Abra-Cadaver

Burke and Hare…the Body-Snatchers....

In the early 1800’s in Britain, medical science was proceeding at an ever-increasing rate with great advances being made in surgical techniques. Many new types of operations were being ‘practised’ on dead bodies by budding surgeons and their teachers. The prisons, where there were many hangings on almost a daily basis, provided most of those bodies for dissection. There was little or no shortage for the trainees....

However, early in the century, what was known as the ‘Bloody Code’ was repealed.   Since 1688, it had made the punishment for fifty criminal offences death by hanging.   However, The Judgement of Death Act 1823 reduced this punishment from the original fifty down to two – Murder and Treason.   Needless to say, this caused a rapid sharp decrease in the number of executions and with it the number of bodies that were available.   A new source was urgently required......

The law of ‘supply and demand’ quickly came into play with characters that became known as ‘Resurrectionists’ taking up the gruesome art of ‘body-snatching’. They would watch out for funerals and later at night they would literally dig up the coffins, remove the body and in many cases return the coffin to the grave and fill in the hole. In order to prevent such a thing happening many relatives or friends of the deceased would hold a vigil and stand guard over the grave for several nights after the burial. In many other cases, iron railings protected the graves.

As even grave robbing prevented the surgeons and their students from having a regular supply of bodies, once again the law of ‘supply and demand’ again took over to provide for the shortage. Several unscrupulous people, not only men but these also included women, decided to not even wait for the funeral but began claiming the bodies before the person even died.

Burke and Hare were two such likely-lads who were born in the North of Ireland and moved to Scotland about 1820.  William Burke was born in County Tyrone in 1792 and was a ‘Jack of all Trades’. He left his wife and two children in Ireland and moved to Scotland about 1817. He was working as a ‘navvy’ on the Union Canal when he met and began living with Helen MacDougal. He began working at different types of jobs and they moved into a lodging-house in Edinburgh, which was owned by Hare, a fellow Irishman who lived with Maggie Laird. 

William Hare was born about 1800, probably in Newry or Derry in Northern Ireland. He too immigrated to Scotland and worked on the Union Canal. He moved to Edinburgh where he met a man named Logue. Logue died in 1826 and Hare moved in with his widow as his common-law-wife and they ran a lodging house. It was to this house that Burke moved. It is probable that they already knew each other from their Canal work.

It was around 1827 that the pair began their campaign, which became known as the West Port Murders. By the time they had finished they had killed 17 people and sold the bodies to Professor Robert Knox, a leading Edinburgh anatomist at the Edinburgh Medical College.

Hare later admitted that their first body was that of a dead tenant, an army pensioner who owed Hare £4 rent. They stole the body from its coffin and sold it to Professor Knox for £7. This was their first meeting with Knox who must have let them know that there was a ready market for such bodies.

As their murderous scheme progressed, with the help of the women, they would ply their proposed victim, usually any sickly tenant, with whisky and then suffocate them. The professor paid £15 for such bodies ‘as they were fresh’. When they ran out of such tenants, the women would lure proposed victims from the street, do likewise with the whiskey, and then suffocate them.

One of their next victims was a well-known local prostitute, Mary Patterson. They did the usual with her but problems arose the next morning when students at the College recognised the victim. Some of them were well acquainted with good old Mary and her trade.....

Vagrants and beggars were the most common victims, as Burke and Hare believed, rightly in many of the cases, that such people would not be missed or recognised. On another occasion Burke ‘saved’ a woman from the police by claiming that he knew her. She too appeared at the College a few hours later. An old woman and a deaf boy were the next two victims but when there was a shortage, they even went as far as murdering one of MacDougal’s relatives.

Two more prostitutes quickly followed but the murders almost came to light when they murdered a well-known retarded young man with a limp. He was called ‘Daft Jamie’ who was eighteen at the time.

When Professor Knox uncovered the body the next morning, several students recognised the young man. Knox quickly removed the head and feet and totally denied that it was Jamie. It appears that he then began to dissect the face to totally prevent identification………….

Their final victim was Marjory Docherty. Burke lured her into the house by claiming that his mother’s family was called Docherty. Another couple called Gray met her at the lodgings. The next morning, Mrs. Gray became suspicious when Burke would not allow her to approach a bed where she had left her stockings. When Burke went out, Mrs. Gray discovered Marjory’s body under the bed. On their way to the police to report the matter, they met MacDougal who offered them £10 per week to remain quiet. They refused and continued to the police station……………….

MacDougal quickly informed Burke and Hare who removed the body from the house before the police arrived. They were all questioned but their stories of Docherty did not tally. They were arrested. It was then that the police received an anonymous tip-off that led them to Knox’s classroom where they found the missing body. The Gray’s identified it. Hare and Burke’s wives were then arrested.

Although they had murdered seventeen people over the previous eighteen months the prosecuting authorities did not consider that there was sufficient evidence to obtain a conviction. They made an offer to William Hare of immunity if he ‘turned Queen’s evidence’ and testified against Burke. That evidence led to Burke being convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. Professor Knox never faced prosecution, as there was no evidence that he had known the origin of the corpses.

Helen MacDougal was almost lynched when she returned to the lodging house. She is supposed to have immigrated to Australia. Margaret Hare is supposed to have returned to Ireland when she too was almost lynched. William Burke was hanged in Edinburgh on 28^th January 1829……………...

William Hare was released in February 1829 and his following years are unknown. There was a story about him being a blind beggar in London having been thrown into a lime pit in Scotland but this was never confirmed.

A couple of strange facts regarding Burke after his execution are that his body was passed to the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh for research. His skeleton remains there to this day. His ‘death mask’ is also retained at the College. For some unknown reason there is also a book, the cover of which is alleged to have been made from his skin. A similar business card case made from his skin is also present.

Perhaps Professor Knox or one of his students was having the last laugh on Burke……

For years afterwards, and who knows, probably still today, Scottish children sing the following rhyme when playing hopscotch or skipping:

Burke the Butcher,

Hare the Thief,

Knox the boy who Buys the Beef.

------Mike------