have been published
ample accounts of the resurrection-men in Scotland.[1] For this reason,
Edinburgh has been omitted from the present work.

As to the genuineness of the Diary there can be no doubt. It was presented
to the Royal College of Surgeons of England by the late Sir Thomas
Longmore. In his early days, Sir Thomas was dresser to Bransby Cooper, and
assisted him in writing the _Life of Sir Astley Cooper_.

At the suggestion of Lord Abinger, it was decided to introduce an account
of the resurrection-men into the book. The information for this was partly
obtained by Mr. Longmore from personal communication with some of the
resurrection-men, who were then living in London. One of these handed over
portions of a Diary he had kept during his resurrectionist days. This was
preserved for some years at Netley, and was afterwards presented to the
College, as stated above. A few extracts from the Diary were printed in
the _Life of Sir Astley Cooper_.

The information respecting the resurrection-men is very scattered; the two
most useful works for getting up this subject are the _Life of Astley
Cooper_ before mentioned, and the _Report of the Committee on Anatomy_
published in 1828. Most of the detailed information has to be sought for
in the newspapers of the period. The accounts there given are, however,
generally of such an exaggerated character that it is often very difficult
to arrive at the truth. When any fresh scandal had given prominence to the
doings of the resurrection-men, the newspapers saw "Burking" in every
trivial case of assault. If a child were lost, the paragraph announcing
the fact was headed, "Another supposed case of Burking." Reports of the
most ridiculous character were duly chronicled as facts by the newspapers
of the day. Sometimes over a hundred bodies were supposed to have been
found in some building, and it was expected that several persons of
eminence would be named in the subsequent proceedings. Search in the
papers nearly always fails to find any further mention of the case.

In reading these accounts it must be remembered that "Burking" did not
always mean killing a person for the purpose of selling the body, but it
referred to the mode adopted by Burke and Hare in killing their victims,
viz., suffocation. Elizabeth Ross is called a "Burker," and may be found
so described in Haydn's _Dictionary of Dates_. She murdered an old woman
named Catherine Walsh, but in the report of her trial the