Amazing True Stories of Execution Blunders (13 page)
Calcraft and two or three other men then again forced the wretched man’s feet from their hold, and his legs were held down until the final struggle was over. In marked contrast, throughout this lugubrious event, the bells of the local churches were ringing merrily to celebrate the end of the Crimean War.’
A fearful moral for teetotallers to ponder is posed by the case of a saddler of Bawtry, Yorkshire, who was offered a fortifying drink of ale on his way to be hanged at York’s Knavemire. Being abstemious, he refused the offer and the grim procession continued to the gallows, where he was duly hanged. But within a minute or two of the noose tightening, a messenger arrived with a reprieve – alas, too late. Now if the saddler had only paused to quaff his one for the road . . .
William Burke
William Burke
Contrary to popular belief, the notorious duo Burke and Hare were not body-snatchers. Instead of raiding cemeteries, digging up corpses and selling them to surgeons who desperately needed specimens for surgical demonstrations, Burke and Hare avoided getting their hands dirty and risking capture simply by finding old – living – people, plying them with drink, suffocating them, and then taking the bodies to the surgical schools. The total score of their victims is believed to have been about fifteen, and this would no doubt have increased had not the awful truth been discovered in 1828 when the naked, doubled-up body of an old woman was found hidden beneath some straw in a room of Hare’s house by one of his lodgers, James Gray, who reported his gruesome find to the police. Both men were arrested, William Hare volunteering to give evidence against his fellow murderer, and because the authorities realised that without his testimony they had no case, the charge against him was withdrawn. The judge at the trial confirmed this, saying ‘that whatever share you may have had in the transaction, if you now speak the truth, you can never afterwards be questioned in a court of justice.’ Exonerated, Hare, understandably highly unpopular in his native city, was escorted across the border into England by the police. It is believed that, blinded by fellow workers while labouring in a lime-burning works, he eventually became a beggar, his patch being on the north side of Oxford Street, London.
Because of Hare’s evidence there was never any doubt about Burke’s guilt, and he was sentenced to death, the execution to take place on 28 January 1829. The local populace was in a state of high elation at the verdict, to put it mildly, and Burke had to be placed under strong guard lest an infuriated mob avenged themselves by taking the law into their own hands.
Shortly after noon on the previous day, preparations were begun at the site of the execution in Edinburgh’s Lawnmarket. Stout poles were fixed in the street to support the chains by which the crowd would be kept back, and on this occasion the space was larger than usual. The work progressed, witnessed by a large crowd which gradually swelled in size as the excited locals came to watch the scaffold being built. As the night went on and the work approached completion, heavy rain fell, but the crowd showed no sign of diminishing and whenever an important part of the structure was placed in position they raised an approving cheer.
At about half past ten the frame of the gallows was brought to the spot, and its appearance was the signal for a tremendous shout. It was quickly positioned, for the workmen did their job with grim satisfaction, and when all was completed, so loud were the three cheers given by the spectators that the noise could be heard as far away as Princes Street. It was now about two o’clock in the morning and, wet and dismal though it was, those anxious to see Burke suffer for his crimes were beginning to take their places. Open spaces and stairways were quickly packed and by seven in the morning the vicinity of the scaffold was occupied by one of the densest crowds ever witnessed on the streets of Edinburgh, the numbers being estimated at 25,000. Every window giving a view of the place of execution had been bought up some days previously, the price varying from five to twenty shillings according to the excellence of the view; no mean amount of money for those times.
Meanwhile, in the prison, Burke had been visited by two Roman Catholic priests and two Protestant ministers, and he received their spiritual consolations calmly, without much apparent benefit, though he did lament his connections with the murders, to which he had confessed. Not that the prospect seemed to upset him to any great extent, for he slept soundly for the greater part of that Tuesday night and rose about five o’clock on the morning of execution day. He had been put in irons shortly after his conviction and now expressed a desire to have them struck off; they fell to the cell floor with a dull
clank
, to which Burke exclaimed, ‘So may all my earthly chains fall!’
After praying for a while with one of the Roman Catholic priests, Burke was escorted to an adjoining room, but on the way he met Thomas Williams, the Edinburgh hangman, who accosted him in an unceremonious manner. Almost insolently Burke waved him away saying, ‘I am not just ready for you yet!’ but Williams followed him and started to pinion his victim. Burke submitted without protest, and when this was completed, he accepted the glass of wine offered him. Raising it to his lips, he looked around and gave his last toast, ‘Farewell to all my friends!’
On his approach to the scaffold, the truly enormous crowd sent up a loud shout and Burke was visibly shaken, as if afraid that the mob might break through the barriers and tear him to pieces, and he made haste to ascend the scaffold. Shouts of ‘Choke him!’ and ‘No mercy, hang him!’ came from all sides, but otherwise the crowd showed no sign of attacking, obviously content to leave it all to the Finisher of the Law, Thomas Williams. Burke looked around somewhat defiantly, then knelt and prayed with one of the priests, a move which infuriated the crowd, not because they thought he was beyond redemption – although they probably did – but because by kneeling, he had moved out of sight.
Ten minutes passed and the crowd was now getting extremely impatient. Burke, having finished his devotions, lifted the silk handkerchief upon which he had been kneeling and put it into his pocket. He glanced up at the gallows, and then stepped on to the drop with a firm step. The hangman proceeded to adjust the rope about his neck, and his confessor told him to say the Creed and when he came to the words ‘Lord Jesus Christ’, to give the signal and so die with the blessed name on his lips.
The shouts from the crowd continued, and the people, excited beyond reason, cried out ‘Give him no rope!’, ‘Wash the blood from the land!’ and ‘You’ll see Daft Jamie [one of his more pathetic victims] in a minute!’
Williams then tried to loosen Burke’s neckerchief but found difficulty in doing so, and the condemned man said, ‘The knot’s behind.’ Those were the only words he uttered in his last moments. The rope was then adjusted, a white cotton nightcap was put on his head and pulled down over his face, and he then began the recitation of the Creed. When he came to the holy name, he gave the signal, the bolt was drawn and the greatest murderer of his time swung on the gallows.
He fell the length of the rope with the multitude’s fearsome yell ringing in his ears, and every time the body of the dying man gave a convulsive twitch – for the rope was much too short to bring instant death – the crowd cheered. An eyewitness said, ‘He struggled a good deal and put out his legs as if to catch something with his feet [obviously Williams had either neglected or forgotten to strap the man’s knees and ankles together] but some of the undertaker’s men, who were down in the pit beneath the drop, seized his feet and sent him spinning round, a motion which continued until he was pulled up above the level of the scaffold boards.’
It was now a quarter past eight, and the body was allowed to hang until five minutes to nine, when Williams cut it down amid the gloating yells of the onlookers. They made a rush forward as if to lay hold of the corpse, but they were kept back by the strong force of police who lined the barriers. The hangman’s assistants too, seemed to be affected by the general frenzy and a scramble took place among them for portions of the rope, shavings from the coffin, or anything that would serve as a souvenir of the great Burke and Hare tragedies. The body was then conveyed to the lock-up for the time being, and the vast crowd slowly dispersed.
But the mere extinguishing of the murderer’s life was not enough to satisfy the bloodlust of the populace. Just as, centuries earlier, the severed head was held high so all could see that justice had been done and the felon had genuinely paid for his crimes against society, so even in the ‘civilised’ nineteenth century, everyone wanted to see and probably gloat over the mortal remains of William Burke, so the macabre circus sideshow had to continue. Accordingly, early the next day while the city was asleep, the corpse was transferred from the lock-up to the College where, just like Burke’s victims, his body was to be dissected. The cadaver was laid out on a table and several eminent scientists and a sculptor, who took a cast of it for a bust, examined it before the students were allowed to enter and inspect it.
That afternoon Dr Munro gave a lecture on their new specimen and for that purpose the upper part of the skull was sawn off and the brain exposed. The brain was described as being unusually soft, but it was pointed out that a peculiar softness was by no means uncommon in criminals who had suffered the last penalty of the law. While this lecture was going on, a large number of students had assembled in the quadrangle of the College and were clamouring for admission. Those who were entitled to be present at the usual lecture time of one o’clock were to be given tickets, but there were so many students that it was difficult to issue them; at last the doors were thrown open and as many as possible of the young men, with or without tickets, were admitted.
The lecture was planned to last one hour but continued for twice that length; meanwhile the seething crowd of young men in the quadrangle had grown so unruly that the police had to be called to preserve order. Far from subduing the students, this only served to exasperate them and many made attempts to overpower the constables. Windows were broken and the police had to use their staves, many injuries thereby being inflicted. The Lord Provost and the College Baillie put in an appearance but hastily retreated, ‘glad to retire with whole bones, under the abuse that was showered upon them.’ Eventually the multitude were promised that good behaviour would result in fifty students at a time being allowed in and in this way order was restored, but not for long. The public in general then started to object to the students being allowed in, and they threatened that unless they too were permitted to enter, they would storm the College, seize the corpse and tear it to pieces. So further promises were given that the public would also be admitted, and this concession brought relative calm.
Those who witnessed the scene on that Friday, 30 January 1829, would never readily forget it. The authorities had made the most elaborate preparations for exhibiting Burke’s body. It was placed naked on a black marble table in the anatomical theatre, and a passage was arranged to facilitate the movement of the viewers through the room.
The upper part of Burke’s skull, which had been sawn off the previous day for the purpose of the lecture, had been replaced, and to the uninitiated it was unlikely that what was apparently a slight scar would be noticeable. Dr Leighton, one of the medical men present, observed that,
‘the spectacle was sufficiently ghastly to satisfy the most epicurean appetite for horrors. There was as yet no sign of corruption or decay, so that the death pallor, as it contrasted with the black marble, showed strongly to the inquiring and often revolting eye; but the face had become more blue, and the shaved head, with marks of blood not entirely wiped off, gave effect to the grin into which the features had settled at the moment of death. However inviting to lovers of this kind of the picturesque, the broad chest that had lain with deadly pressure on so many victims [Burke’s preferred method of suffocation while covering the victim’s mouth], the large thighs and round calves, indicating so much power – but it was the face, embodying a petrified scowl, and the wide-staring eyes, so fixed and spectre-like, to which the attention was mostly directed.’
The doors of the anatomy theatre were thrown open at ten in the morning and from that hour until dusk the crowd streamed in along the narrow walkway, passing in front of the body at the rate, it was calculated, of sixty per minute, so that the total number who viewed it in this way was about 25,000. The crowd was composed mainly of men, although seven or eight women had also managed to gain entrance during the crush at the doors, but they were roughly handled by their male counterparts and had their clothing torn.
Dr Leighton went on:
‘After the public display, Burke was cut up and put in pickle for the lecture-table. He was cut up in quarters, or rather, portions, salted, and put in barrels. At that time an old acquaintance of mine was assistant to the lecturing professor, and with him I frequently visited the dissecting room in the College. He showed me Burke’s remains, and gave me the skin of his neck and of the right arm. These I had tanned, the neck brown, the arm white. The white was as pure as white kid, but as thick as sheepskin; and the brown was like brown tanned sheepskin. It was curious that the mark of the rope remained in the leather after being tanned. Of that neck leather I had a tobacco pouch made, and on the white leather of the right arm I got the artist Johnston to print the portraits of Burke and his wife, and Hare, which I gave to the noted antiquarian and collector of curiosities, Mr Fraser, and it was in one of his cases for many years.’