Burke and Hare murders

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The Burke and Hare murders (occasionally referred to as the West Port murders) were perpetrated in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom in 1827 and 1828 primarily by 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. Their accomplices included Burke's mistress, Helen MacDougal, and Hare's wife, Margaret Hare. [1]

Contents

[edit] 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.

[edit] Spree

By 1827, Burke and his mistress, Helen MacDougal, were regular tenants at Hare's lodging house in Edinburgh. It is not known whether the two knew each other from an earlier common employment on the Union Canal. 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 Professor 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 Hare, 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. 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 Mary 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 he 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.

[edit] 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, Janet Brown heard about it and went to the police. She identified Mary Paterson's clothing.

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. Ironically, following his hanging, he was to share the fate of his victims - dissected for the benefit of medical students. Helen MacDougal was released, since her complicity to the murders was not provable. Robert Knox was not prosecuted, despite a public uproar, since no evidence existed that he had known of the origin of the corpses.

Helen 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.

Robert 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.

Skin from Burke's body was used to make the leather binding of a small book. This book can now be seen in the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. His skeleton hangs in the anatomy library of Edinburgh University's Medical School.

[edit] 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." [2]

[edit] In popular culture

The murders have entered the timeless culture of children’s folklore. Threats of visits from Burke and Hare are used by some parents to discipline unruly children (sf. Boogyman), and the pair are even prominently featured in sing-song rhymes that accompany children’s jump rope and hopscotch games, such as:

Burke the butcher,
Hare the thief,
Knox the boy who buys the beef.[3]

In Kim by Rudyard Kipling, the Babu recommends "the eminent authors, Burke and Hare." Presumably he means Edmund Burke, historian and statesman, and Augustus Hare, author of travel books. But of course seeing these two names together makes the reader think of the two ghouls. [4]


The story of the murders was filmed in 1948 as a motion picture with working title Crimes of Burke and Hare. However, the British Board of Film Censors deemed its historical 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.[5] The original script is apparent to anyone skilled in lipreading. A less coy treatment of the topic was made in the 1971 film Burke and Hare, starring Derren Nesbitt. The 1960 film The Flesh and The Fiends also used the real names, with Peter Cushing as Knox and Donald Pleasence as Hare.[6] The following year, The Anatomist featured Alastair Sim as Dr Knox.[7] 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.[8]

Another film based on the murders was to have been in pre-production, based on a script by Edinburgh novelist Irvine Welsh. Provisionally titled The Meat Trade, the film was scheduled to feature Robert Carlyle and Colin Firth under the direction of Antonia Bird and was to have been shot on location, in Edinburgh, beginning in April 2007.[9]

The Edinburgh-based Australian Rules Football club the Body Snatchers is named for the antics of Burke and Hare.

A Thief 2 computer game enthusiast has created a fan mission titled "The Seven Sisters" which amongst other things features Dr. Knox and the two murderers. Playing this mission requires the latest version of the "Darkloader" game loading and fan mission archiving program, as well as the Thief 2 game CD.

The murders are heavily referenced by Scottish author Ian Rankin in The Falls, part of his Inspector John Rebus series

The murders, in particular 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.

In the Warner Bros. Daffy Duck short My Little Duckaroo, Nasty Canasta is seen reading a book called 'Gravedigger's Joke Book' by Burke and Hare.

In the series that inspired the hit television show "Bones," Burke and Hare were referenced in the penultimate to the most recent book Break no Bones by Kathy Reichs.

Another famous reference to the murders was in the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode "Burked". In said episode Tony Braun, Sam Braun's oldest son, was killed in the same way Burke and Hare killed their victims.

In Harry Potter, a Dark Arts shop in Knockturn Ally is called Borgin and Burkes. Knox is also Latin for darkness and is used to extinguish lights in the stories.

[edit] See also

[edit] Bibliography

  • Adams, N. (2002) Scottish Bodysnatchers ISBN 1-899874-40-2
  • Bailey, B. (2002) Burke and Hare: The Year of the Ghouls ISBN 1-84018-575-9
  • Douglas, H. (1973) Burke and Hare ISBN 0-7091-3777-X
  • Edwards, O.D. (1993) Burke and Hare ISBN 1-873644-25-6
  • MacDonald, H.P. (2005) Human Remains: Episodes in Human Dissection ISBN 0-522-85157-6
  • Menefee, Samuel Pyeatt and Allen Simpson (1994). "The Westport Murders and the Mineature Coffins from Arthur's Seat". Book of the Old Edinburgh Club 3: ns 63-81. 
  • Richardson, R. (2001) Death, Dissection and the Destitute ISBN 0-226-71240-0
  • Roughead, W. (1966). Classic Crimes 1: Katharine Nairn, Deacon Brodie, The West Port Murders, Madeleine Smith, Constance Kent and The Sandyford Mystery. London: Panther. 

[edit] References

  1. ^ William Burke & William Hare
  2. ^ Lancet editorial, 1828-9 (1), pp 818-21, 28.3.1829.
  3. ^ The Know-it-all, by A. J. Jacobs,
  4. ^ Alan Sandison, annotated edition of Kim, pages 163 and 302.
  5. ^ The Greed of William Hart (1948) at the Internet Movie Database
  6. ^ The Flesh and the Fiends (1960) at the Internet Movie Database
  7. ^ The Anatomist (1961) at the Internet Movie Database
  8. ^ The Doctor and the Devils (1985) at the Internet Movie Database
  9. ^ The Meat Trade (2008) at the Internet Movie Database

[edit] External links