Morbid - Episode 447: Burke & Hare Part 1

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Throughout the first three decades of the nineteenth century, doctors and medical schools across Europe struggled to find adequate supplies of bodies that could be used for the purposes of teaching in a medical theater. The outsized demand for fresh cadavers led to the rise of “resurrection men", AKA Graverobbers. Disgusting duo William Burke and William Hare found what they believed to be a wildly easy way to provide doctors with a steady stream of recently deceased bodies. In the end, they brutally killed at least sixteen people. The crimes left an chilling mark on Edinburgh specifically, and all of Scotland in the end. Thank you to Dave White for research assistance. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Oh, okay. Getting, getting cute with the springy, Hey, what's up? What's up, fellas? What's up, fellas and... Fellers. Flores, faunas and boxes. Oh, okay, getting cute with the spring equinox, I see. The spring of it all. What is it, Ostarra? I just learned about something like that. Yeah, it's something like that.

It's witchy. Yeah, it's like welcoming spring. And I feel like we're all kind of feeling this way. Usually I'm, I never want to hang on to winter, but I'm never super eager to get out of it. I'm usually just like, okay, spring is coming. Like cool. That's how I feel. That you see here, but this year I was like, get me the fuck out of winter. This has been a fucking terrible winter. It's, well, we had a lot of family stuff going on. We had which sicknesses. Sicknesses, yeah.

Like, it's just been a shit winter. Too much going on. Yeah, I've lost. Lots of loss up in the air. Yeah, just it's been shit. A lot of stress. So much stress. Like, you guys were all feeling it and our voices, I think,

because we got so many, which like, we can't say it enough, like we really appreciate that you guys give a shit, because the amount of messages we've gotten that are like, you guys okay. Well, it's crazy, like clearly we've been going at it. You get this for a while with you guys, because like you know, you can hear the change in our voice. I know.

Even when we don't think we're showing it, we think we're putting on the show, like the show must go on. Yep. Get rid of whatever's going on behind the scenes. I feel that sentiment so hard. The show must go on. It's true because it has to. And you never want to let you down when shit happens. Like we are here to entertain you.

You know what I mean? To inform you of things. You know, so it's like we're very much in that mindset of the show must go on. But to know that like you said, you guys always know, even when we think we're hiding it. Like that tells us like, how close we are to this community. I'm like a little familiar. And we just appreciate you.

This is like, it's like really nice. It's nice, but I also, it was like a slap because I was like, oh shit, so it's leaking out a little bit. I know. The good news is, like where spring is here, we're feeling a lot more, we feel like we are in a good place,

like schedule wise, like you know, how we went, we kind of changed it to the OG way of things. It's feeling good. Well, and astrologically things are changing a bit right now and like planets are moving into different signs and houses that things are a little more stable. That's what we need. Except I think Aquarius is moving into Pluto next week,

and that's going to bring some kind of major transformation. The last time that Aquarius was, I think it's Aquarius entering Pluto is what it is. And the last time it happened was in the 1700s. Oh, damn. It's not nuts. And it's a time of like, what's is. And the last time it happened was in the 1700s. Oh, damn. It's not nuts. And it's a time of like, what's the word, the war? The havin' revolution.

A time of the war. It's the time of like revolution. Oh wow. Yeah, crazy. So that could be like great or really bad. Well, I think it is. Like revolution, like revolution. Or it can be really bad.

It's gonna probably coincide with like all the aliens that's happening right now. I'm not even joking or bad. I mean, I'm not even happening right now. I'm not even joking, you're bad. I mean, I'm not even joking, you're bad. I'm not even shitting your dick. No way, you're not. I can tell. But you know what, we're in a good place.

It's spring. And the side, happy spring. I'm feeling good. I got some good cases coming up that I'm feeling excited to tell you guys about, just because like, you know I love an old timey like weird history case. You do? I got it. I got a good one here that I'm really excited about and it just burped a little. I'm sorry. That's okay. It happened. You know, sometimes you just see kit. You can't make a stop.

It just a rough kit. Stop, stop, stop. You know? It's not. But I'm going to be doing Burke and It just stops. You know what I'm saying? But I'm gonna be doing Birken hair today and it's gonna be a two-parter. So it's gonna be this week, I'm gonna be doing Birken hair. Damn girl, you're on a two-parter like. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? I love a multi-part.

Yeah, I'm gonna. I like when you do that. I love some really, really intense long cases. When it gives me a little more time to wrap my mouth. There you go, so it works out. And I just think it's good. You know, you get a whole week of one really intense long cases. When it gives me a little more time to wrap my mouth. There you go. So it works out. And I just think it's good. You know, you get a whole week of one really intense long case. I like it.

I'm excited about it. This one's a wild one. And it also takes place in Edinburgh for at least part of it. Ooh. And this is a wild one because we're going to do, I'm going to do this case and then we're going to talk about maybe next week or whenever. We're going to talk about those, these little mini coffins that were found way later. And we're going to get into detail, don't worry. But there's

a theory that it's connected to this case, which is a nice continuation. So you have to look forward to a lot of Birken hair. And the recent, the coming days. Okay, dokey. So throughout the first three decades of the 19th century, doctors and med schools all across Europe, they really struggled to find enough bodies that they could use because this is the time when they were using bodies, like corpses for anatomical teaching. In the surprise of that, they were having a hard time

finding bodies back in that time. Because they didn't want to get like plague bodies or anything like that. You know, like you didn't, you wanted like fresh. Yeah, fresh bodies that were not sick. Presumably, you know, if you could get them where it's in there's no trauma and stuff, it would be helpful. Because you're really trying to do like, I mean, those would be good too for certain things, but yeah. You're really trying to do like, I mean those would be good too for certain things, but yeah.

Now they basically this Demand for fresh bodies and how is becoming so hard to find them this led to the rise of what was called Resurrection men. Oh, which that doesn't sound good cool band name. You call them. This is kind of a tongue-in-cheek name That was given to Gray robbers. Yeah, who medical students turn to a lot for fresh corpses. Isn't that crazy thinking of like, just like, like, hoi-di-toi-di people in the medical field, like, ma-ha-ha, I don't know.

Yeah, well, it is because they're looking, they're basically overlooking the crime of Greybropper and the ethics surrounding that. Just for the pursuit of medical advancement. I feel like really. I guess what you kind of have to, you know, what the time you don't have to. But at the time, that's what was going on.

It was very frequent. Resurrection men were a real thing. Oh, it wasn't like a weird thing. And in Edinburgh, Scotland, Dr. Robert Knox was a very highly respected surgeon. And he found what he believed to be a very reliable pipeline of fresh bodies. Okay.

And he found, and it was really hard to find that. You would find this resurrection man, maybe you could get a couple out of them, but you were gonna have to look around for it. It was not easy. This guy, however, was like, I found a good steady stream of bodies to use. See, that makes me feel like he's working alongside a serial killer.

Well, he was working alongside William Burke and William Hare. The two Williams, Burke and Hare. Oh, no, it's like Tom and Tom. Yeah, exactly. That's not good. No. Anyone see that mid-season trailer? The mid-season trailer, in case you don't know what we're talking about.

Oh, my God, the end of it. When he says, what can I do for you? What do you think? Could I get you anything, you said anything? Or no, she says, do you want anything? Do you want anything? She says, I want you to die. She says, for you to die.

Like, whoa, yeah, but that's for another day. But once we get to the, just wait, once we get to those reunions and those episodes come and we'll talk more about it. For real. But yeah, so this Dr. Robert Knox, he was absolutely comfortable with the fact that William Burke and William Hare were providing him a steady stream of bodies to use in his medical teachings.

And throughout 1828, Burke and Hare supplied Knox with nearly 20 corpses. Uh-huh. They got a very decent profit out of that. I bet they did. But we're, we're Birkenhaar just resurrection men? No, I don't think so. They're just really good at their jobs.

No. Always finding fresh bodies. Nothing is like ever, like if it's too good to be true, it's not true. Exactly. So during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Western world kind of strayed away from the original thinking that, you know, a dead body was the most, I'd start to explain, like, you know how in the beginning, in Victorian times and whatnot, death and bodies were treated

a certain way. There was a lot of respect. It was a big to-do. It was a big to-do, like a lot of ethics surrounding a dead body, a lot of rituals. Importance placed on the body. A lot, the body itself was a real like beacon of ethics and all that kind of stuff. Sure. This, you know, in the late 18th, early 19th century, that's when they began to stray away from that a bit.

And it was more like a body's a body. It kind of did. It was like a more enlightened era where advances in medical science were kind of reshaping this thought process a lot. Because people didn't think that anybody was still lurking around in their body, right? It became more of a clinical situation. You know, like medical theaters became more of a thing. People were watching these dissections.

It was just, it really flipped the whole thing on its ear. And in the early 19th century England, trainee doctors, so medical students, and those hoping to become surgeons were required to dissect at least three corpses before moving forward in their training. That's, which, I like that. Now, that's a similar thing.

You're required to do gross thing. You're required to do gross anatomy. You're required to do that. So it stuck around. And as these trainees needed more and more hands-on experience, the availability of bodies for dissection kind of became entangled a bit with the with the medical school student fees. Okay. So to put it simply, the more bodies of school had access to, the more hands-on training they could offer, and the more hands-on training they could offer, the more they could charge in student fees.

Makes sense. So this, what once was like, we need to do this training, that's important, so they can become good doctors, suddenly became entangled with money, and then it becomes something totally different. Money is the root of all the truth. And truth is. So of course, for the purposes of training exercises, like we were saying, only recently

deceased bodies would release a feist here. That's where that issue came from, that we were just talking about. So this created a man that was far awaying the supply at the time. And the only legal supply of bodies for the purpose of dissection were those who had actually been executed at the gallows. Oh, okay. Yeah. Which makes sense. Which at the time was only about 50 people per year.

Okay, well, so that's good. That's good. And not for this. It's not giving you a great supply of people. But like at the time, executions themselves were heavily attended by spectators. The dissections were also heavily attended social events. They often took on kind of like a carnival atmosphere.

Yeah. There was a lot of showmanship involved, a lot of theater. It's like the, I think you did a whole episode on that way early on in the podcast. And so we were talking about how like the execution, execution, yeah. Yeah, and that's definitely what happened with like dissections in medical theaters. When it was like a new carnival to go to,

it's probably how they saw it. Macabre thing that was happening before you were very eyes. And at the Royal College of Surgeons and London, for example, early 19th century instructor, professor, professor Giovanni Aldini, he was known to perform tricks in the form of like, basically Macabre experiments on corpses. Don't love.

He would make disembodied heads open their eyes with like electrical shock. Oh no. He would have like a dead hand clutch things. He's having a little too much fun with it. Yeah, he would use galvanic experimentation. And this involves using electrical sparks, like static electricity,

to demonstrate that it could cause different muscles to twitch and even move a dissected specimen. Wow, that's... It's interesting and it's fascinating that you can do that. It's just a matter of, should you do that? Exactly, that's the thing you can do that. Yes, but should you? Also, you saying,

Yeah. Go on, Nick took me to a place of failing every science course I've ever taken. There you go. Well, and this made me look into galvanism a little bit, because I was like, I'd never heard of that. So I'd heard like a little bit about making things move with electricity. But a little side note about galvanism, it's really fascinating. In 1751, England passed the Murder Act.

And this act allowed the bodies of recently executed murderers to be used for medical experimentation. So that's how they were able to get the body from the gallows. This way the demand for corpses for medical colleges would be aided. And also the murderer in their eyes was suggested to also subject it, excuse me, to having his body dissected, which at that time was still considered a desecration, and just another form of post-traumist punishment. Whatever they had done. Okay.

So, this is important in a second. So, just remember that putting it in my pocket. But in 1780, and that Italian professor, Luigi Galvani, was the one who suddenly found, or excuse me, wasn't that professor, it was a relation to that other. He was the one who suddenly found that he could use jolt of electricity to make the muscles of deceased and dissected frogs at the time. Twitch around and look like they were alive.

I love frogs. Once he discovered this, others quickly started using this method of experimentation on other animals as well, dead animals. Yes. Galvani's nephew, a physicist named Giovanni Aldini, who just talked about, actually used the body of an ox to do this.

Wow. He cut the ox's head off and used electricity to make its tongue move around. I just like don't think you have to. I just like don't want to, I don't want to go to that show. Yeah, I'm also. Well, weird. But yeah Yeah, I'm also weird. But yeah, it's a little weird.

And once word got out about this though, people began to attend the demonstrations where people, where they would like electrify cows, pigs, other animal heads as like a show. A human species. A human species. A human species. Yeah. So in November 18, 18, a Scottish chemist Andrew Yurrie, I believe it is, took shit to another level. He had not only conducted these experiments, but he did so on recently executed murders because of the murder act.

And he did it for the reason of believing he could use electricity, not just to reanimate particular muscles in a corpse. He believed that he could bring an entire corpse back to life. Well, Dr. Frankenstein, here we go. On this November evening in 1818, Yuri did a truly theatrical demonstration in front of a theater of onlookers on a 35-year-old murderer named Matthew Clyde's Tale. He had murdered his fellow coal miner

who was an 80-year-old man. She's a scratch, yeah. Rebecca. And he had used a pickaxe. Oh my God, monster. So you're gonna try to bring this man back to life. That's the thing. So he was in an anatomical theater full of people watching

and he managed for over an hour to use electrical current directed through rods at different nerve points to make it look like the dead murderer was breathing. Oh no. Like his chest went up and down and they made his hand point at people in the crowd. Wow. Yeah. it looked like the dead murderer was breathing. Like his chest went up and down. And they made his hand point at people in the crowd. Wow. Yeah.

They needed a hobby. They needed a different hobby. Yeah, they needed something. I was going to say this was their hobby. They needed it. Unfortunately, Bravo. They need a Bravo. Not that long ago, every meal or snack felt like I was settling for something that I didn't

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Rage, horror, despair, anguish, and ghastly smiles. You. United their hideous expression in the murderous face. Ser passing far the wildest representations of a fuselie or a keen, an actor and a painter. At this period, several of the spectators were forced to leave the apartment from terror or sickness, and one gentleman fainted, same. And he said he thought the experiment was important,

but not really fruitful, because even if he had managed to revive this man from the dead, he was bringing back a murderer. Exactly. And that's not awesome. So either way, interesting, and since this was something happening at the time in a medical college,

it seems like an interesting side quest for me to take. I just had to. So back to the resurrection man of this time. And the early 19th century skilled trades people could kind of, they could expect to make in their trades, like regular trades. They could make between five and 10 shillings for 72 hour grueling work week.

Yay! By contrast, selling a fresh cadaver could net you as many as 20 guineas, which is around 420 shillings. Oh, shit. That's from the medical training schools. Under the circumstances, the imbalance between supply and demand created an economic opportunity that while it's pretty ghoulish and a little hideous, it would be hard for a lot of people

at the time to pass up. Because remember, like, these are people hard up in really bad situations. They're a little desperate at this point. Makes sense. So that's at least what you have to think of when you think of a perspective at the time. I'm not saying I would do it. I'm just saying I'm not in those dire straits

that they were in. Right. Now also in England, the penalty for unlawful disinterment was a small fine or up to six months in jail. Wow. So, certainly horrified the public, grave robbing, but grave robbing in general wasn't really taken that seriously by the authorities either, because that's not that big of a penalty. Penalty, Penalty, for all.

Yeah, so in fact, while procuring fresh bodies was typically left to grave robbers and resurrection men, and sometimes to a lesser extent students would actually go out and find them themselves. It was like a hazing ritual. Yeah, literally. It was not entirely unheard of for a professor to help in the process.

He was getting desperate. Especially if they hope to obtain a special prize. So there's that. Now, it was the promise of good money that caused normal people to head out to cemeteries and collect these bodies. They would use grappling hooks and wood spades because these were less noisy than like metal tools

that would get them caught in the act. And these resurrection men, they would also be called exumators, I believe it's how you say that. Or lifters, that's also what they're called. They could put in very little effort with the right tools and they earned more than they would earn in a week's time in one night. Damn. Yeah.

Now in Edinburgh, several safeguards were actually installed in cemeteries across the city to make sure this wasn't happening because it was such a big problem. Yeah. These included watchtowers. They have mort-safe which were large. You can look them up online. They're large iron cages. That's sat over a grave site to prevent body snatches. Oh, I think scene photos of them. At the obituary show, they yes, they showed a mort-safe. So if you haven't gotten your tickets to the obituary show, they, yes, they, they showed a more safe. So if you haven't gotten your tickets to the obituary, US tour, you should do that because it's fucking hilarious and you learn a lot. Yeah, but these protective measures, they definitely limited more the procurement of

cadavers, which was making things harder and making medical, the medical colleges in Edinburgh get cadavers from London, Liverpool or Ireland. They were costing more money in that situation. And probably the reward went up because it was a harder thing to do. Exactly. The harder it is to procure something, people find nefarious ways to get it. I love the way that you just said nefarious. I know. I don't know why I said it like that.

You were in Scotland. I usually say nefarious, but I don't know why I was like nefarious. Nefarious. Yeah. Oh, what was I gonna say? I don't know. And that's where the problem was.

It's like if something's harder to get, people are gonna find nefarious ways to get it. Oh, that's what I was gonna say. Yeah, it's not the catch it's the chase. Exactly. So with the dissection of dead human bodies serving both a scientific and entertaining tool, a function at the time, and the value of the recently dead now shooting up there at a premium, it was only a matter of time before the criminal and pretty unscrupulous people turn to not only

digging these bodies up. Oh god, but turn to other ways. Murder! To get bodies. That's exactly. We're gonna turn to murder to meet demand. Oh no. And at the time none, we're going to be as prolific or dare I say efficient at doing this than Edinburgh's Birkenhair. Oh no. So let's talk about Burke and hair. Both Burke and hair had a tendency to exaggerate their lives.

Okay. Both of them, their origin stories, their achievements. It's giving Henry Lee Lucas and an honest, honest tool. Yeah. So at this point, it's difficult to really discern back from fiction and, you know, there's some things from the street. I know because they're just liars. They lie out of their face into your face, so it's just not good.

But there are definitely some facts that we know are true. Okay. So William Burke was born in Liam DeBurke in 1792 in County Tyrone, Ireland. He was the son of Neil Burke, who was a laborer. And while many in late 18th century Ireland were very poor and made a meager living performing manual labor, William Burke's upbringing seems to be a little more fortunate than those around him. He received a fair education it's described as. He created, right? And he found work as a servant to a Presbyterian minister.

But it didn't take long for him to get a little tired of that work, and he moved on. So from there, he tried his hand at being a weaver, a baker, a shoemaker, a candlestick maker. I was waiting for that. And then he turned to the Donnagal militia in 1809, where he served as a personal attendant to one of the senior officers.

I was going to say that sounds intense. It is. And it was during this time with the Milisha, that William Burke married Margaret Colman, who was a young woman from the town of Bellina. Well, that's a pretty town name. Right, Bellina. He, that's actually a... It's like the chicken's name in Return to Oz.

Bellina? I believe it's Bellina's name in Return to Oz. Bellina? I believe it's Bellina. Look at you. Yeah. Look at you quoting horror films. Go watch Return to Oz. I love that that's a horror film. I love it. It is. It really is. But he went to live with Margaret Coleman after the militia was disbanded in 1816 and he found employment with a quote, country gentleman and continued living with his wife

and her family. Okay. That was an until, that they lived together with the family until an ongoing argument with her father made it a little unlivable. That'll do it. The main point of their contention was Berks' obsession with leasing his father in law's land.

But his father in law refused to transfer the lease of his land into Burke's name. So Burke was just pissed and just straight up abandoned the family in 1817. Because he couldn't even... He was like, fuck you guys and he just went to Scotland. He never returned to Ireland and he never saw his wife again. Holy I was gonna say they were married Yep, just by I'm out what it well that goes to show you exactly who this man is exactly His father-in-law wouldn't transfer the lease of his land and to his name and he was like warm out He's like I don't know her. I don't know her no way rolls up the window

So while there are some surviving documents to verify William Burke's origins, we can't say the same for William Harris. His life before and after this whole story is a little mysterious, but some of it's questionable. We can find bits and pieces of it, but by most accounts, he was born in Ireland in the early 1790s. Okay. According to George McGregor, who is the author of a history surrounding this case, and the resurrectionist times and movement. Hair was, quote, brought up without any education or proper moral training and rapidly slipped

into a vagabonding kind of life. His temper was brutal and ferocious, and when he was in liquor, he was perfectly unbearable. Oh, no. Like his later pal Burke, William Hare left Ireland for Scotland in late 1817, or maybe early 1818, and he found work as a lumper at the docks in Hope Town. What's that?

Basically, lumpers unloaded the shimmings. They were just called lumpers, which is hilarious. But it was 1818 during his early days of working at the canal, that William Burke met Helen McDougall. She was a widower at a very young age, and McDougall had two children to support. So she took up with Burke and Madison, and the couple lived for all intents and purposes as a married couple. I was going to say they just couldn't get married because he already had a wife back home. Although they would remain together for the decade leading up to Burke's eventual death,

it seems they never really had a loving or nice relationship. They both were heavy drinkers. They fought constantly. relationship. They both were heavy drinkers. They fought constantly. Their arrangement seemed like it was tolerable and acceptable to both of them, but I wasn't like a lovely situation out of convenience. Yeah, which is unfortunate for everybody, especially the kids. Yeah, in due to economic instability, Burke and McDougal moved around a lot and eventually made their way to Edinburgh in 1827. There they took up residence in a boarding house in Portsburg, excuse me, where Burke had planned to set up a cobbler shop. The home was actually owned by William Hare and Margaret Laird. So I wish it was Lair. Lair and Hair. Lair and Hair.

A Burke had actually, William Burke, had met Margaret Laird a few months before, actually, so he knew her. That's how they got the room at the boarding house. And Laird had convinced Burke and McDougal to move into the boarding house she had inherited from her previous husband, who had died, I think, two years earlier. Everybody died in. It's that time, you know? Yeah. It's about that time.

Like many accommodations in Edinburgh's Westport at the time, the boarding house was not great. It was known as Tanner's Close. It catered to poor immigrants who'd come to the city looking for work. So they didn't, they were not treated well. That's nonsense, so this house was not well maintained. It was what historians have since described as dirty, low and wretched. Awesome. The rooms of these boarding houses were filled with a ton of beds as many beds as you could get. Windows were at street level, so they looked directly in. So there was no privacy. But there was one smaller room at the back of this boarding house that had only one window

looking out over a pigstie. Nice, so, you know, an actual pigstie. Moving on out. And this is actually the particular setting where a lot of the crimes of Burke and Hare would eventually unfold. Okay. Looking out over a pigstie.

Oh God, that's awful. Yeah. It's giving Willie picked in. Yeah, it's not great. So it would be easy and probably reasonable to assume that body snatching for profit was the work of lazy men, hoping to get rich on a very short night of work. Yeah.

But like we said before, that's not necessarily true. In the case of Burke and Hair, both were very hard workers, like that is one thing you can say about them. That's what it sounds like. They actually continued to work their respective trades. Birkenhaire was a cobbler and Hare was a boatman or a salesman and to keep up with appearances. Even after they were selling bodies.

And in fact, looking at the year where they're springing in, author of Birkenha Hair, Berk and Hair the book, Owen Dudley Edwards, describes them as quote, excellent examples of immigrant enterprise, whose ultimate business diligently answered the needs of the host culture. Basically, despite the horrific acts in very ghoulish nature of the business

that they were entering, Berk and Hair saw a need for cadavers and were able to meet the need through hard work and ingenuity, making them a good representation of work ethic at first. Keywords at first. At first. But then. Because remember, we are talking about a time

where people are desperate. We're talking about a time where people are living in fucking care of our conditions, especially immigrants. We are talking about people just desperate to get enough food on the table for their family or feed their kids, keep a roof over the kids house. Those are the people that would turn to this for quick money. Yeah.

Berk and hair in the beginning, we're doing just that. Yeah. But then they turn to murder and that's not okay. I'm not saying the grave robbing is okay. I'm saying that desperation is a part of this story, totally, in the beginning. Right. This is where it ends. Yeah.

This is where the desperation, meager working, you know, living conditions, all this stuff. That's where we, there's always a line. We're drawing a line right here. So nobody say that I'm saying that it's fine that you murder people from medical schools. I'm saying that right now. No, don't say that.

This is where it ends. Not okay. So again, this is before shit got really real. So, burk hair and their women, Laird and McDougal, were all trying to make at least a slightly honest living. Again, their working at, Burke was a cobbler, Hair was a boatman, Laird was a land lady, and McDougal was selling Burke shoes.

Okay. So, they were all working together, they were all working in honest living. But around November 29th, 1827, things turned nefarious. And then imagine saying that you had a pair of burkshoes. About sales went down. That'd be wild. Now this evening, one of Laird's tenants, who was an aged pensioner,

that's how he's described, named Donald, he died in the house. Sure. And he died of natural cause. Oh, okay. He actually did. This is one where he actually did. Some sources say he died of natural cause. He actually did. This is one where he actually did. Some sources say he died of drop C, which is a Dima. And that was honestly. So this

was often the case for pensioners and transients at the time. Donald was living was on living credit, which means he had an arrangement with lared that he would pay for his living, the Ruforver said, when his pension came. He would receive that quarterly, but unfortunately, Donald had died before receiving his next pension. So Laird and Hare had also loaned him money at one point. So they are like the runners of this boarding house, obviously. They'd loaned him money.

They were letting him live on this like, you pay me when your pension comes. So now he's gone. They're not getting the pension. They're not getting their money back. Uh huh. So he actually owed them a fairly large sum of money, which is not like a bad thing. They, they loaned him the money. Yeah.

Everything was fine. It was on the up end. They were now expected to forfeit that. But in his confession later given after his arrest, Burke explained that hair had informed the authorities of the man's death, as you should. And he was hoping that if nothing else, they would just take the body out and the parish would pay for the burial. Because he was like, not only am I not getting paid for the living expenses, I'm not getting the money back that we loaned him.

And now I'm expected to bury this guy. Oh, he would have been expected to pay for the burial. So he was like, I'm not doing that. So he called the authorities being like, you just got to take him out of here. Yeah. And again, the parish would hopefully pay for it. OK. This show is brought to you by BetterHelp.

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What makes a person a murderer? Are they born to kill or are they made to kill? I'm Candace DeLong and on my podcast Killer Psychie Daily, which you can find exclusively on Amazon Music. I share a quick 10-minute rundown every week day on the motivations and behaviors of the criminal masterminds you read about in the news. I have decades of experience as a psychiatric nurse, FBI agent, and a criminal profiler. On Killer Psychie Daily, I'll give you my expert perspective on cases like the mysterious New York City drugings, Breaking Down Lori Vallow, a.k.a. Mommy Doom stays motives, and what drove Caitlin Armstrong to murder? I'll also bring on

expert guests who add even more insight into these criminal minds. I promise you won't regret adding these 10 minutes to your morning routine. Hey Prime members, listen to the Amazon Music Exclusive Podcast Killer Psychie Daily in the Amazon Music app. Download the app today. So they waited, because they were like, sure, we'll come pick them up. And they waited for the coffin to come. And hair continued to be really pissed and bombed about the lost income and expenses

that he wasn't going to get back. And this is when Burke suggested, why don't we just sell the body to the surgeon for the purposes of dissection? Oof. Because he's got no one around. He's got no family. Well, that's really sad. We can't pay for him.

He owes us money anyways. Again, I'm not saying this me, I'm saying this is what they were thinking. Right, right. So they're thinking, you know, and although the practice was illegal and very seriously discouraged from social speaking, a lot of people were doing it.

Burkett extensive experience with medical practitioners from his days in the militia, and he knew that they were often willing to pay a pretty good sum for recently to see spotty that didn't have signs of trauma. So he's looking to get his money back. So they talked a little bit about it, and it was decided that they were going to sell Donald's body

and to recoup hair's losses. But they are how he saw it. Didn't they already call the people to come pick him up? Well, this is what ended up happening, because when I read that too, I was like, what did you tell those people that came? Yeah, exactly. They were just coming to drop off the coffin. They hadn't even arranged yet for the parish to bury him.

Okay. But these authorities were coming to bring the coffin. Gotcha, gotcha. So, they figured they could recoup pairs losses, get this whole thing taken care of, get them out of the house, get a new person in there. There you go. And they said Burke was the one that was going to do the negotiating for the price. And two days later, when the coffin was delivered, Burke and Harris stood by.

They watched as the delivery men loaded the body into the coffin, nailed it shut. Then they left and it was going to be picked up by whoever was going to transfer it to the cemetery. But as soon as those people were out of sight, Burkekin hair pride opened the lid, removed Donald's body, they hid it in a nearby bed, and they stuffed things in the casket that would make it heavier. Mimic the weight of a human being. Oh my God.

Exactly. I think they used Tanner's bark that they collected from the backyard, then they resealed it, and then they had it picked up. It they had it picked up to be interred at the West Churchyard. So it was a filled casket of something else that was interred. Oh my God. So with the first part of the plan, success and their eyes, Burke and Hair next said about finding a buyer for Donald's body. So they first stopped at the surgical college and they asked a student where they could find

Dr. Monroe, who they assumed they would want to see for selling a body he was like the head guy. Right. So the student gave them directions to Monroe's home. But through a series of like really weird mistakes and coincidences, they instead found themselves at another doctor's home. It was intentional.

Okay. This doctor was Dr. Robert Knox, who was, I don't know if you remember him from the beginning. That's what we talked about. Right, I thought you said his name. He was from the top of the episode. He was a private anatomy teacher who had the most students and he used the most bodies in the city.

Okay. So they just happened to come across this guy when they were looking for another doctor. Right. And they've come across the doctor who needs the most bodies that they can get, I see. So whether or not things would have been different if they had come to Monroe's door or some other teacher that had some more...

Smorkles? There you go. We don't know. Right. Maybe. Honestly, I think most doctors at the time would have taken this body. They were desperate. Just because of the way shit was.

But who knows? Things could have been different. Well, never know. If they were turned away and they couldn't find anything, they didn't get paid for it. I think they would have ended up murdering people for some other reason. Right. Later down the line because I don't think these are good men. So I think it would have gone down that road differently, but I think it could have been

a different story. But whatever, Knox was desperate for bodies. So he was thrilled by this offer. So he gave the men 10 shillings for Donald's corpse. This one transaction was the thing that set into motion, the awful chain of events. So I was gonna happen after this. The deaths of at least 16 people, 16,

and one of the worst crimes, reason, Scottish history. Wow. So until this point, Berkenhairs only crime, and this is what I was talking about before, if they committed one at all in the eyes of the time, was unlawful disinterment.

Okay. Because they hadn't killed him. Right. They hadn't done it. That's all they had done. He had died. Yeah. However, they hadn't actually exhumed the man's body.

They only sold this corpse. So it's unclear whether there was even a crime here at all because they didn't exist in the tournament. Because technically nobody had really done this. He was never buried. Yeah. Unlawful disinterment was done this. He was never buried. Yeah. On the awful disentermen was digging up a body grave robbing. Right.

Right. When this man was never buried because nobody thought they would have to make another love like, Hey, if you know someone that guy. Yeah. Like this. So there's like a a loopy hole here that I think they were banking on. But technically, I wonder if they

could have been charged with disentermen because he was in the coffin. And they took him out of his coffin. And that's what I wondered. Yeah. I wondered if maybe who knows? I couldn't, I didn't find what the specific language of the crime would be. Sure.

But I wonder, that's a very good point, because I wonder if them prying open that coffin. What if Camden. Even though he was only in there for a moment, you're disintering him. You are, yeah. Yeah. You know, like technically. So I guess it would be like, how a jury would see it. Yeah. So it's like, you a moment, you're disintering him. You are, yeah. You know, like technically. So I guess it would be like, how a jury would see it.

Yeah, so it's like, you can't, you can look at this as like, all right, they haven't murdered anyone yet, but then you also look at it and go, well, maybe you did commit a crime here. Yeah, you just served a crime. Definitely committed an ethical crime, but like a technical crime. Like a crime, perhaps.

Yeah. But either way, the, what would be looked at at the time as a pretty petty crime that they had just committed? Like somebody tied naturally in their home. They owed these people a debt that they didn't pay. They were put in a coffin. These people just took them out of the coffin and sold them for that debt. Yeah.

At the time, that would be like, wow, that was fucked up, but that's really all that would happen. So that being such in the eyes of the time, a petty crime makes it really surprising how brutal and quick they escalated from that. So they probably, like you were just saying, you were like, oh, I don't know. I think they would have done it anyway.

I think you're right. Because it's like, you don't just go from that to this, what they end up doing. Oh no. It's just, it's one thing to sell the body of a man who dies by natural causes. Again, fat-dying you with the death and saddling you with getting rid of the body at the time. It's quite another thing to systematically seek out a particular type of victim and murder them purely to be paid. Right.

That is a very different series of ground. Yeah, that's your kind of like a hit man. And I think that point. Yeah, and I think that's why it's so shocking the crimes of brick and hair, because it is such a, like they went so quickly into just really brutality. And to sell a body outside of proper channels,

well in poor taste is, again, entirely understandable given the impoverished circumstances of Scotland's immigrant working class at the time. But that next step would never be murder for most of these people. Like most of these people, that would be the end of it. It would be tough. You're going to have trouble sleeping at night with what you did, but you didn't murder anybody.

Yeah. But that's why but you didn't murder anybody. Yeah. But that's why this also doesn't make sense. I'm like, there's gotta be more in here that we don't know about. And people do think there are more murders that we don't know about from them. Really? That maybe aren't even tied to this medical industry that like, because really there's not a lot of sense here for this jump. Well, and I wonder, two of those murders that they couldn't have used the bodies because

they had to be more pristine. Exactly. I wonder, there's got to be more in there. Right. Now, when it comes to identifying the first victim of Birkenhair, there is a little bit of a discrepancy with their confessions, but you just work with what you have because this was a long time ago. According to Birk, the first victim of their scheme was Abigail Simpson.

She was a minor hawker, which is like they would hawk things, you know what I mean? Like selling. Oh, oh, I see. Did you say throw? Yeah, like hawk, I mean. She hawk and things. But she was a minor hawker from the nearby village of Gilmerton, who stopped at the boarding house for a evening.

In Hares Confession, he identifies the first victim as a man named Joseph. So Joseph was a miller who was also staying at the boarding house at the time and was very ill with a fever. Oh, it's so they both died. So it's like whether they were first or not. Well, they probably killed so many people that that's why there's a discrepancy. And we kind of go with hair's confession here because hair's confession was the most consistent and then changing. Oh, good.

All the burks would kind of jump around a little bit. It's generally believed that hair's version of events is probably the most accurate. It also makes more sense that they went from the first crime of somebody dying naturally and them just selling the body to maybe killing someone who is ill already and dying. Yeah, it does make more sense.

If we want to make any sense out of it, but either way, it's fucked, but I'm just trying to make some sense of the escalation here. Yeah. Now, it was in late January or early February, 1828, just a month or two after having sold the body of pensioner Donalds, that Joseph the Miller became very ill with a fever that made him stay in bed. He couldn't get out of bed.

He was unable to speak. He was like, delusional. Oh, God. And fearful of having a man so very close to death in their home, layered. So the other owner of the boarding house, she was eager to get rid of this man as soon as possible. One piece of shit.

Yeah, and she had no idea how to go about doing it. She wasn't saying, like, let's kill him. She was just like, we gotta get him out of here because I don't want him to die in my boarding house. Oh my God. That is the brutality and brutality and callousness of the time. No, it's true.

I keep saying it's giving. It reminds me a lot of the Jack the reverse story. Jack the reverse story. When you hear like you can't die in high boarding house, you know, like it wasn't even, it's foreign to us, but at the time that was, it was desperation. There was such a lack of empathy. There was, and it was, it was a lack of empathy

that was beaten into people. Like this, it wasn't a lack of empathy that, there was a. Like this it was an a lack of empty that there's a bunch of You know exactly it was like no, this was like beaten into people who just were treated like Bucking scum Twizzas Harry would say a sign of the times it truly was a sign of the times, but Sensing so this so this was happening. Laird is a little like, oh, what do we do here? Yeah. Sensing another opportunity to make a quick book, Birkenhair, begin discussing the best ways to get rid of this man wolf.

Ultimately, they decided they should suffocate him. Oh, yes. Scottish historians or Walter Scott suggested that rather than a giant, like, crazy Olympic leap from opportunistic body snatcher to cold-blooded killer, this killing might be that, like I said, that, like, line in between the gray area. That sent them into that whole thing, like the, the really dark area, because they would frame it as a mercy killing. Right. And an act to protect the reputation of hair and layered sporting house, because you know, on people dying in your boarding house,

people are gonna hear about it. Right. That's how they framed it, and that's how they were kind of taking it as that, like, little transition period between being a totally just shitty grave robber and being a fucking e-culler, a coal-bottom killer. So whatever the case, it was here that Burke's preferred method of killing was established. He placed his hand over Joseph Smelzen knows and he instructed hair to lay across the man's

chest to prevent flailing and to make it harder for him and to breathe. Wow. And that's how they would do it. Like hand over mouth and nose, the other one would lay on the chest. He's so easy. He's a very brutal way of killing someone, very scary and terrifying and awful for the person that was being killed.

Yeah. Now, before the evolution of modern forensics, this murder method, which would become known later as birching, oh, I don't like that at all. Yeah, it was very ideal for what they needed to do because it wasn't leaving anything. Right. And there was, again, without the modern forensics we have, that somebody could tell when somebody is suffocated. Right, right.

You couldn't tell back then. One hand over the nose and mouth, or sometimes they would force the jaw shut. It was very difficult, if not impossible, for the victim to draw any breath that way. And then the weight of the second man on the victim's chest prevented the diagram and lungs from expanding. So it was very fast.

It was effective for what they were trying to do, and there were no visible signs of trauma that would affect the price that Knox was gonna offer. Is there a particular hemorrhaging when you get suffocated? Yeah, but they just didn't know what that was. They didn't know that that was not a very common thing that they would be like, oh, you suffocated this person. This technique was used in the murder of Abigail Simpson very shortly after this or what we believe was shortly after this. According to Berks Confession, Abigail Simpson had arrived at the boarding house on February 11th and, quote, was decoined by hair and his wife.

The three spent the evening drinking and after several drinks. Simpson began talking about how difficult it had been to support her daughter as a single mother. Oh, God. That's what makes this even worse to me is like, she literally brought that force to you. Well, in like you spent hours drinking with her and got to know her.

Yeah, like, like, like, like, and then did whatever you did. And got to know that she was talking about how hard her life was, how she had a child. That's f**k. She was raising that child by herself like you're an asshole. Now you're just gonna like orphan a baby. Yeah, so at some point, hair told Abigail that he was a single man and suggested that he would marry her and provide financial support.

Yeah, right. Which convinced her to stay the night, at least. The next day, Abigail was violently ill and was vomiting from drinking the night before. So hair gave her, quote, some porter and whiskey, which caused her to become so intoxicated that she passed out in the bed in the back room. Do you think that they were doing anything to her drinks beforehand? I could see that for sure. But there's no indication of it, like no official indication, but I could see that for sure. But there's no indication of it, like no, like, you know, official

indication, but I could see that happening for sure. Yeah. But she passed out on that bed in the back room, the one that overlooks the pig's die. And once she passed out, Burke entered the room, and then he laid across her legs and feet while hair covered her nose and mouth with his hand until she suffocated. So scary. When the sun had gone down and it was darker outside, they carried her body to nox's dissecting room where he paid them 10 ceilings for the body. I remember nox's

is an asking where they're getting these bodies from. See, that's the problem because you're turning a blind eye. Yeah, like sure. The blindest of us. And there's a point which I believe we're probably going to get to in part two where there's one that you're like, you turned a real blind eye on that one. Oh, yeah. So the pair's third victim, which Burke mentioned in his confession, he called him simply an Englishman, a native of Cheshire. So not even a name. Just an Englishman. He was killed under circumstances that were pretty similar to Joseph the Miller.

So the man was described as being 40 years old and he used to sell spunks in Edinburgh. He's got spunk. What we could see is that spunks are like some kind of like a woody tinder. Okay. I don't know why it's called Spunks. But at the time that he met Burke and Hare, he was unemployed.

And he'd come to the boarding house. And when he'd come to the boarding house, he appeared to be ill. He was suffering from jaundice, they believe. Just like the others, the man was taken to the private back room, knew the pigstie. He was smothered. And then the body was removed once it got dark that night, taken to nox, paid him out 10 shillings and didn't ask any questions.

Silly. Now, if there was any kind of emotional conflict over the murders of these three, the first three victims, neither Burke nor Hare seems to have indicated any kind of like You know emotional turmoil guilt Any kind of remorse so that probably would have murdered even if it weren't for the money They seemed like they were They just went about their lives. There was nothing was affecting them

They didn't seem off to people around them like you know how you'll hear that sometimes like I don't know We seemed off. You know you didn't none of them seemed around them like, you know how you'll hear that sometimes like, I don't know, we seemed off. You know, you didn't, none of them seemed off. And the people that were around these schemes, meaning the two women in the boarding house specifically layered, they didn't seem like they were really asking questions either. Oh, I don't like that at all. Yeah. And what would happen was Burke would explain to Dr. Knox that the men had come across these

bodies, either through relative or some kind of close, you know. And what would happen was Burke would explain to Dr. Knox that the men had come across these bodies either through relative or some kind of close, you know, relative, a personal friend or some kind of acquaintance. There's always close to them, but not close to them. Far enough away where it wasn't weird. Yeah, it was always like that arm's length, like I this person, who knows this person. But, and obviously that's a very flimsy explanation. Like he, like, knocks is like, oh yeah, you got another one and they're like, oh yeah,

like my cousin's brother's friend, you know, he died and they, why not? He said it was fine. And knocks is just like, okay. Like, I don't need to ask anything else. That's like, maybe ask like two questions at least. And then wildly, in at least one of the murders, Abigail Simpson, Margaret Laird is implicated in that crime.

She was drinking with them, she knew it was going on, she was in the house when it happened. Like, she was at the very least to an active participant in luring Abigail into the house. That's what I was going to ask. I had a feeling at some point she was going to be involved in this all. And author of the anatomy murders,

another book about this case, which we'll put them in the sources. Lisa Rosner, she said, the earnings for each body were split three ways with hair getting six, burk getting four, and layered getting one. So she was an active participant.

Weird. And active in the sense, she got one shelling because she was luring or getting them drunk and turning a blind eye, not actively, like physically murdering someone, but she was an accessory. Yeah. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondries Podcast American Scandal.

We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in US history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our newest series, we look at the Kids for Cash Scandal, a story about corruption inside America's system of juvenile justice. In Northeastern Pennsylvania, residents had begun noticing an alarming trend. Children were being sent away to jail in high numbers

and often for committing only minor offenses. The FBI began looking at two local judges, and when the full picture emerged, it made national headlines. The judges were earning a fortune, carrying out a brazen criminal scheme, one that would shatter the lives of countless children, and force a heated debate about punishment, an America's criminal justice system.

Follow American scandal wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wonder App. So Burke and McDougal, who is Burke's lady, yep, she's the other piece of this four-person puzzle, Burke maintained until his death. That McDougal knew nothing of these murders. Well, you don't really hear much about her other than... Nope, he married her. And that's why she was never really,

and she wasn't included in the split either. Like that split three ways, it wasn't split four. And she would have been in it if she was part of it, and she wasn't, so... Interesting. That's interesting. Or did hair get more... And like she was cut into his-

Like his six- She got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- He's got the most- I don't even think she had really the physical part that Lair did. But she had to know something was a rye. Like he's got any money somewhere. Like you said, exactly. She's gotta be asking where is this coming from. And who knows? Maybe he, again, these people are good liars. Like he could have said anything.

Oh, I did so much to work at the boarding house. These guys are ship bags. So it's like, you know, you're with a ship bag. You know he's not getting money via wholesome means. Like come on, like you got to know, so I'm sure you don't know that this is what's going on, but then at the same time, you're in the boarding house. True.

You're not seeing anything? I don't know. Yeah, maybe she just kept quiet. But he maintained, Burke was very clear till his death, said she knew nothing about it, did not participate in it, had nothing to do with it. Damn, or hair, right? Yeah, sorry, but for the most part, Burke and hair chose their victims, like most serial

killers, choose their victims. They were typically transients, so it was like one of those things. And honestly, marginalized people, they would pick, so it was like the less dead. If you were social connections, people that weren't going to be in their opinion missed. Right. There are however, a few exceptions to this method that they went with. Their fourth victim, Mary Patterson, was definitely going to be missed. She was known by a lot of people in town, by face and name. According to her land lady, Mary

quote, much was quote, much given to drink and had even been jailed for at least 10 days the previous year for being drunk disorderly and creating a crowd, which meant she was also known to police, which is another reason to not pick this person. Now this is where I wonder if they were escalating and they wanted some more excitement on a event. That's the thing like this wasn't just financially profitable, but they wanted a little more. Right.

Now, on the evening of April 8th, the Mary went out to a public house with her friend and roommate Janet Brown. The two of them ran into William Burke. So, he was apparently liking the two ladies and he ordered a bottle of whiskey and invited them to join him at his table because he's really good guys.

Yeah, totally. During the trial Janet Brown, the friend said that Burke's advances made her uncomfortable and she was actually very reluctant to join him. But Mary was quote, always a forward fearless disposition and had no reservations. So they stayed there. They drank with him all night. The following morning Burke took both women to the nearby home of his brother Constantine. There they had a big breakfast. They drank two more bottles of whiskey. And after that, Mary passed

out and she was moved to a small bed while Burke and Hare went out to get more food and more alcohol. Okay. Several hours later, the scene was discovered by Helen McDougal. She was pissed to find Burke hanging out with two women who he was clearly like wooing. Yeah. And so they began arguing the couple. Okay. And during this, it got violent. And during this whole thing, Burke hit her hard enough to open a huge gash on her forehead.

Oh my God. Yeah, like pieces of absolute shit. And Janet Brown, the friend of Mary, would later tell the court that she was, quote, much alarmed by their proceedings and tried to wake her friend Mary so they could get the hell out of there. Yeah. But Burke ushered her out the door before she could wake up her friend.

What the fuck? So even though he wouldn't let her go wake her friend, she was like, okay, well, I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna get her later. Yeah. I'm gonna get her. And she said, we're turned within a half an hour together. Now, Brown is gone.

Janet Brown, she's out of the house. And McDougall is sitting in the adjacent room. Remember, McDougall supposedly doesn't know anything about this. She's turning a blind eye. Okay. And Burke and Hare decided to employ their usual method of suffocation

and they killed Mary Patterson. So when Janet Brown came back a half an hour later to remember this isn't even the boarding house, this is Constantine's house. This is the brother. She comes back a little while later and she's told that Mary had gone out to town with Burke and it was unknown when they would return. Okay. So she was like, I don't know about that. So she came back to the house again several hours later, but this time she was told that Mary and Burke

had never returned. What? Okay. So Janet Brown was like, I'm gonna come back again. So she returned back later and even reported Mary's disappearance to the police, but because of their low social status and having a reputation of being heavy drinkers,

and other unsavory in the time behaviors. The report wasn't taken seriously at all, and it was never investigated. So they just didn't investigate it. We're like, well, that's really fun. That's really shitty. Now, four or five hours after killing Mary Patterson, the two men loaded her body into a large tea crate,

and they carried it over to Nox's dissection room. When they got there with the body, one of Knox's assistants recognized Mary from town and asked about how they'd come into possession of her body, to which Burke replied that he'd purchased it from an old woman at the back of Canon Gate. So the student at Dr. Knox's school were like, what the fuck? But they were also so taken with Mary's beauty. They said that she was, quote, so handsome a figure and well-shaped in body and limbs that the professor called in a local painter to create a portrait of her. Instead of inquiring further as to how this man, these two men are saying they

bought this woman's body from a woman behind somewhere. They're like, yeah, that probably checks out. She's so hot, though. We should get a painter in here and we should get a fucking portrait taken of her. Like, wow. And what's crazy is before he painted her, the painter asked Burke to cut off the woman's hair. So they cut off some of the hair, gave him a pair of scissors to do it. And before leaving, Knox gave Burke eight shillings and allowed him to keep the two and a half shillings

that were found clutched in Mary's hand when she arrived. I have to go at this point in time. Yep, I actually have to leave. Yep. So the murder of Mary Patterson was definitely a large departure from Burke and Harris pattern. Yeah.

Not only was the woman known to tons of people in town and they actually, she was recognized immediately. But unlike other victims, he'd been seen socializing with her at a public house for hours. Yeah. Like even gone so far as to seduce her and go back to his brother's house with her.

Like that's a lot of like brazen. Yeah, a lot of eyes on you. And the surprisingly limited details of the murder that basically were only provided by Berks Confession. It suggests that Berk kind of felt differently about this killing than he did to others because the way he described this one was different, the amount of time he spent with the victim was different.

People are like, what the fuck happened there? Like it's a weird departure. And the weird intimacy that was shared was shared between Burke and Patterson, put the scheme and both of their freedom at risk, to be honest. Like Burke really put them in big time. On a really bad position here. One might call it a pickle, a very big pickle.

They, again, they had been seen multiple places by multiple people, countless people. And the last well-known, she was well-known, people know her by name and face. And the last place she's seen alive is at Constantine Berks' home, right? Like Berks' own brother. That does, how that doesn't, the fact that they weren't arrested really can only be explained by really bad policing and a complete disinterest in the safety and welfare of the lower social classes here. Totally, like even her friend

knows the last two people she was seen with, and they were like, yeah, sorry. And we're telling the authorities. Sorry, busy. They were just like, yeah, I don't know, she dropped his gun, like that sucks the suck, I guess. Like what the fuck? So given the inconsistencies and their confessions

and the namelessness of most of their victims, it's pretty impossible to create like a really accurate chronological order of the murders committed between April and October 1828. Instead, you can like group them together to kind of form an approximate picture, let's say, of when the really big things happened. Burke's friendliness with Mary Patterson had caused a number of minor problems for the pair, who, whether they knew it or not,

made the decision to return to the more convenient and less familiar victims. I don't know if that was a conscious effort, like they were like, we can't do that again, or they just did it because they were like, well, that was addic. Right, and just like, didn't think about it. But either way, they went back to the beginning

where it was like, people, they didn't think we're gonna be missed very well. Now, the first of these victims unfortunately was Elizabeth Halden who showed up at Harris boarding house sometime in early spring of 1828. He knew nothing more about her than her name but he described her as quote a stout old woman she had but one tooth in her mouth and that was a very large one in the front. Oh. That's how he described her. That's fucked.

Now, Burke found the woman sleeping off drink in a pile of straw in the stable. That's so sad. And retrieved more alcohol to give to her. Once she was sufficiently drunk and very unstable and able to take care of herself, they suffocated her with the usual manner and left her in the barn until the following day. And that's when they took her body to Knox. A few months later, Elizabeth Haldane's daughter, Margaret, was also murdered by Burke.

What? And was murdered by Burke alone. And did he know that there was a connection there? So that's the thing. We're not really sure. So she was briefly staying at the boarding house. And this murder is one that you can read a lot about and it gets distorted a lot through a lot of fictional accounts. Sure. The murder. A lot of them portray her as like this daughter searching for her mother. And then the woman's killers get the jump on her before she can find them out like this really like intensified, you know, detective noir kind of thing. In reality, Burke described Marbit as someone quote of idol habits and much given to drinking. And it's really likely that they met at a public house or just somewhere else. Okay. He enticed her back to the boarding house with drink.

So just a terrible thing. Once she passed out, Burk laid her face down on the bed and pressed her face until the bed until she suffocated. Jesus. And it really does seem like purely coincidence that she had been killed by the same killers who killed her mother. That is so beyond bizarre. It really is.

And tragic. It's so sad. Now around the same time of Margaret Haldane's murder, Burke had gone into town looking for another victim. And that's there that he made friends with a frail, elderly man who he believed was the perfect fit for the next victim. But just as Burke was about to invite the man back to the boarding house, he spotted what he would describe to police as, quote,

an old woman and a dumb boy, her grandson from Glasgow. Oh. Through conversation, he learned that the woman and child were Irish and had walked from Glasgow to Edinburgh. They were looking for shelter along the road, like, during the night. Yeah. And the woman was not from this area and was completely unfamiliar with Edinburgh. She's lost.

And so this made them ideal victims to him because no one, Edinburgh doesn't know her either. Exactly. So the elderly man with who Burke was talking, he just kind of abandoned that whole thing. He was like, well, you were going to be next, which I can't imagine. Wow. That man. Someone was with him. Yeah. But he invited the woman and boy back to the watching house. Now, by most accounts, the woman had been traveling to Edinburgh to visit friends and was told by Burke that her friends resided at the boarding house of his friend, William Burke. Or excuse me, William Hare. Once they'd reached the boarding house and they settled in, Burke brought out

the bottle of liquor, which immediately they got drunk. The woman retired to bed for the evening. And according to George McGregor, the author, the two killers snuck into the room, quote, at the dead hour of the night, and she was murdered by the human ghouls. While Burke and Hare were murdering the old woman, her grandson was in an adjoining room with lared and McDougal,

who were attempting to soothe his agitation over his grandmother's absence. McDougal was there? Uh-huh. Unsure of what to do, the men decided they needed to get rid of him as well, so they suffocated him as well, and loaded both bodies into

an old herring barrel. And then Burke was quick to note that the barrel was, quote, perfectly dry. There was no brine in it. Oh, just in case you were worried about that. So that was a briny barrel. I would have been pissed, but I mean, I'm pissed either way like hollow, but so that implicates McDougal now too. So goodbye. And then he later sitting there going, she has nothing to do that she didn't know anything. So what did she never, she never said like,

Hey, what happened to that old boy that I was fucking calming down while you made a discrim on the next room? Exactly. Like this is just generic. Yep, that's how I feel. Now later that morning, the two men tried to transport the barrel to Nox's dissection room by horse and cart, but after a few miles, the horse refused to go any further.

Because the horse was like, you guys are assholes, and I'm not doing this. The horse was like, I'm not being implicated in this. So I guess they got a porter's cart from a nearby shop and pushed it the rest of the way. They got to Nox's. Burke carried the barrel, the remaining distance to the dissection room. The students struggled to get the bodies out of the barrel because they were so stiff and cold.

And as a result, Nox paid the most slightly reduced rate of 16 chillings. Now, according to Burke, the pair shot the horse on their return to the boarding house because it wouldn't walk any further. I did not need to know that. So they're like the worst kind of people. Solace.

Women, children, elderly, animals, they don't go far. There's no line with them. And shortly after the murder of this woman and her grandson, Berk and Hair Murdered a Cinder Gatherer that Berk thought maybe went by the name Effie, maybe. Possibly. Who knows. During the spring and summer months, most laborers left the city to work

in the farms and fields that surround the city. And this kind of limited Burke and Harris victim pool during that time, because laborers are gone. So according to Lisa Rosner, the author, Effie was a hawker who would occasionally sell odds and ends door to door. And she was actually known to Burke, like Burke knew her. And because she had sold like bits of leather to him, I think for you says like in his

cobbling business. Crazy. And despite being known to both the killers and many people in town as well, the parent heist Effie into the barn with alcohol and they said you can rest in the barn as well. And once she had fallen asleep, they quote, laid a cloth over her and suffocated her as they did the others. And then they transported her to Noxus Dissection Room where they were paid 10 shillings for the body. Oh my god. And that is where we're going to end for part one of Berk and Hair. Good. When we return, we are going to talk about

the final murders. Things are gonna go awry for the two of them. We're gonna talk about how they were caught and we're gonna talk about what happened to them. I'm excited. I'm excited to talk about what happens to them like and when they get caught in sentence to prison. Because I'm like, you need to be caught at this point. And again, like thinking about like, and when they get caught in sentence to prison. Because I'm like, you need to be caught at this point.

And again, like thinking about like, at the very least two people, but most likely a group of people that are willing to do this kind of shit. And the most vulnerable people too. The most vulnerable people and like two just yucky, scary, terrible couples. Oh, it always freaks me out when couples. Yeah, I don't like it. Yeah, so this is quite a tale. Oh, yay, yay.

And a real sign of the times. For real. But that is part one of Burke and Harry. Well, thanks for listening to that, guys. Yes. Hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. But not this weird because that's too weird.

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