Burke and Hare (27 page)

Old Donald, a pensioner, who lodged in Hare’s house, and died of a dropsy, was the first subject they sold. After he was put into the coffin and the lid put on, Hare unscrewed the nails and Burke lifted the body out. Hare filled the coffin with bark from the tan-yard, and put a sheet over the bark, and it was buried in the West Church Yard. The coffin was furnished by the parish. Hare and Burke took him to the College first; they saw a man there, and asked for Dr Monro, or any of his men; the man asked what they wanted, or had they a subject; they said they had. He then ordered them to call at 10, Dr Knox’s, in Surgeon Square, and he would take it from them, which they did. They got £7 10s for him. That was the only subject they sold that they did not murder; and getting that high price made them try the murdering for subjects.

Burke is thirty-six years of age, was born in the parish of Orrey, county Tyrone; served seven years in the army, most of that time as an officer’s servant in the Donegal militia; he was married at Ballinha, in the county of Mayo, when in the army, but left his wife and two children in Ireland. She would not come to Scotland with them. He had often wrote to her, but got no answer; he came to Scotland to work at the Union Canal, and wrought there while it lasted; he resided for about two years in Peebles, and worked as a labourer. He wrought as weaver for eighteen months, and as a baker for five months; he learned to mend shoes, as a cobbler, with a man he lodged with in Leith; and he has lived with Helen M’Dougal about ten years, until he and she were confined in the Calton Jail, on the charge of murdering the woman of the name of Docherty or Campbell, and both were tried before the High Court of Justiciary in December last. Helen M’Dougal’s charge was found not proven, and Burke found guilty, and sentenced to suffer death on the 28th January.

Declares, that Hare’s servant girl could give information respecting the murders done in Hare’s house, if she likes. She came to him at Whitsunday last, went to harvest, and returned back to him when the harvest was over. She remained until he was confined along with his wife in the Calton Jail. She then sold twenty-one of his swine for £3, and absconded. She was gathering potatoes in a field that day Daft Jamie was murdered; she saw his clothes in the house when she came home at night. Her name is Elizabeth M’Guier or Mair. Their wives saw that people came into their houses at night, and went to bed as lodgers, but did not see them in the morning, nor did they make any inquiries about them. They certainly knew what became of them, although Burke and Hare pretended to the contrary. Hare’s wife often helped Burke and Hare to pack the murdered bodies into the boxes. Helen M’Dougal never did, nor saw them done; Burke never durst let her know; he used to smuggle in drink, and get better victuals unknown to her; he told her he bought dead bodies, and sold them to doctors, and that was the way they got the name of resurrection-men.

Burke declares that docter Knox never incoreged him, nither taught him or incoregd him to murder any person, nether any of his asistents, that worthy gentleman Mr. Fergeson was the only man that ever mentioned any thing about the bodies. He inquired where we got that yong woman Paterson.

(
Signed
) WILLIAM BURK,
prisoner.

Condemned Cell, January
21, 1819.

DR KNOX’S LETTER, DATED 17 MARCH 1829, TO THE
CALEDONIAN MERCURY
, ACCOMPANYING
THE COMMITTEE’S REPORT

Sir,

I regret troubling either you or the public with anything personal, but I cannot be insensible of the feelings of my friends, or of the character of the profession to which I have the honour of belonging. Had I alone been concerned, I should never have thought of obtruding on the public by this communication.

I have a class of above 400 pupils. No person can be at the head of such an establishment without necessarily running the risk of being imposed upon by those who furnish the material of their science to anatomical teachers; and, accordingly, there is hardly any such person who has not occasionally incurred odium or suspicion from his supposed accession to those violations of the law, without which anatomy can scarcely now be practised. That I should have become an object of popular prejudice, therefore, since mine happened to be the establishment with which Burke and Hare chiefly dealt, was nothing more than what I had to expect. But if means had not been purposely taken, and most keenly persevered in, to misrepresent facts and to inflame the public mind, that prejudice would at least have stood on right ground, and would ultimately have passed away, by its being seen that I had been exposed to a mere misfortune which would almost certainly have occurred to anybody else who had been in my situation.

But every effort has been employed to convert my misfortune into positive and intended personal guilt of the most dreadful character. Scarcely any individual has ever been the object of more systematic or atrocious attacks than I have been. Nobody acquainted with this place requires to be told from what quarter these have proceeded.

I allowed them to go on for months without taking the slightest notice of them; and I was inclined to adhere to this system, especially as the public authorities by never charging me with any offence, gave the whole attestation they could that they had nothing to charge me with. But my friends interfered for me. Without consulting me, they directed an agent to institute the most rigid and unsparing examination into the facts. I was totally unacquainted with this gentleman, but I understood that in naming Mr Ellis they named a person whose character is a sufficient pledge for the propriety of his proceedings.

The result of his inquiries was laid before the Dean of Faculty and another Counsel, who were asked what ought to be done. These gentlemen gave it as their opinion that the evidence was completely satisfactory, and that there was no want of actionable matter, but that there was one ground on which it was my duty to resist the temptation of going into a Court of law. This was, that the disclosures of the most innocent proceedings even of the best-conducted dissecting-room must always shock the public and be hurtful to science. But they recommended that a few persons of undoubted weight and character should be asked to investigate the matter, in order that, if I deserved it, an attestation might be given to me which would be more satisfactory to my friends than any mere statements of mine could be expected to be. This led to the formation of a Committee, which was never meant by me to be anything but private. But the fact of its sitting soon got into the newspapers, and hence the necessity under which I am placed of explaining how that proceeding, in which the public has been made to take an interest, has terminated.

I have been on habits of friendship with some of the Committee, with others of them I have been acquainted, and some of them I don’t even know by sight. I took no charge whatever of their proceedings. In order that there might be no pretence for saying the truth was obstructed from fear, I gave a written protection to every person to say what he chose about or against me. The extent to which this was in some instances taken advantage of will probably not be soon forgotten by those who witnessed it.

After a severe and laborious investigation of about six weeks, the result is contained in the following report, which was put into my hands last night. It is signed by every member of the Committee except one, who ceased to act long before the evidence was completed.

I cannot be supposed to be a candid judge of my own case, and therefore it is extremely probable that any opinion of mine on the last view adopted by the Committee is incorrect and theirs [
sic
] right. If it be so, I most willingly submit to the censure they have inflicted, and shall hold it my duty to profit from it by due care hereafter. My consolation is, that I have at least not been obstinate in my errors, and that no sanction has ever been given in any fair quarter to the more serious imputations by which it has been the interest of certain persons to assail me. Candid men will judge of me according to the situation in which I was placed at the time, and not according to the wisdom which has unexpectedly been acquired since.

This is the very first time that I have ever made any statement to the public in my own vindication, and it shall be the last. It would be unjust to the authors of the former calumnies to suppose that they would not renew them now. I can only assure them that, in so far as I am concerned, they will renew them in vain.

I have the honour to be, etc,

R. KNOX.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED TO INVESTIGATE DR KNOX’S ROLE IN THE MURDERS

The Committee who, at the request of Dr Knox, undertook to investigate the truth or falsehood of the rumours in circulation regarding him, have gone into an extensive examination of evidence, in the course of which they have courted information from every quarter. They have been readily furnished with all which they required from Dr Knox himself, and though they have failed in some attempts to procure evidence, they have in most quarters succeeded in obtaining it, and especially from those persons who have been represented to them as having spoken the most confidently in support of these rumours, and they have unanimously agreed on the following report.

1. The Committee have seen no evidence that Dr Knox or his assistants knew that murder was committed in procuring any of the subjects brought to his rooms, and the Committee firmly believe that they did not.

2. On the question whether any suspicion of murder at any time existed in Dr Knox’s mind, the Committee would observe that there were certainly several circumstances (already known to the public), regarding some of the subjects brought by Burke and Hare, which, now that the truth has come out, appear calculated to excite suspicion, particularly the very early period after death at which they were brought to the rooms, and the absence of external marks of disease, together with the opinion previously expressed by Dr Knox, in common with most other anatomists, of the generally abandoned character of persons engaged in this traffic. But, on the other hand, the Committee, after much anxious inquiry, have found no evidence of their actually having excited it in the mind of Dr Knox, or of any other of the individuals who saw the bodies of these unfortunate persons prior to the apprehension of Burke.

The bodies do not appear in any instance to have borne any external marks by which it could have been known whether they had died by violence or suddenly from natural causes, or from disease of short duration, and the mode of protracted anatomical dissection practised in this and other similar establishments is such as would have made it very difficult to ascertain the causes of death, even if special inquiry had been instituted with that intention.

No evidence whatever has come before the Committee that any suspicion of murder was expressed to Dr Knox by any one, whether of his assistants or of his very numerous class (amounting to upwards of 400 students), or other persons who were in the practice of frequently visiting his rooms, and there are several circumstances in his conduct, particularly the complete publicity with which his establishment was managed, and his anxiety to lay each subject before the students as soon as possible after its reception, which seem to the Committee strongly to indicate that he had no suspicion of the atrocious means by which they had been procured.

It has also been proved to the satisfaction of the Committee, that no mutilation or disfigurement of any kind was ever practised with a view to conceal the features, or abstract unseasonably any part of the body, the presence of which might have facilitated detection, and it appears clearly that the subjects brought by Burke and Hare were dissected in the same protracted manner as those procured from any other quarter.

3. The Committee have thought it proper to inquire further, whether there was anything faulty or negligent in the regulations under which subjects were received into Dr Knox’s rooms, which gave, or might give, a peculiar facility to the disposal of the bodies obtained by these crimes, and on this point they think it their duty to state their opinion fully.

It appears in evidence that Dr Knox had formed and expressed the opinion, long prior to any dealings with Burke and Hare, that a considerable supply of subjects for anatomical purposes might be procured by purchase, and without any crime, from the relations or connections of deceased persons in the lowest ranks of society. In forming this opinion, whether mistaken or not, the Committee cannot consider Dr Knox to have been culpable. They believe there is nothing contrary to the law of the land in procuring subjects for dissection in that way, and they know that the opinion which Dr Knox had formed on this point, though never acted on to any extent in the profession, has been avowed by others of the highest character in the profession. But they think that Dr Knox acted on this opinion in a very incautious manner.

This preconceived opinion seems to have led him to give a ready ear to the plausible stories of Burke, who appears from all the evidence before the Committee to have conducted himself with great address and appearance of honesty, as well as in his conversations with Dr Knox as in his more frequent intercourse with his assistants, and always to have represented himself as engaged in negotiations of that description, and occasionally to have asked and obtained money in advance to enable him and his associate to conclude bargains.

Unfortunately also Dr Knox had been led, apparently in consequence of the extent and variety of his avocations, to entrust the dealings with persons supplying subjects and the reception of the subjects brought to his assistants (seven in number) and to his doorkeeper indiscriminately. It appears also that he directed or allowed these dealings to be conducted on the understanding (common to him with some other anatomists) that it would only tend to diminish or divert the supply of subjects to make any particular inquiry of the person bringing them as to the place and mode of obtaining them.

In these respects, the Committee consider the practice which was then adopted in Dr Knox’s rooms (whatever be the usage in this or other establishments in regard to subjects obtained in the ordinary way) to have been very improper in the case of persons bringing bodies which had not been interred. They think that the notoriously bad character of persons who generally engage in any such traffic in addition to the novelty and particular nature of the system on which these men professed to be acting, undoubtedly demanded greater vigilance.

The extent, therefore, to which (judging from the evidence which they have been able to procure) the Committee think that Dr Knox can be blamed on account of transactions with Burke and Hare is, that by this laxity of the regulations under which bodies were received into his rooms, he unintentionally gave a degree of facility to the disposal of the victims of their crimes, which under better regulations would not have existed, and which is doubtless a matter of deep and lasting regret, not only to himself but to all who have reflected on the importance and are therefore interested in the prosecution of the study of anatomy. But while they point out this circumstance as the only ground of censure which they can discover in the conduct of Dr Knox, it is fair to observe, that perhaps the recent disclosures have made it appear reprehensible to many who would not otherwise have adverted to its possible consequences.