Burke and Hare lookout

Back-blip for yesterday since Virgin Media broadband decided to die a slow death in our area last night...must have been all those ghosties...

Anyway, this was meant to be yesterday's Halloween-y photo.  It's taken in the St Cuthbert's churchyard.  The church is located at the bottom of Castle Rock, Edinburgh, on the corner of Lothian Road and Princes Street.  A church has stood on the site since 850AD, making it Edinburgh's oldest building.  One of the stained glass windows, depicting David going out to meet Goliath, was made by Tiffany Glass Company of New York, one of only two or three Tiffany windows in the UK.  The watch-tower in this photo was built in 1847 to ward off grave-robbers, as this was rife at the time.  Burke and Hare were two notable grave-robbers of that time - selling the cadavers to a Dr Robert Knox for dissection at his anatomy lectures.  They committed around 16 murders in 10 months to greedily claim the £7 10shillings they were paid for each corpse.  Most of the victims were lodgers in Hare's house.  They were eventually caught when one of the lodgers found the body of a fellow lodger and therefore the crime was found out.  The police suspected Burke and Hare had carried out many more murders, although this was not proven.  Burke was hanged for his crimes and his skeleton is on display at Edinburgh Anatomical Museum.  Hare was released from prison in 1829 and was chased by angry crowds everywhere he went.  He was eventually dropped off by police on Annan Road and told to make his way to the English border.  There are no records of his fate from then on. 

The watch-tower is currently for rent, should anyone fancy an unusual piece of history for an office...

Extra photo of one of the spooky-walkways through the churchyard.