Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Burke & Hare: Murders for Medicine, Part 1
33 Plays13 days ago
This week's episode takes us to the winding streets of Edinburgh in 1828 to follow the Case of the Notorious serial killers William Burke & William Hare. Grace explores how the the rising medical culture of 19th century Edinburgh created the perfect environment for these two men to kill 16 people and then sell the bodies to surgeons.
Sources mentioned: Anatomy of Murders by Lisa Rosner
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Burke and Hare
00:00:15
Speaker
Hey, everyone. It's Grace Artis. I'm back with another episode of Harlots and Hearses. Today's episode is going to be covering Burke and Hare, who were notorious body snatchers in a way. They're kind of unique to their own sense of being.
00:00:35
Speaker
What really sets them apart is the serial killers who ended up murdering 16 people and then supplying those victims to be cadavers for surgeons ah for dissection in Edinburgh during the eighteen hundred What really set me to this story was when I was doing my master's thesis and I found out about it when I was in London doing research there.
00:01:01
Speaker
We went to the Gordon and Pathology Museum and one, i do believe if my memory serves correct, part of Burke is still on display. And that got me digging into learning more about Burke.
00:01:14
Speaker
And when I was learning about my master thesis and during my time in London, and during that course, it was all about surgery in the 1800s.
00:01:26
Speaker
It really just got me interested in this topic as a whole. So as we dive in, I hope you become just as interested as I am. And without further ado, we're going to dive in.
Research and Sources
00:01:38
Speaker
The main secondary source that I draw from, and like always, it will be in the show notes, comes from Lisa Rosner. She is a doctorate and professor. This book is amazingly done. Each chapter focuses on a different set of victims and then dives into the social economic problems that was going on in Edinburgh during the time.
00:02:00
Speaker
The primary so sources, that there's really only two and that I draw from. it was the court case itself. So the trial of Burke and his companion slash common wife, Helen McDougall.
00:02:14
Speaker
And then the appendix that follows of his later confession that he gave to the sheriff and the deputy. So drew from those, drew from this book. Like always, that they will be in the show notes. And if you are interested in anything relating to surgery, relating to like medical history, i really, really recommend you check out The Welcome. It is a whole museum collection and library as well.
00:02:42
Speaker
in London that is centered around that. That is their whole goal and focus. They have an amazing digital collection. That is what I relied on heavily when I was back in the States doing my master's thesis. so please check them out. I, if I could like spend the night at the welcome specifically in and their archive room and their reading room, it's amazing. And it smells like old books, which is my favorite thing on earth.
00:03:06
Speaker
Please do. I was so sad when my membership expired. like because you have to renew it in person. But without further ado, let's get started. i have my coffee, which at 10 o'clock is probably a bad idea, but you know, that's showbiz.
00:03:21
Speaker
I am going to steal a direct quote from Lisa here and kind of that gives a perfect overview of what this case is and what it's about.
The Crimes of Burke and Hare
00:03:30
Speaker
Over a 12-month period, they killed 16 people, three men, 12 women, and one child, in a murder spree with which ended with their arrest in November 1828. Their murder was for profit, for Edinburgh was a major center for medical education, and lecturers were paid high prices for subjects, that is, cadavers for dissection. The means was a form of suffocation, assisted by Hare's wife Margaret and Burke's companion Helen McDougall,
00:03:58
Speaker
The two men enticed their victims to drink insensibly, then lay on top of them, compressing the chest while holding their mouth and nostrils closed. Birking, it became called. The crimes were made possible in part by general conditions of the early 19th century, with a large mobile population and small police force.
00:04:17
Speaker
There was an additional contributing circumstance. Margaret Hare ran a lodging house for transients in the busy immigrant district. And Dr. Robert Knox, the up-and-coming autonomist to whom the killer sold the cadavers.
00:04:32
Speaker
And he asked no questions. So who are the key players and what's the scene here? So William Burke had come to Edinburgh as a nabby, short for navigator. who supplied hard labor to build the roads and canals that transformed Scotland.
00:04:46
Speaker
What we know of him is very little, but we do know some. He was born in Ireland, and according to the information that he gave, at the time of his arrest, he was 36. We know very little about his family, but he went to school long enough to read and write.
00:05:03
Speaker
And all of his contemporaries, everyone he was around during the time, said he was very well-spoken. He was charming.
00:05:13
Speaker
He was kind of a guy, you know, guy could get beer with, a guy you could get a whiskey with. He was a very chummy guy, a guy you wanted to be around. He also had served in the militia in 1809, and he served for seven years. Before coming to Edinburgh, he was married and he had two children, but he had left Ireland to come to Scotland for work.
00:05:40
Speaker
We know the also that he wrote them a letter and asked them to come to Scotland to live with them, but it went unresponded and he most likely never heard from them again. Soon after, he met Helen McDougall.
00:05:56
Speaker
She had been born in Stirlingshire, and In 1828, she was 33. She described in jail records as tall with brown hair, blue eyes, round face, and a fresh complexion. She may have never married, but as a young woman, she lived with a man named McDougal, and that's where she got the last name. And then she had lived with Burke for 10 years from the age of 23. They consider themselves to be husband and wife, and they were faithful to each other in bound.
00:06:30
Speaker
by the ties of affection is what they said between the years 1822 and 1827 burke had found work as a weaver and a banker while still working as a day laborer during the harvest season and you see in 1827 he had kind of tried to shift his career and he wanted to take up shoemaking and mending of shoes And that is what he gave as Shoemaker during the time of his arrest.
00:07:02
Speaker
Also, forgot to mention that Burke, He was a short lad. He was a short lad. He was 5'5". He was 5'5". And he was described as having a nice round face and sandy, sandish blonde hair.
00:07:17
Speaker
I feel like that's kind of important so you can like kind of set the scene of what these men looked like. And he had blue eyes. Now we're getting to hair. And I want to say that for as nice as everyone described Burke,
00:07:30
Speaker
No one had any good things to say about William Hare. And there could be two reasons for this. The first is that actually he was um he was not a great person. he was kind of mean. He was kind of horrible, like everyone says.
00:07:46
Speaker
The second is Hare turned on Burke during the trial. he turned on him. That's how he didn't get charged with anything. And he got let go. So the reason that people may have said all of the descriptions that I'm about to give about Hare is they viewed him as a rat.
00:08:04
Speaker
The truth can be somewhere in the middle. It can be both. We don't know. I'm just going to give it to you as he was described. All we know about him is his age. He's 21. um he was 5 feet 4 inches. he was listed as having a pale conflexion, small face, brown hair. He's a lice.
00:08:24
Speaker
Contemporary accounts describe him as having, sorry, ferocious, tyrannical disposition. much inclined to quarrel and very Austin perocious went in drink when in liquor.
00:08:38
Speaker
So basically, even worse when drunk. He is also um from Ireland as well. But we have no idea pretty much of his life in Ireland. He was working in Edinburgh as bad man, so someone who...
00:08:55
Speaker
follows coal carts and then carries the coal. That's all we know. His wife, Margaret, was running a lodging house That is where she theoretically met Hare.
00:09:08
Speaker
Not much is known. All we do know is that she did have a previous husband before Hare. It's not clear when she married Hare. She may have had a child with her first husband.
00:09:21
Speaker
That is also unclear. All we know is that at some point between when her and Hare got married and the date of the trial, she had a child and the child was in her arms. When she was arrested, the age they gave was 31. She also, just like her, is not described well in the court records. The trial, she was described as middle-sized,
00:09:47
Speaker
Hazel eyes with an oblique face, fresh complexion, missing tooth in her jaw. She aroused little sympathy. If Hare's appearance was taken as and that the epitome of all that is mean, subtle, and ferocious, noted one journalist, his wife's aspect is much as par with his own.
00:10:06
Speaker
Now brings on the question, how did these two men even meet? It actually is all thanks to Margaret Hare. Burke had known Margaret from a previous visit to Edinburgh. Over dram, he confided in her that he kind of wanted to go to the West County to kind of take employment as a cobbler, which was a new skill for him at the time. She suggested that, you know, ah we have a room available.
00:10:33
Speaker
Why don't you come here and then you you can start up your trade as a cobbler here? And then the rest is history.
Knox and the Medical Demand for Cadavers
00:10:42
Speaker
Then this brings in Robert Knox, who was the surgeon at the time.
00:10:49
Speaker
And let me classify this. Robert Knox, just like the hairs, not a good person. He's not. A lot of... There were two kind of like books that were written, contemporary ah books that were written um a little after the trial. One painted him in a worse light saying Knox is just to blame as everyone else. He knew what he was doing. He knew the murderers.
00:11:14
Speaker
The other book was Knox is innocent. He's a great surgeon. Like if you're blaming Knox, you have to blame all the others. After reading this, after like and knowing what you know and knowing what I know about surgery in this period, and I'll get into the context around surgery and how it came to being cadavers.
00:11:35
Speaker
Knox by no means is innocent and the surgeons of this period were no means were innocent and there is a need for these resurrection men just because of how much the need for bodies was growing because of the need for science.
00:11:49
Speaker
All that aside, Knox was still not a great person. For one, even at the time, was a notorious racist and listed as being the real founder of British race.
00:12:04
Speaker
He believed that race is everything literature, science, art, and a world of civilization. depended on it and that all political social and but environmental conflicts could be understand as a class of race against race and even though like anatomy would prove different he would just like pick and choose which parts of anatomy would support it and then reject everything else he that for one makes him not a great guy and I understand in the period that we're talking about calling a white doctor racist that's not surprising but for him to be like labeled the father of racism I just want to put that in perspective of like why he's not great before I get into
00:12:52
Speaker
mispronouncing and butchering this word let me make sure i know how to say anatomy you have a is t at the end and then I don't know how to pronounce anatomist pronunciation anatomist anatomist anatomist okay So Knox, first and foremost, he was an anatomist. He's like looking to discover the body, discover what the bits and pieces do.
00:13:16
Speaker
He did not maintain a practice in which he treated patients, but performed operations, or carried out post-mortem examinations to determine cause of death.
00:13:26
Speaker
Instead, his goal in his life was to research anatomical science. He said that his models were French anatomists, and he realized that that if he wanted to get into like Edinburgh science, which was very competitive at the time, he needed to actually leave Edinburgh.
00:13:47
Speaker
So in the fall of 1821, he left to go study in Paris. It was very progressive in its ideals. And the primary focus of the school he went to, the Jardin des Plantes,
00:14:02
Speaker
That was the school for anatomy. And it was founded by his number one, his number one guy, George Culver. So he came back a year later and he was like,
00:14:17
Speaker
kind of all high and mighty. He's like, guys, I know the French way of how to do it. And you guys aren't doing it the French way. he didn't want to abandon his science and he didn't want to abandon it just to practice medicine.
00:14:33
Speaker
He wanted to keep learning, which I can respect. I really can respect that. And he learned that, you know, no one would pay him to do his research. So he, like a lot of researchers, he just started doing it on his own. So in April 1824, Knox wrote the Royal College of Surgeons, promising the founding of the Museum of Comparative Anatomy.
00:15:02
Speaker
Towards the formation of the Museum of Comparative Anatomy, I am willing to bestow my whole labor and time with that energy with the cultivation of a favorite pursuit naturally gives. So even though the collection would remain the property of the college, Knox stipulated that he would be allowed during his lifetime the use of the museum for his pursuits and his studies. And the college allowed it.
00:15:28
Speaker
And they granted his request. They were like, hey, we're not going to pay you anything. and Knox was like, will take it. That is great. But then they did to agree by like, you know, so stipulating expenses of press, so the publishing of any of his findings, glasses, spirits.
00:15:47
Speaker
And so Knox slowly started establishing himself in this very prestigious museum of anatomy and pathology. without having to essentially pay for any of it out of pocket, which as a person who is having to pay for her love of research out of pocket, that's huge.
00:16:07
Speaker
That's really big. Knox thing was thinking and big boy steps. Go Knox. And then in 1825, he became the conservator of the pathological section of the museum, which did start paying him. It was kind of like these little baby steps.
00:16:26
Speaker
So once he started with this one section, he supervised the purchase of two major collections. And then Knox was promoted to the conservator of the entire museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.
00:16:41
Speaker
And that gave him a raise. If the museum was his big break, the second big break was his association with John Barkley, who has started suffering from health issues. And he was a big lecturer at the time in Edinburgh. And...
00:16:57
Speaker
in the surgery world and in the anatomy school. And he was actually one of John's teachers. So a common practice at the time, because like lecturers had no pension, was to contract with a younger partner who would be heir apparent to the lecturership, which as of March 2nd, 1825, Knox and Barclay signed a contract, which Knox agreed to relieve Barclay of the whole labor of every branch of the institution.
00:17:28
Speaker
And, you know, once John Barclay died, Knox found himself in a position of inheriting one of the most lucrative lectureships. So this huge teaching position in Edinburgh at this school. And it is said that Knox is said to have taught more than 300 students per year. Lisa says his income from lecturing combined with his position as the conservator continues Because keep in mind, he's still working at the museum. He's still overseeing the museum.
00:18:00
Speaker
Was estimated to be over ah thousand pounds per annuium. Winter of 1820 kind of when this all starts. So the fall of November to December.
00:18:13
Speaker
And that is when Robert Knox meets Burke and Hare for the first time. And so he, at this time, that was kind of like his height. That's when he was building up. So he had had his conservatorship at the museum. He was doing his lectures.
00:18:27
Speaker
He was a very busy man. And he had a reputation. And at this time, he was married and he did have numerous kids to support. He was also known to kind of be a lone man, very introverted. And he was lacking in people skills.
00:18:45
Speaker
And Rosner... ah She argues that he was neither a villain nor fool, and nor was he practicing physician or surgeon. Indeed, he may never in his life had followed a clinical case from illness to death.
00:18:59
Speaker
He's instead a dedicated dissector with a collector's passion for anatomical oddities and pathological specialmen. His contacts with the body trade had probably begun during his partnership with Barclay. And as we've seen, standard practice for Edinburgh automatists to deal with thieves and ask no questions. Very standard practice. Robert Knox was not alone for that, so we cannot fault him for that.
00:19:26
Speaker
What we can fault him for, and we'll get into it later, especially with as the murders grow, is why he did not push Burke and Harris as where the bodies came from.
00:19:41
Speaker
Especially when, as we'll see, and this is more so in part two, when the bodies start to become seemingly known people of Edinburgh.
00:19:51
Speaker
Getting into Edinburgh, and this is where I can kind of like geek out just a little bit, because like what I, in part, what I did my master's thesis over, I'll do a whole episode over my master's thesis. I did my master's thesis over eighteenth century cures for venereal diseases. Specifically, it was like Looking over how medical treatises, so surgeons at the time in London, not Edinburgh, looked to cure them versus home cures. So how women in the house treated them. But I digress. I will do a whole episode over that.
00:20:28
Speaker
um The only thing that is making me not do it right now is... That was an 87-page thesis I did. So it's trying to figure out how to break that into an episode. A little backstory into physicians, surgeons, Edinburgh at the time and what did that look like and how did that create the kind of like the boiler pot that allowed Burke and Hare to like flourish in what it was.
Medical Education in Edinburgh
00:20:59
Speaker
On the surface and... We have to go, I'm going to go back to like the 1700s first to understand 1800s. So 1700s, like English medical culture was very hierarchical.
00:21:12
Speaker
So there was three. So it was physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries. So, and they all had their unique role in place in the social standings in society and they all kind of like had their own unique like boundaries set and then as the 1800s and as time progresses it kind of like all gets more blurred and what makes it more blurred is the emergence of edinburgh surgical college
00:21:46
Speaker
So at the top were the physicians, mainly because these guys, they went to the Lottie Dottie schools of Oxford and Cambridge, and they really looked after the members of the gentry. So the lords, ladies, the higher ups. And physician's primary role was to handle the interior of the body and to handle diagnosis and then prescribe treatments.
00:22:13
Speaker
That was really yeah very They didn't really handle much else. As soon as they diagnosed you, and they were all about kind of big theories. They're like, oh, because of so X, Y, Z, you're experiencing this.
00:22:27
Speaker
So these are the treatments that you need to do. And then as soon as it would give you the treatments, that is then you would go to either the surgeon or the apothecary. You would go to the surgeon if you needed something Like if you needed bloodletting, if you needed a limb cut off, if you needed something removed, if you needed something.
00:22:59
Speaker
Essentially, a surgeon thinks blood. Either cutting, removing, leaching, removing. Anything in that realm, that's when you would seek a surgeon. And then apothecary is herbs, remedies, and that sort of thing. And because there was three of them, there was a huge, huge, huge environment of competition between these three medical practitioners and Then you see the rise of medical universities in Scotland, and that only made that competition worse.
00:23:37
Speaker
These medical universities, they were so successful, and they started producing a new type of doctor that started blending a physician and a surgeon together, which was something that up until this period,
00:23:54
Speaker
did not exist and that's why these like autonomous or huge is because not only are you seeing the body so you're learning the body you can dive into the body which at the time was only for surgeons and surgeons had previously had a very bad rep.
00:24:16
Speaker
They were seen as very bloody. They were seen as dirty and kind of like not to be trusted because they're the ones dealing with the bile. They are the dealing ones dealing with the after products.
00:24:28
Speaker
And you don't want to be... associated with that. But now because you have the rise of these universities who are blending physicians, surgeons, and they're becoming respectable, so now these doctors' places are starting to rise. So these men then had to so try to start marketing themselves better than the others.
00:24:54
Speaker
And it kind of emerged something that you you never saw before. And at the time, it was like very unprecedented. Edinburgh University emerged as a premier institution for medical education in the English speaking world. Like it was the place to go, which for me, a person, it was it was mind blowing because at the time, like the only school's Prior to the the only schools you can go to, if you wanted to study medicine, you at Cambridge or Oxford.
00:25:30
Speaker
And if you could not get into Cambridge or Oxford, you essentially could not study medicine. Like you could not become a physician. But then you had Edinburgh University rise and then more opportunities started opening.
00:25:45
Speaker
And granted, I know there must there may have been other options. This is what I'm doing a very, very, very wide overview. There were definitely other practitioners at the home. You had home doctors. This is a very wide overview.
00:26:00
Speaker
I'm just saying this was very big, very, very big at the time for what it allowed Sorry, I got so excited and i forgot. I did not breathe during any of that. So it was estimated that roughly like 500 students, and keep in mind when these, i mentioned students, they're all male and they're all white.
00:26:20
Speaker
and started arrive in October for the start of classes and would spend anywhere from each year they resided there anywhere to 100 to 500 pounds per year and that one of the professors who was one of the most sought out professors at the time was Alexander he was the one who was attracting more students than any other course and this was Alexander Monroe the first. i mean, he was kind of like the go-to for the longest time.
00:26:54
Speaker
He was an excellent anatomist and their courses were like remained kind of the cornerstone for Edinburgh education and was attended by nearly all of the students. And kind of a practice that they had was that his sons were kind of like grandfathered the just like we saw with Barkley in Knox.
00:27:18
Speaker
His sons were then grandfathered in to be the next lecturers in the series. and So then we have Monroe II. He did all right. His students seemed to like him as well. It went fine.
00:27:31
Speaker
The problem then seemed to rise with Alexander Monroe III. who we kind of see that trend when you kind of are used to like your family's wealth and your family's power you don't really seem to want to do anything to change it he was described as a competent lecturer but he really didn't show up in the dissecting rooms which kind of made him look bad as anatomist, especially to his students, which according to record the records at the university, by the 1820s, barely a third of the approximately 500 students bothered to show up to his lectures. The college resurgence, which was kind of concerned, were like,
00:28:29
Speaker
wait, we need to probably do something about this. So what they did is they started letting like new lecturers start teaching and start allowing the students to attend outside lectures and still essentially, i believe, get credit for it and produce certificates ascending that they had been getting engaged. And kind of like what I mentioned earlier, these men, because they were wanting...
00:28:57
Speaker
the lecturers at the time because they were wanting to get the most students. Because if you think about it this way, if you get the most students and you're signing the certificate saying the students showed up to your class, that shows the college, hey, I have the most students.
00:29:16
Speaker
I have the most students' attention. I'm really, really good at what I do is going to drive competition. And another way you can drive competition is by trashing The other competition.
00:29:29
Speaker
So these men did not have common cause. They had no
00:29:40
Speaker
They had no friendship whatsoever. They loathed one another. So they were competitors. And I noticed this too. Like if It makes me so mad when people are like, oh...
00:29:56
Speaker
History is so boring. No, if you want some tea, like if you want some drama, go read some 18th century medical treatises.
00:30:07
Speaker
Those men are petty. hetty Especially you start reading 18th century medical treatises over venereal diseases? Girl, they go back and forth over who is more qualified.
00:30:22
Speaker
I remember reading one and this guy is like, well, I'm more qualified because I was in the Navy. And you shouldn't trust so-and-so because he only works in whorehouses. And then this other guy is like, he only works in the Navy. That, it just goes off.
00:30:36
Speaker
It goes off. And I still, to this day, am still not over the amount of tea that is spilled in these medical tree disease. um And the amount of pettiness you see in them. Okay. I digress. They had to be competitive.
00:30:52
Speaker
And how you get competitive is A, getting the most practice. B, having the most interesting subjects in your practice. And how you do that is through cadavers.
00:31:06
Speaker
The only issue is how they receive the bodies at the time is through hanged convicts. And there's not enough hanged convicts to keep up with the supply and demand. So with that,
00:31:24
Speaker
they have to resort to other means to supply the bodies.
The Role of Resurrection Men
00:31:28
Speaker
and With that comes resurrection men or body snatchers. Now, body snatchers would typically target graves and that's where they get the name resurrection men as they would resurrect dead bodies.
00:31:41
Speaker
Now, typically they target and poor graves as they were less guarded. And I do believe I am going to cover a whole episode over resurrection men and body snatching just to begin with.
00:31:54
Speaker
because it is a fairly interesting topic. But that is why the supply did not meet the demand. And so that is why they relied so heavily on these resurrection men is because they had to.
00:32:10
Speaker
I'm not dimming it. I'm just saying that that is the situation in the hand in which they were dealt. And the only way they can improve scientifically and make the achievements that they did is with the bodies that they had.
00:32:22
Speaker
This is all set in a huge, larger political issue as well. And it is within four years after this whole Burke and Hare murder incident that we do get the Anatomy Act that will allow for more cadavers to enter and to University of Edinburgh four to allow for more cadavers.
00:32:46
Speaker
I'll cover that in part two. With that, we are going to start getting into the victims themselves. Rosner does give a very good construct, kind of like Criminal Minds victim profile. She says, we can construct a profile of a likely victim of Birkin hair.
00:33:08
Speaker
The candidate for murder might be male or female, but not especially large or strong. Because keep in mind, Both men were short, they were 5'5 and 5'4, or barking would be too difficult.
00:33:20
Speaker
He or she would be poor, but particularly employed rather than destitute, residing at least part of the year some distance from the Westport. Victims would have some form of employment, or they would not have been able to travel to the vicinity of the Westport, which is where the lodging was. Moreover, Herr at least seems to have preferred whenever possible to get his victims drunk on their own money.
00:33:44
Speaker
But the employment would be intermittent, not steady, nor would the victim be steady recipient of public or private charity, which would necessitate regular visits from clergymen or inspectors.
00:33:58
Speaker
The ideal victim might be sick, but if if so, he or she would not be eligible for treatment at the Royal Infirmary or other medical charities. The victim could either be Irish or Scottish, but if the latter, he or she would be comfortable with the Irish and familiar with Irish forms of hospitality.
00:34:17
Speaker
Health, not too strong, intermittently employed, tending to travel for work, willing to drink insensibly. Those are the characteristics of a typical bark and hair murder victim. So the first corpse was and not murdered, but died of natural causes.
Burke and Hare's Criminal Partnership
00:34:33
Speaker
From what presumed was dropsy, which is a buildup of fluid of the tissue, this happened sometime in late November, and we know his name was Donald. So he was a pensioner who owed Hare, who just happened to be his landlord, four pounds before he died. Hare had gone to Burke after Donald's death and kind of had a dilemma on how to handle Donald's body. and
00:34:56
Speaker
because it was a day or two after the death and Hare already made arrangements for the body to be picked up and to be buried at the expense of the parish.
00:35:09
Speaker
But he was noticing that, you know, it's been a day or two and it's taking up space. And then Hare, knowing Edinburgh and being aware what's going on in Edinburgh, he proposed that the body should be sold to the doctors.
00:35:25
Speaker
and that Burke, you know, can get a share of the price. Burke explained and said, and you know, we can't do that because the carpenter would get here in the coffin with the coffin. He would place the corpse in the coffin and then nail it down immediately. And so that's what happened. As soon as the carpenter laugh Burke unmailed the coffin, and the corpse out of and they hid the body in one of the beds, and they took Tanner's bark from that they had just lying around behind the house, put it in the coffin, nailed everything back down, covered the coffin with the sheets, and, you know,
00:36:05
Speaker
coffin was carried away. So now they have a body they have to figure out how to get rid of. but They went to the university and because Dr. Alexander Monroe, he's very famous and well known, the third, they started asking for him and they saw a med student and they were like, you know, he's not around because he's very busy.
00:36:25
Speaker
not doing lectures. They're like, but Dr. Knox, you know, he's always here. He's here 24-7. This was just the moment that Dr. Knox just happened not to be on campus, but his three assistants were.
00:36:35
Speaker
They're like, you know what? Come back after dark. Burke and Hare did. They came back with a body and a sack. They placed it upon the dissecting table. No questions were asked about how the body had been obtained. Then Burke and Herrick were given seven pounds and ten shillings, and the surgeon, Robert Knox, looked at the men and said they'd be glad to see them again if they had any other body to dispose of. Now, that essentially tells the men, hey, if you ever come across any more bodies,
00:37:05
Speaker
We would love to do business with you, so keep coming back. Cool. Moving on to the second victim. And this is where Burke and Hare cannot agree who the second victim was. Burke says it was Abigail Simpson who sold the type of limestone. She's a lodger at the Hare's.
00:37:21
Speaker
And after a night in drinking, she laid her body back on the bed and they smothered her, disposed her body, gave it to the doctors. Hare says that's not who the second victim was. The second victim is a miller. His name is Joseph. He was another lodger. He was ill. He couldn't speak half the time. And the reason he was killed is because Hare and his wife didn't want a rumor going around that there was a fever in the lodge, which would affect people boarding there.
00:37:53
Speaker
So that is why he was killed. And, you know, Burke and Hare also say that since Joseph was close to death, you know, he should be killed. He's, you know, just do it like Donald. So they killed both Joseph and Abigail.
00:38:10
Speaker
So Knox paid them 10 pounds total, which kind of became a customary practice. And Hare would receive six pounds with a pound of that going to his wife.
00:38:20
Speaker
And Burke would receive four pounds with McDougal receiving no money whatsoever. And Burke always claimed that's because she never knew what was going on. And I just kind of like want to break this down of like why the money matters and kind of why you can see why these men would keep going back and why it would be harder and harder and harder for them to stop what they were doing.
00:38:47
Speaker
ten 10 pounds, we hear that, and we're like, that's not a lot of money. 10 pounds at that time was 400 pounds in today's equivalent, which if we break it up into like how many days of work that would be, it would be three times what a seasonal migrant would make and a harvest.
00:39:11
Speaker
It was three years work of hard agricultural labor. And according to Rosner, a hundred days of his work spent hacking out a tunnel. So you can see the thrill that would come of that from just one body.
00:39:30
Speaker
That's a hundred days of him not having to work. So for Knox to say, if you have any more, we'd love to see you and then you have men like donald who are sick and like joseph who are near death i'm sure and this is all speculation but i'm sure you can make the points and conjectures to be like okay it's not that big of a leap for these two men who are poor they don't have much to their name to be like
00:40:02
Speaker
okay, if this man is close to death, why not just put him out of his misery? And then we reap the benefits of that. And then thus we don't have to work as hard anymore.
00:40:14
Speaker
And we can have some reprieve from hardware. So with that, you can somewhat sympathize. What I don't sympathize with is a murder be how more gruesome the murders come to be. Birkin hair would start a type of murder that would get its own name. It's kind of its own catchphrase. It'd be called Birking. What makes Birking so unique is at the time was kind of like undetectable.
00:40:43
Speaker
So it was invented during Joseph's murder. So one, either the second or the third. And it involved with one man Laying across the body. So imagine short little William Hare, little 5'4 man that he was laying across the man's body.
00:41:04
Speaker
And what this would do, it was a it would constrict the lungs. So your lungs would not be able to full up to their whole extent. And then imagine Bert would put the hand his hands over your mouth and then plug the nose. So then this would then limit the time it took you to like actually suffocate to death.
00:41:24
Speaker
And it would be somewhat... quicker death than if they were to just suffocate you on your own. And what makes this stand out is we'll see in their final murder is it's very hard to tell. And the police had a hard time to even admit this is that there's really no way to tell at at this time and period.
00:41:48
Speaker
This death looks like a suffocation instead of a strangulation. And Burke and Harry, at least in this time, at least in Edinburgh, they were the only ones to do it this way.
00:42:01
Speaker
So that is where it gets its own name of Burke-ing. And it's unique as just to this case. And it would kind of take on its own thrill of the time to where even when Burke was convicted and hanged in 1828, everyone was, when they were leading Burke up,
00:42:22
Speaker
to be hanged everyone in the crowd was chanting burke him burke him burke him it took on a life of its own literally moving on to the fourth and fifth victims so we will never know the names of them the fourth we only know about him he was an englishman who sold tenders and he had jaundice and was burked most likely for the same reason that Joseph was that just because he was sick. The fifth, according to Burke, Margaret Hare chose to kill. This could have been true.
00:42:55
Speaker
It also could have not. The reason we should take this kind of with a grain of salt is is because remember when Burke is brought to trial his wife was also brought upon trial and the only reason for that is because the hairs turned on them so it could be true that you know Margaret Hare chose this victim or it was Burke just trying to get pressure and the heat off of his wife but What we do know about this victim, it was an old woman whose origins, names, and occupation are completely unknown. Margaret had kept giving her whiskey and trying to put her to bed.
00:43:35
Speaker
This is what we see becomes a very, very, very common theme of trying to get the victim drunk, placing them to bed, so then the men can then come and burke them.
00:43:49
Speaker
Margaret kept trying to give her whiskey, trying to get her bed. She failed three times. On the third time, she was finally successful. And then they suffocated her with a part of the mattress.
00:44:00
Speaker
So this one, she actually was not burped, suffocated. Knox gave them 10 pounds for each victim. The sixth victim and the one who arose much attention outside of the final victim is that of Mary Patterson.
Mary Patterson and the Victims' Stories
00:44:17
Speaker
And this is actually where I'm going to end it. I just think hers kind of really shows the dichotomy that women faced at the time. And it touches into all of my interests and it touches into the main title of our show of Harlots and Horses.
00:44:33
Speaker
And also I think hers stands. sticks with us the most because we know so much about her because there is a witness diving into mary peterson she was 18 when she was killed and we know that her death happened sometime in the first week of april 1828 this is burke's version burke met her and her companion Janet Brown at his brother's house where she'd been given much to drink and some breakfast. He disposed of her the same he did the others. Yeah, yeah, that's shit. That's shit that all you can say about this woman whose life you took is less than a sentence, especially when we hear what happened in the other witnesses' accounts. Janet Brown survived and she was going to be the chief witness for Mary's murder, but she was never called forth because Burke had already been found guilty of another murder. So there was no reason.
00:45:28
Speaker
Janet, she wanted her story to be told. She wanted the truth to be it out there. So she told told it to a journalist. And as far as anyone knows, she is the only person who lived from an interaction with Burke in here and her testimony really acts as a cornerstone. Little background on Janet.
00:45:50
Speaker
She was described by a journalist as a girl of the town, which is a euphemism for a prostitute, which I want to make very, very clear.
00:46:01
Speaker
That was not illegal. It would not become illegal until I believe if my memory serves correctly. I want to say it was after World War one I want to say it was after World War one And the reason behind that is venereal diseases. So I'll get into that too.
00:46:17
Speaker
But it was not illegal. And she was described as being very intelligent. And being a prostitute during this time, and I'll get into it later, it really only mean that she earned part of her living through being a prostitute. It should not be a reason to define her. It should not be a reason to define anyone.
00:46:34
Speaker
But specifically during this period, it only was a way that she supplemented her income. So Janet said that on April 8th, her and Mary were taken to the police station as watchmen made a practice of admitting young women, drunk homeless people overnight to the station for their protection.
00:46:53
Speaker
The next morning, her and Mary were not charged with anything and then they were released. As soon as they were released, her and Mary went to a spirit shop for breakfast. That is where they met Burke.
00:47:04
Speaker
Right away, this is where her and Burke story different. They didn't meet at Burke's brother-in-law's house. They met at the spirit shop, which right away shows a deviance of behavior for Burke.
00:47:15
Speaker
Because normally Burke is meeting his victims as they are lodgers. He's not actively seeking them out. Now Burke is seeking them out. Burke gives the girl some rum and then he brought bought them a bottle of whiskey.
00:47:30
Speaker
And then he invited them to go to breakfast at his brother's. Brown says she was reluctant to go, but Barry wanted to, or at least she did seemed down. And that Burke was very urgent that she should go. And Burke said he had a pension and could keep her handsomely and make her comfortable for life. Which just reminds me of like, keep in mind Burke at this point is like 33. This girl's 18.
00:47:57
Speaker
this girl eighteen It just so reminds me like, every gross man you see at the bar and, like, on dating apps who, like, you know is married, which he was.
00:48:09
Speaker
He was married and, like, is saying, like, oh, I can keep you so comfortable. Let me be your sugar. So fucking disgusting, which this case is for numerous reasons, but it...
00:48:23
Speaker
it's just disgusting whether or not the girls believe burke and his gross line of he could keep them comfortably for life they agreed and they went to breakfast which apparently was a very common thing to do in edinburgh and in the streets and like the little sections of the town it was very common to go get breakfast in the little areas in which you lived they had breakfast which Janet says with was cooked by Burke's sister-in-law and was consumed by two bottles of whiskey. Mary fell asleep. Janet and Burke went to get food and to get more to drink.
00:48:58
Speaker
And then Helen McDougall appeared, got into a fight with Burke over entertaining two young girls. There is a little bit of confusion over where Janet goes after that.
00:49:09
Speaker
We do know that she does leave Mary there, which is very sad because we ultimately know what ends up happening. But it is said that Janet either sees a Miss Lori or a Miss Clark.
00:49:23
Speaker
Either one of them tries to send Janet back with their maid to fetch Mary because that this older woman sees that this situation is not right, that something is amiss. Janet could not remember where the house was, and by the time they did, Mary was gone. And when Janet asked the sister-in-law, like, what where is Mary?
00:49:43
Speaker
The sister-in-law just told her, like, she's out with Burke. So Janet sent the maid back. Ms. Clark immediately, sensing danger, immediately sends the maid back to get Janet. Later that evening, Janet comes back and she asks the sister-in-law again, hill like, hey, is Mary back?
00:50:01
Speaker
The sister-in-law says, nope, Mary's not back yet. You know, she's still out with Mr. Burke, never sees Mary again. Janet even asked the brother-in-law one more time out on the street, and this is some time after, like, what happened with Mary? And the brother-in-law replied, how the hell can I tell you about you sort of folk? You're here today and away tomorrow. Mary's landlady even got involved, and she went down to Burke's brother and sister-in-laws and asked around and had no success. But that is, of course, we know why. It's because Mary was burped.
00:50:36
Speaker
Mary was suffocated. Her body was disposed of. and What's even worse is that her body only sold for eight pounds, not even the full 10. And this is where her case also seems to set her apart. So not only was Mary scoped out, but even in death, hers gets set apart.
00:50:58
Speaker
Because as soon as Mary's body gets set on the dissection table, Robert Knox's assistants, not in all the other five, have they ever asked, How have Burke and Hare obtained these bodies? But the assistants looked at the body and they recognized it. And they asked the two men where they got in the body. And when the media picked up on this and heard about it, Because it came out later. The media went wild.
00:51:28
Speaker
And it started a hailstorm of rumors. Rosner states it best when she says, "...a young girl strikingly beautiful and strikingly promiscuous, betrayed by her own immortal life into the hands of a callous murderess, only to be recognized by her medical student lover as she lays upon ah dissecting table." And this is all really interesting. and then it begs the question of where along this did mary somehow pick up the title prostitute and rosner questions this too is like how did this girl who seemingly had no connection to being a prostitute how did she get titled with now being a prostitute how'd she get that label and what i love that rosner did is she went through all of the records
00:52:24
Speaker
And she was able to kind of like peace and give two theories as to what she thinks actually happened with Mary. And I'm going to give you her theories because I do think there is meat and potatoes to them. It is a very interesting take on something that like I think would ultimately get left behind.
00:52:45
Speaker
Mary somehow along the way picks up the title prostitute. Is there are really any credibility in that? And the answer is like a very, very complicated, like, yes, but no.
00:52:56
Speaker
So for the first warrant for Burke and Helen McDougall's arrest, it was a suspicion of murdering Mary Patterson. In it, Patterson was described as a girl in the town who had no fixed places of residence.
00:53:12
Speaker
Rumors were going around surrounding this warrant. And then like another article that was mentioned that was also floating around of unfortunate girl of the town as being one of the main victims.
00:53:27
Speaker
Roster like dives in into like the actual warrant. And she was like the formal indictment. Like, I don't know where the other journalists and contemporaries at the time were pulling it. And it just shows just like how much a game of telephone from these reporters can turn even the smallest thing into like a huge thing.
00:53:47
Speaker
Because the formal indictment against Burke and McDougall never gave an occupation for Patterson. There is no Mary Patterson to be found in surviving police records from the eighteen twenty s Though Janet Brown is listed in the police records.
00:54:06
Speaker
So like maybe some people, or maybe because she was associating with Janet Brown, that's why people looped them together. Maybe what Rosner gives is that there is a record for ah Mary Peterson being listed in the Magdalene Asylum, which Magdalene Asylum is essentially a reform school and refugee for girls of the town or women who became pregnant out of wedlock they were very popular in ireland and scotland during this time there was a mary peterson age 16 who is listed in 1826 it is possible that that mary peterson is the same mary peterson of
00:54:52
Speaker
our case and she had been enlisted as spending four months on the town. Giving a little context here, one of my favorite historians ever and if you ever want to do a deep dive into prostitution, history of prostitution specifically like 10th century onward, look up Judith Walkowicz.
00:55:15
Speaker
that That woman, the queen that she is. You will learn so much from her. And one day I hope I can be her. But she dives into the history of prostitution. And essentially one of her main overarching themes that she gave is, you know, prostitution for a lot of these women, it was not their full-time job. It was essentially like a side hustle. It was something they picked on on the side. It was a lot of these women...
00:55:42
Speaker
If they were maids that picked up prostitution, if they were between jobs, it was something they did as supplemental income. It was nothing that, you know, um they ever fully set out to do. And a lot of them, you know, they were single. It was, they were local girls.
00:56:00
Speaker
Like, yes, there were levels to it. But to make this prostitution like a huge sexualized thing of like... a prostitute, like if a girl is a prostitute, that was her whole life.
00:56:12
Speaker
That's not true. A lot of it was a supplemental income that they picked up from here to there. It was not their whole life. So for if that was the case for Mary, you know if if it was four months that she was on the town, it was four months that she could have possibly been doing it while she was doing other things. We don't know. And we have no chance of asking her. There is no written record. You know, she's no longer here. So essentially, that is also the case that Rosner is making as well. This Mary that was at the Magdalene Asylum, the timeline fits, the year fits, the age fits.
00:56:48
Speaker
fits it is very likely that we can say that the mary who's at the asylum is the mary of our case we do know from the information provided from janet brown mary patterson she was a native to edinburgh she was very educated it is possible that the two met at the asylum that kind of gives the question to the answer of was mary a prostitute it's yes but that did not define her the next part of kind of what i want to address is the whole ending up on her lover's table which i think rosner also does a very well job of and i
00:57:29
Speaker
kind of don't want that to be mary's legacy of the only reason that she was also well known is because she ended up on her lover's table mary was at the magdalene asylum which is keep in mind at a magdalene asylum these girls are it's like a reform school the girls do not leave and mary got out like like right around the same time she was murdered like like she was only released from the Magdalene assignment asylum like a Month or a few weeks before the murder browser argues that
00:58:06
Speaker
Mary was not a lover of these assistants, but instead she was actually a patient. And the reason that she gives is the Magdalene Asylum and the Royal Infirmary. Often, if you were sick at the Magdalene Asylum, you would go to the Royal Infirmary to seek treatment.
00:58:24
Speaker
yeah And there is a patient record of a Mary Patterson being there. and seeking treatment at the Royal Infirmary. And there is also record of one of the assistants of Knox's constantly being in the infirmary at the same time. So while it is all speculation, there are some points that do draw up.
00:58:43
Speaker
Rosner gives the reason why the men raised such a big question for this. And if one of the assistants had actually seen marry at the infirmary she would then be a patient of the infirmary if she had died at the infirmary the body then belonged to the hospital aka to nox to the men it belonged it belonged to them so why would they pay burke and hair 10 pounds for a body that they owned
00:59:17
Speaker
the body was stolen. So, Rosner says the question he asked, Burke phrased it as, so where did you get this young woman? Perhaps what concerned him was not how she had died, not that he had last seen her alive,
00:59:31
Speaker
But where it got in the body. In other words, he had stolen it from the Royal Infirmary. So he didn't care that Mary was necessarily a victim. He didn't care who Mary was as a person. no The assistant then only cared about that him and his crew in the hospital were being screwed over. Which is a much more brutal and horrific take than...
00:59:53
Speaker
a, you know, autonomous meeting his lover on the dissection table. It's much more violent because it it takes the humanity out of it. Mary is no longer viewed as a person.
01:00:07
Speaker
Mary is then viewed as a thing. And I think when we start viewing humans as things, that is where, and even in history, when we start viewing humans as things and not as the humans that they once were, thinking of why they did the things that they did, that is where issues arise.
01:00:28
Speaker
And so that's why i like Rosner's take on this, because it makes us question these men and their actions that much more. It puts Mary and her focus back into the story.
01:00:43
Speaker
It gives her depth that she didn't have before. Mary is no longer a fallen woman. Mary is no longer a girl on the town. Mary is a woman who was drastically taken advantage of. She was a woman who found herself in a horrible situation. And even in her death, she was seen as a thing. These men view her as seven pounds, which was less than all of the other cadavers got.
01:01:10
Speaker
So I think at that point, it's very important. and why And this is why I want to kind of end the podcast on her so we have time to kind of think on it and leave on it. It's just how much her story kind of sets her apart from a the others, and kind of like what she reveals about the whole issues with the cadaver system issue as a whole.
01:01:35
Speaker
And honestly, what her horror she revealed about Burke and Hare as a whole. That is where I am leaving the episode on. Thank you so much for listening.
01:01:46
Speaker
I hope you tune in for part two where we'll cover the rest of the murders. I believe there are still 10 more to And the trial itself. And then what ends up happening to our lovely friend, Burke.
01:01:59
Speaker
If you liked the episode, share subscribe like comment you know do all the fun things and I will be back again next week I am gonna go to bed now because it is now like almost one in the morning but I love you guys and I will see you soon