been professor of anatomy for fifty-eight years, and must, in that time, have contributed a prodigious amount to the study of medicine. Back then, as a young man, he was impulsive, intelligent, experimental. All these things. Mercurial. You could never quite pin him down.
There were those who called him a mere sawbones, myself included at that time, albeit in private, and only when I was in conversation with Thomas Brown. There were those who thought he was a genius. Perhaps both judgements were true. Most of his qualities would seem to be admirable. And yet, there was something repellent about his demeanour, or I always found it so. There was something about his ruthlessness in the pursuit of knowledge that gave the observer – this observer, at any rate – a certain feeling of revulsion, like a premonition of dreadful things to come. And yet, he was in no way to blame. In no way at all.
Much later, after all was said and done, something happened that may serve to explain both Jeffrey’s genius and my misgivings . You will no doubt have heard the tale. I was not there. Oh no. I was certainly not there. And somehow, I do not think that Thomas would have been there either. Not by then. He would have learned his lesson all too well by then I think, and he had even resigned as lecturer in botany a couple of years earlier. But Professor Jeffray’s courses in anatomy were still exceedingly popular. The numbers who enrolled annually were sometimes as many as two hundred. And as with botany, samples were required. But these were not things that could be gathered by young lads venturing into the countryside on fine days in June. Jeffray needed human specimens. And he needed them to be dead. Not surprisingly, there was some difficulty in obtaining subjects for demonstration. Executed criminals were fair game, but there were few such in Glasgow at that time. I would never have called this a law-abiding town, but murder was still something of a rarity.
However, in 1818, one Matthew Clydesdale, a weaver from Airdrie, was arrested and charged with murdering an old man in a fit of drunken violence. I suppose Clydesdale was neither better nor worse than many a working man who indulges a little too freely and loses his temper, but in this case the results were tragic. Clydesdale was a big man, and his much older victim could not defend himself. He fell down, banged his head on a flagstone and died. Clydesdale was brought to trial in Glasgow, found guilty of a murder, which was never, I think, his intention, and sentenced to be hung, with the additional judgement that his body was to be anatomised afterwards, a slightly more merciful version of the old, barbarous custom of hanging, drawing and quartering which was generally meted out to Scottish patriots by their neighbours, and latterly to young men such as Andrew Hardie and John Baird, tricked into acts of treason. There had not been a public execution, or indeed any execution for murder, in Glasgow for ten years. As I said, this is by no means a law-abiding town, but murder was still enough of a rarity to be cause for comment, speculation, curiosity . It was by no means the only offence for which the penalty was death. Robbery was also a capital offence, but the additional sentence of being sent to the anatomists was generally the prerogative of foul murderers. Unless one of the professors tipped the wink to the hangman, and there were no close relatives with a prior claim on the body, relatives moreover who were ready to defend it from those who might come to dig it up again in the night. There was a highly lucrative trade in resurrected bodies at that time, certainly enough to encourage a few unscrupulous individuals to cut out the inconvenience of natural death and burial and facilitate the provision of fresh bodies themselves.
Many people came to watch the execution that late autumn day. It was a regular day’s entertainment. I remember the crowds, although I myself kept well
There were those who called him a mere sawbones, myself included at that time, albeit in private, and only when I was in conversation with Thomas Brown. There were those who thought he was a genius. Perhaps both judgements were true. Most of his qualities would seem to be admirable. And yet, there was something repellent about his demeanour, or I always found it so. There was something about his ruthlessness in the pursuit of knowledge that gave the observer – this observer, at any rate – a certain feeling of revulsion, like a premonition of dreadful things to come. And yet, he was in no way to blame. In no way at all.
Much later, after all was said and done, something happened that may serve to explain both Jeffrey’s genius and my misgivings . You will no doubt have heard the tale. I was not there. Oh no. I was certainly not there. And somehow, I do not think that Thomas would have been there either. Not by then. He would have learned his lesson all too well by then I think, and he had even resigned as lecturer in botany a couple of years earlier. But Professor Jeffray’s courses in anatomy were still exceedingly popular. The numbers who enrolled annually were sometimes as many as two hundred. And as with botany, samples were required. But these were not things that could be gathered by young lads venturing into the countryside on fine days in June. Jeffray needed human specimens. And he needed them to be dead. Not surprisingly, there was some difficulty in obtaining subjects for demonstration. Executed criminals were fair game, but there were few such in Glasgow at that time. I would never have called this a law-abiding town, but murder was still something of a rarity.
However, in 1818, one Matthew Clydesdale, a weaver from Airdrie, was arrested and charged with murdering an old man in a fit of drunken violence. I suppose Clydesdale was neither better nor worse than many a working man who indulges a little too freely and loses his temper, but in this case the results were tragic. Clydesdale was a big man, and his much older victim could not defend himself. He fell down, banged his head on a flagstone and died. Clydesdale was brought to trial in Glasgow, found guilty of a murder, which was never, I think, his intention, and sentenced to be hung, with the additional judgement that his body was to be anatomised afterwards, a slightly more merciful version of the old, barbarous custom of hanging, drawing and quartering which was generally meted out to Scottish patriots by their neighbours, and latterly to young men such as Andrew Hardie and John Baird, tricked into acts of treason. There had not been a public execution, or indeed any execution for murder, in Glasgow for ten years. As I said, this is by no means a law-abiding town, but murder was still enough of a rarity to be cause for comment, speculation, curiosity . It was by no means the only offence for which the penalty was death. Robbery was also a capital offence, but the additional sentence of being sent to the anatomists was generally the prerogative of foul murderers. Unless one of the professors tipped the wink to the hangman, and there were no close relatives with a prior claim on the body, relatives moreover who were ready to defend it from those who might come to dig it up again in the night. There was a highly lucrative trade in resurrected bodies at that time, certainly enough to encourage a few unscrupulous individuals to cut out the inconvenience of natural death and burial and facilitate the provision of fresh bodies themselves.
Many people came to watch the execution that late autumn day. It was a regular day’s entertainment. I remember the crowds, although I myself kept well
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