Sure enough, an elderly lady had been buried on the previous Friday but now the coffin was empty. It is impossible to gauge the feelings of the relatives upon discovering the theft of their bereaved, but some travelled south on the Fife ferry. The Magistrates at Kinghorn greeted them in person and when they confirmed the identity of the body, the old lady was reburied in the graveyard in Kinghorn. Rather than a lonely, sad affair, the funeral was well attended, not only by the relatives but by local people who showed their support and sympathy for the bereaved.
Defending the Dead
Although it was unusual for a Resurrectionist to be caught actually carrying the body, the people of Dundee had taken precautions to protect their dead. There were two doughty men standing guard over the burial ground at Logie, and for night after dark night they waited with nothing happening, and then in early May 1824 the body snatchers struck. Rather than sneak in to quietly dig up a grave, they jumped the wall of the graveyard and attacked the watchmen. There was a desperate struggle around the tombstones in the dim of the summer night, but the watchmen held their ground and chased the Resurrection men away. There was little time to celebrate their victory, however, for only the following night the body snatchers returned, but once more the guard fought them off, and Logie rested secure, at least for a while.
There were other, more ingenious methods of ensuring the peace of the deceased. Throughout the nineteenth century the death rate among children was shockingly high. A visitor to any old graveyard only has to read the inscriptions on any random selection of gravestones to realise that many were erected for children from a few minutes to a few years old. It was natural that the parents wanted their children to rest in peace, undisturbed by the Resurrectionists, and in July 1823 one Dundee father went further than most. When his child’s coffin was lowered into the grave, the mourners noticed an array of lines and cables criss-crossing the lid. The father explained that the cables were connected to an explosive device, so if any grave robber attempted to steal the body, they would be blown to pieces.
Perhaps there was a bomb in the coffin, or perhaps the bereaved father had merely tacked on cables in the hope of bluffing the body snatchers. Either way, the sexton was fearful as he looked down on the tiny coffin at the foot of the newly dug grave. Scratching nervously as the pile of earth that lay on top of the grass, he dropped the first shovelful, panicked and jumped back, with many of the mourners immediately joining him. He could hardly be blamed: if the coffin was rigged to explode if a Resurrection man grabbed it, what result might a spadeful of earth bring?
Although the anatomists were probably more interested in dissecting adults’ bodies, children were certainly not immune from Resurrectionists’ predatory claws. In October 1824 a child’s body was stolen from the burial ground at the Howff, and the magistrates of Dundee offered a reward of twenty guineas for its recovery or information about the thieves. Twenty guineas was about twice the going rate for a fresh body, but still, there was no follow-up notice of a capture so it seems these particular body snatchers escaped. The theft of a child must have been particularly distressing for the parents, and there were a few incidents in the town that reveal just how high feelings ran and how fearful people were of these ghouls who prowled the graveyards.
The first scare came in April 1826 when George Law, a shoemaker in Baltic Street, a short street between the Wellgate and the Meadows, investigated a thump at the door. Finding his nine-year-old son on the doorstep in a state of near paralysis, he carried the boy inside and rushed for a doctor, who took a brief look and gave his opinion that the boy was merely drunk. However, Law and his wife were not so convinced and when their son was still insensible the next morning they called a second and more sympathetic doctor. The boy told a strange tale: two well-dressed men had forced him to drink something from a bottle, and then tried to drag him to the Meadows. He had objected, saying he was going home, but the two men had accompanied him all the way, only running when George Law heard his son collapse against the door.
As the people of Dundee digested this disturbing event, they heard of a similar attempt to drug and kidnap a young girl named Orchiston near the Water Wynd, again at Baltic Street. Again there were two well-dressed men, and again they forceed the child to drink from a square bottle, with similar results. Already shaken with the actions of the Resurrection men, the good citizens of Dundee reached a predictable conclusion: the two men were obviously body snatchers intent on murdering the children and selling them to the anatomists. Even as the fear and anger surged around Dundee, the truth seeped through. The first doctor had been correct. Young Law had drunk himself into a stupor and made up a colourful story to avoid his parents’ wrath; young Orchiston had probably heard the tale and jumped on the Resurrectionist bandwagon.
However, there was no doubting the truth of the events of a dark night in March 1825. At that time the Howff was surrounded by a high stone wall, pierced with two tall doors. Between the night and the high walls, the interior was dark, with the serried ranks of the gravestones dimly seen in the moonless night. There were two men on watch in the Howff, guarding the grave of a recently buried woman. With their swinging lanterns casting bouncing shadows on the ground and emphasising the darkness beyond, the watch distinctly heard the creak of one of the doors. It was between eleven and twelve on Saturday night, no time for anybody to have lawful business in the Howff. The watchmen moved forward. When they heard the muffled whispers of men through the rustling of the trees, one raised his lantern and shouted a challenge.
‘Who’s there?’
The whispering ended, but muted threats hissed through the dark, followed by a pregnant silence. The watchmen returned to their posts at the grave, glancing into the sinister dark, wondering who was out there, how many there were, and if they had been scared away. The answer came about half an hour later, when there was a whistle from one edge of the Howff, with an instant reply from the other. Then came calls in what might have been a code but was certainly in words that the watchmen found incomprehensible. Then silence again, and the gravestones, unconcerned, stood in the stern darkness.
That night passed slowly, but the watchmen had no more alarms. They returned to their post the next night, no doubt a little more apprehensive, but also more prepared. As well as their lanterns they carried pistols and were ready to defend their position. Even so, the first part of the night passed peacefully, but about half an hour after midnight the watchmen saw movement among the gravestones and the yellow glow of a lantern.
‘Who’s there?’ the watchmen called again and added that they were armed and would shoot anybody who came near the grave they guarded. There was no reply, but the scuffling continued so both watchmen fired, one after the other, the orange muzzle flare bursting the dark and the roar of the shot tearing apart the silence of the night. The result was immediate: the hollow thump of running feet and the creak of a door as the body snatchers made a quick retreat. Once again the watchmen had guarded their charge well. They picked up a spade and sack the intruders left behind as sure proof of their intentions, but listened with some concern to the threats that were shouted from the other side of the boundary wall. However, the watchmen could be satisfied; the remainder of that night passed peacefully.
The watchmen were back the next night, but so were the Resurrectionists. It was shortly after ten o’clock, dark and crisply cold, when the watchmen turned up for duty. As they stepped into the night, one immediately gave a cry and vanished foot-first into a gaping hole where the grave should be. The body snatchers had come early and had already dug half-way down to the coffin. As the watchman struggled to escape from the grave, two shadowy figures emerged from the night, but rather than threats, the men offered bribes, saying if the watchmen looked the other way they would be rewarded.
True to his salt, the watchman refused, which was a brave thing to do when he was up to his knees in a freshly dug grave. The nearest body snatcher reacted instantly, swinging his spade at the second watc
hman. The blow missed; the watchman drew his pistol, moved forward to take hasty aim but stumbled over a grave and swore as the priming of the firing pan fell out. He cursed again as he reloaded, but by then the Resurrectionists were retreating through the ranked gravestones. The watchman fired anyway, the shot going nowhere as the intruders scurried over the wall and vanished. Chasing them through the dark graveyard, the watchman tripped over something, looked down and realised it was a sack containing a freshly dug-up body. The glazed eyes of elderly Jean Anderson stared sightlessly up at him.
Naturally, with Dundee already on edge with the threat to their deceased, the sound of gunshots and shouting brought crowds, all asking questions, all looking for scapegoats. Two visitors from Edinburgh, probably entirely innocent of any attempt to unearth a Dundonian corpse, became targets for the fear and anger of the mob. As the crowd turned angry, the visitors pleaded for police protection. After a night in the cold cells of the Town House they may have wished they had chanced the mob, but they managed to persuade the police they were not grave robbers.
Early on Tuesday morning, a huge crowd of women, sprinkled with a few dozen men, squeezed into the Howff. There was no reason for being there, no Resurrectionists to chase and nothing to do but ask each other what was happening, voice their anger and search for somebody, anybody, on whom to fix the blame. Around seven in the morning Begg the gravedigger appeared with his wife, and the frightened mob turned their anger on them. Surging forward, they threw both into an open grave and crowded around, chanting, ‘Bury them alive, bury them alive!’ Despite the threats, the Beggs scrambled clear and fled, ducking and dodging as the mob pelted them with stones and turf. Reaching their home, they cowered there until noon when Begg was summoned to fill up an open grave.
Strangely, the crowd were quiet while he worked, but once the coffin was covered and the turf levelled, they again began their attacks, hurling abuse and missiles at the unfortunate gravedigger. Once again Begg had to run home and the crowd remained where it was, packing the burial ground and overflowing outside the gates. It was late afternoon before the Dundee magistrates ordered the Howff cleared, but the people were reluctant to go. They protested but eventually obeyed, amidst much grumbling and muttered threats against any Resurrectionist they should happen to catch.
With many of the crowd still watching suspiciously from outside the walls and the slight eminence to the south, Jean Anderson was returned to her rightful place under the turf. The authorities questioned Mr Begg, the watchmen and Mrs Duncan, a nearby resident who claimed to have seen some men acting suspiciously among the graves. However, nothing was learned that helped catch the body snatchers.
Not surprisingly, feelings in Dundee remained high. Immediately after the weekend skirmishes, the Town Council recruited two watchmen to mount a nightly guard over the burial ground and ordered one of the town officers to help whenever he could, but the Howff was large, the nights were dark and the Resurrectionists were cunning and could be violent. More security was needed. Somebody proposed knocking down the tall surrounding walls and replacing them with a low parapet topped by iron railings so passers-by could see into the graveyard and grave robbers could not hide in dark shadows. However, the tall walls remained in place and people continued to fear for the peace of their departed. Equally abortive was a suggestion to build a house at the entrance and install a guard with a pack of mastiffs.
As the ideas rolled in, the paranoia continued. When one of the town scavengers died in the infirmary, many of his friends and family came down from the Highlands for the funeral. There was no trouble until Dr William Dick ordered the coffin carried to the burial ground, but then the Highlanders steadfastly refused to move. They obstructed everything and everybody, turning what should have been a dignified procession to the graveside into something of a riot. As usual in Dundee, a crowd gathered to watch the fun and soon the rumour spread: the Highlanders believed somebody had stolen the scavenger’s body and sold it to an anatomist. When the protests grew unbearable even Dr Dick agreed to check. The coffin was placed on the ground, the lid unscrewed and the Highlanders crowded round to see the dead body of the scavenger. Once they were satisfied, the procession continued and the coffin was decently interred. It was a minor story, but one that reveals the impact Resurrectionists had on Dundee.
As the grave-robbing spree continued and people began to get ever more nervous, the burgesses of Dundee debated how to protect their dead. They met in the Howff in March 1826 but news of the meeting had leaked and over 300 people crowded into the graveyard. Inevitably there was chaos, until a brave spokesman took the initiative and shouted out what the meeting was about. Only when the surplus population had drifted away was there any progress. The burgesses who remained crammed into the watch house and decided to put a more secure guard on the burial ground. Spurred by fear, they drew up a document of thirteen articles.
The burgess’ document stated they would form a body of ‘voluntary police … for preventing the violation of the graves by those unfeeling wretches who bear the ignominious title of Resurrectionists’. The anger in this statement is so obvious it nearly crawls out of the page and shouts down the centuries. Adding that ‘to prevent crime is more pleasant than to punish it’, the document sets out a plan to have watchers to ‘record anything unusual’. One man would be the ‘captain of the guard’ in charge of five others. They would watch the burial ground from the first day of November until the first of March and from sunset until six in the morning. There would be subscriptions into a general fund that would pay for fire, lights and weapons, but the guards must provide their own refreshments. The plan was well considered. Six armed men with the backing of the town and, it turned out, the approval of the magistrates. When a call for volunteers went out, there were 2,000 subscribers; the people of Dundee had a strong desire to look after their dead. Six were immediately chosen to man the watch that same Thursday night.
Perhaps it was because of the guard, or perhaps the previous gunfight at the burial ground had sent out a strong message, but there were few scares at the Howff after that date. While Cupar and Montrose had their grave robbers, and Edinburgh suffered the horrific depredations of Burke and Hare, Dundee was virtually secure from the Resurrectionists. There was only one more incident of note.
In February 1827 the grave robbers tried again. A party of three or four entered the Howff from the south side, where the wall was lowest and the entrance easiest. One man slipped inside and eased himself into the midst of the gravestones, but the watchmen were alert and moved toward him, with their lanterns casting yellow pools of light among the gravestones. The grave robber ran, clutched a rope his companions had thrown down the wall for him, but the watch were faster. One of the watchman lunged forward and thrust his makeshift weapon, a bayonet tied to the end of a pole, hard into the intruder’s buttocks. With a yell of ‘Murder!’ the man dropped on the far side of the wall and in spite of a hot pursuit by the watchmen, neither he nor his companions were seen again.
Although that was the last known attempt by the Resurrection men at the burial ground in Dundee, there was a final flurry of excitement in February 1829, just after the scares of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh. The Captain of the burying ground found one of the graves uncovered and suspected the watchmen themselves were digging up the dead. Calling the watchmen into the watch house, he locked the door and ran for the police, who escorted the watchers to the police office in St Clement’s Lane. When the police discovered that the relatives of the deceased had uncovered the grave, the watchmen were released.
The watchmen of Dundee remained in the graveyards for a few more years, but after the murders of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh the law was changed, making it easier for anatomists to legally get their hands on corpses; the need for that grisly trade had ended. The Anatomy Act of 1832 ‘provided for executors and other people legally in charge of dead bodies to give them to licensed surgeons and teachers of anatomy unless the deceased had expressed conscientious ob
jection to being dissected’. With that Act, there was no longer a market for dead bodies and peace descended on the Howff. There was plenty other crime still in Dundee.
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Nautical Crime
For much of the early nineteenth century, linen was Dundee’s staple industry. There was an extensive trade with the Baltic and Russia for flax, while sailcloth and other linen articles were exported to half a dozen destinations. With a thriving trade with the Mediterranean and northern Europe added to the mix, it is not surprising that there were thousands of seamen based in Dundee and as many again visiting from other ports. It was nearly inevitable that many of these men spent time and money in Dundee’s pubs and some called in at the lodging houses that doubled as brothels. It was also inevitable that some should end up on the wrong side of the law.
Most of the crimes were petty – simple theft or drunken misbehaviour. For example there was the smartly-dressed seaman James Johnstone who was fined five shillings for simply ‘lurking’ in the passage of a house in the Seagate in November 1824, or the three apprentices who in October 1825 stole a warp and ropes from a Perth smack because a seaman on the vessel said it was all right, or the seaman from the Aberdeen schooner Dee who was fined half a guinea for using abusive language to people in the Perth Road in November 1826. None of these crimes would shake the foundations of the city, but when similar incidents took place day after day, night after night, they would be an irritation to the citizens.
Thefts, Riots and Pistols in the Night
A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee Page 3
