Safe house kept bodies away from grave robbers
DIGGING INTO THE PAST with Dr Murray Cook
The Watch House
I was thinking about the Top of the Town Cemetery this week.
Normally by now I’d be starting to help organise volunteers who give short guided tours round the cemetery to tourists on the way up or down from the castle. We did it in patches last year when the restrictions allowed, all socially distanced of course and I’m hoping we can start again this year, fingers crossed.
As you all know the cemetery is wonderful and great to wonder around looking at angels, cherubs and green men but you get so much more if you know a little about whose grave you’re looking at and what their story is.
The picture here is of the foundation of the Watch House built to deter grave robbers after 1822 when the corpse of Mary Witherspoon was stolen by the grave digger James McNab for illegal dissection at the request of a medical student John Forrest.
There was a bit of a panic and the Watch House was built on existing burial plots using older grave stones. The idea was for relatives or guards to stay in the house for a few nights until the body rotted and was no good for dissection.
Grave robbing stopped being an issue after 1832 when the Anatomy Act was passed regulating the supply of bodies of criminals to medical students.
The Watch House along with the walls of the old cemetery and most of the wall monuments were demolished in 1857 when the Valley Cemetery was built, the idea being to integrate the old and the new and I think they did a wonderful job.
Hopefully you can come on one the tours if and when we start them up.