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?
There was one long current in Leven in Fife of a character more like
fiction than truth. A middle-aged man of the name of Henderson had died
of an acute fever, and was buried in due time. He left a widow and
daughter, and we need not speak, even to those who have not experienced
such privation, of the deep valley of grief through which it takes so long
a time for the light of a living hope to penetrate, if, in some instances,
it ever penetrates at all. Yet people must live, and the widow was to keep
the small public-house in the skirts of the town which her husband had
conducted. Six days had passed since the funeral, when one night, at a
late hour, two men asked and got admittance for the purpose of
refreshment, one of them, according to their statement, having been taken
ill. They were introduced through a dark lobby into a room, where there
was one of those close beds so common in Scotland, and left there with the
drink they had ordered. By and by a loud knock came to the door, and the
voice of an officer demanded to know if some thieves who had broken into a
neighbouring house had there taken refuge. The noise and the impending
search had reached the ears of the two men who had entered shortly before,
and having had some good reason for being afraid of justice, they took
advantage of a window and got out, but they had made so much noise in
their flight, that the officers were directed to a pursuit, in which,
however, they ultimately failed. On their return they thought of examining
the room, with a view to ascertain whether the supposed thieves had left
in their hurry any of the booty; but all that they found was an empty bag,
which they took away with them for the purpose of an expected
identification. The confusion having ceased, the widow, in the depth of
her grief for her departed husband, went into the room to betake herself
to bed. She approached it for the purpose of folding it down, and in an
instant was transfixed; before her on the bed lay the dead body of her
husband in those very grave-clothes made by her own hands, and in which,
six days before, he had been buried. The explanation of the mystery was
not difficult. The two men belonged to the College staff of
body-snatchers; they had succeeded so far in their enterprise, and would
with their burden have avoided all houses, if one of them had not been
taken ill, and the other had not also wanted to participate in a
restorative after their night's work. It is supposed that, thinking
themselves secure in the quiet house, they had taken the body out of the
sack for some purpose only known to themselves, and thinking, when the
noise got up, that the pursuit was after them, they had flung it into the
close bed and flown.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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