Burke and Hare murders

William Burke and William Hare
Hare and Burke
Criminal penalty	Death (Burke)
Details
Victims	17
Country	Scotland

The Burke and Hare murders (also known as the West Port murders) were serial murders perpetrated in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom in 1827 and 1828. The killings are attributed to Irish immigrants William Burke and William Hare, who sold the corpses of their 17 victims to the Edinburgh Medical College for dissection. Their principal customer was Doctor Robert Knox, and their accomplices included Burke's mistress, Helen MacDougal, and Hare's wife, Margaret.

Historical background

Main article: History of anatomy in the 19th century

Before 1832, an insufficient supply of legitimate cadavers was available for the study and teaching of anatomy in British medical schools. As medical science began to flourish in the early 19th century, demand rose sharply, but at the same time, the only legal supply of cadavers—the bodies of executed criminals—was falling due to a sharp reduction in the execution rate in the early 19th century, as compared with the 18th century, brought about by the repeal of the Bloody Code. This situation attracted criminal elements who were willing to obtain specimens by any means. The activities of body-snatchers (also called resurrectionists) gave rise to particular public fear and revulsion.

Burke and Hare

Burke (1792 – 28 January 1829) was born in Urney, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. After trying his hand at a variety of trades there and serving as an officer's servant in the Donegal Militia, he left his wife and two children in Ireland and emigrated to Scotland about 1817, working as a navvy for the Union Canal. He acquired a mistress, Helen MacDougal, and afterwards worked as a labourer, weaver, baker and a cobbler.

Hare's (born 1792 or 1804) birthplace is variously given as Newry or Derry, Northern Ireland. Similar to Burke, he emigrated to Scotland and worked as a Union Canal labourer. He then moved to Edinburgh where he met a man named Logue. When Logue died in 1826, he took Margaret Laird, Logue's widow, as his common-law wife and the two ran a lodging house.

Murders

In autumn 1927, Burke and MacDougal moved into Hare's lodging house in Tanner's Close, in the West Port area of Edinburgh. It is not known whether the two knew each other from their earlier common employment on the Union Canal; however, once Burke arrived in Tanner's Corner, they became good friends. According to Hare's later testimony, the first body they sold was that of a dead tenant, an old army pensioner who owed Hare £4 rent. In November 1827, they stole the body from its coffin and sold it to the Edinburgh Medical College for £7, their first meeting with Dr. Robert Knox, a leading Edinburgh anatomist.

Burke and Hare's next victim was a sick tenant, Joseph the Miller, whom they plied with whisky and then suffocated. When there were no other sickly tenants, they decided to lure a victim from the street. In February 1828, they invited pensioner Abigail Simpson to spend the night before her return to home. Using the same modus operandi, they engineered her intoxication and then smothered her. Because the corpse was so fresh, they were paid £15.

Hare's wife, Margaret, invited a woman to the inn, plied her with drink, and then sent for her husband. Next, Burke brought in two prostitutes, Mary Patterson and Janet Brown, but Brown left when an argument broke out between MacDougal and Burke. When she returned, she was told that Patterson had left with Burke. The next morning, some of the medical students recognized the dead prostitute, possibly because they had used her services.

The next victim was an acquaintance of Burke, a beggar woman called "Effie". They were paid £10 for her body. Then Burke "saved" a woman from police by claiming that he knew her. He delivered her body to the medical school just hours later.

The next two victims were an old woman and a deaf boy. Burke and Hare argued over the boy, but then Burke broke his back and sold both bodies for £8 each. The next two victims were Burke's acquaintance "Mrs. Ostler" and one of MacDougal's relatives, Ann MacDougal.

Then Hare met elderly prostitute Mary Haldane. When her daughter Peggy inquired about her whereabouts, she ended up accompanying her mother on the medical school cutting table. However, this particular disappearance did not go unnoticed, since Haldane had been a well-known figure in the neighbourhood.

Burke and Hare's next victim was an even better-known person, a retarded young man with a limp called "Daft Jamie", who was 18 at the time of his murder. The boy resisted, and the pair had to kill him together. His mother began to ask for her boy. When Dr. Knox uncovered the body the next morning, several students recognized Jamie. His head and feet were cut off after Knox had shown his students the body. Knox denied that it was Jamie, but he apparently began to dissect his face first.

The last victim was Marjory Campbell Docherty. Burke lured her into the lodging house by claiming that his mother was also a Docherty, but he had to wait because of James and Ann Gray who were lodging with them. The Grays left for the night and neighbours heard the noise of a struggle.

Detection

The next day, Ann Gray became suspicious when Burke would not let her approach a bed where she had left her stockings. When the Grays were left alone in the house in the early evening, they checked the bed and found Docherty's body under it. On their way to alert the police, they ran into MacDougal who tried to bribe them with an offer of £10 a week. They refused.

MacDougal and Margaret Hare alerted their spouses, and Burke and Hare took the body out of the house before the police arrived; however, under questioning, Burke claimed that Docherty had left at 7:00 am, but then MacDougal claimed that she had left in the evening. The police arrested them. An anonymous tip-off led them to Knox's classroom where they found Docherty's body. James Gray identified it. MacDougal and Margaret Hare were arrested soon thereafter. The murder spree had lasted eighteen months.

When an Edinburgh paper wrote about the disappearances on 6 November 1828, Brown heard about it and went to the police. She identified Paterson's clothing.

The execution of William Burke on The Lawnmarket, 28 January 1829

The evidence against the pair was not overwhelming, so Lord Advocate Sir William Rae offered Hare immunity from prosecution if he confessed and agreed to testify against Burke. Hare's testimony led to Burke's death sentence in December 1828. He was hanged on 28 January 1929, after which he was publicly dissected at the Edinburgh Medical College. His skeleton, death mask, and items made from his tanned skin are displayed at the college's museum.

MacDougal was released, since her complicity to the murders was not provable. Knox was not prosecuted, despite a public uproar, since no evidence existed that he had known of the origin of the corpses.

Aftermath

MacDougal returned to her house but was almost lynched by an angry mob. She fled to England, but her reputation preceded her. She was rumoured to have left for Australia where she died around 1868. Margaret Hare also escaped lynching and reputedly returned to Ireland. Nothing more is known about her.

Hare was released in February 1829, and many popular tales tell of him as a blind beggar on the streets of London having been mobbed and thrown in a lime pit. However, none of these reports were ever confirmed. The last known sighting of him was in the English town of Carlisle.

Knox kept silent about his dealings with Burke and Hare, but his popularity among students decreased. His applications for other positions in the Edinburgh Medical School were rejected. He moved to the Cancer Hospital in London and died in 1862.

Political consequences

The murders highlighted the crisis in medical education and led to the subsequent passing of the Anatomy Act 1832, which expanded the legal supply of medical cadavers to eliminate the incentive for such behaviour. About the law, the Lancet editorial stated:

"Burke and Hare ... it is said, are the real authors of the measure, and that which would never have been sanctioned by the deliberate wisdom of parliament, is about to be extorted from its fears ... It would have been well if this fear had been manifested and acted upon before sixteen human beings had fallen victims to the supineness of the Government and the Legislature. It required no extraordinary sagacity to foresee, that the worst consequences must inevitably result from the system of traffic between resurrectionists and anatomists, which the executive government has so long suffered to exist. Government is already in a great degree, responsible for the crime which it has fostered by its negligence, and even encouraged by a system of forbearance."

Burke and Hare in popular culture

The murders were adapted into a 1948 film with the working title Crimes of Burke and Hare; however, the British Board of Film Censors deemed its topic too disturbing and insisted that references to Burke and Hare be excised. The film was redubbed with alternative dialogue and characters, and was released as The Greed of William Hart.

The 1960 film The Flesh and The Fiends starred Peter Cushing as Knox, Donald Pleasence as Hare and George Rose as Burke. The following year, The Anatomist featured Alastair Sim as Knox.

In the 1964 Jack Lemmon comedy film Good Neighbor Sam Lemmon's character works for the advertising firm of Burke & Hare.

The 1971 film Burke and Hare starred Derren Nesbitt. Burke and Hare also made an appearance in the Hammer Horror film Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde.

In 1985, Freddie Francis directed a film version of the events entitled The Doctor and the Devils.

A 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone, "The New Exhibit", featured wax museum statues of Burke and Hare as part of a collection of notorious serial killers.

The November 23, 1964 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, "The McGregor Affair" featured Burke and Hare as characters. Andrew Duggan starred as McGregor, Burke was played by Arthur Malet, and Hare by Michael Pate.

In the 1989 children Series TUGS, there are two characters parodied off of Burke and Hare named Burke and Blair who are scrap dealers, a clear equivalent to selling bodies for tugboats.

The murders, particularly those of Mary Patterson and Daft Jamie, are the main plot point in the Doctor Who audio drama Medicinal Purposes, starring Colin Baker, Leslie Phillips and David Tennant.

The Edinburgh-based football club the Body Snatchers is named after Burke and Hare.

See also

• Robert Knox
• Dr. Thomas Sewall
• London Burkers

Bibliography

• Adams, Norman (2002). Scottish Bodysnatchers. Goblinshead. ISBN 1899874402.
• Bailey, Brian (2002). Burke and Hare: The Year of the Ghouls. Mainstream. ISBN 1840185759.
• Douglas, Hugh (1973). Burke and Hare. Hale. ISBN 070913777X.
• Edwards, Owen Dudley (1993). Burke and Hare. Mercat Press. ISBN 1873644256.
• Howard, Amanda (2004). "William Burke and William Hare". River of Blood: Serial Killers and Their Victims. Universal. ISBN 1581125186. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• MacDonald, Helen (2005). Human Remains: Episodes in Human Dissection. Melbourne University Press. ISBN 0522851576.
• MacGregor, George (1884). The History of Burke and Hare and of the Resurrectionist Times: A Fragment from the Criminal Annals of Scotland. T.D. Morison. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
• Menefee, Samuel Pyeatt (1994). "The West Port Murders and the Miniature Coffins from Arthur's Seat". Book of the Old Edinburgh Club. Vol. 3. The Old Edinburgh Club. pp. ns 63–81. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Richardson, Ruth (2001). Death, Dissection and the Destitute: The Politics of the Corpse in Pre-Victorian Britain. Chicago University Press. ISBN 0226712400.
• Roughead, William (2000). "The West Port Murders". Classic Crimes: A Selection from the Works of William Roughead. New York Review of Books. ISBN 0940322463. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

External links

• Buried secrets of the city murder dolls
• Newspaper clipping of the notice of execution of Burke
• Searchable collection of printed materials from the New York Academy of Medicine, related to the murders, trial, and execution of Burke