So well did he do this, that he deceived the nurses and others time after time, and no sooner were the remains got outside the door than the bearer fairly ran with them to Surgeons Square, so eager were they for the well-known handsome reward.
Others there were-celebrities of their time-who followed similar occupations, purveyors of material for Knox and his students. Like other ruffians, they discarded their own name,s and were known under such titles as the “spune”, “The Mordewart”, “The Screw” and “The Grab”: each title pointing to some special trait, or excellence, in their character as Resurrectionists. The first of these deserves a special notice as being remarkable in his way. He affected the character as Resurrectionists. The first of these deserves a special notice as being remarkable in his way. He affected the character of a serious depressed parson, or needy Catholic Priest.
His clothes were always a seedy black suit, threadbare and shiny, and a white starched cravat and collar. His face solemn and cleanshaved always turned to the ground apparently in profound meditation. His name indicated special skill in raising the contents of a coffin, and he received his pay as the reward of virtue. He could quote Scripture wholesale, aspired to some scientific terms which he often used in conversation, and bore the air of a man who was conscious of benefiting his species.
Such were the characters on whom teachers and students depended for the subjects of that Time. Nor did they entirely trust to these. Chiefly owing to the bitter rivalry that existed between the teachers of Anatomy and Surgery-specially between Knox and Liston-the demand for subjects rapidly increased as each taught against the other, and their students competed who should possess the most thorough knowledge of Anatomy, by which alone the debated points could be settled. Both students and teachers therefore, when supplied fell short, were quite ready to conduct the raids in person, and often succeeded by their ardour in obtaining what the more phlegmatic Resurrectionists failed to accomplish.
Specially successful in these expeditions was Robert Liston, the first teacher of Surgery in Edinburgh- a man of ardent temperament and gigantic in strength and stature. Enthusiastic in the of his work and intensely desirous of benefiting mankind by forwarding surgery, he was daunted by nothing in the attainment of his ends. With a single companion he would scour the country, often in disguise as a sailor, pedlar, etc., and would carry a corpse off from some churchyard on his back, travelling for miles in the night across country, and would be teaching in the lecture room next morning, or operating in the hospital, as if nothing unusual had happened.
There is something of interest in such adventures when undertaken for the advance of knowledge, however questionable the means adopted; though, as previously stated, the Government was responsible for not themselves making provision for the necessities of medical study.
Far different we the horrid tragedies so soon to be enacted in that low lodging house at the bottom of the Grassmarket, where the monsters Burke and Hare actually made subjects for dissection by enticing the weak, the old and infirm (specially those who had no friends to enquire after them), making them drunk with whisky, smothering them, and selling their bodies to the Anatomists. Sixteen persons were thus destroyed as admitted by Burke before his execution, and this does not account for nearly all; probably thirty would be nearer the number.
The effect of society of the disclosures of the trial was electrical. There was a general panic. Every household gathered in its members before dark. The waifs and strays, many of who, had fallen victims, notably the old Cinder women, whose lean forms flit about the dustbins in the Edinburgh streets at nights, these all deserted the lonely thoroughfares. Workmen walked home in groups, and no one remained abroad at night who could help it, for fear of being “Burked”, as it was called.
The word was coined and came into general use at once. Hare escaped by turning Kings evidence, and contrived to leave the country unknown, though once or twice he was nearly discovered, and his risk was great, for the feeling against him was so intense that the people would have torn him to pieces, wherever they could have got hold of him.
He was supposed to have reached America, where he lived for some time the life of a Cain, shunned by all and succeeding in nothing. He then returned to England, and Sergeant Ballantyne, in his Memoirs, mentions an old whiteheaded blind man selling matches in the streets of London as no other than William Hare, the undoubted originator and participator in the grim tragedy that took place in the city of Edinburgh over 100 years ago.
But good sprang from the evil. Government at last recognized that something must be done, and the anatomy Act, passed in 1832, in William IVs reign, provided for the wants of all Medical Schools, while at the same time the wants of all Medical Schools, while at the same time it put the system under official inspection, and completely annihilated the secret practice of “Body Snatching”.
The populace at the time was extremely incensed against Knox and his coadjuctors, believing them to be cognisant of the murders, and in consequence mobbed and damaged Knoxs house, Popular feeling indeed ran so high that he was obliged to abandon Edinburgh, and retire to England, where he died in obscurity.
But it seems probable that, though he acted with extreme indiscretion in the matter, he and the others had no idea that violence in the matter, he and the others had no idea that violence had been done, and they probably thought that the subjects came in the usual way, from the churchyards. Indeed, a professor recently living in Edinburgh, who helped to dissect one of the victims, said that the idea of murder had never crossed his mind. Taking everything into consideration, it seems most probable that, though unwise and culpable in the matter, the Anatomists had no complicity with Burke and Hare.
While thus reviewing the past of the Edinburgh Anatomists, one can feel there is reason for congratulation upon the position of our schools-that, while the necessary demands of Science are complied with, the safety of the living is not imperiled, while the mortal remains of peasant and prince alike remain undisturbed.
In Labrador and Newfoundland the main food is white bread, tea stewed in the pot till black, fish occasionally, a little margarine and molasses. Here we have people living in the wildest and least populated of lands suffering from all those ill results which are found in the worst city slums-tuberculosis, beri-beri, and decayed teeth… PROFESSOR LEONARD HILL, The Science of Ventilation and Open-Air Treatment.
Homeopath and physician in Torquay.
Graduation from Edinburgh (1873), member of homeopathic society.