_Tales of the Resurrectionists--The Students at Work._
What has been related in the preceding chapter are some of the early
escapades of the resurrectionists. Throughout the latter part of the
eighteenth century, these worthies, to call them by a mild name, were the
scourge of Scotland, and notwithstanding the utmost vigilance of the
people graves were ransacked of their contents and bodies sold to the
doctors. But it was in the first three decades of the present century that
the horrible trade was in its most flourishing condition. Many tales of
the adventures of resurrectionists are told--some of them serious as the
subject warrants, others of them amusing in spite of the subject. In this
chapter there has been gathered together a number of anecdotes which will
illustrate the part the students themselves took in the movement.
Perhaps the Edinburgh district is richer in the tales of the
resurrectionists than any other in Scotland. This was only to be expected,
for the reputation of the Edinburgh medical school had gone over the
world, bringing to it students from all parts. The desire for fame caused
a professional rivalry among the teachers, which was taken up by their
respective pupils, who were not slow to vie with each other in carrying to
the furthest extent the desire to obtain human bodies for dissection. In
this they were assisted by the "professional" body-snatchers, and by the
beadles and grave-diggers of the churchyards in the vicinity of Edinburgh.
Many excursions of this kind were made. Was a body needed? Then several of
them joined together, searched out a large bag for the conveyance of the
body, and a spade, and their equipment was complete. They had no fear of
the watchers who might be set at the churchyard they intended visiting.
They trusted to their mother-wit to carry them through any difficulty. At
the very worst they could only drop their spoil, and show a clean pair of
heels. But here are some of the tales. It would be useless to make any
effort to put them in a chronological order. They are stories that have
found their way to the public through a variety of sources, without
dates, but it is sufficient to know that the events occurred during the
present century.
A middle-aged man named Henderson, residing in Leven, Fifeshire, died of
fever, and was interred in a neighbouring churchyard. Two young men
attending the University of Edinburgh heard of the death, and about a week
after the funeral they successfully raised the body from what had been
fondly supposed by the relatives of the deceased, to be its last
resting-place. While the men were carrying it away, one of them was
overtaken by sickness, rendering it necessary that they should seek refuge
in an inn at the outskirts of the town. Into this place they carried their
ghastly burden, carefully put up in a sack. Curiously enough, the public
house formerly belonged to the very man whose corpse they had stolen, and
it was then being kept by the widow, for the support of herself and her
daughter. The visitors were ushered into a room, in which was a closed-in
bed, with wooden door, such as may yet be seen in country houses, and the
drink they ordered was taken to them there. No sooner were they fairly
begun to discuss the liquor, than the town's officers roused the landlady,
and asked if some thieves who had broken into a neighbouring house had
taken refuge on her premises. The men, for some unexplained reason, had by
this time taken the body out of the sack, and when they heard the noise
made by the constables they threw it inside the bed, and themselves made a
hasty retreat by the window. The officers went in chase, but the
resurrectionists were too nimble for them and made good their escape. A
search was afterwards made in the room occupied by the men, but only the
empty bag was found. The widow, however, after the tumult was over, went
to the same room to retire for the night, when to her great horror, she
found her dead husband lying in the bed which she herself proposed to
enter, clad in the grave-clothes she had made with her own hands.
Another story of a somewhat similar adventure is told of Liston, the
eminent surgeon, but at this time a student. He had been informed by a
country practitioner in one of the villages on the Firth of Forth of the
death of a man by a disease whose ravages on his frame should afford some
important information to searchers after medical truth. Accordingly,
Liston, with one of his companions, dressed themselves as sailors, and set
out on board a small boat for the village. There they were joined by the
doctor's apprentice, who was to act as guide. They quickly lifted the
body, and placed it in the sack they had brought with them for that
purpose. Liston hoisted the ghastly burden on his shoulder, and carried it
some distance in the direction of the shore, where their boat was lying.
They considered it inadvisable to return to Edinburgh that night,
assuming, probably, that if they managed their prize home in the course of
the following day their adventure would be more likely to have a
satisfactory termination. Accordingly, they placed the bag and its
contents behind a thick hedge, where they proposed it should remain until
next morning, when they would convey it to the boat. This done, they
proceeded to look after their creature comforts, and made their way to a
roadside inn. Here they soon made themselves at home. Sitting cosily by
the kitchen fire, they gave an order for a supply of good liquor. Under
its warming influence they forgot the shocking work in which they had had
so recently been engaged, and they amused themselves by flirting with the
servant girl, a pretty country damsel. Shortly after midnight, when the
companions were proposing to retire to rest, they were alarmed by a
drunken shout from the outside, "Ship, ahoy!" The girl explained that the
noise came from her sailor brother, Bill, who, she feared, had been
drinking. When the door was opened Bill staggered in under the burden of
the sack Liston and his comrades had put behind the hedge, and heaving it
on the floor he exclaimed--"There, if it ain't something good, rot them
chaps there who stole it." He said he got the "hulk" behind a hedge when
he was lying there trying to wear about upon another tack, and remarking,
"Let's see what's the cargo," he proceeded to cut the bag open. The sight
of the contents made the girl fly from the house screaming, and she was
quickly followed by her brother. The two young men, who had witnessed all
under the terror of discovery, seeing a way of escape, took a hasty
resolution. There was no safety for them if they remained in the inn, and
the turn matters had taken showed them that they must make off as quickly
as possible with their booty. Liston again put the dead man on his
shoulders and carried him to the boat, leaving the tavern without paying
the reckoning. They reached Edinburgh without further adventure, and no
doubt they would find some satisfaction in dissecting a subject which was
not only interesting in itself but which had also given them so much
trouble.
This was not, however, the only exploit of the kind in which Liston was
engaged. On another occasion he made an excursion in his boat to Rosyth,
near Limekilns, on the Fifeshire shore. The church-yard here, on account
of its remoteness from human habitation, and its situation on the side of
the Firth, had become a favourite haunt for the resurrectionists. The
reason for this expedition was that Liston had seen in a newspaper an
account of the drowning and funeral of a sailor belonging to Limekilns.
The newspaper also informed its readers, what was the most affecting part
of the story, that the young man had been engaged to be married to a girl
residing in the district, and that she had become insane through the
violence of her grief. This sad calamity had no effect on the young
student. He saw in the announcement, melancholy as it was, only the way to
obtain a fresh subject, and he took measures to carry the project that had
taken possession of his mind into execution. He soon got together a band
of kindred spirits, to whom he explained his intentions. The party in the
boat arrived at the scene of their intended operations at nightfall, and
for a few hours they kept in hiding, until it would be more convenient to
begin. As they were about to land they noticed a young woman sitting on a
tombstone in the churchyard. Of course they knew nothing of her: but her
heart-rending sobs indicated that she was lamenting the death of some
loved one whose body had been consigned to its kindred earth. This scene
delayed their advance, but it was without effect in turning them from
their purpose. At last the woman went away, and the students made towards
the place where she had been sitting. They found she had strewn the grave
with flowers--"Rosemary, that's for remembrance; pansies, that's for
thoughts." Setting to work they quickly raised the body underneath, and
speedily carried it to their boat. The party, one of them wearing in his
coat a flower he had picked from the grave, then pushed off; but before
they were well away from the scene they again observed the woman running
backward and forward in the churchyard with her arms waving, apparently
acting under the most intense excitement. Her agonizing cries quickened
the use of the oars, and hurriedly they left the heart-rending scene
behind them.
Rosyth, it has been said, was a favourite haunt of the resurrectionists,
but gradually the people of Limekilns awoke to the knowledge that their
Golgotha was being desecrated. A party of students from Edinburgh once
made a descent upon the place and narrowly escaped detection. They heard
of the burial of a woman who had died in child-bed, and they rowed over
the Firth to raise her body. When they got to the grave-yard the weather
was wild and stormy; as Burns puts it:--
"The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last;
The rattling showers rose in the blast ...
That night, a child might understand
The Deil had business on his hand."
After twenty minutes' work the students had "the tall beauty," as they had
named her, again above the ground, and carried her to the dyke, upon which
they laid her until they had climbed over themselves. No sooner had they
done this than the plaintive howl of a dog was heard. This incident
introduced something approaching a panic among them, and they sought
comfort in the contents of their pocket flasks. But their terror was
increased by the appearance of a lighted lantern moving about among the
tombs. They made for their boat, taking care, however, to carry the corpse
with them. The dead woman's long golden hair had become entangled among
the stones, and the rough manner in which they dragged the body away left
some of the locks, with a portion of the scalp, on the side of the dyke.
They immediately put off, and afterwards saw the lantern stop at the point
of the dyke where the body had lain. It was currently reported that the
bearer of the lantern was the woman's husband, and that he recognised the
hair entangled on the wall.
The depredators were not, however, always successful in carrying off their
spoil. Three students attending the class of Monro, _tertius_, hired a
gig, and paid a visit to a churchyard to the south of Edinburgh, somewhere
about the vicinity either of Gilmerton or Liberton. When they had arrived
at the place on which they intended to operate, two of them climbed the
boundary wall, leaving the others in charge of the conveyance. They soon
brought to the surface the recently-buried body of a woman, the wife of a
well-to-do farmer in the neighbourhood. Unfortunately for themselves,
these young men were new to the business, and they had omitted to take
with them a very necessary instrument of the resurrectionist--a sack. They
saw their mistake when it could not be remedied, and they made up their
minds to carry the body in the dead-clothes. One of the students had it
hoisted on his back, but as he was going along his grasp upon the shroud
began to give way, and the feet of the corpse slipped down until they were
touching the ground. As the carrier staggered under his burden, the feet
of the dead woman came against the ground every now and then, impeding his
progress, and causing such a peculiar movement that the youth thought the
woman was leaping behind him. The idea struck him that she was alive, and
with an oath he flung the body from him on the road, and made for the gig.
His companions, as frightened as himself, rushed after him, and the three
worthies drove furiously back to the city. Early next morning the farmer
was walking along the Edinburgh road, and came upon a white-robed figure
stretched out on the footpath. He found it was the body of his wife, clad
in her dead-clothes, with eyes wide open and glazed. His first thought was
that she had come back to life, and he tried to restore her, though he
knew she had been entombed for three days. The task was futile, and he was
only restored to reason by the appearance of the Penicuik carrier, who at
once divined the cause of the body being where it was found. The woman was
buried privately the next night, and an effort was made to hush up the
story.
But while the students of the metropolis were active in the
body-snatching work, those of Glasgow were following hard behind them.
About the year 1813, Mr. Granville Sharp Pattison, a clever anatomist
belonging to the western city, drew around him a band of students who
committed many a depredation in the graveyards in and near Glasgow. They
had rooms in College Street, in the vicinity of the old University, and
there they conducted in secret the dissection of the bodies they were
fortunate enough to get into their possession. They kept up a system of
espionage over the doctors in the city, learning all the details of any
peculiar cases they might be attending; and in the event of death there
was little scruple about raising a body from which they thought they were
likely to gain information. When any expedition was on foot, those who had
been chosen to take part in it were careful to show themselves during the
evening in some of the most frequented taverns, in order to throw off
suspicion, and then they set about their unhallowed work. These men, of
course, wrought in secret, but the suspicion gradually grew on the
community that the graves of their friends were being violated. At last
the suspicion deepened into a certainty, greater vigilance was observed by
the city watch in the hope of laying hands upon the offenders, and many
people took the precaution of erecting elaborate iron cages over the
graves to give greater security against their desecration.
However, an event occurred in Glasgow which caused an extraordinary
sensation. A vessel arrived at the Broomielaw with a consignment of what
was supposed to be cotton or linen rags. The cargo, done up neatly in
bags, was addressed to a huckster in Jamaica Street, but he refused to
take delivery, as between £50 and £60 were charged for freight. He said no
rags could afford such freightage, and he sent the packages, without
examination, back to the Broomielaw. There they lay in a shed for some
time, until the dreadful stench proceeding from them caused the city
officers to open them. To the horror of the searchers, there were found in
them the putrid bodies of men, women, and children. The authorities
ordered the remains to be buried in Anderston Churchyard, and this was
done. The explanation of the matter was, that owing to the scarcity of
subjects for the anatomy classes of Edinburgh and Glasgow, the bodies had
been sent from Ireland by some students there; and the price of each
corpse varied from ten to twenty guineas each. As ill-luck would have it,
the Jamaica Street huckster did not receive the note advising him of the
valuable nature of the cargo consigned to him until it was too late,
"otherwise," says old Peter Mackenzie, who tells the story, "there can be
little doubt he would have paid the freight money demanded, and pocketed a
goodly commission for the traffic entrusted to his care!"
Although this discovery still further alarmed the community, and showed
fully the dreadful nature of the conspiracy which those connected with the
medical faculty seemed to have entered into against the peace of the
country, all the efforts of watchers and others were unable to foil the
ingenuity of the students and their accomplices. Notwithstanding the use
of trap-guns placed in the churchyards, bodies were stolen, and the trade
flourished. There is, however, one instance recorded in which a student
was killed by stumbling over one of these guns. He and two companions were
in search of a body in the Blackfriars Churchyard, Glasgow. When he
dropped dead, his fellow-students were horrified, but the fear of
discovery forced them to adopt an extraordinary method of taking away the
body of their unfortunate friend. They carried it to the outside of the
churchyard, and placed it on its feet against the wall; then they each
tied a leg to one of theirs, and taking the corpse by the arms, they
passed slowly along the street towards their lodgings, shouting and
singing as if they were three roysterers returning from a carouse. Once
safely home, the dead man was put to bed, and next morning the story was
circulated that during the night the poor fellow had committed suicide.
The fatal adventure was thus kept quiet, and it was not until many years
afterwards that the true version of the night's proceedings was made
known.
Two other Glasgow students, having heard of an interesting case at the
Mearns, a few miles to the south of the city, determined to obtain
possession of the body, in order to find out what it was that had baffled
the skill of two such eminent practitioners as Drs. Cleghorn and Balmanno.
Knowing that their expedition might be spoiled by the numerous watchers,
they took the most ample precautions against discovery. They purchased a
suit of old clothing in the Saltmarket, and with it they drove out to the
Mearns. The body they desired was easily raised, and was carefully dressed
in the suit they had provided. Then they placed it between them in the
gig, and returned gaily towards the city. The keeper of the Gorbals
toll-bar, through which they had to pass, was a suspicious old man, and
they thought they might have some difficulty with him. When they came to
the bar they halted promptly, and while one was producing the toll-money
the other was attending with the utmost solicitude to what he called his
"sick friend," who was, of course, none other than the dead man. The
tollman, noticing his efforts, looked at the "sick" friend, and remarked
sympathetically, "O! puir auld bodie, he looks unco ill in the face; drive
cannily hame, lads, drive cannily." Once over the bridge, the students
lost no time in conveying to their den the prize they had so ingeniously
secured. This device, it would seem, was practised with success in other
places, for it is said that in Dundee two men conveyed a body, dressed in
the clothes of the living, arm in arm, along the streets, and afterwards
sent it on to its destination, presumably Edinburgh.