James Blake Bailey

A late 19th-century librarian and editor, he is best remembered for The Diary of a Resurrectionist, 1811–1812 (1896), a book that preserved a rare firsthand record of London body-snatchers and set it alongside a wider account of the anatomy trade. The result is part documentary, part social history, and still fascinating for readers interested in medicine, crime, and the darker edges of city life.

Contemporary title pages identify him as B.A., Librarian of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. The Royal College of Surgeons’ own library history also notes that James Blake Bailey was appointed in 1887 after earlier library work in Oxford and at the Medico-Chirurgical Society, and credits him with helping reorganize and strengthen the collection.

Little biographical detail seems to survive in widely accessible sources, but his reputation rests securely on the way he handled unusual historical material: with patience, order, and a storyteller’s instinct for what would keep readers turning pages.