The Flesh and the Fiends

by Allan Norwood

  Next, the living room door burst open. Jamie appeared momentarily in another frantic bid to escape before Burke and Hare dragged him back in again and slammed the door.

  At last Jamie was overcome. Burke lay across his face, holding the boy’s nose and mouth; Hare pinned down his feet. Silence settled in the room. The partners held their positions until Jamie’s breathing stopped. Then Burke eased himself off the corpse and stood up, wiping some blood from a cut lip.

  Hare released Jamie’s legs and stood up too. “He’s a powerful lad!” he said.

  When Helen returned to the living room to inspect the partners’ handiwork, the terrified Maggie decided to make a dash for it. She ran from the dormitory and out into the street, screaming: “Murder! Murder!”

  A crowd collected. “It’s Jamie,” she said. “They’ve murdered Jamie!”

  She ran to the police station. “Come quickly, all o’ ye! I just seen a murder—a terrible murder!”

  Inspector McCulloch was with the sergeant behind the counter. “Now just a minute, lady,” he said.

  “I tell ye it was a murder,” Maggie insisted. “I saw it wi’ me own eyes—an’ it was poor daft Jamie those wicked cut-throats Burke and Hare were murderin’ …”

  “Will you please calm yourself,” said the Inspector. “I cannot accuse anyone of murder without a statement of fact to support me.”

  “Well, dinna be standin’ there yammerin’,” said Maggie impatiently. “I’ll gi’ ye a statement all right!”

  About an hour later, Mitchell was crossing the Market Place on his way home after a dull musical evening at a patient’s house when he noticed an excited crowd. He asked a woman the cause of the fuss.

  “Haven’ae ye heard?” she said. “Maggie’s just seen a murder!”

  “Who’s Maggie?”

  “Maggie O’Hara—friend of Mary Paterson. She’s seen Burke an’ Hare murder Daft Jamie, an’ now she’s at the police station! Been there since a quarter past eleven, she has.”

  Mitchell hurried to Surgeons’ Square in alarm and discovered Knox going down the steps into the cellar. Mitchell hurried after him.

  “Doctor Knox!” he called.

  Knox turned. “Yes, Mitchell?”

  “I’ve got to speak to you urgently, sir.”

  “What is it?”

  “Tonight Burke and Hare will be bringing you another subject. I beg you not to receive it.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because the police know it was murdered!”

  Knox continued walking down the steps and went to where Davey was beside an open tea chest. Knox waved a hand at it. “Is that what you mean? Mr. Burke and Mr. Hare have been here already.”

  Mitchell looked at the chest’s contents; it was Daft Jamie.

  “Am I to understand that this young man is well known?” queried Knox.

  “Everybody knew Daft Jamie.”

  “Yet our friends were not unduly perturbed when they brought him here!”

  “They know you have more to lose than they—and they rely on you to cover their traces.”

  Knox looked at Mitchell sharply. “Are you accusing me of collusion with them?”

  “I don’t know any longer what to think,” said Mitchell desperately. “I only beg you, for your own sake, to dispose of the body before the police get here. They are bound to come. A woman named O’Hara says she saw the murder. She went to the police station about an hour ago and …”

  Mitchell was interrupted by a loud banging on the cellar door.

  “You were saying?” said Knox calmly.

  “It’s too late.”

  “My conscience,” said Knox, “is answerable only to me. Nothing is too late. Please open the door.”

  CHAPTER IX

  Trial and Retribution

  Mitchell hesitated for a moment, then went up to the door and opened it. Inspector McCulloch and Maggie came down the steps. Knox stood still, watching them.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Doctor,” said the Inspector, “but I have received information from this woman …” He looked at Maggie.

  “I have already been told, Inspector!” said Knox, pointing to the tea chest.

  McCulloch and Maggie went over to the chest and looked at the pathetic naked remains inside. Maggie instantly put a hand to her mouth and began to sob. “It’s him—it’s Jamie! Poor Jamie!”

  “It was delivered a few minutes ago by two men of the name of Burke and Hare,” said Knox.

  “Have you examined the body?” asked the Inspector.

  “You interrupted my intention.”

  McCulloch examined Jamie closely. The corpse’s neck, arms and legs were badly bruised, and the face had a purplish tinge. “Take a look now, Doctor Knox,” said the Inspector.

  Knox did so, in his usual aloof manner, and the Inspector asked: “Could you state the cause of death?”

  “Yes,” said Knox without emotion. “Violence.”

  His lips were set in a wintry smile. He knew that the police hadn’t sufficient grounds for charging him. He had accepted the corpse from Burke and Hare in good faith, and because he had not examined it before the Inspector’s arrival he could claim to have had no reason for suspecting murder.

  The rest of Edinburgh, though, was incapable of taking such a detached view of the partners’ obvious guilt. Jamie was one of the city’s best-known characters, and in choosing him for a victim, Burke and Hare stirred up a storm of hatred that was soon to overwhelm them. Inspector McCulloch, nevertheless, had to move carefully in investigating Maggie’s allegation of murder.

  Burke and Hare indignantly denied having had anything to do with killing him, and swore that they had found the boy dead. No one had actually seen him arrive at Tanner’s Close, or being carried away from there. It was simply a matter of the partners’ word against Maggie’s—and the Inspector felt he couldn’t rely too much on the evidence of a prostitute whose favourite perfume, apparently, was gin.

  On Friday, October 31, the mounting horror of Burke and Hare’s barbarism attained its gory climax. Burke enticed an old friendless woman named Mrs. Mary Docherty into his home, murdered her in his customary way and hid her body under some straw at the foot of the bed in the living room. She might well have reached the dissecting table at Surgeons’ Square had not Mrs. Gray, a new lodger of Hare’s who was always in and out of the Burkes’ home, entered shortly after breakfast the next morning smoking a pipe. When she went near the straw, Burke asked angrily: “Wha’ do ye think ye’re doin’ there wi’ a lighted pipe!”

  He had never spoken to her as curtly as that before, and his subsequent behaviour was even more extraordinary. He started sprinkling the bed, the straw, the ceiling of the room and his coat and trousers with whisky.

  “I’m just finishin’ the bottle to get it filled again,” he explained.

  Mrs. Gray thought this an odd waste of good liquor, and when in the early evening Helen was out visiting friends, and Burke and Hare had gone for a drink before taking Mrs. Docherty round to Knox, she went stealthily to the straw and to her horror discovered the body. She at once ran to the police station, with the result that Inspector McCulloch arrived on the scene. Mrs. Gray eagerly identified the nude bloodstained remains as a woman she’d seen with Burke and Hare the previous evening.

  At last, McCulloch thought, he had the cast-iron evidence needed for a conviction.

  Burke’s neighbours spread the news, and an excited crowd of shopkeepers, housewives, students and other passers-by gathered in the Market Place voicing their anger in a demand for vengeance.

  “Wha’s the law doin’ about the murders?” called a man.

  “Let’s take them ourselves!” shouted another.

  “To Tanner’s Close! To Tanner’s Close!” the mob chanted. Led by men holding flaming brands to light the way, they set off.

  Helen was returning home, and had just started to walk down Tanner’s Close when she saw police and a murmuring throng of spectators outside her front
door; also she heard the distant clamour of the approaching mob. Panic-stricken, she turned and ran back up the Close, almost bumping into Burke and Hare.

  “Willy! Willy! They’re after ye!” she babbled in terror.

  “Who are?” said Burke.

  “Listen!”

  The throaty menacing roar of three hundred voices raised in fury was getting louder.

  “They’re on the way to the house,” Helen gasped. “They’re comin’ for both o’ ye!”

  Burke’s flabby face trembled with fear. He turned to Hare desperately. “What will we do, Willy? It’s all up wi’ us!”

  The quick-witted Hare said: “Quick! The tannery warehouse! Hide in there!” He started to run for the warehouse door, which was open. Helen clung to Burke’s sleeve.

  “Wha’ about me?” she pleaded. “I’m comin’ too!”

  “No ye’re not!” said her husband, pushing her away brutally. “Ye stay here. They’ll turn an’ run at the sight o’ yer ugly face!”

  With that, he followed Hare. For a moment Helen was paralysed with fright at being deserted. “Dinna leave me!” she screamed. “Ye coward! I’m yer wife! Coward! Coward!”

  But Burke had vanished into the shadows of the warehouse interior. Helen promptly ran in the opposite direction, towards the mob. Burke had betrayed her so, by God, she would betray him! As the mob’s vanguard reached her and stopped, their faces lit weirdly by the blazing torches, and a hoarse shout of: “That’s Helen Burke!” went up, she silenced them. With her arms raised she cried: “They’ve gone to the warehouse!”

  “Liar!”

  “How can we believe her?”

  “Look for yerselves!” said Helen. As she spoke, the heavy wooden door of the warehouse was swinging shut.

  Burke and Hare barricaded themselves in. Then they ran to the opposite wall, up which a narrow stone staircase led to a closed door.

  “They’re gettin’ close,” breathed Hare, who was the more nimble of the two and was first up the stairs. “They’re comin’ for us here, Willy!”

  Burke spat back: “It just shows ye. Never trust a woman!”

  Thunderous, shattering crashes echoed through the warehouse as the mob swung at the door with a battering ram. The murderers edged up the stairs, their backs pressed against the wall and their eyes bulging with terror as they watched the massive door quiver at the onslaught. With a final splintering heave the ram burst through. The mob, headed by police, poured in.

  The partners’ only hope of escape was now the door at the top of the stairs. Perhaps it led to the roof …

  Burke tried to push past Hare and be the first to reach it, but Hare, in this critical split-second of decision, suddenly grabbed him by the throat and pushed him backwards violently.

  “Willy!” Burke screamed. “Ye canna do this to me!”

  Hare laughed fiendishly as Burke tumbled backwards into the upstretched hands of the police. With the precious seconds gained by sacrificing his partner, Hare darted to the top of the stairs, opened the door, slammed it shut and locked it.

  The room was in darkness. Frantically he groped at the walls, searching for another door or even a window which would afford a way out. But there was none. The room was a small airless store-place, reeking of hides. It was a trap.

  Like an animal cornered, Hare cringed against the furthest wall as the battering ram pounded at the door. Limp with dread at what he imagined to be his own infamous moment of death, he was half to the floor when a burly policeman rushed in.

  “Dinna touch me!” he yelled.

  But the arm of the law clapped a hand on his shoulder.

  When the partners left the warehouse for the police station, they needed a bodyguard of the city’s toughest constables to prevent them from being lynched. They arrived at the station to find that Helen and Mrs. Hare had also been rounded up. The four were put in separate cells, and all of them denied having had anything whatever to do with Mrs. Docherty’s death.

  Edinburgh seethed with rumour. The “Evening Courant” told the story of discovering the corpse and implied, in guarded phrases, that the matter was but a foretaste of sensations to come. Not even the most prolific and lurid imagination, however, could have predicted the actual course of subsequent events.

  In a vain attempt to explain away Mrs. Docherty’s body and prove his innocence, Burke told the police a cock-and-bull yarn so incredible that it is worth recording.

  “A man I never seen before, and whose name I dinna know, called and asked me to mend his shoes,” he said. “While I was busy, he said ‘Would ye mind if I leave a box here?’ Bein’ only too anxious to help him, I said: ‘No’ an’ he came back wi’ a large box which he unroped and put at the end of the bed.”

  “And then?” asked Inspector McCulloch.

  “Well, I was too busy wi’ me work to think o’ turnin’ round to look at him, even when I heard a rustlin’ o’ the straw. The man gave me sixpence and went off with the shoes, but he left the box behind. When I looked under the straw, bless me if there wasn’ae a body wi’out clothes! I was too scared to notice if it was a man or a woman.”

  Helen’s defence was that the corpse shown to her at the police station wasn’t Mrs. Docherty at all; Mrs. Docherty, she said, had dark hair, whereas the corpse’s was grey.

  It was now up to the police to prove in law that murder had been committed—but this wasn’t by any means as simple as it seemed.

  Dr. Alexander Black, an Edinburgh City Police Surgeon, and Dr. Christison, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in Edinburgh University, were among the doctors who examined the body, but they could not say definitely that death was due to violence. Although Mrs. Docherty’s wounds were certainly extensive they were not, medically speaking, severe enough to have killed her.

  The Lord Advocate, Sir William Rae, then had the problem of deciding on the procedure for bringing the gang into court. Several times a day, McCulloch and his colleagues cross-examined them in their cells in the Calton Jail, but made no progress. The four continued to deny having had anything to do with any murder at any time or place.

  Sir William accordingly decided, most reluctantly, that the only possible way to get a case into court was to ask one of them to give evidence for the prosecution against the others. Helen, Burke and Hare were regarded as more heavily implicated than Mrs. Hare. Helen still refused to talk, and this left the choice between Burke and Hare. Burke seemed to be the worst of the gang, so Hare was asked to become King’s evidence—an invitation he accepted with malicious glee. Mrs. Hare, therefore, had to be excluded from the proceedings because her husband couldn’t give evidence against her.

  On December 1 Hare, basking in the protection afforded him in his new role as witness for the prosecution, broke his silence and told the police in detail the full terrible story of slaughter. Five days later the newspapers announced that Burke had been committed for trial on charges of having murdered Mary Paterson, Daft Jamie and Mrs. Docherty; Helen was charged with complicity in the murder of Mrs. Docherty.

  The trial was fixed to begin on Christmas Eve. Edinburgh was agog. The police had 300 reinforcements, and infantry and cavalry were alerted to move into the city if needed to quell riots.

  In the small hours of December 24 the prisoners were taken by coach from the Calton Jail through the bleak cheerless streets to cells under the courthouse in Parliament Close. The street outside the court was packed with people hoping for seats in the courtroom, and when the doors opened at 9 a.m. the public benches were filled to overflowing.

  The court met at ten, the presiding judge being the Lord Justice-Clerk (the Rt. Honourable David Boyle). He was accompanied by Lords Pitmilly, Meadowbank and Mackenzie.

  Anyone who welcomed the courtroom as a warm retreat from the cold outside was speedily disappointed. The Lord Justice-Clerk announced that it was unbearably stuffy and ordered a large window above him to be opened as far as it would go. An icy blast beat down on everyone throughout the hearing. The public, dete
rmined not to be cheated of their spectacle, turned up their coat collars and shivered. The barristers and clerks draped their gowns over their heads and looked like sinister black phantoms. Burke and Helen, unmoved by their prominence in the dock, or by the intense cold, paid keen attention to everything that was happening around them.

  The historic trial began.

  When the indictment had been read, counsel for the defence immediately raised objections. Burke, it was pointed out, was charged with three murders which happened at different places and times, and shared the dock with a woman who was not alleged to have been involved in two of them. Conversely, Helen was charged in connection with one murder, yet was being tried with a man accused of two others.

  The public fidgeted with impatience while the legal wrangling over this point went on for an hour. Then the judges recommended that the charges should be heard separately, and agreed to let the Lord Advocate decide on the first one to be heard. His lordship chose the third charge—the murder of Mrs. Docherty—since it concerned both prisoners.

  “William Burke and Helen M’Dougal,” said the Lord Justice-Clerk, “the indictment having been read in your presence, I again ask you, William Burke, are you guilty or not guilty of the third charge contained in this indictment?”

  “Not guilty,” said Burke.

  “Helen M’Dougal, are you guilty or not guilty of that charge?”

  “Not guilty.”

  The all-male jury, chosen by ballot, was empanelled. It included an insurance manager, two builders, a brewer, three grocers, an ironmonger and an engraver.

  One by one, the first of the prosecution witnesses established that Mrs. Docherty had been with Burke on the evening before her body was found. The fifth witness was Burke’s neighbour, Mrs. Connoway, who testified that she had seen Mrs. Docherty go into Burke’s living room.

  Mr. Alexander Wood, counsel for the Crown, asked: “Did you sleep soundly the following morning?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “What prevented you?”

  “A disturbance in Burke’s house.”

  “What kind of disturbance was it?”