Burke and Hare (20 page)

As to the actual perpetrators of the sixteen murders, it was widely believed at the time that the worst of the two fiends had got away with it. There was nothing to choose between them in moral terms, but it is worth keeping in mind that Burke was the one with such brains as the two possessed between them. He was the only one of the four who was literate, he had the wider experience, and he had the nous to be the chief motivator of a criminal partnership. It is difficult to believe that anyone with an ounce of sense would have followed Hare in a risky enterprise, although it may well have been Hare, who had lived in the squalid back streets of Edinburgh longer than Burke, who first thought of the idea of selling a body to the doctors. Sir William Rae, the Lord Advocate, was probably right in regarding Burke as the principal party in the affair. In which case, the man whom Lord Cockburn later called ‘respectable’ was the evil monster, and the one Professor Wilson called ‘evil’ was the cowardly dupe.

What if Rae had offered Burke immunity from prosecution instead of Hare? Since Nelly McDougal was not Burke’s wife, the Lord Advocate could have had three defendants in the dock instead of two, and might have got two of them convicted, as Maggie Hare’s guilt would probably have appeared rather less doubtful to the jury than McDougal’s, and Burke would most probably have been more talkative in the dock than Hare was. Rae may have genuinely believed that Burke, as the more educated man, was the prime mover in the partnership, and that he should be the one to pay the supreme penalty; but he must also have been influenced in his choice by the probability that Hare would be the easier to frighten and coerce into turning King’s Evidence.

Was there any way in which Hare might have been brought to justice
as well as
Burke? It was infinitely more desirable for the two men to be tried for murder than Burke and McDougal, for even if McDougal had been found guilty she was only an accessory and not a killer herself, as was also true of Maggie Hare. The only body in the case was that of Mrs Docherty, but the case of Mary Paterson was at least suspected before Hare made his statement and had been granted immunity from prosecution. Janet Brown (or ‘Jess’ as she was called in the ‘Echo’s’ letter) had gone to the police with her story when she heard of the arrest of Burke and Hare and their womenfolk. Perhaps more protracted and diligent enquiry after the discovery of Mrs Docherty’s corpse might have led to a chink in the armour of silence that surrounded Knox and his students. Several people, according to David Paterson, had made sketches of Mary Paterson’s corpse. If one of these had come to light it might have been accepted as sufficient evidence to subpoena Knox and his assistants to testify to the delivery of her body by ‘John’ and ‘William’ to 10 Surgeons’ Square.

There would have been no proof that she had been murdered, but the fact that she had been in the company of Burke and Hare alive and well, and been delivered dead, on the same day, combined with the evidence about Mrs Docherty, should have been enough to persuade a jury of the guilt of both men. And if evidence had been given about the delivery of Daft Jamie as well – another young and relatively healthy person, some of whose property had been found in the possession of Burke and Hare, including the brass snuff-box and spoon – that would surely have proved conclusive, even by the admirable standards of cautious Scottish juries reluctant to take chances with the death penalty.

Another question arises about Jamie Wilson’s corpse. If the order I have suggested for the murders is correct, and Burke and Hare got £8 for the body of Mrs Ostler and £10 for that of Ann McDougal, that would suggest that Mrs Ostler was murdered in September (Burke said it was ‘September or October’), and Ann McDougal early in October. Knox advertised his new season’s course of lectures in Practical Anatomy and Operative Surgery as commencing on 6 October, so we may take it that he paid winter rates for his subjects from about that date. So if Ann McDougal’s corpse was the first that Burke and Hare sold to him after the summer recess, Jamie Wilson must have been murdered well into October, possibly halfway through the month.

Now, how long would Knox normally store a corpse before dissecting it? It could not be long, even in a cold cellar, in the days before refrigeration. But the body of Mary Paterson was apparently kept in spirits for three months before it was dissected. If the allegation was untrue that Jamie’s corpse was mutilated and dissected at once to prevent recognition, it might well have been still whole in Knox’s cellar when news reached him of the arrest of Burke and Hare, perhaps a fortnight, or at most three weeks, after he had bought Jamie’s corpse from them.

If this were the case, what would Knox have done in such circumstances? He would either have destroyed the evidence at once, not wanting
another
recognisable corpse to be found on his premises; or he might have assumed with his customary arrogance that he could sweep aside any questions the police might put to him. But there appears to be a possibility, at least, that Jamie’s corpse was intact on Knox’s premises at the time of the arrest, and it could have been seized and subjected to a post-mortem examination which might have revealed more signs of a violent death than was the case with Mrs Docherty.

But thorough investigation of all the circumstances was not one of the hallmarks of this infamous case. Sir William Rae, of course, could not risk bringing four people to the dock and failing to get
any
of them convicted. He acted on the balance of probabilities, and the result was that the despicable Hare got away with multiple murder.

NOTES

¹
Lonsdale, p. 74.

²
Grierson, p. 108.

³
‘Shearing’ meant reaping; i.e. the annual harvest when townsfolk traditionally went for a working holiday in the open air.

⁴
Robert Buchanan et al,
Trial of William Burke and Helen McDougal
, p. xiv.

⁵
Glasgow Chronicle
, 10 February 1829.

⁶
Edinburgh Evening Courant
, 14 February 1829.

⁷
Dumfries Courier
, 10 February 1829.

⁸
Atlay, p. 42.

⁹
Ibid.

¹⁰
Lonsdale, pp. 75-76(n).

10. ECHO

D
uring the weeks since Christmas, while Burke was in the condemned cell awaiting execution and Hare was in prison waiting for legal arguments to end in his release, one other allegedly culpable associate of the foursome had kept what some regarded as a dignified silence.

Dr Knox was commonly perceived as a sinister ringmaster who got Burke and Hare dancing to his tune. Some believed he had actively encouraged sixteen murders, and most of those who would not go that far held him guilty of turning a blind eye, like Nelson, to a clear signal he chose not to see.

Near the end of January, a sixpenny pamphlet was published, entitled
Letter to the Lord Advocate, disclosing the accomplices, secrets, and other facts relative to the Late Murders; with a correct account of the manner in which the Anatomical Schools are supplied with subjects.
Its author hid behind the pseudonym ‘The Echo of Surgeons’ Square’, but it has been attributed ever since to David Paterson, Knox’s doorkeeper. This document has consistently been dismissed as the spiteful reaction of a man who had been sacked and was taking revenge on his employer, while at the same time clearing himself of any blame in the affair. No one in more than 100 years seems to have seriously questioned whether Paterson was really the author of this pamphlet. It is my belief not only that the pamphlet was not written by Paterson, but that it is more important than has been realised. The chief object of the Letter, it appears to me, was not to exonerate Paterson, but to urge the Lord Advocate to prosecute Hare as well as Burke and to bring Knox to justice for his part in the affair. What was meant, otherwise, by the title-page quote, ‘What? Shall wealth screen thee from justice?’ The pamphlet was written and printed in a very short time, before all hope of prosecuting Hare had gone, and by someone with prior knowledge of Burke’s confessions, since they were referred to in the text. But he can only have seen the few leaked (and inaccurate) details of the
Courant
confession, for in
neither
of his confessions did Burke say, as the ‘Echo’ believed, that ‘the first subject ever they sold to Dr K – was a female that died in Hare’s house’. This at least proves that the author of the
Letter
was not the person who somehow gained access to Burke in prison and obtained the complete account.

Paterson lived with his mother and fifteen-year-old sister, Elizabeth, at 26 West Port. He described himself as ‘keeper of the museum belonging to Dr Knox’, and was referred to in court, during Burke’s trial, as a ‘medical person’ by one lawyer and a ‘surgeon’ by another. But after Paterson’s appearance in court and some damaging correspondence with the newspapers, Knox’s senior students, keen to defend their mentor when he would do nothing to defend himself, denounced Paterson as a ‘doorkeeper’, a menial servant who had no responsibilities other than answering the door and keeping the premises clean, and was ‘hired by the week at seven shillings’.

The truth, as is usually the case, seems to have been somewhere between the two extremes. Paterson had no medical qualifications but was rather more than a mere janitor. He was employed by Knox to keep his dissecting-room in good order, making it ready for demonstrations and cleaning it up afterwards, and he had some responsibility for accepting and storing the corpses ready for use when needed. He was authorised by Knox to receive bodies on his behalf when they were delivered, and was, at a later stage at least, Knox’s go-between with the various suppliers.

There has been much confusion about the sequence of events in Paterson’s brief appearance on the stage of judicial history. He did
not
reveal during Burke’s trial, as some authors have said, that he had been attempting to sell to another anatomist, for a profit, a body intended for Dr Knox. Paterson wrote a letter to the
Caledonian Mercury
, published on 15 January, in which he claimed that he had been shamefully wronged as a result of his evidence during the trial, and denied that he had been dismissed from Dr Knox’s service after absconding. He had a letter from Knox, in fact, asking him to go back. Addressed to ‘Dear David’, it acknowledged that ‘the public clamour is of course much against you’, but assured him that ‘all such matters as these subside in a short period, provided the individuals themselves do not adopt false steps’. Paterson protested his innocence of any wrongdoing and challenged the authorities to bring him to trial if they could prove him guilty of any.

It was then that the
Mercury
, instead of offering him any crumbs of comfort, let it be known that the paper had information that Paterson had attempted to sell a body, intended for Dr Knox, to one of the doctor’s rivals, and alleged that the body in question was that of Mrs Docherty, the last victim of Burke and Hare. Paterson admitted that he had attempted to profit from the sale of a body, and offered an explanation. James Syme, one of Knox’s rival private lecturers in anatomy, was desperately short of subjects, and had asked Paterson if he had a surplus. On the same night that Burke and Hare had made it known to him that they had another subject for sale, a message dated 29 October had reached 10 Surgeons’ Square from a well-known local body-snatcher named Andrew Merrilees, nicknamed ‘Merry Andrew’. It read:

Paterson, with two bodies due for delivery together, saw his opportunity for a little profit, and offered to Syme for £15 the one Merry Andrew was bringing in the early hours of the morning. Merrilees would not expect more than £10 or £12 from Knox. Paterson could pocket the difference. In the event, Merrilees failed to turn up with the corpse, but Paterson’s admission got him into further trouble. It looked as if he could have been soliciting corpses in advance and inviting anatomists to bid against one another for them. He admitted that the coincidence of the two corpses looked ‘rather suspicious’, but maintained that these were the facts. The newspaper, however, stuck to its story, and in the end Paterson’s letters to the editor had done him more harm than good. The general belief is that he then wrote the open letter in self-justification.

The open
Letter to the Lord Advocate
has been given short shrift by many previous writers on Burke and Hare, and Lonsdale, in his biography of Knox, only mentions Paterson in a brief and dismissive footnote. Isobel Rae, likewise, barely discusses the
Letter
at all. But the document raises some significant questions which have been largely ignored.

According to the author, ‘when a just suspicion fell upon Burke about the beginning of October last, a policeman was stationed at his door, but even then, he eluded their vigilance, and the body was safely deposited in the Lecture Room’. Whose body was this? According to Burke’s first confession, ‘about the beginning of October’ could have been before the murders of Mrs Ostler, Ann McDougal and Daft Jamie. But is it likely that Burke murdered four more victims (including Docherty)
after
he had come under suspicion and knew the police were watching him? And if someone had gone to the police with a suspicion about Burke, and Knox knew about it, would this not have alerted even the arrogant Knox to the danger he was in?

Later in the letter, the ‘Echo’ represents Paterson as saying that Burke had reported to him that he had a subject, but dare not bring it because a neighbour suspected that he had a body in his possession and a policeman ‘seldom left the corner of the house’. On hearing of this, Knox said that ‘John’ was a coward and he (Knox) would write to the authorities and procure a protection for John to carry ‘any packages safe to his Lecture Room’. Speaking later to Burke himself, Knox reportedly said that if he should be stopped on the street, he should go quietly to the police office until Knox could get him released and the package delivered. Burke allegedly replied that if he were once taken to the police office, he would not so easily get out again! This story, if true, suggests either that Knox really did believe that Burke was merely purchasing dead bodies or that, if he
did
have any suspicions, he was confident that no one could prove anything against him.