BURKER
A BURKER is defined by the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) simply as “a murderer”. It “comes from Burke, the notorious criminal” William Burke (1792-1829), a body-snatcher supplying murdered corpses for dissection to the anatomist Robert Knox. The word is now applied to any killer.
An example appeared as a headline in the Inverness Courier of December 1831: “Execution of the Burkers”. The article goes on to describe “the conviction of Bishop, Williams and May, for the murder of the Italian boy”.
George Cunningham used it later in Verse, Maistly in the Doric (1912): “Boot robbers and Burkers, and lifting the deid”.
One group living in particular terror of the Burkers, or resurrection men, was Travellers. John Kerr’s Reminiscences of a Wanderer (1890) gives us the following: “Twa famed swine-dealing burkers these, The Babbler and the Boar”.
The term was still used and understood by Travellers in relatively modern times. Stanley Robertson, writing in Fish Hooses in 1992, notes “Noo it wis at a time whin there were many Burkers gan aboot, and it wis no safe for Travellers tae be on their toads [travelling alone]”. Stanley Robertson was a Traveller who took a settled job working in the fish gutting and packing industry, hence the book’s title.
Despite being the victims of Burkers, in Timothy Neat’s The Summer Walkers (1996), Alec John Williamson recalled all the supposed practices that Travellers got up to: “First it was sacrifices, then it was witches, then it was the Burkers – but I’m not going into all that!” Hopefully, we now live in more enlightened times.
Scots Word of the Week is written by Pauline Cairns Speitel. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here