In this early television play, a brilliant surgeon’s ambition leads him into a grim pact with Edinburgh’s most notorious murderers.
In 1820s Edinburgh, the brilliant and arrogant Dr. Robert Knox (Andrew Cruickshank) presides over a flourishing anatomy school. His lectures require a constant supply of fresh cadavers, a demand that the city’s gallows cannot meet. Two Irish immigrants, Burke (W. G. Fay) and Hare (Harry Hutchinson), begin supplying Knox with suspiciously well-preserved bodies, no questions asked. While Knox’s assistants, including the principled Walter Anderson (Bruce Seton), become increasingly uneasy, Knox himself remains wilfully blind to the truth. The surgeon’s amorality is contrasted with the romantic anxieties of his ward Mary Belle Dishart (May Shaw) and her sister Amelia (Ethel Glendinning).
James Bridie’s 1930 stage play, a cornerstone of modern Scottish theatre, was an ambitious choice for the fledgling television service. The production was a stark piece of macabre drama, balancing its grim subject with intellectual debate and moments of gallows humour. As was common practice for the era, this live studio presentation was performed twice in four days, broadcast to the handful of receivers able to pick up the Alexandra Palace signal. No recording of either transmission was made, leaving this significant piece of pre-war broadcast drama to exist only in schedules and memories. Moultrie Kelsall, a noted Scottish actor himself, was responsible for the staging.
Broadcast: BBC, 2 Episodes, 2 June – 5 June 1939
Written by: James Bridie
Producer: Moultrie Kelsall
Main Cast: Andrew Cruickshank (Doctor Knox), W. G. Fay (Burke), Harry Hutchinson (Hare), May Shaw (Mary Belle Dishart), Ethel Glendinning (Amelia Dishart), Bruce Seton (Walter Anderson), Margaret Boyd (Jessie Ann), Robert Eddison (Raby), Craighall Sherry (Landlord), Nan Scott (Mary Paterson), Marie Orr (Janet), James Gibson (Davie Paterson)
