The Final Cause.
There are one or two considerations connected with the history we have given which, though having something of a philosophical look, are yet sufficiently practical to be appreciated by the ordinary observer of human nature and the ways of God with His creatures. It is doubtful if, from the beginning, the actors in this drama were ever sufficiently understood; if it is not more true to say, that the people, eager to conserve the prestige of man’s dignity, have been inclined, after the manner of purists, to set off exceptions to the general laws of human nature as the foil of some heaven-born exemption from crime. They have uniformly mixed contempt with their hatred of these strange men. They have not thought them entitled to be objects of consideration, far less study. They have represented them as something so far below their kind, that their deeds can no more enter as elements into a lesson than those of maniacs, or of the lower animals, who are exempted from the laws of responsibility, and so they have shewn an inclination to cast them out of the wide province of history; or, if they would allow them to remain within the precincts of annals, they would consign them to the grotesque page of monstra horrenda.
It is no doubt beneficial for man to think well of the good, but it is not advantageous for him to think lightly of the evil potentialities of his nature. We cannot deny that these men and women were sane; and we have higher authority than a wish-born logic or a self-gratifying rhetoric to satisfy us that “the heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” The authority is from heaven, and there is no want of verifying examples upon earth; nay, if we abate the “putrid coruscations,” or what have been called “the blue lights of necromancy” that play round these sordid murders, and which are at least nourished by the fancy, we may find every day cases scarcely less cruel and scarcely less sordid,—if we might not even say that it requires some analysis to find the difference in mere turpitude between a man who murders for the money that is about the body and one who slays for that which the body will bring. Then the repetition adds nothing to the atrocity of the individual act, while the premeditation is as signal in the slouching highwayman as in him who wiles the victim to the fatal den. In short, we may make what parade we please of the gradations of atrocity and the shades of our feelings, but we must always come back to the beginning, that there are no degrees of wickedness in those who have renounced God.
Not only, however, were these individuals sane; one among them, and the leader, was intelligent, had wit and humour, could feel the superficial sentiment of a pathetic lyric, and, above all, possessed ingenuity to the extent of inventing a new crime which has gone, with his name, over the world. The women, too, were intelligent and apt; nor has it been said that Mrs Hare did not feel the yearnings of a mother, or that M‘Dougal was false to the affection, however low, which bound her to the tyrant who enslaved her. Even Hare was not a fool—a character inconsistent with a will-power which could govern a woman of his wife’s acknowledged adroitness, and lead, if not rule, a man such as Burke, so that we may say that, so far as regards mere intelligence, the quaternity were a fair enough specimen of the people of their class, in which certain parts of our city abound; while Burke may be safely pronounced as being considerably above the average of uncultivated minds, left as a waste for the culture of the devil. But not only in this aspect were they worthy of study—they were perfect in their moral organisation as embodiments of evil, with no scruples, no misgivings, no backcomings of penitence, no fear of the future, and no remorse for the past. They were not only “clear grits”—they were “crystals.” They were, out of millions, creatures suited to the work they did—the work was suited to them, and they did it with all that concentration of purpose and uniformity of action which proclaim the being under alienation from the Almighty.
In what we here venture to say we have a sufficient apology for disinterring these people and their deeds, as constituting the great lesson, that it is the occasion that tests the man; even as it is true what the proverb says, that a man is never known till he is invested with power. As an abstract aphorism, that proverb has but little influence; it is only when we see it reduced to the concrete that we feel its truth and lay it up in our hearts; and this we are the more ready to do that, while we are well penetrated by that horror which is fear, we are not the less under the influence of that other horror, which is hatred. And here we insist for a distinction which may silence those who indulge in the fancy, that it is not useful or good to pander to an appetite for details which, while they harrow the heart, are yet, by some strange peculiarity in our nature, not without a grim charm calculated to fascinate and yet not to deter. The fault here lies at the door of the chronicler, for it is he who holds the wand, and it requires only the mode of using it to change the appetite into a revulsion, and to make the horror which is hatred paramount for good. It is only man who is false to nature, never nature to herself. Such deeds she exhibits in their true colours, and he who interprets her can only be true to his office when he produces those emotions which she produced in him uncoloured by the lights of a factitious fancy.
We may thus, even without going further, find a final cause in these terrible acts done by creatures made after the image of God. We have no more right to inquire why evil should be made to deter from evil, than to investigate into the origin of evil itself. Enough if we know and experience that the wages of sin is death; but we have here even more to consider. While we can have no doubt that the tragedy of Burke and Hare is calculated to deter not only from that sin which it involves, but from all those lesser ones which follow from the temptations of mammon, we have to recollect that it put an end to a pre-existing evil of gigantic magnitude, and which all the adjurations of a distressed people were not able otherwise to effect. That evil, as we have seen, was body-snatching. No sooner were the murders which the temptations of that practice induced brought to light, than our legislators took to their powers and duties, and righted the nation. They saved the affections of the heart without annulling the aspirations of the intellect, served the purpose of science in its remedial application to physical ills, without desecrating the temple where burned the light of the spirit, and through which these ills are felt.
BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH
POPULAR WORKS
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ALEXANDER LEIGHTON,
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Second Edition, crown 8vo, cloth extra, price 3s. 6d.,
CURIOUS STORIED TRADITIONS OF SCOTTISH LIFE.
By ALEXANDER LEIGHTON.
CONTENTS:—
| The White Scalp. The Ten of Diamonds. Sergeant Davies’ Ghost. The Chance Question. The Woman with the White Mice. | The Knife-thrust in the Dark. The Scored Back. The Long Slipper. The Diamond Eyes. The Lord Advocate’s Warrant. |
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By ALEXANDER LEIGHTON.
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CONTENTS:—
| The Amateur Robbery at Muttonhole. The Dowser of Arthur’s Seat. The College Porter of St Andrews. The House in Bell’s Wynd. | The Cradle of Logie. The Bride of Bell’s Tower. Swinton House and its Fairy. The Murder in the King’s Park in 1715. |
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Footnotes:
[1] Scotland, with her open church-yards in secluded places, groaned under this infliction for centuries. See “An Account of the most horrid and unchristian actions of the Grave-makers in Edinburgh, their raising and selling of the dead, abhorred by Turks and heathens, found out in this present year, 1711, in the month of May.” We offer an extract:—
“Methink I hear the latter trumpet sound,
When emptie graves into this place is found,
Of young and old, which is most strange to me,
What kind of resurrection this may be.
I thought God had reserved this power alone
Unto Himself, till He erect’d His throne
Into the clouds with His attendants by,
That He might judge the world in equity;
But now I see the contrair in our land,
Since men do raise the dead by their own hand.”
The price was known too, as a fixed thing apparently—
“As I’m inform’d the chirurgeons did give
Forty shillings for each one they receive.”
[2] Take this specimen of his self-esteem:—“Gentlemen, I may mention that I have already taught the science of anatomy to about 5000 medical men now spread over the surface of the earth, and some of these have turned out most remarkable for their knowledge, genius, and originality, for they now occupy some of the most conspicuous and trying positions in Europe. As a piece of curious testimony to my capabilities of communicating to you knowledge, I may venture to mention to you an interesting fact which took place last summer while on a visit to my distinguished friend and pupil, the Right Honourable the Earl of Breadalbane, at his beautiful and picturesque seat of Taymouth Castle, in the shire of Perth. At a large party given by the noble Earl to the leading nobility and gentry of Scotland, where, to use the beautiful language of Byron,
‘A thousand hearts beat happily, and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
And all went merry as a marriage-bell;’
I, who was there as the Earl’s guest, and knew personally none of the noble Earl’s distinguished personages of the party, happened to fall accidentally into conversation with a noble lord—an adjoining proprietor of our generous host’s—on the subject of the breeding of cattle; and, although our conversation originated in the slightest possible observation, it went on naturally enough, until, by imperceptible degrees, I was forced to open up the whole extensive stores of my anatomical and physiological knowledge, (especially the comparative departments of these subjects,) and before I had addressed myself to the noble lord for ten minutes continuously, for I actually felt myself inspired by my situation, the whole beauty and fashion of the large suite of rooms were surrounding me, and seemed entranced with the deep thought that poured from my lips. I naturally felt somewhat abashed that I had drawn upon myself so much observation, but the direct and indirect compliments that were paid to knowledge and eloquence amply compensated for this painful sensation. Among other things, I shall never forget the observation of an old, fashionable, and distinguished dame, evidently belonging to the middle portion of the last century, in these memorable words, ‘He’s a cunning loon that, he would wile the lav’rock frae the lift,’ for her quaint remark seemed to embody, in few words, the entire sentiment of the large and distinguished company, all illustrating the adage of Bacon, that knowledge is power; and, when brought to bear with eloquence and propriety, it affects equally all conditions of life with its mighty overwhelming strength.”
[3] The following, extracted from the MS. notes of a student, may be taken as a specimen of Knox’s mode of dealing with his brethren:-“Before commencing to-day’s lecture, I am compelled by the sacred calls of duty to notice an extraordinary surgical operation which has this morning been performed in a neighbouring building by a gentleman [Mr Liston] who, I believe, regards himself as the first surgeon in Europe. A country labourer from the neighbourhood of Tranent came to the Infirmary a few days ago with an aneurism of considerable extent, connected with one of the large arteries of the neck; and, notwithstanding of its being obvious to the merest tyro that it was an aneurism, the most distinguished surgeon in Europe, after an apparently searching examination, pronounced it to be an abscess. Accordingly, this professional celebrity—who, among other things, plumes himself upon the wonderful strength of his hands and arms, without pretension to head, and is an amateur member of the ring—plunged his knife into what he thus foolishly imagined to be an abscess; and the blood, bursting forth from the deep gash in the aneurismal sac, the patient was dead in a few seconds. This notable member of the profession is actually an extra-academical lecturer on surgery in this great metropolis; and on this occasion was assisted by a gentleman similarly constituted, both intellectually and physically, who had been trained up under the fostering care of a learned professor in a certain university, who inherited his anatomical genius from his ancestors, and who has recently published a work on the anatomy of the human body, in which, among other notabilities, no notice is taken of the pericardium. Tracing the assistant of our distinguished operator further back, I have discovered that he had been originally apprenticed to a butcher of this city, but that he had been dismissed from this service for stealing a sheep’s head and trotters from his employer’s shambles. It is surely unnecessary for me to add that a knowledge of anatomy, physiology, pathology, and surgery, is neither connected with nor dependent upon brute force, ignorance, and presumption; nor has it anything to do with an utter destitution of honour and common honesty.”—(Roars of applause, mixed with a few hisses.)
[4] However little connexion there seems between our indifference as to what becomes of the body and our belief in the immortality of the soul, it is, nevertheless, certain that believers and unbelievers do not view the subject in the same light. The ancients, in spite of Aristotle, (as we find him construed by Pomponatius,) were greater natural believers in the doctrine of the soul’s immortality, than the moderns, in spite of Des Cartes. And see how they venerated the dead! The Athenians put to death six generals who had achieved for them the greatest of their victories, because they had omitted to bury those who had been killed. When Alcyoneus took the head of Pyrrhus to his father Antigonus, that king struck the bearer with a staff, covered his eyes, and wept, and ordered that the dead body and the head should be honourably put on the pyre. The rabbinical fable of the Luz, or little bone of the size of a grain, which could not be destroyed even by fire, and from which nostrum corpus animate repullulascet, seems to have spread beyond Judea. We need not speak of Egypt and its sacred mummies.
[5] If, in these narratives, it may be found that I depart in some details from the discrepant confessions of Burke, I have to plead such authority as I possess, in a collection of notes taken at the time by one who intended to use them in a fuller account than that comprised in the two pamphlets published by Buchanan.
[6] She had been once a lodger in Log’s house.
[7] On examining the animal, the knackers found that many old sores become hollows had been filled up with tow, and then plastered over with a thin skin.
[8] They are fully described, for the first time we believe, in “Curiosities of Crime in Edinburgh.”
[9] We adopt this version in preference to another, which substitutes Burke.
[10] It was never believed that the cases confessed to by Burke exhausted the real list. One in particular, that of a little Italian boy, Ludovico, who went about with white mice, was a favourite story which could not be doubted, when it was known that the people of Tanner’s Close saw, for years afterwards, the two little animals haunting the dark recesses, where their young master had been sacrificed. And many other visions were seen there besides those of the white mice. But, apart from these superstitions, it is certain that there was found in Hare’s house a cage with the mice’s turning-wheel in it, which clearly had belonged to one of these Italian wanderers. The silence of Burke on the subject is of no importance, for his confessions did not agree, and, besides, it was properly asked, might not poor Ludovico have been the subject which Hare managed “on his own hook” unknown to Burke? Like the others, he would be mourned, but it would be far away in some little hamlet among the Apennines.
[11] A subscription was raised for Gray. He had saved the lives of probably a score of men and women; but so poorly was he remunerated, that he did not get a pound a head for these lives, or a tenth of that got by Burke for his bodies.
[12] The fury against the doctors ran so high not only in Edinburgh, but in Dumfries, that they were exposed to the risk of the fate they experienced under Cato the Censor:—“Romani quondam, sub Catone Censorio, medicos omnes et urbe tota et tota Italia pepulerunt eorum funesta mendacia crudelitatemque aversati.”—Agrippa de Van. Scien. cap. 83. See, too, Montaigne:—“Les Romains avaient este six cens ans avant que de recevoir la médecine; mais après l’avoir essayée, ils la chassèrent de leur ville par entremise de Caton le Censeur.” This proscription of doctors lasted to the time of the first emperors; but even if they had been tolerated, the national reverence for the dead would have been an effectual bar to such practices as Scotland groaned under for centuries. We are not left to wonder how they contrived to keep the body right in these ancient times, for we know that Cato purged his household; and Horace lets us up to the knowledge the old women had of simples.
[13] The allusion is to Knox. His house was afterwards surrounded by a furious mob, who smashed his windows, and he was obliged to secrete himself for a time.
[14] The entire Parliament Square rang as by the echoes of a jubilee.
[15] The story that the cancerous affection arose from the saliva of Daft Jamie, communicated by a bite, was resolutely held to by the people.
[16] “He struggled a good deal,” says an eye-witness, who was very near, “and put out his legs as if to catch something with his feet; but some of the undertaker’s men, who were below the drop, took him by the feet, and sent him spinning round,—a motion which was continued until he was drawn up above the level of the scaffold.”
[17] An eye-witness, whose notes we have, says, “He (Burke) was one of the most symmetrical men I ever saw, finely-developed muscles, and finely-formed, of the athlete class.”
[18] “After this exhibition,” says an eye-witness, “Burke was cut up and put in pickle for the lecture-table. He was cut up in quarters, or rather portions, and salted, and, with a strange aptness of poetical justice, put into barrels. At that time an early acquaintance and school-fellow was assistant to the professor, and with him I frequently visited the dissecting-room, when calling on him at his apartments at the College. He is now a physician in the Carse of Gowrie. He shewed me Burke’s remains, and gave me the skin of his neck and of the right arm. These I had tanned—the neck brown, and the arm white. The white was as pure as white kid, but as thick as white sheepskin; and the brown was like brown tanned sheepskin. It was curious that the mark of the rope remained on the leather after being tanned. Of that neck-leather I had a tobacco-doss made; and on the white leather of the right arm I got 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, jeweller, and it was in one of his cases for many years—may be still, if he is alive.”
[19] The portraits of Burke and M‘Dougal were got by the artist’s having been introduced into the judges’ private room, behind the bench. To complete the group, Mr Johnston, the engraver, managed through the governor to get an artist into the passage between the airing-grounds, when Hare was taking his walk. Hare saw the party sketching, came right up to the iron grating, and stood like a soldier at attention, until the sketch was completed. He then said, “Now, sir, peetch me a shilling for that.”
[20] For much of what follows of Hare’s flight we are indebted to the pencil-pen of Mr M‘Diarmid of the Dumfries Courier.
[21] We might, perhaps, say, except till now. Not long ago, we were told by a lady, who was in Paris about the year 1859, that, having occasion for a nurse, she employed a woman, apparently between sixty and seventy years of age. She gave her name as Mrs Hare, and upon being questioned whether she had been ever in Scotland, she denied it, stating that she came from Ireland. Yet she often sung Scotch songs; and what brings out the suspicion that she was the real Mrs Hare the more is, that she had a daughter, whose age, over thirty, agrees perfectly with that of the infant she had in her arms when in court. In addition to all this, the woman’s face was just that of the picture published at the time.
[22] After Burke’s execution, M‘Dougal is said to have made a wonderful revelation. One night, when the two men were deep in an orgy, Burke put the question, “What they would do when they could get no more bodies?” to which Hare answered, “That they could never be absolutely at a loss while their two wives remained, but that would only be when they were hard up.” The conversation had been overheard by one of the women.