It has been stated that Burke went to live in the house occupied by the man called Broggan. This house, after Broggan’s departure, continued to be possessed by the lodger and his paramour. In a land to the eastward of that occupied by Hare in Tanner’s Close, you reached it after descending a common stair, and turning to the right, where a dark passage conducted to several rooms, at the end, and at right angles with which passage, there was a trance leading solely to Burke’s room, and which could be closed by a door, so as to make it altogether secluded from the main entry. The room was a very small place, more like a cellar than the dwelling of a human being. A crazy chair stood by the fireplace; old shoes and implements for shoemaking lay scattered on the floor; a cupboard against the wall held a few plates and bowls; and two beds, coarse wooden frames without posts or curtains, were filled with old straw and rags; so that of the money which the parties had received no part had ever been devoted to any other purpose than meat and drink, after allowing for the expense of the transitory effort on the part of the women to appear better dressed.
On the morning of a certain day of December, Burke chances again to be in the shop of Mr Rymer, where he saw a poor beggar woman asking for alms, whose brogue revealed that she was one of his country-women. The old story, you will say. Yes, alas! the old story, but with a difference. She would be garrulous—are not all poor people so?—yet the good heart admits that there is some cause for garrulity where there are wants to supply and no one willing to lend an ear. She would tell Burke, who had accosted her with the old accents of sympathy, that she had come over to Scotland to seek for her son. So straightway the sympathiser’s name becomes Docherty, and he would be glad to shew kindness to his country-woman, whom he accordingly invited to his house. The proposal was accepted on the instant, and, Burke leading the way, they proceeded to this asylum, which had so miraculously come in the way of one who had no place she could call a home upon earth. On their arrival, the old play begins. Burke sets before her a breakfast, and, having left Helen M‘Dougal to attend to her wants, he went straightway to find his associate, whom he informed that he had got “a shot in the house,” a piece of information always welcome to that fearful man. Meanwhile Helen M‘Dougal performed her part. At the very first appearance of the poor stranger she knew the fate that awaited her, and yet she set her to work in the cleaning of the house—a duty which the woman would cheerfully undertake out of pure gratitude to those who had thus generously taken in the weary wanderer and filled her empty stomach, yea, promised her harbourage for a time.
Hours passed, during which, in the absence of Burke, who would appear in due time, the two females were feminine, for they were engaged in acts which, as the natural work of their instincts, constitute so far the difference between the sexes; nor was the friendship which these acts were calculated to cement and strengthen to be weakened, in the estimation of the guest, by the arrival, in the evening, of Burke and Hare, and the latter’s wife—a jolly crew, who could render compatible, again as so often before, the orgies of a wild mirth with the foreseen doom of the one round whom these orgies were celebrated. When these parties entered, there were in the house a person of the name of Gray and his wife, who had been for some time lodgers with Burke. It was necessary that these persons, who could not be trusted, should not sleep there that night, and Burke accordingly went out to seek lodgings for them, whereupon, at a certain hour, they departed, taking with them some suspicion that their banishment from their quarters did not quadrate with the excuse that a wandering beggar, albeit represented as a relative, should take their place, if they had not some other grounds, derived from particular observations, to lead them to a thought which was destined to be the original spark to raise into conflagration a long collected mass of rottenness.
On the departure of the Grays, the saturnalia preceding the sacrifice commenced, and the scene was too fraught with enjoyment for the females, always ready for scenes of excitement, to be absent. The inevitable whisky was brought, and the poor stranger, to whom it would be as warmth to a heart cold enough from poverty and privations, must partake. And now there was to be one of those apparent inconsistencies which the one string of catgut exhibits in every day of our lives. If the joyous scene was to finish by the death of her around whom, and for whom, it was celebrated, surely the more remote it was kept from observing eyes the safer; so says prudence, but prudence forgets that she belongs exclusively to the natural and the rational, and like all reasoners who argue from egoism to tuism, she expects abnormals to follow her maxims, which appear to them to be as abnorm as they are to her. So while their spirits are up, as well from the stimulant of drink as from that of the coming sacrifice, they go, whither the destined victim had preceded them, into the neighbouring apartment, occupied by a Mrs Connoway. There the scene was continued, or rather begun afresh. More drink was brought by M‘Dougal, and the enjoyment was elevated into the altitudes of dithyrambism. Songs were sung, accompanied by a chorus of hoarse, broken voices, among which the tremula of the “brisk” little old woman mixed its quavers, till at length they all rose and danced. This scene continued for a considerable time, when they left. It was now eleven o’clock, and they were all again in their old quarters.
We have already seen that it formed a part of their plan of assault that some of the parties should quarrel and fight—the confusion thus produced being the opportunity of the assault. And the scheme was not departed from on this occasion. In the heat of the pretended mêlée the little old woman, who had interfered on behalf of Burke, because he had been “kind to her,” was cast down by force, for she had not drunk so much as they wanted her to do, and by keeping her senses had driven them to the necessity of the fighting prelude. This was the sign. The women, in the knowledge of the approaching struggle, hurry out of the room. At the very moment, Burke throws himself, with all the desperation of his purpose, on the body of the prostrate woman, clutching her by the throat, while his companion, bounding to his help, joins his energies in the old way, so that by the combination of powers utterly beyond resistance, she was held for full fifteen minutes, until, amidst the silence of deep hush and listening, they thought her dead. Not yet. They were deceived: there was more life than they counted upon in the little old woman, and the signs of reaction, as nature vindicated her guardship of the spirit, challenged a further effort. The weight and compression were renewed, and continued till there could be no doubt. The little old woman was dead, and in an instant after doubled up and thrown among a parcel of straw there for the purpose, in a corner of the room, between the foot of the bed and the wall.
When they were satisfied that the act had been accomplished, the women returned from the dark passage; whereupon Burke—it was now about twelve—went to the residence of Dr Knox’s curator of the rooms, who lived near by, and bringing him along with him, pointed to the straw, and said, “There is a subject for you, which will be ready in the morning.” After the departure of the curator, the party sat down to begin again their debauch, in the course of which they were joined by a young man called Broggan, when the revelry being continued, was carried on till four or five in the morning, at which time the two women lay down in bed, with Broggan alongside of them. Next morning, and after Hare and his wife had left for their own house, Mr Gray and his wife, who had slept there during the night, returned to Burke’s, in consequence of an invitation given them by him to come to breakfast. On entering the house, they looked for the little old woman, and were surprised that she was not to be seen. Thereafter Mrs Gray having, during a search for her child’s stockings, approached the bundle of straw, was met by Burke coming forward and intercepting her, by crying, “Keep out there!” with a nod. Broggan was then requested by Burke to sit on a chair so situated as to guard the straw, and prevent an approach; but during the day he deserted his post, and Mrs Gray, still more satisfied that there was something to be discovered, took the earliest opportunity of a search. The dissipation had driven all the actors right and left, so that at length the coast was clear. Assisted by her husband, she began to remove the straw, and the first thing she touched was the arm of the dead woman. They then examined the body, which was entirely naked, and discovered that the mouth and a part of the face were covered with blood. They had seen enough, and thought it high time to get out of that house—a purpose they were in the course of executing when they met Helen M‘Dougal on the stair. Gray immediately told her he had seen the dead body, whereupon she got alarmed, implored him to hold his tongue, and said that if he did it would be worth ten pounds a week to him; but the man was honest, and replied, “God forbid that I should have that on my conscience!”[10]
Now, at last, the great secret had got into a mind true to God and nature; and here you have to mark, with gratitude to Him who takes His own time to bring evil to light and crime to retribution, the beginning of the end of all these terrible evils.
The records of human actions, though so often blotted by stains of blood shed by the power of money, have, as we have observed, seldom shewn more than some one individual act of violence. We exclude, of course, those which set forth the actions of regularly-organised banditti; and even there the robberies with mere violence form the general theme,—the cases of killing being the exception. Here again we see the agent not only working its wonders in the four actors, but extending its influence all around in closing up the issues of discovery. The bribe offered by Helen M‘Dougal to Gray, gives us a further insight into this collateral part of the conspiracy; and while we have the young man Broggan clearly enough brought in as an additional confidant, we cannot avoid the conclusion that he too had been got over by the all-powerful agent. Nor can we account for the conduct of one more, who came into the scene at a still later period, by anything short of this paid “winking toleration.”
In the evening, after Gray and his wife left the house, the body of the little old woman, which had been seen by them, was despatched to Surgeon’s Square in a manner somewhat different from that of the others. Indeed, during the whole of this day, all the actors appear to have been deranged, hurrying hither and thither without definite aim, as if under the influence of a demon. The invitation to breakfast given to the Grays; the nod of Burke when he scared Mrs Gray from the straw; the imprudent watch committed to Broggan, and, above all, the leaving of the house with the body lying in the corner, and the Grays there, so evidently upon the alert, can only be accounted for on the supposition of frenzy. The new element of the discovery made by the Grays, with the threatened communication to the authorities made by the husband, was calculated to aggravate that restlessness, so much better expressed by the German word verwirrung. The nest was fluttered: all went to and fro, but whether it was that the main chance could not, even by all this confusion and fear, be driven from their minds, or that they saw the pressing necessity of getting the body quickly out of the house, Burke hastened and engaged a porter of the name of M‘Culloch to convey the tea-chest, already procured, with its burden, to Surgeon’s Square. When the man came in the evening, the body was not even put into the chest, and so confused and irresolute were the two principals, that M‘Culloch was obliged to help the packing. He saw and handled the body,—forced it down with much pressure, and, even when he was on the point of getting it upon his shoulders, he noticed an oversight to which the others were blind. A part of the hair stuck out, and so, with great caution, this careful cadie took the trouble to put all to rights.
Meanwhile, the other harpies, under the prevailing restlessness and flutter, were on the watch. M‘Culloch, with the burden, sallied forth by the Cowgate to find his way to the top of the High School Wynd, where he was to be met by Burke. When half way up that passage, he was joined by Burke and Helen M‘Dougal, and before he got to the Square, Hare and his wife were there, so that all the four were thus, and on this occasion of delivery only, drawn together by the double motive of clutching the money, and the apprehensions enveloped in the long-reaching shadow of frowning justice. Nor did they stop there. When the burden had been deposited, and M‘Culloch requested to go to Newington, where Dr Knox resided, to get his five shilling fee for his winking toleration, they all set off together, and, though there was some straggling and separating, the women never lost sight of the men. Arrived at Newington, Dr Knox’s curator took the principals, along with M‘Culloch, into a public-house, the women hanging about outside on the watch, and a part of the price, to the extent of £7, 10s. having been paid and divided, the whole party returned to the city.
While all this was going on, the man Gray, having been finally moved to his purpose of informing the authorities of what he had witnessed, and having also seen the removal, had repaired to the Police-office, where, after waiting some time, he saw the officer, John Fisher. To him he detailed what he and his wife had witnessed.[11] The bringing in of the “brisk” little old woman—her good health—the manœuvre to get him and his wife to sleep at Hare’s—so much of the orgie with its dancing and singing as he knew—the disappearance of the stranger in the morning—the discovery of the body under the straw—the blood upon the mouth—the bribe of £10 a-week—the removal of the body. Whereupon Fisher, after despatching his informant before him, repaired to the premises, but he went with no other thought in his mind than that Gray was influenced by spite;—so near again was the conspiracy to an escape from detection. Nor did even what Fisher found and heard tend to awaken him. On getting to the house, he met Burke and M‘Dougal, with Gray and another man called Finlay, coming up the stair, and having told Burke that he wanted to speak to them, they all returned to the room. Fisher then began his interrogations.
“Where are all your lodgers?” he said, directing himself to Burke.
“There is one,” replied he, pointing to Gray. “I turned him and his wife out for bad conduct.”
“But what has become of the little woman who was here yesterday?” he continued.
“She’s away.”
“When did she leave?”
“About seven o’clock in the morning, and Hare will swear he saw her go.”
“Any more to swear that?”
“Oh, a number!” replied Burke, insolently.
Whereupon Fisher began to look about the house, and especially the bed, where he saw many marks of blood.
“How came these there?” he inquired at Helen M‘Dougal.
“Oh,” replied she, confidently, “a woman lay-in there about a fortnight ago, and the bed has not been washed since; and as for the little old woman, she can be found. She lives in the Pleasance, and I saw her to-night in the Vennel.”
“And when did she leave this?” he rejoined.
“About seven o’clock at night,” replied the incautious Helen.
Upon this small discrepancy depended the further prosecution of the inquiry, and, consequently, either the present discovery of the conspiracy, or the continuation of it, with, probably, if possible, increased atrocity, for Fisher was satisfied as to the blood as well as to Gray’s spite, and, according to his own assertion, came to the resolution of taking Burke and M‘Dougal to the Office, only on the mere chance ground of their difference about a time of the day. On arriving before the Superintendent, Fisher mentioned what he had seen, and also what he thought; but the superior, quickened by the mention of the blood, which so far, hypothetically, at least, harmonised with Gray’s story, took another view. Yet how far was he from suspecting that he had in his very hands the key to that chamber of horrors, the untraceable existence of which had for a time produced so much deep-breathing oppression in the public mind! He immediately paid a visit to the house, along with the police surgeon, Mr Black, and Fisher himself. There they found a stripped bed-gown, which Mrs Law, who came in, stated belonged to the little old woman, and in addition to what Fisher had seen, a quantity of fresh blood, mixed with fifteen or sixteen ounces of saliva, among the straw now under the bed, but which, as we have seen, lay formerly between the end of the bed and the wall.
On the following morning, the same three parties proceeded to Dr Knox’s rooms in Surgeon’s Square, and having got the curator formerly mentioned, who felt no hesitation in assisting their inquiries, they were led by him to the cellar. “There is the box,” said he, “but I do not know what is in it.” On opening it they found the body of a woman quite naked, and Gray having then been sent for, came and identified it as that of the little old woman. Thereupon the body and box were conveyed to the Police-office; and on the day following an examination was conducted by Dr Christison and Dr Newbigging, assisted by Mr Black, which, according to the conjectures of the first, who as yet knew nothing of the real manner of death, harmonised wonderfully with the res gesta. There were several contusions on the legs, probably caused by the heavy shoes of the assailants—another on the left loin—another on the shoulder-blade—one on the inside of the lip, the consequence of pressure against the teeth, and two upon the head, probably from being knocked against the floor in restraint of efforts to rise. Above all, as an index to the modus, there was a ruffling of the scarf skin under the chin, and as a proof of the force, a laceration of the ligaments connecting the posterior parts of two of the vertebræ, whereby blood had effused among the spinal muscles as far down as the middle of the back. There was also blood oozing from the mouth and nose. The body appeared to be that of a healthy person, all the organs of the vital parts being unusually sound. From all which, Dr Christison, and also the two other doctors, drew the conclusion, that the woman had met with a violent death by means of throttling—a form indicated by the ruffling of the skin below the chin as more likely than that of smothering or suffocation. Nor was this conclusion liable to be affected by the fact stated by Mr Black, that many of the intemperate people of the city, and so many that he had seen six cases in the Police-office at one time, were often on the eve of death, nay, altogether deprived of life, through accidental suffocation from drink, produced by chance obstruction of the mouth, or lying with the face on a pillow.
All this information having been obtained, the authorities were at length roused, and the Lord Advocate, it is said, saw at once that he was on the eve of a great discovery, which would explain the recent disappearances. All secrecy was imposed upon officials, yet in spite of the precaution, parts of the story got currency among the people, and, offering a solution as they did of the prevailing mystery, deepened the awe, while they stimulated the curiosity not of the city only, but the kingdom. Hare and his wife were laid hold of, and inquiries in every direction set on foot and prosecuted. Recourse was had to the culprits, in the hope that some one or more of them would confess, but at first there was no success in this direction, each of them maintaining that they knew nothing of the death of the woman, or the fate of any of the prior victims. On the 3d and 10th of November, Burke and Helen M‘Dougal, finding that one fact could not be denied, that a dead body was found in their house, issued declarations whereby a story was trumped up to the effect that it was brought there by a stranger, who called one day to get some work performed by the former; but these were disregarded as inconsistent and ridiculous, and the authorities were left to their scent. The evidence of the Grays was of great importance, and other people were found who could speak to isolated facts. Hugh Alston could swear that at half-past eleven on the night of the 31st of October, when he was going to his house, in the same land where Burke resided, he heard a noise coming from the latter’s room—men quarrelling and fighting—(the feint preceding the onslaught)—and amidst the uproar the peculiar voice of a female crying murder, then after some minutes the uproar diminished, and he heard a cry as if proceeding from a person or animal that had been in the act of being strangled. This circumstance recurred to him, and struck him forcibly next evening, when he heard that a body had been found in that house.
Additional information was got from Mrs Connoway, who occupied a room on the right hand of the main passage leading to that other which terminated in Burke’s apartment. She remembered that, on Hallowe’en night, Burke brought in with him a little old woman; that, on subsequently going into his house, she saw her there sitting by the fire supping porridge and milk, and upon her saying, “You have got a stranger,” M‘Dougal replied, “Yes, a Highland woman, a friend of Burke’s.” In the darkening, the woman came into her house, and she was surprised to hear her calling Burke by the name of Docherty, wherein she corrected her. By and by, Hare and the two women followed, one of the latter having a bottle of whisky, part of which the stranger partook of along with the rest. Thereafter they got merry, when they all rose and danced, the little old woman among the rest. When the others left, the woman remained till such time as Burke, who was out, should return to his own house, because she trusted to him for protection. During the night she was disturbed by a terrible noise as of a fight; and in the morning, about nine or ten, having gone ben, she found collected Mrs Law, Young, Broggan, M‘Dougal, and Burke, the last drinking whisky, and sprinkling it over the bed and the straw, and M‘Dougal singing a song. On inquiring where the little old woman was, she was told by Helen that she had kicked her out, because she was “ower freendly” with her husband. Towards six she was called upon by Mrs Gray, who having previously told her of the dead body, asked her to go in and see it, but when she complied, she got so frightened that she turned and ran out. Further on, her husband told Burke that it was reported that he had murdered the woman; on hearing which he laughed very loud, as well as M‘Dougal, who was present, and then said, he “did not regard what all Scotland said of him.” Nor did he seem to be in the smallest degree afraid. This information afforded by Mrs Connoway was corroborated to a certain extent by Mrs Law, who occupied a room in the main passage opposite to that of the former; and Broggan was willing to go so far as to admit certain things, among the rest, the charge of sitting on the chair opposite to the straw.
Withal though this evidence could leave no doubt on the mind that murder had been committed, it did not amount to proof against any particular person. All that pertained to the disposal of the body at Surgeon’s Square was frankly told by the curator; but, with this exception, there was much to complain of as regards the doctors. Knox and his assistants, all of whom shewed from the beginning a marked, if not determined, refusal to help the authorities in the furtherance of justice. But if all the testimony that could be procured in support of the charge in this case was insufficient, the deficiency was still greater in regard to those of Mary Paterson and Daft Jamie, for unfortunately no one, with the exception of the accomplices and the gentlemen in Surgeon’s Square, had seen their dead bodies, or could even say they were dead, so that the corpus delicti was literally little better than a myth. The authorities were therefore placed in a very trying position. The people cried for vengeance; and the Lord Advocate could only respond, “The decrees of the blind goddess are not gropings in the dark;” and he moreover, said, that an ineffectual trial, followed by an acquittal, would not only be injurious to the interests of justice, damaging to the prestige of official dexterity, but dangerous to the country, in the humour in which the inhabitants of Edinburgh felt themselves. That humour had often shewn itself before. The example of the Porteous mob was not only a lesson, but, as regards the crimes, a derision; and it was just as certain as the death of the brisk little old woman, that the big old Edinburgh would take the blind lady into their own hands, and if she would not see that it was right that these four persons should be hanged, whether on a barber’s pole or not—they would extract her cataract or cure her amaurosis for the purpose, and then immolate the criminals at her altar.
From this anxiety with which the Lord Advocate was oppressed, there was an impending relief. The diligent officials, all straining for the satisfaction of the people, the vindication of justice, and the comfort of their superior, were continually attempting the prisoners, and at length it was discovered that the crafty, cruel, and cowardly Hare, and also his wife, were beginning to shew signs of inclination to buy their lives at the expense of those of their perhaps less guilty associates. The leer of the “fearful man,” when the proposition was made to him, was a repetition of the old satisfaction when a “shot was in the house,” and it is not unlikely that he chuckled at the rising thought of sending him to the college for the benefit of science and the good of his fellow-creatures; nor was the indication either unnatural to him or fallacious to the public. In a short time he declared himself, but on the condition of a firm bargain. The “shot” must be paid for by the price of immunity to his person and that of his wife.
When this information reached the law officers of the Crown, they hailed it with that amount of satisfaction which might be felt when a man procures by chemical agents from pollution the means of reproducing health. It could be doubted by no one that the evidence of such a socius criminis as Hare, or socia criminis as the amiable Mary, would be worth less than the value of an old song, insomuch that while the old song might be true, the words of Hare, in a transaction where he himself was concerned, could not possibly be true. He would represent, and the people knew it, the Janus head with one face looking simpering peace to himself, and the other bloody war to his friend. Nor was this foreknowledge of the man, founded as it was upon such an array of actions, belied by the result. The precognition was, from beginning to end, a long train of lies, wherein he represented himself as a good, easy soul—his wife as well—who allowed Burke to have his own way, neither advising him nor assisting him, only not obstructing; and even where he could not avoid some confession of participation, attributing his weakness to the easiness of his nature. How innocently he took a little liquor so as to make him, not drunk, but merely put him in a sort of “drunkish way!” How benignantly he sat on the chair at the side of the bed when the ruffian Burke was fighting like a tiger to squeeze the life out of the little old woman! As for the money, he merely accepted it—never earned it; and who refuses money? So glaring was the falsehood of the man’s statement, and not less that of his wife, that the Lord Advocate was by no means sure of a verdict. Socii criminis have shades of character, but they are only to be believed when they shew penitence, and strike with vigour their own persons; but Hare only held on and kicked out; and a jury true to their consciences might, after all, become disgusted, and find a verdict of “Not proven.”
If the world is rife in unknown crimes, it is still more rich in winking toleration, insomuch as there is generally several winkers to one actor, and the former are of various kinds, while the latter is limited in his passion. Some are cowardly accorders, who favour the crime which they have not courage to commit; others are selfish, and expect benefit from their convenient nictation; and some there are who would be injured by the virtue of others having its own reward. So it is that the world, notwithstanding grave faces and simpering moralities, contains within its circumference only a trifle fewer rogues than inhabitants, the residue being God’s own—stern beings who have fought the devil at his own weapons and conquered. These have a certain price in another place, where the golden streets are happily not liable to be coined; but here they are of small account, where money is the measure of a man’s worth. We have already seen that even such men as Burke and Hare had their sympathisers and secret-keepers; but these were low, and therefore liable to be tempted; and it may be said that we have different men to judge when we go to the halls of science and seek for the winking tolerators of wholesale murder.
So far we admit, and we would be sorry indeed to do these men and youths injustice. We know that great authorities, such as Blackwood, and smaller ones, such as Colonel Cloud, accused them of art-and-partship as resetters, and that the public at large did not hesitate even to vociferate anathemas before a regular trial—with the devil’s advocate to plead for them—qualified them for excommunication by book, bell, and candle. All this goes for nothing with us at a time when it was said the fire of passion would be allayed, and sober reason exert her authority.[12]
It is fair, and even necessary, to assume as a fact, which, indeed, we have seen established by the practice of “Merry-Andrew” and the “Spune,” that the disinterring craft were in the habit of purchasing dead bodies from poor lodging-keepers or relatives, in all which cases the bodies would be very different in appearance from those procured in the ordinary way. We suspect, from the nature of the Scotch character, with its sympathies and friendships, that those examples were not at any time many; and the best evidence of this is, that under such an easy system, the resurrection trade, always difficult and precarious, would not, especially after the indictment of Dr Pattison of Glasgow in 1814, have been so assiduously prosecuted. Such a system, too, depending upon the character of a people and the feelings of individuals, must be supposed to have been under the regulation of those natural, or, if you like, unnatural, laws to which all organic beings are subjected. If, during a period of a decade, examples of such purchase and sale were only one or two in a year, even increasing paulatim et gradatim to three or four, we would not be prepared for a sudden increase starting up all at once in one year to from sixteen to twenty; and there were many people who calculated the number in our “Court of Cacus” at thirty. We may insist here a little upon this view, because, amidst all the outcry against Knox and his assistants, it was never taken into account.
Nor could this sudden rise have appeared the less startling to any mind below that of an idiot, that this new trade was not spread over a great number of persons—and nothing less than a very great number could have sufficed for watching, ferreting, persuading, bribing—overcoming all the prejudices arrayed against an act of sale—but was altogether engrossed by two poor squalid Irishmen, who had come into the trade by a leap, and all but superseded the old experienced hands. If we were to make the supposition, that now, or at any other period in the history of Scotland, two Irishmen had taken it into their heads to set up a trade of this kind in the city of Edinburgh, we would soon come to an estimate of their success, if the doubt would not rather be, that if they got one body in the course of a whole year, it would be no less a wonder than a shame. Nor was there any reasons which might have led the recipients in the Square to suspect that these two solitary individuals were merely the agents or hands of a “dead-body company,” or a joint-stock affair, with one of the crack names, “Association for the purpose of purchasing dead bodies, for the benefit of science and the human race,” a supposition which alone could have reconciled men with eyes in their heads, and brains in those heads, to the anomaly before them.
But above all, that which had so much the appearance of justifying the public rage, was the state in which the contents of these bags, boxes, and chests were presented to the purchasers. One example may serve for the whole. There was no reason for supposing that more violence was expended upon Mrs Docherty than upon the others, if we are not rather to suppose that the younger and stronger cases required more vigour, as presenting more resistance. Even in the weakest cases, the præsidia vitæ upon which nature has expended so much labour are not to be overcome by external force weakly exerted, and without leaving marks easily detected, even by the unlettered in anatomy; but we have only to mention the case of Daft Jamie, who fought manfully to the end, as an example of the necessity of leaving upon the body even greater signs of violence than those presented to the eyes of Dr Christison. Taking the little old woman as a fair medium between the young and the old, the weak and the strong—you may remember the examination report: contusions and bruises everywhere, extravasation of blood, blotches of the same crying evidence, and finally the Lydian test of the abraded skin of the throat,—while less or more of these marks must have appeared in every one of the sixteen known cases, we cannot even suppose a solitary example of one where they could have been altogether wanting; and this led many to wonder at the time how the men preferred violence, with so many chances of detection, to the soffana death-drops of some subtle poison, the effects of which were far less likely to be discovered by mere anatomists, curious about structure only, and so far removed from the duty of a post-mortem examination. With no pathological views in their minds, they never would have dreamt of smelling for prussic acid, or searching for the ravages of green vitriol or arsenic, any more than they thought of drawing up their noses under the effluvia of whisky—an evidence which was never absent, and could not be mistaken, and must have led to the curious conclusion that all the bodies sold by friends were those of drunkards, and drunkards alone.
These contusions, and the invariable thumb-mark on the throat, were, according to the gentle supposition, to be overlooked by men all on the alert to see the cloth taken off—curious investigators into the arcana of nature—most zealous inquirers into the structure of the human body—among whom anything abnormal, or departing from ordinary laws or appearances, produced a speculation, fraught not only with the ardour of science, but the contentious conceit of young aspirants. Nay, these sharp professional eyes were not the first examiners, for they came after the decision of the mercantile, which scanned the value to fix the price. We are aware that there never was an enunciation, not excepting the famous what is is, without the condition of being liable to argumentation, and we are far from wishing to deprive these men of their defence; but that they should have treated as they did the imputation cast upon them, of, we do not say winking toleration, but something like pretty wide-awake suspicion, as an Argive calumny, pointed with venom and shot by passion, was going to the other extreme. Offended innocence is not always the meek thing represented by poets, yet it seldom takes on the form of a man at a window[13] threatening to shoot the officials of the law if they dared to question for the ends of justice so innocuous and ill-used a victim of public prejudice.
In all we have said we have assumed that these suspicions were to cast up their shadows in the magic-lantern of minds, quite free from any recollections or surmises of any body having ever been offered, in the Square or neighbourhood, which could be said to have come to a violent death. The assumption which was set forth at the time was not true, for it turned out to have been pretty well known—and what professional scandal is unknown to students?—that some six months only before, and when the Irishmen were in full feather, the body of a female was offered for sale by some ill-looking men—we do not say, as was said, of Burke’s gang—to the assistant of another teacher of anatomy in the city. The men were not known to him as regular “Spunes,” but as a subject was required, he consented to accept of it, after being satisfied that it suited him. They said that they had it now, and would bring it to the rooms in the evening, between nine and ten o’clock, and at the appointed hour they made their appearance, with a porter bearing the sack. The burden was taken in and turned out of the bag, when it proved to be the body of a woman of the town, in her clothes, with her shoes and stockings on. The startled assistant proceeded at once to an examination, when he found a fracture on the back part of the head, as by a blow from a blunt instrument. “You d——d villains,” cried this honest doctor, “where and how did you get this body?” Whereto one, with much self-possession, replied, “It is the body of a w——e, who has been popt in a row in Halkerston’s Wynd; and if you don’t take it, another will.” The assistant then proposed, with the intention of having them apprehended, that they should wait till he sent for his principal; but the men, taking alarm, made off with their cargo, and soon found a less scrupulous customer. This statement, which was given on authority, was accompanied by an assurance that equally suspicious cases were by no means rare.
In addition to this preparation of the mind, as it may be called, to look suspiciously on introductions coming out of the regular way, with the admission made that they had not been exhumed, and with the inevitable traces of violence which could not be blinked, there was the peculiarity on which, perhaps, the greatest stress was laid, that in one of the cases, at least, there was a recognition of the individual by one of the students as having been seen and conversed with by him, in terms of more than ordinary intimacy, only the night before, or at least a very short period, countable by hours. We allude to Mary Paterson, “the study for the artist,” who, though naked, was said to have made her appearance on the table en papillote—not to be believed—but who, for certain, attracted so much observation, yea, admiration, that the recognition by the youth could not have fallen as an idle brag. The case of Daft Jamie, the collegians’ favourite of almost every day’s fun, was so much stronger, that there seemed no mode of accounting for the pure innocence of Surgeon’s Square, except upon the supposition that all the students had, in the course of a day, been merged in some Lethe. No great wonder that the most zealous defenders of the craft were here contented with a simple shaking of the head, for, to be sure, even the devil’s advocate has not an interminable tether.
These charges are very practical, and even to us, at this distant period, who would be regulated by reason and truth, and cannot be under the influence of passion, are hard bones. Independently of our estimate of youths—putting Knox out of the question,—of good birth and parentage, whose generous hearts would revolt from the thought of a guilty cognisance,—some of these assistants who came in contact with Burke, “and no questions asked,” have risen to rank in their profession, and bear a high character for honesty and humanity. “They ken their ain ken;” but their negative defence leaves their friends to the slough of mere metaphysics. We all know that mysterious attractiveness and repulsiveness of the mind which makes such fools of even the most practical of mankind. The man would not look through Galileo’s telescope, because he knew beforehand that there was nothing to be seen; but he did no more than every man does every day he lives. We all know that we may look, and not see, hear, and not understand; yea, though the image of the outer thing may be in black and white on the back of the eye, and the words play their intellectual tune on the drum of the ear, you may neither see the one nor hear the other. The bird-lime of acceptance is not present, and there is even more—an absolute recusancy in proportion to some reigning wish in the form of what we call a prejudice. All this is alphabetic, and we might go deeper and get lost, but there is no occasion. The truth is, that these medical students had a strong wish for subjects. This rose out of another wish, that for knowledge, and this again came out of one behind, a wish to shine or make money,—the benefit to mankind being only that thing which we all understand when we hear people getting philanthropical in recommending their leather, as contributing to the good of the eternal sons of God. Then the next truth is, that they did suspect, and becoming the paradoxes which so many unconsciously become, did not know, in the sense of an apprehension, that they suspected. When the thought sought entrance to the mind, always under the cogency of the repulse of unwillingness, it was either thrown out or dissolved; to all which the authority of their leader or lecturer contributed, and not less the generosity of their own hearts, naturally seeking uniformity, and averse to think so ill of human nature, as was required to be implied in an atrocity never before heard of in the world. If the thought had ever come so strong upon them as to have amounted to an active conviction, why, then they must have glided into the crime of winking toleration, and to that, we verily believe, they never came. There were only three of these young men who took an active charge. If there had been a score, we might have conceded that one, perhaps two, might have been found among them capable, by the predisposition of an evil nature, to have quietly succumbed to the force of such startling appearances; but judging of the proportions according to what we find among men, we require a large number for the successful selection of the devil’s own. In short, they were very much in the position of resetters, who, standing in great need of the article, take refuge from a suspicion which would injure them in the fallacious eloquence of the naturally selfish heart, and casting up behind them intervening obstructions to the light—a kind of weakness into which all mankind are less or more liable to fall, and against which they are ready to recoil when the passion of possession decays. It requires only superficial looking to bring us to the conclusion, that the world is a great collection of “wee pawns,” every man resetting some thought or feeling, false in itself, and improperly come by, and wrongfully retained. The difference here lies in the fact, that we have not yet come to hold this a crime, nor are we likely to do so till regeneration comes wrapt up in the world-wide cloak of the millennium.
In what we have said, we refer only to those who superintended the division of the bodies and the work of the rooms, and were those who came in contact with Burke. As for the curator, who is still a respectable inhabitant of Edinburgh, and upon whom the short-lived blind fury of some newspapers of the time fell, with much surprise to himself, and much indignation elsewhere, he was, of all the parties concerned, the most free from blame; nor did any one but himself come forward and assist the authorities in the prosecution. Nay, it is understood that, under a passing reflection that the number of apparently unexhumed bodies brought by these men required explanation, he mentioned the circumstance to his principal, and that gentleman silenced him at once by the statement that they had long known of the practice of sale and purchase, and so the suspicion passed away. And, indeed, in reference to them all, it requires to be kept in view that Dr Knox’s great characteristic was his desire to subjugate all people to his will; and every one knows the insidious power of authority. Accordingly, in so far as regards that gentleman, left to the active fury of a mob which he braved, and to the suspicion of more thinking people whom he tried to conciliate, we have little to say. His whitewashing process, consisting of the printed judgment of his conduct by a committee of eminent men, went a considerable length in his favour, and yet did not save him from almost general suspicion. The evidence was all of his own selection; the world never knew what it consisted of; and though we are bound to admit that the umpires vindicated the privilege of searching and satisfying themselves, he behoved to be still their director, and, if he chose, their obstructor. Perhaps those who knew the man the best, and those who knew him the worst, were the least satisfied,—the latter being under passion, and the former aware of a power of conciliation and persuasion under the guidance of a self-love and power of will not often to be met with, and all this professedly not regulated by any sense of religion or respect for public morals. In him we have seen already the one gut-string playing several airs, but without a touch of pity: the soft was not indeed his forte, his preference lying in the direction of those examples we have already given—the joke upon Professor Jameson, the poisoned satire upon Liston, the egotism among the Taymouth Castle guests, the adulation of the Marquis of Breadalbane. Nor can we forget, beyond all, the admitted perspicacity of one of the best anatomists of his time, which, if it had been called in question in an ordinary autopsy, with the most recondite appearances of poison or violence, would have been vindicated by a power and success, accompanied by a bitterness not often witnessed among scientific men. In his letter of 11th January 1829, to the curator of his rooms, he said, “All such matters as these subside in a short time.” “Not so,” added the editor of the Mercury; “such matters cannot subside till such time as he (Dr Knox) clears himself to the public satisfaction.” Time, we fear, has shewn the falsehood of the one statement, and the hopelessness of the other. The same suspicion remained, yea, remains still, and we fear will go down through all time with the record of a story destined ever to be the greatest example of man’s wickedness, when left to his idol, that has ever appeared.
In November 1828, a citation was served upon William Burke and Helen M‘Dougal to appear before the High Court of Justiciary to be held at Edinburgh, the 24th day of December, at 10 o’clock forenoon, to underlie the law in the crime of murder, on three separate indictments. The first comprehended the case of Mary Paterson, as having occurred in the preceding month of April in the house of Constantine Burke; the second—that of James Wilson, or Daft Jamie—in October of the same year in Log’s house, situated in Tanner’s Close; and the third—that of Madgy, Marjory, or Mary M‘Gonegal or Duffie, or Campbell, or Docherty—in November, in Burke’s house, Portsburgh. The libel contained also a list of a great number of articles of dress worn by the victims, and identified, and, among others, Mrs Docherty’s gown, and Daft Jamie’s brass snuff-box and spoon.
The presiding judge of the Court at that time was the Lord Justice-Clerk Boyle; the other judges, Lords Pitmilly, Meadowbank, and M‘Kenzie; and the prosecutor, Sir William Rae, Lord Advocate. The leading counsel for Burke was the Dean of Faculty, that for M‘Dougal, Henry Cockburn, James Tytler being the Crown agent. The witnesses were fifty-five in number—the two principal, Hare and his wife, received as king’s evidence in the characters of socii criminis. The panels having taken their places at the bar in the midst of a crowded court, filled long before the opening of the doors by people who had the privilege of influence, and whose numbers were only as a trifle in comparison of the mass outside, Mr Patrick Robertson, one of Burke’s junior counsel, made a technical objection to the reading of the indictment, which was overruled. A defence was then lodged for Burke, and supported by the same counsel, on the ground that it was contrary to the law of Scotland to combine in one libel so many charges and two separate panels. The argument, which was a long one, involving points of law and practice, was followed up by the Dean of Faculty, and answered by the Lord Advocate, with this result, that the judges, with the consent of the public prosecutor, agreed to limit the charge to the case of Docherty, and thus limited, the proceedings went on. The various witnesses, forming, however, a very small portion of the whole fifty-five cited, appeared in succession to give their evidence. Every word uttered by every one was caught by ears strung to the highest pitch of sensibility; and throughout the entire day, the deep silence, more like that of a death-chamber than a court, was as much the expression of curiosity as of awe—reminding one, too, of the stillness of an audience where the feelings are claimed by oppressed virtue with the encircling meshes in which innocence is to be involved by death getting closer and closer as the scenes succeed. The interest lay in the gradual development, while the heart was affected by all the different passions which, changing from pity for the victims to hatred of the murderers, were kept in continual agitation. Over all, there was the oppressive awe inspired by the presence of the fearful men and women, as if they had been demons of monstrous forms and powers placed there under restraining bonds. At several times,—and especially when Hare described the screigh of the little old woman which preceded that ten minutes’ agony in which she lay under the pressure of Burke—Hare being all the while, according to his lie, sitting coolly looking on,—you might have heard deep sighs escaping from strong hearts, in spite of resolutions to restrain them. Even then the grateful creature, who seemed to have trusted Burke alone, and defended him in the preceding sham fight, was only “dead a wee,” and the process was to be resumed. But even this effect was transcended, if possible, by the very manner in which the witness stated how the victim was presently stripped, and after being bound neck and heel, was cast, mangled and bloody, among the straw in the angle between the bed and the wall. The dominant idea seemed to bring into light all the surrounding objects—the table pushed aside, the old chairs, the squalid bed marked with the blood of prior victims, the women listening with expectation in the long dark passage, the two men panting after the struggle, and bringing forth on the top of their long-drawn breath ribald jokes, and even accomplishing a laugh,—all followed by the rush in of the women, and the resumption of the drink, the song, and the dance.
To the greater part of those assembled in the court, all this was comparatively new, for great secrecy had been observed by the officials. Yet the effect of the great scene did not diminish, or rather, it increased, the interest in the particulars,—the suspicions of the Grays—the restlessness of the murderers under the impression of impending discovery—the lies about having turned the poor creature out because she was too intimate with Burke—the start of Mrs Gray when she seized the arm of the body among the straw—the lifting up of the head by her husband, and the recognition of the features of the woman who had been dancing and singing so short a time before—then the pressing down into the tea-chest, and the sally forth of the whole gang to Surgeon’s Square, from thence to Newington for the price. And as in a tragedy we find collateral lights thrown in by the scintillations of genius to increase the effect of the stronger scenes, so here these were not wanting. How much the sympathy for the little old woman was increased by the love and gratitude she expressed for her benefactor, Burke, when contrasted with the savage eyes that glared upon her as she lay under his death-grasp! Another of these smaller traits going to the aid of the general effect, was the fact stated by the prior witnesses, that when she met Burke, she was going about seeking for her son; and this yearning had only given place for a little to the new feeling of gratitude with which she strove to repay the sympathy of him who had from the first made up his mind to slay her. It was even whispered that that son was in the court listening to the fate of his mother; and, whether true or not, it did not fail of its contribution.
Nor was all this exclusive of that mingling of the grotesque with the serious which the playwright, following nature, resorts to for deepening his shadows. The face of Hare, as he stood in the witness-box, seemed incapable of the expression of either seriousness or fear. The leer was irrepressive, even had there been a wish within to repress it—and there was none; and as for any effect from without, that seemed equally unfelt by him, if the gloom and awe which pervaded the court did not rather increase an inborn propensity to be humorous. He could not say seriously that the woman was dead, only that she was “dead a wee,”—nor that he was drunk, only “drunkish-ways;” and when asked if the word “shot” implied murder amongst the crew, he answered, as impeaching Burke, “amongst him;” so that if you took his looks and words together, you could not, if you had read the accounts of the classic satyrs, avoid the impression that, like these creations of the poets, he was condemned to an eternal grin of self-satisfied sarcasm against the whole human race. Nor, strange as it may seem, did he appear to consider this as incompatible with a wish to produce the impression that while he could mix in and receive the price of murders, he was only (as we have already said) an indolent and easy spectator—a kind of lover of the play, but not an actor. It appeared, indeed, evident that it required only an indication on the face of his questioner to prompt him to laugh, and this was probably all that was wanting to complete an exhibition which no one could ever forget.
The appearance of his wife, who had a child in her arms, was scarcely less impressive, but not from any characteristic indicating the successful cunning displayed by the husband. She could scarcely contain herself. You saw the bloated virago always appearing from under a bunchy and soft mass, with small fiery eyes that peered about in every direction, as if she felt she had come there to favour the judges, who were bound accordingly to admire her. Like most of the famous examples of her sex renowned for cruelty, it was clear she could be as mild as gentleness itself; and it was only when she came to the great scene when she saw Burke lying on the body of his victim, and “flew out of the house” because of her delicacy, and stood in the passage “quite powerless,” unable to “cry out,” that you could come to form a true estimate of that combination of the devilish and the soft, which so much distinguishes the wicked of the one sex from those of the other. She admitted that she knew very well that Burke was murdering the woman, because she had seen “such tricks before;” yet she had “no power to remove herself from the passage;” and whenever the counsel or judge wished to know whether the victim screamed or shewed any indication of violent suffering, her mouth would give out nothing but soft words, so afraid was she to see anything “come upon the woman,” all the while that the fiery scintillations escaped from these small eyes. To the next question, she admitted that she went for the tea-chest, trying to save herself by the qualification that Burke said it was to hold old shoes; and then, in a few minutes after, “she knew that the body was put into that box.” Nor was the audience less struck with the manner in which she used the infant as an instrument to produce pity, and a mean of fence against searching questions. The poor creature was under the influence of hooping-cough, and as the long choking inspirations came every now and then ringing through the court, they reminded the audience of the strangling of the victims, and seemed to be intended by God as a mysterious kind of sign. She was not only a woman but a mother; and should not this produce sympathy even to one who had fought the fight of the drunken virago in the street of Portsburgh, been art-and-part in a dozen of murders, who had led the kind-hearted simpleton as a dumb lamb to the slaughter, and had so often watched under the hush of breathless expectation for the sign when the work was done, and then hung, like one of those fabled creatures called “Furies,” round the slayers and the slain, to get her part of the prey?
When the witnesses were all examined, there ran through the court a whisper, “Where are the doctors?” and well there might, for in all that crowd you could not have got half-a-dozen who did not think these men nearly as culpable as the principal actors. It was known that their names had been placed on the back of the indictment as witnesses, but a very small amount of consideration might have satisfied any one that, whether appearing for the prosecution or the defence, they would be exposed to the danger either of self-crimination or falsehood. They could not have appeared with any effect on the one side without swearing to marks of violence, which would have proved their condemnation; nor on the other without witnessing to the total absence of those signs, which would have convicted them of premeditated lying. The indomitable leader had long before settled the question of their appearance, by ruling them, as he attempted to do the straightforward curator—the only person connected with the Square who came forward—to the determination of being the mutes of the tragedy; and there can be no doubt that his policy was the right one, when it was found that they not only kept themselves scathless from all but the Argive calumny, which, in their case, died away, but afterwards rose to wealth and estimation. If they were ardent students of the science of anatomy, it did not follow that they should also be ardent students of that of justice; and then self-preservation is the first duty of Nature—a keen-eyed deity, who is somewhat before her who is blind. But all these things were not weighed and computed by the dissatisfied people who were in the court that day, and they still looked for the doctors even after the Lord Advocate had begun his speech to the judges and the jury.
That speech was perhaps the best Sir William Rae had ever spoken; and it was not without its delicacies and difficulties. He knew that if the evidence of the Hares, which was, even on the face of it, a tissue of lies, were disbelieved by the jury, he had no case; and he trembled under the responsibility of satisfying an infuriated people, who, surrounding the court-house with ominous faces, made themselves heard by shouts even within the walls of the court. “I do not,” he said, “present those persons, Hare and his wife, to you as unexceptionable witnesses. Assuredly they are great criminals; but the law has said that their testimony is admissible, and thus pronounced it is not undeserving of all credit. It is for you to judge of the degree of credit to which they are entitled. You saw them examined, and will draw your own conclusions. I may be prejudiced, but to me it did appear that, while the evidence of the wife was in many points exceptionable, Hare himself spoke the truth. Notwithstanding all the ability shewn in the cross-examination, I do not remember one particular in which he was led to contradict himself, or state what must be false. Doubtless there exist inconsistencies betwixt his evidence and that of his wife; but these are not of a nature that ought to induce you to withhold all credit from their testimony. Your experience will tell you how difficult it is to find two individuals who, however disposed to speak the truth, will concur in such particulars in regard to an interview which occurred at the distance of two months. But look to the situation in which these persons were placed. Look to the size of the apartment in which all this occurred. Recollect that all present were proved to have been nearly intoxicated at the time, and remember that an act of foul murder was at the time committing. Is it possible that they should not have been in a state of unusual excitement and alarm at the time? And is it wonderful that their memories should have served them differently in regard to such trifling particulars as those to which I have alluded? If they had been at one in all these points, the only just inference would have been that the story was entirely made up between them, and their evidence, in consequence, not entitled to any credit. But look to the main point of the case—the murder, and the mode in which it was done. That was a fact sufficient to rivet attention, and render sober any one, however inebriated. On this material point you find these witnesses entirely concurring,—both describing the same mode of death, and both describing a mode which corresponds completely with the appearance of the body, and which, in the opinion of the medical men, satisfactorily accounts for the death. That both Burke and Hare were participant in the foul act, no one can doubt; and I need not state to you that it matters not which was the principal aggressor in its execution. They are both art-and-part guilty.”
The Dean of Faculty, for Burke, then spoke; and afterwards came Henry Cockburn, for Helen M‘Dougal, with that speech, so renowned among the displays of forensic eloquence, as almost rivalling that of Jeffrey for Mrs Smith. His point of attack was—the credibility of Hare and his wife. “Our learned friend, who prosecutes here, has demonstrated by his conduct, that he is satisfied you ought not to convict without the evidence of the associates; and thus we are absolutely driven to consider what credit is due to those witnesses. If you shall agree with me in thinking that it is an absolute sporting with men’s lives, and converting evidence into a mockery, to give the slightest faith to anything these persons may say, then we have the authority of the public accuser himself for holding that you must acquit. Now, on what does these witnesses’ claim to credit rest? One of them is a professional body-snatcher, the other is his wife; so that, independently altogether of the present transaction, they come before you confessedly vitiated by the habits of the most corrupting and disgusting employment which it is possible to be engaged in, and one of which the chief corruption arises from its implying that he who practises it has long been accustomed to set law, feeling, and character at defiance. Then they both confess their direct accession to this particular murder—a confession which, if it had been made at the bar, would have for ever disqualified them from giving evidence in any court of justice; not having been made at the bar, they are admissible. But, since they have made the very same confession in the witness-box, their credit is as completely destroyed in the one case as it would have been in the other. Hare not only acknowledged his participation in this offence, but he admitted circumstances which aggravated even the guilt of murder. He confessed that he had sat coolly within two feet of the body of this wretched old woman while she was expiring under the slow and brutal suffering to which his associate was subjecting her. He sat there, according to his own account, about ten minutes, during which her dying agonies lasted, without raising a hand or a cry to save her. We who only hear this told, shudder, and yet we are asked to believe the man who could sit by and see it. Nor was this the only scene of the kind in which they had been engaged. The woman acknowledged that she ‘had seen other tricks of this kind before.’ The man was asked about his accession on other occasions, but at every question he availed himself of his privilege, and virtually confessed by declining to answer.
“But why does the law admit them? Why, just because after they are admitted it is the province of you, gentlemen, to determine how far they are to be believed. You are the absolute monarchs of their credibility. But in judging of this, do not be misled by what juries are always told of those who turn king’s evidence, that they have no interest now but to speak the truth. But it is notorious that there is nobody by whom this is so universally forgotten as by those who make a bargain for saving themselves by betraying their associates. These persons almost invariably hurt the interests of their new master by the excess of their zeal in his service. They exaggerate everything, partly by the desire of vindicating themselves, and partly to merit the reward for which they have bargained. And you will observe that, in this case, these persons stand in this peculiar situation, that, so far as we know, they are still liable to be tried for similar offences. There are other two murders set forth in this very indictment, one of them committed in Hare’s house, and if we may judge from what these persons say, they have been engaged in other transactions of the same kind. They came from the jail to this place to-day, and they are in jail again. Do you think that it is very improbable that when coming here they should feel that if this prosecution failed, public indignation would require another victim, and that nothing was so likely to stifle further inquiry as the conviction of those persons?
“The prosecutor seemed to think that they gave their evidence in a credible manner, and that there was nothing in their appearance, beyond what was to be expected in any great criminal, to impair the probability of their story. I entirely differ from this; and I am perfectly satisfied that so do you. A couple of such witnesses, in point of mere external manner and appearance, never did my eyes behold. Hare was a squalid wretch, in whom the habits of his disgusting trade, want, and profligacy, seem to have been long operating in order to form a monster whose will as well as his poverty will consent to the perpetration of the direst crimes. The Lord Advocate’s back was to the woman, else he would not have professed to have seen nothing revolting in her appearance. I never saw a face in which the lines of profligacy were more distinctly marked. Even the miserable child in her arms, instead of casting one ray of maternal softness into her countenance, seemed at every attack (of hooping-cough) to fire her with intenser anger and impatience, till at length the infant was plainly used merely as an instrument of delaying or evading whatever question it was inconvenient for her to answer.”
The Lord Justice-Clerk then charged the jury, going over the evidence, and at last directing his special attention to the case of M‘Dougal:—“It is not in evidence that she took any part in the actual perpetration of the crime; but the question remains, and if answered in the affirmative, will be equally fatal to her as if she had done so, namely, whether she was an accessory, and, therefore, to be held in law as art-and-part guilty along with the other prisoner. Accession to a crime may take place before the fact as well as at the moment the crime is committing. It may likewise be inferred from the conduct of the party after the fact; and if you are to believe the evidence which you have heard, I am much afraid there are but too strong grounds for concluding that the female panel at the bar has been guilty of accession to the crime under investigation, whether you consider her conduct before or after the fact, or while it was perpetrating. It is impossible to conceive for one moment that, under all the circumstances of the case, the panel M‘Dougal could be ignorant of the purpose for which this wretched woman Docherty was brought to the house. The state in which Burke and she appear to have lived, their brutal and dissipated habits, make it impossible to believe that either of them kept the woman in the house from the humane or charitable motives they professed to feel, and affected to shew, towards that unfortunate creature. On one occasion, it would appear, indeed, from the evidence of Gray’s wife, that M‘Dougal actually opposed the proposition of the woman going out of the house. The manner, too, in which she communicated the fact to Mrs Hare, that they had got a shot in the house, shews distinctly her complete knowledge of what was in view, and implicates her morally as well as legally in the guilt that afterwards ensued. Again, as to her accession during the perpetration of the crime, thus much appears, according to the evidence of Hare and his wife, that both Mrs M‘Dougal and Mrs Hare were in the room, at least—whether in the bed, as Hare states, or standing between the bed and the door, as his wife swears, seems immaterial—when Burke placed himself on the body of the woman; and that upon her hearing the first screech of the woman they both flew, as Mrs Hare expresses it, to the passage, where they remained till the door was opened. By this time the crime had been accomplished, and the body thrown among the straw.”
Before the jury retired, and during the time they were enclosed, Burke endeavoured to prepare the mind of M‘Dougal for her fate, as, from the address of the Lord Justice-Clerk, he supposed she would be found guilty. He even gave her directions how to conduct herself, desiring her to look at and observe him when the sentence was pronounced. The jury retired at half-past eight in the morning, and after an absence of fifty minutes, returned the following verdict:—“The jury find the panel William Burke guilty of the third charge in the indictment; and find the indictment not proven against the panel Helen M‘Dougal.” On hearing the words of the foreman, Burke turned to M‘Dougal, and coolly said, “Nelly, you are out of the scrape.”
Thereafter, Lord Meadowbank proposed the sentence, prefacing at considerable length:—“Your Lordships will, I believe, in vain search through both the real and the fabulous histories of crime for anything at all approaching this cold, hypocritical, calculating, and bloody murder. Be assured, however, that I do not state this either for exciting prejudices against the individual at the bar, or for harrowing up the feelings with which, I trust, he is now impressed. But really, when a system of such a nature is thus developed, and when the actors in this system are thus exhibited, it appears to me that your Lordships are bound, for the sake of public justice, to express the feelings which you entertain of one of the most terrific and one of the most monstrous delineations of human depravity that has ever been brought under your consideration. Nor can your Lordships forget the glowing observations which were made from the bar in one of the addresses on behalf of the prisoners, upon the causes which, it is said, have in some measure led to the establishment of this atrocious system. These alone, in my humble opinion, seem to require that your Lordships should state roundly that with such matters, and with matters of science, we, sitting in such places, and deciding on such questions as that before us, have nothing to do. It is our duty to administer the law as handed down to us by our ancestors, and enacted by the legislature. But God forbid that it should ever be conceived that the claims of speculation, or the claims of science, should ever give countenance to such awful atrocities as the present, or should lead your Lordships, or the people of this country, to contemplate such crimes with apathy or indifference. With respect to the case before us, your Lordships are aware that the only sentence we can pronounce is the sentence of death.”