Broadside entitled 'Another church yard pirate'

Transcription

Another Church Yard Pirate,

Who was caught in the High Church Yard
on Thursday Morning, the 1st May,
with a dead body.

Glasgow, May 1st, 1823.?This morning, another of those
disgusting scenes occurred, which produces horror in the minds
of the living, and keeps them in anxious suspense concerning
the bodies of the departed dead.

As the watchman was on duty near the High Church, he ob-
served a fellow coming over the wall from the burying ground.
He instantly sprung his rattle, and with the assistance of some
people had him secured. When seized, he had in his posses-
sion the body of a man put up in a sack, which, along with
the culprit, was taken to the Police Office. The depredator
keeps the shop of a medical person in town. The body was
claimed this morning by the wife and son of the deceased. The
name of the deceased was John Dempster, a labourer, who
was hurt some time since at the new building at the foot of
Montrose Street. He died in the Royal Infirmary, and was
buried on Tuesday afternoon. The poor woman was this morn-
ing in a most melancholy condition, on beholding, in such a
way, the countenance of her husband. We refrain from en-
tering into farther particulars, until an investigation of the af-
fair by the proper authorities, be laid before the public.

Such outrages as have lately been committed on the mansions
of the dead, calls aloud for some exemplary punishment being
inflicted on these worst of pirates, who, afraid of meeting with
any person who can offer them resistance, practise their thefts
in the lonely church-yard. It is surely a most lamentable and
afflicting circumstance, that, after a poor family has involved
itself in debt, (which often requires the greatest-industry to ex-
tricate itself from) in order to get the object whom they loved
decently interred, and, as they thought safe from the plundering
hands of man, it adds a deeper wound to their feelings, and keeps
the community in constant dread of their friends, after their depar-
ture, sharing a like fate.

We would recomond it to those who pretend that it is for the
good of Society that Subjects should be had, in order to treat on,
the number in that line, being now very numerous, it would confer a
favour, if they would bequeath their own bodies, at their death, for
so laudable a purpose.

                                                                      W. Carse, Printer.

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