HELEN M‘DOUGAL.
She is a native of the small village of Maddiston, in the parish of Muiravonside, and county of Stirling, where she resided in her early life. Her maiden name was Dougal. Her character does not appear to have been good at any time, and her conduct speedily dissipated any doubts that might have existed upon the subject. At an early period of her life she formed an unlawful connection with a man who resided in the same village, to whom she bore a child during the lifetime of his wife. After her death, their intercourse continued; and after a short interval, they cohabited publicly together, she bearing his name of M‘Dougal, and passing for his wife. At this period they came to reside in Leith, where M‘Dougal followed his occupation of a sawer, until he took the typhus fever at the time that that disease first raged so fearfully in Edinburgh. He became a patient in the hospital opened in Queensberry-house, where he died. His partner, upon his decease, again returned to her native village, and father’s house. Shortly after her return she met with Burke, who was a labourer on the Canal, when their adulterous intercourse commenced, and in about a year from their first acquaintance, they agreed to live together as man and wife. From that time up to his apprehension, she followed his fortunes, and adhered to him in all his wanderings.
Wherever they resided, her character seems to have been the same. In Edinburgh, Leith, Peebles, and Pennycuik, she was distinguished for her drunken dissolute habits, and was universally disliked, and considered unworthy even of Burke. Notwithstanding their many quarrels, in which she was frequently the aggressor, she seems to have cherished an ardent effection towards him, and at the termination of his career, to have felt sincerely upon the subject of his unhappy fate. Her own condition, indeed, is not less pitiable, although a Jury has been found who could return a verdict of “not proven” that she was a participator in the murder for which he has suffered death, notwithstanding her being present and aiding him in the stratagems which preceded, and the sale of the murdered body, she is guilty in the eyes of God and man, and is doomed to wander on the face of the earth an outcast from human charities, and an opprobrium to human nature. It would almost have been charity to have convicted her along with Burke. Her wretched life is precariously preserved under miseries more horrible than hanging would have been. It was predicted upon her enlargement, that she would realize the fable of the wandering jew, and it seems to have been hitherto fulfilled to the letter. Hunted about from place to place, without being able to find a temporary refuge from her tormentors, she has discovered no person who would maintain social intercourse with her; but, on the contrary, her detection was certainly followed by every species of ill usage and annoyance. We have already adverted to the reception she met with upon her visiting her old haunts in the West Port, and it has only been a sample of what awaited her whenever she went. The next place that she essayed was her father’s residence in the village of Redding in Stirlingshire; here she experienced a similar reception, and was obliged to save herself by a precipitate retreat. She has since made various attempts to discover a resting place with a like effect. She has hitherto been recognised wherever she went, and the summary vengeance of the mob exercised upon her. By the latest accounts we find that she has appeared at Newcastle, where again she has been rescued from an infuriated populace by the police officers, who afforded her temporary protection and shelter in the prison. Their sympathy, however, does not appear to extend beyond this, and she was as speedily as convenient escorted by constables to the “blue stone,” the boundary of the counties of Northumberland and Durham, and there transferred to the safe conduct of the functionaries of the latter county, for what purpose further than to get rid of the “accursed thing” does not appear.