The crowd besieged the jail; stones were thrown at the door, street lamps were smashed and windows broken. A hundred special police armed with batons were called in, and as the night wore on, the crowd melted away. Hare slept peacefully in his cell, despite the noise, and at 3 a.m. was woken by a policeman who told him to get ready to move.
“We’re takin’ ye out o’ town,” he said.
“I canna go alone!” Hare protested.
“Ye’ll ha’ the sheriff and militiamen to keep yer company!”
At 4 a.m. he was turned loose at a lonely spot on the Annan road and left to his own resources. By dawn he had crossed the Border, and two days afterwards the driver of a northbound coach said he had seen him trudging along the road near Carlisle.
What happened to Hare in subsequent years is not known for certain, but it is believed that he took a job as a labourer. His workmates discovered who he was and threw him into a lime pit, with the result that both his eyes were burned out.
Some thirty years after Burke’s death there was a blind man who begged from passers-by on the north side of Oxford Street, London.
And it was whispered that he was none other than William Hare.
Mrs. Hare, released from prison in Edinburgh on January 19, 1829, also had to run the gauntlet. Indignant crowds threw stones and snowballs at her, and she was pleased to be rescued by the police and given sanctuary in the Lock-up House in Liberton’s Wynd where Burke spent his last hours. She was let out after a few days and went to Glasgow, but was recognized there and again had to seek the protection of the police. On February 12 she sailed for Belfast, and all accurate trace of her was lost, though it is said that thirty years later she was working in Paris as a nursemaid.
Helen Burke rashly went back to Tanner’s Close as soon as the prison released her, and tried to patronize the Merry Duke in quest of drink. She was of course recognized, and a baton-squad of police had to fight a lively rearguard action while she fled to the Watch-house of West Portsburgh. The crowd massed outside the prison, and the situation became so dangerous that Helen was told to disguise herself in a man’s jacket and trousers. Then she was smuggled out of a back window and taken to the Liberton’s Wynd Lock-up.
She went to Newcastle, where she was almost lynched, and disappeared from history when she travelled as far south as Durham.
A woman answering her description died in Australia in 1868.
While the rest of the gang dispersed to their various fates, Dr. Knox faced his accusers with typically unflinching courage. One evening following Burke’s execution, he was about to go out to appear before the Medical Council, and his carriage was drawn up near the front door, when a large and menacing crowd collected. Many of them brandished torches. The crowd chanted in unison: “Knox! Knox! Ab—Knox—ious Knox!” and a man yelled: “Come out! We’re waitin’ for ye!”
Mitchell, who was standing inside the hall, watched anxiously as Knox prepared to leave the house. The Doctor selected a top hat, stick and gloves from the hall-stand and allowed Davey to assist him with his cloak.
The crowd’s roar grew louder. “I could get the coach round the back for ye,” Davey offered.
“You’ll do nothing of the kind!” Knox retorted.
Martha ran down the stairs. “I beg of you not to go out there!” she pleaded.
Knox kissed her, smiled gently and looked across at Mitchell. “Take care of her,” he said.
Martha turned to Mitchell. “Geoffrey, stop him! Please!”
But Knox was already at the front door. He opened it and stepped out. Instantly, he was greeted by a coarse threatening yell. The torches lit the screaming faces. Three large stones struck the door as he closed it. Yet Knox merely paused, gazed at the mob disdainfully and walked towards them amid a sudden and ominous silence.
While Martha, Mitchell and Davey watched from a window, fully expecting him to be struck down, he strode to his carriage. As he reached the fringe of the crowd, they were so bewildered that they parted, making a path for him to his carriage door. Without a glance to left or right, he casually got in and instructed his driver to proceed, leaving behind frustrated citizens who broke up into arguing, gesticulating groups.
In awe, Mitchell saw the carriage leave the square. “He’s indestructible!” he said.
“No, Geoffrey,” said Martha. “He isn’t indestructible. With all the jackals snapping at his heels, he is bound to fall. At the Medical Council he will face doctors who have tried for years to destroy him.” Accusingly, she added: “He hasn’t one friend to raise a finger to help him!”
“I have offered my friendship,” said Mitchell bitterly.
“As a bodyguard to shield him from the mob? Deep in his heart, he knows you are his severest critic.”
Mitchell protested: “But in all conscience I can’t defend him!”
Martha, with one of her flashes of fury which Mitchell was to know very well when they got married, snapped: “Then don’t prate about friendship!”
As she left him and went upstairs, Mitchell realized that now was the moment to declare his allegiance to Knox. He put on his hat and coat, and set off for the Medical Council.
Knox walked into the Council’s chamber to find himself at the end of a long polished table. Ranged on either side of it were the elite of Edinburgh’s medical fraternity. At the head of the table sat the President—Dr. Ferguson.
“This is not a court of law, Doctor Knox,” said Ferguson evenly. “The Council is concerned only with the honour of our profession.”
Knox replied: “You are my judges, gentlemen.” He looked at each face in turn, first at Ferguson and then at the others—Elliott and the rest of the doctors he had taken pleasure in insulting in the past. On every face he saw implacable hatred. Having completed his survey, he remarked with cynical detachment: “This is a Heaven-sent opportunity. Make the most of it!”
He turned, abruptly, went back to the door and opened it. In the ante-room beyond stood Mitchell. The two men glanced at each other but did not speak.
Ferguson called: “Come in, Doctor Mitchell!”
Mitchell walked past Knox into the chamber. Knox watched him with cold appraisal, and then went into the ante-room, closing the door.
Mitchell stood in the place which his chief had vacated at the end of the table and addressed the Council. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I have not come here to defend Doctor Knox, nor to make a plea on his behalf. We have all traded in death—bodies snatched from the grave, and bodies taken from coffins before they were put in the grave. In all the years of your experience, can you honestly deny that doubt has ever entered your minds?”
“As to what, Doctor Mitchell?” asked Elliott angrily.
“As to the cause of death.”
“This is a scandalous implication!” said one of the doctors.
“It is more than that,” Mitchell told him. “It is an accusation. We are the students of Hippocrates, but some of us are hypocrites. Look into your hearts and seek the truth. And then if you condemn Doctor Knox, ask each other whether or not you also condemn yourselves and the entire medical profession!”
Martha stayed awake that night, sleepless with worry, when Knox failed to return home.
He spent the night walking, pondering deeply the events of recent months—his association with Burke and Hare, and the Medical Council, whose verdict, he felt, would decide his future. When dawn came, the lightness had gone out of his step; there was no trace of his usual jaunty stride as his black-coated, top-hatted figure reached the Market Place. Only a few people were about, putting up their stalls, and some of them paused in their work to turn, look, and gossip behind his back as he passed.
Jennie, the Connoway’s child, ran up. Her frock was ragged and dirty. “Gi’ us a ha’penny, Mister!” she cried. “Gi’ us a ha’penny!”
Knox stopped and smiled down at her sadly. “What will you buy with it?” he asked.
“Och, just a few sweeties.”
Knox felt in
his pockets and was embarrassed to find that he hadn’t any money on him. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but you want to come to my house. I’ll give you some money there.”
“No thank ye, Mister!” Jennie retorted. “Ye might sell me to Doctor Knox!”
She scampered back to her playmates. Knox reeled. This was the worst blow of all. Very slowly he walked on. He looked haggard. His normal challenging, confident and arrogant expression was beset with doubt.
When he rang the doorbell at No. 10 Surgeons’ Square, Martha ran downstairs and across the hall to answer it. As he entered, she sobbed with relief and flung her arms round his neck. “Oh, I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you!” She kissed him, smiling through her tears. “I thought I’d never see you again!”
“Why?”
“Because of the mob. They shouted: ‘Death to Doctor Knox!’ all night.”
Knox took off his hat and cloak, and laid his gloves and stick carefully on the hall stand. “So you didn’t expect me to come back in one piece, eh? You feared I might become a subject for my dissecting table!”
“Don’t ever say things like that!”
“I’ve only been walking, Martha.”
“All night?”
“Yes. Excellent for the constitution—and edifying for the soul.”
“The soul?”
Knox took her by the arm and led her up to his study. “Oh, yes,” he said, “I admit the soul’s existence. We are not demi-gods. When I was a child I believed in God and the Devil. It took a child to show me what I am now.” He sat in an armchair and put a hand wearily to his head. “I’ve failed, Martha. I don’t care what they say about me. I’ve listened to the screams of the mob and the howls of blood-lust from the Medical Council. I bracket my colleagues with the rest. I despise them all!”
Martha knelt on the carpet beside his chair. “Everyone?” she asked.
“Until this morning—yes. But I’ve just heard the voice of conscience. From a small child I heard the truth.”
“What did the voice of conscience say?”
Knox answered with an effort: “It said: ‘You are an ogre, Doctor Knox. You have killed humanity’ …”
“For the sake of humanity!” said Martha.
“No; for the sake of achievement and ambition. Those bits of clay—the poor lumps of humanity that Burke and Hare brought in—I have to confess to you, Martha, they seemed so small in my scheme of things. I knew how they died …”
The two of them looked at each other, Martha seeing the agony of his suffering and self-abasement.
The front doorbell rang. Davey went to open the door and Mitchell walked in. He went straight up to the study.
“The Council sat through the night and have reached their decision,” he announced. “You are exonerated!”
Martha gasped with relief, but Knox said: “So? They have decided to leave my Nemesis to the general public and keep their hands clean! A clever move!”
He took out his watch and looked at it. “Hm. Time for my lecture! I have never missed a lecture, Mitchell.”
“No, sir.”
Knox checked his cravat in a mirror and remarked: “It will be quite an experience talking to empty walls. At least they won’t criticise me!”
He entered the lecture hall in characteristic fashion, his head slightly bowed. Then he looked up in startled surprise. He expected all his students to have deserted him like so many of his professional associates. Instead, the benches were full. The students rose respectfully and remained standing until he had mounted the platform. Without the slightest trace of the enormous gratification that surged within him, he said: “Be seated, gentlemen. I am taking as my subject for this lecture the oath of Hippocrates—the sacred oath of our profession. Allow me to quote: ‘I will prescribe regimen for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment, and never do harm to anyone …’ ”
For the next few years, Knox remained in Edinburgh. The attacks by his colleagues persisted, but he was content. He had his classes to lecture, the museum to look after, and his hobbies. In 1831 he bought a huge 28-ton whale which was washed up on the shore at North Berwick. Its skeleton is part of the Natural History Collection in Edinburgh’s Royal Scottish Museum.
By 1835, the campaign against him was taking effect; the number of students applying for his courses began to dwindle. He applied for the Chair of Pathology, and then the Chair of Physiology, at Edinburgh University, but was turned down. In 1839 he left Surgeons’ Square and became lecturer in Anatomy at the Argyle Square Medical School.
The decline had set in. The new generation of students knew nothing of his past glories; only the infamy that was now forever linked with his name. In 1844 he went to Glasgow, and such a small number of students came to him that he refunded their fees.
The Scottish medical profession, he was made to understand, wanted nothing to do with him. Universities and medical schools shunned him.
He went to London and took a general practice for a while. Then the ultimate degradation was plumbed when he joined a party of travelling Indian showmen as a lecturer and demonstrator.
On December 20, 1862, at No. 9 Lambe Terrace, Hackney, Dr. Robert Knox, F.R.C.S., died of apoplexy.
He is buried in the cemetery at Woking, Surrey.
THE END
Table of Contents
Back Cover
Preview
Movie
Titlepage
Copyright
Song
CHAPTER I: Partners in Crime
CHAPTER II: Into Mary’s Welcoming Arms
CHAPTER III: Messrs. Burke and Hare in Business
CHAPTER IV: One Last Drink for Aggie
CHAPTER V: Trade Starts Picking Up
CHAPTER VI: Awkward Questions for Dr. Knox
CHAPTER VII: Five More “Subjects”, Nice and Fresh
CHAPTER VIII: Poor Daft Jamie
CHAPTER IX: Trial and Retribution
CHAPTER X: Dr. Knox and His Accusers
The Flesh and the Fiends Page 15