'Twas the night before Christmas and in 1828 William Burke went on trial in Edinburgh for the murder of Daft Jamie and grave robbery. Note to the legal profession and every other organization (except teaching, of course) that closes for two-three weeks around Christmas time - IN OLDEN TIMES PEOPLE ACTUALLY WORKED FOR A LIVING!
In case you're interested, Burke and his accomplice Hare (who got off by stitching up his mate) were robbing graves and murdering people to see the bodies to anatomists who needed freshish corpses for dissection. Burke was found guilty and hanged and - how neat is this? - dissected.
In other news ...
They thought they'd found Lord Lucan today in 1974. He was the chappie, you'll remember, who did a runner after allegedly murdering his children's nanny. In fact, 'Lucan' turned out to be John Stonehouse, a rather dodgy MP who was believed to have drowned off Miami but had in fact faked his own death.
You really couldn't make it up!
