The History of Burke and Hare, and of the Resurrectionist Times / A Fragment from the Criminal Annals of Scotland

by George Mac Gregor

Perhaps the Edinburgh district is richer in the tales of the resurrectionists than any other in Scotland. This was only to be expected, for the reputation of the Edinburgh medical school had gone over the world, bringing to it students from all parts. The desire for fame caused a professional rivalry among the teachers, which was taken up by their respective pupils, who were not slow to vie with each other in carrying to the furthest extent the desire to obtain human bodies for dissection. In this they were assisted by the “professional” body-snatchers, and by the beadles and grave-diggers of the churchyards in the vicinity of Edinburgh. Many excursions of this kind were made. Was a body needed? Then several of them joined together, searched out a large bag for the conveyance of the body, and a spade, and their equipment was complete. They had no fear of the watchers who might be set at the churchyard they intended visiting. They trusted to their mother-wit to carry them through any difficulty. At the very worst they could only drop their spoil, and show a clean pair of heels. But here are some of the tales. It would be useless to make any effort to put them in a chronological order. They are stories that have found their way to the public through a variety of sources, without dates, but it is sufficient to know that the events occurred during the present century.

A middle-aged man named Henderson, residing in Leven, Fifeshire, died of fever, and was interred in a neighbouring churchyard. Two young men attending the University of Edinburgh heard of the death, and about a week after the funeral they successfully raised the body from what had been fondly supposed by the relatives of the deceased, to be its last resting-place. While the men were carrying it away, one of them was overtaken by sickness, rendering it necessary that they should seek refuge in an inn at the outskirts of the town. Into this place they carried their ghastly burden, carefully put up in a sack. Curiously enough, the public house formerly belonged to the very man whose corpse they had stolen, and it was then being kept by the widow, for the support of herself and her daughter. The visitors were ushered into a room, in which was a closed-in bed, with wooden door, such as may yet be seen in country houses, and the drink they ordered was taken to them there. No sooner were they fairly begun to discuss the liquor, than the town’s officers roused the landlady, and asked if some thieves who had broken into a neighbouring house had taken refuge on her premises. The men, for some unexplained reason, had by this time taken the body out of the sack, and when they heard the noise made by the constables they threw it inside the bed, and themselves made a hasty retreat by the window. The officers went in chase, but the resurrectionists were too nimble for them and made good their escape. A search was afterwards made in the room occupied by the men, but only the empty bag was found. The widow, however, after the tumult was over, went to the same room to retire for the night, when to her great horror, she found her dead husband lying in the bed which she herself proposed to enter, clad in the grave-clothes she had made with her own hands.

Another story of a somewhat similar adventure is told of Liston, the eminent surgeon, but at this time a student. He had been informed by a country practitioner in one of the villages on the Firth of Forth of the death of a man by a disease whose ravages on his frame should afford some important information to searchers after medical truth. Accordingly, Liston, with one of his companions, dressed themselves as sailors, and set out on board a small boat for the village. There they were joined by the doctor’s apprentice, who was to act as guide. They quickly lifted the body, and placed it in the sack they had brought with them for that purpose. Liston hoisted the ghastly burden on his shoulder, and carried it some distance in the direction of the shore, where their boat was lying. They considered it inadvisable to return to Edinburgh that night, assuming, probably, that if they managed their prize home in the course of the following day their adventure would be more likely to have a satisfactory termination. Accordingly, they placed the bag and its contents behind a thick hedge, where they proposed it should remain until next morning, when they would convey it to the boat. This done, they proceeded to look after their creature comforts, and made their way to a roadside inn. Here they soon made themselves at home. Sitting cosily by the kitchen fire, they gave an order for a supply of good liquor. Under its warming influence they forgot the shocking work in which they had had so recently been engaged, and they amused themselves by flirting with the servant girl, a pretty country damsel. Shortly after midnight, when the companions were proposing to retire to rest, they were alarmed by a drunken shout from the outside, “Ship, ahoy!” The girl explained that the noise came from her sailor brother, Bill, who, she feared, had been drinking. When the door was opened Bill staggered in under the burden of the sack Liston and his comrades had put behind the hedge, and heaving it on the floor he exclaimed—“There, if it ain’t something good, rot them chaps there who stole it.” He said he got the “hulk” behind a hedge when he was lying there trying to wear about upon another tack, and remarking, “Let’s see what’s the cargo,” he proceeded to cut the bag open. The sight of the contents made the girl fly from the house screaming, and she was quickly followed by her brother. The two young men, who had witnessed all under the terror of discovery, seeing a way of escape, took a hasty resolution. There was no safety for them if they remained in the inn, and the turn matters had taken showed them that they must make off as quickly as possible with their booty. Liston again put the dead man on his shoulders and carried him to the boat, leaving the tavern without paying the reckoning. They reached Edinburgh without further adventure, and no doubt they would find some satisfaction in dissecting a subject which was not only interesting in itself but which had also given them so much trouble.

This was not, however, the only exploit of the kind in which Liston was engaged. On another occasion he made an excursion in his boat to Rosyth, near Limekilns, on the Fifeshire shore. The church-yard here, on account of its remoteness from human habitation, and its situation on the side of the Firth, had become a favourite haunt for the resurrectionists. The reason for this expedition was that Liston had seen in a newspaper an account of the drowning and funeral of a sailor belonging to Limekilns. The newspaper also informed its readers, what was the most affecting part of the story, that the young man had been engaged to be married to a girl residing in the district, and that she had become insane through the violence of her grief. This sad calamity had no effect on the young student. He saw in the announcement, melancholy as it was, only the way to obtain a fresh subject, and he took measures to carry the project that had taken possession of his mind into execution. He soon got together a band of kindred spirits, to whom he explained his intentions. The party in the boat arrived at the scene of their intended operations at nightfall, and for a few hours they kept in hiding, until it would be more convenient to begin. As they were about to land they noticed a young woman sitting on a tombstone in the churchyard. Of course they knew nothing of her: but her heart-rending sobs indicated that she was lamenting the death of some loved one whose body had been consigned to its kindred earth. This scene delayed their advance, but it was without effect in turning them from their purpose. At last the woman went away, and the students made towards the place where she had been sitting. They found she had strewn the grave with flowers—“Rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pansies, that’s for thoughts.” Setting to work they quickly raised the body underneath, and speedily carried it to their boat. The party, one of them wearing in his coat a flower he had picked from the grave, then pushed off; but before they were well away from the scene they again observed the woman running backward and forward in the churchyard with her arms waving, apparently acting under the most intense excitement. Her agonizing cries quickened the use of the oars, and hurriedly they left the heart-rending scene behind them.

Rosyth, it has been said, was a favourite haunt of the resurrectionists, but gradually the people of Limekilns awoke to the knowledge that their Golgotha was being desecrated. A party of students from Edinburgh once made a descent upon the place and narrowly escaped detection. They heard of the burial of a woman who had died in child-bed, and they rowed over the Firth to raise her body. When they got to the grave-yard the weather was wild and stormy; as Burns puts it:—

“The wind blew as ’twad blawn its last;
The rattling showers rose in the blast ...
That night, a child might understand
The Deil had business on his hand.”

After twenty minutes’ work the students had “the tall beauty,” as they had named her, again above the ground, and carried her to the dyke, upon which they laid her until they had climbed over themselves. No sooner had they done this than the plaintive howl of a dog was heard. This incident introduced something approaching a panic among them, and they sought comfort in the contents of their pocket flasks. But their terror was increased by the appearance of a lighted lantern moving about among the tombs. They made for their boat, taking care, however, to carry the corpse with them. The dead woman’s long golden hair had become entangled among the stones, and the rough manner in which they dragged the body away left some of the locks, with a portion of the scalp, on the side of the dyke. They immediately put off, and afterwards saw the lantern stop at the point of the dyke where the body had lain. It was currently reported that the bearer of the lantern was the woman’s husband, and that he recognised the hair entangled on the wall.

The depredators were not, however, always successful in carrying off their spoil. Three students attending the class of Monro, tertius, hired a gig, and paid a visit to a churchyard to the south of Edinburgh, somewhere about the vicinity either of Gilmerton or Liberton. When they had arrived at the place on which they intended to operate, two of them climbed the boundary wall, leaving the others in charge of the conveyance. They soon brought to the surface the recently-buried body of a woman, the wife of a well-to-do farmer in the neighbourhood. Unfortunately for themselves, these young men were new to the business, and they had omitted to take with them a very necessary instrument of the resurrectionist—a sack. They saw their mistake when it could not be remedied, and they made up their minds to carry the body in the dead-clothes. One of the students had it hoisted on his back, but as he was going along his grasp upon the shroud began to give way, and the feet of the corpse slipped down until they were touching the ground. As the carrier staggered under his burden, the feet of the dead woman came against the ground every now and then, impeding his progress, and causing such a peculiar movement that the youth thought the woman was leaping behind him. The idea struck him that she was alive, and with an oath he flung the body from him on the road, and made for the gig. His companions, as frightened as himself, rushed after him, and the three worthies drove furiously back to the city. Early next morning the farmer was walking along the Edinburgh road, and came upon a white-robed figure stretched out on the footpath. He found it was the body of his wife, clad in her dead-clothes, with eyes wide open and glazed. His first thought was that she had come back to life, and he tried to restore her, though he knew she had been entombed for three days. The task was futile, and he was only restored to reason by the appearance of the Penicuik carrier, who at once divined the cause of the body being where it was found. The woman was buried privately the next night, and an effort was made to hush up the story.

But while the students of the metropolis were active in the body-snatching work, those of Glasgow were following hard behind them. About the year 1813, Mr. Granville Sharp Pattison, a clever anatomist belonging to the western city, drew around him a band of students who committed many a depredation in the graveyards in and near Glasgow. They had rooms in College Street, in the vicinity of the old University, and there they conducted in secret the dissection of the bodies they were fortunate enough to get into their possession. They kept up a system of espionage over the doctors in the city, learning all the details of any peculiar cases they might be attending; and in the event of death there was little scruple about raising a body from which they thought they were likely to gain information. When any expedition was on foot, those who had been chosen to take part in it were careful to show themselves during the evening in some of the most frequented taverns, in order to throw off suspicion, and then they set about their unhallowed work. These men, of course, wrought in secret, but the suspicion gradually grew on the community that the graves of their friends were being violated. At last the suspicion deepened into a certainty, greater vigilance was observed by the city watch in the hope of laying hands upon the offenders, and many people took the precaution of erecting elaborate iron cages over the graves to give greater security against their desecration.

However, an event occurred in Glasgow which caused an extraordinary sensation. A vessel arrived at the Broomielaw with a consignment of what was supposed to be cotton or linen rags. The cargo, done up neatly in bags, was addressed to a huckster in Jamaica Street, but he refused to take delivery, as between £50 and £60 were charged for freight. He said no rags could afford such freightage, and he sent the packages, without examination, back to the Broomielaw. There they lay in a shed for some time, until the dreadful stench proceeding from them caused the city officers to open them. To the horror of the searchers, there were found in them the putrid bodies of men, women, and children. The authorities ordered the remains to be buried in Anderston Churchyard, and this was done. The explanation of the matter was, that owing to the scarcity of subjects for the anatomy classes of Edinburgh and Glasgow, the bodies had been sent from Ireland by some students there; and the price of each corpse varied from ten to twenty guineas each. As ill-luck would have it, the Jamaica Street huckster did not receive the note advising him of the valuable nature of the cargo consigned to him until it was too late, “otherwise,” says old Peter Mackenzie, who tells the story, “there can be little doubt he would have paid the freight money demanded, and pocketed a goodly commission for the traffic entrusted to his care!”