Barclay had been brought up for the church, and in his early days had, during the absence of the Rev. Mr. Baird of Bo’ness, wagged his head in the pulpit of that divine. “How did they like him?” asked Baird of Sandy, the village sage or the village idiot or, perhaps, both. “Gey weel, minister, gey weel, but everybody thought him daft.” “Why, Sandy?” “Oh, for gude reasons, minister; Mr. Barclay was aye skinning puddocks” (frogs). It was reported that dogs fled in terror at the sight of him; the sagacious animals feared capture and dissection; he had incautiously cut up a dog in the presence of its kind and thus had an ill name in the canine world! Not that this implied any ill-will to dogs; quite the contrary, as witness a story of John Goodsir (1814-1867), who succeeded Monro tertius as professor of anatomy in 1846. He had carefully studied the anatomy of the horse. “I love the horse, I love the horse,” he said with genuine fervour, “I have dissected him twice!”
Barclay possessed an uncle, a full-blown divine, and the founder of a sect by some called after him. Nephew and uncle argued theological points. The young man was so hard to convince that the elder sent a heavy folio flying at his head; he dodged the missile, but if not confuted, was at any rate silenced.
Many of the anecdotes of the surgeon’s life in old Edinburgh turn on this question of anatomy. Until the Anatomy Act of 1832, that science was terribly hampered by the want of subjects. The charter of 1505 provided an allowance of one body annually, which was almost ludicrously insufficient, hence body snatching became almost a necessity, perhaps among the surgeons themselves it was counted a virtue, but they dared not say it openly. On 20th May 1711, the college solemnly protested against body snatching. On the 24th of January 1721 a clause was ordered to be inserted in indentures binding apprentices not to violate graves, but the populace, rightly or wrongly, thought those rascal surgeons had tongue in cheek all the time, and were ever inclined to put the worst possible construction on every circumstance that seemed to point that way. Lauder of Fountainhall commemorates an early case. On the 6th February 1678 four gipsies, a father and three sons, were hanged together at Edinburgh, for killing another gipsy called Faa at Romanno. To the Edinburgh burghers of the day the gipsy and the cateran were mere wild beasts of prey, and these four wretches were hung in haste, cut down in haste, and forthwith huddled together with their clothes on—it was not worth while to strip them of their rags—into a shallow hole in Greyfriars Churchyard. Next morning the grave lay open, and the body of the youngest son, aged sixteen, was missing. It was remembered he had been the last thrown over, and the first cut down, and the last buried. Perhaps he had revived, thrown aside a scanty covering of earth, and fled to Highland hill or Border waste. Others opined that the body had been stolen by some chirurgeon or his servant for the purpose of dissection, on which possibility Fountainhall takes occasion to utter some grave legal maxims; solemnly locks the door, as it were, in the absence of the steed. In 1742 a rifled grave was noted in the West Kirkyard, and a body, presumably its former tenant, was presently discovered near the shop of one Martin Eccles, surgeon. Forthwith the Portsburgh drum was beating a mad tattoo through the Cowgate, and the mob proceeded to smash the surgeon’s shop. As for Martin, you may safely assume non est inventus, else had he been smashed likewise. Again, a sedan chair is discovered containing a dead body, apparently on its way to the dissecting room. The chairman and his assistant were banished, and the chair was burned by the common hangman. Again, one John Samuel, a gardener, moved thereto, you guess, by an all too consuming thirst, is taken at the Potterow Port trying to sell the dead body of a child, which was recognised as having been buried at Pentland the week before. He was soundly whipped through Edinburgh and banished Scotland for seven years.
A still more sordid and more terrible tragedy is among the events of 1752. Two women, Ellen Torrence and Jean Waldy, meet in the street a mother with her little boy, they ask her to drink, an invitation, it seems, impossible to resist. Whilst one plied her with liquor, the other enticed the boy to her own den, where she promptly suffocated him. The body was sold for two shillings to the students, sixpence was given to the one who carried it, and it was only after long haggling that an additional ten pence was extorted “for a dram.” They were presently discovered and executed. This almost incredible story, to which Gilbert Glossin in Guy Mannering makes a rather far-fetched reference in a discussion with Mr. Pleydell, proves at any rate one thing, there was a ready market for dead bodies in Edinburgh for purposes of dissection, and as the buyer was not too inquisitive, indeed he could scarcely afford to be, the bodies almost certainly were illegally procured; though, whatever the populace might think and suspect, there was never any case where there was the least evidence that the surgeon was a party to the murder. Any surgeon who was such must have been a criminal lunatic. The case of Dr. Knox, to be presently referred to, was the one that excited most notice and suspicion. It was carefully inquired into, and nothing was found against him. If there had been a prima facie case, the popular feeling was so strong that the Crown authorities needs must have taken action, but I anticipate a little.
From the latter half of the eighteenth century to the first part of the nineteenth, the resurrectionist and the pressgang were two subjects on which the popular imagination dwelt with a certain fascinated horror. The resurrectionist was so much in evidence that graves were protected with heavy iron frames (you still see one or two specimens in old Greyfriars and elsewhere), and churchyards were regularly watched. There is no need to set forth how the tenderest and deepest feelings of human nature were outraged by the desecration of the last resting-place. On the other hand, the doctors were mad for subjects. A certain enthusiasm for humanity possessed them, too. Were they not working to relieve suffering? There was something else: the love of daring adventure, the romance and mystery of the unholy midnight raid had their attraction; it was never difficult, you can believe, to collect a harum-scarum set of medical students for an expedition. Some men, afterwards very eminent, early distinguished themselves. Thus, the celebrated surgeon, Robert Liston (1794-1847), was engaged in more than one of the following adventures, the stories of which I here tell as samples of the bulk. One Henderson, an innkeeper, had died in Leven, in Fifeshire. Two students from Edinburgh had snatched the body and were conveying it away, when one of them suddenly felt ill. They took refuge with their burden, enclosed in a sack, in a convenient public-house. It happened to be the one formerly kept by Henderson, and now in charge of his widow and daughter. They were shown to an upper room, which contained a closed-in box bed, so frequent a feature in old Scots houses. The sick man was pulling himself together with brandy and what not, when a great hubbub arose downstairs. The town officers were searching the house for stolen property. The students were beside themselves with panic, though in fact the officers do not seem to have searched the upstairs room at all. However, “The thief doth fear each bush an officer.” The two lads hastily took the body from the sack and put it in the bed, then they bolted through the window, and were seen no more. The room as it turned out was used by the widow as a bedroom, and it was only when she retired for the night—I need not follow the narrative further, save to note that the graveclothes had been made by herself!
When Liston was a student he heard from a country surgeon of an interesting case where a post-mortem seemed desirable in the interests of science. He and some others dressed as sailors and repaired to the place by boat, for it was on the shore of the Firth. The surgeon’s apprentice met them as arranged, and everything went off well. The marauding party repaired for refreshment to a little change-house, leaving their sack under a near hedge. Here they spent a happy time in carousing and chaffing the country wench whom they found in charge. A loud shout of “Ship ahoy!” startled them. The girl said it was only her brother, and a drunken sailor presently staggered in with the sack on his shoulders. Pitching it to the ground, he said with an oath, “Now if that ain’t something good, rot them chaps who stole it.” Presently he produced a knife. “Let’s see what it is,” said he as he ripped the sack open. The sight of the contents worked a sudden change: the girl fled through the door with hysterical screams, the sailor on the instant dead sober followed, Liston seized the body, and all made for the boat, and they were soon safe back in Edinburgh. Liston is the chief figure of another adventure. He and his party had gone by boat to Rosyth to get the body of a drowned sailor. His sweetheart, nearly distracted at her recent loss, was scarce absent from the tomb night or day. They did manage to get the body lifted and on board the boat, when the woman discovered the violated grave. Her wild shrieks rang in their ears as they pulled for the opposite shore as hard as they could, but they kept secure hold of their prey. Another story tells of a party of tyros who had raised the body of a farmer’s wife from Glencorse or some neighbouring churchyard. As they dragged along it seemed to their excited fancy that the body had recovered life and was hopping after them! They fled with loud yells of terror, and left their burden by the roadside. The widower was the first to discover it there next morning. He thought it was a case of premature burial and made some frantic efforts at resuscitation: the truth only gradually dawned upon him. This, I venture to think, was the story that suggested to R. L. Stevenson his gruesome tale of The Body-snatcher.
Yet another story tells of a certain Miss Wilson of Bruntsfield Links who was courted by two admirers. She showed a marked preference for one, and when he died she seemed heart-broken. The other, not content with having the field to himself, engaged the services of a professional body-snatcher and proceeded to Buccleuch burying-ground. Miss Wilson was mourning at the grave; they waited till she was gone and then set to work, and the surviving rival soon had the cruel satisfaction of knowing that the body of the other was on the anatomical table at the University!
I have mentioned the professional body-snatcher, and the class certainly existed. Obviously it was formed of men of a low type, however afraid they might be to perpetrate actual murder. Among the best known was a certain Andrew Lees, called “Merry Andrew” by the students. He had been a carrier between a country town and Edinburgh, and his house was near the churchyard, which he despoiled at leisure. In after days he used to lament the times when he got subjects “as cheap as penny pies.” It was said he drank sixteen glasses of raw whisky daily, and that on great occasions the glasses became pints. Various ruffians were associated with him, one nicknamed “Moudiewart,” or mole, from his skill in the delving part of the operation. Perhaps a line from Shakespeare was in the mind of the nicknamer:
“Well said, old mole, can’st work i’ the earth so fast?”
More probably it was all native wit. Another was a sham parson called “Praying Howard,” who wept and supplicated with an unction hard to distinguish from the real article. There is no doubt these rascals thoroughly enjoyed their knavish pranks, and they were ever on the watch to hear of some one dying, friendless and alone; then one appeared among a household perplexed to know what to do with the remains of a person in whom they had no special interest. The stranger was a dear friend or near relative of the deceased, and was only anxious to bury him with all possible honour, and in due course a mock funeral was arranged, with parson, undertaker, and chief mourner. The procession started for some place in the country, but of course the real destination of the departed was one of the Edinburgh dissecting rooms. If things went well, Andrew and his fellows spent a night in wild debauchery in some tavern of ill odour in every sense of the word.