Burke and Hare

       One of the best things about being a nerdy genealogist like me is - www.ancestry. You plug in your family tree and then they alert you to lots of stuff like possible 'hatches, matches and dispatches info, or sometimes, to other people researching the same ancestors. I have discovered relatives all  over the world this way.                  
       Just before Xmas I was contacted by someone else researching my Grindlay ancestors. To our shared excitement, she had found that one of them - a Dr Charles Grindlay, was thought to be one of the doctors involved with Burke and Hare, the notorious grave robbers, who were hanged in Edinburgh in 1829.
      On reading more about them, I have discovered that they started as grave robbers, but them moved on to become murderers, the bodies all being sold for dissection to respectable doctors at Edinburgh University Medical School, who presumably had no idea that these poor people had been  murdered.  
      The Professor Alexander Monro dipped his quill pen into Burkes blood and wrote "This is written with the blood of Wm Burke who was hanged at Edinburgh. This blood was taken from his head"
    Some of Burkes things and some parts of his body are still to be seen in various Edinburgh  museums. Wallets made from his skin were sold in Edinburgh after his death. All very gruesome.
    My ancestor Dr Charles Grindlay is recorded as being involved but it is not known in what way. No wonder it was obliterated from our family history