Body Snatching in Montrose

 Most people have heard of Burke and Hare and their nefarious way of ensuring that the best corpses were provided for the keen medical anatomists of Edinburgh. But body snatching (which sounds marginally better than body stealing) was practised far and wide. 

From the Montrose Review on Friday 21 December, 1827, we have the following account of this dark activity:

The people in this neighbourhood have not, for a long time, had their peace of mind broken by the grieving thought, that sepulchres of their dead were violate by the profance hands of body-stealers. They heard only, certainly not without feelings of indignation and sorrow, of resurrectionists at a distance: they now find that there are such unfeeling wretches grown up among themselves; and the whole vicinity is struch with astonishment at the mortifying disclosure. On Monday morning, a box was brought, by the Fettercairn carrier, to the office of Cobourg, addressed "B. C. & Co., North Place, Edinburgh," with the instructions to be forwarded with haste. The proprietor of the coach, entertaining suspicion of its contents, examined the box more minutely and found it to emit a most disagreeable smell. Having ascertained from whence it came, he communicated his supicion to a Justice of the Peace, who granted warrant for the apprehension of the individual from whom, the carrier received the box. In the meantime, it was opened by the authority of a Justice and was found to contain the remains of an aged man of the name of Kinnear which were interred in the Old Churchyard of Logie on Friday week.

The individual suspected of disturbing his ashes - and who is also suspected of having carryied on the trade of a body-snatcher for some time - is a young fellow of the name of Burnett, who resides about the Brae of Rosemount, and who was brought here by the officers the same evening. After undergoing an examination he was committed to the Jail, for further precognition - for which purpose the Sheriff-Substitute arrive last night; but it was wit some difficuty that the fellow could be got conveyed thither from the Town House, as the populace would fain have taken summary justice upon the wretch, who, they believed, had committed the gross violation. The corpse was re-interred by the deceased's friends on Wednesday. The resurrectionists seem to have been extremely busy, or extremely unfortunate, last week as, besides the above instance, two bodies, also on their journey to the Scotch metropolis, have been detained - the one at Carlisle and the other in the north country.