Although this discovery still further alarmed the community, and showed fully the dreadful nature of the conspiracy which those connected with the medical faculty seemed to have entered into against the peace of the country, all the efforts of watchers and others were unable to foil the ingenuity of the students and their accomplices. Notwithstanding the use of trap-guns placed in the churchyards, bodies were stolen, and the trade flourished. There is, however, one instance recorded in which a student was killed by stumbling over one of these guns. He and two companions were in search of a body in the Blackfriars Churchyard, Glasgow. When he dropped dead, his fellow-students were horrified, but the fear of discovery forced them to adopt an extraordinary method of taking away the body of their unfortunate friend. They carried it to the outside of the churchyard, and placed it on its feet against the wall; then they each tied a leg to one of theirs, and taking the corpse by the arms, they passed slowly along the street towards their lodgings, shouting and singing as if they were three roysterers returning from a carouse. Once safely home, the dead man was put to bed, and next morning the story was circulated that during the night the poor fellow had committed suicide. The fatal adventure was thus kept quiet, and it was not until many years afterwards that the true version of the night’s proceedings was made known.
Two other Glasgow students, having heard of an interesting case at the Mearns, a few miles to the south of the city, determined to obtain possession of the body, in order to find out what it was that had baffled the skill of two such eminent practitioners as Drs. Cleghorn and Balmanno. Knowing that their expedition might be spoiled by the numerous watchers, they took the most ample precautions against discovery. They purchased a suit of old clothing in the Saltmarket, and with it they drove out to the Mearns. The body they desired was easily raised, and was carefully dressed in the suit they had provided. Then they placed it between them in the gig, and returned gaily towards the city. The keeper of the Gorbals toll-bar, through which they had to pass, was a suspicious old man, and they thought they might have some difficulty with him. When they came to the bar they halted promptly, and while one was producing the toll-money the other was attending with the utmost solicitude to what he called his “sick friend,” who was, of course, none other than the dead man. The tollman, noticing his efforts, looked at the “sick” friend, and remarked sympathetically, “O! puir auld bodie, he looks unco ill in the face; drive cannily hame, lads, drive cannily.” Once over the bridge, the students lost no time in conveying to their den the prize they had so ingeniously secured. This device, it would seem, was practised with success in other places, for it is said that in Dundee two men conveyed a body, dressed in the clothes of the living, arm in arm, along the streets, and afterwards sent it on to its destination, presumably Edinburgh.
CHAPTER III.
Tales of the Resurrectionists—What the Doctors did.
A record of the share which the doctors themselves took in the resurrectionist work has not been well preserved. Personally they do not seem to have done much, leaving the active operations in the hands of the students and body-snatchers. There was a suspicion, however, that they were not above lending a helping hand in a case of necessity, when they hoped to obtain a special prize. At least they connived at the practice, and undoubtedly benefited by it. It has been more than hinted, that in many outlying places, far from the University centres, a good deal of business of this kind was done by medical men who had with them apprentices whom they had engaged to teach the art and science of medicine, but who found it impossible to do so unless they had, by some means or other, the requisite anatomical subjects. In these country places the churchyards were watched by the villagers in turn, there being a voluntary assessment on the inhabitants for peats to make the fires by which the guardians of the dead sat and smoked their pipes and sipped their whisky during the long dark nights. In a village in the north of Scotland it is a tradition that a medical man set out with his students one night to lift a body which they considered would be of value to them. The watchers, however, surprised them, and the doctor was mortally wounded by a shot fired by one of the defenders. His companions fled, carrying the injured man with them, and a few days afterwards it was announced that he had died by his own hand.
Others, again, laid the churchyards of Ireland under contribution, as a story related by Leighton amply testifies. A young Irish doctor, known under the name of the “Captain,” resided in Surgeon’s Square, Edinburgh, and many a barrel containing the bodies of his compatriots arrived by boat at Leith addressed to him, and he disposed of them to his friends. He was in the habit of telling how, when at home, he relieved his want of a “subject” in a rather clever way. He had been attending a young man who ultimately died and was honestly interred. It struck him that the body was precisely what he wanted, and he drove off to the churchyard for it. On the way back he met the lad’s mother, who asked him if it were “all right wid the grave ov poor Pat?” The “Captain” assured her it was, and drove her home in his gig, which also contained her son’s corpse. “I dhrove,” said he, “the good lady home agin without breaking a bone of hir body, and Pat never said a word.” Once he addressed the body of a woman, lying on one of the Edinburgh dissecting tables,—“Ah, Misthress O’Neil! did I spare the whisky on you, which you loved so well,—and didn’t you lave me a purty little sum to keep the resurrectionists away from you,—and didn’t I take care of you myself? and by J—s you are there, and don’t thank me for coming over to see you.”
A somewhat amusing conflict took place between the students of Drs. Cullen and Monro for the possession of the body of Sandy M‘Nab, a lame street singer, well known in Edinburgh. He died in the Infirmary, and Cullen and several others placed the body in a box, in order to raise it by a rope to their rooms above. Some of the students under Monro, impelled by a similar motive, were searching for the body, and they came upon it in the box. They shifted it to the other side of the yard, intending to lift it over the wall, but they were observed and attacked by their rivals. A great fight followed, until at last the attacking party had to retire, leaving victory—which meant possession of Sandy’s body—with the original body-snatchers.
The doings of the students of Glasgow has already been mentioned, and the influence which Dr. Pattison had in making body-lifting popular among them has at least been indicated. Matters in that city were at last brought to a crisis, and the doings of this gentleman and his colleagues came to light. The Ramshorn and Cathedral churchyards were being robbed of their silent inhabitants almost nightly, and the greatest excitement prevailed in consequence throughout the city. Two deaths from what were considered peculiar causes occurred in Glasgow about the beginning of December, 1813. On the afternoon of the 13th of that month both the bodies were interred, one in the Ramshorn and the other in the Cathedral churchyard. The students accordingly made preparations for raising both of them. The expedition to the Cathedral was highly successful, for in addition to the corpse they went specially for, the young anatomists put another in their sacks, and made a safe journey to their rooms. In the Ramshorn yard, however, the work had been gone about rather noisily, and the attention of a policeman stationed in the vicinity having been attracted, he raised the alarm. The students escaped, but they were seen to disappear in the neighbourhood of the College. The search was stopped for the night, but next day the news spread throughout the whole community. Intense alarm prevailed, and the Chief Constable, James Mitchell, was besieged with inquiries. Many persons visited the graves of their friends to see if all were right. The brother, or some other relative, of the woman—Mrs. M‘Alister by name—who had been lifted from the Ramshorn, quickly found that her body had been stolen. No sooner was this discovery made than a large crowd rushed to the College, and gave vent to their feelings by breaking the windows of the house occupied by Dr. James Jeffrey, then professor of anatomy in the University. The police had to be called to suppress the tumult. At last the magistrates, forced to action by the strength of public opinion, issued a search-warrant empowering the officers of the law to enter, by force, if necessary, every suspected place, in order to find the body of Mrs. M‘Alister, or of any other person. The officers were accompanied by Mr. James Alexander, surgeon dentist, who had attended the lady to the day of her death, and also by two of her most intimate acquaintances. In the course of their search they visited the rooms of Dr. Pattison, in College Street, where they found the doctor and several of his assistants. They were shown over the apartments with all apparent freedom, but they discovered nothing. They had left the house when Mr. Alexander thought they should have examined a tub, seemingly filled with water, which stood in the middle of the floor of one of the rooms. They returned accordingly, and the water was emptied out. At the bottom of the tub were found a jawbone with several teeth attached, some fingers, and other parts of a human body. The dentist identified the teeth as those he had himself fitted into Mrs. M‘Alister’s mouth, and one of the relatives picked out a finger which he said was the very finger on which Mrs. M‘Alister wore her wedding ring. Pattison and his companions were immediately taken into custody. They were removed to jail amid the execrations of the mob, who were with difficulty restrained from executing summary vengeance upon them. This done, the officers dug up the flooring of the rooms, and underneath they found the remains of several bodies, among them portions of what was believed to be the corpse of Mrs. M‘Alister. The parts were carefully sealed up in glass receptacles for preservation as productions against the accused at their trial. On Monday, 6th June, 1814, Dr. Granville Sharp Pattison, Andrew Russell, his lecturer on surgery, and Messrs. Robert Munro and John M‘Lean, students, were arraigned before Lord Justice Boyle, and Lords Hermand, Meadowbank, Gillies, and Pitmilly, in the High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh, charged under an indictment which set forth, particularly, that the grave of Mrs. M‘Alister, in the Ramshorn churchyard, Glasgow, “had been ruthlessly or feloniously violated by the prisoners, and her body taken to their dissecting rooms, where it was found and identified.” The prisoners were defended by two eminent men—John Clerk and Henry Cockburn. The evidence of the prosecution was clearly against the accused, but the counsel of the defence brought forward proof which as clearly showed that some mistake had been made with the productions. They proved to the satisfaction of the law at least, that the body, or portions of the body, produced in court, and which were libelled in the indictment, were not portions of the body of Mrs. M‘Alister. This lady had been married and had borne children; the productions were portions of the body of a woman who had never borne children. The result was an acquittal. So strong, however, did public feeling run, that Pattison had to emigrate to America, where he attained to an eminence deserving his abilities.
This put an end for a time to the resurrectionist fever in Glasgow, but it was shrewdly suspected that other cases occurred. They must have been few, for the strictest watch was preserved over the graveyards. There was, however, another case which should be mentioned, and occurring, as it did, at a time when the whole of Scotland was struck with terror at the wholesale pillage of churchyards, and the frequent mysterious disappearances of the living, it caused a terrible sensation in Glasgow. In the month of August, 1828, a poor woman in that city was delivered of a child, and on the same evening, some female neighbours observed, through a hole in the partition wall of the apartment in which she resided, that her medical attendant made a parcel of the newly-born infant, and placed it below his coat. When he left the house, they raised the “hue and cry” after him, calling out, “Stop thief,” and telling all they met that the man had a dead child in his possession. An immense crowd soon gathered, the man was attacked, and the body taken from him; and only the opportune arrival of the police saved him from being torn to pieces by the mob. The officers took him and the body to the station-house, the people hooting and howling around them. An examination of the body of the infant was made by several practitioners in the city, at the instance of the authorities, and they certified that it had been still-born. The explanation was, that the young man was a student finishing his course, and that the mother had agreed with him that if he attended her during her illness, he should have the body of the dead child for the purpose of using it as he thought proper.