Sketches of the lives and work of the honorary medical staff of the Manchester Infirmary : from its foundation in 1752 to 1830 when it became the Royal Infirmary / [Edward Mansfield Brockbank].

Edward Mansfield Brockbank

Date:: 1904

Credit: Sketches of the lives and work of the honorary medical staff of the Manchester Infirmary : from its foundation in 1752 to 1830 when it became the Royal Infirmary / [Edward Mansfield Brockbank]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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Dr. Deacon, who had a small practice in the town), and Thomas Syddall were sent down to Manchester to be spiked in a public place; and we read in the Constables’ Accounts of the town for that time that a sum of one-and-sixpence was paid to the constable for his expenses for attending on the Sheriff when the heads were fixed on the Old Exchange. The heads remained exposed until 1749 when they suddenly disappeared one night, and the man in the street, or his eighteenth century equiva- lent, was provided with a mystery which was not dispelled for about a hundred years. It was Edward Hall who removed them, by running out a plank from Mrs. Raffald’s coffee house, adjoining the Exchange, and once secured, he buried them in his father’s garden. He was about eighteen years old at the time, a Jacobite and a medical student. What more need be said as to the probability of the truth of the story? The manner in which this story was revealed is rather romantic. In 1828, when Edward Hall’s last sister Frances was dying, she told Dr. James Lomax Bardsley, who attended her profession- ally, the above facts about the Jacobite skulls, and indicated the exact spot in the garden where they were buried. She asked Dr. Bardsley to promise

Sketches of the lives and work of the honorary medical staff of the Manchester Infirmary : from its foundation in 1752 to 1830 when it became the Royal Infirmary / [Edward Mansfield Brockbank].

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