The Lady and Her Monsters (23 page)

Burke and Hare always believed they had good reasons for doing what they were doing. When another occupant in their tenement became ill, they rationalized that they were killing him not so much to sell his body but because he was suffering savagely from his disease. They were providing a kindness toward the failing man, and in turn the selling of his body would provide them with a recompense. Using a method that would become their signature style, they plied the man with drink until he became incoherent, then smothered him by covering his nose and mouth until he suffocated. That style of murder left no visible traces and eventually became known in the common language as Burking.

But while the corpse gave them what they yearned for—a small allowance to cover their needs for a short while—they quickly realized their lodging house was never completely full; at times Burke and Hare and their women were the only occupants. They needed a more reliable source of subjects.

When asked if anyone else knew what they were doing, Burke stated: “None but Hare. We always took care when we were going to commit murder, that no one . . . should be present . . . that no one swear he saw the deed done. The women might suspect what we were about, but we always put them out of the way when we were going to do it.”

Both men always maintained that their companions (and everyone else, for that matter) were not aware of their doings, but plenty of reliable information indicates otherwise. The women may not have taken part in the actual killings, but they knew what Burke and Hare did. Not only that, the women often found the victims.

Many of those who died were elderly, prostitutes, indigents, drunks living on the streets—people who in the criminals' minds no one would miss and no one would look for. But those people also yearned for friendship and a place to stay, which set them up to become victims. It was not uncommon for them to be lured to the tenement with the notion of free-flowing drinks, merry conversations, a bed to rest in for the night, and the ability to rinse filthy garments under a trickle of relatively clean water. In this way, for most of 1828, three men, twelve women, and a child came face-to-face with Burke and Hare.

Burking left no evidence that a crime was committed, but Knox and his assistants should have become suspicious when Burke and Hare were visiting the back door a little too often. Also, the corpses may not have displayed any outright evidence that the victims had been killed, but nothing else indicated why they were dead. These corpses were not only fresh but also well preserved. Usually a dead body that had been interred and then disinterred bore the marks of that ordeal. The earth itself left remembrances—even if the body had been buried for only a few hours—and the elements had a way of insidiously infiltrating into the flesh. Aside from that, the corpses were also most often dragged out of their coffins by the necks or their hair, which left some kind of physical trace behind.

Burke and Hare's corpses displayed none of those signs. Sometimes young, and relatively pliable, they appeared to have been going about their business one moment and then were suddenly struck down by a simple act of God. Knox, by reputation and practice, was a skilled physician. Should he have not seen what was going on? Did he notice and choose to keep quiet? Those who knew him adamantly refused to believe he had been aware of the murders, thinking instead that he'd proceeded just like all the other anatomists and had not asked where the corpses were coming from, nor how the resurrectionists had gotten them.

Eventually Knox did know what was happening, particularly when the next few victims trickled in. Burke and Hare's greed reached such a point that they no longer looked toward the indigents of society as their targets, but to anyone who crossed their paths, most especially the prostitutes, who, parading up and down the streets, seemed to taunt the killers with a price advertised on their carefully coifed heads. Burke and Hare, perched on stools inside a bar, their heads bent close together as if discussing the latest political scandal, were noticing the happenings among the crowd inside and out, who would make a fitting subject for the anatomists. This was when they began setting their eyes on the more famous characters and their unraveling took place.

On a fine April morning, Dr. Knox began his customary rituals before his students arrived. A body was set upon the surgical table, one that had been provided by Burke and Hare. By now they had become if not his only suppliers, then his most reliable, and though he had not seen today's corpse, he expected that it would be fresh, plump, and without any advanced case of disease or injury. As Knox and his assistant lifted the sheets to view it, they were rewarded with an amazing if nasty surprise: the body of eighteen-year-old Mary Paterson, who despite her last name was not related to Knox's assistant, lay there in all her nakedness.

This was perhaps the moment when Knox realized something was amiss. Young, beautiful, and extremely healthy, she was a well-known fixture in the streets of Edinburgh not only because of her beauty, but because she was a prostitute. It has been suggested that the men in the room were so moved because many had been her clients.

Mary had been lured to the tenement with the prospect of alcohol and had been smothered to death in the same manner that all the others had been. But she did not suffer the usual fate under Knox's knife—not right away, at least. Reports later revealed that Knox, his assistants, and those students who had arrived in the laboratory were so taken by her naked flesh that they refused to work on her, and instead of dissecting her, they used her as a model for their artistic sketches, albeit a dead model. Overwhelmed by the beauty of her form, Knox placed Mary's body in an alcohol-filled cask, where it remained preserved for the next three months.

Though people noticed Mary was missing from the streets, her disappearance was blamed on her lifestyle. Perhaps she had moved where opportunity loomed, or, if indeed she had been killed, as some in her line of work were, her body would be discovered some months later. What finally got everyone talking was the disappearance of James Wilson, who was known in the neighborhood as Daft Jamie.

An eighteen-year-old boy who walked with a limp and suffered from mental retardation, Daft Jamie was well known and well liked by the children in the area. He lived with his mother and was on his way to meet her when he came face-to-face with William Burke. Burke said he knew where Daft Jamie's mother was and directed Jamie to Burke's house. Of course Jamie discovered that his mother was not there, but he stayed for a while as the two adults seemed friendly and offered him liquor. Jamie wasn't much of a drinker, so he refused. Burke and Hare wouldn't take no for an answer, so they forcibly tried to make him swallow the spirits, which resulted in a struggle. Burke and Hare must have miscalculated Jamie's physical strength, because he was unusually powerful and strong, and soon he was able to overcome Burke. The two continued to fight, and then Hare intervened; it was a tough fight, but they overwhelmed the boy, smothered him, and sold his body to Dr. Knox. As Jamie's mother and the neighbors searched for him and called out his name along the darkening streets, the doctor in his laboratory was dissecting Jamie's body.

Portrait of James “Daft Jamie” Wilson, murdered by William Burke and William Hare. Wilson was suffocated by the two killers in William Hare's boardinghouse, and his body later sold to the anatomist Robert Knox for dissection.

Marjory Campbell Docherty had the terrible honor of being Burke and Hare's last victim. She had arrived at the Hares' tenement along with another couple, the Grays, and was killed when the Grays were not present. Neighbors surrounding the dwelling heard a struggle and thought it sounded vaguely peculiar. Then, realizing that it was Halloween, a night reserved for debauchery and wickedness, they had chalked up the noises and screams to a party getting a little out of hand. Following the murder, Docherty's body was hidden beneath a bed. When the sun came up, the Grays asked about Marjory and were told she had left. Ann Gray found that disturbing, because Marjory had not said anything about leaving, and she became even more suspicious when she moved near her bed to remove some undergarments and was blocked by William Burke. It seemed odd that he wouldn't let her retrieve her stockings.

Later that day, Ann was able to return and investigate. The place seemed as dingy and foul as it always did, but she and her husband checked beneath the straw mattress and found Marjory's dead body. They quickly left the house intent on informing the police, but as they rushed out, they bumped squarely into M'Dougal, who immediately understood what had happened. Trying to calm them, she promised that they would be part of the money if they kept quiet. The Grays refused and hurried outside toward the police.

Burke and Hare, suffocating Mrs. Docherty. Her body was then sold to Dr. Knox for dissection. The killers used the method known as Burking—plying their victim with drink then suffocating her. Mrs. Docherty was their last victim.

M'Dougal rushed to tell Burke and Hare what had happened, and they removed the body from beneath the bed and quickly sold it to Dr. Knox. The police were later directed toward Dr. Knox's laboratory, where they found the remnants of Marjory.

Though Burke and Hare had committed numerous murders, the police found themselves with a dilemma: by the time they arrested the men and their significant others, most of the evidence had disappeared. The crime spree had occurred over a period of nearly a year, and the dissections most often took place as soon as the corpses arrived on the table. Afterward the doctors usually buried the remains in unmarked graves, or they incinerated them. The police agreed to give William Hare complete immunity if he not only confessed to all their deeds but also testified against Burke. And “from the hour in which he heard that his associate Hare was to be admitted as evidence against him,”
The Scotsman
reported, “he [Burke] abandoned all hope of acquittal and resigned himself to his awful fate.”

When Hare arrived on the stand, he provided detailed accounts of the murders, with one particular difference: he took himself out of the ordeals, placing the blame for all that had occurred on Burke's shoulders. He pointed to the method Burke had employed in choosing his victims. He said that one particular incident involved an elderly woman, whom Burke suffocated on the bed while Hare sat by and watched. If Hare intended to make himself come across as sympathetic, it did not work.

He even said that other people, including Knox's assistant Paterson, were involved. To a crowd that was already inflamed, his words only made things worse, particularly when he described how one body had been disposed of in a box with the doctor's assistance: “He [Burke] went in, and drew the body from under the bed, and the porter put it in; there was some hair hanging out, and the porter put it in, and said it was bad to let it hang out.”

Hare went on: “The porter carried it to Surgeon's Square. It was roped . . . I went with the porter, and Burke went for the Doctor's man.”

Hare denied knowing where the bodies had come from or that he'd had any part in their killings. As he spoke, the “sinister expression in his look” bothered those in attendance because they knew he was just as guilty as Burke. Particularly offensive to them was the “look of evident satisfaction” he had when he finished his testimony, clearly aware that he had literally gotten away with murder.

The trial took place over the Christmas holiday and lasted only several hours. Not surprisingly, the jury quickly decided that Hare, his wife, and M'Dougal would go free. But Lord Meadowbank sentenced William Burke to hang on January 28, 1829. “You may rest assured that you have no chance of pardon,” the lord justice clerk told Burke. “I now solemnly warn you to prepare your mind in the most suitable manner to appear in a very short time before the throne of God.”

In a further stroke of what seemed poetic justice, he added that Burke's body would be handed over for dissection to the very same professor Burke and Hare had initially wished to do business with: Alexander Monro. Many saw this as a message that this had now become “murder for hire . . . a new species of assassination.”