Katharine Nairn is one of the most complex of Scotland's wicked women. Angel or devil, saint or sinner, innocent or guilty – hers is a case of history wrapped in an enigma.
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DISTAFF OF LEGEND
Helen McDougall and Maggie Laird, 1828
Scotland is only a small country but it has many cases of murder that continue to excite the imagination and send gallons of printer's ink flowing like blood across acres of paper. The story of Madeleine Smith is one of everlasting mystery. The trial of Oscar Slater, wrongly convicted of murder in Glasgow, is one of everlasting shame. Peter Manuel is, perhaps, the most terrifying – not only did he target young girls walking alone he also crept into the homes of innocent people and slaughtered everyone he found. Shadowy Bible John, who may have killed at least three women, still haunts the minds of Glaswegians. But, of all the oft-repeated tales of murder, both single and mass, two notorious names resound through the decades and echo around the world. Their crimes are at the centre of the first properly documented cases of multiple murder in the country and simply naming them conjures up images of a dark and noisome city, of conspiracy and cover-up, of deprivation and decay and death. They are, of course, Burke and Hare.
They have been called bodysnatchers and resurrectionists but they were not. The moonlight trade of grave robbing was not for them. They found an easier way to provide their favoured anatomist, Robert Knox, with study tools and, at the same time, line their own pockets. Murder was their trade and business was brisk. Their death tally has been placed at as high as thirty but the most commonly accepted figure is sixteen – with all the deaths occurring within a period of a few months.
They did not work alone, however. What is often sidelined in popular retellings of the tale is that there were two other people involved. They were with the men during the killing time and, although they may not have been involved in the actual murders, they did benefit from them.
Helen McDougall and Maggie Laird were, respectively, the wives – if only by bad habit and ill repute – of Burke and Hare. And they were up to their necks in those dark deeds of 1828 Edinburgh.
Of the principal dancers in the ballet of death that was to follow, only Helen McDougall was a Scot, born in Redding near Falkirk. She had once been an attractive woman but the life of a poor woman in early nineteenth-century Scotland had taken its toll on her features. However, when news of the mass murder hit the newspapers, she was described as still being ‘tolerably good-looking’. She had taken her surname from that of a man she had once lived with and was already the mother of two children when she turned to prostitution. What happened to her offspring is unknown. Perhaps they stayed with their natural father, perhaps they were sent out for adoption or perhaps they died. If life was hard for adults in those days, it was brutal for the young.
Around 1818–19, the countryside around Falkirk was teeming with Irishmen who had come to Scotland to eke a hard living out of digging the Union Canal, which would link the Forth and Clyde waterways with Edinburgh in the east. It was back-breaking work but the men, the famed Irish navvies, had fled the dire poverty of their homeland in search of employment. They were hard workers and, more importantly for the employers, they were cheap. This, of course, did not endear them to the native workforce who often saw them as subhuman.
With human nature and the sex drive being what they are, wherever there are large bodies of men living away from home, there are always going to be women who are ready to see to their needs – for a price. Helen McDougall was one such woman and it was during this time that she met the young Irishman, William Burke. He had left his home, complete with wife and two children, in County Tyrone to seek his fortune but all he found was the sweat and strain of working in the ditches. Helen McDougall must have been attracted to the squat little Irishman, with the piercing dark eyes and his love of dancing, for he first became a client, then a regular and, finally, her one and only. Despite his tendency to slap her around, there appeared to be some genuine feeling between the two – even while he was languishing in the condemned cell in Edinburgh, Burke sought to excuse her from his litany of death.
After four years of working on the canal, the pair dodged around central Scotland and, by 1827, found themselves in Edinburgh, repairing and dealing in second-hand boots and shoes. One day, in the street, they met an Irish woman called Maggie Laird who was known to Burke. The two had become three.
One contemporary chronicler deliciously describes Laird as ‘a poor, miserable, boney, skinny, scranky, wizened jade’. Clearly she was not as attractive as ‘Nelly’ McDougall but she was just as free with her favours. Unlike Nell, though, she did not take it up professionally. Maggie was a tough piece and had laboured on the canal herself, wielding a pick and shovel and digging out the hard Scottish earth with the best of them. Once she set aside her spade, she took up with a man called Logue who ran a down-at-heel lodging house in Tanner's Close, in the area off the Grassmarket known as the West Port. Lodging house is a grand name for what Logue – and many others like him – provided in the filthy, stinking Old Town. Basically, he charged for a leaking roof, a bed of dirty straw, that could be shared by up to three people, and all the lice they could kill. If customers did not like what was offered, they could move on and God damn their eyes for there was seldom a shortage of people looking for somewhere to lay their heads for a few pence a night. The ragged and the filthy, the poor and the desperate, the honest and the crooked – they were all flooding into the nation's cities in search of a new life or work or simply a place to hide.
By the time Laird had met up with Burke and McDougall in the street, Logue had died and she had a new squeeze – a man named William Hare. Hare had also come over from Ireland to graft on the Union Canal and, like the man who was soon to become his partner in crime, had gravitated towards Edinburgh where he found labouring work and a bed in Logue's house. It was here that he had first met Maggie although it is possible that, like Burke, he had known her while working on the canal. The two took a fancy to each other and Hare was soon giving her something more than a thrupenny bit each night. They were a well-matched pair for she was no prize and he was far from the answer to a maiden's prayer – even though Maggie had not been a maiden for many a long year. One contemporary description states the lanky Hare had ‘dull, blackish, dead eyes’ and ‘a coarse-lipped mouth’ which, mixed with his high cheekbones and sunken cheeks, inspired ‘disgust and abhorrence, so utterly loathsome was the whole look of the reptile’.
Naturally, Logue had taken a dim view of the liaison between his woman and the newcomer so he had sent Hare packing. But, after the landlord died, Hare was back under the roof and in Maggie Laird's bed. He, like Burke, was a bit too free with his fists when it came to women and it is said that Laird was often seen sporting a pair of black eyes.
And so, during the street conversation and subsequent visit to a tavern, Burke told Laird that he and Helen planned leaving Edinburgh for the west country, where Burke hoped to set up business as a cobbler. Laird suggested they lodge in Tanner's Court for a while. There was a room available there, she said, and perhaps Burke could try his luck in Edinburgh. There they met William Hare, now styling himself as a landlord. And, thus, the three became four.
Burke and Hare – both Irishmen, both former navvies – seemed to bond immediately. They made an incongruous pair – Hare was tall and cadaverous, the archetypal ghoul, and Burke was short and thick-set with an air of respectability. But, for the women, it was another matter. Maggie Laird never fully trusted Helen McDougall. Perhaps it was a racial thing for Helen was Scottish and many Irish people, particularly Irish Catholics, had first-hand experience of prejudice at the hands of the natives – the flame lit by John Knox was still burning brightly. Perhaps Maggie did not like the idea of having a former prostitute under her roof. Or perhaps she had an eye for Burke herself for it would appear he was the better-looking of the two men – but then, compared to Hare, Quasimodo would have been a matinee idol.<
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Business boomed in the lodging house for every day there seemed to be a new influx of transients flooding the city. They joined the thousands living in the tall tenements that clustered round the castle like ticks on a stray dog. They filled the many taverns and drinking dens that lined the roads and alleys. They clogged the streets, wading through the sewage that ran openly in the gutters and dodging the fresh filth tossed from the windows above. Death and disease walked hand in hand here and often stepped into the overcrowded lodging houses. It was sickness that would give the new friends their first item of merchandise for butcher Robert Knox.
In November 1827, with Burke and McDougall ensconced in Tanner's Close, an old soldier named Donald had the audacity to die while owing landlord Hare the sum of £4. Hare was not the fellow to let such a debt go uncollected so the body was howked out of the coffin as it lay awaiting burial and sacks of bark put in its place. It was well known that doctors paid handsomely for fresh cadavers so Hare suggested they cart old Donald round to Surgeon's Square and see what they could get for him. In the end, they received over £7 from the well-respected Dr Robert Knox. Before they left his premises, Burke and Hare were told that, should they have any further bodies to dispose of, the surgeons would be happy to see them again. Heading back to Tanner's Close, the two would probably have discussed how they might obtain such goods. It would be realised very early on that they could not simply wait around for tenants to die – and the idea of stealing into graveyards in the middle of the night to rob graves was not one that appealed to them. They'd had enough of digging during their years on the canal, thank you very much. After a couple of months of inactivity, they reached the conclusion that there was only one way they could guarantee a steady supply of such merchandise. They would just have to kill the people themselves.
The correct order of the murders is not known for certain. The next victim was either an old tenant named Joseph, a nameless Englishman or a woman named Abigail Simpson. Joseph's situation was most inconvenient for his landlords because he had developed a fever and, if word of sickness in the house got out, they could lose their business. Their tenants may not have been too choosy but they were not stupid enough to leave themselves open to infection. Joseph was also proving tardy in actually dying so, after some discussion – in which Laird may well have been involved – it was decided to put Joseph out of his misery. The old, sickly man was first made insensible with whisky and then smothered, Hare's hand clamped over his nose and mouth, Burke's body draped across his chest to keep him still and to prevent him from making any noise that may alert the other tenants. In subsequent murders, they swapped their roles – one would smother, the other sit on the victim's chest – but the end result was always the same and Dr Knox had a fresh and unmarked corpse ready for the cutting. Little did they know that they had recreated the murder method used by Robert Weir over two hundred years earlier when disposing of Jean Livingston's husband (see ‘Death and the Maiden’, pp. 49–56). Their modus operandi later became known as ‘Burking’.
Plying their victims with liquor also became a vital part of their routine. Maggie Laird may also have taken a more active role by enticing intended victims into their slaughterhouse. She was certainly with Hare when they met elderly Abigail Simpson. The pair got her drunk and lured her back to Tanner's Close where he and Burke duly killed her. The Englishman, like Joseph, was a tenant who fell ill and had to be removed. For each of the cadavers they received £10, a far from paltry amount in those days. Hare took half but Burke received only £4. The remaining pound went into Maggie Laird's greedy little hand. After all, it was reasoned, the work was being done under her roof.
Whatever the order of death, they were getting away with murder. There was no outcry over the disappearance of these unfortunates. They were the lost and the lonely and no one seemed to notice they were even missing. That was until Burke selected the good-looking prostitute, Mary Paterson, as his next victim – and, for the first time, Helen McDougall was known to have played a part.
Teenage Mary and her friend, Janet Brown, met William Burke in a city tavern where they had dropped in for an early morning ‘tightener’, having spent the night in the lock-up for a breach of the peace. He chatted the pair of them up and invited them back to the home of his brother, Constantine, in Gibb's Close, off the Canongate. At this stage, he may have had nothing more on his mind than sex with the two women so taking them to Tanner's Close, where Helen McDougall would have been waiting, was out of the question.
Con Burke had left for his street-sweeping job but his wife, displaying some fine Irish hospitality, made the three of them some breakfast and watched as they swilled copious amounts of whisky. Soon Mary had drunk herself unconscious so Burke turned his amorous intentions to her friend, Janet. Unfortunately, he had forgotten to tell her he was already spoken for, an omission soon remedied when Helen McDougall arrived looking for her man. She took one look at Burke with the drunken beauty and launched a tirade of verbal vitriol at them both. Burke halted the flow with a well-aimed glass, which sliced a bloody gash on Nelly's temple, before throwing her out of the room and slamming the door against her furious screeching. By this time, whatever ardour Janet may have been feeling had cooled and she wanted to leave so Burke – ever the gentleman – escorted her from the house, leaving Mary Paterson snoring softly behind them.
By the time he returned, Con's wife had alerted William Hare and Maggie Laird. The men swiftly realised that, in the body of the still unconscious Mary Paterson, they had an ideal opportunity for some trade so they ushered their respective wives out of the room, with Nell still breathing fire and venom. The shapely corpse of the young girl soon ended up on the anatomist's slab – much to the delight of the many doctors whose fascination with its beauty bordered on the necrophilic. An artist was even called to record it for posterity and the body itself was preserved in alcohol for some time.
Did Laird and McDougall know what was going to happen when they left the room? It is entirely probable. Their men had come into quite a bit of money lately and it could not all have been earned through renting rooms and repairing shoes. The men had hinted they were moonlighting as resurrectionists but, surely, their women knew them better than that. Maggie Laird had already assisted in luring one victim to her doom and had even, it seems, fetched a chest for the body to be placed in. And then there was McDougall's jealous rage to consider. Would she allow him to remain in a room, even with Hare, while an equally beautiful young girl lay insensate over the table?
However, Mary Paterson was no stranger in the city. She was a well-known streetwalker – even one of Knox's students recognised her – and, unlike the previous nonentities, her disappearance was noted. On top of this, there was also a witness – Janet Brown – who returned to the rooms in search of her friend. But, by this time, Mary was dead and her body was hidden behind a curtain. While Burke went out to find a tea chest to put her in before she was carted round to Surgeon's Square, Janet sipped whisky with Hare, Laird and a still-seething McDougall. She could have gone the way of her friend had her brothel-keeper not sent someone to fetch her.
Maggie and Helen also had a part to play in a double slaying – that of a woman from Glasgow and her deaf mute grandson. They helped get the old woman drunk and then sat at the fireside with the twelve-year-old boy while their menfolk committed murder in another room. What did they think was going to happen when Burke and Hare, with their faces flushed from their exertions and deeply lined in the dancing light of the flames, took the lad from them? And did they ask no questions when, come first light, neither grandmother nor grandson was anywhere to be seen? Did they ask no questions at all when the victims vanished? Or did they just help drink away the money earned from the sale of the corpses and prefer not to think about it?
But Maggie Laird continued to mistrust Helen McDougall until at one point, according to Burke, she suggested they do away with her. Burke, of course, refused but it was clear that the team was beginning to frag
ment. In June 1828, Burke and Helen left Edinburgh to visit her father in Falkirk. While they were away, Hare committed another murder, either a solo effort or in conjunction with his wife. Burke was displeased at this attempt at sole trading and, with Maggie Laird's homicidal thoughts towards his woman fresh in his mind, moved out of Tanner's Close and took a room nearby with a cousin.
Burke and Hare may no longer have been bosom buddies but their murdering ways continued. They had come too far together to stop – and, if a system ain't broke, don't fix it. The victims came fast and furious now. There was an ageing prostitute, followed by her daughter. Then Ann McDougall, a Falkirk woman who was a cousin of Nelly's former partner, had the misfortune to come visiting. But they made a mistake this time – one that could have proved fatal. Her body was actually seen by John Broggan, the husband of Burke's cousin. However, a few glasses of whisky and some pound notes ensured his silence. The money was supposed to pay Broggan's back rent but he made off with it, leaving Burke to foot the bill.
Here again, the question of Helen McDougall's complicity must be raised. Ann McDougall was a friend of Helen and, during her visit, she had apparently vanished without a word. What did she think had happened? Did she even care? Later, her actions were to prove that she knew exactly what her man had been up to all this time. But, before that, Maggie Laird took an active role in another murder.
‘Daft’ Jamie Wilson, like Mary Paterson, was well known on the streets of the Old Town as he limped about on his deformed bare feet. The eighteen-year-old was mentally retarded but he was well liked and wholly dependent on the charity of locals. While Burke was in a tavern enjoying his now customary early morning drink, he spotted Maggie Laird leading the lad towards Tanner's Close. Later the woman returned, asked him to buy her a drink and, while they sat together, she touched his foot with her own. Burke knew this was the signal that they had another pigeon for the plucking. Clearly, they had done this before. Later, Laird left Jamie in a room alone with Burke and Hare and a bottle of whisky. Just to make sure they were not disturbed, she locked the door behind her.
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