Anonymous

“ Would that we could here read a warning lesson to those who indulge themselves in the horrid vice of drunkenness, as the certain precursor of their final ruin, and the destruction of all their earthly hopes. There is scarcely any vice which entails more complicated misery upon the unhappy wretch that is a slave to it, than intoxication. It gradually undermines the strength and vigour both of body and mind. We every day see the most deplorable effects of this most shameful vice in the ruined health, constitution, and fortune of vast numbers of our fellow-creatures. ”

“ The sensation which the murder of the boy excited in the metropolis may be said to be almost unprecedented; it was not regarded as one of those murders which stain our criminal annals; but when the fact transpired, that it had been committed by a gang of resurrectionists, the alarm spread into the bosom of every family. The dreadful deeds of Burke and his associates arose to the memory in all their appalling horrors, and if a child or a husband was absent a longer time from home than usual, the maternal fear immediately arose that the burkers had been at work. ”

“ It is a trite axiom in politics, that private benefit must yield to public good; but it is not therefore a natural corollary, that private feelings are to be outraged, and the entire happiness of the social circle to be destroyed by the desperate acts of a gang of miscreants, who make a trade of human life, and murder the defenceless and unprotected, on the mere ground that it is contributary and indispensable to the interests and advancement of a particular science. ”

“ Because, as all crimes, even the vilest, differ in degree, we feel that the man who has but once imbrued his hands in the blood of a fellow-creature, may have been prompted by a sudden impulse of rage or revenge, and may afterwards be touched with the deepest compunction for his crime; but repeated deeds of death prove that the perpetrator of them is actuated by selfish motives, and is wholly inaccessible to remorse.
It is the circumstance of Bishop and Williams having murdered their victims for the sake of lucre, that imparts a feature of peculiar horror to their crime. ”

“ People talk, or rather used to talk, of some species of crime not being English—Alas! that England should now stand indelibly stained by guilt of so foul, so unnatural a blackness, that all other 'detested sins' which, when exposed, 'stood bare and naked, trembling at themselves,' compared with this, are blanched into the complexion of natural, perhaps generous impulses, culpable only in their misdirection and excess! ”

“ It was then a common exclamation,—if anatomy be necessary to medical science, and if medical science be so useful to mankind, why do not the upper classes of society, why do not the wealthy and the enlightened consent to give their bodies for dissection as well as the poor, and why are the sacrifices for medical knowledge to be confined to those who have enjoyed the least of its benefits? ”

“ Here then lies the origin of the mistake of the identity of the body; but it excites our surprise in no small degree, that any individuals should take upon themselves to identify a body, the features of which were wholly disfigured by a violent death, which features were only known to them, by a passing glance at the individual when alive, as an itinerant beggar upon the streets, and the impression of which might be wholly effaced from their memory a few minutes afterwards. ”

“ If some Bishop or Williams, unable to supply the trade with the fruits of plundered churchyards, think of making subjects, whom do they entice into their den of murder? Not the affluent, the respected, or the known, but the poor unfriended wretches, for whom nobody is supposed to care, and whose loss nobody will deplore,—the very parties, in short, who would, most probably, be borne to their grave, at the public expense, from the wards of a hospital, or the cells of a poor-house. ”

“ We have recently had an instance in the case of Holloway, in whose mind the principles of religion were inculcated at an early period, and who professed to adhere to those principles whilst standing on the scaffold, that they were in themselves incompetent to deter him from the commission of one of the most horrid murders recorded in the annals of the country. If, therefore, neither education, civilization, nor religion be sufficient to effect the prevention of crime, to what other power are we to have recourse in order to bring about such a desirable benefit for the human race? ”

“ It is a new passage in our domestic history, it is entirely out of the ordinary range of iniquity, and stands by itself a solitary monument of villainy, such as would seem almost to mark an extinction in the heart of all those social sympathies which bind man to his fellow men, and even of that light of conscience which awes the most hardened by the fear of final retribution. ”

“ Here, then, in the most enlightened nation of the world, whose courts of judicature are held up as the pattern for all surrounding nations—whose laws are boasted of as being founded on mercy, clemency, and truth,—here we have the example of an individual tried, condemned—found innocent, and respited—but still punished with the next severest punishment after death which the criminal code of his country could inflict upon him! ”

“ As the dawn of day approached, and with it the fatal hour that was to consign the wretched criminals to their well-merited fate, all the streets leading to the Old Bailey were thronged with people, chiefly of the working classes, hastening to the spot. Constant streams of population were pouring into the Old Bailey till they formed, around the scaffold and at the corner of every street from whence even a distant or a faint view could be obtained, a vast lake of life. ”

“ It is admitted on all sides that medical students must practise, or, at least, witness, repeated dissections of the human body, in order to obtain a competent knowledge of their profession; there can be, therefore, no question of the propriety of braving the absurd prejudices of weak-minded individuals, rather than permit the present deplorable system of violating the sepulchre, and even of murdering, for subjects to be continued. The choice of two evils is before us,—we cannot but choose the least of them. ”

“ Did ever any civilized country witness such a situation as that in which the law has placed you and the public? It has contrived to raise the price of a dead body to such a height, as absolutely and appallingly to endanger the safety of the living. Of this danger, both the public and the legislature have been long and earnestly warned. Several years ago, before any instance of the actual perpetration of the crime had been discovered, the temptation and the consequent danger were fully brought to view in a pamphlet, entitled "The Use of the Dead to the Living." ”

“ Poaching and smuggling have long been notorious for their destructive influence on the morals of our provincial population. An indulgence in those comparatively trivial offences, together with the difficulty of obtaining honest employment when known as a smuggler or a poacher, too often lead to crimes of a deeper dye. How much more mischievous then must be the influence of the disgusting avocation of the resurrectionist upon those who are tempted by the high price given for subjects to steal the clay-cold corpse from the grave, at the dead of night? ”

“ The offence of murder, dreadful as it is, is unhappily too familiar in our criminal proceedings; but such an artfully contrived and deliberate scheme, such a systematic traffic of blood as were disclosed on the trials of Bishop, Williams and May, of Calkin and of Mrs. Cook, were certainly never before heard of in this country. ”

“ But murder will out sooner or later,—'Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.' In spite of all their infernal cunning and midnight secresy, justice has overtaken these monsters, and never again may the annals of any age or nation be stained with such revolting criminality. ”

“ It is only the fool that asks questions.' Thus it is at once apparent, that some legislative enactment is imperatively called for, by which the professors and students of one of the most useful and liberal of human sciences may be released from this degrading and disgraceful state of dependence on a set of wretches, who are the very refuse of society, and their high and honourable feelings not daily and hourly wounded by being slavishly obliged to truckle to the miscreants, for the very materials by which their professional pursuits can be carried on. ”

“ As a female, Mrs. Cook may be considered as one of the most atrocious murderers of the age in which she lived, or of any preceding one. Essentially, and in her real character, an ignoble, base, meanspirited wretch, this wholesale assassin, by the mere extinction or obliteration of every moral principle and feeling of her nature, now stands out in strong relief from the long and black catalogue of those who have most signalized themselves by their daring violation of the laws both of God and man. Ordinary homicides slay from passion or revenge ”

“ The most profligate among the lower orders of the English people abhor the crime of murder,—even the daring gangs of thieves by whom the metropolis is infested, though they live by daily robberies, invariably refrain from destroying life. Ours is not a blood-thirsty population; theft is unfortunately of common occurrence, and peculations of almost every description are continually practised amongst us; but happily murder is, comparatively, of very rare occurrence, and we have no doubt that all who witnessed the execution of these human boas rejoiced in their punishment. ”

“ It seems reserved for the British schools of anatomy to offer a premium for murder not prompted by passion, not provoked by injury, not justified even to the murderer by revenge, but premeditated with cold, diabolical, mercantile calculation, as to the price which will be given for the corpse of the victim.
The depravation of the actors of these crimes appears to us almost inexplicable. It has been said, that all are not men who bear the form of men; and the resurrectionist, in his horrid vocation, bears no alliance to humanity ”

“ A man charged with an offence ought not to be compelled to confession by the promise of pardon; but is there no difference between this and actually urging him to silence against his will, as a method of escape, though he may have committed the offence? We are really sick of reading examinations, every part and portion of which are made up of injunctions to the accused, to do and say nothing whatever that can by any possibility injure his chance of eluding justice. ”

“ But the same law that makes it imperative on you to study anatomy, in order to acquire a legal right to practise your profession, renders the possession of the means of pursuing the study illegal. Human anatomy cannot be known without the dissection of the human body, yet the possession of a body that has been exhumed, for the purpose of dissection (no body except that of the murderer being obtainable in any other mode) is penal. ”

“ It is a very probable case, that a poor unfortunate girl, whose only crime perhaps is her prostitution, may in her mind be impressed with the solemn obligations of an oath, and the consequences which would result to her, morally and religiously, from the infraction of it; but it by no means follows, that because a blustering counsel has extracted from her the confession of the mode of life by which she gains her livelihood, that her testimony is to be wholly rejected or only partially received, especially when the life of a human being is dependent upon it. ”

“ Hence it is that Bishop, Williams, and the others convicted of the horrid crime of Burking, are perhaps the only criminals who have died on the scaffold, not only without exciting an emotion of pity in a human bosom, but amidst the curses, both loud and deep, of the assembled thousands who witnessed the ignominious termination of their guilty career. ”

“ It would appear, in fact, that with the growth of the illumination of the mind, the degeneracy of the heart has increased, and that fresh sources of guilt have opened themselves, in proportion as the endeavours of the schoolmaster have been directed to their extinction. It is true, indeed, that murder is a crime which has been committed in all ages, and in all countries. It was, in fact, the first crime by which the human race exhibited their natural depravity. But the idea of reducing murder to a system was reserved as the distinguishing feature of the present century ”

“ Partridge.—I believe the immediate cause of death to have been a blow on the back of the neck by some blunt instrument, but I judge of the violence which must have been used, from other circumstances, namely, the freshness of the body, the rigidity of the limbs, the swollen state of the face, the bloodshot eyes, and their perfect freshness. ”

“ It is at once evident that, from the present mode of supplying subjects for dissection, no man's life is secure. The murderer may disguise his victim by laying out, and for a time burying the corpse, by cutting off the hair, or by knocking out the teeth, and then his market is as safe as it is sure; or, if the assassin be more timid than usual, he has only to dismember the subject, and the sale by piecemeal will turn in an equal profit, and defy detection. ”

“ We may boast of the excellence of our legislative enactments,—and in the plenitude of our conceit, we may fancy that we are far superior to all other nations in the construction of our legislative code,—but in what other country than this, professing to be enlightened by civilization, was the [Pg 216] crime of burking ever known?—and yet science has advanced as rapidly in those countries where it was never exemplified, as in that where it has been carried to an extent actually appalling to our nature, and disgraceful to the nation in which it has been practised. ”

“ It is with pleasure that we bestow upon M. Auzouz every encomium of which he is deserving, for his zeal for the promotion of science; for his patience, his ingenious attempts, and finally for the results which are due to his perseverance, and his correct knowledge of anatomy. ”

“ He was sorry to say, that it was not of late very extraordinary to find persons base enough to raise the hand of murder against their fellow-creatures without any previously-conceived malice against them,—without being stirred up by passion or ill blood, but solely impelled from the spirit of sordid gain,—a gain not to be derived from the possession of the property of their victim, but from the very being which God gave them; their object being to derive profit from the dead bodies to persons engaged in the prosecution of the science of surgery. ”