CONFESSIONS OF BURKE.
The information from which the following article is drawn up, we have received from a most respectable quarter, and its perfect correctness in all respects may be confidently relied on. In truth, it is as nearly as possible a strict report, rather than the substance, of what passed at an interview with Burke; in the course of which the unhappy man appears to have opened his mind without reserve, and to have given a distinct and explicit answer to every question which was put to him relative to his connection with the late murders.
After some conversation of a religious nature, in the course of which Burke stated that, while in Ireland, his mind was under the influence of religious impressions, and that he was accustomed to read his catechism and his prayer-book, and to attend to his duties, he was asked, “How comes it, then, that you who, by your own account, were once under the influence of religious impressions, ever formed the idea of such dreadful atrocities, of such cold-blooded, systematic murders, as you admit you have been engaged in—how came such a conception to enter your mind?” To this Burke replied, that he did not exactly know; but that becoming addicted to drink, living in open adultery, and associating continually with the most abandoned characters, he gradually became hardened.
He was then asked, how long he had been engaged in this murderous traffic. To which he answered, “From Christmas 1827 till the murder of the woman Docherty in October last.” “How many persons have you murdered, or been concerned in murdering, during that time? Were they thirty in all?” “Not so many; not so many, I assure you.” “How many?” He answered the question; but the answer was, for a reason perfectly satisfactory, not communicated to us, and reserved for a different quarter.
“Had you any accomplices?” “None but Hare. We always took care, when we were going to commit a murder, that no one else should be present—that no one could swear he saw the deed done. The women might suspect what we were about, but we always put them out of the way when we were going to do it. They never saw us commit any of the murders. One of the murders was done in Broggan’s house, while he was out, but before he returned the thing was finished, and the body put into a box. Broggan evidently suspected something, for he appeared much agitated, and entreated us ‘to take away that box,’ which we accordingly did. But he was not in any way concerned in it.
“You have already told me that you were engaged in these atrocities from Christmas 1827 till the end of October 1828; were you associated with Hare during all that time?” “Yes. We began with selling to Dr. —— the body of a woman[4] who had died a natural death in Hare’s house. We got ten pounds for it. After this we began the murders, and all the rest of the bodies we sold to him were murdered.”
“In what place were these murders generally committed?” “They were mostly committed in Hare’s house, which was very convenient for the purpose, as it consisted of a room and a kitchen. Daft Jamie was murdered there. The story told of this murder is incorrect. Hare began the struggle with him, and they fell and rolled together on the floor; then I went to Hare’s assistance, and we at length finished him, though with much difficulty. I committed one murder in the country by myself.[5] It was in last harvest. All the rest were done in conjunction with Hare.”
“By what means were these fearful atrocities perpetrated?” “By suffocation. We made the persons drunk, and then suffocated them by holding the nostrils and mouth, and getting on the body. Sometimes I held the mouth and nose, while Hare went upon the body; and sometimes Hare held the mouth and nose, while I placed myself on the body. Hare has perjured himself by what he said at the trial about the murder of Docherty. He did not sit by while I did it, as he says. He was on the body assisting me with all his might, while I held the nostrils and mouth with one hand, choked her under the throat with the other. We sometimes used a pillow, but did not in this case.”
“Now, Burke, answer me this question—Were you tutored and instructed, or did you receive hints from any one as to the mode of committing murder?” “No, except from Hare. We often spoke about it, and we agreed that suffocation was the best way. Hare said so, and I agreed with him. We generally did it by suffocation.” [Our informant omitted to interrogate him about the surgical instruments stated to have been found in his house; but this omission will be supplied.]
“Did you receive any encouragement to commit or persevere in committing these atrocities?” “Yes; we were frequently told by Paterson that he would take as many bodies as we could get for him. When we got one, he always told us to get more. There was commonly another person with him of the name of Falconer. They generally pressed us to get more bodies for them.”
“To whom were the bodies so murdered sold?” “To Dr. ——. We took the bodies to his rooms in —— ——, and then went to his house to receive the money for them. Sometimes he paid us himself; sometimes we were paid by his assistants. No questions were ever asked as to the mode in which we had come by the bodies. We had nothing to do but to leave a body at the rooms, and go get the money.”
“Did you ever, upon any occasion, sell a body or bodies to any other lecturer in this place?” “Never. We knew no other.”
“You have been a resurrectionist (as it is called) I understand?” “No. Neither Hare nor myself ever got a body from a churchyard. All we sold were murdered save the first one, which was that of the woman (man) who died a natural death in Hare’s house. We began with that: our crimes then commenced. The victims we selected were generally elderly persons. They could be more easily disposed of than persons in the vigour of health.”
Such are the disclosures which this wretched man has made, under circumstances which can scarcely fail to give them weight with the public. Before a question was put to him concerning the crimes he had been engaged in, he was solemnly reminded of the duty incumbent upon him, situated as he is, to banish from his mind every feeling of animosity towards Hare, on account of the evidence which the latter gave at the trial; he was told, that, as a dying man, covered with guilt, and without hope, except in the infinite mercy of Almighty God, through our blessed Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, he, who stood so much in need of forgiveness, must prepare himself to seek it by forgiving from his heart all who had done him wrong; and he was most emphatically adjured to speak the truth, and nothing but the truth, without any attempt either to palliate his own iniquities, or to implicate Hare more deeply than the facts warranted. Thus admonished, and thus warned, he answered the several interrogatories in the terms above stated; declaring, at the same time, upon the word of a dying man, that every thing he had said was true, and that he had in no respect exaggerated or extenuated any thing, either from a desire to exculpate Hare, or to spare any one else. The unhappy man is, moreover, perfectly penitent, and resigned to his fate. He never deluded himself with any hopes of escape or of mercy; and he is now accordingly preparing himself for confession, and for receiving absolution, by a perusal of such books as his spiritual guides have put into his hands, and by listening with the most devout attention to their religious instructions. He fully acknowledges the justice of his sentence; nay, he considers it in some measure as a blessing, the certainty of his approaching fate having brought back his mind to a sense of religion, from which it had been long estranged. At first he expressed deep regret that Hare, whose guilt he conceives as of a still deeper dye than his own, should have escaped the vengeance of the law; but by the exertions of his spiritual monitors, who have been indefatigable in their efforts to impress him with a strong sense of the dreadful enormity of his own guilt, as well as to bring him to a right frame and temper of mind, he no longer gives expression to such feelings, and now only breathes a wish to die at peace with all mankind. As often as the subject of the late trial is mentioned, however, he never fails to assert that Hare perjured himself in the account he gave of the murder of the woman; repeating the statement we have already given, that, so far from sitting by, a cool and unconcerned spectator of the crime, Hare actively assisted in the commission of it, and was upon the body of the woman co-operating with himself in his efforts to strangle her.