Interment

A plaque in the old Shankill graveyard. “Watch-House: This wall once formed part of a small building known as the “Watch-House” which was erected about the year 1830 by Mr. William Sayers and Mr. Israel Milliken, following the Burke and Hare sensation in Edinburgh. In it, relatives of the newly-buried kept watch to protect their dead from the unwelcome attention of body-snatchers who disinterred corpes [corpses] and sold them for medical research, or in the hope of securing articles of value which might have been buried with them.”

Wider scene below …