Grave robber
However, the article was spoiled, for me at least, by likening it to a “21st-century act of Burke and Hare”.
By far the best-known grave robber, in my opinion, was Thomas, the 7th Earl of Elgin, who at the beginning of the 19th century conducted grave robbing on an industrial scale in Greece when he was ambassador to the Porte (Turkish ruler) who occupied the country at that time.
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Hide AdOn his return to London Elgin petitioned parliament to buy his collection of grave-robbery artefacts as well as the Parthenon marbles but while the government bought the latter they baulked at the former which, in his catalogue, included “some hundreds of large and small earthenware urns or vases discovered in digging in the ancient sepulchres round Athens”.
In addition, his catalogue contained details of dozens of stele (grave markers), some of which have recently been bought from the Elgins by the John Paul Getty Museum for huge sums, and other sacrilegious plunder including altars.
So the two Irish Williams were but mere amateurs compared with our own Scottish, grand master grave robber.
Tom Minogue
Victoria Terrace
Dunfermline