William Burke and William Hare Murders Part II

 

Trial

The trial began at 10:00 am on Christmas Eve 1828 before the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh's Parliament House. The case was heard by the Lord Justice-Clerk, David Boyle, supported by the Lords Meadowbank, Pitmilly and Mackenzie. The court was full shortly after the doors were opened at 9:00 am, and a large crowd gathered outside Parliament House; 300 constables were on duty to prevent disturbances, while infantry and cavalry were on standby as a further precaution.

McDougal and Burke

The Hares

The case ran through the day and night to the following morning; Rosner notes that even a formal postponement of the case for dinner could have raised questions about the validity of the trial. When the charges were read out, the two defence counsels objected to Burke and McDougal being tried together. James Moncreiff, Burke's defence lawyer, protested that his client was charged "with three unconnected murders, committed each at a different time, and at a different place" in a trial with another defendant "that is not even alleged to have had any concern with two of the offences of which he is accused". Several hours were spent on legal arguments about the objection. The judge decided that to ensure a fair trial, the indictment should be split into separate charges for the three murders. He gave Rae the choice as to which should be heard first; Rae opted for the murder of Docherty, given they had the corpse and the strongest evidence.

In the early afternoon Burke and McDougal pleaded not guilty to the murder of Docherty. The first witnesses were then called from a list of 55 that included Hare and Knox; not all the witnesses on the list were called and Knox, with three of his assistants, avoided being questioned in court. One of Knox's assistants, David Paterson—who had been the main person Burke and Hare had dealt with at Knox's surgery—was called and confirmed the pair had supplied the doctor with several corpses.

In the early evening Hare took the stand to give evidence. Under cross-examination about the murder of Docherty, Hare claimed Burke had been the sole murderer and McDougal had twice been involved by bringing Docherty back to the house after she had run out; Hare stated that he had assisted Burke in the delivery of the body to Knox. Although he was asked about other murders, he was not obliged to answer the questions, as the charge related only to the death of Docherty. After Hare's questioning, his wife entered the witness box, carrying their baby daughter who had developed whooping cough. Margaret used the child's coughing fits as a way to give herself thinking time for some of the questions, and told the court that she had a very poor memory and could not remember many of the events.

The final prosecution witnesses were the two doctors, Black and Christison; both said they suspected foul play, but that there was no forensic evidence to support the suggestion of murder. There were no witnesses called for the defence, although the pre-trial declarations by Burke and McDougal were read out in their place. The prosecution summed up their case, after which, at 3:00 am, Burke's defence lawyer began his final statement, which lasted for two hours; McDougal's defence lawyer began his address to the jury on his client's behalf at 5:00 am. Boyle then gave his summing up, directing the jury to accept the arguments of the prosecution. The jury retired to consider its verdict at 8:30 am on Christmas Day and returned fifty minutes later. It delivered a guilty verdict against Burke for the murder of Docherty; the same charge against McDougal they found not proven. As he passed the death sentence against Burke, Boyle told him:

Your body should be publicly dissected and anatomized. And I trust, that if it is ever customary to preserve skeletons, yours will be preserved, in order that posterity may keep in remembrance your atrocious crimes.

Aftermath, including execution and dissection

McDougal was released at the end of the trial and returned home. The following day she went to buy whisky and was confronted by a mob that was angry at the not proven verdict. She was taken to a police building in nearby Fountainbridge for her own protection, but after the mob laid siege to it she escaped through a back window to the main police station off Edinburgh's High Street. She tried to see Burke, but permission was refused; she left Edinburgh the next day, and there are no clear accounts of her later life. On 3 January 1829, on the advice of both Catholic priests and Presbyterian clergy, Burke made another confession. This was more detailed than the official one provided prior to his trial; he placed much of the blame for the murders on Hare.

On 16 January 1829 a petition on behalf of James Wilson's mother and sister, protesting against Hare's immunity and intended release from prison, was given lengthy consideration by the High Court of Justiciary and rejected by a vote of 4 to 2. Margaret was released on 19 January and travelled to Glasgow to find a passage back to Ireland. While waiting for a ship she was recognised and attacked by a mob. She was given shelter in a police station before being given a police escort onto a Belfast-bound vessel; no clear accounts exist of what became of her after she landed in Ireland.

 

Burke's preserved skeleton

Burke was hanged on the morning of 28 January 1829 in front of a crowd possibly as large as 25,000; views from windows in the tenements overlooking the scaffold were hired at prices ranging from 5s to 20s. On 1 February Burke's corpse was publicly dissected by Professor Monro in the anatomy theatre of the university's Old College. Police had to be called when large numbers of students gathered demanding access to the lecture for which a limited number of tickets had been issued. A minor riot ensued; calm was restored only after one of the university professors negotiated with the crowd that they would be allowed to pass through the theatre in batches of fifty, after the dissection. During the procedure, which lasted for two hours, Monro dipped his quill pen into Burke's blood and wrote, "This is written with the blood of Wm Burke, who was hanged at Edinburgh. This blood was taken from his head".

Burke's skeleton was given to the Anatomical Museum of the Edinburgh Medical School where, as at 2022, it remains. His death mask and a book said to be bound with his tanned skin can be seen at Surgeons' Hall Museum.

Hare was released on 5 February 1829—his extended stay in custody had been undertaken for his own protection—and was assisted in leaving Edinburgh in disguise by the mailcoach to Dumfries. At one of its stops he was recognised by a fellow passenger, Erskine Douglas Sandford, a junior counsel who had represented Wilson's family; Sandford informed his fellow passengers of Hare's identity. On arrival in Dumfries the news of Hare's presence spread and a large crowd gathered at the hostelry where he was due to stay the night. Police arrived and arranged for a decoy coach to draw off the crowd while Hare escaped through a back window and into a carriage which took him to the town's prison for safekeeping. A crowd surrounded the building; stones were thrown at the door and windows and street lamps were smashed before 100 special constables arrived to restore order. In the small hours of the morning, escorted by a sheriff officer and militia guard, Hare was taken out of town, set down on the Annan Road and instructed to make his way to the English border. There were no subsequent reliable sightings of him and his eventual fate is unknown.

Caricature of Knox, harvesting corpses

Knox refused to make any public statements about his dealings with Burke and Hare. The common thought in Edinburgh was that he was culpable in the events; he was lampooned in caricature and, in February 1829, a crowd gathered outside his house and burned an effigy of him. A committee of inquiry cleared him of complicity and reported that they had "seen no evidence that Dr Knox or his assistants knew that murder was committed in procuring any of the subjects brought to his rooms". He resigned from his position as curator of the College of Surgeons' museum, and was gradually excluded from university life by his peers. He left Edinburgh in 1842 and lectured in Britain and mainland Europe. While working in London he fell afoul of the regulations of the Royal College of Surgeons and was debarred from lecturing; he was removed from the roll of fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1848. From 1856 he worked as a pathological anatomist at the Brompton Cancer Hospital and had a medical practice in Hackney until his death in 1862.

Legacy

Legislation

The question of the supply of cadavers for scientific research had been promoted by the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham before the crimes of Burke and Hare took place. A parliamentary select committee had drafted a "Bill for preventing the unlawful disinterment of human bodies, and for regulating Schools of Anatomy" in mid-1828—six months before the murders were detected. This was rejected in 1829 by the House of Lords.

The murders committed by Burke and Hare raised public awareness of the need for bodies for medical purposes, and of the trade that doctors had conducted with grave robbers and murderers. The East London murder of a 14-year-old boy and the subsequent attempt to sell the corpse to the medical school at King's College London led to an investigation of the London Burkers, who had recently turned from grave robbing to murder to obtain corpses; two men were hanged in December 1831 for the crime. A bill was quickly introduced into Parliament, and gained royal assent nine months later to become the Anatomy Act 1832. This Act authorized dissection on bodies from workhouses unclaimed after 48 hours, and ended the practice of anatomizing as part of the death sentence for murder.

In media portrayals and popular culture

The events of the West Port murders have made appearances in fiction. They are referred to in Robert Louis Stevenson's 1884 short story "The Body Snatcher" and Marcel Schwob told their story in the last chapter of Imaginary Lives (1896), while the Edinburgh-based author Elizabeth Byrd used the events in her novels Rest Without Peace (1974) and The Search for Maggie Hare (1976). The murders have also been portrayed on stage and screen, usually in heavily fictionalized form.

David Paterson, Knox's assistant, contacted Walter Scott to ask the novelist if he would be interested in writing an account of the murders, but he declined, despite Scott's long-standing interest in the events. Scott later wrote:

Our Irish importation have made a great discovery of Oeconomicks, namely, that a wretch who is not worth a farthing while alive, becomes a valuable article when knockd on the head & carried to an anatomist; and acting on this principle, have cleard the streets of some of those miserable offcasts of society, whom nobody missd because nobody wishd to see them again.

Notes

 Gilliland observes that although there is no evidence that the couple had been formally married, they were considered as such under Scottish law.

 It has been suggested that, but for this chance encounter, the public opprobrium which later fell on Knox might have attached to Monro.

 £7 10s in 1827 equates to approximately equivalent to £683 in 2021, according to calculations based on Consumer Price Index measure of inflation.

 The original copy of Hare's confession—given on 1 December and accepted as the basis of his turning king's evidence—was subsequently lost, although the details were widely reported in the press of the time.

 The modern sources that provide a chronological list of the murders are:

Brian Bailey, Burke and Hare: The Year of the Ghouls; Bailey also tabulates the order from the two Burke confessions, three contemporary publications and his own;

Lisa Rosner, The Anatomy Murders;

Owen Dudley Edwards, Burke and Hare.

 Rosner reflects that the pair were unlikely to change their modus operandi for the second murder, particularly for a less effective method of smothering a victim.

 £10 in 1828 equates to approximately £875 in 2016.

 The two women were described in contemporary accounts as prostitutes, but there is no evidence that this was true.

 Some contemporary accounts state that Burke murdered the boy by putting him over his knee and breaking his back; both Rosner and Bailey consider this highly unlikely, and the latter describes it as "a piece of sensational embroidery".

 Margaret Docherty's name is also given as Margery, Mary or Madgy with the alternative surname Campbell.

 It was a Saturday and the dissecting rooms were closed, so the tea-chest containing the body was left in the cellar; Knox gave the men £5 and told them he would examine it on Monday, when he would pay them the balance.

 During their careers both Newbigging and Christison were Presidents of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh; Christison also became the president of the British Medical Association and one of the personal physicians to Queen Victoria.

 The original meaning changed over time in general use as a word for any suppression or cover-up.

 One of the spectators present was Marie Tussaud, also known as Madame Tussaud, who made several sketches during the case. She had a wax model of Burke on display in Liverpool within a fortnight of his execution.

 Burke and McDougal even had their evening meal of soup and bread at 6:00 pm, while they were still in the dock; the case continued while they ate.

 On hearing the not proven verdict Burke turned to McDougal and said, "Nelly, you are out of the scrape".

 Some accounts of the escape state that she was disguised as a man for her escape from Fountainbridge, which Rosner considers "picturesque though unlikely".

 One contemporary source, A. Wood's 1829 work West Port Murders, considers the number of attendees "more nearly to forty thousand souls than to thirty-five thousand".

 Several tales of Hare's fate exist. These include that he worked at a lime pit until he was recognised, upon which point his fellow-workers threw him into the pit, which turned him blind; he may have turned to begging on Oxford Street, London. Other possibilities are that he went to Ireland or America and lived for 40 years after the murders.

 Rosner gives the date as 10 February; Bailey gives 11; Taylor gives 12.

 In order to change public opinion on the matter, Bentham donated his body to be publicly dissected and his corpse to be preserved as an "auto-icon"; it has been on display in University College London since 1850.

 On stage:

The Anatomist (1930) by James Bridie.

The Doctor and the Devils by Dylan Thomas.

On radio:

"The Anatomist" (1937) by Bridie; based on his own play.

On film:

The Body Snatcher (1945), based on Stevenson's story.

The Flesh and the Fiends (1960).

Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) depicted Burke and Hare in the late Victorian era as employees of Dr. Jekyll.

Burke & Hare (1971)

The Doctor and the Devils (1985), based on Thomas's play.

Burke & Hare (2010).

On television:

"The Anatomist" (1939) by Bridie.

"The Anatomist" (1956) an episode of the ITV Play of the Week series.