“With an ‘effrontery’ which is very far indeed from being ‘scientific,’ but which is nevertheless ‘peculiarly and eminently his own,’ it has been reserved for this blundering renegade to pronounce a series of murders, devised and perpetrated by Irishmen alone, as ‘decidedly of Scotch origin;’ and to talk of the ‘internal evidence’ of a murder, while he is in ignorance of every thing concerning it, except the mere fact of its having been committed; to pander to the prejudices of the very lowest class of Englishmen by pouring out abuse upon Scotland; and to compromise the solid interests of his constituents, the highly respectable proprietors of the Sun, by venting libellous scurrilities against the country which had the misfortune to give him birth, and where that journal has hitherto been received with a degree of favour to which, not the talents of its editor certainly, but the activity of its reporters seemed to entitle it. But let that person look to himself. We know it is always renegade Scotsmen who are loudest and fiercest in abusing their country. Dr. John Macculloch is one of that class, and he has accordingly been served out in some measure proportioned to his deserts. If the editor of the Sun, therefore, has a mind to indulge further in such disgraceful scurrilities, he had as well accustom himself paullatim et gradatim to stand a pretty vigorous application of the scourge.”
This display of energy on the part of the Mercury was greatly appreciated by the people, and a letter which was addressed to the editor on behalf of Gray and his wife gave expression to the popular feeling in the matter:—“Sir,—You drubbed Maculloch (the libeller of his country) delightfully; and it is hoped you will keep a good look-out if ‘The Sun’ again shows any more such dirty dark spots as the one you lately held up to merited abhorrence. It is a general remark that our Scottish papers are sadly deficient in public spirit.”
As for Gray, in whose favour the letter just quoted from was written, he was given an appointment in the Edinburgh police establishment, in which he is said to have become an active and intrepid officer. A public subscription was raised for him, but the amount did not anything like adequately acknowledge his services to the country. Perhaps Burke himself gave the best testimony to these services, when he said, to a gentleman standing near him while he was making his confession before the Sheriff—“The murders never would have been discovered had Gray not found the body among the straw.” This was supplemented by “Candidus,” the writer of the letter to the Caledonian Mercury, who remarked—“Could they (Gray and his wife) have been bribed not to inform about the dead body, these murderous fiends, Burke and Hare, aided and abetted by their miscreant female companions, would still have been pursuing their dark deeds of blood.” The relationship between Mrs. Gray and Helen M‘Dougal, it should be here stated, was simply that the former was the daughter of the man M‘Dougal with whom the latter took up in Maddiston, and lived with until his death, when she met Burke.
CHAPTER XL.
The Relations of the Doctors and the Body-Snatchers—Need for a change in the Law—A Curious Case in London—Introduction and withdrawal of the Anatomy Bill.
The revelations following the execution of William Burke, in the publication of his confessions, and in the paragraphs—more or less authentic—which appeared in the newspapers from time to time, had the effect of making the public alive to the dangers by which they were surrounded under the then state of the law. To all reasonable men who desired investigation for the benefit of suffering humanity, it was painfully manifest that the supply of bodies for the anatomical schools of the country was far too limited if any satisfactory result was to be expected. And they were face to face with the equally painful fact that the sacreligious violation of graves, and the even more sacreligious “breaking into the bloody house of life,” as Mr. Cockburn put it, had been resorted to in order to give the bold anatomists of the time an opportunity of investigating the science, on which, above all, human happiness and pleasure on earth were dependent. Many were unwilling to adopt the views which these facts forced upon them; others with a wise enthusiasm threw their whole influence in their favour. The surgeons themselves, seeing that under the existing state of things they were regarded by many as allied with an unholy class of men, desired such an alteration of the law as should put them on a more satisfactory footing. They wished that instead of the purchase of bodies from poor relations being done in what was almost a surreptitious and hidden manner, it should be done under legal sanction, and without the semblance of moral turpitude. This in itself was perfectly reasonable, and had been proven to be right by the stern logic of facts; but the great mass of the people were against it. Suggestions that legislation should proceed in this direction were regarded simply as suggestions for legislation for a favoured class—the doctors themselves—the fact being ignored that on the extension of the accurate information of that class depended to a very material extent the welfare and comfort of the whole nation, without respect of persons. The public mind, therefore, required to be educated up to the inauguration of a new state of things, which in the end would be better for all concerned. But two or three smart lessons, in addition to the severe one taught by the Edinburgh revelations, were required before Parliament could be turned in the right direction.
In January, 1829, while Burke was lying in Caltonhill jail, Edinburgh, under sentence of death, a case which showed the anomalous state of the law, occurred in London. A man named Huntingdon and his wife were charged with stealing the clothes of a man who had died suddenly while walking along Walworth Common. “The investigation of the charge,” says a contemporary chronicler, “exhibited an extraordinary instance of the manner in which dead bodies are procured for dissection.” Mr. Murray, the assistant overseer of the parish of Newington, stated that on the Monday preceding the 9th of January, when the case was first heard, the body of a man who had dropped dead on one of the streets of that parish, was brought to the workhouse. Two days afterwards, the two prisoners attended at the committee room of the workhouse, and affecting great sorrow, represented that they were nearly related to the deceased, and that they desired to have his body delivered to them, as they wished to have it decently interred at their own expense. The parish officers, on this representation, made enquiries respecting Huntingdon and his wife at the place where they resided, and as nothing to their disadvantage was heard, it was agreed that the body be delivered to them immediately the public inquest as to the cause of death was concluded. On the Thursday the inquest was held, and after it the prisoners again made their appearance at the workhouse, and renewed their demand for the corpse, which was now given them. While preparations were being made for its removal, they became talkative, and informed the parish officers that the deceased was Mrs. Huntingdon’s brother, and that, having come to London from Shoreham, in Sussex, about four months before, with eighty pounds in his possession, he had led a life of dissipation, and squandered all in that short period. This only tended to give a greater air of consistency and truth to the statements already made by the prisoners, that the officials thought they were not only doing right in giving up the body, but also that they were saving the parish the expense of a pauper’s funeral. This dream, however, was soon rudely dispelled. In consequence of a quarrel which occurred between the prisoners and a female companion, as to the division of the money which the sale of the corpse had brought, the affair was brought to light, and Huntingdon and his wife were apprehended. Of course they were imposters, in no way related to the dead man; and on obtaining possession of the body they had sold it to the surgeons of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, receiving eleven guineas for their ware. An officer of the police searched the lodgings of the prisoners in Southwark, and there discovered the clothes which had belonged to the deceased, together with a great variety of implements used by body-snatchers, such as screw-drivers and wrenching machines for opening the lids of coffins, and gimlets of all sizes. But not only did they appear to be engaged in robbing the houses of the dead—house-breaking implements of all kinds showed that they were at war with the living as well. But the most curious part of the whole case was that instead of being charged with the theft of the body, or with a misdemeanour which would cover that offence, Huntingdon and his wife, under the existing state of the law, could only be libelled for having stolen the clothes of the deceased, and for having burglarious instruments in their possession.
A few weeks after this, on the 21st of March, 1829, Mr. Henry Warburton, the Member for Bridport, obtained the first reading of a bill, intended to free anatomists from the restrictions under which they pursued their inquiries. This measure was supported by the Lord Advocate for Scotland, Sir William Rae, whose experience in the inquiries in the Burke and Hare trials was a strong recommendation in its favour. On the 7th of April Mr. Warburton obtained the passage of a motion made by him, under which the House of Commons appointed a Select Committee to consider and give effect to the recommendations contained in a report prepared by a Select Committee on Anatomy appointed in the previous Session. Those recommendations were in accordance with what he and many anatomists desired should be made the law of the country. That the details of the bill, however, were not altogether satisfactory to those who were supposed to be most interested in it, is evinced by the fact that on the 8th of May, Mr. B. Cooper, the member for Gloucester, presented a petition from the Royal College of Surgeons, praying to be heard in opposition to it. The petitioners, Mr. Cooper stated, were friendly to the principles laid down in the measure, but they wished to be heard on the details. The presentation of this petition gave rise to a short discussion, in the course of which the Edinburgh tragedies were incidentally mentioned. Mr. Smith, the representative of Norwich, complained of a letter which had appeared in the public prints, stating that Dr. Knox, of Edinburgh, was guilty of the most intolerable criminality, and that he was unworthy to be trusted. If Dr. Knox, he said, did not deserve this, the letter must be reprobated in the highest degree. The petition was ordered to be laid on the table of the House; but it is probable that this passing reference in Parliament may have shown Dr. Knox that the position he then occupied was unsatisfactory, and have induced him to seek the inquiry into his relations with Burke and Hare mentioned in a previous chapter.
When Mr. Warburton’s Anatomy Bill reached the committee stage on the 15th of May, the member for Oxford University, Sir R. Inglis, moved that it be an instruction to the committee that it be empowered to repeal so much of the Act 9, Geo. IV., Cap. 31, as gave permission to the judges to order the bodies of murderers, after execution, to be given over for dissection; but Mr. Warburton strenuously opposed this motion, as he believed the fate of his bill depended upon its containing no such provision. The view of the measure taken by the great body of the people was fitly given expression to by Lord F. Osborne, the member for Cambridgeshire, who, in a subsequent part of the debate, said he must oppose a measure which gave over the bodies of the poor and friendless to the surgeons; but the other side of the question was as aptly put by Mr. Hume, in the remark that the measure would be beneficial to the poor as well as to the rest of the community. At the close of the debate, the bill was committed with the instruction desired by Sir R. Inglis; and on the 19th of March it was read a third time, and passed by the House of Commons. Lord Malmesbury stood as sponsor for the measure in the House of Lords, which it reached on the 20th of May. His lordship, in moving that it be printed, admitted that it was extremely unpopular out of doors, but urged its necessity; and on the motion of the Earl of Shaftesbury it was read a third time. However, under the whole circumstances, it was deemed expedient, on the 5th of June, to withdraw the bill, and in the discussion to which this proposal led, the Earl of Harewood stated that, with respect to the horrid proceedings at Edinburgh, it was a disgrace to the country that they had not been investigated more fully, and that the public had not been informed of the result of the investigation. All that the public really knew was that fifteen or sixteen murders had been committed.