TheGlasgowStory 

Skip Navigation / Jump to Content

Featured Images

 Caledonia Road UP Church
Caledonia Road UP Church

High Street, 1955
High Street, 1955

Watching and Warding

GUL, Sp Coll, Northern Looking Glass

*Open in New Window
Watching and Warding

Coloured cartoon from the Northern Looking Glass 18 August 1825, the third in the series "Essay on Modern Medical Education". Entitled "Watching and Warding" it depicts people gathered around a lantern in a graveyard, canoodling and drinking.

Such was the extent of body snatching from graveyards in the city, that citizens would gather in the grave yard for several nights after a burial to ensure that the body of a friend or relative was not dug up by "resurrectionists" seeking fresh cadavres to sell to a medical school for dissection. In this cartoon, the "watchers" have turned their vigil into a night of drinking and merriment. While they carouse the body snatchers have exhumed a body and are sneaking it over the kirkyard wall still wrapped in its mortcloth.

Reference: Sp Coll Bh14-x.8

Glasgow University Library, Special Collections

Keywords:
cadavres, canoodling, cemeteries, corpses, dissection, drinking, drunkenness, Glasgow Looking Glass, grave robers, gravestones, graveyards, lithographs, mortcloths, Northern Looking Glass, resurrectionists, watchers, watching and warding



Quick Search


Photo Album

You have 0 images in your photo album.

View Photo Album

Log-In (Optional)

username:
password:
Not a user? Register now for FREE!

Other Options