FEATURE: Bye Bye Burke

Mark McLaughlin
Edinburgh Evening News
January 28, 2009

IT was only 8am but already the streets of Edinburgh were packed with 25,000 people.

They had gathered, despite the driving rain, in the shadow of St Giles' Cathedral to watch the miserable end of a notorious killer.

In contempt of the baying mob, many of whom had paid the princely sum of GBP 1 to the householders of the loftiest Royal Mile tenements for grandstand seats, the condemned man - pathetic-looking and emaciated - shot the crowd a look of "fierce defiance", then turned his back to them.

Shrieks of "turn him round" came from the crowd and, at exactly 8.10, one of Edinburgh's most notorious murderers was hanged from the gallows builders had erected during the night.

The man was William Burke - who, with his accomplice William Hare, murdered to provide bodies for the city's burgeoning medical research institutes. The date of his execution was January 28, 1829 - 180 years ago today.

The account of the execution appeared in the Edinburgh Evening Courant, a forerunner of the Evening News, and to coincide with the anniversary of Burke's execution - and cash in on the continued fascination with the murders - Edinburgh walking tour company The Cadies & Witchery Tours has reprinted the Christmas Day edition from 1828.

On that date, two of the paper's four pages were devoted to coverage of the infamous trial, where Burke was found guilty of the murders of Mary Paterson, James Wilson and Mary Docherty.

The Witchery Tours manager, Cameron Pirie, says:

"The trial is one of the darkest yet most important episodes in Edinburgh's history. William Burke had been luring the poor and the destitute to their deaths, with collusion from his wife Helen McDougal and from William Hare, with the intention of selling their bodies to Dr Robert Knox at Surgeon's Square."

Hare turned King's Evidence, and Burke was put on trial. The Courant was in the High Court of Justiciary to follow the case.

It reads: "Burke is of a short and rather stout figure. There is nothing in his physiognomy, except perhaps a dark lowering of his brow, to indicate any peculiar harshness or cruelty of disposition."

There were 55 witnesses listed for the case, among them a Hugh Alston, who lived above Burke. He told the court how on Hallowe'en, at around 11 o'clock, he heard the cries of a woman shouting "murder".

He listened at the door and heard two men "wrangling and struggling and the woman crying murder but not in such a manner as he considered her in imminent danger. That continued for about a minute and then he heard a cry as an inferior animal might give when strangled", the paper reported.

Alston, the paper reported, went off to call a policeman but couldn't find one. When he came back from his fruitless mission, he could no longer hear the woman's voice - so just went home.

The pair's victims had been sold to city anatomist Dr Robert Knox and it was evidence given by David Paterson, keeper of the museum owned by Knox, which caused one of the biggest stirs.

He described how Burke had arrived at around midnight on Hallowe'en and told him that he had "procured" something for the doctor which he would receive the next day.

The following evening, "Burke, Hare and a porter, named McCulloch, came with an old tea chest. It was put into a cellar, the door locked."

Dr Knox gave him five pounds which he divided between the three - the rest of the payment was to be handed over on the Monday, but on the Sunday the police arrived.

"He went with them - opened the door of the cellar and gave the package to them, which had been left the night before. He assisted in opening the box which was found to contain the body of an elderly female - who did not appear to have been interred. The head was pressed down as if for want of room."

Another lodger at Burke's house, Ann Gray, told the court of the dramatic moment she had found the body of Mary Docherty, a penniless Irish woman who Burke had pretended to befriend and brought to the house the previous night.

At the trial, Mrs Gray said: "There were no clothes on her. Her husband lifted up the head by the hair and saw blood on the face and about the mouth."

Hare, of course, was the star witness and his evidence helped to seal Burke's fate, claiming he had seen him murder the Irish woman. After Burke's execution, he was dissected like many of his victims.

The execution wasn't the last time Burke's words appeared in the Courant - his confession was printed on February 7, where he stated that he and Hare had always met with a ready market for the bodies, and when they had delivered one they were always told to get more. He also complained Dr Knox still owed him GBP 5 from the delivery of Mary Docherty's body.

The crowds for Burke's final appearance on the dissecting table at Surgeon's Square were queued round the block, and the police were called to keep order amongst the eager students demanding admission.

The top of his head was sawn off and his brain was the subject of a lecture. According to a contemporary account of the dissection "the amount of blood that gushed out was enormous, and by the time the lecture was finished . . . the lecture-room had the appearance of a butcher's slaughter house".

Burke was then skinned and his flesh was used to make a number of grim artifacts, including a business card holder - purchased by The Cadies and Witchery Tours in 1989 - and a wallet bearing the inscription "Executed 28 Jan 1829".

The artifacts are still a tremendous draw for tourists and researchers, and Edinburgh University's Anatomy Museum receives regular requests from around the world to view the items in their possession - including Burke's skeleton, which still hangs here.

Dr Gordon Findlater, senior lecturer in anatomy and curator of the museum, says:

"Burke was condemned to be hanged, dissected and put on public display in a sentence that very much harked back to the days when they would impale the heads of criminals on spikes around the city walls as a reminder to people not to repeat their crimes."

One outcome of Burke and Hare's trial was the introduction of the Anatomy Act in 1832 which "provided for executors and other people legally in charge of dead bodies to give them to licensed surgeons and teachers of anatomy unless the deceased has expressed a conscientious objection to being dissected".

Dr Findlater adds: "We no longer pay for bodies and haven't done since the introduction of the Anatomy Act 1832.

"If any 'silver lining' could be found in the crimes of Burke and Hare, this would be it."