Grave Robbing and Murder in Georgian Britain

 Astley Cooper (1768-1841) was one of the most innovative surgeons and anatomists of the early nineteenth century. He pioneered several significant operations and added much to knowledge of the body and pathology. There is a darker side to his story, however, one which reveals much about the relationships between power and poverty.

Cooper, who hailed from Norfolk, had an amazing ability to secure bodies for dissection, for himself and his medical pupils. He once bragged before a parliamentary inquiry into the body snatching trade that he could get anyone's body to dissect if he wanted it badly enough. 

Cooper' main providers were known as resurrectionists, or sack 'em up men. They could earn good money stealing corpses from graves or securing them otherwise before burial. (Image: "The Resurrectionists," c.1775, by Thomas Rowlandson).

In some cases, we don't know how many, the body snatchers didn't wait until the subjects were dead. The most famous murdering body snatchers were Burke and Hare in Edinburgh, who gave us the word "burking" for the procedure. (Image: Burke and Hare smothering a victim -- one of 16 people they murdered).

Less well known than Burke and Hare are the trio of Bishop, Williams, and May. They are known as the "London Burkers." Their operation was uncovered in 1831 after the notorious case of the so-called Italian Boy. The number of their victims is unknown. Bishop and Williams were hung, May died on board a prison ship awaiting transport to Australia. (Image: the London burkers in the dock at their trial)

Several other burkers were executed, and it is likely others were never caught. Cooper got most of his bodies from an organization known as the Borough Gang. They operated out of Southwark, near Guy's and St. Thomas's Hospitals, where Cooper was a surgeon and anatomist. If you have visited Borough Market, you have been in their heartland. 

Some of the Borough Gang members were or had been hospital porters, dissection room assistants, grave diggers, workhouse officers, and church sextons. Their jobs and experience made them useful to the task of acquiring fresh "subjects." 

Snatched bodies could of persons recently buried. In some cases, the corpses were stolen before burial, from poorhouses, graveyard watch houses, morgues, or houses. Watch houses were created to prevent body snatching from the ground, but the watchmen sometimes looked the other way for a fee. 

(Images: Rotherhithe Watch House, next to the burial ground of St. Mary's Rotherhithe, 1824, and historical plaque. This is likely to have been one of the places the Borough Gang got bodies from due to its proximity to Guy's and St. Thomas's Hospitals)

 

Body snatching was not even a crime until 1778. It then became a misdemeanor punishable by a fine and at most a few months in prison. It seems odd that a society that hanged people for petty theft would punish corpse stealing so lightly. But the main focus of the Georgian criminal law was to protect property. A dead body was not considered to be property. (Image: Resurrectionists, by Phiz, 1841)

The illegal source of Cooper's "dissection material" did not much hurt his reputation. His income rose to princely sums. He even operated on a king, removing a sebaceous cyst from the head of George IV in 1820. His Majesty rewarded the surgeon with the baronetcy that made him Sir Astley Cooper, Bart.

The Burke and Hare and Italian Boy scandals did lead to a law that gradually put the resurrectionists out of business. In 1832, Parliament passed the Anatomy Act, which permitted the anatomy schools to acquire the bodies of paupers who died in a workhouse if no one claimed them within three days.

The law infuriated the working classes, those most likely to end their days in a workhouse. The fury increased after Parliament added the Poor Law Act of 1834, which made admission to the workhouse a requirement for receiving poor relief (welfare). 

The New Poor Law was designed to make the workhouse environment as unpleasant as possible, to discourage requests for public assistance. Families were broken up, recipients forced to wear uniforms and fed a spare diet. The poor saw themselves as being criminalized. Previously, the only bodies that could be legally dissected were those executed for murder. (Images: Women and men paupers separated in Victorian workhouses)

Curiously, the Wikipedia article on Sir Astley Cooper does not even mention body snatching.

Further Reading: 

Sarah Wise, The Italian Boy: Murder and Grave Robbery in 1830s London

Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection, and the Destitute

Druin Burch,  Digging up the Dead 

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Environmentalist Robert Burns: On Mice and Men

"The best-laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft agley." This line from Robert Burns' "To a Mouse," published in 1786, has become internationally famous. (Image: Burns by Alexander Nasmyth, 1828)

Burns wrote "To a Mouse" like many of his poems, in a Scots dialect many people find hard to follow without a bit of translation. The relevant line from the poem is often rendered into "standard" English as "The best-laid plans of mice and men oft go awry." 

Burns' poem got a major boost from the success of John Steinbeck's Depression Era novel Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck projects Burns' theme onto the lives of George and Lennie, two down-and-out farm laborers seeking work and a better life. Their plans of buying a little farm with rabbits and settling down "gang agley" in a tragic denouement.

The climate crisis, environmental disasters, and wars in Ukraine and Gaza, make Burns' rumination on the fates of mice and men as relevant as ever. Such events may be likened to the destructive force of Burns' plough. 

In the poem, Burns, an Ayrshire farmer, apologizes to the mouse. His plough has destroyed the "wee beasties'" home. However humble, the mouse had labored hard to make his house secure for winter. 

In addressing the mouse, Burns sounds like a modern environmentalist. He pointedly stresses the interconnectedness of humans and the natural world:

I'm truly sorry Man's dominion,

Has broken Nature's social union,

An' justifies that ill opinion

Which makes thee startle

At me, thy poor, earth-born companion

An' fellow mortal!

Burns goes on to compare the mouse's predicament to his own. He was in financial difficulties at the time (and reaping the consequences of relentless womanizing). In a way, he suggests the mouse is better off because it lacks a sense of the past and future:

Still thou are blest, compared wi' me!

The present only toucheth thee:

But Och! I backward cast my e'e

On prospects drear!

An' forward, tho' I cannot see,

I guess an' fear!

Many of us have had our plans ripped apart by various events. Holidays abroad, business trips, and visits to families and friends churned up and away like the soil under Burns' plough. 

But those are minor disruptions. Things could be worse, much worse. Ask the Ukrainians, the people of Gaza, Pakistan, Turkey, Sudan, and other countries hit by recent disasters. 

Meanwhile, tour companies are advertising great trips for 2024 and beyond. Life must go on. We need to dream, to have something to look forward to, to plan ahead for good or ill. But we can be forgiven if we sometimes feel like the mouse with Burns' plough bearing down on us. 

PS. Burns was looking for new opportunities around the time he wrote "To a Mouse." One of the jobs he nearly took was that of overseer on a Jamaican sugar plantation, which sits in stark contrast to the anti-slavery and egalitarian themes of many of his later poems. 

While preparing for the voyage to the West Indies, he sent his poems to a publisher in Kilmarnock. The volume was published to great acclaim. It is known today as the "Kilmarnock Edition." (Image: Title page to Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, 1786)

The success of the book led Burns to abandon the Jamaican plan. He decided to stay in Scotland, left his Ayrshire farm to his brother, and headed for the bright lights and smoky air of "auld reekie" (Edinburgh). 

He would find further success and wider acclaim in the clubs and salons of the Scottish capital. Before long, he soured on genteel society. He alienated many influential men through his outspoken support for the American and French Revolutions and for political reform in Britain. 

Burns returned to his native Ayrshire and became an excise officer. He died in 1796, possibly from rheumatic heart disease aggravated by hard work. He was 37. (Image: Burns by Alexander Nasmyth, 1787)

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Anatomy and Body Snatching in Georgian Britain: William Hunter

London's Soho district has long been notorious as a place where bodies are for sale. Living bodies. Less well known is its connection to the sale of dead bodies. If you walk along Shaftesbury Ave. to the Lyric Theatre, and turn onto Great Windmill Street, you will find this blue plaque on the side wall of the theatre:  

William Hunter (1718-1783), who once lived and worked here, was one of the most renowned (and often reviled) anatomists of the 18th century. He was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University under William Cullen, then moved to London to train in anatomy and obstetrics at St. George's Hospital under William Smellie. Dissecting decaying bodies was indeed a smelly business, but the name was merely coincidental.  (Image: William Hunter, by Allan Ramsay)

 

Like all anatomists, Hunter needed dead bodies -- for his own research and for teaching anatomy. The number of legally available bodies, then restricted mainly to persons executed for murder, fell far short of the growing need. The number of anatomy schools, especially in London, was increasing, and with it, the demand for fresh corpses. 

For Hunter, the difficulty of obtaining bodies was compounded by the fact that much of his research was in obstetrics. His most famous work, The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus (1774) involved the dissection of a lot of recently deceased pregnant women. 

Few if any of these bodies could have been obtained through normal legal channels. Executed murderers were not numerous enough, and in any case, pregnant women were rarely executed. They did, however, sometimes commit suicide out of a sense of shame or desperation. 

Most anatomical "subjects" had to be illegally "snatched," often from recent burials, sometimes before burial. In the cartoon at the top of this post, an anatomist, almost certainly Hunter, is shown fleeing after a watchman (at left) has discovered him with a woman's body. 

In 2010, Don Shelton argued that some of the women whose bodies Hunter acquired must have been murdered. Cases of people killing to acquire bodies to sell did occur, most famously that of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh in the 1820s, but there is no evidence that Hunter obtained corpses in this way.  

Anatomists and their students sometimes did body snatching themselves, but gangs of "resurrectionists" or "sack 'em up men" increasingly took over that task during the late 18th century. They took bodies from cemeteries, poorhouses, hospital morgues, and probably just found some lying in the streets or floating in rivers. 

Hunter's anatomy school in Great Windmill Street was a mecca for aspiring surgeons and physicians. A certificate of attendance at his courses was highly valued. Many of the most famous surgeons and anatomists of the next generation trained with William Hunter, or his younger brother John. [Image: Certificate of Attendance at William Hunter's lectures.]

Artists were highly interested in Hunter's work. His friends included famous painters and sculptors. In the painting below by Johan Zoffany, Hunter is pictured at the Royal Academy of Arts, next to Sir Joshua Reynolds (holding his ear trumpet in his arm).

Hunter's work and the source of his research material aroused much suspicion and derision. Cartoonists of the day sometimes made him their subject. The top one here shows Hunter with the mangled bodies of his "resurrected" subjects. The bottom image, by Thomas Rowlandson, shows a scene at Hunter's school. A man, possibly Hunter, is looking at a list of prices for bodies, male, female, and infant.

Further Reading:

Wendy Moore, The Knife Man (London: Penguin, 2006)

Don C. Shelton, "The Emperor's New Clothes," Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2010: 103: 46-50

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Imagining John Bull: Part 1: The Georgian Age

Not so long ago people in much of the world would have easily recognized the image below as John Bull, a symbol of the British nation, much like the USA's Uncle Sam or France's Marianne. But he did not always look like this guy. He evolved for more than two centuries before he was allowed to go to his rest.

John Bull began life as a literary creation rather than an image. He was "born" in 1712 as a character in two of Dr John Arbuthnot's political satires, Law is a Bottomless Pit and The History of John Bull. Ironically, Arbuthnot was a Scot whose character evolved into a personification of Englishness. 

The name "Bull" from the beginning invited comparisons with the animal of that name, especially its virility, strength and stubbornness. Bull also alluded to English fondness for roast beef. The French often called the English les rosbifs.

During the Georgian period, caricaturists provided John Bull with a visual image, or rather a variety of images. He was sometimes portrayed as a bull rather than a man, as in James Gillray's, "John Bull Triumphant" (1780). 

The figure the bull is tossing into the air represents Spain, which had recently joined France and the fledgling United States in war against Britain. The frightened looking figures at the right are France (in blue and pink) and the USA (the Native American!). A farmer in red and buff looks on in satisfaction at the bottom left. Or is he John Bull the man? 

In the cartoon from 1814 below, Bull is pictured as a man with a bull's head. "Johnny Bull and the Alexandrians," however, is by an American. It is commenting on the British attack on Alexandria, Virginia during the War of 1812. The anthropomorphic Bull did not catch on. He was destined to be a man.

The Georgian era John Bull was English, but not necessarily British, in outlook. He was insular in his views. He distrusted "foreigners." That distrust extended to Scots (or North Britons), despite the fact that England and Scotland had been united into Great Britain since 1707.

The cartoon below, Sawney Scot and John Bull (1792) illustrates but seems to condemn the age-old animosity between the Scots and the English. With Britain heading to war with revolutionary France,  the artist was perhaps saying, "let's bury the prejudices that divide us." It would take some time, but John Bull would come to be a British as well as an English symbol. 

During the French Revolution and Napoleonic periods (1789-1815), John Bull emerged into the national limelight as a patriotic, no-nonsense opponent of revolution and then of authoritarianism. 

Two great Georgian caricaturists, James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson, played significant roles in shaping the image of Bull around the turn of the 19th century. 

An example is Gillray's "French Liberty/English Slavery" (1792). Although Gillray does not name the English figure here, he parallels the image of John Bull he and other artists were developing. 

The "liberated" Frenchman wearing a tricolor cockade is emaciated and attired in rags. He is dining on raw scallions and snails. In contrast, the English "slave" is stout, comfortable, and well dressed He is tucking into a meal of roast beef and ale, his wig at his side. 

The skinny Frenchman is praising the new French republic as a paradise. The portly Englishman is complaining that high taxes are starving him to death. The irony could hardly be missed.  

British caricaturists of the revolutionary period generally drew Bull as a yeoman farmer. He is a man of the earth -- honest, hale, hearty, and rough in manner. Neither rich nor poor, he is a man of simple tastes and strong principles, pugnacious and ever ready to fight Britain's enemies. 

He was also a man of voracious appetites. Gillray's 1798 print, "John Bull Taking a Luncheon, or British Cooks Cramming Old Grumble Gizzard with Bonne Chere" shows Bull gorging on French naval ships. The cooks are British admirals. The one on the right is Admiral Nelson, who had just won a major sea battle against the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile. 

Artists of the time often drew Bull in a long coat and buff trousers (as above), or in a farmer's smock, as in this 1791 Gillray print, "Alecto." 

"Alecto" is a satirical jab at Whig leader Charles James Fox, who had expressed sympathy for the French Revolution. Fox, on the right is pictured as a recruiting sergeant, trying to enlist John Bull into support for the revolution. No hope for that. 

During the 19th century, the farmer's smock disappeared. The long coat and buff trousers became standard in colored prints, often with a red waistcoat. The coat was often blue, perhaps because blue and buff symbolized the two major political parties of the time, the Tories and the Whigs. 

After 1800, the cartoons tend to portray Bull as a sporting countryman who loves dogs, horses, hunting, and English ale. He has little use for intellectualism and European high culture. 

An example is Rowlandson's 1811 print "John Bull at the Italian Opera." While others are enjoying or pretending to enjoy the music, Bull, up in the box, cannot disguise his irritation, or boredom. Away with that foreign stuff! 

John Bull appeared frequently as the nemesis of Napoleon Bonaparte. A common theme was "Come on Boney, we dare you to attack us!" Gillray drew an especially grisly Bull holding the head of Napoleon in "Buonaparte 48 Hours after Landing" (1803)

In "John Bull Making Observations on the Comet" (1807) Rowlandson tells the comet (Napoleon) that he will never reach the level of the sun (King George III). British naval ships on the horizon explain why. 

In "Conversation Across the Water" (artist unknown), 1803, Napoleon declares he will invade Britain. John Bull, looking a bit like Bilbo Baggins, dares him to try. He also points to Royal Navy ships on the horizon. In many of the prints of this time, Napoleon appears as a pint-sized dictator dwarfed by his hat and boots: "Little Boney."

In "John Bull Arming the Spaniards," (1808) Rowlandson portrays Bull as the British emissary bringing aid, arms, and ammunition to Spain in its struggle against Napoleonic conquest. 

In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, Bull was enlisted in other causes, some of them repugnant today. In "John Bull Taking a Clear View of the Negro Slavery Question" (1826), Robert Cruikshank uses Bull to undermine the arguments of the growing antislavery movement. 

The abolitionists (in black) are raving about the terrible conditions of the enslaved in the West Indies. Bull, in blue and buff, peers through the telescope and "clearly" sees them enjoying feasting and dancing. A few years later (1833) the abolitionists succeeded. Parliament abolished slavery in the British Empire. 

By the 1820s, John Bull was maturing as a personification of the British nation. Victorian caricaturists would give him a fashion makeover, and employ him to represent a variety of opinions.

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Masters of Caricature: George Cruikshank

"Please Sir, I want some more." If you have read Dickens' novel Oliver Twist, or seen the musical Oliver! that line is probably familiar. Perhaps you may even have seen the illustration from the novel, shown below. It depicts the famous scene when the half-starved orphan Oliver dares ask Mr. Bumble for more gruel.

The artist who drew that illustration, and many others for Dickens and other authors, was George Cruikshank. His father Isaac was a leading caricaturist of the late Georgian era. Isaac was born in Edinburgh but moved to London where George was born, in 1792. 

Young George originally made his name as a caricaturist, along with his brother Robert. They produced hundreds of works of social and political satire during the Regency period. Many of George's works focused on what he called the "monstrosities of fashion" and hedonistic Regency "dandies." 

In 1819, the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester inspired "Britons, Strike Home!" It depicts the local yeomanry (militia) attacking a peaceful crowd of demonstrators for parliamentary reform. Eleven were killed and hundreds injured. The title and scene were meant to invoke a contrast with the charge of British soldiers at Waterloo four years before. 

George Cruikshank soon gained particular notoriety from political prints attacking the royal family and leading politicians. At one point he received a bribe of £100 (a lot of money then) to refrain from ridiculing George IV. 

Previously Prince of Wales and Regent, he was an easy target: extravagant, gluttonous, massively obese, and a collector of mistresses. Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson had also produced prints of the man some people called "The Prince of Whales."

Cruikshank drew the cartoons below at the time the prince succeeded his father as king, in 1820. The first depicts George IV contemplating himself in a mirror. He sees a ghost from the past, his estranged wife Caroline of Brunswick. She had returned from exile in Germany to claim her lawful right to be Queen. Cruikshank quotes Hamlet: "To be or not to be."

George detested Caroline. He tried to prevent her from becoming Queen. He brought a bill to Parliament to dissolve their marriage, alleging adultery, something he had often committed himself. The affair generated a huge scandal for the monarchy, which only began to recover under Victoria. 

In the next cartoon, Cruikshank portrays George and Caroline wrapped in large green bags. The bags are green to reflect the fact that the evidence he presented against her was taken to the court in green bags. They are large because there was a lot of documentation and of course because the pair were large. George is considerably larger. He weighed in at 240 pounds at the time. 

The words at the bottom of the print mock their incompatibility and physiques: "Ah, sure, such a pair was never seen so justly form'd to meet by nature...Dedicated to Old Bags."

The government withdrew the Pains and Penalties Bill when it became clear that it would never pass the House of Commons. It had also aroused a huge uproar in an already badly divided country. 

Much of the public and especially radicals demanding political reform supported the Queen. The scandal soured any remaining affection most people had for the king. He was fortunate that Caroline conveniently died a few months later.

Cruikshank's prints were not confined to exposing the follies of the fashionable rich, royals, and Tories. He lampooned politicians of all parties, and reformers of various stripes. Some of his works were blatantly racist and misogynist. 

In 1819 Cruikshank produced the now infamous "New Union Club" portraying a dinner held by the  Society for the Abolition of Slavery. The cartoon portrays a scene of chaos and intimacy between whites and blacks. Among the people Cruikshank represented was William Wilberforce, a major leader in abolitionist movement, at far left.  

Cruikshank also ridiculed women who joined the abolitionist movement, portraying them as unfeminine and grotesque. In a book on the Irish Rebellion of 1798 he drew the rebels as simian-like beings. He gave the Chinese similar xenophobic treatment. 

In the 1820s, Cruikshank embarked on a new career as a book illustrator. One of his most successful early efforts were illustrations for the 18th century novel by Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, done in (1832)

Around that time, Cruikshank became friends with Charles Dickens, and illustrated several of his early works, including Sketches by Boz and Oliver Twist. One of his illustrations for the Twist novel is shown below, of the criminal fence Fagin in prison before being hanged. 

In the late 1840s, Cruikshank embarked on yet another career, as a propagandist for the temperance movement and teetotalism. Once a heavy drinker and smoker, he gave up both and became an advocate of teetotalism, or complete abstinence. As early as 1829 he attacked the evils of cheap gin in "The Gin Shop." Here Death is stalking the customers. 

Cruikshank produced several illustrated books focusing on the evils of alcohol, most notably, The Bottle (1847) and The Drunkard's Children (1848). Below is one of the prints from The Bottle, in which the drunken husband is beating his wife while his children look on and try to stop it.

Cruikshank's advocacy of complete abstinence from alcohol led to a break with Dickens, who favored moderation. After Dickens' death in 1870, Cruikshank claimed to have been the originator of the plot of Oliver Twist. 

In his later years, Cruikshank, a fervent British patriot, became heavily involved in the Volunteer Movement. It began 1859 in response to a diplomatic crisis between France and the UK, and a exaggerated fear that Napoleon III was planning an invasion of England. Cruikshank organized a couple of Rifle Volunteer Corps in Surrey and Middlesex. 

He developed palsy in his final years and died in 1878. He is buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. 

*Cruikshank was not exactly innocent of adultery himself. He married twice but also kept a mistress, a former servant, with whom he had eleven  children.  

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A Marriage of Inconvenience: Scotland and England

Many people think Britain is a very old country. In fact, it is barely older than the USA -- younger if we insist on its current name, the United Kingdom.

Britain became an official country in 1707, when England and Scotland united to create The Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, Ireland was added to the Union and it was renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (now Northern Ireland).

The road to the union of Scotland and England began a century before, in 1603. Elizabeth I died childless, as Virgin Queens tend to do. She also painted herself with white poison and had poor personal hygiene. That may be another reason for her lack of an heir. But she did live to be 69.

Her cousin King JamesVI of Scotland inherited the throne of England, where he was crowned as James I. History books generally refer to him as James I, because England is much more important than Scotland, you see. 

James was not only the first Scottish monarch of England. He was also the first to rule the entire British Isles. He styled himself "King of Great Britain and Ireland" although no such kingdom existed. James proposed a formal union between Scotland and England, but the idea was unpopular in both countries. Rather. 

It took another century to achieve James's idea of union. In 1707, his great granddaughter, Queen Anne, became the first monarch of the Kingdom of Great Britain. The flag of the new country was that designed by James, which combined the English cross of St. George with the Scottish cross of St. Andrew. 

The parliaments of both countries passed the necessary legislation, the Act of Union, which abolished the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh. Scotland received 45 MPs and 16 representative lords in the Westminster Parliament. 

Scotland also kept its own legal system of civil law, which differed (and differs) in many ways from English common law. Scotland retained (and retains) its own established or state church. The Presbyterian Church of Scotland, unlike the Episcopal Church of England, had no bishops, and there were some major doctrinal differences as well. 

The Union was a tough sell, especially in Scotland, because of the loss of its parliament. It was obvious then as now that English representatives would always dominate over the much smaller number of Scottish ones. 

English negotiators sweetened the deal with a number economic goodies. The Scottish economy was in dire shape after the collapse of the Darien Scheme in the 1690s. Financial help from the English Exchequer and free trade with the English colonies was a deal maker for the Scots. That and a bit of well-directed bribery. 

It took several decades for the new union to find grudging acceptance on both sides of the border. They had after all been enemies for centuries and had fought many a bloody battle. 

Scots who opposed the Act of Union complained that their leaders had sold off their parliament for English gold. Many of the English were appalled by the prospect of their country being invaded by lean and hungry Scots greedy to take over their jobs, money, women, and empire. 

Alas, Scots in great number did pour into England. As much as possible, the English sent them away to serve as soldiers, sailors, and administrators of the Empire. Oh, and Doctors, or McDoctors.

During the 18th century, English writings and images often portrayed Scots as impoverished, uncouth, dirty barbarians. In "A Scots Pastoral" (1763), the poet Charles Churchill characterized Scotland as a land of famine where "half-starved spiders preyed on half-starved flies." Samuel Johnson called Scotland a "vile country." (He later changed his opinion somewhat after a visit there.)

The cartoons below indicate how some of the English viewed their new fellow citizens, the "North Britons." They usually portrayed them as savage Highlanders and referred to them as "Sawney." 

The name "Sawney" came from the legend of Sawney Bean, a robber who allegedly lived in a cave and ate his victims. The English represented themselves in the character of John Bull, a sturdy, honest beef eater. You get the picture: thieving cannibal v. hard working farmer.

In 1714, a change of dynasty threatened to kill the infant state of Great Britain in its cradle. Queen Anne had at least 17 pregnancies, but only five of them resulted in live births. Of those, four died before the age of two. One child survived infancy, but he died aged 11. Anne turned out to be the last of the Stuarts to rule the two kingdoms. 

Anne had lots of relatives with claims to the throne, most notably her younger half-brother James, "The Old Pretender." The problem was that he and all of Anne's close relatives were Catholic. After the reign of Bloody Mary, that was a BIG problem in England. 

In 1702 the English parliament barred Catholics from inheriting the throne. It passed an act settling the crown on Anne's nearest Protestant relative, who was German. The Scots parliament initially refused to go along, but accepted it as part of the agreement that produced the Act of Union in 1707. 

A lot of people in Britain were upset by the Act of Settlement, which they viewed as a violation of hereditary right. But it was most disliked in Scotland, especially in the Highlands. 

When Anne died in 1714, George, Elector of Hanover, became king, the first Hanoverian monarch. During the next thirty years, Scotland was the scene of several Jacobite risings on behalf of the exiled Catholic Stuarts. 

The last and most dangerous of these revolts, in 1745, saw the last battle fought on British soil, at Culloden, near Inverness. A Hanoverian army of mainly Lowland Scots and English soldiers crushed a Jacobite force of hungry, exhausted, outnumbered Highland clansmen. It was more of a massacre than a battle. 

The romance surrounding the '45 and its leader, "Bonnie Prince Charlie" seems inexplicable today. Prince Charles Edward Stuart escaped from the battlefield disguised as a woman. This was a sound ploy in the Highlands, where transvestism was widespread. He then fled to the Continent, to spend the rest of his life beating his wife, gambling, and drinking himself to death. 

In the aftermath of Culloden, Parliament passed laws designed to destroy Highland clan culture. Laws proscribed the wearing of the tartan and undermined the clan system. In the 19th century a reimagined Scottish culture emerged, which we are still suffering from today. I blame the Romantic movement and Queen Victoria. 

Ironically, the new/old Scottish culture was essentially sanitized Highland culture without Highlanders: tartan, kilts, bagpipes, whisky, Highland games, and haggis.  The most famous writers about the Highlands were Lowlanders: Burns, Scott, and Stevenson. 

Queen Victoria also lent a hand. Vicky loved Scotland, and I do mean LOVED. None of the Hanoverian kings had gone near Scotland, except for George IV in the 1820s, when he exposed his massively obese self in a kilt at the request of Sir Walter Scott. It must have used a lot of tartan. 

In the 1850s Victoria bought the Balmoral Estate and built the current castle. She started the tradition of the Royal Family holidaying in the Highlands in August and September. I'm not sure the family has ever forgiven her. 

Lots of English and Lowland tourists followed the royals, as they do, wearing tartan and pretending to be Rob Roy or Braveheart -- who BTW Mel, didn't wear a kilt or paint his face blue. 

The new romantic Highland culture was both ironic and tragic. Tragic because it came into existence largely in the absence of Highlanders themselves. Most of them left in the 19th century, some by choice, but many by force. Greedy landlords drove them off their farms to make room for sheep and wealthy tourists, hunters, and fishermen. 

The Highland Clearances were part of a great Scottish Diaspora. Scots left their homeland in droves, like the Scottish cattle going south to feed the rich folk of London. Scots emigrated to the Lowlands, England, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other parts of the globe.  

Today there are fewer people in the Highlands than in 1800. It is the most sparsely populated region in Europe. The population of Scotland itself remains small for a country its size. 

In 1707 the population of England was about 5 times that of Scotland. Today, it is more than 10 times larger, 67 million to 5.5 million. Much of England's demographic growth came from immigrants, and many of them were Scots. 

One of the things that helped cement the Union, and maintain the UK until recently, was the British Empire. Note: British, not English. It was a shared venture of all the peoples of the British Isles. 

Scots were particularly active in imperial affairs, for good or ill. With the end of Empire, a sense of shared Britishness seems to have gone as well. Nowadays, most white people in the UK identify as English, Scots, or Welsh, not British. 

Since 1998, Scotland has had its own devolved parliament at Holyrood, in Edinburgh. It is currently dominated by Scottish nationalists committed to independence. Brexit has sharpened Scots' desire for independence, because they feel that the English have dragged them out of the EU against their will. It may be that Brexit is the final nail in the coffin for the UK as it exists today. Stay tuned.

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Brexit: England Has Always Been a Nation of Immigrants

 Everyone knows that the pro-Brexit vote was fueled in large part by a desire to "get back control" of Britain's (read "England's) borders. "Border control!" is of course a euphemism for "there's too many damn foreigners here!"

 

The desire for Brexit was and remains mainly an English one. Wales voted Leave but by a slim margin. Northern Ireland voted Remain, also by a slim margin. 

A solid majority of Scots (61 per cent) voted Remain. Many of them wanted to keep an open border with the EU. Scotland has been bleeding people for centuries. Most Scots want immigrants to come. 

Because England is much more populous than the so-called "Celtic Fringe" of the UK, its pro-Brexit majority dragged the others out of the EU. 

The UK (English Tory) government can now "control the borders" -- except perhaps in Northern Ireland, where an open border with the Irish Republic -- and the EU -- remains. Tory Home Secretaries can put up the "No Entry" sign for "undesirable" foreigners who they not so subtly suggest are mostly criminals and rapists. 

The last two Home Secretaries have promoted that anti-immigrant agenda with a vengeance. Consider the irony: both Priti Patel and Suella Braverman are the children of Asian immigrants who could not have settled in the UK if the current restrictions on migrants were in force at the time. Maybe Freud could help us understand that. 

The Tory and Brexit immigration agenda is based on a false conception of Englishness: the idea that not so long ago this sceptered isle was the home of pure bred Englishmen. Rubbish. 

England has always been full of foreigners. Nearly everybody on the island of Britain is descended from people "from off" as they like to say in the American South, where I lived for many years. 

Leaving aside the prehistoric migrations of pre-Celtic and Celtic peoples, the first recorded foreign invasion is that of the Romans under Emperor Claudius in AD 43. [Image: Emperor Claudius]

The Romans stayed in England and parts of Scotland (Britannia) for almost four centuries. This gave them plenty of time to spread their genes around. Their Army pulled out shortly after 400 to defend Rome against "Barbarian" (mostly Germanic) invasions. 

Some of the German tribes opted to go to Britannia about the same time. We usually call them the Angles and Saxons, but other tribes were also in the mix. The name "England" derives from the Angles (Angle-land). 

During the 5th and 6th centuries the Anglo-Saxons settled most of modern-day England. They pushed the Romanized Celtic Britons to the west and northwest, but also mixed with them, further complicating their DNA. The name "England" derives from the Angles (Angle-Land). [Image: Anglo-Saxon Helmet from Sutton Hoo, Reconstructed, British Museum]

In the modern era, England has often been referred to as an "Anglo-Saxon" nation, but this is a gross oversimplification. Besides the Celtic and Romanized Britons who were already resident, new migrants soon appeared: the Vikings, mainly Danes and Norwegians. [Image: Vikings, from Minnesota. Sorry, but the most accurate image of Vikings I could find]

Scandy hordes first came to England in 793 with a raid on Lindisfarne Monastery in Northumberland. In the following century raids gave way to settlement and conquest. 

The Norwegians focused mainly on Scotland and Ireland, but also northern England. The Danes concentrated on England. Before they were stopped by Alfred the Great, King of Wessex in 878, they had gained control of the eastern half of the country. After a treaty between Alfred and the Danes, this region became known as the Danelaw. 

During the 10th century, Alfred's successors reconquered the Danelaw and established an English kingdom roughly the size of today. The Danes were not through, however. 

In 1013, King Sweyn of Denmark conquered England. He died soon after, but his successors ruled it as part of a Danish Empire until 1042, when his line died out. A half-English, half-Norman king descended from Alfred ascended the throne. 

Edward the Confessor himself had no children. His death in 1066 ended the line of Alfred the Great. The English nobles chose a Saxon, Harold as king. But several other laid claims to the throne. The ultimate winner was yet another foreigner, William of Normandy, better known to history as William the Conqueror. [Image: A not so near likeness of William the Conqueror from the Bayeux Tapestry]

Normandy got its name from Vikings -- "Northmen" -- who settled in that part of what is now France in the 10th century. The Norman invasion army of 1066 also included French knights William bribed with promises of English land. More foreign genes, and a lot of "English" words and customs.

For the next two centuries and more England was ruled by a Norman-French aristocracy which gave us the term "robber barons." By the 14th century, however, the foreign elite began to merge with the locals culturally, linguistically, and genetically. The England of today began to take visible shape, heralded by Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and the Hundred Years War with France. 

During the Middle Ages one group of "foreigners" was deported from England. In 1290, Edward I (Longshanks) formally expelled the Jews. Massacres of Jews also occurred.

That edict was not overturned until 1656, by Oliver Cromwell, who was tolerant of most people except Catholics, especially Irish Catholics. Jews began to return -- at first in small numbers -- then in much greater numbers in the late 19th and 20th centuries. At that time, they were fleeing pogroms in Tsarist Russia and a general rise in anti-Semitism in Continental Europe.

The mongrelisation of England continued during the Middle Ages and beyond. England was part of a trading world that included merchants and artisans from Italy, France, Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and the Hanseatic League. Many people from those places settled in England and made it their home.

When Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, renewed persecution of the Protestant (Huguenot) population led many French folks to flee to Britain. Their numbers included many highly skilled merchants and artisans. Among them were the famous Spitalfields silk weavers of East London. 

The Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 brought another influx of foreigners. Dutch settlers came in the train of their prince, William of Orange, who became William III of England and Scotland. Like most new arrivals, the Dutch suffered from some nasty anti-immigrant behavior for a while.

Daniel Defoe pilloried these xenophobic attacks on the new arrivals and King William in a brilliant poem, "The True Born Englishman." (1701). The poem was extremely popular. It sold more copies than any poem before, which shows that some people were receptive to his message, which in effect was this: we English are a mongrel people and new immigrants will assimilate. 

[Image: William III, of Orange]

Scots poured into England after the Act of Union (1707) merged Scotland and England to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. They also aroused resentment, and were often portrayed in popular journals and images as impoverished, barbaric, and avaricious. (See "A Vile Country": Dr Johnson on Scotland and Scots) 

The Irish and Welsh came to England in large numbers as well from the 18th century on. Irish "navvies" virtually built the canal and rail network of Britain, doing backbreaking, dangerous work that would be done by heavy machinery today. Of course, they were looked down upon for their efforts. It seems society tends to look down on those it most depends upon. 

Many Italians came to Britain from the late 19th century bringing good food and delicious ice cream. In the late 20th century people from all over the far-flung British Empire, now Commonwealth, began to arrive, first a trickle, then a flood. Africans, Asians, West Indians, and more recently, Eastern Europeans. 

England is truly a nation of foreigners. It is part of its strength and greatness. Many different peoples, from Roman times on, have merged to create the England of today. If, like the USA, England hasn't always been welcoming to new arrivals, it has always accepted them in time. And for the most part, they have accepted if not glorified English culture, institutions, and customs. 

In 1953, English writer L. P. Hartley published The Go Between. He opened the novel with the now famous line "the past is a foreign country." As a historian, I completely agree. I hope you will agree with me that England, too, is a foreign country. I mean that as a compliment.

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