PANEL 76    The Forth and Clyde Canal, Burke and Hare

James Hutton’s investment in a canal linking the east and west of Scotland was worthwhile and, in the early 19th century, work began on digging a canal between Fountainbridge in Edinburgh and Port Dundas in Glasgow. The men doing the labouring work were known as navigators or navvies and many of these were Irish. The most notorious were William Burke and William Hare who committed a series of unusual murders in 1828, the details of which were very memorable. They sold the corpses of their 16 victims to Dr Robert Knox, an anatomist at Edinburgh University who needed fresh bodies for dissection. He charged fees for his lectures and, although he was never arrested or brought to trial, the Edinburgh mob and the press believed that Knox was complicit in the murders. When Burke was convicted and sentenced to death (Hare turned King’s evidence and was granted immunity from prosecution), the judge specified that his body be publicly dissected. This famous case did not spark any anti-Irish rioting but it did spawn many films, TV programmes, plays, novels and songs.

 

Panel stitched by:

Whippity Stouries

Christine Simm

Jean Taylor

Fiona Wilkie

Stitched in:

Bo’ness