1/28/1829 - The infamous real-life boogey-men (so notorious that they will become the subject of a nursery rhyme used by parents to frighten their children) killing team of Burke and Hare, is permanently sundered in Edinburgh, Scotland when William Burke is hung, condemned chiefly on the testimony of his partner, William Hare, given to save Hare's own neck.
Burke
Hare
Born into an Irish middle-class family in Urney, County Tyrone in 1792, William Burke joins the British Army as a teenager, serves in the Donegal militia, and marries an Irish lass, but the marriage falls apart when Burke argues with his father-in-law over ownership of a piece of land. Adios, the marriage is abandoned (along with two children) and Burke moves to Scotland, settles in the village of Maddiston where he works as a laborer on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal (a waterway running between the cities of Falkirk and Edinburgh), and begins living with Helen McDougal (whom he calls Nelly). When work on the canal dries up, in November of 1827, the couple move to Tanner's Close in the West Port region of Edinburgh, where Burke makes a living selling second-hand clothes to the poor people of the region and becomes a cobbler, entertaining his customers with song and dance as they wait for their shoes. Raised a Roman Catholic, seldom seen without his Bible, he becomes a regular worshipper at Presbyterian religious meetings that take in Grassmarket. At roughly the same time, William Hare is born in County Armagh in Ireland (the exact year and locale are unknown). Finding nothing to his liking in Ireland (he is described as a brawler with scars of his fights on his head and face), Hare also moves to Scotland and begins working on the Union Canal out of Tanner's Close. After seven years of working on the canal, he too moves to Edinburgh, becomes a coal man's assistant and becomes the unwed spouse of a widow, another Irish immigrant, named Margaret Laird Logue. Bonding over their Irish backgrounds, work experiences, and love of drink, sometime in 1827 the men and their ladies become fast friends and Burke and McDougal move into the lodging house of Hare and Margaret.
Union Canal
West Port, Edinburgh
Edinburgh's Royal College of Surgeons
Monro III
Upset that a lodger known as Old Donald has died of dropsy while owing four pounds in back rent, over drinks Burke and Hare decide to get the money owed by selling the corpse to Edinburgh University. Substituting wood shavings and bark for Donald's body, the men send off the coffin they've received for the army pensioner, and after dark, the pair take the corpse to the medical university where they are told that Dr. Robert Knox is in the market for fresh cadavers (blind in one eye from a bout of childhood smallpox, a medical veteran of the Battle of Waterloo, the doctor is an expert on human anatomy that carries out two dissections a day before classes of more than 400 students). Finding Dr, Knox, the men are pleased to receive seven pounds and ten shillings for their chattel, and begin thinking of future transactions when one of Knox's assistants tells the men that the doctor would be glad to see them again if they come across any other cadavers they'd like to market. Seed planted, wanting the nice payday repeated (the pounds and shillings paid are worth roughly $900 in present-day dollars), in January of 1828, when another lodger at Hare's home comes down with a fever and becomes delirious, using the excuse that he will soon die anyway and that infectious state could cause business at the home to suffer, the pair become murderers for the first time when Burke holds the man down (a miller named Joseph) and Hare suffocates him with a pillow. Taking the fresh corpse to Dr. Know, they are paid ten pounds for their second body and stumble upon a method of murder that will almost undetectable until the arrival of modern forensics. Too easy and too great a payday to not try again, over a period of ten months, the duo will expedite the leaving of fifteen more individuals.
Making Money
Dr. Knox
Usually getting their victims drunk first (and taking the opportunity to throw down a few whiskeys themselves), paid between eight to ten pounds for each body by an uninquisitive Dr. Knox or one of his assistants, for the most part using a killing method that will be called "Burking" in which suffocation is brought on by a hand covered mouth and pinched off nostrils, sometimes assisted by their ladies providing beverage, locking a door, or helping with hiding a body, the murders pile up into October of 1828: a salt seller named Abigail Simpson spends the night at Hare's house and never wakes up, an unnamed English match seller that comes down with jaundice while staying at Hare's fills out a need for a male corpse, an old women invited to Hare's by Margaret Hare is done away with using a stiff mattress cover, Mary Paterson is killed after she falls asleep at Hare's after imbibing too much whiskey with Burke (McDougal will get her skirt and petticoats), a Mrs. Haldane gets drunk and falls asleep in the stable of Hare's house and is killed, and when her daughter comes looking for her mother, Burke does a solo and kills her too after getting the woman intoxicated, a "cinder gatherer" who previously had sold scraps of leather to Burke for his cobbling is tempted into the stable with whiskey and suffocated, a drunken woman being helped home by local constable is done away with when Burke convinces the lawman that he is her friend and get her home so the officer can go about his business, a grandmother and her grandson have their oxygen cut off when they make the mistake of lodging at Hare's home (when the horse used to transport to Dr. Knox balks at its heavier than usual load and a porter and handcart are required to get the two corpses to the university, Hare shoots the horse dead), while Burke and McDougal are away visiting McDougal's father in Falkirk, Hare kills a women by himself (the murder will lead to a fight between the two killers when Hare lies about the deed and doesn't share the money he gets from Dr. Knox, leading Burke and McDougal to find new lodging a few blocks away from Hare's home ... the rift between the men will soon end though), a washerwoman named Mrs. Ostler who comes to the property Burke is staying at to do the laundry is filled with liquor and killed, a female McDougal relative is murdered (and Mrs. Hare suggests that maybe Helen should also be done away with), an inoffensive, mentally challenged 18-year-old with a limp caused by deformed feet named James Wilson and known on the streets of Edinburgh as Daft Jamie is murdered (despite fighting with his killers, who keep the youth's snuff box and snuff spoon ... several students in Dr. Knox's class will recognize Wilson but be dissuaded from contacting the authorities when the doctor claims they are wrong and then dissects the body, missing both its head and feet).
Hare's Lodging House
Burke's Home
Murder
Dr. Knox
The pair's final killing comes on Halloween of 1828 and is a middle-aged Irish woman named Marjory Canpbell Docherty who Burke gets drunk while claiming to be from the same part of Ireland. Docherty however is discovered hidden in a pile of straw under a bed before she is taken to Dr. Knox by two other lodgers at Burke's place, Ann and James Gray and the authorities are notified of the death (but not before McDougal tries to bribe the two to remain silent about what they've found). Questioned by police, four different stories of innocence are told to the authorities and when Docherty is found the next morning in Knox's dissecting room, both killing couples are placed in custody and charged with murder. Sure that they have caught a quartet of killers, but unsure they can prove it in a court of law, Edinburgh's Lord Advocate, Sir William Rae focuses on getting a confession from one member of the group that will get the others convicted, and settles on William Hare being the weak link he needs. Offered a full pardon for his tale of what has been taking place on the hard streets of Edinburgh, Hare turns on his partner (his testimony can't be used to prosecute his wife) and his lady. The couple's trial begins at 10:00 in the morning of Christmas Eve, 1828 before the High Court in the city's Parliament House, heard by Lord Justice-Clerk, David Boyle, supported by Lords MacKenzie, Pitmilly, and Meadowbank (and the court protected from disturbances by 300 constables, with infantry and cavalry at the ready should more men be necessary). Witnesses called and testimony given (though somehow Dr. Knox escapes the proceedings and will never be charged with anything, though his career goes into a downward spiral ... he dies in the town of Hackney in 1862) with only short breaks for meals be taken, at 8:30 in the morning of Christmas Day the jury is given the case and takes only fifty minutes to return a verdict of guilty against William Burke, while McDougal is told the charges against her are "not proven." Sentenced to death by hanging, because of the motive behind the murders, Boyle tells Burke, "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."
McDougal & Burke
The Execution Of William Burke
Death Mask And Blood Note
Burke
As for the others, McDougal is released after her trial, is almost torn apart by a mob the next day when she goes out to buy whiskey (she escapes retribution by taking refuge in the city's main police station off High Street, after fleeing out the back window of a smaller station in the city's Fountainbridge region), leaves Edinburgh after being denied permission to see Burke before his execution, and vanishes from history. And the story is similar for the other two participants in the killings too. Margaret Hare is released on January 19, 1829, travels to Glasgow, with the help of the local police escapes a mob calling for her death, makes her way by ship back to Ireland, and is lost to history, while William Hare is released from jail on February 5, 1829, escapes a mob ready to tear him to pieces, makes his way across the border into England, and is never seen again (there will be rumors of him in London, Canada, and Australia, but nothing is ever known for sure).
Hare
"Up the close and doon the stair, But and ben' wi' Burke and Hare. Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief, Knox the boy that buys the beef." With the hanging of William Burke on this day in 1829, the final chapter of the Burke and Hare Edinburgh killings ends.
Burke & Hare
Absolutely terrible.
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