_Tales of the Resurrectionists--What the Doctors did._
A record of the share which the doctors themselves took in the
resurrectionist work has not been well preserved. Personally they do not
seem to have done much, leaving the active operations in the hands of the
students and body-snatchers. There was a suspicion, however, that they
were not above lending a helping hand in a case of necessity, when they
hoped to obtain a special prize. At least they connived at the practice,
and undoubtedly benefited by it. It has been more than hinted, that in
many outlying places, far from the University centres, a good deal of
business of this kind was done by medical men who had with them
apprentices whom they had engaged to teach the art and science of
medicine, but who found it impossible to do so unless they had, by some
means or other, the requisite anatomical subjects. In these country places
the churchyards were watched by the villagers in turn, there being a
voluntary assessment on the inhabitants for peats to make the fires by
which the guardians of the dead sat and smoked their pipes and sipped
their whisky during the long dark nights. In a village in the north of
Scotland it is a tradition that a medical man set out with his students
one night to lift a body which they considered would be of value to them.
The watchers, however, surprised them, and the doctor was mortally wounded
by a shot fired by one of the defenders. His companions fled, carrying the
injured man with them, and a few days afterwards it was announced that he
had died by his own hand.
Others, again, laid the churchyards of Ireland under contribution, as a
story related by Leighton amply testifies. A young Irish doctor, known
under the name of the "Captain," resided in Surgeon's Square, Edinburgh,
and many a barrel containing the bodies of his compatriots arrived by boat
at Leith addressed to him, and he disposed of them to his friends. He was
in the habit of telling how, when at home, he relieved his want of a
"subject" in a rather clever way. He had been attending a young man who
ultimately died and was honestly interred. It struck him that the body was
precisely what he wanted, and he drove off to the churchyard for it. On
the way back he met the lad's mother, who asked him if it were "all right
wid the grave ov poor Pat?" The "Captain" assured her it was, and drove
her home in his gig, which also contained her son's corpse. "I dhrove,"
said he, "the good lady home agin without breaking a bone of hir body, and
Pat never said a word." Once he addressed the body of a woman, lying on
one of the Edinburgh dissecting tables,--"Ah, Misthress O'Neil! did I
spare the whisky on you, which you loved so well,--and didn't you lave me
a purty little sum to keep the resurrectionists away from you,--and didn't
I take care of you myself? and by J--s you are there, and don't thank me
for coming over to see you."
A somewhat amusing conflict took place between the students of Drs. Cullen
and Monro for the possession of the body of Sandy M'Nab, a lame street
singer, well known in Edinburgh. He died in the Infirmary, and Cullen and
several others placed the body in a box, in order to raise it by a rope to
their rooms above. Some of the students under Monro, impelled by a similar
motive, were searching for the body, and they came upon it in the box.
They shifted it to the other side of the yard, intending to lift it over
the wall, but they were observed and attacked by their rivals. A great
fight followed, until at last the attacking party had to retire, leaving
victory--which meant possession of Sandy's body--with the original
body-snatchers.
The doings of the students of Glasgow has already been mentioned, and the
influence which Dr. Pattison had in making body-lifting popular among them
has at least been indicated. Matters in that city were at last brought to
a crisis, and the doings of this gentleman and his colleagues came to
light. The Ramshorn and Cathedral churchyards were being robbed of their
silent inhabitants almost nightly, and the greatest excitement prevailed
in consequence throughout the city. Two deaths from what were considered
peculiar causes occurred in Glasgow about the beginning of December, 1813.
On the afternoon of the 13th of that month both the bodies were interred,
one in the Ramshorn and the other in the Cathedral churchyard. The
students accordingly made preparations for raising both of them. The
expedition to the Cathedral was highly successful, for in addition to the
corpse they went specially for, the young anatomists put another in their
sacks, and made a safe journey to their rooms. In the Ramshorn yard,
however, the work had been gone about rather noisily, and the attention of
a policeman stationed in the vicinity having been attracted, he raised the
alarm. The students escaped, but they were seen to disappear in the
neighbourhood of the College. The search was stopped for the night, but
next day the news spread throughout the whole community. Intense alarm
prevailed, and the Chief Constable, James Mitchell, was besieged with
inquiries. Many persons visited the graves of their friends to see if all
were right. The brother, or some other relative, of the woman--Mrs.
M'Alister by name--who had been lifted from the Ramshorn, quickly found
that her body had been stolen. No sooner was this discovery made than a
large crowd rushed to the College, and gave vent to their feelings by
breaking the windows of the house occupied by Dr. James Jeffrey, then
professor of anatomy in the University. The police had to be called to
suppress the tumult. At last the magistrates, forced to action by the
strength of public opinion, issued a search-warrant empowering the
officers of the law to enter, by force, if necessary, every suspected
place, in order to find the body of Mrs. M'Alister, or of any other
person. The officers were accompanied by Mr. James Alexander, surgeon
dentist, who had attended the lady to the day of her death, and also by
two of her most intimate acquaintances. In the course of their search they
visited the rooms of Dr. Pattison, in College Street, where they found the
doctor and several of his assistants. They were shown over the apartments
with all apparent freedom, but they discovered nothing. They had left the
house when Mr. Alexander thought they should have examined a tub,
seemingly filled with water, which stood in the middle of the floor of one
of the rooms. They returned accordingly, and the water was emptied out. At
the bottom of the tub were found a jawbone with several teeth attached,
some fingers, and other parts of a human body. The dentist identified the
teeth as those he had himself fitted into Mrs. M'Alister's mouth, and one
of the relatives picked out a finger which he said was the very finger on
which Mrs. M'Alister wore her wedding ring. Pattison and his companions
were immediately taken into custody. They were removed to jail amid the
execrations of the mob, who were with difficulty restrained from executing
summary vengeance upon them. This done, the officers dug up the flooring
of the rooms, and underneath they found the remains of several bodies,
among them portions of what was believed to be the corpse of Mrs.
M'Alister. The parts were carefully sealed up in glass receptacles for
preservation as productions against the accused at their trial. On Monday,
6th June, 1814, Dr. Granville Sharp Pattison, Andrew Russell, his
lecturer on surgery, and Messrs. Robert Munro and John M'Lean, students,
were arraigned before Lord Justice Boyle, and Lords Hermand, Meadowbank,
Gillies, and Pitmilly, in the High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh, charged
under an indictment which set forth, particularly, that the grave of Mrs.
M'Alister, in the Ramshorn churchyard, Glasgow, "had been ruthlessly or
feloniously violated by the prisoners, and her body taken to their
dissecting rooms, where it was found and identified." The prisoners were
defended by two eminent men--John Clerk and Henry Cockburn. The evidence
of the prosecution was clearly against the accused, but the counsel of the
defence brought forward proof which as clearly showed that some mistake
had been made with the productions. They proved to the satisfaction of the
law at least, that the body, or portions of the body, produced in court,
and which were libelled in the indictment, were not portions of the body
of Mrs. M'Alister. This lady had been married and had borne children; the
productions were portions of the body of a woman who had never borne
children. The result was an acquittal. So strong, however, did public
feeling run, that Pattison had to emigrate to America, where he attained
to an eminence deserving his abilities.
This put an end for a time to the resurrectionist fever in Glasgow, but it
was shrewdly suspected that other cases occurred. They must have been few,
for the strictest watch was preserved over the graveyards. There was,
however, another case which should be mentioned, and occurring, as it did,
at a time when the whole of Scotland was struck with terror at the
wholesale pillage of churchyards, and the frequent mysterious
disappearances of the living, it caused a terrible sensation in Glasgow.
In the month of August, 1828, a poor woman in that city was delivered of a
child, and on the same evening, some female neighbours observed, through a
hole in the partition wall of the apartment in which she resided, that her
medical attendant made a parcel of the newly-born infant, and placed it
below his coat. When he left the house, they raised the "hue and cry"
after him, calling out, "Stop thief," and telling all they met that the
man had a dead child in his possession. An immense crowd soon gathered,
the man was attacked, and the body taken from him; and only the opportune
arrival of the police saved him from being torn to pieces by the mob. The
officers took him and the body to the station-house, the people hooting
and howling around them. An examination of the body of the infant was made
by several practitioners in the city, at the instance of the authorities,
and they certified that it had been still-born. The explanation was, that
the young man was a student finishing his course, and that the mother had
agreed with him that if he attended her during her illness, he should have
the body of the dead child for the purpose of using it as he thought
proper.
The result of this revolting work in the West of Scotland was not
altogether evil, for, as was said by Dr. Richard Miller, for forty years
lecturer on Materia Medica in the University of Glasgow, "these
experiments in the Anatomy School of Glasgow, lighted up the torch of
science in this quarter of the world, and saved the lives of many
invaluable beings."