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The Luddites, Fighting for a Better Life

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

The Luddites were 19th-century English textile artisans who protested against the newly-developed, labour-saving machinery from 1811 to 1817. The stocking frames, spinning frames, and power looms introduced during the Industrial Revolution made it possible to replace the artisans with less-skilled, low-wage labourers, leaving them without work.

Although the origin of the name Luddite is uncertain, a popular theory is that the movement was named after Ned Ludd, allegedly a youth who had smashed two stocking frames 30 years earlier, and whose name had become emblematic of machine destroyers. The name evolved into the imaginary General Ludd or King Ludd, a figure who, like Robin Hood, was reputed to live in Sherwood Forest.

Any casual observer of working-class behaviour during the years 1740 to 1800 might easily have come to the conclusion that the majority of the lower orders were disaffected to the point of disloyalty toward the King and his Government. Such a verdict, however, would have been inaccurate, as a careful study of the facts would have proved. There was never any evidence and display of disloyalty, nor any real signs of disaffection toward the Government. Even when the opportunity came in 1745, and again in 1789, for the people to ally themselves with revolutionary movements, they remained aloof. It is no exaggeration to say that the suffering masses of the eighteenth century never tried to alter the Constitution and never openly desired a change in the form of administration. What concerned them most was the adequate meeting of their daily needs. When that became difficult because of high prices and continued exploitation, they quickly lost their patience and vented their anger in noisy demonstrations.

But when commodities remained plentiful and prices fairly stable, then the working classes maintained their tranquillity and disorders became rare. There can be no shadow of doubt about the conclusion that physical distress and anxiety were responsible for the explosions of violence so frequently occurring throughout the greater part of the century.

The movement emerged during the harsh economic climate of the Napoleonic Wars, which saw a rise in difficult working conditions in the new textile factories. The principal objection of the Luddites was the introduction of new wide-framed automated looms that could be operated by cheaper, relatively low-to-unskilled labour, resulting in unemployment among the skilled textile workers. The movement began in Nottingham in 1811 and spread rapidly throughout England over the following two years. Handloom weavers burned mills and pieces of factory machinery. Many wool and cotton mills were destroyed before the British government suppressed the movement.

History
The Luddites, often enjoying local support, met at night on the moors surrounding industrial towns, where they would practice drills and manoeuvres. Their main areas of operation were Nottinghamshire in November 1811, followed by the West Riding of Yorkshire in early 1812 and Lancashire by March 1813. Luddites battled the British Army at Burton’s Mill in Middleton and at Westhoughton Mill, both in Lancashire. Rumours abounded at the time that local magistrates employed agents provocateur to instigate the attacks. Using the pseudonym King Ludd, the Luddites and their supporters anonymously sent death threats to–and even attacked–magistrates and food merchants. Activists smashed Heathcote’s lacemaking machine in Loughborough in 1816. He and other industialists had secret chambers constructed in their buildings which be used as hiding places during an attack. In 1817, an unemployed Nottigham stockinger and probable ex-Luddite named Jeremiah Brandreth led the Pentrich Rising, which was a general uprising unrelated to machinery but could be seen as the last major Luddite act.

Government Response
Later intrepretation of Machine Trashing (1812), showing two men superimposed on an 1844 engraving from the Penny magazine which shows a post 1820s Jacquard loom.

The British Army clashed with the Luddites on several occasions. At one time, there were more British soldiers fighting the Luddites than Napoleon on the Iberian Peninsula. Three Luddites, led by George Mellor, ambushed and assassinated a mill owner named William Horsfall from Ottiwells Mill at Crosland Moor in Marsden, West Yorkshire. Horsfall had remarked that he would, “Ride up to his saddle in Luddite blood.” Mellor fired the fatal shot to Horsfall’s groin, and all three men were arrested.

The British government sought to suppress the Luddite movement with a mass trial at York in January 1813. The government charged over sixty men, including Mellor and his companions, with various crimes in connection with Luddite activities. While some were actual Luddites, many had no connection to the movement. Rather than legitimate judicial reckonings of each defendant’s guilt, these were show trials intended as a deterrent to other Luddites from continuing their activities. Through effective displays of harsh consequences, including many executions and penal transportations, the trials quickly ended the movement.

Parliament subsequently made “machine breaking” (i.e. industrial sabotage) a capital crime with the Frame Breaking Act and the Malicious Damage Act. Lord Byron, becoming one of the few prominent defenders of the Luddites after the treatment of the defendants at the York trials, opposed this legislation.

In Retrospect

Later intrepretation of Machine Trashing (1812), showing two men superimposed on an 1844 engraving from the Penny magazine which shows a post 1820s Jacquard loom.

The movement can also be seen as part of a rising tide of English working-class discontent in the early 19th century. An agricultural variant of Luddism, centring on the breaking of threshing machines, occurred during the widespread Swing Riots of 1830 in southern and eastern England. Research by Kevin Binfield places the Luddite movement in its proper historical context: as organised action by stockingers had occurred at various times since 1675, the movements of the early 19th century must be viewed in the context of the hardships suffered by the working class during the Napoleonic Wars rather than an absolute aversion to machinery.

Such figures are not without their value. They should not be taken to portray a comfortable, well-ordered society in which the conditions of labour may be contrasted with the later conditions of exploitation, unemployment and misery; the permanent condition of the times was still that of underemployment.

Employment which arose out of the growth of trade and shipping in ports — the dramatic ‘growth’ industries of these years — were notorious then, as later, for occupations with precarious employment prospects. But, also in ‘domestic’ manufacturers, there was a desire for more available labour than normally employed; this, as an insurance against labour shortages in boom times.

Moreover, the organization of manufacture by merchant-capitalists, still the predominant textile industry form, was inherently unstable. Whilst the financier’s capital was still largely in the form of raw material, it was easy to increase commitment where trade was good; but, it was almost as easy*to cut back when times were bad. Merchant-capitalists lacked the incentive of later factory owners, their capital invested in building and plant, to maintain a steady rate of production, and return on fixed capital. Combined with this seasonal variations in wage rates, effects of violent short-term fluctuations springing from harvests and war, periodic outbreaks of violence become more easily-understood.

Spasmodic rises in food prices provoked keelmen on the Tyne to riot in 1709, tin miners to plunder granaries at Falmouth in 1727. There was a rebellion in Northumberland and Durham in 1740, manhandling of Quaker corn dealers in 1756. More peaceably, skilled artisans in the cloth, building, shipbuilding, printing and cutlery trades organized friendly societies to insure them against unemployment and sickness and sometimes, gild fashion, against the intrusion of ‘foreign’ labour into their trades.

In modern usage, “Luddite” is a term describing those opposed to industrialisation, automation, computerisation or new technologies in general.

Posted in British history, Georgian Era, Living in the Regency, real life tales, Regency era, Victorian era | Tagged Industrial Revolution, Luddites, Robin Hood | Comments Off

Ned Ludd, Leader of the Luddites, or Maybe Not…

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

Ned Ludd or Ned Lud, possibly born Ned Ludlam or Edward Ludlam, is the person from whom the Luddites took their name.

In 1779, Ludd is supposed to have broken two stocking frames in a fit of rage. After this incident, attacks on the frames were jokingly blamed on Ludd. When the “Luddites” emerged in the 1810s, his identity was appropriated to become the folkloric character of Captain Ludd, also known as King Ludd or General Ludd, the Luddites’ alleged leader and founder.

Supposedly, Ludd was a weaver from Anstey, near Leicester. In 1779, either after being whipped for idleness, or after being taunted by local youths, he smashed two knitting frames in what was described as a “fit of passion.” This story is traceable to an article in The Nottingham Review on 20 December 1811, but there is no independent evidence of its truth.

John Blackner’s book History of Nottingham, also published in 1811, provides a variant tale of a lad called “Ludnam” who was told by his father, a framework-knitter, to “square his needles.” Ludnam took a hammer and “beat them into a heap.” News of the incident spread, and whenever frames were sabotaged, people would jokingly say “Ned Ludd did it.” Nothing more is known about the life of Ludd.

By 1812, the organized frame-breakers who became known as the Luddites had begun using the name King Ludd or Captain Ludd for their mythical leader. Letters and proclamations were signed by “Ned Ludd.”

In Popular Culture
Music
The character of Ned Ludd is commemorated in the folk ballad “General Ludd’s Triumph.” Chumbawamba recorded a version of this song on their 2003 release, English Rebel Songs 1381–1984.

Robert Calvert wrote and recorded another song “Ned Ludd,” which appeared on his 1985 album Freq; which includes the lyrics:
They said Ned Ludd was an idiot boy
That all he could do was wreck and destroy, and
He turned to his workmates and said: Death to Machines
They tread on our future and they stamp on our dreams.

Steeleye Span’s 2006 album Bloody Men has a five-part section on the subject of Ned Ludd.
The Heaven Shall Burn song “The Final March” has a direct reference to Captain Ludd.

Alt-country band The Gourds affectionately refer to Ned Ludd as “Uncle Ned” in the song “Luddite Juice” off their 2009 release, Haymaker.

The Scottish folk musician Alasdair Roberts sings of Ned Ludd in his song “Ned Ludd’s Rant (For World Rebarbarised)” on his 2009 album, Spoils.

Theo Simon has written a song entitled “Ned Ludd,” commemorating the machine-breakers of 1811-13 and praising current direct action protest as a continuation of his ethos.

San Diego punk band The Night Marchers included a song called “Ned Lud” on their 2013 release “Allez, Allez.”

Literature
Edmund Cooper’s alternative-history The Cloud Walker is set in a world where the Luddite ethos has given rise to a religious hierarchy, which dominates English society and sets carefully prescribed limits on technology. A hammer – the tool supposedly used by Ned Ludd – is a religious symbol, and Ned Ludd is seen as a divine, messianic figure.

The novel The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975), by Edward Abbey, is dedicated to Ned Ludd.
Anne Finger wrote a collection of short stories titled Call Me Ahab about famous disabled historical and literary figures, which included the story “Our Ned” about Ned Ludd.

Ecodefense: A Field Guide To Monkeywrenching was published by Ned Ludd Books. Much of the content came from the “Dear Ned Ludd” column in the newsletter of the group Earth First!.

Posted in British history, Georgian Era, legends and myths, Living in the Regency, real life tales, Regency era, Uncategorized, Victorian era | Tagged Captain Ludd, Luddites, Ned Ludd | 2 Comments

Nicholas Hawksmoor, a Builder of Georgian Churches

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

Nicholas Hawksmoor (probably 1661 – 25 March 1736) was a British architect born in Nottinghamshire, probably in East Drayton or Ragnall.

Life
Hawksmoor was born in Nottinghamshire in 1661, into a yeoman farming family, almost certainly in East Drayton or Ragnall, Nottinghamshire. On his death he was to leave property at nearby Ragnall, Dunham and a house and land at Great Drayton. It is not known where he received his schooling, but it was probably in more than basic literacy. George Vertue, whose family had property in Hawksmoor’s part of Nottingham shire, wrote in 1731 that he was taken as a youth to act as clerk by ‘Justice Mellust in Yorkshire, where Mr Gouge senior did some fretwork ceilings afterwards Mr. Haukesmore [sic] came to London, became clerk to Sr. Christopher Wren & thence became an Architect.’

Wren who hearing of his ‘early skill and genius’ for architecture, took him as his clerk at about the age of 18. His early drawings in a sketch-book, containing sketches and notes some dated 1680 and 1683, of buildings in Nottingham, Coventry, Warwick, Bath, Bristol, Oxford and Northampton. His somewhat amateur drawings, now in the Royal Institute of British Architects Drawings Collection, shows that he was still learning the techniques of his new profession at the age of 22. His first official post was as Deputy Surveyor to Wren at the Winchester Palace from 1683 until February 1685. Hawksmoor’s signature appears on a brickmaker’s contract for Winchester Palace in November 1684. Wren was paying him 2 shillings a day in 1685 as assistant in his office in Whitehall.

From about 1684 to about 1700, Hawksmoor worked with Christopher Wren on projects, including Chelsea Hospital, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Hampton Court Palace and Greenwich Hospital. Thanks to Wren’s influence as Surveyor-General, Hawksmoor was named Clerk of the Works at Kensington Palace (1689) and Deputy Surveyor of Works at Greenwich (1705). In 1718, when Wren was superseded by the new, amateur Surveyor, William Benson, Hawksmoor was deprived of his double post to provide places for Benson’s brother. “Poor Hawksmoor,” wrote Vanbrugh in 1721. “What a Barbarous Age have his fine, ingenious Parts fallen into. What wou’d Monsr: Colbert in France have given for such a man?” Only in 1726 after William Benson’s successor Hewett died, Hawksmoor was restored to secretaryship, though not the Clerkship of the works – this post was given to Filtcroft. In 1696, Hawksmoor was appointed surveyor to the Commissioners of Sewers for Westminster, but was dismissed in 1700, “‘having neglected’ to attend the Court several days last past.”

He then worked for a time with Sir John Vanbrugh, helping him build Blenheim Palace for John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, where he took charge from 1705, after Vanbrugh’s final break with the demanding Duchess of Marlborough, and Castle Howard for Charles Howard, later the 3rd Earl of Carlisle. In July 1721 John Vanbrugh made Hawksmoor his deputy as Comptroller of the Works. There is no doubt that Hawksmoor brought to the brilliant amateur the professional grounding he had received from Wren, but it is also arguable that Wren’s architectural development was from the persuasion of his formal pupil, Hawksmoor.

By 1700, Hawksmoor emerged with a major architectural personality, and in the next 20 years he proved himself to be one of the great masters of the English Baroque. His baroque, but somewhat classical and gothic architectural form was derived from his exploration of Antiquity, the Renaissance, the English Middle Ages and contemporary Italian baroque. Unlike many of his wealthier contemporaries, Hawksmoor never travelled to Italy on a Grand Tour, where he might have been influenced by the style of architecture there. Instead he studied engravings especially monuments of ancient Rome and reconstructions of the Temple of Solomon.

In 1702, Hawksmoor designed the baroque country house of Easton Neston in Northamptonshire for Sir William Fermor. This is the only country house for which he was the sole architect, though he extensively remodelled Ockham House, now mostly destroyed, for the Lord Chief Justice King). Easton Neston was not completed as he intended, the symmetrical flanking wings and entrance colonnade, very much in the style of John Vanbrugh, remaining unexecuted.

As he neared the age of 50, his creativeness was received by two universities, Oxford and Cambridge. In 1713, Hawksmoor was commissioned to complete King’s College, Cambridge: the scheme consisted of a Fellows’ Building along King’s Parade, and opposite the Chapel a monumental range of buildings containing the Great Hall, kitchens and to the south of that the library and Provost’s Lodge. Wooden models and plans of the scheme survive, but it proved too expensive and Hawksmoor produced a second scaled down design. But the college that had invested heavily in the South Sea Company lost their money when the ‘bubble’ burst in 1720. The result was that Hawksmoor’s scheme would never be executed, the college was finished later in the 18th century by James Gibbs and early in the 19th century by William Wilkins. In 1690s, Hawksmoor gave proposals for the library of the Queen’s College, Oxford. However like many of his proposals for both universities, such as All Souls College, The Radcliffe Library, Brasenose College, Magdalen College Oxford, was not executed.

The West Towers, Westminster Abbey

After the death of Wren in 1723, Hawksmoor was appointed Surveyor to Westminster Abbey. This post received 100 pounds voted by Parliament for the repair and completion of the Abbey in 1698. The west towers of the Abbey were designed by Hawksmoor but was not completed until after his death.

Hawksmoor conceived grand rebuilding schemes for central Oxford, most of which were not realised. The idea was for a round library for the Radcliffe Camera but that commission went to James Gibbs. He did design the Clarendon Building at Oxford; the Codrington Library and new buildings at All Souls College, Oxford; parts of Worcester College, Oxford with Sir George Clarke; the High Street screen at The Queen’s College, Oxford and six new churches in London.

Hawksmoor’s six London churches
In 1711, parliament passed an Act for the building of Fifty New Churches in the Cities of London and Westminster or the Suburbs thereof, which established a commission which included Christopher Wren, John Vanburgh, Thomas Archer, and a number of churchmen. It appointed Hawksmoor and William Dickinson as its surveyors. As supervising architects, they were not necessarily expected to design all the churches themselves. Dickinson left his post in 1713 and was replaced by James Gibbs. Gibbs was removed from his post in 1716 and replaced by John James. James and Hawksmoor remained in office until the commission was wound up in 1733. The declining enthusiasm of the Commission, and the expense of the buildings, meant that only twelve churches were completed, six designed by Hawksmoor, and two by James in collaboration with Hawksmoor. The two collaborations were St Luke Old Street (1727–33) and St John Horsleydown (1727–33), to which Hawksmoor’s contribution seems to have been largely confined to the towers with their extraordinary steeples. The six churches wholly designed by Hawksmoor are his best-known independent works of architecture. They compare in their complexity of interpenetrating internal spaces with contemporaneous work in Italy by Francesco Borromini. Their spires, are essentially Gothic outlines executed in innovative and imaginative Classical detail. Although Hawksmoor and John James terminated the commission by 1733, they were still being paid “for carrying on and finishing the works under their care” until James’s death.
St Alfege’s Church, Greenwich
St George’s Church, Bloomsbury
Christ Church, Spitalfields
St George in the East, Wapping
St Mary Woolnoth

Christ Church Spitalfields (1714–29), west front

Garden Buildings and Monuments

Hawksmoor also designed a number of structures for the gardens at Castle Howard these are:
The Pyramid (1728)
The Mausoleum (1729–40) built on the same scale as his London churches, it is almost certainly the first free-standing mausoleum built in Western Europe since the fall of the Roman empire.
The Carrmire Gate, (c.1730)
The Temple of Venus (1731-5) demolished
At Blenheim Palace he designed the Woodstock Gate (1723) in the form of a Triumphal arch. He also designed the obelisk in Ripon market place, erected in 1702, at 80 feet in height it was the first large scale obelisk to be erected in Britain.

Death and obituary
Hawksmoor died on 25 March 1736 in his house at Millbank from ‘Gout of the stomach.’ He had suffered poor health for the last twenty years of his life and was often confined to bed hardly able to sign his name. His will instructed that he be buried at the church at Shenley, Hertfordshire. This has been deconsecrated and his tomb stone there is now in a private garden. It has this inscription:
P M S
L
Hic J[acet]
NICHOLAUS HAWKSMOOR Armr
ARCHITECTUS
obijt vicesimo quin[t]o die [Martii]
Anno Domini 1736
Aetatis 75

Hawksmoor’s only child was a daughter, Elizabeth, whose second husband, Nathanial Blackerby, who wrote the obituary of his father-in-law.
His obituary appeared in Read’s Weekly Journal, no. 603. 27 March 1736.
: Thursday morning died, at this house on Mill-Bank, Westminster, in a very advanced age, the learned and ingenious Nicholas Hawksmoor, Esq, one of the greatest Architects this or the preceeding (sic) Century has produc’d. His early skill in, and Genius for this noble science recommended him, when about 18 years of age, to the favour and esteem of his great master and predecessor, Sir Christopher Wren, under whom, during his life, and for himself since his death, he was concerned in the erecting more Publick (sic) Edifices, than any one life, among the moderns at least, can boast of. In King Charles II’s reign, he was employ’d under Sir Christopher Wren, in the stately buildings at Winchester; as he was likewise in all the other publick structures, Palaces &c, erected by that great Man, under whom he was assisting, from the Beginning (factually wrong, Hawksmoor was 14 years old then) to the Finishing of that grand and noble Edifice the cathedral of St. Paul’s, and of all the churches rebuilt after the Fire of London. At the building of Chelsea-College he was Deputy-Surveyor, and Clerk of Works, under Sir Christopher Wren. At Greenwich-Hospital he was, from the Beginning ’till a short time before his death, Clerk of Works. In the Reigns of King William and Queen Anne, he was Clerk of their Majesties Works at Kensington, and at Whitehall, St. Jame’s and Westminster. In the reign of King George I, he was first Surveyor of all the new Churches, and Surveyor of Westminster-Abbey, from the death of Sir Christopher Wren. He was chiefly concern’d in designing and building a great number of magnificent Nobleman’s Houses, and particularly (with Sir John Vanbrugh) those of Blenheim and Castle-Howard, at the latter of which he was at his Death, carrying on a Mausoleum in the most elegant and grand Stile (sic), not to mention many others: But one of the most surprising of his undertakings, was the repairing of Beverley Minster, where the stone wall on the north-side was near three Foot out of the perpendicular, which he mov’d at once to its upright by means of a machine of his own invention. In short his numerous Publick Works at Oxford, perfected in his lifetime, and the design and model of Dr. Ratcliff’s Library there, his design of a new Parliament-House, after the thought of Sir Christopher Wren; and, to mention no more, his noble Design for repairing the West-End of Westminster-Abbey, will all stand monuments to his great capacity, inexhaustible fancy, and solid judgement. He was perfectly skill’d in the History of Architecture, and could give exact account of all the famous buildings, both Antient (sic) and Modern, in every part of the world; to which his excellent memory, that never fail’d him to the very last, greatly contributed. Nor was architecture the only science he was master of. He was bred a scholar. and knew as well the learned as the modern tongues. He was a very skilful mathematician, geographer, and geometrician; and in drawing, which he practised to the last, though greatly afflicted with Chiragra, few excelled him. In his private life he was a tender husband, a loving father, a sincere friend, and a most agreeable companion; nor could the most poignant pains of Gout, which he for many years laboured under, ever ruffle or discompose his evenness of temper. And as his memory must always be dear to his Country, so the loss of so great and valuable man in sensibly, and in a more particular manner felt by those who had the pleasure of his personal acquaintance, and enjoy’d the happiness of his conversation.

Upon his death he left a widow, to whom he bequested all his property in Westminster, Highgate, Shenley, and East Drayton, who later married William Theaker; grandchild of this second marriage ultimately inherited Hawksmoor’s properties near Drayton, after the death of the architect’s widow. Hawksmoor’s only child was a daughter, Elizabeth.

Recovering Hawksmoor’s Reputation
Modern scholarship has sought to distinguish Hawksmoor’s work from that of Christopher Wren and the other designers in the Office of Works such as Robert Hooke. Many buildings were previously attributed without distinguishing their designers by name and Hawksmoor’s reputation as an individual designer has been obscured by this fact. Modern re-apraisal began with a study in 1924 by Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel. The major breakthrough in Hawksmoor scholarship came with Kerry Downes’s 1979 monograph the examined the numerous documents of Hawksmooor’s work, a happy result of much of his work being for the Office of the King’s Works, who kept their records.

Hawksmoor’s influence by Old Testament descriptions of the Temple of Solomon and lost wonders of the ancient world is explored in Pierre De La Ruffiniere’s du Prey’s 2000 study of Hawksmoor. In 2002, Hawksmoor was the subject of an award-winning monograph by the architectural historian Vaughan Hart, which appraised Hawksmoor in the light of archival discoveries since the work of Kerry Downes.

St. John’s Horsleydown (1727–33), joint work with John James, tower by Hawksmoor, bombed in London Blitz then demolished

Hawksmoor in Modern Literature
Hawksmoor’s architecture has influenced several poets and authors of the twentieth century. His church St Mary Woolnoth is mentioned in T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land (1922).

Algernon Stitch lived in a “superb creation by Nicholas Hawksmoor” in London in the novel Scoop by Evelyn Waugh (1938).

Hawksmoor is the subject of a poem by Iain Sinclair called ‘Nicholas Hawksmoor: His Churches,’ which appeared in Sinclair’s collection of poems Lud Heat (1975). Sinclair promoted the poetic interpretation of the architect’s singular style of architectural composition that Hawksmoor’s churches formed a pattern consistent with the forms of Theistic Satanism though there is no documentary or historic evidence for this. This idea was, however, embellished by Peter Ackroyd in his novel Hawksmoor (1985) the historical Hawksmoor is refigured as the fictional Devil-worshiper Nicholas Dyer, while the eponymous Hawksmoor is a twentieth-century detective charged with investigating a series of murders perpertrated on Dyer’s (Hawksmoor’s) churches.

Both Sinclair and Ackroyd’s ideas in turn were further developed by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell in their graphic novel, From Hell, which speculated that Jack the Ripper used Hawksmoor’s buildings as part of ritual magic, with his victims as human sacrifice. In the appendix, Moore revealed that he had met and spoke with Sinclair on numerous occasions while developing the core ideas of the book. The argument includes the idea that the locations of the churches form a pentagram with ritual significance.

A view of All Souls College, looking east from the University Church of St Mary the Virgin

Posted in British history, Georgian Era, Living in the Regency, real life tales, Regency era, Victorian era | Tagged architect, churches, Nicholas Hawksmoor | Comments Off

Book Buying Stats and Building an Author Following

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

This article comes from The Globe and Mail. As a mid-list author with a niche following, this struck home. To read the complete article, go to http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/why-book-buying-stats-might-stifle-the-next-great-author/article6755208/

This article is part of Next, The Globe’s five-day series examining the people, places, things and ideas that will shape 2013.

Given the pressure to reduce costs, something had to give in the formerly genteel world of book publishing, and it’s not the publishers. Rationalizing with mergers, capitalizing on global fads and making up in digital sales some of what they have lost in print, the big houses are stubbornly resisting their oft-foretold extinction.

The true dinosaurs of the new age are authors. Once happily enclosed in the “stables” of publishers willing to nurture and develop their talent, even if they never wrote a major bestseller, droves of so-called “mid-list” authors now find themselves roaming among the ever-present throng of wannabes flogging unpublished work in an indifferent market. And that throng is most likely to produce tomorrow’s bestsellers, even if they begin life as obscure, self-published digital texts that, onloy after they find a following, are taken up and heavily marketed to mainstream prominence by major publishing houses.

Many mid-list authors have fallen victim to increasingly sophisticated, widely available sales data, according to agents and publishers. Publishers can now assess every author’s lifelong sales thanks to such services as Nielsen Bookscan in the United States and BookNet Canada.

Posted in Industry News/Publishing | Comments Off

John Wilson Croker, Public Steward and Controversial Regency Era Figure

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

John Wilson Croker (20 December 1780 to 10 August 1857) was an Irish statesman and author.

Life
He was born at Galway, the only son of John Croker, the surveyor-general of customs and excise in Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1800. Immediately afterwards, he entered Lincoln’s Inn, and in 1802 he was called to the Irish bar.

His interest in the French Revolution led him to collect a large number of valuable documents on the subject, which are now in the British Museum. In 1804, he published anonymously Familiar Epistles to J. F. Jones, Esquire, on the State of the Irish Stage, a series of caustic criticisms in verse on the management of the Dublin theatres. The book ran through five editions in one year. Equally successful was the Intercepted Letter from Canton (1805), also anonymous, a satire on Dublin society. During this period a rather scathing poem attributed to Croker led to the suicide of actor John Edwin, husband of Elizabeth Rebecca Edwin. In 1807, he published a pamphlet on The State of Ireland, Past and Present, in which he advocated Catholic emancipation.

The following year he entered parliament as member for Downpatrick, obtaining the seat on petition, though he had been unsuccessful at the poll. The acumen displayed in his Irish pamphlet led Spencer Perceval to recommend him in 1808 to Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had just been appointed to the command of the British forces in the Iberian Peninsula, as his deputy in the office of chief secretary for Ireland. This connection led to a friendship which remained unbroken until Wellington’s death.

The notorious case of the Duke of York in connexion with his abuse of military patronage furnished Croker with an opportunity for distinguishing himself. The speech which he delivered on 14 March 1809, in answer to the charges of Colonel Wardle, was regarded as the most able and ingenious defence of the duke that was made in the debate; and Croker was appointed to the office of secretary to the Admiralty, which he held without interruption under various administrations for more than twenty years. He proved an excellent public servant, and made many improvements which have been of permanent value in the organization of his office. Among the first acts of his official career was the exposure of George Villiers, a fellow-official who had misappropriated the public funds to the extent of £200,000.

In 1824 he helped found the Athenaeum Club, and became the subject of the lampoon beginning “I’m John Wilson Croker, I do as I please…”

In 1827, he became the representative of Dublin University, having previously sat successively for the boroughs of Athlone, Yarmouth, Bodmin and Aldeburgh. He was a determined opponent of the Reform Bill, and vowed that he would never sit in a reformed parliament; he left parliament in 1832. Two years earlier he had retired from his post at the admiralty on a pension of £1500 a year. Many of his political speeches were published in pamphlet form, and they show him to have been a vigorous and effective, though somewhat unscrupulous and often virulently personal, party debater. Croker had been an ardent supporter of Robert Peel, but finally broke with him when he began to advocate the repeal of the Corn Laws.

He was for many years one of the leading contributors on literary and historical subjects to the Quarterly Review, with which he had been associated from its foundation. The rancorous spirit in which many of his articles were written did much to embitter party feeling. It also reacted unfavourably on Croker’s reputation as a worker in the department of pure literature by bringing political animosities into literary criticism.

He had no sympathy with the younger school of poets who were in revolt against the artificial methods of the 18th century. In April 1833 he savagely criticised Poems, published the previous December by Alfred Tennyson – an attack which, coupled with the death of his friend Arthur Hallam, discouraged the aspiring poet from seeking to publish anything more for nine years. He was also responsible for the famous Quarterly article on John Keats’s Endymion. Shelley and Byron erroneously blamed this article for bringing about the death of the poet, ‘snuffed out,’ in Byron’s phrase, ‘by an article’ (they, however, attributed the article to William Gifford).

His magnum opus, an edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1831) was the subject of an unfavourable review by Macaulay in the Edinburgh Review (a Whig rival/opponent of the Quarterly Review) The main grounds of criticism were echoed by Thomas Carlyle in a less famous review in Fraser’s Magazine

*** that Croker had added extensive notes, which were to little point, being superfluous or declaring Croker’s inability to grasp Johnson’s point on matters where the reviewers had no difficulty. Macaulay also complained (with numerous examples) of factual errors in the notes; Carlyle of their carping attitude to Johnson’s motives (Carlyle, whose father was a stonemason, and who (like Johnson) had scraped a living as a schoolmaster, before writing encyclopaedia articles for bread-and-butter wages, also took great exception to one note which took for granted that when Johnson spoke of having lived on 4 ½ d a day he was disclosing something of which he should have been ashamed to speak)

*** that Croker had not preserved the integrity of Boswell’s text, but had interpolated text from four other accounts of Johnson (Hawkins, Mrs Thrale, etc.), distinguished only from genuine Boswell by being inside brackets, so that “You begin a sentence under Boswell’s guidance, thinking to be carried happily through it by the same: but no; in the middle, perhaps after your semi-colon, and some consequent ‘for’ – starts up one of these Bracket-ligatures, and stitches you in half a page to twenty or thirty pages of a Hawkins, Tyers, Murphy, Piozzi; so that often one must make the old sad reflection, Where we are, we know; whether we are going no man knoweth.”

Croker made no immediate reply to Macaulay’s attack, but when the first two volumes of Macaulay’s History appeared he took the opportunity of pointing out the inaccuracies in the work. Croker was occupied for several years on an annotated edition of Alexander Pope’s works. It was left unfinished at the time of his death, but it was afterwards completed by the Rev. Whitwell Elwin and Mr WJ Courthope. He died at St Albans Bank, Hampton.

Croker was generally supposed to be the original from which Benjamin Disraeli drew the character of “Rigby” in Coningsby, because he had for many years had the sole management of the estates of the Marquess of Hertford, the “Lord Monmouth” of the story. Hostile portrayals of Croker can also be found in the novels Florence Macarthy by Lady Morgan (a political opponent whom Croker subjected to notoriously savage reviews in the Quarterly) and The Anglo-Irish of the Nineteenth Century (1828) by John Banim.

The chief works of Croker not already mentioned were:
Stories for Children from the History of England (1817), which provided the model for Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather
Letters on the Naval War with America
A Reply to the Letters of Malachi Malagrowther (1826)
Military Events of the French Revolution of 1830 (1831)
a translation of Bassompierre’s Embassy to England (1819)
He also wrote several lyrical pieces of some merit, such as the Songs of Trafalgar (1806) and The Battles of Talavera (1809). He edited the Suffolk Papers (1823), Hervey’s Memoirs of the Court of George II (1817), the Letters of Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey (1821–1822), and Walpole’s Letters to Lord Hertford (1824). His memoirs, diaries and correspondence were edited by Louis J Jennings in 1884 under the title of The Croker Papers (3 vols.).

Posted in British history, Georgian Era, Living in the Regency, real life tales, Regency era | Tagged Duke of Wellington, John Wilson Croker, Secretary of Admiralty | Comments Off

Spencer Perceval, the UK’s Only Assassinated Prime Minister

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

Spencer Perceval, KC (1 November 1762 – 11 May 1812) was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 4 October 1809 until his death on 11 May 1812. He is the only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated. He is also the only Solicitor General or Attorney General to have been Prime Minister.

The younger son of an Irish earl, Perceval was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. He studied law at Lincoln’s Inn, practised as a barrister on the Midland Circuit and in 1796 became a King’s Counsel before entering politics at the age of 33 as a Member of Parliament for Northampton. A follower of William Pitt, Perceval always described himself as a “friend of Mr Pitt,” rather than a Tory. Perceval was opposed to Catholic emancipation and reform of Parliament; he supported the war against Napoleon and the abolition of the slave trade. He was opposed to hunting, gambling and adultery, did not drink as much as most Members of Parliament, gave generously to charity, and enjoyed spending time with his twelve children.

After a late entry into politics his rise to power was rapid; he was Solicitor and then Attorney General in the Addington Ministry, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons in the Portland Ministry, and became Prime Minister in October 1809. At the head of a weak ministry, Perceval faced a number of crises during his term in office including an inquiry into the disastrous Walcheren expedition, the madness of King George III, economic depression and Luddite riots. He survived these crises, successfully pursued the Peninsular War in the face of opposition defeatism, and won the support of the Prince Regent. His position was looking stronger by the spring of 1812, when John Bellingham, a merchant with a grievance against the Government, shot him dead in the lobby of the House of Commons.

Although Perceval was a seventh son and had four older brothers who survived to adulthood, the Earldom of Egmont reverted to one of his great-grandsons in the early 20th century and remained in the hands of his descendants until its extinction in 2011.

Childhood and Education
Perceval was the seventh son of John Perceval, 2nd Earl of Egmont; he was the second son of the earl’s second marriage. His mother, Catherine Compton, Baroness Arden, was a grand-daughter of the 4th Earl of Northampton. Spencer was a Compton family name; Catherine Compton’s great uncle Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington, had been Prime Minister.

His father, a political advisor to Frederick, Prince of Wales and King George III, served briefly in the Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty. Perceval’s early childhood was spent at Charlton House, which his father had taken to be near Woolwich docks.

Perceval’s father died when he was eight. Perceval went to Harrow School, where he was a disciplined and hard-working pupil. It was at Harrow that he developed an interest in evangelical Anglicanism and formed what was to be a lifelong friendship with Dudley Ryder. After five years at Harrow he followed his older brother Charles to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won the declamation prize in English and graduated in 1782.

Legal Career and Marriage
As the second son of a second marriage, and with an allowance of only £200 a year, Perceval faced the prospect of having to make his own way in life. He chose the law as a profession, studied at Lincoln’s Inn, and was called to the bar in 1786. Perceval’s mother had died in 1783, and Perceval and his brother Charles, now Lord Arden, rented a house in Charlton, where they fell in love with two sisters who were living in the Percevals’ old childhood home. The sisters’ father, Sir Thomas Spencer Wilson, approved of the match between his eldest daughter Margaretta and Lord Arden, who was wealthy and already a Member of Parliament and a Lord of the Admiralty. Perceval, who was at that time an impecunious barrister on the Midland Circuit, was told to wait until younger daughter Jane came of age in three years’ time. When Jane reached 21 in 1790 Perceval’s career was still not prospering, and Sir Thomas still opposed the marriage. So the couple eloped and married by special licence in East Grinstead. They set up home together in lodgings over a carpet shop in Bedford Row, later moving to Lindsey House, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

Perceval’s family connections obtained a number of positions for him: Deputy Recorder of Northampton, and Commissioner of Bankrupts in 1790; Surveyor of the Maltings and Clerk of the Irons in the Mint — a sinecure worth £119 a year – in 1791; counsel to the Board of Admiralty in 1794. He acted as junior counsel for the Crown in the prosecutions of Thomas Paine in absentia for seditious libel (1792), and John Horne Tooke for high treason (1794). Perceval joined the Light Horse Volunteers in 1794 when the country was under threat of invasion by France.

Perceval wrote anonymous pamphlets in favour of the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and in defence of public order against sedition. These pamphlets brought him to the attention of William Pitt the Younger and in 1795 he was offered the appointment of Chief Secretary for Ireland. He declined the offer. He could earn more as a barrister and needed the money to support his growing family. In 1796 he became a King’s Counsel and had an income of about £1000 a year.

Early Political Career 1796–1801
In 1796 Perceval’s uncle, the 8th Earl of Northampton, died. Perceval’s cousin, who was MP for Northampton, succeeded to the Earldom and took his place in the House of Lords. Perceval was invited to stand for election in his place. In the May by-election he was elected unopposed, but weeks later had to defend his seat in a fiercely contested general election. Northampton had an electorate of about one thousand — every male householder not in receipt of poor relief had a vote — and the town had a strong radical tradition. Perceval stood for the Castle Ashby interest, Edward Bouverie for the Whigs, and William Walcot for the corporation. After a disputed count Perceval and Bouverie were returned. Perceval represented Northampton until his death 16 years later, and is the only MP for Northampton to have held the office of Prime Minister. 1796 was his first and last contested election; in the general elections of 1802, 1806 and 1807 Perceval and Bouverie were returned unopposed.

When Perceval took his seat in the House of Commons in September 1796 his political views were already formed. “He was for the constitution and Pitt; he was against Fox and France,” wrote his biographer Denis Gray. During the 1796–1797 session he made several speeches, always reading from notes. His public speaking skills had been sharpened at the Crown and Rolls debating society when he was a law student. After taking his seat in the House of Commons, Perceval continued with his legal practice as MPs did not receive a salary, and the House only sat for a part of the year. During the Parliamentary recess of the summer of 1797 he was senior counsel for the Crown in the prosecution of John Binns for sedition. Binns, who was defended by Samuel Romilly, was found not guilty. The fees from his legal practice allowed Perceval to take out a lease on a country house, Belsize House in Hampstead.

It was during the next session of Parliament, in January 1798, that Perceval established his reputation as a debater — and his prospects as a future minister — with a speech in support of the Assessed Taxes Bill (a bill to increase the taxes on houses, windows, male servants, horses and carriages, in order to finance the war against France). He used the occasion to mount an attack on Charles Fox and his demands for reform. Pitt described the speech as one of the best he had ever heard, and later that year Perceval was given the post of Solicitor to the Ordnance.

Solicitor and Attorney General 1801–1806
Pitt resigned in 1801 when the King and Cabinet opposed his bill for Catholic emancipation. As Perceval shared the King’s views on Catholic emancipation he did not feel obliged to follow Pitt into opposition and his career continued to prosper during Henry Addington’s administration. He was appointed Solicitor General in 1801 and Attorney General the following year. Perceval did not agree with Addington’s general policies (especially on foreign policy), and confined himself to speeches on legal issues. He kept the position of Attorney General when Addington resigned and Pitt formed his second ministry in 1804. As Attorney General Perceval was involved with the prosecution of radicals Edward Despard and William Cobbett, but was also responsible for more liberal decisions on trade unions, and for improving the conditions of convicts transported to New South Wales.

Pitt died in January 1806. Perceval was an emblem bearer at his funeral and, although he had little money to spare (by now he had eleven children), he contributed £1000 towards a fund to pay off Pitt’s debts. He resigned as Attorney General, refusing to serve in Lord Grenville’s ministry of “All the Talents” as it included Fox. Instead he became the leader of the Pittite opposition in the House of Commons.

During his period in opposition, Perceval’s legal skills were put to use to defend Princess Caroline, the estranged wife of the Prince of Wales, during the “delicate investigation”. The Princess had been accused of giving birth to an illegitimate child and the Prince of Wales ordered an inquiry, hoping to obtain evidence for a divorce. The Government inquiry found that the main accusation was untrue (the child in question had been adopted by the princess) but was critical of the behaviour of the princess. The opposition sprang to her defence and Perceval became her advisor, drafting a 156-page letter in her support to King George III. Known as “The Book,” it was described by Perceval’s biographer as “the last and greatest production of his legal career.” When the King refused to let Caroline return to court, Perceval threatened publication of the book. But Grenville’s ministry fell – again over a difference of opinion with the King on the Catholic question – before the book could be distributed and, as a member of the new Government, Perceval drafted a cabinet minute acquitting Caroline on all charges and recommending her return to court. He had a bonfire of the book at Lindsey House and large sums of Government money were spent on buying back stray copies, but a few remained at large and “The Book” was published soon after his death.

Chancellor of the Exchequer 1807–1809
On the resignation of Grenville, the Duke of Portland put together a ministry of Pittites and asked Perceval to become Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. Perceval would have preferred to remain Attorney General or become Home Secretary, and pleaded ignorance of financial affairs. He agreed to take the position when the salary (smaller than that of the Home Office) was augmented by the Duchy of Lancaster. Lord Hawkesbury (later Liverpool) recommended him to the king by explaining that he came from an old English family and shared the king’s views on the Catholic question.

Perceval’s youngest child, Ernest Augustus, was born soon after Perceval became Chancellor (Princess Caroline was godmother). Jane Perceval became ill after the birth and the family moved out of the damp and draughty Belsize House, spending a few months in Lord Teignmouth’s house in Clapham before finding a suitable country house in Ealing. Elm Grove was a 16th-century house that had been the home of the Bishop of Durham; Perceval paid £7,500 for it in 1808 (borrowing from his brother Lord Arden and the trustees of Jane’s dowry) and the Perceval family’s long association with Ealing began. Meanwhile, in town, Perceval had moved from Lindsey House into 10 Downing Street, when the Duke of Portland moved back to Burlington House shortly after becoming Prime Minister.

One of Perceval’s first tasks in Cabinet was to expand the Orders in Council that had been brought in by the previous administration and were designed to restrict the trade of neutral countries with France, in retaliation to Napoleon’s embargo on British trade. He was also responsible for ensuring that Wilberforce’s Bill on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, which had still not passed its final stages in the House of Lords when Grenville’s ministry fell, would not “fall between the two ministries” and be rejected in a snap division.[6] Perceval was one of the founding members of the African Institute, which was set up in April 1807 to safeguard the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act.

As Chancellor of the Exchequer Perceval had to raise money to finance the war against Napoleon. This he managed to do in his budgets of 1808 and 1809 without increasing taxes, by raising loans at reasonable rates and making economies. As leader of the House of Commons he had to deal with a strong opposition, which challenged the government over the conduct of the war, Catholic emancipation, corruption and Parliamentary reform. Perceval successfully defended the Commander-in-Chief of the army, the Duke of York, against charges of corruption when the Duke’s ex-mistress Mary Anne Clarke claimed to have sold army commissions with his knowledge. Although Parliament voted to acquit the Duke of the main charge, his conduct was criticised and he accepted Perceval’s advice to resign. (He was to be re-instated in 1811).

Portland’s ministry contained three future prime-ministers – Perceval, Lord Hawkesbury and George Canning – as well as another two of the 19th-century’s great statesmen: Lord Eldon and Lord Castlereagh. But Portland was not a strong leader and his health was failing. The country was plunged into political crisis in the summer of 1809 as Canning schemed against Castlereagh and the Duke of Portland resigned following a stroke. Negotiations began to find a new Prime Minister: Canning wanted to be Prime Minister or nothing, Perceval was prepared to serve under a third person, but not Canning. The remnants of the cabinet decided to invite Lord Grey and Lord Grenville to form “an extended and combined administration” in which Perceval was hoping for the Home Secretaryship. But Grenville and Grey refused to enter into negotiations, and the king accepted the Cabinet’s recommendation of Perceval for his new Prime Minister. Perceval kissed the king’s hands on 4 October and set about forming his Cabinet, a task made more difficult by the fact that Castlereagh and Canning had ruled themselves out of consideration by fighting a duel (which Perceval had tried to prevent). Having received five refusals for the office, he had to serve as his own Chancellor of the Exchequer – characteristically declining to accept the salary.

Prime Minister 1809-1812
The new ministry was not expected to last. It was especially weak in the Commons, where Perceval had only one cabinet member – Home Secretary Richard Ryder – and had to rely on the support of backbenchers in debate. In the first week of the new Parliamentary session in January 1810 the Government lost four divisions, one on a motion for an inquiry into the disastrous Walcheren expedition (in which, the previous summer, a military force intending to seize Antwerp had instead withdrawn after losing many men to an epidemic on the island of Walcheren) and three on the composition of the finance committee. The Government survived the inquiry into the Walcheren expedition at the cost of the resignation of the expedition’s leader Lord Chatham. The radical MP Sir Francis Burdett was committed to the Tower of London for having published a letter in William Cobbett’s Political Register denouncing the government’s exclusion of the press from the inquiry. It took three days, owing to various blunders, to execute the warrant for Burdett’s arrest. The mob took to the streets in support of Burdett, troops were called out, and there were fatal casualties. As Chancellor, Perceval continued to find the funds to finance Wellington’s campaign in the Iberian Peninsula, whilst contracting a lower debt than his predecessors or successors.

King George III had celebrated his Golden Jubilee in 1809; by the following autumn he was showing signs of a return of the illness that had led to a Regency in 1788. The prospect of another Regency was not attractive to Perceval, as the Prince of Wales was known to favour Whigs and disliked Perceval for the part he had played in the “delicate investigation”. Twice Parliament was adjourned in November 1810, as doctors gave optimistic reports about the King’s chances of a return to health. In December select committees of the Lords and Commons heard evidence from the doctors, and Perceval finally wrote to the Prince of Wales on 19 December saying that he planned the next day to introduce a Regency Bill. As with Pitt’s bill in 1788, there would be restrictions: the Regent’s powers to create peers and award offices and pensions would be restricted for 12 months, the Queen would be responsible for the care of the King, and the King’s private property would be looked after by trustees.

The Prince of Wales, supported by the Opposition, objected to the restrictions, but Perceval steered the bill through Parliament. Everyone had expected the Regent to change his ministers but, surprisingly, he chose to retain his old enemy Perceval. The official reason given by the Regent was that he did not wish to do anything to aggravate his father’s illness. The King signed the Regency Bill on 5 February, the Regent took the royal oath the following day and Parliament formally opened for the 1811 session. The session was largely taken up with problems in Ireland, economic depression and the bullion controversy in England (a Bill was passed to make bank notes legal tender), and military operations in the Peninsula.

The restrictions on the Regency expired in February 1812, the King was still showing no signs of recovery, and the Prince Regent decided, after an unsuccessful attempt to persuade Grey and Grenville to join the government, to retain Perceval and his ministers. Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, after intrigues with the Prince Regent, resigned as Foreign Secretary and was replaced by Castlereagh. The Opposition meanwhile was mounting an attack on the Orders in Council, which had caused a crisis in relations with America and were widely blamed for depression and unemployment in England. Rioting had broken out in the Midlands and North, and been harshly repressed. Henry Brougham’s motion for a select committee was defeated in the Commons, but, under continuing pressure from manufacturers, the government agreed to set up a Committee of the Whole House to consider the Orders in Council and their impact on trade and manufacture. The committee began its examination of witnesses in early May 1812.

A painting depicting the assassination of Perceval. Perceval is lying on the ground while his assassin, John Bellingham, is surrendering to officials (far right)Assassination

At 5:15 on the evening of 11 May 1812, Perceval was on his way to attend the inquiry into the Orders in Council. As he entered the lobby of the House of Commons, a man stepped forward, drew a pistol and shot him in the chest. Perceval fell to the floor, after uttering something that was variously heard as “murder” or “oh my God.” They were his last words. By the time he had been carried into an adjoining room and propped up on a table with his feet on two chairs, he was senseless, although there was still a faint pulse. When a surgeon arrived a few minutes later, the pulse had stopped, and Perceval was declared dead.

At first it was feared that the shot might signal the start of an uprising, but it soon became apparent that the assassin – who had made no attempt to escape – was a man with an obsessive grievance against the Government and had acted alone. John Bellingham was a merchant who believed he had been unjustly imprisoned in Russia and was entitled to compensation from the Government, but all his petitions had been rejected.[9] Perceval’s body was laid on a sofa in the Speaker’s drawing room and removed to Number 10 in the early hours of 12 May. That same morning an inquest was held at the Cat and Bagpipes public house on the corner of Downing Street and a verdict of wilful murder was returned.

Perceval left a widow and twelve children aged between three and twenty, and there were soon rumours that he had not left them well provided for. He had just £106 5s 1d in the bank when he died. A few days after his death, Parliament voted to settle £50,000 on Perceval’s children, with additional annuities for his widow and eldest son. Jane Perceval married Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Henry Carr, brother of the Reverend Robert James Carr, then vicar of Brighton, in 1815 and was widowed again six years later. She died aged 74 in 1844.

Perceval was buried on 16 May in the Egmont vault at St Luke’s Church, Charlton. At his widow’s request, it was a private funeral. Lord Eldon, Lord Liverpool, Lord Harrowby and Richard Ryder were the pall-bearers. The previous day, Bellingham had been tried, and, refusing to enter a plea of insanity, was found guilty. He was hanged on 18 May.

In a curious echo Henry Bellingham, who is descended from a relative of Bellingham’s, was elected in 1983 as the Member of Parliament for North West Norfolk. In 1997 he lost the seat by 1,339 votes. This could be attributed in part to the 2,923 votes received by the Referendum Party candidate Roger Percival, who claimed to be descended from Perceval.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged assassination, Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, William Pitt | 2 Comments

Infamous Court Cases: The 1828 Burke and Hare Murders

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

The Burke and Hare murders, also known as the West Port murders, were a series of murders committed in Edinburgh, Scotland, over a period of about ten months in 1828. The killings were attributed to Irish immigrants William Burke and William Hare, who sold the corpses of their 16 victims to Doctor Robert Knox as dissection material for his well-attended anatomy lectures. Burke and Hare’s accomplices were Burke’s mistress, Helen McDougal, and Hare’s wife, Margaret Laird. From their method of killing their victims came the word “burking,” meaning to smother and compress the chest of a murder victim, and a derived meaning, to suppress something quietly.

Before 1832, there were insufficient cadavers legitimately available for the study and teaching of anatomy in Britain’s medical schools. As medical science began to flourish in the early nineteenth century, the demand for cadavers rose sharply, but at the same time the legal supply failed to keep pace. One of the main sources—the bodies of executed criminals—had begun to dry up owing to a reduction in the number of executions being carried out in the early nineteenth century. The situation of too few corpses available to doctors for demonstrating anatomical dissection to growing numbers of students attracted criminal elements willing to obtain specimens by any means. As at similar institutions, doctors teaching at the Edinburgh Medical School, which was universally renowned for medical sciences, relied increasingly on body-snatchers for a steady supply of “anatomical subjects.” The activities of these “resurrectionists” gave rise to particular public fear and revulsion, but, such were the financial inducements, the illegal trade continued to grow. It was a short step from grave-robbing to anatomy murder.

Burke and Hare
Burke (1792–1829) was born in Urney, near Strabane, in the very west of County Tyrone, part of the Province of Ulster in the north of Ireland. Urney, a small district where the village of Clady is located, lies on the eastern bank of the River Finn, just across from County Donegal. After trying his hand at a variety of trades and serving as an officer’s servant in the Donegal Militia, he left his wife and two children in Ireland and emigrated to Scotland about 1817, working as a navvy on the Union Canal. There he met Helen McDougal. Burke afterwards worked as a labourer, weaver, baker and a cobbler.

Hare’s birthplace is variously given as Poyntzpass near Newry, or Derry, both of which are also in the Province of Ulster in Ireland. He was born in 1792 or 1804. Like Burke, he emigrated to Scotland and worked as a labourer on the Union Canal. While working at the Edinburgh terminus of the canal, he met a man named Logue, who ran a lodging-house for beggars and vagrants in the nearby West Port area of the town. When Logue died in 1826, Hare married Logue’s widow, Margaret Laird. She continued to run the lodging house while Hare worked at the canal basin.

Something of Hare’s origins and character are revealed in the following account from the Newry Telegraph of 31 March 1829.

Hare was born and bred about one half mile distant from Scarva in the opposite county of Armagh and shortly before his departure from this country he lived in the service of Mr Hall, the keeper of the eleventh lock near Poyntzpass. He was chiefly engaged in driving the horses which his master employed in hauling lighters on the Newry Canal. He was always remarkable for being of a ferocious and malignant disposition, an instance of which he gave in the killing of one of his Master’s horses, which obliged him to fly to Scotland where he perpetrated those unparalleled crimes that must always secure him a conspicuous page in the annals of murder.

Murders
Shortly after their arrival in Edinburgh in November 1827, Burke and McDougal moved into Tanner’s Close where Margaret Hare’s lodging-house was situated. Burke had met Margaret on previous trips to Edinburgh, but it is not known whether he was previously acquainted with Hare. Once Burke arrived in the close, they became good friends.

According to Hare’s later testimony, the first body they sold was that of a tenant, an old army pensioner who had died of natural causes on 29 November 1827. He had died owing Hare £4 rent, so to recoup the loss they substituted the body by filling the coffin with bark and took the cadaver to Edinburgh University, looking for a purchaser. According to Burke’s later testimony, they asked for directions to Professor Monro, but a student directed them instead to Surgeon’s Square where they sold the body for £7.10s (2010 values: £731, US$1,130) to an assistant of Dr. Robert Knox, an anatomist of considerable reputation owing to the knowledge and skill he had gained as an army surgeon at the time of Waterloo. But for this chance encounter, the public opprobrium, which later fell on Knox, would have attached to Munro.

Knox was an extra-mural lecturer who, as was customary at the time, charged fees to medical students and visitors attending his lectures on anatomy. His advertising promised “a full Demonstration on Anatomical Subjects” as part of every course of lectures he delivered, and he boasted that his lectures drew a class of above 400 pupils.

Burke and Hare’s first murder victim was a sick tenant named Joseph, a miller by trade, whom they plied with whisky and then suffocated. When there were no other sickly tenants, they decided to lure a victim from the street. In February 1828, they invited pensioner Abigail Simpson to spend the night before her return home to the village of Gilmerton. The following morning they employed the same modus operandi, serving her with alcohol to intoxicate her, and then smothering her. This time they placed the body in a tea-chest and handed it over to a porter sent to meet them “at the back of the Castle.” They were paid £10.

Mary Paterson
Two further undated murders took place that spring. One victim was invited into the house by Mrs Hare and plied with drink until Hare’s arrival; the other was dispatched in similar circumstances by Burke acting on his own. Next, Burke encountered two women, Mary Paterson and Janet Brown, in the section of Edinburgh known as the Canongate. He invited them to breakfast at his brother’s house in Gibb’s Close, but Brown left when an argument broke out between McDougal and Burke. When she returned, she was told Paterson had left with Burke; in fact, she, too, had been taken to Dr. Knox’s rooms in a tea-chest. The two women were described as prostitutes in contemporary accounts. The story later arose that one of Knox’s students had recognized the dead Paterson, whose acquaintance he had made a few days earlier.

Daft Jamie
One victim was an acquaintance of Burke, a woman called Effie who scavenged for a living and was in the habit of selling him scraps of leather she found, which he could use for his cobbling. They were paid £10 for her body. Then Burke “saved” an inebriated woman from being held by a policeman and his assisting neighbour by claiming he knew her and could take her back to her lodging. He delivered her body to the medical school just hours later. The next two victims were an old woman and her mute son or grandson, aged about 12.

While the woman died from an overdose on painkillers, Hare took the young boy and stretched him over his knee, then proceeded to break his back. He later said that this was the murder which disturbed him the most, as he was haunted by his recollection of the boy’s expression. The customary tea-chest being found inadequate, both bodies were forced into a herring barrel and conveyed to Surgeons’ Square, where they fetched £8 each.
According to Burke, the barrel was loaded onto a cart which Hare’s horse refused to pull uphill from the Cowgate, so Hare had to call a porter to help him drag it the rest of the way on a sled. Once back in Tanner’s Close, Hare took his anger out on the horse by shooting it dead in the yard.

Mrs Docherty
Two more victims were Burke’s acquaintance, Mrs. Hostler, and one of McDougal’s relatives, Ann Dougal, a cousin from Falkirk. Burke later claimed that about this time Mrs Hare suggested converting Helen McDougal into merchandise on the grounds that “they could not trust her, as she was a Scotch woman”; but he had refused.

Another victim was Mary Haldane, a former lodger who, down on her luck, asked to sleep in Hare’s stable. Burke and Hare also murdered her daughter Peggy Haldane when she called a few days later to inquire after her mother’s whereabouts.

Burke and Hare’s next victim was a familiar figure in the streets of Edinburgh, a mentally retarded young man with a limp, named James Wilson. “Daft Jamie,” as he was known locally, was 18 at the time of his murder. The boy resisted, and the pair had to kill him together, though later each blamed the other for taking the main part in the crime. His mother began searching and asking for the boy.

When Dr. Knox uncovered the body the next morning, several students recognized Jamie. Knox denied that it was the missing boy, and was reported to have dissected the body ahead of others to render the remains unrecognizable.

While Hare was in the habit of disposing of victims’ clothing in the Union Canal, Burke passed Jamie’s clothes to his nephews, leaving behind material evidence which was recovered before the trial. Burke stated later that he and Hare were “generally in a state of intoxication” when the murders were carried out, and that he “could not sleep at night without a bottle of whisky by his bedside, and a twopenny candle to burn all night beside him; when he awoke he would take a draught of the bottle—sometimes half a bottle at a draught—and that would make him sleep.”

The last victim was Mrs Mary Docherty. Burke lured her into the lodging house by claiming his mother was also a Docherty, but he had to wait to complete his murderous task because of the presence of lodgers, James and Ann Gray. The Grays left for the night and neighbours later reported having heard the sounds of a struggle and even a woman’s voice crying “murder!”

Detection
The next day the Grays returned, and Ann Gray became suspicious when Burke would not let her approach a bed where she had left her stockings. When they were left alone in the house in the early evening, the Grays checked the bed and found Docherty’s body under it. On their way to alert the police, they ran into McDougal who tried to bribe them with an offer of £10 a week. They refused.

Burke and Hare had removed the body from the house before the police arrived. However, under questioning, Burke claimed Docherty had left at 7 A.M., while McDougal claimed she had left in the evening. The police arrested them. An anonymous tip-off led the authorities to Knox’s dissecting-rooms, where they found Docherty’s body, which James Gray identified. William and Margaret Hare were arrested soon thereafter. The murder spree had lasted almost ten months.

When an Edinburgh paper reported the disappearances on 6 November 1828, Janet Brown went to the police and identified her friend Mary Paterson’s clothing.

Trial and execution
The evidence against the pair was far from conclusive. In the one case for which the authorities had a body (Mrs Docherty’s) the medical experts could not state the cause of death with any certainty, and the prospect seemed real that Burke and Hare would blame each other for the murders, leaving a jury uncertain as to whom to convict for a capital offence. Lord Advocate Sir William Rae, therefore, offered Hare the opportunity “to turn King’s evidence”, i.e. be granted immunity from prosecution if he confessed and agreed to testify against Burke.

Contemporary accounts suggest Burke was perceived as the more intelligent of the two, and was, therefore, presumed to have taken the lead in their crimes. After visiting both men in their cells, Christopher North described them in Blackwood’s Magazine (March 1829):– although there was “nothing repulsive” about Burke who was “certainly not deficient in intellect”, he was “steeped in hypocrisy and deceit; his collected and guarded demeanour, full of danger and guile”, a “cool, calculating, callous and unrelenting villain”; Hare, on the other hand, was “the most brutal man ever subjected to my sight, and at first look seemingly an idiot.” Comparing the two women, he observed that Mrs Hare “had more of the she-devil.”

The Lord Advocate’s decision was extremely unpopular with the press and the public, which throughout the trial expressed hostility towards the Hares. A petition on behalf of James Wilson’s mother and sister, protesting against Hare’s immunity and intended release from prison, was given lengthy consideration by the High Court and rejected by a vote of 4 to 2 against.

Burke and McDougal faced three charges of murder in respect of Mary Paterson, James Wilson, and Mrs Docherty (the third charge to be heard first and, on a successful capital conviction, the other two to remain unheard). The trial took place on Christmas Eve 1828 and lasted twenty-four hours. A journalist who was present described the dismal scene in the packed court-room,

By orders from the Court a large window was thrown open as far as it could be done, and a current of cold damp air beat for twenty-four hours upon the heads of the whole audience… The greater part of the audience being Advocates and Writers to the Signet in their gowns, these were wrapped round their heads, and, intermingled with various coloured handkerchiefs in every shade and form of drapery, which gave to the visages that were enshrouded under them such a grim and grisly aspect as assimilated them to a college of monks or inquisitors, or characters imagined in tales of romance, grouped and contrasted most fantastically with the costume of the bench and the crowded bar engaged in the trial.

The jury retired to consider its verdict at 8.30 A.M. on Christmas Morning and returned fifty minutes later to find Burke guilty of the third charge and the charge against McDougal not proven.

Before passing the death sentence, the Lord Justice-Clerk, David Boyle, addressed Burke with the words,

You now stand convicted, by the verdict of a most respectable jury of your country, of the atrocious murder charged against you in this indictment, upon evidence which carried conviction to the mind of every man that heard it. (…) In regard to your case, the only doubt that has come across my mind, is, whether, in order to mark the sense that the Court entertains of your offence, and which the violated laws of the country entertain respecting it, your body should not be exhibited in chains, in order to deter others from the like crimes in time coming. But, taking into consideration that the public eye would be offended with so dismal an exhibition, I am disposed to agree that your sentence shall be put in execution in the usual way, but accompanied with the statutory attendant of the punishment of the crime of murder, viz.- that your body should be publicly dissected and anatomized. And I trust, that if it is ever customary to preserve skeletons, yours will be preserved, in order that posterity may keep in remembrance of your atrocious crimes.

The edition of the Edinburgh Evening Courant newspaper that covered the trial sold an extra 8,000 copies, increasing its revenue by £240.

Burke was hanged at 8:15 A.M. on 28 January 1829, a day of torrential rain, in front of a crowd estimated at between 20,000 and 25,000. Window-seats in tenements overlooking the scaffold were hired at prices ranging from 5 shillings to £1. On the following day, Burke was publicly dissected in the anatomy theatre of the University’s Old College. Police had to be called when large numbers of students gathered demanding access to the lecture, for which a limited number of tickets had been issued. A minor riot ensued and calm was restored only after one of the university professors decided to allow the would-be gatecrashers to pass through the theatre in batches of fifty at a time. During the dissection, which lasted for two hours, Professor Alexander Monro dipped his quill pen into Burke’s blood and wrote “This is written with the blood of Wm Burke, who was hanged at Edinburgh. This blood was taken from his head.”

Burke’s skeleton is displayed at the University of Edinburgh’s Anatomy Museum. His death mask and items made from his tanned skin are exhibited at Surgeons’ Hall. Following the execution and dissection wallets supposedly made from his skin were offered for sale on the streets of Edinburgh. A calling card case made from his skin is displayed at The Police Information Centre in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile.

Calling Card Case made from Burke’s skin

McDougal was released after the charge against her was found to be not proven. Knox was not prosecuted, despite public outrage at his role in providing an incentive for the 16 murders. Burke swore in his confession that Knox had known nothing of the origin of the cadavers.

Summary of victims

Burke made two confessions while awaiting execution: an official judicial confession (3 January 1829) and a statement to the Edinburgh Evening Courant (7 February 1829). While these differ to some extent in chronological sequence and detail, combining their content enables the following list of victims to be compiled (and, where known, the amounts paid for them). Burke asked in his condemned cell whether Knox could pay the £5 share of the money he was expecting to receive for Mrs Docherty so that he could buy a new set of clothes before appearing in public on the scaffold.

— Donald, the pensioner (£7.10s)
1. Abigail Simpson of Gilmerton (£10)
2. Joseph, the miller (£10)
3. Drunken female lodger (£10) – Burke acting alone
4. English male lodger from Cheshire (£10)
5. Mary Haldane, lodger (?)
6. Effie, the cinder-gatherer* (£10)
7. Glasgow woman (£8)
8. Glasgow woman’s son or grandson (£8)
9. Female lodger – Hare acting alone (?)
10. Drunken woman in the West Port (£10) `
11. Margaret Haldane* (£8)
12. Mary Paterson, the street-walker, also known as Mary Mitchell (£8)
13. Mrs Hostler, the washerwoman (£8)
14. Ann McDougal, cousin of Helen (£10)
15. James Wilson (£10)
16. Mary Docherty, the beggar-woman, also known as Margery Campbell (-)
(9 were killed in “Hare’s House” and 2* in the stables in the courtyard; 4 were killed in “Burke’s House” (two closes east from Tanner’s Close where he and McDougall had gone to lodge with a carter called Brogan); and 1 at the house of Burke’s brother, Constantine Burke, in the Canongate; 12 of the victims were women.)

The novelist Sir Walter Scott commented,
Our Irish importation have made a great discovery of Oeconomicks, namely, that a wretch who is not worth a farthing while alive, becomes a valuable article when knockd on the head & carried to an anatomist; and acting on this principle, have cleard the streets of some of those miserable offcasts of society, whom nobody missd because nobody wishd to see them again.

Aftermath
McDougal returned to her house, but on venturing out the following evening to buy liquor was attacked by an angry mob and had to be taken into police custody for her own safety. She was taken to the police station in the West Port, but after the mob laid siege to it, she was dressed in men’s clothes and escaped through a back window to the police lock-up off the town’s High Street. After meeting with a hostile reception on returning to her home area of Stirling, she revisited Edinburgh briefly before moving on to Newcastle, where she was again recognized, attacked and taken into police custody. The authorities took her to the county border with Durham, after which her trail went cold. She was rumoured to have died in Australia in 1868.

Margaret Hare was released from the Calton Gaol and almost immediately spotted making her way to the Old Town and surrounded by a hostile crowd, from which she was rescued by police intervention. After a few days in the High Street lock-up, she moved to Glasgow where, according to newspaper reports, she and her child had to be rescued on two occasions from hostile mobs. She was moved secretly from the Calton Police Office to Greenock where the police put her on board a ship bound for Belfast on the way to her family home near Derry.

Hare was released in February 1829 and immediately assisted in leaving Edinburgh by the mailcoach to Dumfries. At one of its stops, he was recognized by a fellow-passenger who, as chance would have it, was a junior counsel who had represented James Wilson’s family. On arrival in Dumfries the news of Hare’s presence spread like wildfire and a crowd estimated at 8,000 gathered at the hostelry where he was staying the night. Police arrived and arranged for a decoy coach to draw off the crowd while Hare escaped through a back window into a carriage, which took him to the town’s tolbooth. A crowd surrounded the building; stones were thrown at the door and windows and street lamps smashed before 100 special constables arrived to restore order. In the small hours of the morning, escorted by a sheriff officer and militia guard, Hare was taken out of town, set down on the Annan Road and instructed to make his way to the English border. Two days later the driver of the northbound mail reported having passed him within half a mile of Carlisle. Several days later he was spotted two miles south of the town; the last reported sighting of him on the mainland.

The Newry Telegraph reported on 31 March 1829:

On Friday evening last Hare the murderer called in a public house in Scarva accompanied by his wife and child and having ordered a naggin of whiskey he began to enquire for the welfare of every member of the family of the house, with well affected solicitude. However, as Hare is a native of this neighbourhood, he was very soon recognised and ordered to leave the place immediately, with which he complied after attempting to palliate his horrid crimes by describing them as having been the effects of intoxication. He took the road towards Loughbrickland followed by a number of boys yelling and threatening in such a manner as obliged him to take through the fields with such speed that he soon disappeared whilst his unfortunate wife remained on the road imploring forgiveness and denying, in the most solemn manner, any participation in the crimes of her wretched husband. They now reside at the house of an uncle of Hare’s near Loughbrickland.

Many popular tales about Hare circulated in the years after the trial. One such told of him being mobbed and thrown into a lime pit, causing him to be blinded and to end his days as a blind beggar on the streets of London. However, none of these tales were ever confirmed by hard evidence.

Knox kept silent about his dealings with Burke and Hare. Although a committee of inquiry cleared him of complicity, the Edinburgh mob held him accountable nonetheless (transactions had been carried out by assistants or servants; and his claim of having no reason to suspect foul play was accepted with some reservations expressed). A few days after Burke’s hanging, a crowd converged on his house and began throwing stones at its windows. An effigy of Knox, which had been carried in procession from the Calton Hill was hanged from a nearby tree and set alight by a bonfire underneath. While the police dispersed the crowd, Knox, disguised in his military cloak and armed with sword, pistols and a Highland dirk, escaped through a back door. He continued to lecture on anatomy into the 1840s and eventually moved to London where, from 1856, he worked as an anatomist at the Brompton Hospital and had a medical practice in Hackney until his death in 1862.

In 1836 five boys hunting for rabbits found a set of 17 miniature coffins containing small wooden figures in a cave on the crags of Arthur’s Seat. Contemporaries believed that they were made for the purpose of witchcraft. No-one at the time appears to have linked them to the number of bodies involved in the Burke and Hare case. Some of the coffins are now displayed in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Anatomy Act 1832
The murders highlighted the crisis in medical education and led to the subsequent passing of the Anatomy Act 1832, which expanded the legal supply of medical cadavers to eliminate the incentive for such behaviour. The Act authorised persons who had legal custody of a dead body to send it to a medical school before burial, so that it might be used for the study of anatomy and practice of surgery. If relatives could not be found, Public Health Authorities, Parish Councils and Boards of Guardians etc. counted as legal custodians. About the law, an editorial in The Lancet stated:

Burke and Hare … it is said, are the real authors of the measure, and that which would never have been sanctioned by the deliberate wisdom of parliament, is about to be extorted from its fears … It would have been well if this fear had been manifested and acted upon before sixteen human beings had fallen victims to the supineness of the Government and the Legislature. It required no extraordinary sagacity, to foresee that the worst consequences must inevitably result from the system of traffic between resurrectionists and anatomists, which the executive government has so long suffered to exist. Government is already in a great degree, responsible for the crime which it has fostered by its negligence, and even encouraged by a system of forbearance.

The Act also ended anatomising as part of the death sentence for murder.

In media portrayals and popular culture

Marcel Schwob told their story in the last chapter of Imaginary Lives (1896.) Jorge Luis Borges, who recognizes Schwob as an influence of his own A Universal History of Infamy, wrote that this story was the most successful one in the book.

The Burke and Hare murders are referenced in Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story, “The Body Snatcher,” which portrays two doctors in Robert Knox’s employ responsible for buying the corpses from the killers.

The 1945 film The Body Snatcher, directed by Robert Wise, stars Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. The murders were adapted into a 1948 film with the working title Crimes of Burke and Hare; however, the British Board of Film Censors deemed its topic too disturbing and insisted that references to Burke and Hare be excised. The film was redubbed with alternative dialogue and characters, and was released as The Greed of William Hart.

In the Warner Brothers Merrie Melodies cartoon, “My Little Duckaroo” (1954), the villain, Nasty Canasta, reads the “Gravedigger’s Joke Book,” authored by Burke and Hare.

The 1960 film The Flesh and the Fiends starred Peter Cushing as Knox, Donald Pleasence as Hare and George Rose as Burke. The following year, The Anatomist featured Alastair Sim as Knox.

The New Exhibit, a 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone, features Burke and Hare along with several other historical murderers as exhibits in a wax museum tended by curator Martin Balsam.

The 23 November 1964 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, “The McGregor Affair” featured Burke and Hare as characters. Andrew Duggan starred as McGregor, a man who hauls items for Burke and Hare. Burke was played by Arthur Malet, and Hare by Michael Pate.

In the 1965 TV show The Munsters, season 1, Herman Munster (Fred Gwynne) shows home movies featuring two grave robbers. Herman claims that he once knew them (Burke and Hare).

The 1971 film Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde transported Burke and Hare into the late Victorian era and portrayed them as being employed by Dr. Jekyll. Burke was played by Ivor Dean and Hare by Tony Calvin.

The 1971 film Burke & Hare starred Derren Nesbitt as Burke and Glynn Edwards as Hare.

The 1985 film The Doctor and the Devils, directed by Freddie Francis, is based on Dylan Thomas’ 1953 screenplay of the same name and is a retelling of the Burke and Hare murder story with the names of the characters altered. Timothy Dalton plays Dr. Rock (Thomas’ characterization of Dr. Knox), while Jonathan Pryce and Stephen Rea play the Burke and Hare surrogates.

In the 1989 children’s show Tugs, two scrap dealers are known as Burke and Blair, a parody of the two corpse dealers.

In 1999 a novel inspired by Burke and Hare, Grave Robbers, was written by Robin Mitchell and published by Luath Press, Edinburgh.

The 2004 Doctor Who audio drama Medicinal Purposes placed the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) amidst the events of the murders; the play featured Leslie Phillips as Dr. Knox and David Tennant (who would later become the Tenth Doctor) as “Daft Jamie.”

I Sell The Dead, a 2008 comedy horror film, has pub patrons claiming career grave-robbers Willie and Arthur are successful rivals to Burke and Hare’s notoriety.

Burke & Hare, a comedy film loosely based upon the historical case, starring Simon Pegg as Burke and Andy Serkis as Hare, and directed by John Landis, began filming in early 2010, and was released in the UK on 29 October 2010. It received a North American release in 2011.

In April 2012, Channel 4 TV featured on its Four Rooms show a card case made out of skin taken from William Burke’s hand.

The stage musical “Bloodless: The Trial of Burke and Hare” had its Toronto premiere in October 2012.

In 2012, the Burke and Hare murders and Dr. Knox’s use of their victims as subjects for dissection was covered in an episode of Dark Matters: Twisted But True, in a segment entitled “Cadavers for Sale.”

Posted in British history, film, Georgian Era, gothic and paranormal, legends and myths, Living in the Regency, real life tales, Regency era, Scotland, Victorian era | Tagged burking, Doctor Robert Knox, Helen McDougal, Margaret Laird, William Burke, William Hare | 3 Comments

Henry Holland, Georgian Architect of Carlton House and the Brighton Pavilion

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

Henry Holland (20 July 1745 – 17 June 1806) was an architect to the English nobility. Born in Fulham, London, his father also Henry ran a building firm, and he built several of Capability Brown’s buildings, although Henry would have learnt a lot from his father about the practicalities of construction, it was under Brown that he would learn about architectural design, they formed a partnership in 1771. He married Brown’s daughter Bridget on the 11th February 1773 at St George’s, Hanover Square. In 1772, Sir John Soane joined Holland’s practice in order to further his education, Soane left in 1778 to study in Rome. Holland paid a visit to Paris in 1787; this is thought to have been in connection with his design of the interiors at Carlton House, from this moment on his interior work owed less to the Adam style and more to contemporary French taste.

Holland was a founder member in 1791 of the Architects’ Club, which included Thomas Hardwick as a signtory. In the 1790s, he translated into English, A.M. Cointereaux’s Traite sur la construction des Manufactures, et des Maisons de Champagne. Holland was feeling unwell in the early summer of 1806, on the 13 June he had a seizure, and his son Lancelot made this entry in his diary on the 17th June, ‘My poor father breathed his last about 7 o’clock in the morning. He had got out of bed shortly before and inquired what the hour was. Being told he said is was too early to rise and got into bed again. He immediately fell into a fit. I was sent for, and a minute after I came to his bedside he breathed his last.’ He was buried at All Saints Church, Fulham, in a simple tomb, a few yards from the house in which he had been born. Bridget Holland, his wife, lived for another 17 years and was the main beneficiary of her husband’s will.

Children

Of his sons the elder Henry Jr (1775-1855). remained a bachelor. The younger son Colonel Lancelot (1781-1859), married Charlotte Mary Peters (1788-1876) and they had fifteen children. Of Holland’s five daughters, two married two brothers, Bridget (1774-1844) to Daniel Craufurd (lost at sea 1810) and Mary Frances Holland (1776-1842) to Major-General Robert Craufurd (1764–1812), commander of the Light Division during the Peninsular War. Bridget later remarried to Sir Robert Wilmot of Chaddesden. The remaining daughters, Harriet (1778-1814), Charlotte (1785-1824) and Caroline (1786-1871) never married.

Early Work

Claremont

Holland began his practice by designing Claremont House for Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, with his future father-in-law in 1771, and their partnership lasted until Brown’s death twelve years later. Claremont is of nine by five bays, of white brick with stone dressings. The main feature on the entrance front is the tetrastyle Corinthian pedimented portico. This leads to the entrance hall with red scagliola columns, these are arranged in an oval with the rectangular room. The drawing room has a fine plaster ceiling and marble fireplace with two caryatids. There is a fine staircase.

In 1771 he took a lease from Charles Cadogan, 2nd Baron Cadogan, on his Chelsea estate and began the Hans Town (named after an earlier owner Hans Sloane) development on 89 acres (360,000 m²) of open field and marsh. There he laid out parts of Knightsbridge and Chelsea, including Sloane Street and Sloane Square, and Hans Place, Street and Crescent and Cadogan Place. The buildings were typical Georgian, terraced houses, they were three or four floors in height plus an attic and basement and two or three windows wide, of brick, decoration was minimal, occasionally the ground floor was decorated with stucco rustication. These developments quickly became some of the most fashionable areas in greater London. Construction was slow, the start of the American War of Independence, in 1776, being one of the factors; Lord Cadogan also died that year. Sloane Square was virtually complete by 1780. Apart from a few houses on the east side, Sloane Street was not developed before 1790. By 1789, Holland was living in a house designed by himself, called Sloane Place; it was to the north of Hans Place. The house was large 114 feet in length, to the north the octagonal entrance hall had a black and white marble floor the south front had a one storey ionic loggia across the central five bays with an iron balcony above in front of the main bedrooms, the rooms on the ground floor south front were the drawing room, dining room, lobby, library and music room. As the area was developed on ninety-nine year leases Holland’s houses were almost entirely rebuilt from the 1870s onwards. A few houses survive in Hans Place, Nos. 12 and 33-34. Cadogan Square was laid out from 1879 onwards in part over the gardens of Sloane Place.

Benham Park

Another joint work was Benham Park 1774-75 designed for William Craven, 6th Baron Craven, three stories high, nine bays wide, in a plain neoclassical style, of stone, with a tetrastyle Ionic portico, the building was altered in 1914, the pediment on the portico was replaced by a balustrade and the roof lowered and hidden behind a balustrade. The interiors have also been altered. Though the Circular Hall in the centre of the building, with its large niches and fine plasterwork, is probably as designed by Holland, is has an opening in the ceiling rising to the galleried floor above and a glazed dome. The principal staircase is also original.

Brown had been designing the landscape of Trentham hall since 1768, for the owner Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Marquess of Stafford (he was an Earl at the time), when it was decided to remodel the house, this took from 1775–78, it was enlarged from nine to fifteen bays, the pilasters and other features were in stone, but the walls were of brick covered in stucco to imitate stonework. The building was remodelled and extended by Sir Charles Barry in 1834-40 and largely demolished in 1910.

Cardiff Castle (Holland’s work is the pale coloured stone)

John Stuart, 1st Marquess of Bute commissioned Holland and Brown to restore Cardiff Castle (1778–80), Holland’s interiors were swept away when the castle was remodelled and extended by William Burges in the 1860s. The east front of the

Brooks’s club, London

main apartments retain Holland’s work a rare example of him using Gothic Revival architecture and the neoclassical style Drawing Room being the only significant interior to survive more or less as Holland designed it.

In 1776 Holland designed Brooks’s club in St James’s Street, Westminster. Build of yellow brick and Portland stone in a Palladian style similar to his early country houses. The main suite of rooms on the first floor consisted of the Great Subscription Room, Small Drawing Room and the Card Room, Brook’s was known for its gambling on card games, the Prince of Wales being a member. The interiors are in neoclassical style, the Great Subscription Room having a segmental barrel vault ceiling.

From 1778-81, for Thomas Harley, Holland designed and built Berrington Hall, Herefordshire, one of his purest exercises in the Neoclassical style, the exterior is largely devoid of decoration, the main feature is the tetrastyle Ionic portico. The interior are equally fine, the most impressive being the staircase at the centre of the building, with its glazed dome and the upper floor is surrounded by Scagliola Corinthian columns. The main rooms have fine plaster ceilings and marble chimneypieces, these are the library, dining and drawings rooms. The small boudoir has a shallow apse screened by two Ionic columns of Scagliola imitating Lapis lazuli. Holland also designed the service yard behind the house with the laundry, dairy and stables as well as the entrance lodge to the estate in the form of a Triumphal arch.

In 1788 Holland continued the remodelling of Broadlands in Hampshire for Henry Temple, 2nd Viscount Palmerston started by Brown. The exterior was re-clad in yellow brick and a three bay recessed Ionic portico added on the north front, a tetrastyle Ionic portico was added on the south front, within he added the octagonal domed lobby, also by Holland are the ground floor rooms on the south front library (Wedgwood room), saloon and drawing room, and on the east front the dining room, all in the Adam style.

Carlton House

The garden front of Carlton House in London. Early 19th century illustration.

Holland first major commission for the Prince of Wales, later King George IV, was his celebrated remodelling of Carlton House, London (1783-c.1795), exemplified his dignified neoclassicism, which contrasted with the more lavish style of his great contemporary Robert Adam. Carlton House was his most significant work, built on a slope, the north entrance front on Pall Mall was of two floors, the south front overlooking the gardens and The Mall was of three floors. The large hexastyle Corinthian portico on the north front acted as a porte-cochère, after Carlton was demolished the columns were reused in the construction of the National Gallery by the architect William Wilkins. The principal rooms were on the ground floor as entered on the north front. The various floors were linked by the Grand Staircase, built c.1786, this was one of Holland’s finest designs. Carlton House was demolished in 1827, other significant interiors by Holland were the Great Hall, (1784–89), and the Circular Dining Room (1786–94). After Carlton House was demolished many fittings including chimney-pieces were reused by John Nash in the construction of Buckingham Palace.

Marine Pavilion, Brighton

the garden front of the Marine Pavilion at Brighton, later to be transformed into the Royal Pavilion. Between the late 1780s and the early 1810s.

Holland is perhaps best remembered for the original Marine Pavilion (known as such from 1788) (1786–87) at Brighton, Sussex, designed for the Prince of Wales. The Prince had taken a lease on a farmhouse in October 1786, in the centre of Brighton, then little more than a village. From 1788 Holland began transforming the building, the east front had two double height bows added, to the north the present saloon was created circular in plan with two apses to north and south, the exterior was of the form of a large bow surrounded by Ionic columns, and to the north of that the farmhouse copied, the west front was quite plain, a tetrastyle, Ionic portico in the centre flanked by two wings forming an open court. Holland proposed further alterations to the pavilion in 1795, but due to the Prince’s financial problems were delayed/ and it was not until 1801 that any work was carried out, this involved extending the main facade with wings at 45 degrees to north and south containing an eating room and conservatory (these were later replaced by Nash’s Banqueting and Music rooms) and the entrance hall was extended with the portico moved forward, and three new staircases created within. In 1803 Holland produced a design to remodel the Pavilion in Chinese style, but this was not executed.

Later work
The Prince of Wales brother Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany commissioned Holland to extend Dover House (then called York House), work started in 1788 he designed the facade to Whitehall with its portico and behind it the circular domed vestibule 40 feet in diameter with an inner ring of eight scagliola Doric columns.

In 1785 George Spencer, 2nd Earl Spencer entrusted Holland with the remodelling of his country house Althorp, the exterior was encased in white Mathematical tiles to hide the unfashionable red brick[36] and he added the four Corinthian pilasters to the entrance front. He also added the corridors to the wings. Several interiors are by Holland, the Library, Billiard Room and the South Drawing Room. He also remodelled the Picture Gallery.

One of the Prince of Wales’s friends was Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford, he commissioned Holland to remodel and extend his country residence Woburn Abbey from 1786, this involved a remodelling the south front, within the south wing Holland remodelled several rooms (1787–90), the Venetian Room, to house twenty four paintings of Venice by Canaletto, the Ante-Library and the Library a tripartite room divided by openings containing two columns of the Corinthian order. Also he created the greenhouse (1789)(later altered by Jeffry Wyattville c.1818) attached to the stable block, a grand riding-school (1789) demolished, indoor tennis court, demolished and Chinese style dairy (1789). Within the park he also designed a new entrance archway (1790), farm buildings, cottages and kennels. In 1801 he converted the greenhouse into a sculpture gallery to house the Duke’s collection of Roman sculpture, adding the ‘Temple of Liberty’ at the east end to house busts of Charles James Fox and other prominent Whigs.

Holland went on to design the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, when it was rebuilt (c.1791-94) as Europe’s largest functioning theatre with 3919 seats. The building was 300 feet in length, 155 feet in width and 108 feet tall. The Portland stone exterior was of four floors, rising a floor higher above the stage, the facades were fairly plain, the main embellishments were on the ground floor a single storey Ionic colonnade surrounding the building, there were shops and taverns behind it. The auditorium was approximately semi-circular in plan, with the Pit, there was a row of eight boxes flanking each side of the Pit, two levels of boxes above, then two galleries above them. The stage was 42 feet wide and 34 feet to the top of the scenery. The Theatre Royal burnt down on the night of 24 February 1809. At the Royal Opera House he rebuilt the auditorium in 1792. The new auditorium contained a pit and four horseshoe shaped, straight-sided tiers, the first three were boxes, and the four the two-shilling gallery. The ceiling was painted to resemble the sky. In addition Holland extended the theatre to provide room for the Scene Painters, Scene Room, Green room, Dressing Rooms etc. The theatre burnt down on the 20th September 1808. From 1802 Holland converted York House on Piccadilly into the Albany apartments.

In 1796 Holland started remodelling Southill House, Southill, Bedfordshire, for Samuel Whitbread the work would continue until 1802, the exterior was remodelled with loggias and a portico with Ionic columns and the interiors completed modernised in the latest French Directoire style. The finest interiors are the library, drawing room, dining room, Mrs Whitbread’s room and the boudoir. In the garden Holland created the north terrace and the temple with four Tuscan columns.

In 1796 Holland received the commission to design the new headquarters for the East India Company, East India House in Leadenhall Street, the city of London. In order to find a suitable design a competition had been held between Holland, John Soane and George Dance. The building was of two stories and fifteen bays in length, the centre five having a portico of six Ionic columns, that only projected by the depth of a column from the facade. The building was demolished in 1861-62.

List of architectural work

Projects marked # were joint works with Brown.
Hale House, Hampshire, alterations (1770)
Hill Park, near Westerham, Kent, (c.1770) subsequently altered and renamed Valence
Battersea Bridge, the original wooden bridge (1771-2) demolished 1881
#Claremont House (1771–74)
#Benham Park (1774–75)
#Trentham Hall remodelled (1775–80), later remodelled by Sir Charles Barry (1834–49) demolished 1910
#Cadland, near Southampton (1775–78) demolished 1953
Brooks’s club London (1776–78)
#Cardiff Castle reconstruction in a Gothic style (1777–78)
Hans Town, London, including Cadogan Place, Sloane Street & Sloane Square, (1777–1791), few of his buildings survive
The Crown Hotel, Stone, Staffordshire (1778)
Berrington Hall (1778–81)
St. Michael’s Church, Chart Sutton, rebuilt except for the tower (1779) altered in 19th century
#Nuneham House alterations (1781–82)
Grangemouth, he devised the plan for the town, (1781–83)
7 St. James Square, London, refronted (1782)
Carlton House, London (1783–95) demolished 1827.
Spencer House, London, internal alterations (1785–92)
Royal Pavilion Brighton, (1786–87) remodelled by John Nash (1815–22)
Bedford House, Bloomsbury, remodelled dining room (1787) demolished 1800
Knight’s Hill, Norwood, Surrey, (1787) demolished 1810
Stanmore Park, Stanmore, Middlesex, (1787) demolished
Woburn Abbey, the south front, library, stables, sculpture gallery, Chinese dairy, entrance lodge (1787–1802)
Althorp remodelled the exterior and interior (1787–89)
105 Pall Mall, London, remodelled interior (1787) demolished 1838
Dover House (was York House), Whitehall, extended the house adding the grand pillared & domed entrance hall and facade & portico on Whitehall (1789–92)
House, Allerton Mauleverer for the Duke of York (1788) rebuilt 1848-51
Broadlands Ionic Portico on east front, and the major interiors (1788–92)
Oakley House, Bedfordshire, (1789–92)
44 Berkeley Square, remodelling of rooms the original architect being William Kent (c.1790)
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane designed the 3rd theatre (1791–94) burnt down 1809
Covent Garden Theatre, new auditorium (1792) burnt down 1808
The Swan Hotel, Bedford c.(1792)
Birchmore Farm, Woburn, Bedfordshire (1792)
Oatlands House, Weybridge, (1794–1800)
The Theatre, Aberdeen, Marischal Street, (1795) demolished
Debden Hall, Debden, Epping Forest (1795) demolished 1936.
Southill Park Southill, Bedfordshire (1796–1802)
Park Place, Henley-on-Thames, (1796) demolished
East India House London (1796–1800) demolished 1861-2
Dunira, Perthshire, (1798) demolished
East India Warehouses, London, Middlesex Street, (1799–1800) demolished
Wimbledon Park House (1800) demolished 1949
Albany (London) conversion of the former Melbourne House by William Chambers into bachelor apartments (1803–04)
Assembly rooms, Glasgow added terminal pavilions (1807) to the building by Robert Adam, demolished 1889
Gateway Westport, County Mayo (1807) demolished 1958

Posted in British history, Georgian Era, Living in the Regency, real life tales, Regency era, Uncategorized, Victorian era | 1 Comment

Backlists and the Copyright Law

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

This article from Publisher’s Weekly is one of the best on explaining what can and cannot be expected with backlists and an author’s rights. To read the complete article, go to http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/55377-will-the-copyright-act-open-a-floodgate-of-contract-rewrites-for-authors.html

Publishing attorney Lloyd Jassin has been writing and speaking about the termination clause for more than two years. He was a major source for an August 2011 PW story on the clause and what it could mean for the book industry. With the first authors able to opt out of old contracts starting in January 2013, PW asked Jassin for a reminder about the termination provision and how it is triggered.

When the Copyright Act was passed in 1976, little thought was given to the future impact of an esoteric provision that gave individual authors the “option” to terminate book contracts and “recapture control” of their copyrights. This provision was designed to protect against bad deals for authors—and is intended to aid authors who signed contracts with little bargaining power and who were not aware of the potential future value of their work. Accordingly, Congress embedded in the Copyright Act a “reset button” for every post-1977 contract, which, when activated 35 years after a contract was signed, returns ownership and control of the copyright to the author or author’s heirs.

This means that, starting in 2013, authors and their heirs or estates will be able to terminate virtually any publishing contract entered into on or after January 1, 1978. While some authors will use this powerful right to reclaim ownership and control of their books, others will leave their publishing contracts intact, but extract more favorable terms for doing so.

Given that 35-year “reset button,” the first author termination right to vest began taking effect on January 1, 2013. There is, however, a very specific process that must be followed in order for authors to successfully reclaim control of their copyrights. To successfully terminate the copyrights, holders must provide “legally sufficient” termination notices, which need to be sent and recorded. What is meant by legally sufficient? To give a precise summary, you have to know that grants signed after 1977 can be terminated during a five-year window starting 35 years from the date the author-publisher agreement was signed.Since termination notices can go out as early as 10 years before the effective date of termination, or as late as two years prior, notices for 1978 works can be served as late as 2016. To complete the termination, the notice must also be recorded with the Copyright Office. Boring stuff, until you get the big picture.

Posted in Industry News/Publishing | Comments Off

History of Body Snatching

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

Body snatching is the secret disinterment of corpses from graveyards. A common purpose of body snatching, especially in the 19th century, was to sell the corpses for dissection or anatomy lectures in medical schools. Those who practised body snatching were often called “resurrectionists” or “resurrection-men.” A related act is grave robbery, uncovering a tomb or crypt to steal artifacts or personal effects rather than corpses.

Before the Anatomy Act of 1832, the only legal supply of corpses for anatomical purposes in the UK were those condemned to death and dissection by the courts. Those who were sentenced to dissection by the courts were often guilty of comparatively harsher crimes. Such sentences did not provide enough subjects for the medical schools and private anatomical schools, which did not require a licence before 1832. While during the 18th century hundreds had been executed for trivial crimes, by the 19th century only about 55 people were being sentenced to capital punishment each year. However, with the expansion of the medical schools, as many as 500 cadavers were needed.

Interfering with a grave was only a misdemeanour at common law, not a felony, and was therefore only punishable with fine and imprisonment, rather than transportation or execution. The trade was a sufficiently lucrative business to run the risk of detection, particularly as the authorities tended to ignore what they considered a necessary evil.

Body snatching became so prevalent that it was not unusual for relatives and friends of someone who had just died to watch over the body until burial, and then to keep watch over the grave after burial, to stop it being violated. Iron coffins, too, were used frequently, or the graves were protected by a framework of iron bars called mortsafes, well-preserved examples of which may still be seen in Greyfriars churchyard, Edinburgh.
Visitors to the older Edinburgh graveyards must have noted their strange resemblance to zoological gardens, the rows of iron cages suggesting rather the dens of wild animals than the quiet resting-places of the dead.

One method the body snatchers used was to dig at the head end of a recent burial, digging with a wooden spade (quieter than metal). When they reached the coffin (in London the graves were quite shallow), they broke open the coffin, put a rope around the corpse and dragged it out. They were often careful not to steal anything such as jewellery or clothes as this would cause them to be liable to a felony charge.

The Lancet reported another method. A manhole-sized square of turf was removed 15 to 20 feet (5 to 6 m) away from the head of the grave, and a tunnel dug to intercept the coffin, which would be about 4 feet (1.2 m) down. The end of the coffin would be pulled off, and the corpse pulled up through the tunnel. The turf was then replaced, and any relatives watching the graves would not notice the small, remote disturbance. The article suggests that the number of empty coffins that have been discovered “proves beyond a doubt that at this time body snatching was frequent.”

During 1827 and 1828, Burke and Hare brought a new dimension to the trade of selling corpses “to the doctors” by murdering rather than grave-robbing and supplying their victims’ fresh corpses for medical dissection. Their activities, and those of the London Burkers who imitated them, resulted in the passage of the Anatomy Act 1832. This allowed unclaimed bodies and those donated by relatives to be used for the study of anatomy, and required the licensing of anatomy teachers, which essentially ended the body snatching trade. The use of bodies for scientific research in the UK is now governed by the Human Tissue Authority.

Body snatching in the United States of America
In the United States, body snatchers generally worked in small groups, which scouted and pillaged fresh graves. In general, fresh graves were best, since the earth had not yet settled and digging was easy work. The removed earth was often shoveled onto canvas tarp laid by the grave, so the nearby grounds were undisturbed. Digging commenced at the head of the grave, clear to the coffin. The remaining earth on the coffin provided a counterweight which snapped the partially covered coffin lid, which was covered in sacking to muffle noise, as crowbars or hooks pulled the lid free at the head of the coffin. Usually, the body would be disrobed–the garments thrown back into the coffin before the earth was put back into place.

Resurrectionists have also been known to hire women to act the part of grieving relatives and to claim the bodies of dead at poorhouses. Women were also hired to attend funerals as grieving mourners; their purpose was to ascertain any hardships the body snatchers may later encounter during the disinterment. Bribed servants would sometimes offer body snatchers access to their dead master or mistress lying in state; the removed body would be replaced with weights.

Although medical research and education lagged in the United States compared to medical colleges’ European counterparts, the interest in anatomical dissection grew in the United States. Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York were renowned for body snatching activity: all locales provided plenty of cadavers. Finding subjects for dissection proved to be “morally troubling” for students of anatomy. As late as the mid-19th century, John Gorham Coffin, a prominent professor and medical physician wondered how any ethical physician could participate in the traffic of dead bodies.

Dr. Charles Knowlton (1800–1850) was imprisoned for two months in the Worcester (Massachusetts) County Jail for “illegal dissection” in 1824, a couple of months after graduating with distinction from Dartmouth Medical School. His thesis (http://www.danallosso.com/Graverobbing.html) defended dissection on the rationalist basis that “value of any art or science should be determined by the tendency it has to increase the happiness, or to diminish the misery, of mankind.” Knowlton called for doctors to relieve “public prejudice” by donating their own bodies for dissection.

The body of Ohio congressman John Scott Harrison, son of William Henry Harrison, was snatched in 1878 for Ohio Medical College, and discovered by his son Benjamin Harrison.

Emerging medical schools
The demand for cadavers for human dissection grew as medical schools were established in the United States. Between the years of 1758 and 1788, only 63 of the 3500 physicians in the Colonies had studied abroad, namely at Edinburgh. Study of anatomy legitimized the medical field, setting it apart from homeopathic and botanical studies. Later, in 1847, physicians formed the American Medical Association, in an effort to differentiate between the “true science” of medicine and “the assumptions of ignorance and empiricism” based on an education without the experience of human dissection.

In 1762, Dr. William Shippen, Jr., founded the medical department of University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Shippen put an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette in November 1762 announcing his lectures about the “art of dissecting, injections, etc.” The cost was “five pistoles.” In 1765, his house was attacked by a mob, claiming the doctor had desecrated a church burying ground. The doctor denied this and made known that he only used bodies of “suicides, executed felons, and now and then one from the Potter’s Field”.

In Boston, medical students faced similar issues with procuring subjects for dissection. In his biographical notes, John Collins Warren, Jr. wrote, “No occurrences in the course of my life have given me more trouble and anxiety than the procuring of subjects for dissection.” He continues to tell of the difficulty his father John Warren had finding subjects during the Revolutionary War: many soldiers who had died were without relation. These experiences gave John Warren the experience he needed to begin his lectures on anatomy in 1781. His advertisement in the local paper stated the following: “A Course of lectures will be delivered this Winter upon the several Branches of Physick, for the Improvement of all such as are desirous of obtaining medical Knowledge: Those who propose attending, are requested to make Application as soon as possible, as the Course will commence in a few days. It was dated and signed: Boston 01/01/1781 John Warren, Sec’y, Medical Society.

Ebenezer Hersey, a physician, left Harvard College £1,000 for the creation of a Professorship in Anatomy in 1770. A year earlier, John Warren and his friends had created a secret anatomic society. This society’s purpose was to participate in anatomic dissection, using cadavers that they themselves procured. The group’s name was the “Spunkers”; however, speaking or writing the name was prohibited. Often the group used shovels to obtain fresh corpses for its anatomical study.

Harvard Medical School was established on November 22, 1782; John Warren was elected Professor of Anatomy and Surgery. When his son was in the college in 1796, the peaceful times provided few subjects. John Collins Warren, Jr. wrote: “Having understood that a man without relations was to be buried in the North Burying-Ground, I formed a party … When my father came up in the morning to lecture, and found that I had been engaged in this scrape, he was very much alarmed.”

Dr. John Warren’s quest for subjects led him to consult with his colleague, W.E. Horner, professor of anatomy at University of Pennsylvania, who wrote back: “Since the opening of our lectures, the town has been so uncommonly healthy, that I have not been able to obtain a fourth part of subjects required for our dissecting rooms.”

Warren later enlisted the help of an old family friend, Dr. John Revere (son of Paul Revere) to procure subjects for dissection. Revere called upon John Godman who suggested that Warren employ the services of James Henderson, “a trusty old friend and servant” who could “at any time, and almost to any number, obtain the articles you desire.”

Dr. John Warren attempted to set up a cadaver provision system in Boston, similar to the systems already set up in New York and Philadelphia. Public officials and burial-ground employees were routinely bribed for entrance to Potter’s Field to get bodies. In New York, the bodies were divided into two groupings–one group contained the bodies of those “most entitled to respect, or most likely to be called for by friends”; the other bodies were not exempt from exhumation. In Philadelphia’s two public burying grounds, anatomists claimed bodies regularly, without consideration. “If schools or physicians differed over who should get an allotment of bodies, the dispute was to be settled by the mayor–a high-reaching conspiracy that resulted in a harvest of about 450 bodies per school year.”

Race and body snatching
Public graveyards were not only sanctioned by social and economic standing, but also by race. New York was 15% black in the 1780s. “Bayley’s dissecting tables, as well as those of Columbia College” often took bodies from segregated section of potter’s field, the Negroes Burying Ground. Free blacks as well as slaves were buried there. In February 1787, a group of free blacks petitioned the city’s common council about the medical students, who “under cover of night…dig up the bodies of the deceased, friends and relatives of the petitioners, carry them away without respect to age or sex, mangle their flesh out of wanton curiosity and then expose it to beasts and birds.”

In December 1882, it was discovered that six bodies had been disinterred from Lebanon Cemetery and were en route to Jefferson Medical College for dissection. Philadelphia’s African-Americans were outraged, and a crowd assembled at the city morgue where the discovered bodies were sent. Reportedly, one of the crowd urged the group to swear that they would seek revenge for those who participated in desecration of the graves. Another man screamed when he discovered the body of his 29-year-old brother. The Philadelphia Press broke the story when a teary elderly woman identified her husband’s body, whose burial she had afforded only by begging for the $22 at the wharves where he had been employed. Physician William S. Forbes was indicted, and the case led to passage of various Anatomical acts.

After the public hanging of 39 Dakota warriors in the aftermath of the Dakota War of 1862, a group of doctors removed the bodies under cover of darkness from their riverside grave and divided the corpses among themselves. Doctor William Worrall Mayo received the body of a warrior called “Cut Nose” and dissected it in the presence of other doctors. He then cleaned and articulated the skeleton and kept the bones in an iron kettle in his office. His sons received their first lessons in osteology from this skeleton.

Public outcry
Graves of whites also were not safe: On February 21, 1788, a body of a white woman was taken from Trinity Church. A hundred-dollar reward was offered by the rector of the church for information leading to the arrest of grave robbers. In the Daily Advertiser, many editorial letters were written about the incident: one such writer named Humanio warned that “lives may be forfeit … should [the body snatchers] persist.” There was cause for concern: body snatching was perceived to be “a daily occurrence.” To assuage the outraged public, legislation was enacted to thwart the activities of the body snatchers; eventually, anatomy acts, such as Massachusetts Anatomy Act of 1831, allowed for the legalization of anatomy studies.

Prior to these measures allowing for more subjects, many tactics were employed to protect the bodies of relatives. Police were engaged to watch the burying grounds but were often bribed or made drunk. Spring guns were set in the coffins, and poorer families would leave items like a stone or a blade of grass or a shell to show whether the grave was tampered with or not. In his collection of Boston police force details, Edward Savage made notes of a reward offer on April 13, 1814: “The selectmen offer &100 reward for arrest of grave-robbers at South Burying-Ground.” Iron fences were constructed around many burying grounds, as well as deterrent to body snatchers. “Burglar proof grave vaults made of steel” were sold with the promise that loved ones’ remains would not be one of the 40,000 bodies “mutilated every year on dissecting tables in medical colleges in the United States.” The medical appropriation of bodies aroused much popular resentment. Between 1765 and 1884, there were at least 25 documented crowd actions against American medical schools.

Despite these efforts, body snatchers persisted. At City Hospital in New York, on April 13, 1788, a group of boys playing near the dissection room window peered in. Accounts vary, but one of the boys saw what he thought were his mother’s remains or that one of the students shook a dismembered arm at the boys. The boy, whose mother had recently died, told his father of the occurrence; the father, a mason, led a group of laborers in an attack on the hospital.

In order to control the destruction of private property, the authorities participated in searches of local physicians’ houses for medical students, professors, and stolen corpses. The mob was satisfied. Later, the mob reassembled to attack the jail where some of the medical students were being held for their safety. The militia was called, but few showed; this was perhaps due to the militia sharing the public’s outrage. One small troop was harassed and quickly withdrew. Several prominent citizens–including Governor George Clinton; General Baron von Steuben, and John Jay–participated in the ranks of the militia protecting the doctors at the jail. Three rioters were killed when the embattled militia opened fire on the mob, and when militia members from the countryside joined the defense, the mob threat quickly dissipated.

Body snatching in other countries
Canada
The practice was also common in other parts of the British Empire, such as Canada, where religious customs, as well as the lack of means of preservation made it hard for medical students to obtain a steady supply of fresh bodies. In many instances the students had to resort to fairly regular body snatching.

In Montreal during the winter of 1875, typhoid fever struck at a convent school. The corpses of the victims were filched by body snatchers before relatives arrived from America, causing an international scandal. Eventually the Anatomy Act of Quebec was amended to prevent a recurrence, effectively ending medical body snatching in Quebec.

China
In China there has been reports in 2006 of a resurgence in the ancient practice of ghost marriages in the northern coal-mining regions of Shanxi, Hebei and Shandong. Although the practice has long been abandoned in modern China, some superstitious families in isolated rural areas still pay very high prices for the procurement of female corpses for deceased unmarried male relatives. It is speculated that the very high death toll among young male miners in these areas has led more and more entrepreneurial body snatchers to steal female cadavers from graves and then resell them through the black market to families of the deceased. In 2007, a previously convicted grave robber, Song Tiantang, was arrested by Chinese authorities for murdering six women and selling their bodies as “ghost brides.”

Cyprus
In Cyprus, the former President Tassos Papadopoulos’s body was stolen from his grave on 11 December 2009.

France
In the 1530s while studying in Paris, Vesalius was accustomed to robbing the Paris graveyards with fellow anatomy pupils. Body snatchers in France were called “Les Corbeaux” (the crows). Violation of graves could result in a year’s imprisonment plus a stiff fine.

Ireland
In Dublin, Ireland, the medical schools of the 18th and 19th centuries were on a constant hunt for bodies. The Bullys’ Acre or Hospital Fields at Kilmainham was a rich source of anatomical material as it was a communal burial ground and easily accessed. Soldiers attached to the nearby Royal Hospital were always on the alert for grave robbers mainly because many of their comrades were buried there. In November 1825, a sentry captured Thomas Tuite, a known resurrectionist, in possession of five bodies. When searched his pockets were found to be full of teeth–in those days a set of teeth fetched £1 (about £50 in 2011). Many other graveyards were targets of the medical students or those who made robbing graves their profession. The largest cemetery in Ireland, Glasnevin Cemetery, laid out in the 18th century, had a high wall with strategically placed watch-towers as well as blood-hounds to deter body snatchers.

The Netherlands
In The Netherlands, poorhouses were accustomed to receiving a small fee by undertakers who paid a fine for ignoring burial laws and resold the bodies (especially those with no family) to doctors.

Contemporary body snatching
There are also modern-day reports of body snatching, although this is very rare. One notorious case in the United Kingdom involved the theft of the remains of Gladys Hammond from Yoxall Churchyard near Lichfield in south Staffordshire. Mrs Hammond’s remains were taken by animal rights extremists who were campaigning against Darley Oaks Farm, a licensed facility that bred guinea pigs for scientific research. Mrs Hammond was the mother in law of one of the farm’s owners. After a four-year investigation by Staffordshire Police four leaders of the Save the Newchurch Guinea Pigs campaign group (three men: Kerry Whitburn of Edgbaston, John Smith of Wolverhampton, John Ablewhite of Manchester; and one woman: Josephine Mayo of Staffordshire) were jailed for conspiracy to blackmail. The men received 12 years each and the woman received four years. The police said the conspiracy included the theft of Mrs Hammond’s remains, which were recovered by police following information given by one of the four.

In February 2006, Dr. Michael Mastromarino, then a 42-year-old former New Jersey-based oral surgeon and CEO and executive director of operations at Biomedical Tissue Services, was convicted along with three employees of illegally harvesting human bones, organs, tissue and other cadaver parts from individuals awaiting cremation, for forging numerous consent forms, and for selling the illegally obtained body parts to medical companies without consent of their families, and then sentenced to long prison terms. BTS sold its products to five companies, including Life Cell Corporation, of New Jersey, and Regeneration Technologies, of Florida.

There is still a demand for corpses for transplantation surgery in the form of allografts. Modern body snatchers feed this demand. Tissue such gained is medically unsafe and unusable. The broadcaster Alistair Cooke’s bones were removed in New York City and replaced with pvc pipe before his cremation. The director Toby Dye made the documentary Body Snatcher of New York about this case in 2010.

Posted in British history, Georgian Era, real life tales, Regency era, Scotland, Victorian era | Tagged body snatching | 5 Comments

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