“At home.”
“Then if you will bring it here about ten it will be examined, and you will get your money; and since you are a beginner, I may tell you, you had better bring it in a box.”
“And have we not a tea-chest all ready, which howlds it nate, and will not my friend help me to bring it?”
“Well, mind the hour, and be upon your guard that no one sees you.”
The young students who had this conversation with Burke were two men who afterwards became famous in their profession—Sir William Ferguson, F.R.S., the author of a System of Practical Surgery; and Thos. Wharton Jones, one of the most eminent physiologists of the country. So that the training they obtained in these troublous times has proved highly beneficial to medical science, and through it to humanity.
But to continue the story of the disposal of old Donald’s body. Having come to this agreement with the students, Burke joined his companion, and went home. They put the body into a sack, and carried it to Surgeons’ Square. When they arrived there they were in doubt as to what they should do with it. They laid it down at the door of a cellar, and then went to the room, where they saw the students again. By their instructions they carried the corpse into the room, took it out of the sack, and placed it on a dissecting table. A shirt which was on the body they removed at the request of the students, and Dr. Knox, having examined it, proposed they should get £7 10s. The money was paid by Jones, Hare receiving £4 5s., and Burke £3 5s., the paymaster saying he would be glad to see them again when they had any other body to dispose of. This is Burke’s account of the transaction, as made in his confession on the 3rd January, 1829, and it substantially agrees with the fuller account given by Leighton.
This was the first transaction these two men had with the doctors, and it is curious to notice how an incident of so little moment in itself should be to them the first step in a long and terrible course of crime—long in the sense that, considering its nature, they should have for such a length of time kept out of the reach of the law, or, indeed, of any suspicion of being anything worse than pitiful creatures of resurrectionists, who were willing to rob graves of their mouldering contents for a few paltry pounds. That step, however, was enough.
CHAPTER VII.
New Prospects—Description of Hare’s House—The Murder of Abigail Simpson, the Old Woman from Gilmerton—The Two Sick Men.