The Trial and Execution of Burke

Hello is there And welcome to Murder Most British. I'm Zach. Hey, welcome. I'm Rachel H hope you got like me, gotot a coffee with you I got a juice Gott to stay hydrated We have a Cffee settled down get into this case Well we're headed off to Scotland again And we're going back in time again Brutal past I think that It's funny because people they romanticize the past a lot and This one's going to show you that Fuck that. It was quite brutal back then, huh Yeah. Some of the things that they get up to is pretty fucking wild So yeah Well we should delve into the case and find out all about it and hair. This was actually a listener, well friendriend listener ur friend Dave A long time ago. I think it was just after we started. Yeah. She's like, you should do this one. I think I'll put it on the list. So here we are. Okay, so yeah, we're covering a friend's recommendation of case. ye Yeah. We show Do our best. yeah Well before we begin, just a small request from us. 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This episode contains discussion of murder, grave robbin, body seelling, public execution and the treatment and display of human remains It also includes reference to child murder and vulnerable victims Some listeners may find this content distressing, so listener discretion is strongly advised Let's get to the story in the winter straits of Edinburgh, The dead were no longer safe graves were watched Iron cages were locked over fresh earth Families kept vigil in churchyards Afraid that someone they loved might vanish before morning. But in the Westport, two men found an easier way. They did not wait for death They invited it in gave it whisky, closed the door, and carried what remained through the dark to an anatomy room By the time the city understood what had been happening The horror was not only that bodies had been sold It was that some of them had still been alive and well the night before. Edinburgh in the eighteen twenties was a city with one face turned toward progress and the other pressed into the mud There were lecture halls, courts, medical schools and men in fine coats talalking solemnly about science There were also closes and wines where poverty packed people into dark rooms where drink was cheap Rent was brutal and a stranger could disappear without the city p where they had gone. Well at the center of this story was anatomy A respectable science with a deeply unrespectable appetite. Edinburgh had become one of Europe's great medical cities, but anatomy could not be taught properly from books alone. Students needed to see the body opened Lecturers needed cadavers The legal supply was tiny. Anatomists relied heavily on the bodies of executed criminals and there was never ennough of those. Yeah But you like watching that? Was that on YouTube? where the guysy he he digs into Yeah. So I do watch it's what is it called Something of Anatomy Institute of Anatomy, I think it's called on YouTube, really good if you're interested in actually shows what it is. Yeah he obviously cuts into well, he's not cut into it's They're already there. He shows you body parts, things that are inside the body that and explains, you know, how how it works and how the body works and yeah, it's just interesting, you know you get to learn about All the different stuff, theig you know, Migdilar, he'll show you everything. So check it out if you're interested. it's pretty cool Yeah. Well, that shortage of bodies created a trade everyone knew about even if respectable people preferred to look in the other direction. Grave robbers, also known as resurrection men stove freshly buried bodies and sold them to surgeons and anatomy schools. The fresher the corpse, the better the price In winter body is kept longer In summer, decay came quickly Even death in this market had to shelf life Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah. Well families fought back however they could Some graveyards were watched. Some graves were covered with heavy stones Others were protected by mort safes which are iron cages placed over the earth to stop the newly buried from being dug up. You might have seen them. the cages mainly in films. Yeah. You know, you wouldn't have them now and nowadays, but back then. Well you look at it and you go, that's that can't be, you know Yeah it was real. Yeah. But it's so funny that they call them Mort safes. It seems like some new Here I've got this new fen thing I mean, to be fair, you could probably sort of dig from the side and then go under, you know, I don't know, mayaybe they did work. It just makes it harder and you're trying to go as quickly as possible. Exactly. It's probably just another way to kind of keep people there a bit longer doing their activity and then hopefully be caught in the act, but Yeah, so it sounds quite gothic now, but almost theatrical But for families in Edinburgh, this was Kurry The dead had to be guarded from men who came in the dock with lanterns, spades and carts But those protections for the dead had a grim side effect. They made bodies harder to steal while the medical schools still wanted them. The market did not vanish It adapted And when money could already be paid quietly for a body no one asked too much about Some men began to see the living as simply another source of supply. Hm, not good. Well ye Yeah. One of the men teaching anatomy in Edinburgh was doror Robert Knoobs Brilliant, ambitious and popular with students Private classes drew large numbers and part of his appeal was practical teaching That meant bodies Fresh bodies. Knox was not the only Eatmiss relying on illicit cadavers But in this case, his rooms in Sgeon Square became the final stop for something far worse than grave robin And the men who would bring those bodies to his door came from a very different Edinburgh William Burke was not born in Scotland. He came from County Tyrone in Ireland And like many laboring men of the period He moved wherever work could be found He had served in the militia worked on the Union Cal and eventually came to Edinburgh with Helen McDougal. the woman he lived with as his wife He was not a man of one fixed place or trade Someone piecing together a living wherever he could Well what made Burke so disturbing to those who thought they knew him was not that he had always seemed monstrous It was that for years he had seemed almost ordinary He had been born near Strabain raised Catholic and given more education than many men of his class He could be sociable, musical, humorous, even religiously inclined. So the horror wasn't written plainly across him from the start That ordinary surface had already begun to crack Burke had deserted his wife and children in Ireland What a stand up dude And then he came to Scotland buuilt a new life with Helen alcohol, instability and the lodging houses of the West Port pulled him further down By the time he crossed paths with William Hare The useful, talkative, sometimes charming man had become something far more dangerous. A band still able to look harmless while standing on the edge of unimaginable cruelty Then there was William Hare he was also Irish, though much of his earlier life is less clear He too had worked on the Union Canal before ending up in Edinburgh By the late eighteen twenties, he was living in Taners's close in the West Port poor and crowded district near the grass market. After the death of a man named Lue became involved with Loke's widow Margaret Leed Often called Maggie and took over the lodging house there By late eighteen twenty seven, Burke and Hare's lives began to fold into each other. Burke and Helen lodged with Hare and Maggie And the two couples became known for drinking, noise, quarrels, and disorder This was not the elegant Edinburgh of polite drawing rooms and learned societies This was the city underneath lodging houses, cheap drink Narrow passages, thin walls, and people living close enough to hear trouble without always knowing that trouble meant And the rooms themselves helped hide what was happening Burke's lodggeing sat below the street and had a back way out towards Wteground where a body could be moved with less notice Hare's house in Tanna's close was larger A lodging house for beggars and wanderers, but no less useful These were not hidden places outside the city They were ordinary rooms folded into the noise of Edinburgh itself Yeah, you just Blends right in. Yeah What do you got there? Oh, just some rubbish. don't worry, it's just a big sack hand backac and out onto wasteland. I mean You I Not really many people' going to be going Woering about there to be fair I don't give a shit. I got shit to do. Yep Well, their first step into the trade did not begin with murder Yeah, because and that distinction matters. okay. It didn't start that way Unfortunately, it would not matter for long Around Christmas of eighteen twenty seven, an old pensioner named Donald died naturally in Hare's lodging house But he owed rent The parish arranged a modest burial and a coffin was brought into the house Donald's body was placed inside and the coffin was left there until it could be collected and taken away for burial Most landlords would have seen a bad debt and a sad death Hairaw an account still waiting to be settled Hm cananescape that debt, bro And Nope. I mean, nowadays probably passes on to the next of Kin but You know, You got to pay his debts. Yeah Before the coffin was taken away Burke and Hare opened it rememoved Donald's body and hid him elsewhere in the house They then filled the coffin with bark from a nearby tannery. Giving it enough weight to pass as occupied Coffin went to Greyfriars as if nothing had ever changed. body. presumably was still in there. Yeah. Oh yeah, they're like, yeep, she is right to me. Let's go.ota bury this guy. Well, as long as there's some weight, they would they would not think any different. So Donald's body was carried through Edinburgh in a sack first awkwardly then with' growing purpose. until Burke and Hare found their way to Dr. Knox's anatomy rooms in Segeon Square. Death had a price. Yeah So then get their money back for the rent that you paid. Oh yeah. Oh way more than that Yeah. because that price was said to be seven pounds and ten shillings. Not a lot in our Not a lot in today's money. Well, But back then Yeah, well, that's roughly the buying power of a thousand pounds today And for men living close to the edge That was the equivalent of many weeks wages. It was not enough to make them rich. but it was enough to teach them body was worth. Yeah. They had not begun as resurrection men They'd not dug up the dead discovered that a corpse could be turned into money. And the only inconvenience was waiting for someone to die. Yeah Grave Robin was risky, difficult and exposed. Murder in the world that they had created for themselves would be much simpler The West Port gave them cover The anatomy rooms gave them a market Donald's body gave them the idea. They're thinking easy money. Oh yeah, you got tons of people coming coming in and out, you know? someomeone might be sick You, o, let me help you along, man, no worries. Yeah. And then you're throwing them in a cart and taking them off to the anatomy rooms S every man Well, the exact order of the early murders is not completely settled Later confessions and accounts don't always line up clearly. But the pattern is clear enough Birk and Hare targeted people who were already vulnerable Lodgers, beggars, oldlder women, drinkers, strangers, people passing through the city without anyone watching over them. They did not need victims who could be hidden forever On people who could vanish into the noise of the Westpore long enough for the trail to go cold. And their method was brutal in its simplicity First came the alcohol, enough to soften the victim, slow them. and make them easier to handle. Yeah, G them liquored up. Yep Then one man them down while the other closed off their nose and mouth That way there was no blood, no weapon and offer no obvious injury exactly why the bodies could pass so easily into the anatomy rooms This wasn't a frenzied killing, it was murder shaped by a market. body had to be scalable The death had to look clean Later, that method would become known as King A word that turned their crime into a verb The first murder is usually said to have been Joseph a miller lodging with hair who had fallen ill with fever to birk in hair illness was not a warning. It was a cover. If Joseph died suddenly, few would be shocked at it They gave him alcohol, smothered him. his body into a te chest. and carried him off to Surgeon Square What had begun with Donald as a crime against the dead had now crossed into something far darker They were no longer waiting for bodies They were making sure Be more re pretty wild I mean, Let's say you're doing two bodies a week. That's two grand. Its a week of money. That is a lot of money And you're like, well Needs must. Yeah. And obviously with no injuries and stuff You know, Dr. Knox would think, well, this is just died by You know Is he going to be aware that these were actually murdered, you know Who knows? And but's pretty much you don't ask a whole lot of questions When you're in need of bodies For scientific research, sh I well Here you go, my dudes, here's some money. Thanks bye Well, another early victim was Abigail Simpson Oer women from Gilmonton who came into Edinburgh selling salt She was drawn in with alcohol, warmth and false friendliness In some accounts, Hare even played on her hopes for her daughter. pretreending there might be marriage or security ahead Once she was too drunk to protect herself, she was overpowered down and suffocated For that body, Burke and Hare were reportedly paid around ten pounds The human life converted neatly into a fee That's about fourteen hundred. Yeah. Yeah mostome.. Cky. Crakey Then came others whose names are less firmly held by history. A sick lodger, an elderly woman, a woman who gathered cinders A woman helped from the street while drunk The details vary from account to account the shape stays the same Birk and hair found people on the edges of society Threw them into the rooms where alcohol and noise were ordinary and made them disappear into the anatomy rooms. Yeah, it definitely seems that they were they were targeting people that were not going to be Miss missed like immediately. you know, kind of give them time to So let it all Yeah, once once the they can and then they take them off to the anademy rooms, then they' See ya. Yeah among the more Chillian accounts were those of Elizabeth Holdaine and her daughter Margaret sometimes called Peggy. Elizabeth was said to have Come to Hare's Lodgeing house in the spring of eighteen twenty eight where she was suffocated in her sleep Several months later Margaret came to the same place looking for her missing mother She was told that Elizabeth had left in good health and that there was no need to panic. then Burke did what he had done before. He reassured her The mood brought out the drink and waited until she was vulnerable. Margaret was then killed in the same way as her mother and carried off to Segeon Square. That is crazy I mean imagine, you know, your daughter sort of come looking for you. Yeah. And then you're dealt with the same fate. Oh, it's okay. She left. donon't worry. Hey, you know, come on in come let's have cup of tea. Yeah, so they're like, Hey, come on in, have a whiskey You know, no problem. Well, you know, we can stay here tonight, you know, Yeah We'll take care of you. Yeah, that would have been the thing. you know, stay here and You've been on your journey over here, let's And especially because people probably didn't have a whole lot of you know, people being nice Yeah or like saying or charity, you know Like, o Oh, just come in stay the night, donon't worry See you later Yep and she was not there in the morning. Well, one killing though, should not disappear into that list. In June, Birk and Hare murdered an old Irish woman and her twelve year old grandson According to later accounts, Burke first had another elderly man in mind But the arrival of the woman and child gave them two victims instead of one grandmother was killed first while the boy was kept occupied nearby Then the child was killed too because he had become a witness They could not safely leave alive Burke later said the boy haunted him more than the others because of the look on his face rutalrender. Brutal I mean They they probably had intention to kill the boy anyways right from the beginning ofoney both Yeah. Yeah but also knowing full well that You know, what are they going to do with him if they kill the gnd grandmother. Yeah. you know He's gonna to talk. so Jesus They just didn't give a shit I mean, even though he says o, I was haunted by it, well you still did it. Yeah. Yeah bastard. But then he obviously it's not going to be haunted until after he's done it because then You know, Oh, it's just horrible Anyways, the usual te chest was too small for two bodies So they were forced into a barrel When they tried to move it by cart, the horse reportedly refused to go on leaving them with a barrel full of bodies in the street In the end, the dead grandmother and child were carried through Edinburgh like goods for delivery. Well, the barrel incident showed how far the trade had gone there was something else. birk and hair We're not a steady pair of conspirators moving with one mind partnership was never stable Money, jealousy alcohol and suspicion Hold at it. At one point, Burke believed Hare had sold a body without him and kept the profit They argued, fought, separated, and then came back together. The trade was too profitable And by then, both men knew too much about the other to walk away cleanly Their friendship was not loyalty It was mutually assured destruction. Yeah And you can you can see it as well, you know, with I know what you've doing, you know, the greed might come in. the suspicions on each other. Yeah. That's a lot of money. going behind each other's back, but then also They It's human nature to have a type a little bit of greed set in, you know, and be like, H, maybe I could do this on my own and make more money and keep all the money to myself. Instead of splitting this ten pound with somebody, I can just take it all for myself. think natural to sort of think that way, you know, like you think, hmm, I wonder like maybe if I just do this on my own break away for your own killing business Well, and still the killings went on The next victims were not all lost to history in the same way Mary Patterson was different because her name did not disappear into the general fog of the case She was young, probably in her late teens or around twenty. and had been drinking with Janette Brown before Burke drew them in. Janet eventually left But Mary did not. When Janet returned only around twenty minutes later. just twenty min. twenty minutes Mary was gone And the explanation was that she had left with Burke Janet did not believe it By then, Mary had been killed, packed into the tea chest and taken to Dr. Knox body was reportedly still warm when it arrived. Yep, that was a quick. twenty minutes. twenty minutes. That's So she's gone. Let's go Jesus Christ. stillill warm showing up to the old an hadaby room. crazy You'd think somebody would go That's weird. Yeah. Why is she still like like literally just happened? Yeah. Christ Even after death, Mary was not allowed dignity though. Later accounts claim her body drew attention inside Doox's rooms because of her youth and appearance. She was not treated simply as a subject for anatomy But as something to be displayed, commented on and turned into a spectacle before she was finally dissected It was the same cold transformation again A living woman reduced first to merchandise Then to public curiosity Well, then they went on to kill James Wilson, better known in Edinburgh as Daft Jamie. Jamie was more than a local oddity People knew his laugh, his bare feet, his awkward bow, and the way that he pulled at the front of his hair and greeting He was young, recognizable, good natured, and familiar around the oldld town That made him dangerous to them Yeah, because he was not a nameless traveler who could vanish without anyone wandering e belonged in his own way to the streets. He was vulnerable He was not invisible. People fed him, spoke to H, rememember him and understood his harmlessness. In a city where Birk and Hare had relied on poverty to make people disappear Jamie was different The city knew his face. Yeah Well, Jamie did not go quietly. Good unlike some of the others, he was not easily overcome by alcohol He struggled hard and later accounts described him fighting with a strength that nearly overpowered. Hopefully he got some good punches in can hurt him. Hey tri it Burke and Hare subdued him killed him and sold his body too Some accounts say Knox's assists recognized Jamie almost at once body was not just fresh, it was familiar because he was so recognizable. Later accounts claimed his face was disfigured and identifying parts were dealt with quickly once suspicion began to spread Oh, I guess that says the part where, hey They were like, well It's another body Yeah That's where they're getting sloppy now because they're going for somebody that is well known you know, even just by even if they don't speak to him P will have seen this guy, you know, and know his pattern of movements around the town and where he locates and stuff. But it's wild that the anatomy room was like, Yeah, you know this guy. Yeah U to cover our asses, we need to dis figure his face and Take care of this before anybody notices. Awful Well, then there was the final victim Margaret Dockerty Also known in some records as Marjorie Campbell, It's all pretty weird and Yeah back records are wild. Some of my ancestor family, they would choose you know, different names to go by? I think it was quite a I no longer want to be John. I want to be Paul. Yeah ye. I'm going to be Smith. I'm going to be Parker And then I'm going to go back to Smith and you know, ye Yeah. Margaret had already spent days in Edinburgh looking for her son that morning she left the Pleasants area in good health walked part of the way with a man who knew her from Ireland. and told him she was leaving town She was almost gone. Somewhere along the way, she ended up at Rimer's shop in the Westport asking for charity. A blesser. Well, unfortunately, Burke was there He heard her Irish accent, asked her name And when she said Detty He turned that name into Bait. He claimed his own mother had the same name and presented himself almost as a countryman and friend. for a woman alone in the city tired and looking for help It must have felt like luck But it was quite the opposite Yep brought Margaret back to the lodging house where the day slipped into drinking, singing, and dancing Other people came and went James and Anne Gray, who were staying there were moved out for the night and given somewhere else to sleep Now that mattered because it cleared the room And somewhere in the middle of that day In the day, not at night The language around Margaret changed. She was no longer a woman being given shelter told Hare he had quote A shot in the house Body for the doctors Not a guess Not a woman A shot Well the noise faded And the singing stop Then came something that could be hidden inside the usual chaos of the West Port A quuarrel, a struggle, a cry no one answered quickly enough Margaret Dockerty died in that room body was stripped, folded into the straw near the bed and left there while the house settled back into silence him. When the pattern was finally exposed The accepted number was sixteen murders. God jeez, thats that's just what they could really figure out. Yeah. Okay. I mean, there could have been more you know, but the records that we found sort of allocate to about sixteen. Yeah, there was probably more. U and just think of this, okay? This wasn't over like a couple of years. Oh God no This was months. Yeah. They did this in months Okay, so some of the victims entered the record only as fragments An old woman from Gil Merton, an English peddler, Joseph de Miller, a cinder gatherer A young woman released from the Canonate watch house Mary Patterson and McDougal Mres. Ostler Staff Jamie Margaret Dockerty and others blurred by poverty, drink or the indifference of the city around them. The anatomy rooms received bodies The Westport Lost faces Well Anngrey didn't find Margaret because the police had finally closed in. She found her because something in that room felt wrong The story that was given was that Margaret had left But it just didn't sit right Anne had belongings there, including stockings, and when she returned the next day Burke seemed far too interested in where Anne went and what she touched You tried to keep her away from the bed. trally That only made her look harder Yeah, the old striidees end Wh? I whyy is he telling me to not go towards about? Yeah. So what are you hid in Bome Why not? Well, when Anne and James Gray were left alone, They search the room. There was straw where there shouldn't have been any An reached down first and caught hold of a woman's arm Yeah And then James lifted the body by the hair and they saw what had been hidden there Margaret. beneath the straw Bood around her mouth and nose Burke' story of what happened to Margaret collapsed in that instant I mean, honestly, James Pulliner. body up by her hair. I mean just like, o, what's going on? What is this? The. I proy it was a doll or some some shit. I mean, like, what is this? And they're like, whoa, shit C Well when the Gys confronted McDougal, Her response only made the horror clearer She did not run for help them to hold their tongues Anne was offered a few shillings James was told Silence could be worth ten pounds a week It was the whole trade in miniature dead woman on the floor and someone already trying to price silence Anne's answer cut through it She did not want money got for the dead people. No yeah. I wouldn't either. Good. goodood on him saying no, no, no no You're not bribing me. risk because they, you know They could turn on them. Yeah, you know, they clearly killed you know, don't worry about killing people. So with them refusing to stay silent and start, you know, saying, oh, we're not, you know, we don't want but also they're not droned. They're not risk. fully aware and they can fight back V tr Oh shit. Even still, there is that slight risk of right how, you know, are we gonna to get out of this house? Yeah They did because they left to get help. Good. but Even then the story nearly slipped away Whild whileile they try to alert the authorities, Move fast. G Gott toa get this shit done. By daylight, Margaret was no longer a woman hidden in his room She was cargo Her body was crammed into the tea boox and sent to Sgeon's Square Burke and Hare then went to collect what they could, and according to the trial account They came away with five pounds On half the agreed price H I wonder what that is about whether that's because Dr. Knox is thinking, hang on, this is getting a bit too risky, now you're giving us a likeation over here with a body, you know? Like here here, take it, t it. Yeah. Or maybe they were just eager to G as a body and yeah There was another witness as well Alston lived nearby and on the night Margaret died He heard more than ordinary Westport noise He heard quarreine, then a woman cry murder. calling for place. Then came something worse. ine Strangled sounds as if a person or animal was choking. Allston went looking for police but found none By the time he returned, the noise had died away There were some thin walls. And obviously police, you know, there's no sort of phone to be Yeah, you can't call. Run on the street and see if there's a Bobby walking by. Yeah. C can't be down at nine hundred ninety nine no phones. You gott to run down, you gotta runatching it. Where's the police? Yeah When officers finally showed up In searched Burke's room, they found blood clothing and traces that tied Margaret back to the room Burke's behavior only made it worse He had thrown whiskey around on the floor in the bed, laughing it off as waste Whether it was meant to blur the smell, confuse the scene or cover what had happened, It was a tiny ugly detail. kind of practical thinking that showed Margaret had already been reduced from a person to a problem Yeah, he's definitely gone into panic m. guysere you And he's just slinging whiskey around Christ Well the next step led straight to Surgeons Square Early the following morning, officers went to Dr. Knox's dissecting rooms and found Margaret Docketty's body there Say, Wha, what a coincidence. James Gray identified her as the woman he had seen in Burke's house that changed the case. Police were no longer dealing with a rumor from a poor lodging room Trace Margaret from Berke's Foor to Dr. Knox's cellar Come on, arrest them all. Let's go Well, that route often ran through David Patterson Knox's assistant and museum keeper He was the man Burke approached The man who received the box, and the man who helped arrange payment In Ct, Patterson stood as a bridge between the Westport and Surgeon Square. but not accused of murder. impossible to ignore To the public, he became part of the uncomfortable question at the heart of the case How much could the men receiving the bodies really claim Not to know. Yeah. There's only so much feigning of ignorance that you can do to go These same guys are showing up two, three times a week or whatever. Fresh bodies, one of them was still warm. Can you believe the lookuck? No questions, you know, asked and it's like Well surely is that they didn't ask questions because they they kind of had an inklland where these bodies were coming from. Yeah. But then they were bies we really need that We got a class tomorrow and we could really use this body crazy. Well Burke, McDougal, Hare and his wife, Maggie were all detained problem was not suspicion Plenty of that. The problem was proof. The bodies sold to an anatomist did not automatically prove who had killed her or even giving the doctors a certain cause of death The horror was obvious The legal case was not. Yep, that's a tough one. Well, that was where the doctors came in Margaret's body was examined by Dr. Alexander Black the police surgeon And Robert Christisen Professor of Medical jurisprudence. They believed she had probably been suffocated probably was not certainty. And with that uncertainty hanging over the case, investigators began looking beyond her. If Margaret had been carried from Burke's room to Dr. Knox's dissecting rooms Other disappearances suddenly looked very different Yeah, well, the trouble was that many of those bodies were already gone., dissected, dispersed or no longer useful as evidence Investigators could suspect a whole series of murders, but suspicion could not stand alone in court. gave the Lord advocate Sir William Ray A hard choice The case was going to move from public horror to a conviction One of the four to talk. Yeahep. You gotta flip somebody Somebody has got to talk. Yep they gotta flip them And the chosen one wasas hair He was offered protection if he turned King's evidence and told them what had happened to Margarea Dockerty. That decision enraged the public And you can understand why Yeah Hair was not some minor figure standing at the edge of the case He was in it. Yeah, deep in it. But the prosecution needed someone who could place Burke inside the act itself That's mad, isn't it? Like what out you think, right, okay, we've got these two possible killers You know, doing the same thing, doing it together Yeah killing all these people. Yeahet, we're going to Tind to give immunity to the other this one in order for him to. But they're also hoping to get the other ones as well. So they're like we can get three convictions instead of zero. It's crazy. Yeah. Ah, dear Wild But then when there's not no evidence and you need to rely on somebody that will say, yes, I was there, I see all this and they done this and this is this. Yeah, yeah, it's hard when you've got all these bodies or suspicions and all the bodies have been opened up and cut up you know, like, well, how the hell do I them back over there. How How were they killed? You have to have the proof Well, Hare accepted the offer. Of course he did. Yeah This was the bargain Edinburgh would hate Hair could point Burke towards the gallows and keep the rope from his own neck Once he began talking, the case changed gave them Birk, the room, Margaret's death, and the body being sent on. as another subject for the Doctors It was still ugly, but now It could be put to the jury. Y The authorities then focused on the charge they believed could hold That would be Margaret Dockerty and Helen McDougal would face trial while the names Mary Patterson and James Wilson, the also known as Daf Jamie still hung around the case like ghosts Dr. Knox, however would not stand in the dock To many in Edinburgh, that seemed impossible to accept But suspicion was not evidence And public anger was not enough to prosecute him The city wanted the whole system exposed The law could only reach Cn it. they thought they could prove. Yeah. I mean, they got to prove that he knew that these were bodies being received by It is a result of murders, you know, but So you can understand the public's theurory. They're like, I want to burn this whole mother fuckking another ground This is crazy. don't do because it's putting a trade That's just so gruesome and so brutal. peopleople are like, this is disgusting. You know, we can't be having this. Yeah where they were already in the, you know, when the bodies when there was grave robbers, they they were trying to protect their dead people and Yeah, you know, society as a whole. But they're seeing where it's going to to accept, you know, They're seeing where it's going to lead. It's going to lead to people going, you know what grave robbing Let's just kill people Yeah and just take them off and make money. And the thing is, unless, you know, there's some accountability on the dor Dr. Knox's part you know, then Most other anatomists well, are they going to question where bodies are coming from our mix? How many other people have gotten this idea as well but never gotten caaught. Exactly. On Christmas Eve of eighteen twenty eight, Burke and McDougal were brought before the High Court of Justicary in Edinburgh By seven that morning, people were already gathering around Parliament Square by nine court was packed. Yeah. Police held the entrances, reporters were squeezed into place Extra constables stood ready in case public anger spilled into disorder with troops kept in reserve if the city police lost control of the crowd shows how mad the city was. Very much, so. Inside, the air was cold, damp and crowded bit of chill cutting through the rooms for hours. Outside, the city waited for scraps of news This was not just a trial, it was a public reckoning in a room too small to hold the horror Ct could not try the whole nightmare at once The indictment named three alleged murders Mary Patterson James Wilson, also known as Daf Jamie and Margaret Dockerty The defense argued that placing all three before one jury turn the case into a parade of horrors with which each death poisoning the judgment of the next Court allowed the indictment to stand But the Lord advocate had to proceed one charge at a time. He began with Margaret the strongest case body that they still had Yeah, best place to start. Burke and Helen McDougal were both pleaded not guilty. The court heard from witnesses who had seen Margaret alive from neighbourors who had heard the noise in the room and from Anne and James Gray whose discovery had broken the whole thing open They were not grand witnesses. They were ordinary people who had looked where Burke did not want them to look. Then came William Hare There was no way to make that clean. He was not some nervous bystander dragged in from the edge of the story He was one of the men who had made the trade work. But now, he stood in court protected by the bargain he had made tellelling the jury that Burke had attacked Margaret that she had died in that room and that her body had been taken away as another subject for the doctors Well the defense knew exactly where to strike Hair was useful But he was filthy with guilt. Yeah Every word he gave against Burke also helped keep himself from the gallows So the question was not simply whether hair could be trusted. It was whether his account matched the evidence already closing in around Burke Maggie Hare gave evidence to carrying her baby into the witness box There's a picture of. They did a drawing. And she looks angry as fuck, but she's got her baby in her arm. Yep. they wouldn't allow that now. No Well, her memory when pressed, was poor Conveniently poor in some places Then came the doctors, and even they could not give the jury a perfect answer belieelved Margaret had been probably suffocated but probably needed to be more certain than that. Yeah, probably is not a certain. Yeah Well, even with the body recovered, the case still needed witness testimony, circumstance, and common sense C close the gap. You've said that before. Yeah. I need a common sense Con sense, I mean, it's so underrated, you know Unfortunately, there's a lot of people that don't have it. The thing that any human person could have Yeah is common bloody sense. Yeah. Well we've seen a lot of crime shows where we go. They have no common senseense. sh Dumb shit Burke's own declarations were read Googles were red too By then, the difference between the two cases were becoming clear Against Berke, the crown had hair. Graze the body, the room and the route to surgeon square Against McDougal, there was suspicion, proximity and behavior that looked dark But that darkness was not proof. Yeah. That was where Henry Cochburn's defense of McDougal found its opening He did not need to make her sympathetic. He only needed to make the jury hesitate hadad she known Had she helped hadad she merely been there Drunk, frightened, compromised, liivving beside horror, but not legally proved to be part of the killings In a case this monstrous, The line was thin But legally It was a line between freedom And the hangman's rope. Yeah Imagine how like what you would be feeling if just facing that you might get hung. Yeah like publicly. Yeah, scary. Well the trial ran through the day and through the night Christmas morning after nearly a full day of evidence and argument, the jury retired. They didn't mess around. They were like On the Lord's birthday. we fuck that we are going to get these guys. It's just mad how then it was like right they're very matter of factual on what they've got. This is this and you know, it quite a speedy process to be f. Yeah Bedy trial, let's go. Yeah Well, The jury retired and they were gone for just fifty minutes. Not even an hour Against William Burke for the murder of Margaret Doggerty. the verdict was gey. Against Helen McDougal, the verdict was not proven. Oh, there' not proven is again Yeah The jury were in doubt. Yeah But you gotta put it in the hands of the jury? Yeahep, most definitely But that verdict did not clear McDougal in the eyes of the city. It only meant the case against her had failed She could leave the court but she could not step out of the shadow meanwhile, had remained unnervingly composed He ate asked for biscuits and at times seemed almost detached from the horror unfolding around him When McDougal was found not proven, he reportedly turned to her and said Nelly You're out of the scrape As for biscuits. I mean you don't get that in court nowadays. blloody out Hey man, you got some hop knobs over there? I like get munch on some biscuits. S digestive. is fed L Mad. Well, then the sentence was passed Burke was to be taken to the commommon jail of Edinburgh. Then brought out on Wednesday the twenty eighth of january of eighteen twenty nine and hanged by the neck until dead A that. body was to be delivered for public dissection. Yeah The sentence had a grim logic Burke had sold the murdered dead to Anatomy. now Anatomy O, imagine that Yeah They're like a public flipping dissection where they're all kind Yeah I I've seen, you know research into stuff and I've come across and sort of seen the drawn pictures of this stuff happening back then Imagine seeing that in real life I'd be Oh my go, there's some testines being pulled out. It'll be gagging and thrown up everywhere. Gross. Well across Edinburgh, It still didn't feel like justice It felt like one man had been handed to the gallows while the rest slipped through the cracks Daf Jamie's mother and sister tried to bring Hir to trial themselves, arguing that a family's right to justice could not simply be wiped away by a deal made with a murderer ruled that the Lord advocate's promise held and hair was still protected That's terrible in it really? Yeah. But the legal freedom did not mean safety Care was kept in custody for his own protection until February of eighteen twenty nine And when officials finally tried to slip him quietly out of Edinburgh, It didn't work. Yeah On the journey south, he was recognized, and by the time he reached Dumfrees, word had spread. That's the guy. G him pretty much. crowd had gathered Windows were broken, stones were thrown People shouted that hair should be burked himself The mob came so close to killing him that the authorities had to hide him, move him, and hurry him out under darkness. After that Hair became a rumor Some stories said he was blinded after being thrown into a lime pit. Others had him begging in London Returning to Ireland or disappearing under another name No one knows for certain. The man whose evidence condemned Burke vanished into darkness and no version of his ending. trusted. Well, yeah, I mean, authorities is probably with the amount of public ur dissatisfaction, you know. They probably did change his name and and do what they G him the fuck out of Scotland. Yeah got him probably down right down south his bother and P probably was in London probably. before the execution, Burke tried to shape the story one last time His confessions filled in more of the horror, but they also did what condemned men often do. They moved some of the darkness elsewhere Much of the blame in Burke's telling settled back on to H. He claimed Hare had led him into the trade urged him on and then murdered him turnurning evidence Whether that was confession, self pity, or one final attempt to shift the weight It didn't change the inevitable Yep, because by the morning of the execution, Edinburgh had become a theater of punishment Rain had fallen through the night The scaffold had gone up by torchlight And long before Burke appeared, the high street was filling with people who had not come in silence, pity or solemn reflection They had come in fury The city had waited months for an answer And now it wanted to watch that answer drop Yeah, think me personally It's just a curiosity. I think I'd go know what I mean, just to experience entertain see what's going on, you know, But like we watch crime showss movies. Well, you watch movies and stuff we've said this before, like, but you know it's fake right This is seeing it for real like would just be so horrific like Especially if they didn't do it right. Yeah. they didn't get a good executioner Yeah. Like if the rope was too long, it could pop their head off. If it wasn't long enough, they'd be dangl in there trying and you know. And to be fair, you know, there's nothing to say that they're going to die within, you know, just a quick snap of, you know, they Yeah. it might not snap the neck as they drump so then they are there kind of like strgg playing around. Yeah. Oh God. Brutal. Imagine it. Jesus. Well, on the twenty eighth of january of eighteen twenty nine, tens of thousands packed into the streets and windows around the scaffold waiting for the man whose name had become a curse Some paid for windows overlooking the execution When Burke appeared, the shouting rose around him him Hang here too. Hang knocks There was a little sympathy in the crowd. Yeah. Too many watching. This was not simply the death of a condemned man payment Not enough, perhaps, but the only payment the law had managed to take Yeahep After the execution, Burke's body was not returned for private burial because there was still one thing left. It was taken from the scaffold to the anatomy rooms laid out before students and surgeons and publicly dissected Thousands came to see him. One famous account claimed that Professor Alexander Monroe pen into Burke's blood and wrote with it. grotesque a final turn for a man who had spent months selling bodies to the dissecting rooms Well his skeleton was preserved, his death mask was taken Pieces of his skin were reportedly removed and turned into some gruesome souvenirs. Brutal. One surviving example held by Sgeons' Hall museums is a small pocketbook made from his skin with a pencil inside and the date of his execution marked on the back. You could actually go see it. Yeah, go check it out. I see the picture of it, It's wild The ps history. Yeahah, definitely. go go and, you know Cool like museums they've got evenven before Burke had died, The city had begun turning the case into relics peopleople tried to see his room Har's house and the places where the bodies had passed Edinburgh had been horrified by the trade and bodies But now it created its own smaller trade in traces of the murders That's like true like is true crime. Yeah like us now. curious. I was curious about It's not even about the axe itself. it's about behaviors that people have that make them do these horrific things You know, the psychology of murderers. Yeah what drove them to it? Yeah, it's the whole Sing combined Yeah make really interestnteresting and intriguing but Obviously gruesome. No Ver good Very interestingough. As for Helen McDougall, danger came almost immediately Within a day of her release, even entering a shop could draw a crowd. Ordinary errands became impossible When she was recognized in public, people gathered with terrifying speed Some armed with ropes, blades, and whatever else could be snatched up in the heat of the moment Police had to move her out of sight before street justice took over. Yeah, you can't order online You got to go out to the shops and people are like, I'm gonna to stab you up or rope you up or you know, that's some that's somefury right there. Definitely, deffinitely Maggie Hare faced that same theory She was recognized in Glasgow and attacked before police helped her onto a Belfast bound vesole to get the fuck out of Scotland. Yeah The verdicts and legal bargains may have protected the women from the dock they offered little protection in the street Both were hounded from place to place, recognized, threatened, and driven into hiding Well Robert Nox survived in the legal sense, but not untouched. He was never charged with murder Burke's confession said Knox had not encouraged the killings But Edinburgh had already reached its own verdict Too many had asked too little paid too readily benefited too often He had not stood in Burke's room with his hands over a victim's mouth But his rooms had received the benefit of those crimes. Yeah It like the Proceeds of Crimes Act. Yeah the proceeds of and the benefits from Stolen goods? Yeah, whereereas these are not actually they murdered goods. Yeah you know, and shouldn't be doing that. Yeah Well the anger around Knox became physical Crowds gathered outside his home. An effigy of him was hanged in the street. I love it when some people do effigies. Yeah. I seen one of Ka Starma the other day. it was so funny. I think it was the pink ladies so they were doing the What' that, uh, Oops upside your head. you know, we're here You're sitt in a line like you're all in a line behind each other And yeah, they were just black in this effigies that I. It was so funny. Good Lord That was the punishment. The crowd believed the courts had denied them Cicatures showed him as something monstrous not just a doctor. Buyer of the dead. Yep He kept lecturing for a time, but his standing in Edburgh never recovered. No,n wouldn't surprise me. And very much so, I think, you know We would felt the same back then. Yeah it's like, hang on a minute. you've received these You know, you should have been asking questions on how often you was receiving these Freshly because you're your There should have been more due diligence on these bodies. He's a doctor. He would have known that these bodies were Very, very fresh. Yeah. S it comes to you is still warm, come on Maybe they should have had some sort of like certificate to say, you know We work with a morgue or whatever. Yeah, there should have been like a morgue that says, hey, here's the dust jacket. Yeah, you know, that type of thing. Yeah Thankfully, we have those now.. The Westport murders did not immediately create reform on their own But they became impossible to ignore They helped force a wider reckonon over how bodies were obtained for medical study A few years later, the Anatomy Act of eighteen thirty two changed the legal supply of cadavers reducing the need for grave robbers and the criminal market that had grown around them The law had not come in time to save these victims. It did begin to close the market that made their murders profitable Burke and Hare became shorthand for something colder than murder darker than body snatching killing the poor because their bodies could be sold And because polite Edinburgh had a door open for the dead That is why the story lasted It had villains, yes. but also a whole city around them. leecture halls, graveyards, lodging houses, mobs medical ambition and the old fear of what might happen to a body after death Margaret Dockerty was the one who broke the pattern. because she was the first or the youngest, or the best known But because someone looked too closely Dev pulled that opened that door between the West Port and Surgeon Square And what came out was more than one murder. It was a trade, a silence, a city's hunger for bodies And in the end, body that closed the circle. Books his own Yep, it sure was. Well that was the story of the resurrection man, Birkin Hare. Absolutely wild. Eme That's an extremely gruesome horrific case. Yes, very gruesome. You I Good Lord. Jesus I mean, imagine living in them days. and just, you know ' grateful for a lot of the things that we have now. Oh yeah, yeah you know, and policies and you have to have death certificates. you have to have this, you have to, you know, You don't have to have a mort safe over top of your grave That's pretty wild that they call it Mort saafe. I kind of it made me think, you know that little the club that you can put on your steering wheel, so it locks the steering wheels. O obviously you got like gott to give it a name, don't they? L with the you've got like a mortis lock. so it's probably more is probably use that in as a reference, maybe Yeah Whathead. Yeah. Crazy And in like we said, it was like Probably say about sixteen, it was probably more than. Yeah. I would thought it would been more to be fair because, you know, they were pretty much on a roll. Oh ye and and they were doing it over over months, you know? Yeah. this wasn't a ongo well, these ones But they could have started a lot, you know, sooner Well, it's one of those things where You can only gather so much information. and like It's not a lot of records Yeah you know and and like you're like, who, I don't know Yeah. because people just try, you know, they're transient, they're walking around coming from different places. They could have been other transient people that have come across Birk and H And, you know, a cheap lodging house. Exactly. It's like, Ohh, you know, it's not that much, you just go Hey, hey, Ohh, they got whiskey. Oh, you're just giving it to me for free. Yeah and it wast get you dream me that they actually, you know, they were sort of focusing on transients and people of lesser like while Joseph the Miller was But he was ill. Yeah. So they just thought, o, well, he just unfortunately died of this fever act that was an easy one for them, I think, you know, But then yeah then they get that idea of Oh Let's do this we got more and more money. Yeah, we can get A grand a week onene body a week or two bodyies three Yeah, whoa We can get as much stuff as we want because they were drinking and partying and all that Well, I'm glad there's no opportunity for people to be doing that sort of stuff nowadays, definitely Yeah, protecting the dead. Yep. Wow That was pretty wild. Thankks for Thank Thanks for joining us.. Thanks for joining us case. this recent case. Yeah. and thanks to Dave for ell the case Yeah recommending it. Excellent. Yeah, definitely. Well we look forward to you coming back next week and listening to the next case. 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