Προ ημερών είδα τη μάλλον μέτρια ταινία Burke and Hare με τον Σάιμον Πεγκ. Μαύρη κωμωδία ή μαύρο χάλι, πάντως ενημερώθηκα για το ζεύγος των δολοφόνων που ζούσαν από το εμπόριο πτωμάτων που ήταν ζωντανοί άνθρωποι μέχρι που έπεφταν πάνω στον Μπερκ και τον Χέαρ.
(Αυτούς, αλήθεια, τους λέμε σίριαλ κίλερ ή κάτι άλλο;)
Εκτός από το ότι έμαθα για αυτούς τους δύο κυρίους (που με τη δράση τους ανάγκασαν το κράτος να φέρει νόμο που προέβλεπε τη νόμιμη εξασφάλιση πτωμάτων για τα μαθήματα ανατομίας), έμαθα και για το ρήμα burke. Στην ταινία υπάρχει ο εξής διάλογος ανάμεσα στους δύο δολοφόνους καθώς δοκιμάζουν τη μέθοδο της ασφυξίας σε ένα από τα πρώτα θύματά τους:
Γράφει στην Wikipedia:
Ήρθε σήμερα και το ηλεδελτίο του Κουίνιον με παρουσίαση του θέματος και είπα να μη σας το στερήσω άλλο.
Και λίγος Ρόμπερτ Γκρέιβς δεν κάνει κακό:
(Αυτούς, αλήθεια, τους λέμε σίριαλ κίλερ ή κάτι άλλο;)
Εκτός από το ότι έμαθα για αυτούς τους δύο κυρίους (που με τη δράση τους ανάγκασαν το κράτος να φέρει νόμο που προέβλεπε τη νόμιμη εξασφάλιση πτωμάτων για τα μαθήματα ανατομίας), έμαθα και για το ρήμα burke. Στην ταινία υπάρχει ο εξής διάλογος ανάμεσα στους δύο δολοφόνους καθώς δοκιμάζουν τη μέθοδο της ασφυξίας σε ένα από τα πρώτα θύματά τους:
— Lucky got her drunk. Now you just hold her still.
— I'm trying!
— You know, this is how they put wounded soldiers out of their misery on the battlefield.
— Oh, aye, what's that called?
— Doesn't really have a name.
— Perhaps we should invent one.
— Just get it over with, William.
— I've got it, I've got it—in honour of my best friend, from now on this shall be called... “Burking”.
— I'm trying!
— You know, this is how they put wounded soldiers out of their misery on the battlefield.
— Oh, aye, what's that called?
— Doesn't really have a name.
— Perhaps we should invent one.
— Just get it over with, William.
— I've got it, I've got it—in honour of my best friend, from now on this shall be called... “Burking”.
Γράφει στην Wikipedia:
From their infamous method of killing their victims has come the word "burking", meaning to purposefully smother and compress the chest of a victim, and a derived meaning, to quietly suppress.
Ήρθε σήμερα και το ηλεδελτίο του Κουίνιον με παρουσίαση του θέματος και είπα να μη σας το στερήσω άλλο.
Question: In one of C P Snow’s Strangers & Brothers series, Time of Hope, I came across a verb that I'd not seen before: “I did not burke the certain truths”. What did Snow mean by “burke”? [John Boaler]
Answer: It's an intriguing verb. It takes us back to the 1820s and that notorious pair, Burke and Hare. Medical schools were finding it difficult to get enough cadavers for the anatomic dissection essential to train students. The only official source was executed criminals but their numbers had been decreasing because fewer were being condemned to death, while the number of students needing corpses was increasing. One source was grave-robbing, carried out by low-life scavengers who were given the ironic name of resurrectionists.
Brendan Burke and William Hare, two Irish immigrants to Edinburgh, started their grisly trade by selling the body of a recently deceased tenant of their boarding house to Dr Robert Knox, a local anatomist. Having learned that bodies could be profitable, they began to murder individuals, usually by getting them drunk and then smothering them, to leave no marks on the bodies that would reduce their value as specimens.
Burke was convicted of 16 murders and executed in January 1829; in a fitting end, his body was publicly dissected at the Edinburgh Medical College. Hare had turned King's Evidence and had been given immunity from prosecution. The case caused a huge sensation, as did the imitative but much more widespread activities of a gang in the English capital which became known as the London Burkers. With the public outcry over grave-robbing, these led to the passing of the Anatomy Act 1832, which legitimised the donation of bodies for medical science.
The Times report on 2 February 1829 of his public hanging recorded of those attending that "every countenance wore the lively aspect of a gala-day" and that Burke's name had already become an eponymic verb: the spectators shouted "Burke Hare too!" By the time Charles Dickens was writing his first novel less than a decade later, the term was known to everybody:
By this time, too, the verb had become figurative. To burke is to suppress, hush up, or avoid discussing something. It comes from the idea of metaphorically smothering an issue. This is the sense in which Snow used it. Though it's hardly common, it's still around:
Answer: It's an intriguing verb. It takes us back to the 1820s and that notorious pair, Burke and Hare. Medical schools were finding it difficult to get enough cadavers for the anatomic dissection essential to train students. The only official source was executed criminals but their numbers had been decreasing because fewer were being condemned to death, while the number of students needing corpses was increasing. One source was grave-robbing, carried out by low-life scavengers who were given the ironic name of resurrectionists.
Brendan Burke and William Hare, two Irish immigrants to Edinburgh, started their grisly trade by selling the body of a recently deceased tenant of their boarding house to Dr Robert Knox, a local anatomist. Having learned that bodies could be profitable, they began to murder individuals, usually by getting them drunk and then smothering them, to leave no marks on the bodies that would reduce their value as specimens.
Burke was convicted of 16 murders and executed in January 1829; in a fitting end, his body was publicly dissected at the Edinburgh Medical College. Hare had turned King's Evidence and had been given immunity from prosecution. The case caused a huge sensation, as did the imitative but much more widespread activities of a gang in the English capital which became known as the London Burkers. With the public outcry over grave-robbing, these led to the passing of the Anatomy Act 1832, which legitimised the donation of bodies for medical science.
The Times report on 2 February 1829 of his public hanging recorded of those attending that "every countenance wore the lively aspect of a gala-day" and that Burke's name had already become an eponymic verb: the spectators shouted "Burke Hare too!" By the time Charles Dickens was writing his first novel less than a decade later, the term was known to everybody:
"Why, sir, bless your innocent eyebrows, that's where the mysterious disappearance of a 'spectable tradesman took place four years ago." "You don't mean to say he was burked, Sam?" said Mr. Pickwick, looking hastily round. [The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens, 1837.]
By this time, too, the verb had become figurative. To burke is to suppress, hush up, or avoid discussing something. It comes from the idea of metaphorically smothering an issue. This is the sense in which Snow used it. Though it's hardly common, it's still around:
In the case of the BNP [the British National Party], both Government and Opposition need to be compelled to confront the issue they have for so long burked; for it is the mishandling of this which has allowed the BNP to raise its ugly head. [Belfast Telegraph, 20 Oct. 2009.]
Και λίγος Ρόμπερτ Γκρέιβς δεν κάνει κακό:
CRY FAUGH!
Caria and Philistia considered
Only pre-marital adventures wise;
The bourgeois French argue contrariwise.
Socrates and Plato burked the issue
(Namely, how man-and-woman love should be)
With homosexual ideology.
Apocalyptic Israelites, foretelling
The Imminent End, called only for a chaste
Sodality: all dead below the waist.
Curious, various, amoral, moral –
Tell me, what elegant square or lumpish hamlet
Lives free from nymphological disquiet?
‘Yet males and females of the lower species
Contrive to eliminate the sexual problem,’
Scientists ponder: ‘Why not learn from them?’
Cry faugh! on science, ethics, metaphysics,
On antonyms of sacred and profane –
Come walk with me, love, in a golden rain
Past toppling colonnades of glory,
The moon alive on each uptilted face:
Proud remnants of a visionary race.
Caria and Philistia considered
Only pre-marital adventures wise;
The bourgeois French argue contrariwise.
Socrates and Plato burked the issue
(Namely, how man-and-woman love should be)
With homosexual ideology.
Apocalyptic Israelites, foretelling
The Imminent End, called only for a chaste
Sodality: all dead below the waist.
Curious, various, amoral, moral –
Tell me, what elegant square or lumpish hamlet
Lives free from nymphological disquiet?
‘Yet males and females of the lower species
Contrive to eliminate the sexual problem,’
Scientists ponder: ‘Why not learn from them?’
Cry faugh! on science, ethics, metaphysics,
On antonyms of sacred and profane –
Come walk with me, love, in a golden rain
Past toppling colonnades of glory,
The moon alive on each uptilted face:
Proud remnants of a visionary race.
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