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n Burke and Hare. A right pair of wrong ’uns and nondoubt, and although Burke might well have been the lesser of these twonparticular evils, it’s true that the lesser of two evils is still evil.nAnd William Burke was trouble from the start – that feckless Irish wanderer whonleft a wife and two children behind when he skipped to Scotland following anfamily row, and threw his lot in with Helen McDougal (who alreadynhad a couple of husbands somewhere about the place), he worked as a navvy onnthe Union Canal, where it’s likely he first met William Hare, another Irishnimmigrant navvy.
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| William Burke |
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nHare was married to the widow of a lodging house keeper, Maryn(or Maggie) Logue, and she invited Burke and McDougal to move intonher house in Tanner’s Close, Edinburgh, from where Burke then worked as ancobbler. At about Christmas 1827, an old army pensioner named Donald died atnthe lodging house, owing Hare £4 in rent and loans, and Hare doubted thatnDonald’s relations would honour the debt. Burke and Hare devised a plan tonraise the money to cover the arrears; when the coffin was closed, theynsurreptitiously unscrewed the lid, removed Donald’s corpse, replaced it withnoak bark and screwed the lid back into place. The coffin was taken off andnburied with due ceremony, with Donald’s relatives none the wiser; Burke andnHare put the body in a sack and took it to Surgeon’s Square, where they metnwith some medical students and Dr Robert Knox, an anatomy teacher.
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| William Hare |
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nOne of thenstudents, Thomas Wharton Jones (who would later become a very eminentnphysiologist), paid Burke and Hare £7 10s for Donald’s mortal remains, withnHare receiving £4 5s and Burke £3 5s. The prospect of ready money so easilynmade tempted the pair to repeat the transaction, but as the fresh cadavers ofnthose who had died from natural causes were a bit thin on the ground innTanner’s Close, Burke and Hare commenced making corpses of their own.
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nThe firstnwas Abigail Simpson, an old woman whom Hare found drunkenly wandering in thenEdinburgh Grassmarket and easily convinced that they were former acquaintances.nThey went back to the lodging house, drank copious drams and sang the oldnsongs, before the whole party passed out, drunk. In the following morning, thenold soak said she was making for home but whisky and porter soon changed hernmind and she passed out again. Hare put his hands over her mouth whilst Burkenlaid over her body, to prevent her from moving, until she was suffocated. Thencorpse was stripped and put in a chest and Burke and Hare delivered it to DrnKnox that evening, for which they were paid £10.
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| Dr Robert Knox |
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nNext came an unfortunate knownnonly as ‘Joseph’, a miller from a good family who had fallen on hard times andnwas reduced to dossing at Hare’s flophouse. Joseph took ill with a fever andnHare and his wife feared that if word of an infection got out, business wouldnsuffer, so Burke forced a pillow to Joseph’s mouth whilst Hare held him down,nand another £10 body went over to Surgeon’s Square.
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nAn almost identical murdernfollowed next – a forty-year-old matchseller from Cheshire became ill withnjaundice in the lodging house, so Burke and Hare smothered him for thencustomary ten quid from Dr Knox, no questions asked.
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| Two ladies who are no better than they should be |
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nEarly in the morning ofnApril 9th 1828, Burke went to a pub in Canongate and picked up anpair of prostitutes, Mary Paterson and Janet Brown, who had spent the night innthe Canongate police cells for being drunk and disorderly, and had been setnfree at about four or five that morning. Burke began pouring drink into thengirls before inviting them back to his house for breakfast. In fact, they wentnto Burke’s brother Constantine’s house, where he pretended to be a lodger, andnafter tea, bread, eggs and haddock, the whisky bottles were produced and morendrinking followed. Paterson passed out and Burke and Brown went for a walk,ncame back again with more booze when Helen McDougal turned up,nintent on a fight with just about anyone present. Burke and McDougalnbegan throwing the crockery at each other and Janet Brown staggered off home,nglad (and unbelievably lucky) to be out of it.
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| Mary Paterson (or Patterson or Mitchell) |
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nThen Hare arrived on the scenenand he and Burke murdered the still comatose Paterson, stripped her body andnmade for Surgeon’s Square with it. This time however, questions were asked.nSome of the students recognized Bonny Mary, who had been a particular beautynwith very distinctive red tresses, indeed one of them was sure he had seen thisngirl, or one very like her, in Canongate that very morning, and the body,nalthough cold, was suspiciously flexible. Bodies were ordinarily procured fromngraves by resurrection men but this one had not come out of any burial ground –nshe still had her curling papers in her hair, for crying out loud!nNevertheless, Dr Knox gave his suppliers £8 for their trouble and was so takennwith the body that he preserved it in spirits for three months, at one timeninviting an unnamed painter to come over and see it (like many good lookingnstrumpets, Mary had occasionally been an artist’s model).
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| Mary Paterson posing as Venus |
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nMaybe we should notnspeculate too much on what may have occurred between the Doctor and his cadavrenexquis during those three months.
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nMore murders by Burke and Hare tomorrow
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