The history of Burke and Hare and of the resurrectionist times : a fragment from the criminal annals of Scotland / by George MacGregor.
- Mac Gregor, George
- Date:
- 1884
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The history of Burke and Hare and of the resurrectionist times : a fragment from the criminal annals of Scotland / by George MacGregor. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![who clung tenaciously to the traditions of his profession, be the result kill or cure. The first indication of anything approaching body-snatching in Scotland is to be found in the Fountainhall MS., in the Library of the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh. As the entry is of more than ordinary interest it may be quoted in extenso:— 6 Februarii 1678.—Four ^Egyptians [Gypsies] of the name of Shaw were this day hanged, the father and three sones, for a slaughter committed by them upon one of the Faws (another tribe of these vagabonds, worse than the mendicantes validi mentioned in the code), in a drunken squabble, made by them in a randevouz they had at Eomanno, with a designe to unite their forces against the clans of Browns and Bailzies, that were come over from Ireland to chasse them back again, that they might not share in their labors ; but in their ramble they discorded, and committed the fore- said murder, and sundry of them of both sydes ware apprehended. . . . Thir four being throwen all unto on hole digged for them in the Grayfrier Church Yeard, with their clothes on ; the nixt morning the youngest of the three sones (who was scarce sixteen) his body was missed, and found to be away. Some thought he being last thrown over the ladder, and first cut downe, and in full vigor, and no great heap of earth, and lying upper- most, and not so ready to smother, the fermentation of the blood, and heat of the bodies under him, might cause him rebound and throw off the earth, and recover ere the morning, and steall away ; which, if true, he deserves his life, tho' the magistrats, or their bourreau, deserved a reprimande ; but others, more probably, thought his body was stolen away by some chirurgeon, or his servant, to make ane anatomicale dissection on ; which was criminal to take at their owne hand, since the magistrats would not have refused it; and I hear the chirurgeons afl&rme, the towne of Edinburgh is obliged to give them a malefactor's body once a year for that effect, and its usual in Paris, Leyden, and other places to give them ; also some of them that dyes in hospitals. The obligation mentioned in this quotation as lying on the city of Edinburgh, was made under the charter granted by the Town Council to the Surgeons in 1505. This grant of one body in the year would, however, be of little value, and the inquiring spirit that was abroad gradually came to feel that the privilege was little better than none at all. In the last decade of the seventeenth century strenuous efforts were being made to establish a school of anatomy in the city. Alexander Monteith, one of the most eminent physicians of the time, made](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21065251_0022.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
