Lisa Rosner

Dark blue background with a drawing of a skull to the left of the image. To the right of the image is white text that reads: Blood and Guts: The Twists and Turns of Edinburgh's Medical History Walking Tour

Our Blood and Guts walking tours will return on the 24th of January!

Hear little known accounts of iconic writers, chloroform tea parties, pioneering women, grave robbing and of course Burke and Hare.

Tours run every Saturday and Sunday at 2pm.

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/blood-and-...

🚨 CfP Alert! 🚨

Thanks to the generosity of the Susan Manning Workshop Fund at @iashedinburgh.bsky.social, my colleague and I are delighted to be organising a symposium, "1725-2025: Historical and Contemporary Links Between Scotland and South Asia.”

PDF here: drive.google.com/file/d/1IuTn...

1825 Resurrection Men Roundup A Year of Body-Snatching via the British Newspapers Archive, https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

1825 Resurrection Men Roundup

Everyone else gets a year in review, so why not bodysnatchers? Wishing my readers a Happy New Year, and all best wishes for 1826
burkeandhare.substack.com/p/1825-resur...

A Damp, Drizzly November in my Soul Leicester Journal,4 Nov.1825; London Packet & New Lloyd's Evening Post, 23 Nov.1825; Evening Times and Oxford University & City Herald, 26 Nov.1825; Fife Herald 17 Nov. 1825, British Newspaper Archive

November 1825 was a busy month for body-snatchers, as they worked night and day -- but especially night -- supplying anatomy students. We know when they were caught, thanks to newspapers -- but who knows how often the bodies shipped on schedule?
burkeandhare.substack.com/p/a-damp-dri...

A Halloween Story London Sun, 1 November 1825, via British Newspaper Archive

Are graveyards haunted by the ghosts of disinterred cadavers, waiting to wreak havoc on callous Resurrection Men? If not, perhaps they should be, as we can see in A Halloween Story... burkeandhare.substack.com/p/a-hallowee...

Community Support for a Dead Child Morning Chronicle, Thursday, 28 July, via British Newspaper Archive

Community Support for a Dead Child burkeandhare.substack.com/p/community-...
July was a slow month for digging up dead bodies -- so why not try stealing them before they were buried? When anatomists deal with resurrection-men, they have to be prepared for the consequences.

Image of Jamaica Street shortly before its demolition in 1966, from Threadinburgh.scot, The thread about the five different Jamaica Streets of Edinburgh and Leith; and how these and other street names evidence a time of colonialism and slavery

During our busy February 1825, some body-snatchers found ways to obtain cadavers without going through the bother of digging them up. Read more in Coffin Filled with Stones, with thanks to @threadinburgh.scot for images and info on Jamaica Street,
burkeandhare.substack.com/p/coffin-fil...

Southwark Bridge, designed by John Rennie, 1819

Woman and child at St. Giles Workhouse, 1877

What a busy month for body-snatchers was February 1825! Resurrection-men didn't work alone: they relied on friends and accomplices to help them retrieve cadavers. Find out more in burkeandhare.substack.com/p/body-snatc...

and

burkeandhare.substack.com/p/body-snatc...

Artist's conception of Carlo Ferrari, killed for dissection, wellcomecollection.org/works/atnk92e5, @wellcomecollection.bsky.social
If London surgeons had stopped purchasing cadavers from Bishop and May in 1825, would Carlo Ferrari had lived to see his 15th birthday?

Image from post, Early Appearance of the London Burkers, https://burkeandhare.substack.com/p/early-appearance-of-the-london-burkers

An 1825 appearance of well-known body-snatchers John Bishop and James May in the British Newspaper Archive, substack.com/home/post/p-..., for fans of @misssarahwise.bsky.social The Italian Boy: A Tale of Murder and Body Snatching in 1830s London.

Two tied bundles of letters inside envelopes lying on a table.

Letters sent home to America from Edinburgh by a medical student in the 1930s. He writes of his first dissection class at Surgeons' Hall, the Royal Infirmary’s “beautiful amphitheatre”, and also meeting his first love.
#EYALove #ExploreYourArchive

Went to the Prado for the first time this past summer and was very intrigued by the Queen Cristina connection.

This site currently resides on the grounds of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, @immaireland.bsky.social @irishmuseums.bsky.social, image courtesy of SCDD, Paddy Healy Collection. For more on a fascinating heritage trail, see imma.ie/heritage-tra...

Bones excavated from Bully's Acre in 1991, from the IMMA Heritage Trail website, https://imma.ie/heritage-trail/bullys-acre/. Image from SDCC Library, Paddy Healy Collection.

February is...Body Snatching Month? In February 1825, colder weather combined with ongoing medical school classes led to an uptick in activity by Resurrection-Men. The first incident took place at the notorious burial-ground, Dublin's Bully's Acre, burkeandhare.substack.com/p/resurrecti....

Two pages from a manuscript album. The page on the right says "Zur Erinnerung a den 20 Aprilis 1632 vor Engolstadt. Ferdinand v Zinneck Lieutenant." The page on the left shows a battle scene with cavalry clashing in front of a burning city wall.

I'm giving a talk tomorrow at Philobiblon. 6:15 at the Ethical Society.
This wonderful page will figure prominently. (I use the image on the right for my banner here)

Sooo many symphonies! So little time!

Despite needing to play catch-up, I couldn't resist doing a deep dive into #68. I spent so much time on it that I'd better be doubly quick about this one.

TL;DR: It's bloody good too!

fyi Lisa

Top of broadside entitled A full and particular account of a most shocking and horrible murder, from Harvard's website English Crimes and Execution Broadsides.

An unusual legal defense: "I heard the sounds of horns and trumpets, and I thought the Resurrection Men were after me..." Read more about Charles Lynn's murder of his friend Abraham Hogg, January 1825: substack.com/home/post/p-...

Wellcome Collections: Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh: doctors treating a patient with a dislocated shoulder, ca. 182-. Photograph, 1927, after Johnston, 182-. Date: 1927; Reference:15834i

Could the "eminent practical anatomist" involved have been Dr. James Syme, FRCSEd, later Prof of Clinical Surgery? The advantage of surgery over anatomy is that patients actually consent to surgical procedures, no matter how awful they appear (wellcomecollection.org/works/ujdpu8...) ...(3/3)

Account of the Edinburgh Police Court, The Scotsman, 25 December 1824

Here's the report from The Scotsman, which often carried news from the Edinburgh Police Court. It's a great resource for local history (2/3)...

Engraving of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, 1818, by J and H S Storer, with cart and several porters standing nearby.

In Edinburgh, an assault on anatomists! Or was it an affray?
In late December 1824, this peaceful scene was disrupted by an angry mob attempting to demolish the coach of an "eminent anatomist," believing it carried cadavers for dissection. Find out more... (1/3) substack.com/home/post/p-...

Surgeon lifting a dead body out of a packing crate, Robert Seymour ill, from Murderers of the Close

Were you wondering who sent two dead bodies from Dublin to Shrewsbury? The Bristol Mirror reported that it was a "medical student" from St. Barts, London. But was it an ordinary student? Or someone in the shadowy body trade? substack.com/inbox/post/1...

Scotsman account expressing doubt over the alleged abduction.

Or did they?
Were the Resurrection-Men truly responsible for William Millar's ordeal? Or was it a cover-up to excuse his own transgressions?
The Scotsman was quick to weigh in -- but were they protecting the anatomy trade? (Story at substack.com/home/post/p-...).

...And here's part 2. Stay tuned as the story unfolds...

Part one of William Millar's story of being abducted by resurrection-men, as told to a reporter. For a text version, visit my sub stack @burkeandhare

OOOPS! I should report the name of my young hero correctly: It's William Millar, and his occupation was as a slater. Here's part 1 of the account...

The Resurrection-Men Did It!
How peaceful the scene of the Union Canal near Edinburgh, pictured below! Yet how dastardly the deed when young William Slater was abducted by -- curiously direction-challenged -- Resurrection Men in December 1824...
Read full story here: substack.com/home/post/p-...

Dealing the Dead NBC News exposed how a Texas medical school cut up the unclaimed bodies of the poor and leased them without consent or the knowledge of their families.

And NBC's "Dealing the Dead" series shows that if there's money to be made, and no regulation to prevent it, cadavers are still likely to end up as someone's commodity, www.nbcnews.com/dealing-the-...

We don't need to go back 200 years to hear about unethical traffic in body parts. Here's a 2013 NPR update on a prominent "body stealing" scheme that made headlines: www.npr.org/sections/hea...

Full newspaper account from British Newspaper Archive

An extraordinary occurrence in Shrewsbury, December 1824! Two boxes arrived by parcel post, but when opened, they were found to contained two bodies: of a man near 70 years old, and of a woman about 50.
The purpose was presumed to be anatomical dissection.
Stay tuned, investigation is ongoing.