Burke and Hare (30 page)

In the foregoing statement, your Lordship and the public will perceive, that David P—n did not act the part assigned to him in the public prints; it will be observed that all along it was the assistants to the Doctor that bargained with Burke and Hare for the subjects, and P—n seems to have been made a kind of scape goat; it will also be observed, that long before P—n came into the Doctor’s service, Mr M—r, an assistant, had been in the habit of going with Burke and Hare for the bodies, and it is not till very lately that P—n was employed as a go-between the Doctor and Burke and Hare; be this as it may, let the public judge for themselves. From the inquiries I have made respecting him, I find that he is friendless, has uniformly borne a good character, and has refused to return to his situation.

The public are aware that the lecturers on anatomy must be supplied with subjects; a meeting of that respectable body has already taken place on this topic, the result of which I am yet ignorant. But as the public must also be satisfied on this point, I will here detail to your Lordship what facts respecting the procuring of subjects are in my possession. It is next to impossible that any subjects can be got in or within twenty miles of Edinburgh, without the concurrence of the persons employed to watch the ground, which sometimes, but rarely, happens. But at great toil and eminent danger bodies are sometimes procured some thirty miles round, and the schemes and stratagems then employed to ensure a safe deliverance in Edinburgh are truly ingenious. From Newcastle there is generally a good supply, sent in trunks and hampers, either anonymously addressed, or without any address. But previous to this package being sent to the coach office, an invoice, or a letter of advice, is sent by post, stating, that by such a coach, and on such a day, a subject inclosed in a particular box or hamper, with a certain address, or marked soft goods, chrystal, or paper, to be kept dry, will be forwarded accordingly. A person is in waiting at the office to claim such package, pay the carriage, and it is safely deposited in Surgeons Square. Now, it must be very pleasant for an outside passenger to know, that probably he may be sitting cheek by jowl with his deceased grandmother, or perhaps covering the remains of an affectionate wife; nay, our Christmas presents are not exempt from bearing company with, and probably imbibing the effluvia of the deceased. I do not mean to say that the coach proprietors are always aware of the company they carry, but this I know, that at one time they must have been, which the following anecdote will illustrate: a porter, one day in February last, brought a box to a certain Lecture Room, and as this box was very similar to those in which subjects generally came, and without any address or mark; it was understood by the porter, and by those to whom it was delivered, that it contained a subject. Some little time after the porter was gone the box was opened, (as a subject was advised,) but to the utter astonishment of those present, instead of a dead body, there came forth a very fine bacon ham, a large cheese, a basket of eggs, and a huge clue of Hodden grey worsted, – a present, no doubt, from a country cousin, and intended to have reached a different destination. A body in a box without address had come by the same conveyance, and had, no doubt, been changed by mistake; but what the feelings of the party were who received it, judge ye!

I am told that sometimes the resurrection men procure bodies from the Royal Infirmary; the stratagem they make use of is nearly this, they hear by their spies that such a person has died without friends, one goes immediately and claims kindred with the deceased, a coffin is procured, and they are generally removed to some house adjacent for interment. The body, however, does not receive this last token of respect, for with all possible speed a box is procured into which the corpse is crammed and mediately disposed of.

On one occasion, I remember to have witnessed one of the most daring scenes I ever beheld. On turning the corner of Surgeons Square, I observed two men at the trot with a coffin on their shoulders, in open day, they instantly plunged into a certain Lecture Room, the corpse of a female was rolled out on the flour, and the coffin broke in a hundred pieces; they received very little for this body, as some person in the surgical department of the Royal Infirmary had, with an instrument, so mangled the body, as to render it almost useless to any Lecturer. I do not mean to say, that the gentleman who has the sole charge of the surgical department, and through whose hands all bodies ought to pass before their friends can receive them, was in any manner connected with the mangling of the body. But if it was suspected, that the persons claiming the deceased, intended it for dissection, why give it up to them, and if not, why should the body be mangled; possibly this is a new regulation of the Hospital, of which I have not yet heard. I am confident that no blame can be attached to Mr Marshall, his late conduct in tracing and recovering a body out of Mr M’K—’s Lecture Room, places him above the reach of suspicion – So much for home, I will now take a trip to Ireland, which is the grand mart for subjects. There are several agents who supply the Edinburgh Lecturers with subjects, at about £7 each, expences included, these come in lots of ten or twelve, sometimes addressed to one individual, and when such is the case, the other professors attend and cast lots; this is when a general cargo arrives, but the more frequent is for each professor to receive his own barrel, box, or hamper. A large hamper sometimes contains from three to four bodies, packed up with a motely assortment of Irish law papers, or liquid blacking in bottles, or as pickled beef or pork. The usual route of conveyance is by Greenock, Glasgow, and down the Union Canal; in all this, there is nothing dreadfully appalling; bodies must be had, come from where they will, and I think were an act passed, that all those who die upon the parishes or in Hospitals, without friends to inter the bodies, were to be forwarded to the Lecture Rooms, at the professor’s expence, it would in a short time, supersede every other method now in use.

Your Lordship, I trust, will pardon me for any expressions in this letter you may consider harsh or improper. I solemnly assure you that such was not my intention. I have merely stated facts, which can be supported upon oath. If I have erred in giving these publicity, it is with a desire that the public should be made acquainted with that portion of this mysterious affair they seemed so anxiously to wish for. Something ought to be done, nay must be done, to appease the public feeling; and I am confident that your Lordship will, to the utmost of your power, endeavour to do so, for which you will not only have the thanks of a wise and discerning public, but all the information that lies in the power of

THE ECHO.

OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS

Evidence and Report of the Select Committee on Anatomy
, House of Commons, 1828

‘An Act for Regulating Schools of Anatomy’, 2 and 3 Will. IV, c. 75, 1832

Hansard
, Parliamentary Debates, 1829–32

Home Office Papers in Public Record Office

OTHER PRIMARY SOURCES

Robert Buchanan et al,
Trial of William Burke and Helen McDougal before the High Court of Justi ciary at Edinburgh on Wednesday, December 24, 1828, for the murder of Margery Campbell, or Docherty
, (Edinburgh), 1829

‘Echo of Surgeons’ Square’,
Letter to the Lord Advocate, Disclosing the Accomplices, Secrets, and Other Facts Relative to the Late Murders, etc.
, Menzies (Edinburgh) 1829

Manuscript diary of a body-snatcher in the Library of the Royal College of Surgeons, London

ARTICLES, PAMPHLETS, ETC.

Sir Humphrey Rolleston, ‘Provincial Medical Schools a Hundred Years Ago’, Cambridge University Medical Society magazine, 1932

A Laconic Narrative of the Life and Death of James Wilson, known by the name of Daft Jamie
, W. Smith (publisher), (Edinburgh), 1829

BOOKS

J.B. Atlay,
Famous Trials of the Century
, Grant Richards (London), 1899 Brian Bailey,
The Resurrection Men
, Macdonald (London), 1991

James Blake Bailey (ed.),
The Diary of a Resurrectionist
, Swan Sonnenschein (London), 1896

James Moores Ball,
The Body-Snatchers
, Dorset Press (New York), 1989

Horace Bleackley,
The Hangmen of England
, Chapman and Hall (London), 1929

Pauline Chapman,
Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors
, Constable (London), 1984

Kellow Chesney,
The Victorian Underworld
, Penguin Books (London) 1982 edn.

Robert Christison,
The Life of Sir Robert Christison, Bart
, (2 vols), Wm Blackwood & Sons (Edinburgh), 1885

Henry Cockburn,
Memorials of his Time
, A. & C. Black (Edinburgh), 1856

C.H. Creswell,
Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh
(Edinburgh), 1926.

V. Mary Crosse,
A Surgeon in the Early Nineteenth Century
, E. & S. Livingstone (Edinburgh), 1968

H.C. Darby (ed.),
A New Historical Geography of England after 1600
, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge), 1976

Daniel Defoe,
A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain
, Penguin Books (London), 1971 edn.

Dictionary of National Biography

Hugh Douglas,
Burke and Hare
, Robert Hale (London), 1973

Owen Dudley Edwards,
Burke and Hare
, Polygon Books (Edinburgh), 1980

M. Dorothy George,
London Life in the Eighteenth Century
, Penguin Books (London), 1985

H.J.C. Grierson (ed.),
The Letters of Sir Walter Scott
, Vol XI, 1828–31, Constable (London), 1936

Thomas Ireland (publisher),
West Port Murders
, (Edinburgh), 1829

Alexander Leighton,
The Court of Cacus
, Houlston & Wright (Edinburgh), 1861

J.G. Lockhart,
Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott
, Vol IX, A. & C. Black (Edinburgh), 1869

Henry Lonsdale,
A Sketch of the Life and Writings of Robert Knox the Anatomist
, Macmillan (London), 1870

Ida Macalpine & Richard Hunter,
George III and the Mad-Business
, Allen Lane, the Penguin Press (London), 1969

George MacGregor,
The History of Burke and Hare and of the Resurrectionist Times
, Thos D. Morison (Glasgow), 1884

Peter Mackenzie,
Old Reminiscences of Glasgow and the West of Scotland
(2 vols), J.P. Forrester (Glasgow), 1890

C.S. Parker,
Sir Robert Peel
Vol II, John Murray (London), 1899

Isobel Rae,
Knox the Anatomist
, Oliver & Boyd (Edinburgh), 1964

Ruth Richardson,
Death, Dissection and the Destitute
, Routledge & Kegan Paul (London), 1987

William Roughead (ed.),
Burke and Hare
, part of
Notable British Trials
series, Wm Hodge (Edinburgh), 1948

George Ryley Scott,
The History of Capital Punishment
, Torchstream Books (London), 1950

Sir Walter Scott,
Journal
, Oliver & Boyd (Edinburgh), 1950

Thomas Stone,
Observations on the Phrenological Development of Burke, Hare, and Other Atrocious Murderers
, (Edinburgh), 1829

John Struthers,
Historical Sketch of the Edinburgh Anatomical School
, Maclachlen and Stewart (Edinburgh), 1867

Cecil Howard Turner,
The Inhumanists
, Alexander Ouseley (London), 1932

Edward Gibbon Wakefield,
Facts Relating to the Punishment of Death in the Metropolis
, Ridgway (London), 1831

West Port Murders
, Thos Ireland (Edinburgh), 1829

Sir Llewellyn Woodward,
The Age of Reform, 1815-70
, Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1997

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