Much, even at this early stage, was made of the conduct of Knox and his assistants, but, we think, with little justice to these men. Why did they not ask those dark and suspicious-looking ruffians, who did not belong to their regular staff, where they got the object thus brought to them? The answer appears to be satisfactory, whatever might be thought of their subsequent defence and explanations. There was nothing here to excite suspicion, except, as it was said, the absence of certain marks often made by resurrectionists in their process of working, but the exception went for nothing in the face of an assertion that such marks are seldom to be seen; and then, as for the asserted naturalness—if we may use the expression of an inquiry of such a kind—it was said, and may be repeated, that that which appears to be natural is not always expedient. We are here to keep in view that the medical men were aware that they were dealing in smuggled goods, the participation on their part being, as they conceived, justified by the necessities of their profession; and when was it ever known that the dealer with a smuggler questioned him as to the whereabouts and the manner of his contravention of the laws? It does not need even to be remarked, that to discourage is not the best way to lay the foundation of a new bargain; nay, there was weight in the observation, that the prudent avoidance of such interrogation had become a habit, and though they were perfectly aware that bodies had been brought to them which had never been in graves, and, consequently, that there existed a practice of sale and purchase between the men devoted to this profession, and the friends or distant relatives of the dead, they still considered that all such cases were covered by the claims of science, whereby society got returned to it, in the shape of an increased knowledge and skill of cure, that which had been taken from it against the sanction of human affections. Then it was admitted, even by the “howlers,” that never, up to this time, had there been offered a body which could be said to have borne marks of violence; and if the minds of at least these generous and well-bred youths never entertained a suspicion of murder, the fact might more properly have been adduced as honourable to their estimate of mankind, than as an objection to their want of guard against an evil which had not yet appeared in the world, and which was to become, unhappily, in good old Scotland, a new species of crime.
The Quaternion.
We suspect there is scarcely a life of a great man, whether he has been great for good or for evil, in which you will not find passages that are analogous to some things in your own. As with the physical monsters, described by such men as Dr Denham, in which there is always a natural foundation out of which grow the amorphous excrescences which we call monstrosities, so in the moral there is always something that pertains to the natural, insomuch that we may say, that the abnormal beings who go by the name of monsters are, as respects their unenvied peculiarity, the result of a twist in the development of what was intended to be according to the ordinary rule. The observation may serve as a cave diabolum even to those who think they are for certain out of the reprobatory decrees.
William Burke was born in the parish of Orrey, county of Tyrone, Ireland, in the spring of 1792. When at school, he was distinguished as an apt scholar, and was, besides, cleanly and active in his habits. Though bred a Catholic, he was taken when very young into the service of a Presbyterian minister, a circumstance which may explain the religious tendencies he subsequently exhibited; but even at this early period, he began to shew signs of that versatility of purpose which, leading sometimes to success, more often ends in vagabondism. Having left the minister to try the trade of a baker, he renounced that for the occupation of a weaver; and from that he enlisted in the Donegal militia. Yet in the midst of these changes he observed so much moral regularity that he was selected by one of the officers as his servant. While thus employed he married a young woman in Ballinha; and after seven years he returned to live with her, on the disbanding of the regiment. Still with a fair character, he then became the servant to a neighbouring gentleman, with whom he lived three years. Meanwhile he had a family by his wife; and having taken it into his head that he would be able to maintain them by getting a sub-lease of a piece of ground from his father-in-law, who was himself a tenant, he insisted for this right, which was refused, and the quarrel which ensued sent him to Scotland. Still, however, even in his advanced manhood, without any other stain than an imputed infidelity to his wife, we are assured, at least, that as yet he had shewn no indications of what may be termed cruelty even by the fastidious, if it was not that he bore the reputation of mildness approaching to softness.
Yet he came to Scotland with this blot on his soul, and it was soon deepened, when, having gone to work as a labourer on the Union Canal, he fell in, at Meddiston, with Helen M‘Dougal, a comely, if not good-looking, young widow, then residing there after the death of her husband. It has been always said that this was an affair of love, at least it ended in a connexion so close that they resolved to live together.
It would appear that the connexion thus formed having been communicated to his priest, he was admonished, and recommended to return to his wife; and a consequence of his refusal was the ordinary excommunication. Yet he continued to have religious fits, during the continuance of which he avoided the chapel, from the terrors of the anathema. We trace him afterwards, as he returned with his paramour to Edinburgh, where he fell, as the consequence of his continued versatility, into peripatetic pedlery, buying and vending old clothes, skins of animals, human hair, and other small articles and wares. Nor did he stick by this, soon betaking himself to cobbling, for which, in a rude way, he discovered that he had a turn, though he had never been taught the craft; and by purchasing old shoes and boots, to which he applied his art, and getting M‘Dougal to hawk them, he contrived to realise fifteen or twenty shillings a-week. At this time he was a lodger in “The Beggars’ Hotel,” kept by the well-known Mikey Culzean,—an establishment which had a famous termination, when, being one day burned to the ground, there came forth, driven by the flames, such a swarm of beggars, halt and blind, that their congregation seemed as difficult to account for as the assemblage of a colony of rats. Among them appeared Burke and M‘Dougal; but there were left behind in the fire the library of the cobbler, consisting of Ambrose’s “Looking unto Jesus,” Boston’s “Fourfold State,” “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” and Booth’s “Reign of Grace.” Once more he became a lodger with Mikey, who took up a new hotel in Brown’s Close, Grassmarket.
That the man, originally neither cruel nor profane, was not yet, like Balaam, left to his idol, would appear from his continued religious exercises. The grace of the Lord tracks the devil in his darkest caves. In the next house the candle of salvation burned, and even cast its light into the thick atmosphere of the surrounding dens. Thither Burke repaired, and joined, with apparent seriousness, in the exercise of devotion; nor did he fail to tax the incurable Mikey with profanity, when that notorious lover of a joke, even at the expense of divine things, thrust his head through the papered partition, and cried out, to the dismay of the devotees, “The performance is just going to begin.” In all this there seemed to be no hypocrisy, because there was no use to which he tried to turn it; and then his conversations on the subject of the service, which, after the company dispersed, he had with the man in whose house the meetings were held, seemed to be too secret for the displays of the mere dissembler.
Other traits conspired to shew the nature of the man, before the temptations of the idol changed it. Kind and serviceable, inoffensive and playful, he was industrious as well, and seldom inclined for drink. Fond of singing and playing on the flute, he sought, in his melancholy moods, the solace of plaintive airs. All which qualities were combined with a jocular and quizzical turn, which, displaying a fund of low humour, made him a favourite. Some anecdotes are given in illustration,—as where, one day, when he heard a salt-wife bawling out, “Wha’ll buy salt?” he replied, “Upon my word, I doun’t know; but if you ask that woman gaping at the door opposite, perhaps she may inform you;” or where, on another, when, having been abused by a painted Jezebel on the High Street, he tried to shame her by an accusation: “I might have passed over the painting,” said he, “if it had been properly done, but it’s shameful to come to the street bedaubed in that unskilful way,”—an objurgation which was applauded by the bystanders.