Burke and Hare

by Bailey, Brian

  The story of the girl Paterson, or Mitchell, is still more glaring. Jess Brown states, that Paterson was in her company when they were accosted by two men, (Burke and Hare); the men would not accompany them to the house proposed by Brown, but insisted upon the girls going with them; they contrived to give Brown the slip, or Brown gave them the slip, and observed Burke, Hare, and the girl Paterson proceed towards the Canongate; they were admitted into Burke’s brother’s house in the Canongate; she was seen there by Burke’s brother, who is a scaffenger, and he sat carousing with them until his avocations called him away early in the morning; after his departure the murder was committed; the body was taken the same evening to Surgeons Square, and sold for £10; the next day it was recognized by Mr F—, an assistant to Dr K—; the face was of a strong livid colour, and traces of blood were observable at the mouth, nose, and ears. Here is a chain of strong circumstantial evidence against Hare, so much so, that an English jury would not have the least hesitation in returning a verdict against him; still it may be said, that there is no proof as to these men being the perpetrators of the murder.

  Your Lordship must be aware that the law does not always require eye witnesses to the fact, for it justly observes, that these acts are generally done in so secret a manner, that nine cases out of ten would go unpunished; but that a chain of circumstantial evidence, well supported, taking into consideration the previous character of the parties, will be sufficient to condemn. There is sufficient proof that Burke and Hare were seen last in Paterson’s company; there is also sufficient proof, that Burke and Hare brought the body of Paterson to Surgeons Square, fifteen hours after she was seen by Burke’s brother. One witness can swear it was her body he saw in the Lecture Room; combine this with the circumstance of her mysterious disappearance, and, as an honest man, ask your own conscience, if there is not sufficient proof to put HARE upon his trial for the murder. I will call your Lordship’s attention to another circumstance. HARE brought a subject to Surgeons Square while Burke was absent in the country, and delivered it to Mr M—. I think it would be proper to examine Mr M— upon this point, as it possibly might be the body of the person that was murdered in Broggan’s house, and the evidence obtained from Dr K—, Mr M—, Broggan, and possibly others, might be of service in the prosecution. Another chain of circumstantial evidence against HARE is this, James Wilson, or DAFT JAMIE, was seen by many, the day of that evening the murder was committed; he was last seen in the West Port with Burke or Hare; the night after the murder he was carried to Surgeons Square by M’Culloch, accompanied by Burke and Hare; the observations of the students the next day, that they knew it to be JAMIE, and when the story of his disappearance became general, – the ordering of that body for dissection, instead of the uniform practice of making use of the body longest in possession of the lecturer, – and even then destroying all traces of such parts of the body as were most likely to lead to a discovery, this calls loudly upon the lecturer to give the public some satisfactory reason, why he deviated in this case from the usual mode of procedure. There is Mr M—1, a student, who on, lifting up the head of the subject, declared it at once to be Jamie, and many others coincided in his opinion. If these gentlemen will now come forward and state upon oath, to the best of their knowledge, that the body alluded to, was that of James Wilson, or Daft Jamie, and the parties that last saw him, – time and place; the party that carried the body to Surgeons Square, – from whom did he receive it, and from whence he carried it; the party that received the body, – from whom and by whom accompanied, with time and place; the party that paid the money for the body, and to whom did they pay it. If in this chain of circumstances there is no proof that HARE has acted a principal part, it is not to be supposed that your Lordship can file a bill against him; but, on the other hand, should your Lordship see the least ground of evidence that can be supported by circumstances, I trust you will, with your wonted alacrity, bring him forward to answer for those crimes of which he seems to be a principal accomplice. Public justice demands it, and the public feeling must be appeased.

  In the foregoing statement, your Lordship and the public will perceive, that David P—n did not act the part assigned to him in the public prints; it will be observed that all along it was the assistants to the Doctor that bargained with Burke and Hare for the subjects, and P—n seems to have been made a kind of scape goat; it will also be observed, that long before P—n came into the Doctor’s service, Mr M—r, an assistant, had been in the habit of going with Burke and Hare for the bodies, and it is not till very lately that P—n was employed as a go-between the Doctor and Burke and Hare; be this as it may, let the public judge for themselves. From the inquiries I have made respecting him, I find that he is friendless, has uniformly borne a good character, and has refused to return to his situation.

  The public are aware that the lecturers on anatomy must be supplied with subjects; a meeting of that respectable body has already taken place on this topic, the result of which I am yet ignorant. But as the public must also be satisfied on this point, I will here detail to your Lordship what facts respecting the procuring of subjects are in my possession. It is next to impossible that any subjects can be got in or within twenty miles of Edinburgh, without the concurrence of the persons employed to watch the ground, which sometimes, but rarely, happens. But at great toil and eminent danger bodies are sometimes procured some thirty miles round, and the schemes and stratagems then employed to ensure a safe deliverance in Edinburgh are truly ingenious. From Newcastle there is generally a good supply, sent in trunks and hampers, either anonymously addressed, or without any address. But previous to this package being sent to the coach office, an invoice, or a letter of advice, is sent by post, stating, that by such a coach, and on such a day, a subject inclosed in a particular box or hamper, with a certain address, or marked soft goods, chrystal, or paper, to be kept dry, will be forwarded accordingly. A person is in waiting at the office to claim such package, pay the carriage, and it is safely deposited in Surgeons Square. Now, it must be very pleasant for an outside passenger to know, that probably he may be sitting cheek by jowl with his deceased grandmother, or perhaps covering the remains of an affectionate wife; nay, our Christmas presents are not exempt from bearing company with, and probably imbibing the effluvia of the deceased. I do not mean to say that the coach proprietors are always aware of the company they carry, but this I know, that at one time they must have been, which the following anecdote will illustrate: a porter, one day in February last, brought a box to a certain Lecture Room, and as this box was very similar to those in which subjects generally came, and without any address or mark; it was understood by the porter, and by those to whom it was delivered, that it contained a subject. Some little time after the porter was gone the box was opened, (as a subject was advised,) but to the utter astonishment of those present, instead of a dead body, there came forth a very fine bacon ham, a large cheese, a basket of eggs, and a huge clue of Hodden grey worsted, – a present, no doubt, from a country cousin, and intended to have reached a different destination. A body in a box without address had come by the same conveyance, and had, no doubt, been changed by mistake; but what the feelings of the party were who received it, judge ye!

  I am told that sometimes the resurrection men procure bodies from the Royal Infirmary; the stratagem they make use of is nearly this, they hear by their spies that such a person has died without friends, one goes immediately and claims kindred with the deceased, a coffin is procured, and they are generally removed to some house adjacent for interment. The body, however, does not receive this last token of respect, for with all possible speed a box is procured into which the corpse is crammed and mediately disposed of.

  On one occasion, I remember to have witnessed one of the most daring scenes I ever beheld. On turning the corner of Surgeons Square, I observed two men at the trot with a coffin on their shoulders, in open day, they instantly plunged into a certain Lecture Room, the corpse of a female was rolled out on the flour, and t
he coffin broke in a hundred pieces; they received very little for this body, as some person in the surgical department of the Royal Infirmary had, with an instrument, so mangled the body, as to render it almost useless to any Lecturer. I do not mean to say, that the gentleman who has the sole charge of the surgical department, and through whose hands all bodies ought to pass before their friends can receive them, was in any manner connected with the mangling of the body. But if it was suspected, that the persons claiming the deceased, intended it for dissection, why give it up to them, and if not, why should the body be mangled; possibly this is a new regulation of the Hospital, of which I have not yet heard. I am confident that no blame can be attached to Mr Marshall, his late conduct in tracing and recovering a body out of Mr M’K—’s Lecture Room, places him above the reach of suspicion – So much for home, I will now take a trip to Ireland, which is the grand mart for subjects. There are several agents who supply the Edinburgh Lecturers with subjects, at about £7 each, expences included, these come in lots of ten or twelve, sometimes addressed to one individual, and when such is the case, the other professors attend and cast lots; this is when a general cargo arrives, but the more frequent is for each professor to receive his own barrel, box, or hamper. A large hamper sometimes contains from three to four bodies, packed up with a motely assortment of Irish law papers, or liquid blacking in bottles, or as pickled beef or pork. The usual route of conveyance is by Greenock, Glasgow, and down the Union Canal; in all this, there is nothing dreadfully appalling; bodies must be had, come from where they will, and I think were an act passed, that all those who die upon the parishes or in Hospitals, without friends to inter the bodies, were to be forwarded to the Lecture Rooms, at the professor’s expence, it would in a short time, supersede every other method now in use.

  Your Lordship, I trust, will pardon me for any expressions in this letter you may consider harsh or improper. I solemnly assure you that such was not my intention. I have merely stated facts, which can be supported upon oath. If I have erred in giving these publicity, it is with a desire that the public should be made acquainted with that portion of this mysterious affair they seemed so anxiously to wish for. Something ought to be done, nay must be done, to appease the public feeling; and I am confident that your Lordship will, to the utmost of your power, endeavour to do so, for which you will not only have the thanks of a wise and discerning public, but all the information that lies in the power of

  THE ECHO.

  * * *

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  * * *

  OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS

  Evidence and Report of the Select Committee on Anatomy, House of Commons, 1828

  ‘An Act for Regulating Schools of Anatomy’, 2 and 3 Will. IV, c. 75, 1832

  Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 1829–32

  Home Office Papers in Public Record Office

  OTHER PRIMARY SOURCES

  Robert Buchanan et al, Trial of William Burke and Helen McDougal before the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh on Wednesday, December 24, 1828, for the murder of Margery Campbell, or Docherty, (Edinburgh), 1829

  ‘Echo of Surgeons’ Square’, Letter to the Lord Advocate, Disclosing the Accomplices, Secrets, and Other Facts Relative to the Late Murders, etc., Menzies (Edinburgh) 1829

  Manuscript diary of a body-snatcher in the Library of the Royal College of Surgeons, London

  ARTICLES, PAMPHLETS, ETC.

  Sir Humphrey Rolleston, ‘Provincial Medical Schools a Hundred Years Ago’, Cambridge University Medical Society magazine, 1932

  A Laconic Narrative of the Life and Death of James Wilson, known by the name of Daft Jamie, W. Smith (publisher), (Edinburgh), 1829

  BOOKS

  J.B. Atlay, Famous Trials of the Century, Grant Richards (London), 1899 Brian Bailey, The Resurrection Men, Macdonald (London), 1991

  James Blake Bailey (ed.), The Diary of a Resurrectionist, Swan Sonnenschein (London), 1896

  James Moores Ball, The Body-Snatchers, Dorset Press (New York), 1989

  Horace Bleackley, The Hangmen of England, Chapman and Hall (London), 1929

  Pauline Chapman, Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors, Constable (London), 1984

  Kellow Chesney, The Victorian Underworld, Penguin Books (London) 1982 edn.

  Robert Christison, The Life of Sir Robert Christison, Bart, (2 vols), Wm Blackwood & Sons (Edinburgh), 1885

  Henry Cockburn, Memorials of his Time, A. & C. Black (Edinburgh), 1856

  C.H. Creswell, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (Edinburgh), 1926.

  V. Mary Crosse, A Surgeon in the Early Nineteenth Century, E. & S. Livingstone (Edinburgh), 1968

  H.C. Darby (ed.), A New Historical Geography of England after 1600, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge), 1976

  Daniel Defoe, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, Penguin Books (London), 1971 edn.

  Dictionary of National Biography

  Hugh Douglas, Burke and Hare, Robert Hale (London), 1973

  Owen Dudley Edwards, Burke and Hare, Polygon Books (Edinburgh), 1980

  M. Dorothy George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century, Penguin Books (London), 1985

  H.J.C. Grierson (ed.), The Letters of Sir Walter Scott, Vol XI, 1828–31, Constable (London), 1936

  Thomas Ireland (publisher), West Port Murders, (Edinburgh), 1829

  Alexander Leighton, The Court of Cacus, Houlston & Wright (Edinburgh), 1861

  J.G. Lockhart, Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott, Vol IX, A. & C. Black (Edinburgh), 1869

  Henry Lonsdale, A Sketch of the Life and Writings of Robert Knox the Anatomist, Macmillan (London), 1870

  Ida Macalpine & Richard Hunter, George III and the Mad-Business, Allen Lane, the Penguin Press (London), 1969

  George MacGregor, The History of Burke and Hare and of the Resurrectionist Times, Thos D. Morison (Glasgow), 1884

  Peter Mackenzie, Old Reminiscences of Glasgow and the West of Scotland (2 vols), J.P. Forrester (Glasgow), 1890

  C.S. Parker, Sir Robert Peel Vol II, John Murray (London), 1899

  Isobel Rae, Knox the Anatomist, Oliver & Boyd (Edinburgh), 1964

  Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute, Routledge & Kegan Paul (London), 1987

  William Roughead (ed.), Burke and Hare, part of Notable British Trials series, Wm Hodge (Edinburgh), 1948

  George Ryley Scott, The History of Capital Punishment, Torchstream Books (London), 1950

  Sir Walter Scott, Journal, Oliver & Boyd (Edinburgh), 1950

  Thomas Stone, Observations on the Phrenological Development of Burke, Hare, and Other Atrocious Murderers, (Edinburgh), 1829

  John Struthers, Historical Sketch of the Edinburgh Anatomical School, Maclachlen and Stewart (Edinburgh), 1867

  Cecil Howard Turner, The Inhumanists, Alexander Ouseley (London), 1932

  Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Facts Relating to the Punishment of Death in the Metropolis, Ridgway (London), 1831

  West Port Murders, Thos Ireland (Edinburgh), 1829

  Sir Llewellyn Woodward, The Age of Reform, 1815-70, Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1997

  NEWSPAPERS AND JOURNALS

  Aberdeen University Review

  Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine

  Caledonian Mercury

  Dumfries Courier

  Edinburgh Evening Courant

  Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle

  Glasgow Chronicle

  Glasgow Herald

  Lancaster Gazette

  Liverpool Mercury

  Medical Times & Gazette

  Scots Magazine

  The Kaleidoscope

  The Lancet

  The Quarterly Review

  The Scotsman

  The Times

  Westminster Review

 

 

 
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