John Rennie and the Construction of Leith Docks

Leith throughout the medieval and early modern periods was the port of Scotland's capital city and consequently of vital importance to the Scottish economy. Leith was the principal gateway in and out of the country. It was the main point of export for eastern Scotland's goods and manufactures, including wool, fish, glass, iron and metal wares, as well as the place where wines, timber, hemp and tar arrived from abroad. Trade increased dramatically in the later 18th century, mainly as a result of the demand created by the nascent Industrial Revolution, and in addition to the vessels devoted to trade there were many involved in the fishing and whaling industries. By 1794, it was recorded that there were 144 vessels belonging to the port of Leith, with a gross tonnage of 15, 504, and by this time it had become abundantly clear that the facilities offered by the port were utterly inadequate to handle the business passing through it.

At this date Leith had no dock at all; the harbour consisted of the narrow quayed confines of the mouth of the Water of Leith, the vessels tying up to the quays to load and unload, often three-deep on either bank with the goods passing across two strange decks to reach their destinations. In addition, the river brought silt down to the bar across the mouth of the port, so that access for any but the smallest vessels was restricted to the hours immediately on either side of high tide. As if these problems were not enough, boat-building yards occupied the upper part of the harbour, further restricting access.

In recognition of the need for the improvement of the port's maritime accommodation, locally-born civil engineer John Rennie was asked by Edinburgh's city fathers to design a new dockyard on the most advanced principles. Rennie had already become known for the construction of important canals, including the Lancaster Canal and the Kennet and Avon. His design at Leith was for what became known as the Old East and West Docks, and included the first wet docks to be built in Scotland as well as two dry docks. The work was begun in 1800 and was carried out in two phases, being completed in 1817. The result was a modern, permanently accessible dockyard with accommodation for at least 150 vessels of the size then generally employed at Leith, ie from about 100 to 200 tons. A good impression of the general scheme can be gained from this map dated 1840 (below).

Rennie had also drawn up plans to extend the docks to the west in the direction of Newhaven by land reclamation, but this idea was not realised until the far more recent development of the area at the close of the 20th century. Rennie firstly built the 10.4 m wide, 44.2m long and 7m deep entrance lock with a 4m sill depth and and the East Dock, which measured 228.6m by 91.4m. Between 1810 and 1817 the West Dock was built with the same dimensions.

The development saved Leith from extinction as a major Scottish port, and after the hiatus of the Napoleonic Wars trade continued to boom during the 19th century, so much so that further improvements at Leith followed. Both the Eastern and Western Piers were considerably extended between 1826 and 1829, and the Victoria Dock was added between 1846 and 1852. About 1850, Rennie's original wooden swing bridge at the East Dock entrance was replaced by an iron structure which can still be seen, but the Old East and West Docks were filled in during later development work.

John Rennie went on to design build the Royal Ireland Canal which linked Dublin with the Shannon, the Crinan Canal, Waterloo Bridge, London Bridge (completed after his death), Southwark Bridge and Old Vauxhall Bridge as well as the docks at Hull, Liverpool,Greenock and the East India and West India Docks in London. He was also responsible for the breakwater at Plymouth Sound, which measures over a mile in length and was built in 20m of seawater, almost certainly the most colossal civil engineering project of the Georgian period. Rennie died aged 60 in London in 1821 and was buried in St Paul's Cathedral.

Sir Walter Scott: Inventor of the Scotland of Romance

Today is the 241st anniversary of the birth of Sir Walter Scott. A full appraisal of the importance of any author is impossible within the limits of a blog post, but this is particularly true of Scott. This page will confine itself to a brief biography, an assessment of his impact on literature, and some links to other sources.

Scott was born on August 15, 1771 in College Wynd, Edinburgh. He was the ninth child of Walter Scott, Writer to the Signet, and Anne Rutherford, but five of his siblings had already died in infancy, and a sixth, Barbara, was to die when he was five months old. In infancy Scott contracted polio, the effects of which made him lame in his right leg for life. In an attempt to cure his lameness he was sent in 1773 to live in the rural Borders region at his paternal grandparents' farm, where he was taught to read by his aunt Jenny, and he learned from her the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends that characterised much of his work. Scott never lost his early fascination with the folk tales and histories of Scotland’s outlying places, and travelled the countryside to collect them throughout his younger adulthood. After returning to Edinburgh for his education at the Royal High School and the University, Scott qualified as a lawyer, joining the Faculty of Advocates in 1792.

The first sign of Scott’s literary interest in Scottish history and folk tales came in 1802 with the publication of a three-volume set of collected ballads, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. This work immediately captured the public imagination and established its Scott’s reputation as a writer, and it was followed by Marmion in 1808, which contains the famous lines:

Yet Clare's sharp questions must I shun

Must separate Constance from the nun

Oh! what a tangled web we weave

When first we practice to deceive!

A Palmer too! No wonder why

I felt rebuked beneath his eye.

Although Scott had attained celebrity through his poetry, he soon tried his hand at documenting his researches into the oral tradition of the Scottish Borders in prose fiction – stories and novels. In 1814, in an innovative and astute action, he wrote and published his first novel, Waverley, a tale of the Jacobite rising of 1745, and it was followed by a string of other historical novels with Scottish settings, collectively known now as the Waverley Novels. These included Guy Mannering (1815), The Antiquary (1816), Rob Roy (1817), and Ivanhoe (1819), and were published anonymously, as at the time novels were considered aesthetically inferior to poetry (above all to such classical genres as the epic or poetic tragedy) as a mimetic vehicle for portraying historical events. Such was the popularity of these works that by 1827 Scott was happy to abandon anonymity and publish under his own name.

Scott's fame grew as his explorations and interpretations of Scottish history and society captured popular imagination. Impressed by this, the Prince Regent (the future George IV) gave Scott permission to search for the fabled but long-lost Crown Jewels ("Honours of Scotland"), which during the years of the Protectorate under Cromwell had been squirrelled away and had last been used to crown Charles II. In 1818, Scott and a small team of military men unearthed the honours from the depths of Edinburgh Castle. A grateful Prince Regent granted Scott the title of baronet. Later, after George's accession to the throne, the city government of Edinburgh invited Scott, at the King's behest, to stage-manage the King's entry into Edinburgh.

With only three weeks for planning and execution, Scott created a spectacular and comprehensive pageant, designed not only to impress the King, but also in some way to heal the rifts that had previously destabilised Scots society. He used the event to contribute to the drawing of a line under an old world that pitched his homeland into regular bouts of bloody strife. He, along with his 'production team', mounted what in modern days could be termed a PR event, in which the rather obese King was dressed in tartan (worn over pink tights), and was greeted by his people, many of whom were also dressed in similar tartan ceremonial dress. This form of dress, previously proscribed after the 1745 rebellion against the English, subsequently became one of the seminal, potent and ubiquitous symbols of Scottish identity.

In 1825 and 1826, a banking crisis swept through the cities of London and Edinburgh. The Ballantyne printing business, in which he was heavily invested, crashed, resulting in his being very publicly ruined. Rather than declare himself bankrupt, he determined to write his way out of debt. He kept up his prodigious output of fiction, as well as producing a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte, until 1831. By then his health was failing. Notwithstanding this, he undertook a grand tour of Europe, being welcomed and celebrated wherever he went. He returned to Scotland and, in September 1832, died (under unexplained circumstances) at Abbotsford, the home he had designed and had built, near Melrose in the Scottish Borders. Though he died owing money, his novels continued to sell and the debts encumbering his estate were eventually discharged.

Although he continued to be extremely popular and widely read, both at home and abroad, Scott's critical reputation declined in the last half of the nineteenth century as serious writers turned from romanticism to realism, and Scott began to be regarded as an author suitable for children. This trend accelerated in the twentieth century, and today he must be one of the least-read of our 'famous' authors. In his homeland, where to some extent he was responsible for creating the image of Scotland that still dominates across the world, he is celebrated today chiefly through the naming of Edinburgh’s Waverley railway station and the iconic gothic architecture of the Scott Monument in Princes Street. To many observers, including the author of this blog, this seems a great pity. Scott’s importance as the inventor of the historical novel and as the creator of Scotland’s ‘shortbread tin’ romantic imagery is not in doubt, but several of his greatest works are genuine masterpieces and should be much more widely read today. He has ‘out of fashion’ for far too long, and very unfairly. 

The following link leads to G. K. Chesterton’s appraisal of Scott, and is well worth reading:

http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/twelve-types/12/

There follow some other links that the reader may find useful:

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scott

The Walter Scott Digital Archive: http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/home.html

Encyclopedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/529629/Sir-Walter-Scott-1st-Baronet

Robert Watt: radical or government spy?

It is generally appreciated today that Edinburgh in the late eighteenth century was the scene of many new scientific, academic and cultural innovations. The capital was the chief centre of the Scottish Enlightenment and the habitat of a galaxy of famous names associated with learning and the arts; the Adam brothers, David Hume and Adam Smith are only examples from a long list. What is perhaps not so widely appreciated is that Edinburgh was also the scene of certain political developments, including a brand of fiery radicalism that caused the political authorities of the day deep concern. The victory of the United States of America over monarchical Britain in 1783 and the outbreak of the French Revolution six years later helped inspire a new republican enthusiasm in many parts of Britain, but nowhere more than in Scotland. In the early 1790s this movement took the form of 'corresponding societies', groups of individuals who favoured radical political reform and who met openly to debate and exchange ideas. In October 1793 the Scottish 'Friends of the People' society held a British Convention in Edinburgh which was attended by delegates from other corresponding societies in England, as a result of which a manifesto was approved and published which praised the principles of the French Revolution and called for universal male suffrage as well as annual parliaments.

James Gillray, 'London Corresponding Society alarm'd' (1798), a pro-government view of the radicals.

The reaction of government was harsh and authoritarian. The leading Scottish radicals were arrested, tried for the new crime of 'sedition' and transported to New Holland for fourteen years. The writings of republican authors such as Tom Paine were proscribed, political assemblies prohibited, and in England, habeus corpus was suspended. These measures forced the radical movement underground, and turned what had been a peaceful movement for reform into a network of secret societies with revolutionary aims. In order to undermine the radicals government had pursued a policy of recruiting paid informers to penetrate their ranks and identify their leaders, and in Edinburgh a man named Robert Watt approached lord advocate Robert Dundas with the offer of informing upon his fellow radicals in 1792. Watt's business as a wine merchant had failed after Britain's declaration of war upon France, and presumably he meant to salvage his fortunes by betraying his fellow radicals. His reports from this period relate to political activities in Perth, Dundee and Glasgow as well as Edinburgh, written in a close, spidery hand; the documents have survived and are held in the Advocate's Library, Edinburgh. Watt's reports are thoroughly alarmist, exaggerating the threat to the existing order in order to encourage government's further interest. In April 1793 Watt wrote offering the lord advocate information from two unnamed persons who demanded £100 for their services; Watt was given £30 but no useful information was forthcoming, and thereafter Dundas appears to lose interest in his informer. These are not trifling amounts, for £100 in the 1790s would be the equivalent of about £8,000 today.¹

John Kay, 'Robert Watt' (1794). Kay was Edinburgh's foremost caricaturist in the period.

By 1794 Robert Watt appears to have given up his attempts to wheedle more cash from the authorities and to have returned to his former political activities, for in May of 1794 a search of his house for property belonging to a bankrupt revealed the presence of several pikes and copies of a printed handbill which was designed to suborn the loyalties of the soldiery in Edinburgh Castle. Watt was immediately arrested, and a subsequent search found more pikes at a local blacksmith's. Details emerged of a plot to seize the Castle, the post office, the banks and the industrial works of the city, and to remove the existing authorities and replace them with a provisional republican government, though how close to realisation this scheme was, or indeed how realistic, remains open to question. Watt had been part of a seven man 'Committee of Ways and Means' which had dreamt up the plot, and another man, an Edinburgh silversmith named David Downie, was arrested with him. Both men were charged with high treason, and the trials took place in Edinburgh in the August and September of 1794.

Public execution in Edinburgh. 'The Execution of Deacon Brodie' by Alexander Hay Ritchie.

Watt's counsel conducted Watt's defence on the basis of his contention that he was acting as agent provocateur for the civic authorities, but with the city authorities testifying that he had received no encouragement from them to do so, and with most of his fellow conspirators turning King's evidence against him, the result was a foregone conclusion. He and Downie were both found guilty, the jury recommending mercy. In the case of Downie, this was agreed to, and the death sentence was commuted to permanent transportation to New Holland. Watt, now universally detested on both sides of the political divide, was not so fortunate. The sentence passed by the court was that 'you... be taken  from the bar to the place from whence you came, and from thence to be drawn upon a hurdle to the place of execution, there to be hanged by the neck, but not till you are dead; for you are then to be taken down, your heart to be cut out, and your bowels burned before your face, your head and limbs to be severed and held up for public display.'² This sentence was carried out on 15th October 1794.


Notes

1.  http://www.johnowensmith.co.uk/histdate/moneyval.htm

2. The Trial of Robert Watt, late Wine Merchant in Edinburgh, for High Treason (1794), P.34

John Paul Jones and the building of the Leith Fort

In August of 1779, during the height of the American War of Independence, or Revolutionary War as it is more often known in the USA, a flotilla of three vessels of the American Navy under the command of Scottish-born John Paul Jones unexpectedly appeared in the Firth of Forth just off Edinburgh. Jones had come round the north coast of Scotland, thus avoiding the heavy British naval presence in the English Channel. His orders were to provide a diversionary attack on British assets there whilst a French and Spanish invasion fleet launched the main attack on southern Britain. Jones may have been surprised to find the Scottish capital completely undefended against attack from the sea: there were no Royal Navy warships in the Firth at that time, and no coastal battery fired upon the Americans as they cruised around looking for an opportunity.

Above: the American depiction of John Paul Jones

Ashore, the news of his arrival created panic in the city. Jones had attacked the English port of Whitehaven the year before, and had led a raid upon the Scottish home of the Earl of Selkirk in an attempt to kidnap him. His ferocious, rapacious reputation very nearly won Jones the spoils of the city without a shot being fired, for many of its less impoverished citizens suddenly remembered at this moment that they had relatives elsewhere they must visit in a hurry; in no time there was neither a carriage nor a horse to be seen. Banks were closed, the garrison in Edinburgh Castle closed their their portcullis gates, church bells rang out the invasion alarm. In the event, a gale of wind prevented the Americans from landing, and Jones sailed off south to look for other pickings. The episode underlined the vulnerability of Edinburgh and its port of Leith to such an approach by enemy forces, and the local authorities hurriedly set up a battery of nine cannon on the shore at Leith to cover the approaches to the harbour.

Above: John Paul Jones as he appeared in British newspapers

This battery was the beginnings of the construction of a fort at Leith, parts of which survive to this day. The site chosen for the first battery was not ideal, being only twelve feet above the high water mark. The intention seems to have been to prevent the landing of boats rather than to deter the more distant approach of larger vessels; Jones had led his previous attacks on Britain in small boats, leaving his ships safely offshore. Edinburgh lacked any suitable overlooking height within range of the anchoring ground called the Roads of Leith where any enemy ships would have to moor, and the battery at Leith could not elevate their guns high enough to hit such ships. It was not a perfect solution to the problem then, but it was far better than nothing and consolidation of the battery's position went ahead, beginning with the construction of a stout defensive casement to protect it from bombardment from the sea. It was still felt to be too vulnerable however, and the designer of the city's New Town, James Craig, was urgently commissioned to draw up plans for further defences in the form of a fort on the site. 

Craig was a civilian planner rather than military architect, and his design reflects this anomaly. The high curtain wall would certainly prevent any casual intrusion, but it was not stout enough to withstand cannon fire and there were no buttresses from which defence of the walls could be properly maintained. Inside the fort, Craig's classical aesthetics produced columned and arcaded stone buildings more suitable for service as schools, libraries or courthouses than as guard blocks and barracks. To the north-east of the fort a terrace of brick-built terrace of houses comprised the officer's quarters, and this became locally known as 'London Row' due to its similarity to the fine Georgian housing then being built in the southern capital. 

Above: soldiers and civilians at Leith Fort, c.1910

The fort was finally completed in 1793 and was garrisoned by Captain Rimmington's blue-coated Royal Artillery company. Apart from a Martello Tower built near the pier at Leith in 1810 the fort remained the only defence of this coastline during the long French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. It is perhaps as well that the enemy did not test it, for there is little doubt that in the artillery sense the fort was almost useless. By the mid-1790s, brick buildings had even been allowed to be built directly in front of the battery, thus rendering over half of the cannon quite useless. Had an invasion of Leith taken place by any reasonable force in that period, there could have been no doubt about the outcome. In fact just such an invasion was planned at one time by the French and their allies in the (Dutch) Batavian Republic, but that story deserves a blog post to itself and will appear here in due course.

Above: Leith Fort before the flats were demolished

Leith Fort continued in active military use until 1955, latterly serving for National Service training. Upon being decommissioned the site was acquired by the City Council who demolished those buildings not legally protected and in the 1960s built several blocks of low-grade tower housing, still surrounded by the incongruous fort walls and guard houses. The development was not a happy one and social problems there brought notoriety to the area. At the present time the flats are being demolished prior to redevelopment of the site. Details of the nature of the plans are available here: http://www.edinburghnp.org.uk/neighbourhood-partnerships/leith/local-info/fort-house-regeneration/

Robert Burns in Edinburgh

Scotland's national bard, Robert Burns, was born in Ayrshire into a struggling tenant farmer's family on January 25th, 1759, exactly 253 years ago. Burns does not lack biographers and it is not intended here to do anything more than offer a brief exploration of his connections with and experience of the city of Edinburgh.

Dogged by penury and personal difficulties throughout his early life, Robert's fortunes improved in 1786 with the publication In Kilmarnock of his book Poems, chiefly in the Scottish dialect which met with immediate success. Abandoning his plans to emigrate to Jamaica, a move that had clearly been forced on him by his financial difficulties and which he was glad to escape, Robert was encouraged by his friends to seek a publisher in Edinburgh, the Scottish literary capital, for a second edition. So fired was he by the prospect of further success that in his own words he immediately "...posted for that city, without a single acquaintance, or a single letter of introduction." ¹

Robert borrowed a pony and set off for Edinburgh on November 27th, 1786. His claim of knowing no one there was not quite accurate, for he took up shared lodgings in Baxter's Close on the south side of the Lawnmarket with a friend named John Richmond that he had known in Ayrshire. Baxter's Close was demolished many years ago but the approximate site of the house is the pub now called Deacon Brodie's Tavern at the junction of the Lawnmarket and Bank Street.

Edinburgh welcomed Robert with open arms. He found himself the immediate source of attention in a society that must have been quite different to anything the rustic farmer had ever known or aspired to. At that time Edinburgh was one of the greatest centres of learning and the arts in the world, the home of the Scottish Enlightenment. In material fabric it was badly overcrowded, venerable and unhealthy, but in its people and society it was celebrated across the globe. A feature of that society was the way people of different walks of life lived cheek by jowl in the tottering tenements and closes, making for an egalitarian atmosphere which Robert Burns must have fairly fallen in love with; many of his works reflect his strong belief in the essential equality of all individuals and his strong support for the cause of liberty.

Edinburgh proved a triumph for Robert. From the beginning he was welcomed into the literary and philosophical circles that met in clubs and in private houses, and his poetry together with his quiet, unassuming manner quickly made him the city's darling. One of his earliest champions was Edinburgh author Henry Mackenzie, author of The Man of Feeling, whose newspaper The Lounger famously referred to Robert as "this heaven-taught ploughman", thus establishing the myth that he was a ploughman rather than a farmer. It was Mackenzie too who arranged for the Edinburgh edition of Robert's Poems, chiefly in the Scottish dialect by his own publisher, William Creech, in March 1787. For the edition Creech commissioned a portrait of the poet by Edinburgh painter Alexander Nasmyth (reproduced above) from which an engraving was made to illustrate the frontispiece of the book.

Robert Burns had become a freemason in 1781 and some sixty years after his death the artist William Stewart Watson produced the above painting, which depicts Robert being inaugurated as Poet Laureate at an Edinburgh lodge. However it is almost certain that the honour was conferred on him posthumously, so the scene he depicts is entirely imaginary. It is certain however that the poet was the subject of many honours and invitations, joining at their invitation for example the gentrified field sports club Caledonian Hunt and the less exalted gentlemen's drinking club the Crochallan Fencibles, who conducted their 'meetings' in Anchor Close off the High Street. Several of those he met there became lifelong friends, including James Cunningham, 14th Earl of Glencairn, the music seller and song collector James Johnson with whom he shared an enthusiasm for the preservation of old Scottish ballads, and the metaphysician Dugald Stewart.

A famous meeting took place at the house of the philosopher and historian Adam Ferguson in the Sciennes district of Edinburgh, when Scotland's national poet met her greatest writer. Whilst admiring a print on the drawing-room wall, Robert Burns asked the assembled company if anyone knew who had penned the verse that was attached to the picture. Reluctantly, a quiet youth of fifteen years came forward with the answer, for which he was thanked civilly. That youth was Sir Walter Scott, who wrote with pride of the event many years later. The illustration below shows the painter Hardie's impression of the event.

It was not only the gentlemen of the city who were enamoured of Robert. It was at a tea-party in Edinburgh in December 1787 that he met Nancy M'Lehose, a married woman who had separated from her husband. Nancy had enjoyed a little education, rare enough among the ladies of the day even in Edinburgh, and she was able to converse with Robert on subjects he had never heard from a woman's lips. The two were extremely attracted to each other, and though it seems doubtful whether their love was ever consummated the two exchanged passionately romantic letters under the pseudonyms 'Sylvander' and 'Clarinda'. There is no doubt whatsoever about the nature of Robert's relationship with Nancy's domestic servant Jenny Clow, who bore him a son, Robert Burns Clow, in 1788.

His success in Edinburgh brought Robert another consequence, one that took him away from the city for good. The father of Jean Armour, the girl he had begged to marry years before to no avail, now considered him a suitable son-in-law and relented upon his opposition to the match. They were married in 1788 and the couple took up a long lease on Ellisland, a farm on the banks of the River Nith near Dumfries. In common with most 18th century Scottish farms, the soil at Ellisland was exhausted by intensive cultivation over many years, and neither crop growing nor dairy farming provided a living for them. Robert moved his family to Dumfries to work for the Excise Office. It was there that Robert Burns died at the age of 37 in 1796.


Notes

1. R. Chambers, A Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen (1852)

Two views of Princes Street, Edinburgh in 1814

Two early views of Princes Street in the second decade of the nineteenth century by John Heaviside Clark offer an excellent visual insight into the life of Georgian Edinburgh. Both views represent divergent prospects from the same spot, at the junction with South St Andrews Street. These works are aquatints, a sophisticated type of print that results from a process using acid-resistant rosin to produce distinctive tonal effects. They were first published in 1814 by printseller Daniel McIntosh, whose premises were located at 16 St Andrews Street. In 1817 McIntosh described his business on his trade card as 'D. McIntosh. English and Foreign Printseller, Carver and Gilder, Ladies fancy Works, Stationery, Water Colours & all Requisites for Drawing'.

The first of these aquatints is shown above, and looks south-eastwards towards distant Arthur's Seat with the cliffs of Salisbury Crags just below it. On the right can be seen the tall tenements of the Old Town, some at least ten storeys high, with the spire of St Giles Cathedral on the extreme right. On the extreme left the distant Nelson's Monument on Calton Hill can be seen; this was built between 1807 and 1815 to honour the late naval hero, and indeed it has an unfinished look. Below Arthur's Seat in the middle distance the artist shows the North Bridge, and below this what looks like white smoke or steam; this is the site of present-day Waverley Station, but in 1814 railways were undreamed of and there was certainly no station there! Contemporary maps show that at this time there was a slaughterhouse on the spot. On the right in the middle distance is the old Crofts Road connecting with Princes Street. This was later renamed Waverley Bridge after Sir Walter Scott's famous series of novels. Princes Street itself is shown with its south side completely free of the development that would later hide some of this superb view. In the foreground the artist has depicted the fashionable ladies and gentlemen of the New Town taking the air whilst two-in-hand carriages and a heavily laden mail coach rattle over the cobbles.

The second aquatint looks south-westward towards Edinburgh Castle. Those who are familiar with this view today will note the absence of the Scott Memorial and National Galleries at the foot of the Mound. Whilst the New Town was being built in the late eighteenth century (see blog post of 12 December 2011, below) the 'Earthen Mound' was created by dumping about 1.5 million cartloads of earth excavated from the foundations of the new buildings in order to create an artificial ramp connecting the Old and New Towns. In the foreground the fashions of the day are shown, and it can be seen from these prints that pantaloons (trousers) are becoming popular with the gentlemen, though some are persisting with breeches and half-boots. A female carrying baskets is probably a street vendor. On Princes Street itself oil lamps can be seen, and fine quality pavement; the stone for this was mined in Caithness in the far north of mainland Scotland. Originally all buildings in Princes Street had the same format: set back from the street with stairs down to a basement and stairs up to the ground floor. Heights were generally three storeys plus an attic. Of this original format only one such property remains in its original form. Through the 19th century most buildings were redeveloped at a larger scale and the street evolved from residential to mainly retail uses.

The Body-snatchers

The University of Edinburgh was an internationally recognised centre for medical science throughout the Georgian period and beyond, but until 1832 the faculty of anatomy suffered from a chronic shortage of cadavers suitable for dissection. The trouble was that until that date the only legal supply, the corpses of executed criminals specifically sentenced to be dissected by the court, was dwindling rapidly. Changes in the law, in the growth of Britain's prisons, and in public opinion meant that the number of executions in the early nineteenth century was falling rapidly. At the same time the number of cadavers needed was rising due to the rapid expansion of the country's medical schools. This crisis led to anatomists offering ever-increasing sums for fresh cadavers; by the late 1820s it was in the order of £10, the equivalent of 1,000 GBP (or 1,500 USD) today. This was enough, in an age when the average worker's annual income was considerably less, to tempt some families to deliver their recently deceased loved ones to the anatomists' dissecting tables.

It was also enough to tempt others to take up the habit of illegally removing corpses from their graves. These body-snatchers, or resurrectionists as they were sometimes known, were undoubtedly encouraged by the fact that the courts tended to turn a blind eye to the practice, seeing it as a necessary evil. In England body-snatching was technically a misdemeanour at common law, not a felony, but in Scotland a completely distinctive system of law survived the political union of 1707 and under Scottish law it was indeed a crime that could be prosecuted; the fact is though, that very few were. Very few cases ever came to court, and when they did it was usually because the relatives had claimed a stolen body, or because it was felt that an offender had been excessive in his activities. A report in the Glasgow Herald of September 14th 1829 read:

"On Saturday, Bell the resurrectionist was again brought before Baillie Gray, the Sitting Magistrate, in the Police Court, who asked whether the dead bodies of which we gave an account in our last, had been claimed; and on being answered in the negative, the Magistrate observed, that if they had been owned, the prisoner would have been handed over for trial to the Justiciary Court; but as it was, he must dismiss him at present, with the advice that he should be very careful with regard to his future conduct, as, should he ever be found in connection with such a business again, the present charge would certainly tell most powerfully against him."

In the light of this level of leniency in the courts, it is scarcely surprising that body-snatching became so widespread. The official attitude was not often shared by the families of the people who were unearthed or by local communities however. There are many instances of body-snatchers caught red-handed in cemeteries and of the subsequent hospitalisation of the culprits. Nor were anatomists exempt from public outrage. The Glasgow Herald of March 3rd 1823 reported:
"Yesterday, between one and two o’clock, a crowd assembled in front of the dissecting room in Duke Street and the doors burst open, and everything contained in it destroyed. The Superintendent and a number of the officers of Police were immediately on the spot, and the appearance of the mob was such that a detachment of the 77th Regiment was sent for. On their approach the crowd dispersed, but in a short time thereafter they assembled in Portland Street, and burst open the outer gate of another dissecting room, when they were immediately checked by Mr Hardie with a party of the 77th. They then made a sortie to a dissecting room in College Street; and finally between seven and eight o’clock they made their appearance in front of Dr Jeffray’s laundry, at the College, suspected to be a dissecting room."

Various means were adopted by local authorities and families to safeguard the remains of the deceased. Mort-safes (illustration above) were grills of heavy iron placed over the graves of the recently deceased by those with the means to pay for them, and are still commonly seen in Scottish graveyards. Communal mort-safes were sometimes purchased with parish funds, and were rented by relatives of the dead and used as a temporary burial place until such times as the body was reckoned to be no longer of potential use to anatomists; only very fresh corpses attracted a fee. Still to be seen too are graveyard watchtowers (illustration below), which were manned at night by the relatives of the recently deceased or by persons employed by them. However, there are records of occasional "gamekeepers turned poachers", and a family usually performed these duties out of love and respect for their late loved one as well as mistrust of the sort of person who would offer to keep watch for them.

In Scotland the body-snatchers worked mainly in winter, as the cold weather helped preserve corpses and it was dark in the early evening; very often early police forces did not come on duty until 8pm, so between 6pm and 8pm was the prime time for the resurrection men. One method they used was to dig at the head end of a recent burial, digging with a wooden spade as this was quieter than metal. When they reached the coffin they would break it open, put a rope around the corpse and drag it out. The British medical journal The Lancet of 1896 (147 (3777): 185–7) reported another method used in earlier periods. 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 usually 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... [in the 1820s] body snatching was frequent". Evidence of the extent of the practice is necessarily difficult to obtain, but the number of watchtowers and mort-safes surviving in Scotland to the present day is surely an indication that the threat was considered very real. The Glasgow Herald of March 9th 1829 records a rare contemporary discovery:

"For a considerable time past there has existed a suspicion that the trade of disinterring bodies from the graves of the burying ground of the parish of Kirkmichael, county of Ayr, has been carried on. On the morning of Thursday the 5th inst., the populace insisted on the right of opening some graves, where recent interment had taken place; the parish minister resisted the attempt, advising a more regular mode of procedure, but the anxiety to ascertain the fate of their friends and companions was too powerful to admit of such delay, and to work they went. In the first instance they were too successful, for the empty coffins realised their fears. This prompted the work of examination, and at the close of the day, there were seventeen graves, where interment had taken place within the last six months, which were robbed of their inmates. Today, the 6th, the work of examination was continued, and four more have been found in the same situation; the scene is melancholy - the empty coffins are brought up, and the dead clothes, fresh and white, exhibited across the graves; the relatives are rushing from every part of the parish to know the fate of their departed friends, and it is not easy to describe the anguish they feel when their removal is discovered. The perpetrators have, in some instances, left the bodies of such as have not suited their purpose in a situation too shocking to describe. I visited the place, and was not a little surprised to see a work of this kind done by a populace, without any leader to direct their movements, with as much calmness and order as if they had been paying the last tribute to those they esteem."

Sometimes the methods employed were ingenious. One successful resurrectionist by night, grave digger by day, would take the body out of the coffin prior to burial and place it in a sack on top. While burying the coffin it was easy to pull the sack up as the soil level rose. At the top of the grave the body would be covered with a thin laver of soil, easily removed when he returned for the body under cover of night. Corpses were also obtained before burial. Snatchers watched the crowded lodging and workhouses in cities, paying careful attention to news of sickness and imminent death. As soon as death struck snatchers could appear claiming to be grieving relatives of the deceased. Merry Andrew, a member of an Edinburgh resurrection gang, would present himself as a relation of the departed and after mourning over the body would depart- ostensibly to arrange the funeral. He would quickly return with a horse and hearse, often accompanied by another gang member called Praying Howard. Howard, dressed as a minister, prayed over the body before the two took their leave with the corpse and with the confidence of the residents.

In time the practice evolved into its ultimate and most sinister form. William Burke and William Hare are Edinburgh's most infamous suppliers of corpses to the medical fraternity, but they were not body-snatchers. The time, trouble and risk involved was neatly bypassed using the simple expedient of murdering their victims. A fuller account of this pair will appear in this blog in due course, but for now it is enough to note that the notoriety of this case and the outrage it created led directly to the Anatomy Act of 1832, which allowed unclaimed bodies and those donated by relatives to be used for the study of anatomy, and required the licensing of anatomy teachers. This UK act of parliament essentially ended the body snatching trade.