SCROLLING through social media, human feet, fingers and skulls are easily up for grabs – with soaring price tags for certain body parts.
Grim as it might be, so-called “death brokers” are perfectly legal – with no laws against the buying and selling of human bones in the UK.
Skulls sit on a shelf in North East India – where human bones were routinely stolen from graves
Curiosity shops often sell human bones, including skulls and teeth
Imported human foetus skulls for sale in Oklahoma
Henry Scragg runs Curiosities from the 5th Corner – a shop in Essex filled with peculiar items
But Brits buying tooth necklaces or human skull cups may be shocked to learn that the vast majority of bones in circulation were stolen from graves on the other side of the world.
And there’s fresh fears of in the UK following the rise in popularity of the bone trade – thanks to giving death dealers easy access to an eager market.
The Sun documented dozens of people using Facebook and Instagram to sell bones – with adverts like “all human feet now reduced” and “bones and skulls for sale, serious clients only”.
Brits are interested in acquiring human bones for all sorts of reasons – displaying them as morbid curiosities, using them in macabre or for herbal medicines.
Henry Scragg runs a shop in called Curiosities from the 5th Corner, where you can find a foetus of conjoined twins floating in a medical jar and shelves of human skulls.
Morbid knick knacks for sale include rings adorned with skull cap chunks and a bullet pendant mounted with a splinter of leg bone.
Mr Scragg admits some people consider his trade “wrong and unethical”, but tells The Sun that he conducts business with respect.
He says: “Some people brought up in certain cultures are very set in their ways, and don’t like what I do.
“But they just don’t understand it, it’s the fear of the unknown.”
He argues that society appears to treat the dead with more reverence than the living at times.
For over a century, real human skeletons were also a staple of medical classroom and doctors surgeries.
Today, you’ll have to fork out if you want to acquire bones of your own.
The going rate for a complete foot is around £100 – or you can buy an assortment box for a similar price, according to an ITV investigation .
But journalist Scott Carney, the author of The Red Market – a book about the trade of body parts – warns that most bones in circulation have come from looted graves in .
He explains why, from a grave-robber’s perspective, it’s “much better to get your skeleton’s fresh”, and why pregnant women fetch a grisly “premium”.
A selection of bones available to buy online
Scott tells The Sun: “Calcutta was exporting about 60,000 skeletons every year at its peak.
“And there’s no way to source 60,000 human skeletons ethically.”
Most of the demand was driven by medical in countries like the UK, US and .
While a fraction of the number of bones would be properly sourced, most would be from people “going to graveyards or burning ghats and taking bodies, once the family had left, and they would go steal corpses”, he said.
Scott says: “I met several people who had their family members stolen, relatively recently.
“And there’s a premium put on pregnant women who are dying because foetal skeletons are worth more.”
Scott says: “Basically, all human skeletons were stolen. If you are a doctor who trained in the 80s, you trained on a stolen human skeleton.
“And more recently, anytime you’re buying a human body part and you’re not asking how it was sourced, there’s a really good chance that the actual supply chain is much more untoward than you would want.”
Bone fanatic Jon Pichaya sells human bones for a living from his website Jons Bones
Many bones in circulation have been stolen from graves
The journalist, who spent time in India and has seen first-hand huge bags bulging with skulls, reveals in grisly detail how these bones would be extracted and prepared for sale.
He tells us: “The way you would do that is you would take the body, and you would wrap it in a fishing net, and you’d leave it in the water for a week, so it would get pretty soggy.
“Then you’d be able to scrape off all of the flesh from the body.
“You would then put that then skeleton into caustic soda to take off the rest of it… and then with a little bit more processing at the anatomy labs in Calcutta, it would be good to go and sent around the world.”
In order to get their hands on a quality product, these grave robbers would raid the newest burial sites.
Scott says: “It’s much better to get a fresh skeleton than one that’s been in the grave for a little while.”
The law in the UK on selling human bones
The buying and selling of human bones exists in a legal grey area in the UK, with no explicit ban on such transactions under current laws.
While the trade is not explicitly illegal, it operates in an unregulated space – and it has significant ethical questions.
The Human Tissue Act 2004 regulates the use of human tissue for transplantation, research, and public display – but does not address the private sale of human bones.
Human body parts are also not considered property under UK law, but certain processes applied to remains may establish a form of ownership.
But the “disturbance of graves” without authority is illegal.
That’s because older skeleton can crack or splinter, Scott explained.
While some of these bones were split open for medical classes, many of them have dispersed across the world and ended up in people’s closets or on their shelves.
Now they are finding a new lease of life through the revived bones trade in the UK.
Shops of curiosities, selling things like conjoined twin’s foetuses and shrunken skulls, have also seen a surge in popularity.
All of this trade – whether on social media or in dark street-corner shop – is perfectly legal in this country.
But there is only a limited supply of bones, skin and human matter in circulation, meaning that as demand grows new sinister supply roots are springing up.
Some voices are warning that the burgeoning trade risks fuelling a new era of “body snatching”, amid reports that some graves have already been raided in the UK.
A human skull available on Instagram
Scott Carney, an investigative journalist, has tracked the historic trade of human bones
Dame Sue Black, one of the UK’s leading forensic scientists, thinks it’s time for a crackdown.
She told The Guardian: “You’ve got people who are breaking into mausolea and who are taking remains away to sell them for people who think this is gothic, quaint [or] supernatural.
“If you can make the sale of a bird’s nest illegal, surely to goodness you can make the sale of a human body illegal.
“Having a necklace made out of somebody’s teeth isn’t acceptable to people.”
And these calls are gaining traction.
Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, has closed some of the dozens of accounts using its platforms to buy and sell human products after an investigation made it aware.
Mr Scragg’s Curiosities from the 5th Corner was one of the casualties.
Both of his Facebook and Instagram accounts were taken down for apparent policy violations.
Mr Scragg said: “I’ve just lost my main source of income for keeping a roof over my daughter’s head.”
For now, the popularity of buying and selling of human bones is on the rise – and raising ethical questions.
Henry Scragg’s Curiosities from the 5th Corner social media accounts have been shut down for alleged violations of policy 
