Salvage Rites: And Other Stories

by Ian Watson

  Perhaps Burke wasn’t, strictly speaking, a ‘resurrection man’. That sobriquet properly attached to those grave robbers who dug up freshly buried corpses to sell to the medical schools. Yet Burke took this grim process one stage further, short-cutting the brief sojourn in the graveyard. Thus in a sense he and Hare were the kings of the resurrection men. The panic-stricken public certainly regarded them as such, and anxiety lasted for years, especially with Hare on the loose.

  So how did Burke’s right ear come into my family, pickled in a jar of formalin? And a hundred miles south from the scene of the crimes! On Tyneside, in the North of England. That’s quite a story; though it’ll be overshadowed by the story I have to tell you presently…

  Back in the 1820s, my greatsomething grandfather and his family lived here in Grosvenor Place, North Shields, in what was then a rather elegant, newly built Georgian terrace house. My ancestor Mr Park – and that’s my name too, Jim Park, pleased to meet you, though we can’t shake hands – he owned a thriving paint shop in Clive Street, supplying both domestic and marine customers. He was also a great fancier of our native bird life. This house in Grosvenor Place was full of cages, confining twittering and trilling and cheeping bundles of feathers. He had songthrushes, nightingales, and the mottled skylark. The lively chiff-chaff warbled its ‘chivy-chavy!’ He owned yellow wagtails, which look like golden-green canaries, though these only squeak sharply – and greenfinches, forever busy washing themselves, warbling their humble, mellow ‘tway’ – and there were twittering sand martins, prevented from burrowing into their favourite clay banks like little engineers; just as the larks were prevented from ascending, the wagtails from migrating, the chiff-chaffs from weaving their oven-nests. Still, who’s to say that these birds were less fortunate than their wild kin? Even if frustrated; even if the insect-eaters amongst them probably had a diet of fish-bait?

  ‘How,’ I hear you ask, ‘do you know so much about the aviary of your Grandad several times removed?’

  ‘Ah,’ I reply, ‘that’s because I’ve heard his birds. I’m an ear-witness to them.’

  ‘You’re a… what?’

  ‘Wait… and be amazed.’

  Mr Park obtained all his birds from the Papageno of North Shields, Joney Aird, who trapped them with nets and limed twigs and whatever – ranging over the whole locality from the ponds on the Town Moor to the woods of Jesmond Dene and Holywell Dene, from the corn fields to the sand dunes. Joney Aird sold his feathery captives from a stall on the fish quay. Some skippers liked to take a bird to sea, to remind them of the softness of the land, to distract from the harsh screaming of the gulls. Jones, who was on something resembling friendly terms with Mr Park, frequently called at the paint shop in Clive Street.

  The bird catcher kept his things in a dilapidated attic above Brown’s Flour Mill. He was a twittery creature of nature himself. Behold his patched-up raggy jacket, often torn by crawling through briars till it seemed like a sort of plumage worn by a man who was half bird himself. And could he whistle! Not Mozart, not popular airs, not hymns – but a kind of dawn chorus all of his own, which seemed to bring woodland and pondside to the fish quay. Joney lured birds by this means, and was very knowledgeable about their habits. A fey, strange fellow.

  ‘Do you mean he was soft in the head?’

  ‘I do not. He was always canny with his coppers, though he never accumulated too many. I refer to the Irish in him, the leprechaun strain.’

  ‘So why, in the Winter of 1828,’ you may well ask, ‘should Mr Park have decided that this same Joney Aird was in actuality William Hare, murderer and resurrection man?’

  ‘I may well ask,’ you say.

  ‘Ah,’ I respond, ‘you must understand the nature of public hysteria.’

  It was on the night between 21st and 22nd February 1823, almost six years before the revelations about the dreadful duo, that Dr Greenhow of Dockwray Square, North Shields, was called to the bedside of a Mrs Gaunt. The Gaunts only lived in Tyne Street a hundred yards away. After examining the lady and returning home, Dr Greenhow made up a suitable prescription and roused his apprentice out of bed to deliver it. Half asleep, and knowing that it was no distance at all he had to go, the apprentice – young John Margetts – merely dragged on trousers and coat, ignored hat or stockings, and ran out.

  He never returned. Enquiries next day revealed that Margetts had delivered the medicine, only halting briefly at the Gaunts’. Had he then run away to sea, on impulse in the middle of the night? Unlikely! When John Margetts quit Dr Greenhow’s house he might have looked slipshod, yet in other respects he was diligent. He was almost ending the term of his apprenticeship. He had never shown the slightest interest in a mariner’s life.

  A mason called Mr Profit, who lived at the end of Church Street, reported hearing a scuffle in adjacent Tyne Street at that hour of the night, and a voice crying out, ‘What are you doing with me?’ Furthermore, a watchman stationed at Chapman’s Bank in Howard Street had witnessed two men leading another down Union Street. He supposed that the man they led was drunk, not an uncommon sight, so he took no more notice.

  Had agents of the Honourable East India Company kidnapped Margetts for service abroad, the way that they had kidnapped other victims? Had they fastened him under hatches in a ship in the Tyne till the hue and cry could die away?

  If so, it failed to die away. During the succeeding weeks and months and even years the whole of Shields remained in a feverish froth over the lad’s disappearance. For years the offices of the Hon. East India Company in London’s Leadenhall Street were bombarded with passionate letters and pleas and suggestions from the citizens of Shields. Deny as they might that anyone called Margetts was on their books, they weren’t believed. When news came that Afghan rebels had captured an army surgeon with a name that resembled Margetts, hysteria broke out afresh on Tyneside. Then a soldier came forward to declare that he had known Margetts in India. Now an army surgeon, Margetts had described his kidnapping. A public meeting was held to hear the soldier’s tale. But later the same soldier wrote to the newspapers confessing that the Gaunt family had bribed him with £100 and the offer of their prettiest daughter in marriage – to clear them of suspicion.

  For yes, the Hon. East India Company were not the only targets of calumny. When the news of Burke and Hare finally broke, a fellow swore that he had seen John Margetts enter the Gaunts’ house that night and never come out again. Rumours soon spread to the effect that the Gaunts’ little son – who must have been rather young six years earlier – had blurted out in school that ‘they had soon done for Margetts, and put him in a box’. Before long the distressed Gaunts were having to issue writs for defamation. They won damages, but no matter; in danger of their lives from a half-crazed public they had to flee the town. New tenants moved into their house in Tyne Street, and presently a sizable skeleton was dug up from the back garden. This proved to be that of a Newfoundland dog, beloved pet of the previous occupants. But no matter; no one quite believed it. The house was branded as haunted.

  Any stranger visiting the neighbourhood became an instant suspect. One fellow who moved in, accompanied by long boxes – which actually contained machinery for spinning worsted cloth – was nearly lynched. He did escape with his life after the boxes were jemmied open at his insistence; though he wasn’t any too welcome to pursue further business in Shields. The boxes might have contained bodies; and might do so again.

  Oh I heard it all. The rumours, the whispers, the howls of the mob crying ‘Burke him! Burke him!’ at the unlucky owner of those boxes.

  As for the family of the missing lad, at first they enjoyed the warmest public sympathy, and derived much practical benefit from this. A local bard gave tongue:

  ‘Good people, to my tale give ear,

  Sad, shocking news you soon shall hear,

  For I have lost my darling son.

  Alas! alas! I am undone.

  I fear he is no more.

  Two ruffians stole my son away,
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  Twas on the twenty-second day,

  At five o’clock on Thursday morn.

  My heart! my heart! my son is gone,

  And now he is no more.

  He with some medicine was sent,

  To cure the sick was his intent,

  When these two ruffians seiz’d their prey,

  They bound my son – took him away -

  And never yet was found.

  Now, with a mother share a part,

  And judge the feelings of my heart

  As I am left for to deplore

  My dearest son I’ll see no more -

  I hope he’s happy now.’

  I have omitted several verses.

  However, the fickle populace of Shields began to take umbrage at the way the fortunes of the Margetts had improved thanks to that selfsame kindly populace. Could it be that the Margetts knew perfectly well what had become of their son – but weren’t saying, in case the stream of charity dried up? Thus suspicion fell upon the Margetts household too. As a result, John’s mother went insane. Every day she would make her way to a nearby ash-heap, and poke it for hours trying to find her son’s slippers. Mr Margetts sank into imbecilic dotage. John’s brother eventually became a lunatic pauper confined in the Tynemouth workhouse. What mumblings, what ravings.

  Let’s call another witness. I summon Mrs Cornforth of the Whitby Arms in the Low Street near the New Quay. Mrs Cornforth declared that on the night in question she heard a cry of murder. Upon looking out, she saw two men dragging a third man along the Low Street. This trio never arrived at the New Quay, otherwise – ‘Next witness, please!’ – the watchman posted outside the Northumberland Arms would have seen them.

  Thus the three men must have cut down the lane towards Brown’s Flour Mill.

  By now Dr Greenhow’s son, Mr Conrad Haverkam Greenhow, was pursuing his own enquiries assisted by the Reverend Mr Neal from South Shields, an Anglican precursor of Chesterton’s Father Brown. Procuring a warrant, the amateur detectives searched the mill and found evidence of a struggle in Joney Aird’s attic in the shape of a torn leather neck collar. True, the collar could have been ripped during an over-hasty exit from a briar patch clutching a frantic song thrush. But Joney Aird had also disappeared! The bird had flown the nest.

  Aird, Hare.

  Hare. Aird. Do you note a resemblance?

  No? Well, Mr Greenhow and Mr Neal did. Struck by this, and by the puzzle of where Joney Aird had vanished to, the two gentlemen were electrified by the news from Edinburgh about Hare’s arrest, and Burke’s, and their terrible crimes; as was the whole country. Burke and Hare hysteria reinforced the local Margetts hysteria. Ignoring the conundrum of how Joney Aird could simultaneously have been trapping linnets on Tyneside and stifling down-and-outs in Auld Reekie – unless he metamorphosed into a bird of passage himself, and a fast one at that – Mr Greenhow prevailed on the bird-loving Mr Park to set out post-haste for Edinburgh to identify Hare as Aird; and pressed guineas on him for his fare.

  Alas, winter’s storms and snow drifts held up the coach, with the result that Mr Park arrived in Edinburgh only after Hare had been released (to vanish, like a bird on the wind), and Burke had been newly executed, though not yet buried in quicklime. Because Mr Park had travelled such a long way all for nothing, the warder in charge of Burke’s corpse asked if the gentleman would care for a piece of the murderer as a memento.

  ‘Wey aye, Aa’d thank ye!’ said Mr Park, who must bring back something to Shields for his trouble, apart from a chill.

  The warder promptly took out his clasp-knife and cut off Burke’s right ear. He presented this to Mr Park, who hurried to an apothecary’s shop to have the flap of flesh embalmed in a jar of formalin. Thus for many years on the mantelshelf in Grosvenor Place the last remaining earthly trace of Burke floated in its little preservative bath.

  But maybe there exist situations beyond good and evil, when ordinary reality bends a little, into the shape of an ear, say?

  During my childhood that ear was an accepted part of the furniture. Some visitors would glance at it askance and refrain from comment, perhaps imagining that it was a pickled cancer, souvenir of a successful operation, or even something gynaecological. Later in life I read how the poet Verlaine’s mother – I think it was Verlaine -kept the preserved foetuses (assorted sizes) of all his miscarried would-be brothers and sisters in a line-up of jars on her mantelshelf.

  But if someone asked my mother, she would explain matter-of-factly, ‘That’s the ear of William Burke the murderer, who sold his victims’ bodies to be cut up by anatomy students in Edinburgh.’ And she would add, ‘It’s been in the family for generations.’

  This was what she said to Cousin Dick from Canada, when he visited England in 1947 or so. Though the war was over, rationing was still strict and our relations in Vancouver continued to send food parcels containing tins of red salmon, which my mother would serve up in a white sauce dabbled with vinegar poured over mashed potatoes.

  Cousin Dick seemed to think we should show our gratitude by being healthier, cleaner in mind and body and household management than he found us. A pickled ear was hardly a wholesome antique.

  ‘I guess the Red Indians used to take scalps,’ he remarked, looking baffled at the warped uncleanliness of the old country as my mother agitated the jar, bumping the ear from side to side. The mantelpiece – and by extension the house – would have lacked a certain character without it.

  I was only five at the time, and I remember asking, ‘Did they punish the man by cutting him up? Was that the only way they could stop him?’

  I imagined a story-book ogre whom the citizens of Edinburgh finally trapped in a pit they dug; they could only destroy his power by cutting him into little bits and sending the pieces all over the kingdom to be kept securely in separate locations, one of these being our front room. I gained the idea that we were, from father to son to grandson, Custodians of the Ear. An important, secret duty.

  ‘Why, of course they didn’t cut him into pieces, Jim. They hanged him.’

  ‘Did they hang him by his ear? Is that how it came off?’

  One of the teachers at the school where I had just started used to twist the ears of older boys who annoyed him, till they howled. Did it kill you if you had your ear torn off? Fear flooded me.

  My mother chuckled. ‘Of course not. They cut it off afterwards, and gave it to us.’

  To us, us especially.

  ‘Scalps, yeah,’ muttered Cousin Dick, knitting his brows. Here was some primitive dirty native ritual which his own modern, sanitized country had outgrown. After years of generosity, to save us from malnutrition, skin diseases, web eyes, or stunted growth, he had come all this way thousands of miles along the Canadian Pacific Railway and over the Atlantic Ocean to visit the old home country, and had discovered us roosting in this dingy room in a drab town with a pickled ear as our mascot, our totem.

  ‘What’s an Atomy?’ I asked my mother. ‘Is that like bombs?’

  ‘Anatomy is the body,’ she explained. ‘The parts of the body. How they join together inside you.’

  Cousin Dick looked increasingly offended, and in fact he made his excuses within quarter of an hour and departed to tour Scotland’s glens and heathery moors where maybe other branches of our family were neater and less sordid. Cousin Dick made his living in the salmon-canning industry, but fish guts were one thing; a human ear in a jar was another. The ear had large lobes and little brown hairs sprouting from inside, with a blob of orange wax still attached. Ear-wax! It hadn’t even been cleaned out. Yeah, that was the score – I imagine his mind ticking over – he had sent all those cans of good red fish flesh, and we showed him our own version, our own satire on his kindness: a preserved lug-hole. Food parcels ceased thereafter.

  Before too long it was 1951, which was the year of the Festival of Britain. Down in London, in Battersea Park, the silver Skylon pointed up at the clouds just like a rocket-ship in the new comic, The Eagle – and the Dome
of Discovery was a larger version of the flying saucers in which the green Treens from Venus landed during a village cricket match in the far-off South of England.

  I compared the coloured pictures in The Eagle with the photos of the Festival in the New Chronicle and dearly wished we could visit London. But my father hated the smoky smell of steam trains, which made him sick – he had chest trouble; and the bus journey down the Great North Road would be a ghastly, cramped twelve hours at least. Besides, the cost!

  In a fit of frustrated hope, when no one was about, I sneaked into the front room – our ceremonial room, which was otherwise unused. Maybe if I held the ear, maybe if I rubbed it genie-in-bottle style, my dream of visiting the Festival would come true?

  After all those years the lid was tight. I almost skidded the jar off the mantelpiece to shatter on the tiles of the fireplace.

  Sticking in two fingers, I removed the dripping ear and dried it on my hanky then dabbed up the drops I’d spilt here and there. An ear’s quite like a soft sea-shell, isn’t it? You can listen to the sea in sea-shells, the hiss of the surf.

  So I held Burke’s ear to my own ear.

  ‘Chivy-chavy!’ cried a birdy voice. ‘Chivy-chavy!’

  All at once a dozen birds were cheeping, twittering, and trilling. I was barkening to this same front room of ours a century and a quarter ago, when it had housed many of Mr Park’s bird cages!

  Of course I didn’t realize that immediately. I wasn’t yet aware of my ancestor’s hobby. Mainly I thought that the ear was kept under liquid to drown the noise it would otherwise make.

  Yet when I jerked the ear to arm’s length I couldn’t hear a thing.

  So maybe the jar and the liquid were a device to deter people from picking the ear up idly from the mantelpiece, and hearing secret things? (I wasn’t too much au fait with the chemistry of preservation.) What could be secret about bird-song, so much like the warblings of morse code on the short wave radio band?