In the dimly lit streets of 19th-century Edinburgh, a thick shroud of fog hung in the air, casting an eerie atmosphere over the city. The gas lamps flickered, their feeble glow barely piercing the veil of mist. It was a night where secrets thrived, and malevolence concealed itself in the shadows.
On one such fog-choked evening, two men, slinked through the cobblestone alleys tea chest in hand weighed down with tonight’s spoils.
As they moved quickly down roads, streets and avenues, their breath visible in the frigid air, They arrive at the door of 10 Surgeon Square. A knock at this door will bring a tidy sum for their ill-gotten gains, Gains that were alive several hour previous.
After the doctor answered and money was paid the poor persons remains would lay on the doctor's table ready for dissection.
Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast where we explore the darkest parts of human history. hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. Welcome to the new episode, The Dark Biography of Burke and Hare the anatomy killers, Of course, some people here will be familiar with our two protagonists and some may not, I do guarantee that the real story is a lot darker than the movie staring Simon Pegg, I must admit if you haven’t seen it go watch it, it’s brilliant. Burke and Hare were two notorious 19th-century Scottish murderers who became infamous for selling cadavers to medical schools in Edinburgh. They lured vulnerable individuals, killed them, and then sold the bodies for dissection, taking advantage of the high demand for anatomical specimens. Their gruesome crimes eventually led to their capture and the subsequent public outrage and legal proceedings, making them infamous figures in the history of crime. So without further ado please sit back and relax next to the fire for more dark history.
At the heart of Georgian medicine lay a blend of ancient wisdom and emerging scientific curiosity. Physicians, often clad in waistcoats and powdered wigs, were well-versed in the teachings of revered figures like Hippocrates and Galen. They believed in the concept of bodily humours, striving to restore balance by purging excesses or prescribing peculiar potions.
Amid the medical landscape, there were flickers of progress. The late Georgian period witnessed the groundbreaking work of Edward Jenner, a country doctor who introduced the smallpox vaccine. His discovery heralded a new era in preventive medicine, offering hope against a devastating disease. At this time, just as the Industrial Revolution was beginning its infancy, modern medicine such as morphine and equipment such ras the stethoscope were invented. But covered by all of this medical advancement there was a shadier underbelly.
Picture, if you will, the hushed ambience of a Georgian-era physician’s study. Dim candlelight flickers, casting eerie shadows on the oak-panelled walls adorned with anatomical drawings and mysterious medical instruments. The air is thick with the pungent aroma of herbs and tinctures, as well as a sense of both anticipation and trepidation. In front of you is a pale and freshly decided individual, a man hung for the crime of murder, he is ready for you to cut and discover the secrets of the human body. Now cadavers such as this man are in abundance but soon they will not.
Due to the enactment of the Bloody Code or the Judgement of Death Act 1823 the number of crimes punishable by death in Britain drop dramatically. Good news in theory, but since medical and anatomical schools were only legally allowed to dissect the bodies, or cadavers, of those who had been condemned to death, this led to an extreme shortage of dead bodies.
Thus giving rise to the Resurrection men or grave robbers. Some unscrupulous types found a gap in the market and would engage in the illegal and grisly practice of exhuming corpses from graves for various purposes. These bodies would be sold into medical school for a tidy sum. This practice was No more prevalent than in Edinburgh, where the people of the city had become tired of this trade and had armed guards, watch towers or cages installed in graveyards to bring an end to this macabre commerce.
William Burke was born in 1792 in Urney, County Tyrone, Ireland, one of two sons to middle-class parents. Burke, along with his brother, Constantine, had a comfortable
upbringing, and both joined the British Army as teenagers. Burke served in the County _ Donegal militia until he met and married a woman from County Mayo, where they later settled. But in 1818, after an argument with his father-in-law over land ownership, Burke deserted his wife to Scotland and became a labourer, working on the Union Canal. He settled in the small village Falkirk, and set up home with Helen McDougal, whom he affectionately nicknamed Nelly; After a few years, and when the works on the canal were finished, the couple moved to Tanners square , in Edinburgh, in November 1827. Burke became a hawker, selling second-hand clothes to impoverished locals. After Burke realised hawking wasn’t for him
He became a cobbler, a trade in which he experienced some success, earning upwards of £1 a week. His outward dominar to people in the area was as an industrious and good-humoured man who often entertained his clients by singing and dancing for them on their doorstep as he worked.
Although raised as a Roman Catholic, Burke became a regular worshipper at Presbyterian religious meetings seldom seen without a bible.
William Hare, the second of our darkly disturbed duo was born in County Armagh, County Londonderry or in Newry. His age and year of birth are somewhat of a mystery but a chance encounter with Her Majesty's police force gives us an age of 21 in 1828, but one source states that he was born between 1792 and 1804. Though information on his early life is light, we know he worked in agriculture and as a labourer before his move to Britain. He too would work on the Union Canal for seven years before moving to Edinburgh in the middle of the 1820s, where he worked as a coalman's assistant. He lodged in the Tanner's square house of a man named Logue and his wife, Margaret Laird, in the nearby West Port area of the town. When Logue died in 1826, Hare may have married Margaret. Hare was an uncouth- a lean, quarrelsome and violent man who thought nothing of throwing his hands to solve a problem and he had the scars to prove it, his being head covered in old wounds.
In 1827 Burke and McDougal went to Penicuik in Midlothian to work on the harvest, where they met Hare. The men became friends and when Burke and McDougal returned to Edinburgh, they moved into Hare's Tanner's square lodging house, where the two couples soon acquired a reputation for hard drinking and boisterous behaviour. This chance meeting would form a heinous quintuple of drunkenness, disgust and death the likes the streets of Edinburgh had never seen.
On the fateful night of the 29th of November 1827 Donald, a lodger in Hare's house, died of dropsy shortly before receiving a quarterly army pension. Donald, a veteran of the Napoleonic wars, unfortunately, owed the sum of £4 in back rent. Hare bemoaned his financial loss to Burke on one of their frequent nights of heavy drinking, the pair had an epiphany, sell Donald's body to one of the local anatomists and that would cover any loss plus a little extra due to it being a sellers market. Returning home the pair prised open the coffin that A carpenter had provided, which was to be paid for by the local parish, and hid his body under the dearly departed Donald’s bed. After this the morally bankrupt pair absconded to a tanner’s yard, which adored the periphery of Tanner Square, to acquire off-cuts and waste to weight the coffin ready for burial. After dark, on the day the coffin was removed for burial, the pair trudged through the dimly lit streets of Edinburgh, Donald’s corpse in tow and took the remains to Edinburgh University, where they looked for a purchaser. According to Burke's later testimony, they asked for directions to Professor Monro, but a student sent them to a Dr Robert Knox's premises in Surgeon's Square.
Knox was a Scottish surgeon and anatomist. He was born on September 4, 1791, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and he was known for his keen interest in anatomy and his role in the field of medical education. He had been a field surgeon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and saw more action during the Cape Frontier War in Southern Africa in 1819. After his time in the army, he settled back in life in his home town of Edinburgh in 1820.
By 1825 he had become a lecturer and fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. His lectures on anatomy saw him showcase dissections twice a week to crowds of 400 people or more and he is considered to have single-handedly progressed British medicine.
Knox operated a private anatomy school in Edinburgh and Due to the new blood code, there was a high demand for cadavers for medical research and dissection, something which Knox was willing to pay handsomely for.
Although the men dealt with juniors when discussing the possibility of selling the body, it was Knox who arrived to fix the price at £7 10s. From this amount Hare received £4 5s while Burke took the balance of £3 5s; Hare's larger share was to cover his loss from Donald's unpaid rent! According to Burke's official confession, as he and Hare left the university, one of Knox's assistants told them that the anatomists "would be glad to see them again when they had another to dispose of”
There is no agreement as to the order in which the murders took place but this first foray into body snatching gave our deplorably devilish duo an idea, they needed more money and more bodies Instead of stealing them why not create them?
Not a great deal is known about the background of the first victim of Burke and Hare but what we do know is his name was Joseph and he was a Miller. Joseph had checked into, Hare’s lodging house on Tanner Square, in January of 1828. Joseph was racked with fever giving the pair a perfect cover story to not arouse suspicion.
Burke and Hare banked that their other guests wouldn’t want an infectious person roaming around the corridors of the lodging house spreading his germs and infection to everyone. So when he simply died or disappeared nobody would grieve for his sudden absence.
Burke and Hare entered Joseph’s room with medical smiles and the opportunity of a tot of whisky to ease the poor man's suffering. Liberally, the duo, plied poor Joseph with whisky until he was shit-faced thus being unable to defend himself. Now with the chance to reveal their dark plan Hare grabbed a pillow and firmly placed it over Joseph's face smothering the man whilst Burke pounced on his chest restraining the poor Joseph and dooming him to his fate.
After they stripped Joseph's limp and lifeless body of his clothes they folded his body into a wooden tea chest. As night fell, our fiendish duo again toiled the darkened cobbled streets of Edinburgh their path leading them to 10 Surgeon Square and Dr Robert Knox.
Knox on seeing the chest at his doorstep was delighted and commented on the freshness and condition of Joseph's cadaver. He was so delighted the sum of 10 British pounds was given to the pair, this in modern money would be around £1000 or $1300.
After the exchange, the men shook hands and intended that this would become a regular arrangement the three drew up a contract for future corpses that would be brought to Knox, the amount of £10 would be paid for cadavers in winter due to the ease of preserving the condition and £8 in the summer when the heat would inevitably cause decay to occur more quickly.
With the peramitous of their deal set, the dark duo embarked on a nine-month killing spree which would see the deaths of 15 more people.
Like their first victim not much is known about the second victim, we don't even have a name but what we do know is he was English, a tall man who stood just under 6 feet tall, around 40 years old and a match seller from Cheshire. The man came to the unfortunate event of checking into Hare lodging house just a week after Joseph's untimely demise, and soon he became stricken with jaundice. Sensing further opportunities the two Williams again employed their modus operandi, plying the man with whisky and suffocating him before carting the unnamed victim to the wanting clutches of Dr Robert Knox.
After the killing of our mysterious victim, Burke and Hare expanded their murderous operation out of the confined of the lodging house and into the street of Edinburgh. They frequently perused their victims on the streets of the Blackfriars area of the city.
Soon another victim would be chosen. Whilst Hare and his wife Margaret were patrolling the area they came across an elderly woman named Abigail Simpson, a salt seller, on the 11th of February 1828. Simpson, who was not an Edinburgh native, had come to the city from her village of Gilmerton to supplement her pension.
She was invited to the lodging house where Willam Burke and Helen McDougal joined the party. If you weren't aware before the two couples were all involved in these schemes. Just like the previous victims, Abigale was given enough alcohol to render her inebriated and unable to return home. She was offered a room on the house and as she slipped into the land of nod she was unceremoniously set upon by Burke and Hare. By now Hare had graduated from a pillow to his hands, slowly snuffing Abergail’s life out of existence. She was then folded up into the tea chest and delivered into the waiting arms of Knox.
Like many of their victims the next is shrouded in mystery, with no name or date of her demise, the next lady was again lured back to the lodging house by Margaret Hare, again given enough whiskey to knock her unconscious, again held down and strangled and again given to Knox for the sum of £10. It's possible that she was killed in the very early spring of 1828 around late February or early March but this is only a guess of historians.
The next round of killings Thankfully have more detail. Maybe that was the wrong choice of words. On the 9th of April 1828 after once again using the tried and tested method of plying victims with large amounts of drink Burke managed to lure two 18-year-old prostitutes, Mary Patterson and Janet Brown. This time however there was a change of plan, instead of going to the lodging house in Tanner’s Square the two women were taken to his brother's house in Canongate.
Janet was very hesitant to follow Burke but the very attractive Mary shared no such thoughts. Burke entered his brother's home after Constantine had left for work, here The drink flowed until Mary passed out at the table, leaving Burke and Janet alone to conversation and maybe drunkenly flirt. Luckily Janet was spared her impending doom when Helen McDougal, Burke’s partner, burst in with accusations of an affair. A melee soon erupted with glasses being thrown and raised voices allowing Janet to leave with her apologies for his unknown marriage.
But for Mary Patterson, her fate was sealed. The poor unconscious woman was murdered by Burke and Helen with Helen taking her petticoat and skirt. Naturally, Janet returned to the property to check on her friend but she was told she had left with a gentleman client to Glasgow. Little did she know her friend's body was lying still warm on Knox’s table. Mary Patterson did not immediately suffer the same dissection the other victims would posthumously endure, No Knox cut her hair short to hide her identity and stored her in a barrel of whiskey. Her remains would only be brought out to be leered over by Knox or one of his other paying customers who wanted to look upon her beauty. After he commissioned a painting of her remains Knox finally dissected Mary Patterson to a crowd of people who had paid handsomely to see it.
At the risk of repeating myself, there were several other murders but at this point in time suspicion had begun to rise. You see the body of Mary Patterson and two other prostitutes murdered by the pair had been recognised by some of the good doctors students.
The gossip was exacerbated when the pair brought in a handicapped children’s entertainer by the name of James Wilson who was well known in the city as ‘Daft Jamie’. The pair enticed James into the lodging house with whiskey. James, who was not a big drinker, thus was not as drunk as their normal victims fought back against the two attackers, but eventually he was over powered and suffered the same demise. When Wilson’s body turned up at 10 surgeon square the men were payed as always and the remains were taken in, but this time due to James Wilson’s local fame he was unequivocally recognised by some of Knox’s students something which Knox strongly deny the identity of the body but swiftly removed his head and deformed foot during the dissection.
Following an argument between Burke and Hare, which was caused by Burke’s suspicion that Hare and Margaret were cutting himself and Helen out of deals with Knox, Burke and Helen began to take in their own lodgers.
On Halloween 1828 Burke and Hare’s last victim, Marjory Campbell Docherty, was invited to stay with Burke and Helen on the pretence that she was a distant relation of Burke’s mother. Burke’s other lodgers, a couple called James and Ann Gray, were invited to stay temporarily at Hare’s boarding house that evening so the murder could take place.
On their return to Burke’s lodgings the following day, the Gray’s were told that Marjory had been asked to leave because she had been flirtatious with Burke. The couple became suspicious when they were not allowed to enter the spare room where they had left some belongings, and when left alone they discovered Marjory’s dead body hidden under the bed. The couple challenged Helen over their discovery and she offered them a bribe of £10 a week if they would keep the discovery to themselves. The Gray’s refused and reported the murder to the Police. However, in the meantime word must have reached Burke and Hare, as by the time the Police arrived at the premises, Marjory’s body had been removed and taken to Knox. Burke and Helen and later Hare and Margaret were all arrested and gave conflicting accounts of what had taken place, with Burke and Hare each blaming each other. The Police’s investigation soon led them to Knox, and James Gray identified the body found in his lecture hall as Marjory. Having read about the murder in a local newspaper, Janet Brown later identified clothes found at Hare’s lodging house as belonging to her missing friend Mary Patterson. However, the Police had little hard evidence to prove the crimes had been committed and eventually the Lord Advocate, Sir William Rae, offered Hare immunity in return for testifying against Burke and Helen, which he was more than happy to do!
The trial began on Christmas Eve 1828 and early the following day Burke and Helen were both charged with Marjory Docherty’s murder. Burke was also charged with the murder of Mary Patterson and James Wilson. While Helen’s complicity in Marjory’s murder was deemed ‘not proven’ under Scottish Law and she was set free, Burke was sentenced to death by hanging.
William Burke was hanged at Lawnmarket in front of a boisterous, cheering crowd of over 25,000 on 28 January 1829 and, fittingly perhaps, after being put on public display, his body was donated to medical science.
A number of anatomy students took ghoulish souvenirs of his skin, even using it to bind books and card holders. Burke’s skeleton is still on display at Surgeon’s Hall in Edinburgh next to his death mask and the life mask of Hare’s face.
Despite his obvious involvement in the murders, his accomplice Hare was released in February 1829 and escaped across the border into England. No one knows definitively what happened to Hare, but it has been rumoured that he was thrown into a lime quarry by an angry mob and lived out his days as a blind beggar on the streets of London. Both Helen and Margaret also fled Edinburgh, with Helen said to have emigrated to Australia and Margaret to Ireland.
And despite mass public outrage, Knox was also cleared of his involvement in the murders as Burke claimed he had no idea where the bodies had come from. His reputation in ruins, Knox moved to London to try and salvage a career in medicine.
Thank you everyone for taking the time out of your day to listen to this dark and rather long episode. The research for this episode took quite a bit of time as the details are quite scant. Most of this is taken from the confessions of the two men, With the first victim I don't understand why they were so wrapped up with the notion of other people being so suspicious I mean this guy comes into the lodging house already sick, money and medicine was scarce so why not smother him put the whisky in his room and be like “yeah he was poorly when he came here the sickness and his drunkenness must have killed him” it not like the 1800’s had CSI is it “hold on we have seaman over here” or “this man's toxicology report shows he had no whisky in his system”! It was Willam Burke and William Hare in the guestroom with the pillow. That was never going to happen, was it? People would just have been like “shit glad he's dead now I'm I'm not gonna die of a cold”
The contract for me was hilarious Knox sounds like a clever individual but maybe lacks common sense I mean who in their right mind draws up a contract for murder? Come on doc maintain that plausible deniability. Another thing with Knox is don't understand is surly any doctor who is worth his salt would have put two and two together and realised these bodies are incredibly fresh and now there is bruising around the neck Surely something untoward is going on here, maybe I should steer clear of these fellows.
Some of the murders I didn't mention due to similarities but quickly the death of a woman by the name of Mrs Haldane who lodged at the lodging house again She was killed and sold in early to mid-1828, followed by her daughter Coincidentally, she met a fate the same as her mother only this time burke acted alone. Next, a woman known only as Effe who was a cinder gatherer or a person who scavenges in bins, selling what they find. She would be taken from a policeman on the rouse that Burke was an honest gentleman looking to get her home but as we all know, then he murdered her with his same MO.
Next up a grandmother and her grandson both slain and sold by the pair. The death of the boy was said to have haunted Burke, showing maybe there was a shred of humanity in the man.
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