The Court of Cacus; Or, The Story of Burke and HareLeighton, Alexander
History
The Court of Cacus; Or, The Story of Burke and Hare
Leighton, Alexander
Body snatching; Burke, William, 1792-1829; Hare, William, 1792?-1870?
if you don't take it, another will." The assistant then proposed, with the
intention of having them apprehended, that they should wait till he sent
for his principal; but the men, taking alarm, made off with their cargo,
and soon found a less scrupulous customer. This statement, which was given
on authority, was accompanied by an assurance that equally suspicious
cases were by no means rare.
In addition to this preparation of the mind, as it may be called, to look
suspiciously on introductions coming out of the regular way, with the
admission made that they had not been exhumed, and with the inevitable
traces of violence which could not be blinked, there was the peculiarity
on which, perhaps, the greatest stress was laid, that in one of the
cases, at least, there was a recognition of the individual by one of the
students as having been seen and conversed with by him, in terms of more
than ordinary intimacy, only the night before, or at least a very short
period, countable by hours. We allude to Mary Paterson, "the study for the
artist," who, though naked, was said to have made her appearance on the
table _en papillote_--not to be believed--but who, for certain, attracted
so much observation, yea, admiration, that the recognition by the youth
could not have fallen as an idle brag. The case of Daft Jamie, the
collegians' favourite of almost every day's fun, was so much stronger,
that there seemed no mode of accounting for the pure innocence of
Surgeon's Square, except upon the supposition that all the students had,
in the course of a day, been merged in some Lethe. No great wonder that
the most zealous defenders of the craft were here contented with a simple
shaking of the head, for, to be sure, even the devil's advocate has not an
interminable tether.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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