After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Burke & Hare: Scotland’s Most Notorious Serial Killers

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

They’re the most famous grave-robbers in the world…except they never actually robbed any graves. Discover the true story of Burke and Hare’s murderous rampage through the streets of Edinburgh, all to serve the needs of the city’s scientific minds.Anthony tells Maddy the unnerving details about the infamous 19th century serial-killing duo.Written by Anthony Delaney. Edited by Tom Delargy. Producer is Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte LongDiscover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Kate Lister, Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Mary Beard and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code AFTERDARK. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hello everyone, Anthony here. Listen, we have some sensitive content in this episode, so this one might not be for you. If it's not, please go back, listen to one of the earlier episodes, but if you're sticking around, we're certain that you're going to enjoy this one. It's a frosty morning in Edinburgh, on the 28th of January 1829, just after 8am. A misty chill hangs in the air and a crowd of thousands are waiting with growing anticipation watching the notorious serial killer William Burke spend his last moments alive before he's hanged at the gallows.

Now Burke is one half of the murdering duo Burke and Hare who killed and sold their victims' bodies to Professor Robert Knox, an anatomist at the University of Edinburgh. The case has gripped Scotland, and the public execution has drawn a huge crowd. Some people have even hired their rooms in tenements overlooking the scaffold, at a cost of around ten shillings for a better view of the hanging. Burke is dressed in black and looks composed. The noose is placed over his neck. His body convulses with the last movements of life. It is then cut down and will be publicly dissected,

fitting for a man who killed people purely to serve the voracious dissection table. After the dissection, they'll put his skeleton on display. They'll take his skin to the tanners and turn it into the leather covers of a book. Inscribed on the front of the book will be, Burke's Skin Pocketbook. The final resting place of an opportunistic killer. Hello and welcome to this episode of After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. My name's Anthony.

And I'm Maddy. And today we are going to transport you to the early 19th century. Maddy, this is a little bit more of the area that you are comfortable in, right? I'm more of an early 17th century person. I love this period. So if we're talking in Britain, the end of the Regency period, George IV comes to the throne. Britain is coming out of wars. It's defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. And it's rebuilding what is already an incredible, powerful, violent empire across the globe. And it's kind of expanding it even more. It's building parts of London, it's expanding everywhere. There's all this kind of

new wealth, there's excitement in the air. Romanticism is in full swing. We've got Frankenstein published, we've got Pride and Prejudice published. You know, this is a moment of British history of incredible creativity, incredible inequality as well. And those things are absolutely hand in hand. And on the one side, you know, we think of this period as glittering, elegant,

you know, think Bridgerton, think your Jane Austen adaptations. On the other side, we have a slightly darker history. And today I think we're going in the pretty dark and scary footsteps of famous body snatchers, Burke and Hare. But were they body snatchers? Well, let's get into it.

Grave robbing in the 19th century, is this common? I mean, it's interesting because what you find is it starts to become a little bit of a kind of a small business onto itself. So obviously there's this growth of scientific discovery, anatomy and anatomical discovery is really growing at this time. And there just simply isn't enough bodies to provide the anatomists with their cadavers so that they can make their discoveries, they can teach doctors at, you know, future medical students that will go on to be the future anatomists. So this grows up not just in Edinburgh, but Edinburgh, it really attaches itself to Edinburgh because Edinburgh was such a centre of anatomy and it was one of the forefront places in Europe at this time for medical discovery. Okay, so there's a real need, a real hunger.

And there's plenty of things happening in Edinburgh. So obviously, we have the university, we then have Glasgow as well, but we also have private practitioners. And those people need cadavers themselves. So there is this trade that starts that's quite informal, illegal. And what we find is that Edinburgh becomesburgh becomes because of the demand for cadavers for the anatomy students which just keep incoming by the way like edinburgh was the place to go so we will not have enough of a supply so they this is how this grave robbing phenomenon happens okay so in and around edinburgh so we know who's having these bodies once they've been snatched from the graves and

why they need them. Who are the people who are doing the grave robbing? It's presumably not the medical professionals themselves. No, and this is a really interesting, and it comes up in the case of Birkenhair, which we'll discuss in more detail, but it comes up in this, what is the relationship between those people who are probably working class, poor, who are being used in a way as part of this trade in human remains that serves people who are far more powerful, far more rich, far more affluent than they are. But those are the people who are getting punished. It's those grave robbers that are being, you know, they're the ones that are receiving the fines. They're the ones that are being imprisoned. If and when they're caught, they're not very often caught, actually. It's something they do get away with.

But there is certainly a class distinction between the anatomists are not going to the graveyard themselves. So it is a risky business for the people who are doing the body snatching. So what is the incentive to do it? Why are they going to a graveyard, taking bodies away with them?

What's that about? This will come as no surprise, money. So they could earn up to seven pounds, eight pounds, depending if it was a particularly fresh body. And this is in the beginning of the 19th century. So the 1810s, 1820s, how much money is that? So you're talking about, it's roughly equivalent to 50 days of a skilled labourer's wage. So that's for one night's work. So you go out, you do this thing, it's partially unpleasant, but you can get 50 days worth of a wage in that one night, two, three hours.

If you're skilled at what you're doing, it's almost a no-brainer. So it's absolutely worth it. If you have the stomach for it, it's a great advantage. Yeah, if you can put that kind of moral, late George and then early Victorian moral attitude towards death aside, if you can do that because it financially is going to be beneficial, it's a lot of money. It's interesting.

So what you're saying here is that the people who are doing the grave robbing, in some ways they are part of the lower classes and they are serving a higher class, the medical professionals. But I suppose they're also kind of violating those hierarchies that govern the city. You know, they are going to a graveyard and presumably taking people of any class out of a grave and selling them on. You know, once you're a cadaver, we're all the same. So what are people doing to stop that? And is there a kind of anxiety around the way that people are violating not just graves, but the kind of the strictures, I suppose, that govern

19th century Edinburgh? It's interesting, right? Because there is this thing where we say, well, it starts with the grave robbers and it goes then to the anatomists. But we need to go back one step further because it actually starts with the sextons or it starts with even some of the clergy. It starts with- So people are in on this? Oh yeah. No, there's a chain. That's kind of what I mean about this business. This is an industry. Exactly that. There is a chain of commerce that's going on here. And we'd be foolish to think that

the sextons and the clergy weren't taking some of that seven pounds because that's how they get access. They also know there will be some kind of more, not anatomist, but more kind of lowlier kind of quack doctors and stuff that will know about, oh, Mary's about to croak it there. Keep an eye on her. There'll be a funeral in a few days. Okay. So sometimes it's even before people have died that maybe writing it on a list. The corpse has to be as fresh as possible. So they will be watching for people to die in order for this to happen. So because there is this chain of information and this chain of kind of, you know, corpse commerce, I don't know. But because there is this chain happening.

Great band name, Corpse Commerce. Yeah, you can take that one for free. But they, as you asked, people are coming up with these things to stop the intrusion of people into their loved ones' graves. So some of the examples, one of the earliest examples is something kind of rudimentary, which is layering on the grave. So they would put soil on first, which is normal, that would happen. Then they'd put like a collection of branches on top of that so they would just make it more difficult to dig through. Then they'd put soil again and then another collection of branches

and then cover it off with soil. But presumably for the people who are willing and excited to earn seven pounds digging this grave, that's not going to save poor old granny in the earth, is it? No. Well, actually, granny probably mightn't have been that valuable to them. They're looking at dad who fell down the steps after having a couple of drinks. OK, so not only a fresher corpse, but potentially younger. They want a variety, but the younger corpses will get you more money, yeah.

Okay. But in terms of kind of counteracting some of that layering, so they didn't, you could easily go, right, well, look, they'll just dig through it, it's fine, it takes a little bit of time, but they don't have time. So what they do instead is they find the head of the grave, they go a few centimetres beyond that again, and they start digging down from there,

and then they go into the grave from the top, so they pull them out by the head and drag them up. So they'll have a hook, and they'll pull them up that way. So it's quite technical. Oh, yeah. But it's like it feeds into that kind of industry that you're talking about where there's a problem, will we solve it? It's ingenuity. The demand is creating new skills being, I don't know, developed. The demand is creating new skills being, I don't know, developed. Yeah, and it's almost like legitimizing it in the way that they can come around these things. So that doesn't work particularly well.

Then they move on to coffin collars. So I say, you know, it's quite gruesome in a way. Your loved one dies and they say, we need her to stay in this coffin because we've paid some money for it. So she's got to stay on the ground. And so they affix a collar around the person's neck who has passed away. And then they affix that collar to the bottom of the coffin. But again, people work around that really quickly. I'm going to suggest people will take the rest of the body maybe without the head.

No, they take the head too. They just take off the screws. They just take everything. So you're bringing a toolkit with you to the graveyard. Because because actually without the head it's going to be worth less money to them right okay so they need basically what they in an ideal world what they would have is somebody dies and hands over a body there and then and you have the freshest corpse that you could possibly have but they find ways around the the collar too just by loosening the coffin collar and then just taking the body out in the same way. So this is all it's all very technical and presumably involves some

level of skill or or at least ingenuity and inventiveness people aren't doing this in the middle of the day though are they they're not doing it in broad daylight for everyone to see. No this is all conducted after dark which is why we're featuring it on this podcast. But excellent bit of branding. dark which is why we're featuring it on this podcast but excellent bit of branding thanks very much it is done under the cover of night it has to be because well first of all usually around cemeteries you're going to have high walls that are going to lock you in but people come and go through cemeteries uh all the time but at night obviously there's a little bit more leeway where you will have a you'll have a period of time particularly in graveyards that are in the middle

of cities like grey friars is in edinburgh so you're going to have a period of time, particularly in graveyards that are in the middle of cities like Greyfriars is in Edinburgh. So you're going to have a little bit more time under the cover of darkness. You had to be swift, though. That was one of the things. They're not in there all night. They're in there for an hour if they can be. They're in there as quickly as they can. Remember, the earth is fresh.

It's not going to take them that long to dig up that earth because it's just been placed in there. So they'll get in. They'll get out very quickly. They had, as I said, like with the hook, get that body out really quickly and get on your way. They would then put the body into a sack, carry it over their shoulder as if it was any other piece of meat. It could have been a pig that they were carrying through town. So they would go through town with these sacks on their backs sometimes. So you would often, now I will say often there were routes that they could take that was a little bit more conspicuous, that they could have been a little bit more hidden. But people saw

them, they wouldn't have known what was in the bags, but people definitely saw them. So it's a covert operation. It's a covert operation and it's happening at night. And as a result, when people's loved ones died, for a while, they were putting people in the graveyards to watch over the bodies overnight or watch over the graves more accurately overnight. And that's where you get these kind of watch houses in graveyards at this time coming around where there's somewhere for them to sit safely. It was lit inside. And if people were coming and going through the graveyard, they would see. So these are guards guarding the dead.

Yeah. And they're often relatives of the family as well. But there are some more formal pointies. They can be armed. Yeah. Yeah. So they're often relatives of the family as well. Okay. But there are some more formal appointees. They can be armed, yeah. Yeah, yeah, they can be armed. Okay, so this is a dangerous business to get into then. Like, if you can pull it off, the rewards are substantial, but there are risks. As an escalation then from the coffin collar, what happened was people would stop you trying to even get into the grave.

That was thought to be the most foolproof way of keeping the corpse safe in the ground. So you'd see these mort safes that go up around graves. So I don't know if you've been to as many graveyards as I have at this point. And I know you actually have a fair few graveyards as well. Who are you talking to here? There is those metal railings kind of around the graves and that was supposed to, I mean, that to me always felt a little bit, some of them have open tops. And I was, I always think to myself, well, you've just wasted your time there. But actually it did. It was relatively effective. Others you will see are far more heavy duty. But we're only seeing a certain aspect of that above the ground that goes down over the coffin as well in most cases. So they're really encasing

this. You'd nearly need to go under. So that stop i mean that's really substantial i i have seen a mort safe recently actually in um just a little graveyard of a church that's deconsecrated i think it's part of the church's conservation trust now and it was the only grave in the graveyard to have that and so my next question is about who had the mort safes and who didn't is this a class issue i mean do you get more elaborate mort safes the richer you get? What's going on? Yeah, it is a class issue as everything, particularly at this time, becomes about class ultimately. And I mean, if you are buying a mort safe to go down into the ground, it's quite a big piece of kit that's going to cost you money. So working classes are probably not affording that. Well, they're not. They're simply not affording that. The poorest of the poor are being buried in mass graves sometimes.

So they're sharing their graves. And that was often a way for grave robbers to go in and take bodies from there because they wouldn't even be missed sometimes. But the really wealthy people are building, I guess, mausoleum type mort safes where it's this big stone structure, you know, elaborately decorated with gates on the front. I'm sure you've seen them if you've been to some of those bigger graveyards, like again, Greyfriars is a great example. And they memorialise the dead, they show their wealth, but they also keep their bodies safe. So they're filling so many functions at one time. It's so interesting. We think of death as being this kind of leveller, you know, that everyone is the same when they die, we're all going to the same place, potentially. Actually, in this period, social class and economic wealth are following you

into the grave, and then out again, you know, that how you live when you are alive, really is going to affect how your body is treated after you die. Now, there's an obvious solution to the question of the freshness of the corpse. So we're talking about Burke and Hare. Are they grave robbers? No, is the easiest answer. And there are plenty of people, it's funny, there are plenty of people who become notorious in the 19th century for being grave robbers. We have people like Patrick Murphy and Berne Crouch. These people are usually London based, actually. But I think if you were to ask, you know, people don't know those names. But if you ask somebody who are the most famous grave robbers that you can think of, they will say Burke and Hare. But Burke and Hare are not grave robbers. So let me tell you a little bit more about that.

William Burke and William Hare were both Irishmen who had come to Scotland in the 1820s. They both lived on Tanner's Close, where Hare ran a boarding house with his partner Margaret Laird. When Hare's elderly tenant, Old Donald, died of natural causes in December 1727, he owed Hare £4 in rent. So Hare decided to recoup his loss by selling Donald's body to Professor Robert Knox, the anatomist. He enlisted Burke to help transport the body. Knox paid the pair £7.10 for the remains of old Donald.

Fresh corpses might be bought at a premium price. Burke and Hare smelled opportunity, and in early 1828, when another of Hare's tenants named Joseph seemed not too long for this world, the duo helped the poor, suffering creature on his way. They loaded Joseph with whiskey. They carefully suffocated the man together,

making sure to leave no marks or evidence of trauma to the body, which would impact their profits. Then they transported the departed once more to Knox. Having perfected their method of killing, which was later known as burking, a frenzied spree of murder ensued. Burke and Hare widened their victim profile and targeted the local poor, who they might entice to Hare's lodging house where they were killed. Further victims included sex workers, the elderly and

a young blind boy who Hare brutally murdered by breaking the boy's back across his knee. In total, it's thought that the pair killed at least 16 people in this way, though some estimates suggest this could be much, much higher. It's quite an industry that they set up, really. They go very quickly from taking an opportunity that presents itself to quite routinely and effectively, efficiently getting these bodies to Professor Knox. So how do they get caught in the end? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of, gosh, if it wasn't so grim, it would be ingenious. You know, I mean, in terms of the ways in which people devise for themselves to survive,

they definitely were doing that. Unfortunately, it was kind of a really dastardly way to go about things. One of the reasons why suspicion starts to get pointed in their direction is because, and this is kind of a bit grim as well, people start to recognise some of the victims. Remember, Edinburgh is a relatively small city at this time.

I mean, it's the biggest city in Scotland, but it's not London. It doesn't sprawl as far as London. So if you're in and around the centre of Edinburgh and you're, you know, going between coffee houses and you're going to anatomy lessons and you're a medical student or whatever it might be, you're probably seeing some of the same faces day after day.

Some of those may be, you know, people who are begging on the streets. Some of those may be sex workers that you're probably seeing some of the same faces day after day. Some of those may be, you know, people who are begging on the streets. Some of those may be sex workers that you're familiar with. One of the victims that definitely raised a few eyebrows to begin with was Mary Patterson, who was a sex worker. And some of the medical students, for whatever reason, known to themselves, started to recognise Mary when she appeared on the slab. I mean, that's so tragic that her body ends up unconsentingly in their control for them to experiment on it.

It's so grim. It's just so grim. I mean, in some ways you say it's part of the reason I mean, it's, in some ways, you say it's, you know, it's part of the reason why Burke and Hare are caught in the end. But it's such a grim route to get there. Thank you. I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII, who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. One of the saddest ones for me is the person who's referred to in the newspaper articles at the time as Daft Jamie. Jamie was known around Edinburgh as this really kind of lovable, friendly giant and somebody who everyone was fond of, but had some vagrancy issues. But as a result, was really well known. So when Burke and Hare decided to pick off Jamie, that was a real problem for them because he was loved and he was recognisable.

So as soon as he becomes one of the cadavers, that's really causing problems for them. So there's a few where towards the end, it feels like they're starting to get a little bit messy and they're not thinking about the consequences of who they're putting on Knox's table. It's so interesting that that kind of, it's just this story gives us so much information about life at street level in Edinburgh in the early 19th century,

that we can reconstruct some of these lives that are tragically lost. They are victims of Birkenhead, but we can kind of step back a little bit and see what they were doing, you know, in the days, weeks leading to that moment when their lives are taken and to kind of, you know, people, individuals who may otherwise have disappeared from the historical record or, you know, never have been there to begin with. It also says something about the, again, we'll come back to class, but it says something about the kind of mixing of class in Edinburgh. And I think Edinburgh is unique in this way. Obviously, if you've been to Edinburgh, you might be aware of the tenement style building that most people lived in. And that was an elite home as well as a home for some of

the poorer people. The way it would work is the poorer people lived at the bottom, the richer people lived at the top. So when they're throwing their waste out the windows at the top and shouting, Gardaloo, as it falls down, the poorer people are getting the waste on them outside their doors, down by their windows. The richer people are not. But it also says something about kind of coexisting in a way that probably isn't happening in London to the same extent, where actually, obviously, poverty is very rife in London, but they're not living cheek by jowl in the same way as they are in Edinburgh. Not necessarily in the same buildings, at least. Yeah. And the very poorest are not living in those tenement buildings. But certainly there is a big disparity between who's living at the top of that building and who's living at the bottom.

So the fact that these people can become known says something about that community in Edinburgh and the way working class people on the streets of Edinburgh have formed this kind of safety net in a way for themselves. I mean, it doesn't stack up, but they're able to help with identification. They know what people's movements have been. But the person that really catches them out in the end was their final victim. And she was called Marjorie Campbell Docherty. What do we know about her? So because, as I said before, Hare had this lodging house.

Burke kind of felt that he was missing out a little bit. And he was like, you know what I need? I also need a lodging house. Because he didn't trust, probably rightly, he didn't trust that he was seeing the full extent of the profits from Hare. So Hare was obviously masterminding most of what was going on here

and giving Burke his dividends. Okay, so the cracks between the pair are starting to show their attentions, this mistrust, right? I mean, what's that saying? No trust amongst thieves or something like that? That's the one, yeah. No honour amongst murdering body snatchers. Yeah, body snatching not thieves.

Who'd have thought it? I know. So this kind of suspicion is causing a little bit of anxiety between Burke and Hare. And so Burke has set up his own lodging house, which is overseen by himself and his partner, Helen. He has two other lodgers called James and Anne Grey. But this doesn't really make sense. Burke said to them here, would you mind clearing out there? Do you know my friend Hare? Just go down to his lodging house there just for a while. There's somebody I'd like to have over. And, you know, it's fine. Mary's a friend of ours and she's just visiting and I need just to have a bit of time

with her. So off you go there now and have a lovely time down at Hares. And the two go, they're just like, okay, I've seen a bit. Well, I mean, that says so much about itinerant living of the lower classes, right? And this kind of movement around that you couldn't expect

to be in the same place for very long. And so they do accept that quite readily. But they do come back. And the next day when they come back, they're like, right, we had a lovely time there at Hares. Now, can we go into our room? And by the way, where's that? Where's that woman? Where's Marjorie that you had come visit? And Burke and Helen are just like, oh, no, no, we don't like her anymore. She was flirting with Burke. And so we kicked her out. What a hussy. She should never be allowed into any of these places. Such a shame. And they're like, all right, that's an interesting story, but I'm not getting involved in your family drama.

Let me go back into my room, please. And they're like, just maybe hold on and don't go into your room for a second. And they're like, no, but let us into the room. I can see where this is going. And so then whatever the comings and goings, basically they do get into the room once I think Burke and Helen take a bit of a sidestep somewhere. But they know something's up, basically, because they have belongings in that room. So even if they were a case of going, something's up here, I don't want to stay.

They need to get their belongings because, you know, the valuables are particularly valuable to the working poor. They go in and they discover Marjorie's dead body under the bed in what was their room. So they haven't made that much effort to hide what they've done. I mean, is she under floorboards? Is she just... No, she's just shoved under the bed. No, yeah, she's just shoved under the bed, probably with their belongings, because likely as they put some of their belongings under the bed.

And is she there because they're waiting to sell her body? So they'll be waiting for... If you were to put two and two together, you would imagine she was killed very late the previous, or rather very early that morning. Okay. So they're waiting for the sun to go down. Yeah, exactly.

But it just also goes to show a little bit of a lack of intelligence with Burke because the timing's all off. That body is not as fresh as it could be now and it's not as valuable as it could have been. So there's a few things happening here. Not to mention, of course, the fact that he killed this poor woman. You know, there is also that, of course.

It's also interesting to think about how the women are coming in here. So Hare's partner and Burke's partner. These women are definitely in the know about what's going on at these houses. There's this kind of really fascinating intersection between the domestic space and the street that they're kind of drawing people in to kill them now. You know, I kind of picture them hiding down a dark alley ready to bludgeon you on the head. But actually they are, they're putting on like quite a respectable show. There's a performance.

Yeah. And they're, you know, they're welcoming people into their home where they're putting on quite a respectable show. There's a performance, right? Yeah, and they're welcoming people into their home where they're renting rooms and then killing them there. And actually, it's not quite as kind of gothic and violent as you might expect. And it's more insidious. Far more insidious. That's exactly the word that I was thinking of as you were describing that. I was like, yeah, there's something a lot more kind of unsettling about the ways in which they are doing it and the kind of spaces of home and what happens in home and what happens when you invite somebody into your home, the power that you potentially have over them, even if it's this kind of shared lodging house. It also says the fact that they're able to run these lodging houses means that there is a little bit of money traveling between Burke and Hare because there are some set up costs.

There are some rent that they're going to have to pay or a lease that they're going to have to pay. So there's a little bit of money travelling between them, even if they are from poor backgrounds. But they're becoming a little bit more affluent in some ways. So they offer the Greys a bribe. Basically, once Marjorie's body has been discovered, they offer the Greys a bribe. I mean, that's quite a bold move. Why don't they kill the Greys? Maddy. mean that's quite a bold move why don't they kill the Greys Maddy they're not thinking clearly

they've killed enough people 16 people I don't necessarily want to add to the list I just think in their line of work is that not an opportunity

that also solves the problem in front of them here's the thing right so say that's the opportunity but it had never happened that there was two together before okay

so they usually isolate and usually isolate vulnerable people. It's too much of a risk. It's too much. One could run and then they're in trouble. Well, they're in trouble anyway. Somebody has a moral compass in this story. The Greys refuse the bribe and they go to the police. And as a result, Helen and Burke and Margaret and Hare, they're all arrested and they start finger pointing at each other.

And Burke and Margaret and Hare, they're all arrested and they start finger pointing at each other. OK, so we have Burke and Hare and they've set up this business model together where they are killing people. They're selling the bodies to the professor at the anatomy school. They've been caught out. They've done one death too many. They're going to be arrested. What's going to happen to them now? Sorry, this is just a total tangent. But like, can you imagine them going on Dragon's Den trying to sell that business model? Who would buy in on this? Or they're just going, right, we're here today. And we've got this crook in one hand. And what

we would like to do is take up bodies from the ground just to sell them to doctors. And they'll be like, hmm, interesting, interesting. I've seen this business model before. And they're just like, I know, but not like this. We're actually killing them. So they managed to convince these people. But anyway, yeah, the next bit of the story kind of unravels and lets us know what the kind of formal consequences were. OK, so. Having been arrested, the details of Birkenhair's gruesome activities quickly unraveled. Having been arrested, the details of Burke and Hare's gruesome activities quickly unravelled. The police attempted to gather evidence of their crimes,

but eventually the Lord Advocate, Sir William Ray, determined to secure a conviction, offered Hare immunity if he testified against Burke. Hare took the offer. On the 24th of December, 1828, the trial began, and by Christmas Day, Burke had been found guilty of the murders of Marjorie Docherty, Mary Patterson and James Wilson. He was sentenced to death. His execution was scheduled for the 28th of January 1829, and on that day, a crowd of over 25,000 people gathered at the lawn market to see

the serial killer swing. His body, perhaps fittingly, was donated to the study of anatomy. The medical students we know now took macabre mementos from his dissected body, including patches of his skin which were used to cover various types of objects, including books and card holders. Burke's skeletal remains are displayed at Surgeon's Hall Museum in Edinburgh to this day. Alongside his remains, you can also see his death mask and a moulding of Hare's face taken while he was in prison. So I have a lot of questions. Burke is only found guilty of three murders.

Yeah, they kind of go with what they have because there will be no need to do anything else. I mean, they are not so concerned with victim status at this point. It's more about conviction. And they would rather get a conviction of somebody, and in this case only one of them, than have nothing at all where some of the other evidence might be too sketchy. I mean, bear in mind now those bodies are dissected. Nobody seems to have seen anything prior to that or else they would have reported it.

The only real evidence that we have against other people for other murders is that Burke and Hare are pointing fingers at one another now. So it's Hare's word against Burke, essentially. Yes. So why does he get that offer? Why is he seen as the weak link between them? Oh, I think the opposite, you know. The opposite.

Yeah, I think Hare is seen as the one who is clever enough to take the offer. Ever the opportunist, I should say. So I think the Lord Advocate says we need a conviction. It's happening one way or the other. So if it means we have to lose one of them, you know, it kind of goes to show the function that execution is fulfilled

because obviously they will have known that found guilty, whoever is found guilty here is going to be executed. And as long as there's a hanging, we can put this to rest. But without a hanging, this is a disaster.

People will lose their jobs because it would just be such a public outcry. There's been so much attention drawn to these now murders as we know. So someone needs to swing. So someone needs to swing.

Who's the person that we can most likely do it? Obviously, Burke's not giving the details. He needs to convincingly convict Hare for whatever reason. Or maybe he's trying to,

but it's just not very convincing or he doesn't seem like a very convincing turncoat. Hare, on the other hand, again... He's happy to do it. He's happy to do it. He's obviously doing it coherently enough that they trust the evidence he's giving, as much as you can trust a serial killer, but they're happy to use his evidence, let's put it that way. And the gamble that he is willing to take, and he's kind of clever enough to take the gamble. What happens to their partners? They get off.

I think it's kind of felt that it's potentially a little unseemly for women to be involved in this kind of activity. There is no doubt in my mind that they knew what was going on. There is also very little doubt in my mind that they will have aided in some of the murders, particularly as they're taking place. But presumably women were body snatching all over Britain. It wasn't an exclusively male activity. There's actually very little evidence to suggest that there were women body snatching, actually.

But that's what makes Margaret and Helen all the more interesting. They weren't actually the formal wives of Birkenhair. Other wives existed in Ireland, actually, but these were the partners that they were living with. But there's no way that within this domestic sphere, they weren't helping with these murders. It was just happening. It's inconceivable that it wasn't. And I guess for the people who came to stay in their house, in the rooms that they were renting, they offered, I suppose, a kind of a veneer of legitimacy, right? They represented the domestic space and welcomed people in. And it probably seemed a little bit more, I don't know, welcoming and safe if there were women there. Yeah. And it seems more every day if you open the door and there's a husband and wife seemingly team welcoming you into their lodging house going, oh, I'll be fine here.

It's not just some creepy robber. I'm not going to, he's not going to kill me in my sleep. Just don't look under the bed. Yeah, don't find Marjorie under the bed. But they go on nonetheless to have this huge influence over grave robbing. It seems to be that they are the kind of poster boys for grave robbing, even though they never actually robbed a grave. Do you think that a lot of that, the sort of celebrity or the celebration, at least around them,

comes from the treatment of Burke's body afterwards? Do you think that there's a kind of morbid fascination there and a kind of gruesomeness that has endured over the centuries? Yes, I do. It's interesting, actually, isn't it? Because here's the thing. It says something about how we view death and how we view bodies as well. We are interested enough to display the book bound in his skin in a museum.

And then the question comes, well, how different does that make us from them? Absolutely. You know, he didn't consent to his body being used in that way just like his victims didn't consent to the medical experimentation that was on them there's a feeling of sort of revenge he's got his comeuppance i guess yeah yeah that he's treated the same as how his victims were treated the execution was not enough you know and his skeleton is still there it's really evocative to kind of walk into and it looks so small actually the skeleton now skeleton now, thinking back to it.

The death masks, as I say, they're lined up beside it. It's a strange embodiment or an attempt to embody the people who did those crimes. Yeah. We have a sort of, I guess, a morbid fascination with, you can go to Madame Tussauds and see the murderer's gallery. We have an obsession and an interest in being playfully close to those people without being put in harm's way. You know, we want to sort of flirt a little bit with the idea of meeting them. But in reality, of course, we wouldn't want to. And it strikes me as well that Burke and Hare were happy to be flirted with, if that makes sense.

They kind of skirted that notoriety, particularly towards the end. I mean, I say that, but Hare disappears. We do not know where he ends his days. We don't know where he went. There is a theory that he went to Ireland, that he went back down to London. We don't know. So he was never really brought to justice, as far as we know. There is a theory as well that he was killed

not long after this by a mob of people seeking revenge. Annie and all of these things could be true, but we don't actually know what is. I have a feeling that if he was killed, we'd know about it because people wouldn't have been able to keep that quiet. They would want to kind of brag that,

okay, he got away, but I brought him to justice. So it's an interesting one, but it's also interesting that it's come down to us as a history of grave robbing, as opposed to a history of serial killers, which is, you know, both are bad, but one is far more nefarious than the other.

Yeah, it's so interesting. And I love the term. I mean, I don't love the term. It's terrible. But the fact that when they were killing people, it becomes known as burking. Yeah. And this term kind of has a life of its own afterwards, right? That people take this term up and apply it to other murderers in London, to Burke someone. It also suggests that Burke was potentially the hired help in the kind of physical side of things. He's the henchman. He's the henchman. He's going to club you over the head, whereas Hare is maybe doing the more strategic kind of thing. But I have a question before we finish up on this, because this is Burke and Hare. There's a movie, there's numerous books,

people go and see the site where Burke was hanged. Let's talk very briefly before we wrap up about Professor Robert Knox, the anatomist. Is he also guilty? Like, do we think, do you think that he knew what he was receiving? Do you think he knew what the two lads were up to? Yes. Yeah, I think so. Absolutely. He fled as well. So if he was like, well, strike me down. They were killing these people all the time. I had no idea. He knew. He had to.

I mean, the infamy of grave robbing, the fact that it was a sort of an epidemic in Edinburgh and that it was such a problem, presumably most, if not all, medical professionals would know where the bodies were coming from. The question is, you know, they were using that to advance medical knowledge. Is that OK? No. If people aren't consenting, did they see it as OK at that time? Yes, probably.

They didn't ask too many questions. They didn't ask questions. No, they just handed over the money. And I mean, the thing is, we're talking about, as you say, medical professionals here, like medical professionals at the top of the game as well. So they're going, oh, yeah, there's James now. And listen, it looks to me a little bit like he might have been smothered because I am quite skilled in this area and this is my area of specialty.

So yeah, no, he was definitely knocked off. But sure, look, we need the body. Let's just leave it there and we'll say nothing. And then go, oh, lads, do you have any other women aged between 35 to 45? Because we could do with a little bit of an experiment. You know, we talked earlier in the episode about this kind of chain of conspiracy when it came to, in this case, murder, but grave robbery too, where it's going, you inform me of this and I'll inform the next person and then they'll get the body. There's a whole network of people involved and, you know, maybe not to the extent of placing orders for people, but potentially that was happening, you know. And, you know, maybe not to the extent of placing orders for people, but potentially that was happening, you know.

And I think it's a really sad and dark foundation that a lot of medical knowledge is built on. It's a part of medical history that has been, I guess, sensationalized. But at the end of the day, you know, these were bodies that were used to advance medical knowledge. And that is an intrinsic part of that history and that knowledge that we still, I guess we still use today. And people held him guilty at the time because the mob went to his house and tried to chase him

and they decreed his guilt on him as far as they were concerned. Did this case have any impact on the law? This case, particularly, no. But the Anatomy Act did come in in 1832. I mean, this will have been taken into consideration. It just meant that the regulation was a little bit more formalised after 1832. But they wouldn't have done it in reaction to this alone. Specifically to this, yeah. Yeah, it was just because there was a space.

But clearly, from the public reaction that you're talking about, there was a call for change, I guess. Absolutely. And then it was mostly criminals' bodies that were being offered up after execution for anatomists to do their experiments and do their kind of discoveries on. But it does, it does. It's a fascinating case, I think. And, you know, it's well covered, but there's always something to talk about when we come to look at Birkenhair. And it says something about what happens at night time once the kind of the light of day goes. And in Edinburgh, I'm living there at the moment, and it gets very atmospheric in the city. And what's happening once the lights go out, and once there is a whole new code of behaviour that comes into play at night time, and Burke and Hare definitely try to exploit some of those behaviours for their own financial ends,

as I think we've established does Professor Robert Knox. Thank you for listening to After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. If you enjoyed this episode, you can follow us along wherever you get your podcasts and do leave us a review. And do leave us a review. Well, thank you for listening to this episode of After Dark. Please follow this show wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. Don't forget, you can listen to all these podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com forward slash subscribe.

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