Edinburgh Darkside Walking Tour

This evening we headed off to join the Edinburgh Darkside Walking Tour: Mysteries, Murder and Legends. Our tour guide Ryan was fabulous, a Canadien social worker who had been a tour guide in Prague until early 2020 when he contracted meningitis and shingles. Once he was released from hospital he decided to move to the UK where he worked as a social worker as there was no work for tour guides. He moved to Edinburgh a couple of years later where he has been leading these tours.

Ryan was very engaging and a great storyteller who knows his history and was both serious and comedic. He first took us to the Town Hall and told us about “Black Death” and due to the unhygienic nature of the city the plague went through Edinburgh about 15 times over a 300 year period. In fact there were poor people living below Town Hall on one of these occasions and the powers that be just sealed them in to prevent the spread of the plague, where they all died and their bodies remain to this day.

Ryan told us about King James VI (who also became James I of England following the death of Elizabeth I ). King James wrote a book called Daemonologie which was a guide on catching / identifying witches. He and his followers were responsible for the murder of 2000 women falsely accused of being witches - the Scottish parliament only apologised for this in 2021.

Ryan also recounted the tale of Thomas Weir (1599 - 1670) a Scottish soldier and occultist who was executed for bestiality, incest and adultery. He was a Covenanter who professed a particularly strict form of Presbyterianism. He was an evil predator who was able to continue his despicable life because he was well connected. At his trial the powers that be tried to shut down his testimony but his sister (victim since she was 13) also testified so they executed them both, his sister because she announced she was his ‘witch’. The only reason he was on trial was because he fell ill and was expected to die and from his deathbed began to confess to a secret life of crime and vice. He recovered but wanted to be punished for his crimes ( even though the powers that be tried to cover it up initially). He was garrotted and burned at the stake in a public execution ( the locals enjoyed an execution and turned up in their 1,000’s).

Another story we were told about was the Burke and Hare murders. William Burke and William Hare murdered sixteen people over a period of 10 months in 1828. Edinburgh was a leading European centre of anatomical study in the early 19th century, in a time when the demand for cadavers led to a shortfall in legal supply. Scottish law required that corpses used for medical research should only come from those who died in prison, suicide victims or from foundlings and orphans. This shortage led to an increase in body snatching. When a lodger in Hare’s house died, he and Burke sold the body to Dr Robert Knox for which they received £7 10s (a generous sum). Two months later another lodger fell ill with a fever and Hare thought she may deter others from lodging at his house and so he and Burke murdered her and sold her body to Knox. They went on to murder a further 15 people who they sold to Knox (who probably knew what they were doing).

The police were alerted when lodgers found the body of their final victim, Margaret Docherty and contacted police. A forensic examination was inconclusive as to cause of death and so the police offered immunity from prosecution to Hare if her turned king’s evidence, which he did. He provided the details of Docherty’s murder and confessed to all sixteen murders. Burke was charged and found guilty of one murder and sentenced to death by hanging and his corpse dissected and his skeleton displayed at the Anatomical Museum of Edinburgh Medical School where it remains to this day. Hare walked away a free man.

We were told several other gruesome stories and our tour concluded in the Greyfriars Kirkyard.Baca selengkapnya