The History of Burke and Hare Part 1

The History of Burke and Hare.

by George Mac Gregor.

PREFACE.

The history of the Scottish nation has, unfortunately, been stained with many foul crimes, perpetrated either to serve personal ends and private ambition, or under the pretence of effecting the increased welfare of the people. These have given life to a large amount of literature, much of it from the pens of some of the most distinguished legal and antiquarian authors the country has produced, such as Arnot, Pitcairn, MacLaurin, Burton, and others. But of all the criminal events that have occurred in Scotland, few have excited so deep, widespread, and lasting an interest as those which took place during what have been called the Resurrectionist Times, and notably, the dreadful series of murders perpetrated in the name of anatomical science by Burke and Hare. The universal interest excited at the time of these occurrences, also, has called forth a great quant.i.ty of fugitive literature; and as no narrative of any considerable size, detailing in a connected and chronological form the events which bulk so largely in the history of the country, had yet appeared, the Author considered a volume such as the present was required to fill up an important hiatus in the criminal annals of his country.

In the preparation of this work the Author has had a double purpose before him. He has sought not only to record faithfully the lives and crimes of Burke and Hare, and their two female a.s.sociates, but also to present a general view of the Resurrectionist movement from its earliest inception until the pa.s.sing of the Anatomy Act in 1832, when the violation of the sepulchres of the dead for scientific purposes was rendered unnecessary, and absolutely inexcusable. He has, in carrying out this object, endeavoured to give due prominence to the medical and legal aspects of the whole subject; and to the social effects produced by the movement throughout the century and a half during which it flourished in Scotland.

In order to do this the Author has consulted books, newspapers, and doc.u.ments of all kinds, and has sought, where that was possible, to supplement his information by oral tradition. But in addition, he has, in the body of the work, and in the Appendix, brought together stray ballads, and ill.u.s.trative cases and notes, which help to give a better and fuller understanding of the historical aspect of the question, and of its influence on the minds of the great bulk of the Scottish people.

The Author has to express his thanks to the many gentlemen who have kindly allowed him access to their rare and valuable collections, from which he derived great a.s.sistance in the course of his investigations.

GLASGOW, May, 1884.

INTRODUCTION.

_The Resurrectionist Movement--Its Contributing Causes and Results._

There is perhaps no portion of the social history of Scotland which possesses greater interest of a variety of kinds than that which relates to the rise, development, and ultimate downfall of the resurrectionist movement. To many persons now living, but who are nearing the verge of the unseen world, the interest is in a sense contemporary, for their younger days were spent under the shadow which so long overspread our country; to those of a later generation the traditions--perhaps the events are scarcely of sufficiently remote occurrence to call the stories of them traditions--of that dreadful time served to make their young imaginations vivid, and render them more obedient to behests of their parents or nurses. How many can remember the time when they were frightened into good behaviour by the threat that, if they did not do what they were told, "Burke and Hare" would take them away; or who, pa.s.sing by a churchyard on a dark night, with the light of the moon casting a gruesome glamour over the tombstones, recalled to mind the tales of the doings of the terrible resurrectionists. How many children--some of them old men and women now--in their play chanted the lines--

"Burke an' Hare Fell doun the stair, Wi' a body in a box, Gaun to Doctor Knox";

who trembled, even during the day, when they pa.s.sed the houses occupied by these two men in the West Port of Edinburgh, remembering the fearful deeds that were enacted there. But in addition to the extraordinary impression which the resurrectionist movement made on the minds of the people of Scotland, it must be admitted to have had one good result. In the face of restrictive laws it gave an impetus to anatomical study, which was in the first instance beneficial to humanity; and in the second to the medical schools of this country, notably to the Edinburgh medical school, which attained great reputation at the period when the majority of the subjects for dissection were obtained in a manner revolting to the best feelings of humanity.

This practice of violating sepulchres, which must ever be regarded as one of the foulest blots on Scottish civilization, may be said to have had several contributing causes. The princ.i.p.al of these is admitted on all hands to have been the discovery on the part of the medical faculty that the knowledge they possessed of the human frame was founded rather upon uncertain tradition than upon empirical science; that they were practically ignorant of anatomy; and that if they hoped to make any advance in the art of healing human diseases they must devote more attention to a minute study of the dead subject. Having arrived at this conclusion--and it is a wonder they did not do so earlier--they were met by a difficulty brought about by prejudice. The people of Scotland, even in the most lawless ages, had an almost superst.i.tious reverence for the dead; a reverence, indeed, which they did not always pay to the living. In this they only showed their human nature, and exhibited those instincts which seem to characterise men of all countries and all times. The "something beyond" the mortal sphere caused a peculiar regard for the dead; their belief in a resurrection was rather material, and it was thought impossible by many that when the last trump should sound the dead could rise if the bodies were cut up in dissection. The bodies of the dead, therefore, were carefully entombed to await the last call. The almost insurmountable difficulty, then, that presented itself to the doctors when they awoke out of their dream of ignorance, was where to obtain those subjects upon which they could experiment, and gain that knowledge of which they stood so much in need. The prejudice of the people, it has been stated, was against the subjection of the bodies of their deceased friends to such sacrilegious treatment, even though they were willing, for the most part, to admit that benefit was to be derived from it. As a consequence, science and prejudice came into violent conflict, and the war was carried on by the representatives of the former with a determined persistency that led more or less directly to shocking crime, but ultimately to a _modus vivendi_ that was for the interests of all concerned. These were the two main causes of the traffic; but there were others which, while not bearing so directly upon it, greatly aided its development. It received considerable a.s.sistance from the remarkable superst.i.tions long attached to graveyards, the stories of ghosts and of wandering spirits

"Doom'd for a certain time to walk the night";

of spiteful goblins and playful "brownies," or of the uncanny dabblers in the forbidden art, whose dominion over the world was only during the midnight hour. It was then that the witches met in solemn conclave with the "father of lies" to plot against the peace of humanity, and that the denizens of the nether h.e.l.l breathed the free air of earth, away from the choking fumes of the infernal brimstone. Such were the beliefs, and it therefore behoved every well-conducted person to keep the house after night-fall; and when any ventured abroad during the magic hours the working of superst.i.tion on minds either naturally credulous, or muddled with deep potations at the village tavern, or both, was sure to produce all kinds of apparitions, more or less fearful. Through this means the men employed by the surgeons to obtain bodies for dissection,--men, generally, whose utter absence of moral principle gave them the power to discredit the fears of their more conscientious countrymen,--were enabled for a time to go about their dreadful work with great immunity. Gradually the people threw off their superst.i.tious feelings about church-yards, and considering themselves safe from unhallowed influences by the presence of numbers, they took guard in the protection of the bodies of their friends.

Many skirmishes ensued between these watchers and the resurrectionists, and these have given to Scottish literature a large collection of anecdotes of rather a unique description. Then the large iron cages, or railings, placed over graves, give our churchyards an aspect peculiarly their own. All these matters have made an impression on the Scottish mind which it will yet take generations to efface.

There is, however, another aspect in which the resurrectionist movement can be regarded. It gave rise to a series of the most shocking crimes, committed in Edinburgh by Burke and Hare and their female confederates; and the discovery of these, again, brought about a trial occupying a most prominent and curious place in the annals of Scottish criminal law. In that trial legal points of the utmost importance were involved; and in connection with it the most eminent lawyers of the time were engaged. Were it only because of the great trial with which the movement may be said to have terminated it is deserving the attention of all interested in the history of Scotland. Further than that, it brought about the pa.s.sing of a measure which relieved the medical faculty of the restrictions to inquiry and investigation under which they had so long laboured, and tended towards the development of a science in which humanity is too deeply interested to neglect.

CHAPTER I.

_Early Prohibition of Dissection--Shakespeare's Tomb--The Progress of Anatomy--Curious Incident in Edinburgh--An Old Broadside Ballad on Body-s.n.a.t.c.hing--Tumults in Edinburgh and Glasgow--Female "Burkers."_

At the first blush one is apt to think that the resurrectionist movement, culminating in Scotland by the apprehension of Burke and Hare, and the execution of the former, is of modern growth. That this, however, is not the case, is shown by a little investigation into the records of the past.

There are numerous instances, in all civilised countries, if not of active body-s.n.a.t.c.hing, at least of prohibitions of it or anything akin. The early Christians put epitaphs on the tombs of deceased relatives calling the curses of heaven upon the sacrilegious hand that dared disturb the ashes of the dead; Pope Boniface VIII. issued a bull condemning even the profane perforation of a skeleton; and who knows but the well-known inscription on Shakespeare's tomb, written long before the great poet had become the object of a world's regard, may have been dictated by a similar feeling:--

"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear To dig the dust inclosed here: Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones."

Then, again, the desire expressed by the dying Bruce that his heart should be cut from his body and taken to Jerusalem by the faithful Douglas, called forth the malediction of Pope Benedict XII. Mahomet, also, in the pages of the Koran, has forbidden dissection. All these instances show a most p.r.o.nounced antipathy to the mutilation of the human body after death; and argue two things, first, that it was instinctive, and not a trait in the character of any particular nation or type of civilization; and, second, that unless a molesting cause existed, there would have been no need for the prohibitions. But the advancement of science was not to be bound down by this superst.i.tious reverence for the dead; and, ultimately, in the sixteenth century, with the revival of learning, the bodies of criminals and unclaimed paupers were granted to surgeons for dissection, but then so sparingly that little progress in anatomy was made. The ignorance of the functions of the human body was so great, that the most haphazard methods of cure were adopted. If a sick person recovered it was more by chance than science, and if he died there is little doubt that death was hastened by the ignorance of his so called medical attendant, who clung tenaciously to the traditions of his profession, be the result kill or cure.

The first indication of anything approaching body-s.n.a.t.c.hing in Scotland is to be found in the Fountainhall MS., in the Library of the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh. As the entry is of more than ordinary interest it may be quoted _in extenso_:--

"6 Februarii 1678.--Four aegyptians [Gypsies] of the name of Shaw were this day hanged, the father and three sones, for a slaughter committed by them upon one of the Faws (another tribe of these vagabonds, worse than the _mendicantes validi_ mentioned in the code), in a drunken squabble, made by them in a randevouz they had at Romanno, with a designe to unite their forces against the clans of Browns and Bailzies, that were come over from Ireland to cha.s.se them back again, that they might not share in their labors; but in their ramble they discorded, and committed the foresaid murder, and sundry of them of both sydes ware apprehended.... Thir four being throwen all unto on hole digged for them in the Grayfrier Church Yeard, with their clothes on; the nixt morning the youngest of the three sones (who was scarce sixteen) his body was missed, and found to be away. Some thought he being last thrown over the ladder, and first cut downe, and in full vigor, and no great heap of earth, and lying uppermost, and not so ready to smother, the fermentation of the blood, and heat of the bodies under him, might cause him rebound and throw off the earth, and recover ere the morning, and steall away; which, if true, he deserves his life, tho' the magistrats, or their bourreau, deserved a reprimande; but others, more probably, thought his body was stolen away by some chirurgeon, or his servant, to make ane anatomicale dissection on; which was criminal to take at their owne hand, since the magistrats would not have refused it; and I hear the chirurgeons affirme, the towne of Edinburgh is obliged to give them a malefactor's body once a year for that effect, and its usual in Paris, Leyden, and other places to give them; also some of them that dyes in hospitals."

The obligation mentioned in this quotation as lying on the city of Edinburgh, was made under the charter granted by the Town Council to the Surgeons in 1505. This grant of one body in the year would, however, be of little value, and the inquiring spirit that was abroad gradually came to feel that the privilege was little better than none at all. In the last decade of the seventeenth century strenuous efforts were being made to establish a school of anatomy in the city. Alexander Monteith, one of the most eminent physicians of the time, made the following proposal to the Town Council:--"We seek the liberty of opening the bodies of poor persons who die in Paul's Workhouse, and have none to bury them; and also agree to wait on these poor for nothing, and bury them at our own charge, which now the town does. I do propose if this be granted to make better improvements in anatomy in a short time than have been made by Leyden in thirty years."

Monteith had studied at Leyden. The Edinburgh Faculty were alarmed at the proposal, because they felt that, if it were approved, a privilege which they had hitherto enjoyed as a corporation would be given in a much more extended form to one of their number; and they accordingly put forward an application in which they sought "the bodies of foundlings who dye betwixt the tyme that they are weaned and their being put to schools and trades; also the dead bodies of such as are dead-born, which are exposed; also, suicides, a violent death, and have none to own them; likewise the bodies of such as are put to death by sentence of the magistrates." Both applications were granted, under condition, however, that the dissections were only to be made during the winter, and that the intestines were to be buried within forty-eight hours after the body was obtained, and the rest within ten days. Such restrictions were unworthy the enlightened policy the authorities were pursuing; and through the very act by which they fed the spirit of inquiry they created an increased appet.i.te for anatomical research, which quickly went beyond foolish conditions, and ultimately led many to adopt the practice of body-s.n.a.t.c.hing. Even yet the supply of bodies was unequal to the demand, and the doctors' apprentices resorted to robbing Greyfriars Churchyard, then the chief place of burial in the city.

Their work was done very stealthily, for no one except the most hardy would in that age venture near a churchyard after the "gloaming." The matter at last became known, and the College of Surgeons, on the 20th May, 1711, drew up a minute protesting against the practice, saying that "of late there has been a violation of sepulchres in the Greyfriars'

Churchyard by some who most unchristianly has been stealing, or at least attempting to carry away, the bodies of the dead out of their graves."

This discovery caused a terrible sensation in the city, and it spread throughout Scotland. A broadside on the event was printed and hawked about the country. As it marks an important step in the progress of the movement, the quotation of such a lengthy doc.u.ment will be excused:--

_"An Account of the most horrid and unchristian actions of the Gravemakers in Edinburgh, their raising and selling of the Dead, abhorred by Turks and Heathens, found out in this present year 1711, in the Month of May._

Dear Friends and Christians, what shall I say, Behold, the dawning of the latter day Into this place most bright casts forth its rays-- The like was never seen by mortal eyes.

Methink I hear the latter trumpet sound, When emptie graves into this place is found, Of young and old, which is most strange to me, What kind of resurrection this may be.

I thought G.o.d had reserved this power alone Unto himsell, till he erect'd his throne Into the clouds, with his attendance by, That he might judge the world in equity.

But now I see the contrar in our land, Since men do raise the dead at their own hand; And for to please their curiosities They them dissect and make anatomies.

Such monsters of mankind was never known, As in this place is daily to be shown; Who, for to gain some worldly vanities, Are guilty of such immoralities.

The Turks and Pagans would amazed stand, To see such crimes committed in a land, As among Christians is to be found, Especially in Edinburgh doth abound.

There is a rank of persons in this place That strive to run with speed a wicked race: They trample rudely on G.o.d's holy law, And of his judgment they stand not in aw; For those that are laid in their graves at rest, This wicked crew they do their dust molest.

Dead corps out of their graves they steal at night, Because such actions do abh.o.r.e the light.

The heathen nations, for ought I read, Was never found for to molest the dead, That were their kindred, and among them born; But we to nations all may be a scorn: In that such crimes is perpetrated here, As both the living and the dead do deer.

These monsters of mankind, who made the graves, To the chirurgeons became hyred slaves; They rais'd the dead again out of the dust, And sold to them, to satisfy their l.u.s.t.

As I'm inform'd, the chirurgions did give Fourty shillings for each one they receive: And they their flesh and bones a.s.sunder part, Which wounds their living friends unto the heart; To think that any of their kindred born Unto the nations, should become a scorn; For they their bones to other nations send-- As I'm informed, this is their very end.

How may now all the nations us deride, And call us poor, since that we sell our dead, Some coyn to get, the living to maintain; The like in any nation ne're was seen.

The G.o.dly sowe their dust on such cold ground As do our kirks and chappels compa.s.s round, That they may get their dust in such a field, So well refin'd, that it to them may yield A crop most plentiful at the last day, When they from dust must haste and come away.

But now their dust they take out of the ground, So that nothing but empty graves is found.

I'm very sorry that such things should be Practis'd by folk professing piety; And the religion should be wounded so By any who under a name do go.

But still I see profession is no grace, As does appear into the present case; But more especially at the last day, When all the world shall be put in a fray, When stars shall fall out of the firmament, And sun and moon out of their orbs be rent, And all this earth into a flame shall burn, And eliments like liquid mettals run, And all mankind before G.o.d's throne shall come, That He may justice do unto each one-- Then shall the separation be made Between them that are good and that are bad: The good receiv'd to everlasting glore, The bad cast down to h.e.l.l for evermore.

All who to wrong the saints do still desire, Dead or alive, shall have h.e.l.l for their hyre, Unless with speed they do repent of sin, And do another course of life begin.

But I shall say no more upon this head, Hoping henceforth they will not raise the dead, But suffer them to rest into their beds, And won their bread by following other trades."

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM BURKE. (From a Sketch taken in Court)]

Neither such a production as this, nor the mild protest from the College of Surgeons, was likely to put a stop to a practice which was being found useful on the one side and profitable on the other. Dr. Alexander Monro, "primus," the great anatomist, became Demonstrator of Anatomy in the University of Edinburgh, and his fame brought around him a large number of students. These seem to have been making depredations on the churchyards in the city and neighbourhood, and the College of Surgeons again took action, this time by ordering, on the 24th January, 1721, the insertion of a clause in the indenture of apprentices binding them not to engage in the violation of graves. Four years later, however--in April, 1725--the practice had grown to such an extent as to cause popular commotion. The people rose in angry protest against the violation of the sepulchres of their dead, and before the authorities could quell the disturbance the windows of Dr. Monro's anatomical establishment were destroyed, while the inmates stood in imminent danger of their lives.

Notwithstanding the extreme views the people of Scotland held against the resurrectionists, as the body-s.n.a.t.c.hers were named, their horrible trade continued to prosper, and it received many recruits. The surgeons, even, gradually dropped into the business; perhaps not themselves engaging in it personally, but at least sanctioning and approving of it by the purchase of the bodies offered them. But besides these, a cla.s.s of men became resurrectionists as a matter of trade, and no churchyard in the country was safe from their depredations. The law was comparatively powerless, or took refuge under the pretext of the necessity for subjects being procured, but it took no steps to produce a remedy. The people, therefore, took matters into their own hands, and were not slow in punishing any one suspected of body-s.n.a.t.c.hing, as the following story from the _Scots' Magazine_ for 1742 will show. On the 9th of March of that year the body of a man, Alexander Baxter by name, which had been interred in the West Kirkyard of Edinburgh, was found in a house adjoining the shop of a surgeon named Martin Eccles, in that city. The popular indignation had been raised by the suspicion, amounting almost to certainty, that the churchyards were being desecrated, and it needed very little to cause a tumult. The Portsburgh drum was seized, and beat through the Cowgate. The populace demolished the contents of Eccles' shop, smashed the windows of the houses of other surgeons, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the authorities were able to quell the riot. Eccles and some of his apprentices were brought before the court charged with the offence of being accessory to the lifting of bodies, but the charge was abandoned for want of proof. Later, on the 18th of the same month, the house of a gardener named Peter Richardson, in Inveresk, was burned by the people on the suspicion that he had some hand in pilfering the village churchyard of its dead; and on the 26th, a chairmaster and carrier were banished the city of Edinburgh for being in possession of a street-chair containing a body, and the chair itself was burned by the public executioner under the order of the magistrates. In the July following, under the sentence of the High Court of Justiciary, John Samuel, a gardener in Grangegateside, was publicly whipped through Edinburgh for having been detected at the Potterrow-port, in the April preceding, selling the corpse of a child which had been buried in Pentland Kirkyard a week before. He was also banished from Scotland for seven years.

In Glasgow, about the same period, a riot of a serious nature occurred. On the 6th of March, 1749, according to the _Newcastle Magazine_, a disturbance arose in the city on a suspicion in the minds of the citizens that the students in the College had been raising bodies from one of the city graveyards. The windows of the University buildings in the High Street were broken, a large number of people sustained severe injury, and had not the appearance of the military intimidated the mob, the tumult might have a.s.sumed much more serious proportions.

But it is curious to notice, in view of the main subject of this work--the history of Burke and Hare--that the crimes of which these men were guilty had a prototype in one committed in Edinburgh between seventy and eighty years before they entered upon their murdering career. In 1752, two women, Helen Torrence and Jean Waldie, were executed for the murder of a boy of eight or nine years of age. They would appear to have been nurses, and they promised to some doctors' apprentices that they would supply them with a subject, proposing to do so by the abstraction of a body from a coffin, when they were sitting at the death-watch, for it was then the custom--and still is, in some parts of the country--never to leave a corpse in a room alone. They were either unsuccessful in accomplishing this, or were anxious speedily to redeem their promise and obtain their reward, for they took even more reprehensible means to obtain a body. They met the boy and his mother in the street, and invited the woman into a neighbouring house to drink with them. She consented, and while she was sipping her liquor one of them went out to look for the boy. He was discovered leaning over a window, and the woman carried him into her own house, where she suffocated him among the bed-clothes. The mother afterwards searched for her son, but could not find him. Meantime, Torrence and Waldie took the corpse to the surgeon's rooms, where they were offered two shillings for it, the one who had carried it receiving sixpence additional. They demurred at the lowness of the price, but the students would only increase it by tenpence, which was given them for a "dram." The facts of the case at length came to light, and the women suffered on the scaffold for their barbarous crime.

CHAPTER II.