“They were fightin’ like.”
“Did you go out?”
“No.”
A ripple of anticipation spread through the court when witness No. 15—William Hare—was called. Burke regarded him glumly. After Hare had been sworn in, Lord Meadowbank said: “We observe that you are at present a prisoner in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and from what we know, the court understands that you must have had some concern in the transaction under investigation.
“It is therefore my duty to inform you that whatever share you had in that transaction, if you now speak the truth you can never afterwards be questioned in a court of justice. But you are required, by the solemn oath you have taken, to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And if you deviate from the truth, or prevaricate in the slightest degree, you may be quite assured that it will not pass without detection, and that the inevitable result will be the most adequate punishment that can be inflicted. You will now answer the questions put to you.”
First, though, the Lord Justice-Clerk warned Hare: “You are called here regarding the death of an elderly woman, and it is only with regard to her that you are now to speak.”
Hare, completely unperturbed by the bewigged majesty of the law facing him, said brightly: “T’ould woman, sir?”
“Yes.”
Cross-examined by the Lord Advocate, Sir William Rae, Hare described how he and his wife went round to Burke’s house on the evening of the murder. He had a quarrel with Burke over whether or not he had been invited to come, and it ended in a fight.
“When you were fighting,” said Sir William, “where was this old person?”
“She was sittin’ at the fire, an’ she got up and asked Burke to sit down. She said she didn’ae want to see Burke abused.”
“Did she run out?”
“Aye, twice.”
“And what did she call out?”
“Either ‘Murder!’ or ‘Police!’ I couldn’ae say which.”
“How was she brought in again?”
“It was M’Dougal that fetched her back.”
“Both times?”
“Aye.”
Sir William gripped the lapels of his coat grandly. In cultured tones he led Hare to the story of how Mrs. Docherty came to be involved in the fight. “Did she get any push, or fall over on the ground?” he asked.
“When we were strugglin’, I pushed her over a little stool.”
“And Burke and you continued to struggle while she lay there?”
“Aye. She raised herself on her elbow—she was not able to rise, being drunk—an’ called on Burke to be quiet.”
“Did Burke eventually leave you alone?”
“After he’d thrown me on the bed a second time he left me, an’ I lay still on the bed.”
“What did he do?”
The court tensed. This was the crucial moment; the murder.
“He got stride-legs on top of the woman on the floor,” said Hare matter-of-factly, “an’ she cried out a little. Then he kept in her breath.”
“Did he lay himself down upon her?”
“Aye, he pressed down her head with his breast.”
“She gave a kind of cry, did she?”
“Aye.”
“How did he use his hands on her?”
“He put one hand under the nose, and the other under her chin.”
“Did he continue this for any length of time?”
“I couldn’ae exactly say the time; ten or fifteen minutes.”
“Did she appear to be quite dead?”
“She wasn’ae movin’!”
“What were you doing all this time?”
Hare smiled. “I was sittin’ on the chair,” he said.
“What did Burke do with the body?”
“He stripped it of the clothes and put them under the bed.”
“Then?”
A gasp of horror rose from the public benches as Hare continued: “He took it and threw it at the foot of the bed, doubled her up and threw a sheet over her. He tied her head to her feet, and covered her with straw.”
“Now during the time this man was lying on her, where was M’Dougal and your wife?”
“When they heard the first screech, they went into the passage.”
“Did they come in again when this was going on?”
“They didn’ae come in again till this was all over, and her covered with straw.”
Helen, up in the dock with her hands on her lap, realized with relief that after this piece of evidence she’d at least escape the death penalty; she couldn’t be hanged for taking part in the murder.
It was three o’clock on Christmas Day morning, and the case had already lasted seventeen hours, when Sir James W. Moncrieff, the Dean of Faculty, addressed the jury on Burke’s behalf. He stressed that for all the gossip and rumour in the newspapers and handbills, there wasn’t conclusive proof that Mrs. Docherty had been murdered. Medical evidence suggested that death could have been due to drunkenness without any violence whatever.
At 5 o’clock, when the sky beyond the open courtroom window was still black, and some of the public were beginning to droop, Mr. Henry Cockburn rose to address the jury for Helen. Despite the wretchedness of the hour, he presented a fiery speech proclaiming that his client’s innocence was beyond all doubt. He said that she, and not Mrs. Docherty, was the woman who ran into the passage crying: “Murder!” She had remained silent during the preliminaries to the killing because no wife could be expected to give her husband away, but when the crime was being committed she felt it her duty, as a citizen, to try to raise the alarm.
For the next two and a half hours the Lord Justice-Clerk summed up, and at 8.30 a.m. the jury retired.
Fifty minutes later they filed back into a hushed, expectant court. The atmosphere was electric when the foreman, John M’Fie, a merchant from Leith, was asked for the verdict. Burke, he said, had been found guilty of the third charge of the indictment, but the indictment against Helen was Not Proven.
As a hubbub of comment started, and the Lord Justice-Clerk called for silence, Burke whispered to his wife: “Well, ye are out o’ yer scrape!”
Calmly he listened as the Lord Justice-Clerk commented: “The only doubt that has come across my mind is whether, in order to mark the sense that the court entertains of your offence, your body should not be exhibited in chains to deter others from the like crimes in times to come!”
Then the judges signed the sentence of death and it was read aloud.
“The Lord Justice-Clerk and Lords Commissioners of Justiciary, in respect of the verdict before recorded, adjudge the said William Burke to be carried from the bar, back to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, therein to be detained, and to be fed on bread and water only, until Wednesday the 28th day of January next to come, and upon that day to be taken forth to the common place of execution, in the Lawn-market of Edinburgh, and then and there, between the hours of eight o’clock and ten o’clock before noon, to be hanged by the neck, by the hands of the common executioner, upon a gibbet, until he be dead, and his body thereafter to be delivered to Dr. Alexander Monro, Professor of Anatomy in the University of Edinburgh, to be by him publicly dissected and anatomized.
“And may Almighty God have mercy on your soul!”
To Helen, the Lord Justice-Clerk said: “The jury have found the libel against you not proven. You know whether you have been in the commission of this atrocious crime. I leave it to your own conscience to draw the proper conclusion. I hope and trust that you will betake yourself to a new line of life, diametrically opposite from that which you have led for a number of years.”
The court rose after a marathon non-stop sitting of almost exactly twenty-four hours.
When Burke was shown into the condemned cell in the Calton Jail he remarked: “What a bloody cold place ye’ve brought me to!”
However, he settled down to the prison routine, his only complaint being that he hadn’t a decent coat or pair of trousers to wear at his f
inal public appearance. For a mass-murderer he showed a surprising desire for religious faith, welcoming Catholic and Presbyterian priests into his cell. He knelt with them in prayer for the salvation of Helen and the Hares.
On January 3 he voluntarily made an official confession of his crimes. His signature on this grisly catalogue was witnessed by Mr. George Tait, the Sheriff-substitute.
Such fantastic excitement at his impending execution was being generated in the city that at 4 a.m. on Tuesday, January 27, the city authorities took the precaution of sending him by coach from the jail to the Lock-up House in Liberton’s Wynd, only a short distance from where he was to die.
An artist named Benjamin Crombie called at the lock-up and asked for permission to sketch him. Burke agreed willingly and posed for half an hour. His ankles were heavily chained, but he stood with his feet astride and his hands clasped across his stomach. His eyes looked heavenwards.
Meanwhile, the preparations for his execution had already begun. At noon, chains supported by stout poles were put up in the street to keep the crowds clear of the scaffold. As night fell it began to rain, but when the framework of the gibbet arrived at 10.30 p.m. an enthusiastic crowd was there to greet it. At midnight it was in place, and the crowd gave three tremendous cheers.
Torrential rain was still falling at dawn, but the spectators increased until some 23,000 people—one of the largest crowds ever seen in Edinburgh—jammed the streets. Many of them had come from outlying towns and villages. They perched on the tops of adjoining archways and even on the gables of a nearby kirk roof. Every window with a view of the scaffold was packed with sightseers who had paid between 5s. and £1 each, according to position.
Burke passed a good night, and when he woke at 5 a.m., called for the jailer.
“Will ye no’ be takin’ off me leg-irons?” he asked.
A blacksmith came and did this for him half an hour later. As the last chain was struck off and clattered to the stone floor of the cell, Burke said: “An’ so may all me earthly chains fall!”
At half-past six he was seen by two Catholic priests—the Rev. Reid and the Rev. Stewart—and at seven he walked steadily to the office of Mr. Christie, the lock-up keeper, and warmed himself, sitting in an armchair by the fire.
There was a dramatic incident when, on the way to the lavatory, he accidentally met Williams, the executioner.
“I’m not ready for ye yet!” said Burke.
Nevertheless, Williams was waiting for him on the return trip, and when Burke arrived back in the keeper’s room his arms were pinioned.
He was offered a glass of wine, which was raised to his lips, and before he left the lock-up he thanked the magistrates and all the public authorities, including the prison governor, for the kindness they had shown him.
Exactly at 8 a.m., leaning on the arm of the Rev. Reid, he walked out to the scaffold and mounted the steps firmly amid shouts from the crowd of: “Give him no rope!” “Burke him!” “Hang Knox!” and “Hare! Hare! Bring out Hare!”
Burke scowled at the crowd and annoyed them by turning his back when he knelt in prayer. “Turn him round!” they called.
At 8.10 he took up his position on the drop.
“Do the same for Hare!” yelled the crowd.
The Rev. Reid asked: “Is there anything you want to say before you meet your Creator?”
“Aye, Father,” said Burke. “It’s a curse on Willy Hare, I’m thinkin’! It’s not that I mind him givin’ evidence at the trial. But to think on him cheatin’ me like he did!”
“Cheating you?”
“Aye, it was the money the good doctor paid us for the body of Daft Jamie. Not a silver shillin’ did Hare gi’ me for me rightful share!”
The priest let this pass. “Now say your creed,” he said, “and when you come to the words: ‘The Lord Jesus Christ’, give the signal and die with His blessed name in your mouth.”
The kirk clock was chiming eight fifteen when Burke gave the signal by twitching his hands. The crowd screamed its delight and approval, and he died without hardly a struggle.
At 8.55 his body was cut down, amid more frenzied acclamation, and police had trouble in keeping back the crowd, some of whom scrambled under the scaffold among the executioner’s assistants. They cut pieces of the rope and grasped handfuls of wood-shavings from the coffin as souvenirs.
That night, the body was taken to Dr. Monro’s anatomical theatre, and at 1 p.m. on Thursday the doctor dissected Burke’s brain for as many students as the theatre would hold. He described it as remarkably soft—due, perhaps, to the hanging. Police had to be called to quieten the crowd of further students who had tickets for a private view of the body and were waiting outside the theatre. Windows were smashed, and police and students were injured in scuffles.
On Thursday the public were admitted. No less than 30,000 people filed past the black marble slab on which the corpse lay, and seven women had their clothes torn in the crush. An enormous crowd gathered outside the College on Friday, but the authorities decided not to repeat the exhibition.
The rest of Burke was dissected, salted, and stored in barrels for use at future lectures. His skin was preserved by tanning, and bits of it which are still in existence look like aged brown leather.
CHAPTER X
Dr. Knox and His Accusers
On the morning that Burke was hanged, Knox held his class as usual.
Before he arrived in the lecture hall, a fight broke out between those students who criticised his part in the West Port scandal, and those who still worshipped him and believed he could do no wrong. The Doctor’s principal champion was Smedley, who had to be dragged away from his opponent. He shouted to the class belligerently: “If anyone else has something to say against Knox, he’d better say it to me now!”
In the silence that followed, the students heard a mob approaching. Some two hundred men and women who had been to the execution were marching on Surgeons’ Square.
The students scattered to their seats as Knox entered the hall. He mounted the platform and looked at the class inscrutably, observing that there were much fewer present than normally. The students watched him intently, wondering how he would react to the threat in the street outside, but he seemed oblivious of it.
A wild yell followed a crash as a brick came hurtling through one of the windows. Smedley jumped to his feet.
“Keep your seat, Mr. Smedley,” Knox ordered. “The subject of this morning’s lecture, gentlemen, is neurology.”
And while the crowd murmured, chanted, cat-called and threw more bricks, but didn’t dare invade his home, he spoke for two hours.
Hare was in a far more vulnerable predicament. Though strenuous attempts were made to bring him into court again, charged with at least one murder—particularly that of Daft Jamie—the Lord Advocate ruled that the protection promised him at Burke’s trial had to stand; it would be dishonourable to disregard it. The police couldn’t find any crime with which to charge him outside those in the “confession” he made, so they had no further cause for keeping him in prison.
Inspector McCulloch visited Hare in his cell. “You’re free to go,” he said.
Hare’s sharp ears detected the sound of a crowd waiting. He was scared. “But the mob,” he said. “They’ll get me!”
“It’s getting dark, and you can go out the back way.”
“Will ye send someone wi’ me?”
The Inspector replied: “I said you were free.” He did not even look at Hare as he nodded to the jailer. Hare, shaking with fright, tried to stay where he was, but the jailer seized him roughly and pushed him out through the rear entrance. He managed to avoid most of the crowd, but two toughs, one of them carrying a blazing torch, spotted him and gave chase. They gripped him by the arms and held the torch up to his face.
“My eyes! Not my eyes!” he screamed. He wriggled free and darted down an alley, eventually reaching Newington, where he was just in time to catch the south-bound mail coach. He climbed to a se
at on the roof and, travelling as “Mr. Black”, would have left Scotland in complete safety but for a strange coincidence.
When the coach halted at Noblehouse, the first stage on the road to Dumfries, and everyone went into the inn parlour for supper, Hare kept discreetly in the background. Then one of the passengers invited him to come near the fire. Hare took off his hat, coat and thick muffler—and discovered that one of the passengers travelling inside the coach was Mr. Douglas Sandford, a lawyer who had acted for Daft Jamie’s friends in the hope of bringing a murder-charge.
The secret was out. When the coach was ready to start again, Hare tried to take an empty seat inside, but Mr. Sandford called to the guard: “Remove that fellow!”
Hare sat miserably on the top again, and Mr. Sandford revealed the true identity of “Mr. Black” to the rest of the passengers. When the coach reached Dumfries and stopped at the King’s Arms, the news that the celebrated Hare was in town spread rapidly. About 8,000 people converged on the inn. Hare’s fear of being lynched changed to pride when he realized that they simply wanted to gape at him. He received as many of the townsfolk as possible in the tap-room, but firmly declined their offers to buy him drink.
When a red-faced farmer urged him to reveal the “inside story” of the murders, Hare said flatly: “I’ve said all I’m goin’ to say about tha’. I said it in Edinburgh!”
His admirers thought this churlish and began to lose their tempers. “Burke him!” they called.
Hare retreated, inch by inch, into a corner of the tap-room, while the crowd pressed around him threateningly, and only the arrival of the police saved him from being killed on the spot.
The magistrates of the town were anxious to be rid of him, but knew there’d be riots if he tried to leave by the coach. They therefore decided on a ruse. A chaise and pair was made ready and taken to the front door of the inn; a large trunk was loaded on board and grooms bustled round. The crowd fully expected Hare to appear and make a dash for it—another crowd was waiting on the bridge to waylay him and drown him in the river—but Hare, with the help of the police, jumped out of a back window, scaled the wall of the stable and jumped into another chaise, which was driven off at breakneck speed. When the mob realized they’d been tricked, they ran in pursuit, but after a breath-taking journey Hare reached the safety of the local jail.
The Flesh and the Fiends Page 14