While her son was away, Lady Agnes poisoned Bertha. Simple as that. A wee drop of deadly nightshade or similar into her evening's claret and away went the problem. Except Alexander found out, and in death, Bertha had driven mother and son apart. Either of these tormented souls are said to be haunt the castle.
Curiously the Green Lady is thought to be neither Lady Agnes or Bertha, and such is the nature of anecdotal evidence, plus the fact that ghosts rarely participate in a census, the identity of the Green Lady is unknown. Some say she is a servant who disappeared in disgrace after becoming pregnant. But who really knows? We'd go an ask her personally, but given her reputation as a portent of death for a member of the Burnett family it is understandable that the family would like her to maintain a low profile.
Scottish Heroes and Villains
Hollywood has immortalised Scottish heroes such as William Wallace and Rob Roy MacGregor (whether accurately or not can be debated). Even some of our less commendable characters have been shown on the silver screen and preserved in literature; Burke and Hare the infamous body snatchers, Deacon Brodie the inspiration for the character of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde and even the cannibal family of Sawney Bean was the inspiration for the horror movie 'The Hills have eyes'. Read more of the commendable and the contemptible characters of Scotland.
The Legend of Sawney Bean
By Rodger Moffet
In recent times the stories of Hannibal Lecter and the real life horrors of Jeffrey Dahmer have provided chilling accounts of cannibalism. However, Scotland can lay claim to one of the most gruesome horror tales ever recounted - the legend of Sawney Bean.
Sawney Bean was born in East Lothian approximately 9 miles to the east of Edinburgh. With all legends dates are rather sketchy but some versions of the tale put his birth around the reign James VI of Scotland. The son of a "hedger and ditcher" he became a tanner by trade. However hard work was not his forte and he eventually decided to give up making an honest living and fled to County Galloway with his new bride. Here they found residence at Bennane Cave, by Ballantrae in Ayrshire.
The cave was a perfect hideout with tunnels penetrating the solid rock and extending for more than a mile in length. Furthermore, twice a day at high tide the cave's entrance was flooded for several hundred metres making it almost impenetrable. From this subterranean lair Sawney Bean hatched his plans for his families future.
With honest labour out of the question he decided to turn to robbery and began to ambush travellers. To ensure he wasn't caught he made a point of not letting anyone he ambushed escape with their lives. Sawney then saw an answer to yet another dilemma; the Bean clan was growing (no doubt through incest) and soon reached upwards of 46 sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters. With so many mouths to feed and a surplus of fresh meat in the form of human corpses he took the horrific decision to resort to cannibalism!
Sawney beans cave Victims were ambushed with military precision by the Bean clan with all means of escape cut off. As many as half a dozen victims could be ambushed at a time. The hopeless victims were killed, dragged to the cave and butchered. What they couldn't eat the pickled and preserved and what they didn't preserve they tossed into the sea. Soon these grim discoveries, including perfectly preserved but decaying body parts were discovered washed up. Alongside this the number of missing persons in Galloway was rising. To make matters worse many who had gone missing had last been seen at local Inns so the suspicion naturally fell on several innocent innkeepers who were wrongly accused and hanged
Estimates of how many victims met their end at the hand of Sawney's clan vary from several hundred up to nearly a thousand souls.
The fortunes of Sawney Bean and his cannibal family finally took a turn for the worse around the year 1600. The gang attacked a man and his wife travelling back on horseback from a local country fair. A gang of Women dragged the poor unfortunate wife from her horse where she was stripped and disembowelled then as the husband desperately fought off his attackers he witnessed these same women beginning to devour their victim. No doubt finding new strength from the horror he was witnessing the husband fought desperately to escape, finally driving his horse over his attackers. Just at that point a group of 20 -30 returning from the same fair came upon the awful scene. Sawney realising even his gang were outnumbered fled back to the cave. This time leaving the evidence in the form of one mutilated corpse.
The traumatised husband was swiftly taken to see the Chief Magistrate of Glasgow who reported the crime to the King himself. James IV took a very keen interest in witchcraft and so these crimes so enthralled him that he took personal charge and very soon arrived in Ayrshire with tracker dogs and a small army of four hundred men.
Despite their best efforts no sign of the Bean's lair was discovered, that was until the dogs picked up the scent of something very unholy coming from a cave entrance.
Carefully the troops entered Bennane cave and were treated to an almost unbelievable sight. All round the walls rows of human body parts were hung up to dry. all around the cave piles of clothing along with jewelry and other personal possessions from their victims lay - along with piles of discarded bones. The Beans struggled to escape but were vastly outnumbered and around forty-eight of the clan were arrested. Some of the Kings men stayed behind and gathered up what human remains they could find and buried then in the sands. The rest accompanied the wretched Bean clan to Edinburgh where they were locked up in the Tollbooth.
So severe were the crimes and so clear the guilt that no offer of a trial was given and the very next day they were taken to Leith under sentence of death. twenty-seven men were hung drawn and quartered, a particularly slow and severe punishment where their limbs were cut off and the victims bled to death. The women and grandchildren of the clan were forced to witness this awful spectacle and while they screamed in horror three huge bonfires were built. The remaining twenty-one women were burned like witches.
Clearly a horrific tale but unfortunately one that lacks any sort of supporting evidence. There are no records of missing persons around the time or indeed records of executed innkeepers. Furthermore King James' cameo appearance does make the whole story even more fantastic. Some recon that the story was concocted in the 18th century in a sort of 'Penny Dreadful' or that it was anti Scottish propaganda aimed at countering the Jacobite sympathies. Whatever the truth is the legend of Sawney Bean is still good enough to chill the bones.
Burke & Hare
By Rodger Moffet
The year is 1836 and five young boys are roaming Arthurs Seat in Holyrood park, Edinburgh - hunting for rabbits, what they find defies belief and brings back to the public's attention one of the most gruesome periods of our capital's history.
Buried in a small cave they find 17 miniature coffins - each coffin is only 4 inches long and each contains a small carved wooden doll - made with some expertise. Many theories exists as to what these dolls represented but the one that captured the imagination was their coincidental link to the 17 victims of William Burke & William Hare; The BODY SNATCHERS.
The story of Burke & Hare is fascinating in itself for many reasons, though motivated by greed on the part of the perpetrators, the purpose of the murders and the resulting bodies created a scandal that both shocked the polite society of Edinburgh but at the same time contributed to the city's standing as a place of intellectual advancement in the development of modern medicine.
We go back to the early 1800s - great advances take place in science and medicine is no exception - however research into anatomy is made difficult as the supply of fresh cadavers on which to experiment are hard to come by. Generally only those executed for murder were given up for dissection and with such a voracious demand from the university there just were not enough murderers to go round, ironically an opportunity arose then for two of the best.
Enter William Burke & William Hare, two Irish immigrants from Ulster who had come to Scotland to work on the Union Canal. The pair probably met when Burke moved to a lodging house in Edinburgh's West Port area run by Hare and his partner; Margaret Laird. Burke & Hare could never have been considered of high morals and indeed the area around the West Port was rife with criminals, prostitutes and life's detritus in all shapes & sizes. However they did not suddenly wake up one morning and decide to become Edinburgh's most notorious serial killers - their path to hell was a little less obvious...
The downfall of Burke & Hare began with a simple problem - what to do with a dead tenant who owed you money? In 1827 an elderly lodger of Hare's called Donald had died of natural causes in the night - he had no known family and owed Hare £4.49 in rent. Burke listened to Hare curse his bad luck - then a solution came to them. Poor Donald may have been considered worthless in life but maybe not so in death - the anatomists! And so their new career began; on the day of Donald's funeral they filled his coffin with bark and in the dead of night - wheeled the body to Surgeon's Square where Professor Knox paid them seven pounds and ten shillings and asked few questions regarding how they had come about the corpse. suddenly from four pounds down they were three pounds ten shillings up, not a bad night's work!
The scheme had one drawback though - if they had to sit and wait for the next tenant to pop his clogs they could be in for a wait - even in such a god forsaken place as the West Port! As they eagerly eyed their tenants the next victim presented himself; Joseph Miller was already sick, why not help him on his way a little? no harm in that surely? So one night they plied him with whisky and suffocated the poor man. Since they had now exhausted the supply of sick tenants in the boarding house it was time to look elsewhere. In February 1828 Abigail Simpson, an elderly lady was lured into the lodging house and dispatched in the same style, a smothering technique designed not to harm the corpse which grimly became known as 'Burking'.
Poor Abigail was hardly cold by the time she reached Knox's back door, This was reflected in Burke & Hare's payment for this cadaver when the Anatomist paid them fifteen pounds as she was so 'fresh'.
Over the next year they grizzly trade was carried out from their seedy boarding house.
The victims of Burke & Hare were mostly those on the lower rungs of life's social ladder, those who would not be missed but even in a city the size of Edinburgh not everyone at this level was a complete unknown; The pair had their first close escape when Burke brought back two prostitutes, Mary Patterson and Janet Brown. Brown left after an argument but Patterson was not so lucky. As her body was uncovered on the dissecting table the next morning a collective gasp was heard among the students. Many students had known Mary...intimately!
Several more victims followed in her footsteps; local characters such as Effie a local beggar along with more of Edinburgh's elderly, poor infirm and immoral including a mother and daughter, Mary Haldane and her daughter Peggy who had been dispatched after arriving at the boarding house looking for her mother. But Mary was to give them yet another scare and arise more suspicion when she was also recognised on the slab.
Still the pair became even more daring - their next victim, young 'Daft Jamie' was a well known local character, and his mother reported his disappearance. His unveiling on the dissecting table was shouts of recognition from students, Knox denied that this was the same boy and realising that the blood was on his hands too in more ways than one set about dissecting the poor boy's face first to ensure no-one would recognise him.
The killing spree of Burke & Hare came to an end on Halloween night in 1828.
Earlier Burke & Hare had argued, Burke had accused Hare and his partner of selling bodies behind his back and Burke and his mistress, Helen MacDougall had set up their own lodging house. On Halloween, Burke befriended a fellow Irish woman Mary Docherty in a local shop, claiming that they were related since his mother was also a Docherty he invited her back to his own lodging house. But Burke had a problem; James & Ann Grey were already tenants in their tiny establishment and Burke knew that murder can be noisy work! Burke paid for the Grays to spend the night at Hares equally infamous home.
The deed was done but next morning Ann Gray returned to collect some items and became suspicious of Burke's behavior. That evening the investigated the house and found Mary's body hidden under a bed in a spare room. The confronted Helen MacDougall who lost her nerve and offered a ten pound bribe to the Grays. The refused and fled to report the murder to the police but by that time Burke had already been tipped off and by the time the police arrived Mary's corpse was already in the possession of Doctor Knox. An anonymous tip-off led police to Surgeon's Square where James Grey identified the body. It would have appeared that Burke & Hare's fate was sealed.
And yet after months of questioning the courts could not make a strong case against Burke, Hare or their womenfolk. Finally Sir William Rae the Lord Advocate made an offer to Hare, turn King's evidence against Burke and receive immunity from prosecution. The old saying of 'no honour among thieves' was ever more true and Hare willingly confessed all to the police implicating Burke and Helen in all the grizzly murders.
Burke's trial began on Christmas Eve 1828, It was a short trial and he was soon convicted and sentenced to death. Helen's case was not proven and she was released and fled the country to avoid lynching.
