But this could not continue long; nor did it. Burke, become hot with impatience, suddenly threw himself upon the still sleeping simpleton, and, clutching him by the neck, attempted to strangle him. The onset roused the instinctive energies of the lad, who had sense enough to see his danger. The fear which in other circumstances would have made him run to avoid his enemies, seemed to pass into courage, and nerve him to sudden desperation. He clutched his assaulter with great force—his eye darted forth his fury—the mantling foam stood upon his lips like a lather—and throwing off the tiger with a bound, he sprang to the floor, stood erect, and awaited another onset. Nor did he wait long. Burke, in his turn, roused by opposition to the height of his wrath, again seized him, with the intention to throw him; but Jamie had the greater strength, and, besides, he fought for his life, so that he was again likely to become the master, when Burke cried out to Hare, who had hitherto kept back, as if afraid to enter into the struggle, to come forward and assist him, otherwise “I will stick a knife in you.” The threat had its effect, for Hare, rushing forward at the very moment when Jamie was mastering his enemy, tripped up his heels, and laid him on his back on the floor. Not a moment was now to be lost, as the continued thumping and knocking against the furniture and the screams of the lad might reach the Close, and they must do their work, as we have said, without a knife, (which would have quickly brought matters to a termination,) otherwise no price at Surgeon’s Square. The next moment saw Burke extended upon the body of the still struggling simpleton, while Hare, at his head, was engaged in the old process of holding the nose and mouth. Even after this, it was still a struggle of considerable duration. The men were sweating and breathing loud with their mere efforts to kill, and Burke, roused to fury, was often thrown off, only to spring again with greater ferocity. By and by, Jamie’s struggles got weaker and weaker—relapses into stillness—wild upraisings again—spasmodic jerks of effort—those indescribable sounds which the doctors say attend cynanche—all receding gradually to the last sign. Nor did they quit their grasp till they were pretty sure they had effected their purpose. They hung over him—listened for breathings—made surety surer. Daft Jamie is dead!
This was beyond all question the most imprudent of all the acts of these terrible beings. Without supposing them mad, it is hardly possible to imagine that they could place before young men of the College, who were in the daily habit of conversing with their victim, a body which could scarcely fail to be recognised upon the instant. Yet on that very day it was put into a chest and conveyed to the rooms, where, after examination, it brought the price of £10. Burke, when he rose up after being satisfied that Jamie was dead, rifled his pockets, and took out the small box and the spoon, giving the spoon to Hare, and keeping the box to himself. The clothes he gave to his brothers children, who, when the bundle was unbound, fell to fighting about them; connected with which part of an atrocity which the paper will scarcely bear the impression of, is the curious fact that a baker some time after recognised upon one of Constantine Burke’s sons a pair of trousers he had not long before given to Jamie. But here, again, though the mother of the lad, distracted by his sudden disappearance, ran about searching and inquiring everywhere for her poor boy, and though it was circulated that one of Dr Knox’s students had affirmed that he saw Jamie on the dissecting-table, no suspicion of the manner in which he had been disposed of was ever hinted, till the final discovery, which arose out of another case. Yet it is certain that even before this event there had begun to move an under-current of uneasiness in the public mind, and even some dark hints appeared in the public prints; not that any of these pointed to anything of a defined character, but that they gradually gave rise to a suspicion that there was some great secret to be unfolded—what, no one could tell, no one even surmise—which would startle the public ear, and lay open some terrible conspiracy. Theories flew about in various guises, all as dark as they were ridiculous. Some said that there existed somewhere in the city a secret association of men, bound together by a fearful oath to avenge fancied wrongs by a crusade against society, and that the members prowled about at night for their victims, which they immolated amidst oaths and curses. Others, still more wild, whispered that the missing individuals were slaughtered and eaten by a gang of famished wretches, who having once tasted human flesh, got keen upon the zest. Sawney Bean and Christie of the Cleik rose up again, and became what they had been in olden times, the bugbears of grown children. And, however ridiculous all these fancies might appear after the disclosure of the true secret, it cannot be denied that even sensible people, who looked sharply into human nature, and were not utterly sceptical of the old legends, might, without the charge of being fanciful, be led into thoughts which they would otherwise have been ashamed of. The fact that so many individuals, old and young, had disappeared within so short a time, without a trace being left, and in many cases with their clothes lying unclaimed, remained to be accounted for, and there was no experience to guide, and no theory of human nature to explain. After all, was it possible that any supposition could transcend, yea, come up to the reality?
The Brisk Little Old Woman.
It has been stated that Burke went to live in the house occupied by the man called Broggan. This house, after Broggan’s departure, continued to be possessed by the lodger and his paramour. In a land to the eastward of that occupied by Hare in Tanner’s Close, you reached it after descending a common stair, and turning to the right, where a dark passage conducted to several rooms, at the end, and at right angles with which passage, there was a trance leading solely to Burke’s room, and which could be closed by a door, so as to make it altogether secluded from the main entry. The room was a very small place, more like a cellar than the dwelling of a human being. A crazy chair stood by the fireplace; old shoes and implements for shoemaking lay scattered on the floor; a cupboard against the wall held a few plates and bowls; and two beds, coarse wooden frames without posts or curtains, were filled with old straw and rags; so that of the money which the parties had received no part had ever been devoted to any other purpose than meat and drink, after allowing for the expense of the transitory effort on the part of the women to appear better dressed.
On the morning of a certain day of December, Burke chances again to be in the shop of Mr Rymer, where he saw a poor beggar woman asking for alms, whose brogue revealed that she was one of his country-women. The old story, you will say. Yes, alas! the old story, but with a difference. She would be garrulous—are not all poor people so?—yet the good heart admits that there is some cause for garrulity where there are wants to supply and no one willing to lend an ear. She would tell Burke, who had accosted her with the old accents of sympathy, that she had come over to Scotland to seek for her son. So straightway the sympathiser’s name becomes Docherty, and he would be glad to shew kindness to his country-woman, whom he accordingly invited to his house. The proposal was accepted on the instant, and, Burke leading the way, they proceeded to this asylum, which had so miraculously come in the way of one who had no place she could call a home upon earth. On their arrival, the old play begins. Burke sets before her a breakfast, and, having left Helen M‘Dougal to attend to her wants, he went straightway to find his associate, whom he informed that he had got “a shot in the house,” a piece of information always welcome to that fearful man. Meanwhile Helen M‘Dougal performed her part. At the very first appearance of the poor stranger she knew the fate that awaited her, and yet she set her to work in the cleaning of the house—a duty which the woman would cheerfully undertake out of pure gratitude to those who had thus generously taken in the weary wanderer and filled her empty stomach, yea, promised her harbourage for a time.
Hours passed, during which, in the absence of Burke, who would appear in due time, the two females were feminine, for they were engaged in acts which, as the natural work of their instincts, constitute so far the difference between the sexes; nor was the friendship which these acts were calculated to cement and strengthen to be weakened, in the estimation of the guest, by the arrival, in the evening, of Burke and Hare, and the latter’s wife—a jolly crew, who could render compatible, again as so often before, the orgies of a wild mirth with the foreseen doom of the one round whom these orgies were celebrated. When these parties entered, there were in the house a person of the name of Gray and his wife, who had been for some time lodgers with Burke. It was necessary that these persons, who could not be trusted, should not sleep there that night, and Burke accordingly went out to seek lodgings for them, whereupon, at a certain hour, they departed, taking with them some suspicion that their banishment from their quarters did not quadrate with the excuse that a wandering beggar, albeit represented as a relative, should take their place, if they had not some other grounds, derived from particular observations, to lead them to a thought which was destined to be the original spark to raise into conflagration a long collected mass of rottenness.
On the departure of the Grays, the saturnalia preceding the sacrifice commenced, and the scene was too fraught with enjoyment for the females, always ready for scenes of excitement, to be absent. The inevitable whisky was brought, and the poor stranger, to whom it would be as warmth to a heart cold enough from poverty and privations, must partake. And now there was to be one of those apparent inconsistencies which the one string of catgut exhibits in every day of our lives. If the joyous scene was to finish by the death of her around whom, and for whom, it was celebrated, surely the more remote it was kept from observing eyes the safer; so says prudence, but prudence forgets that she belongs exclusively to the natural and the rational, and like all reasoners who argue from egoism to tuism, she expects abnormals to follow her maxims, which appear to them to be as abnorm as they are to her. So while their spirits are up, as well from the stimulant of drink as from that of the coming sacrifice, they go, whither the destined victim had preceded them, into the neighbouring apartment, occupied by a Mrs Connoway. There the scene was continued, or rather begun afresh. More drink was brought by M‘Dougal, and the enjoyment was elevated into the altitudes of dithyrambism. Songs were sung, accompanied by a chorus of hoarse, broken voices, among which the tremula of the “brisk” little old woman mixed its quavers, till at length they all rose and danced. This scene continued for a considerable time, when they left. It was now eleven o’clock, and they were all again in their old quarters.
We have already seen that it formed a part of their plan of assault that some of the parties should quarrel and fight—the confusion thus produced being the opportunity of the assault. And the scheme was not departed from on this occasion. In the heat of the pretended mêlée the little old woman, who had interfered on behalf of Burke, because he had been “kind to her,” was cast down by force, for she had not drunk so much as they wanted her to do, and by keeping her senses had driven them to the necessity of the fighting prelude. This was the sign. The women, in the knowledge of the approaching struggle, hurry out of the room. At the very moment, Burke throws himself, with all the desperation of his purpose, on the body of the prostrate woman, clutching her by the throat, while his companion, bounding to his help, joins his energies in the old way, so that by the combination of powers utterly beyond resistance, she was held for full fifteen minutes, until, amidst the silence of deep hush and listening, they thought her dead. Not yet. They were deceived: there was more life than they counted upon in the little old woman, and the signs of reaction, as nature vindicated her guardship of the spirit, challenged a further effort. The weight and compression were renewed, and continued till there could be no doubt. The little old woman was dead, and in an instant after doubled up and thrown among a parcel of straw there for the purpose, in a corner of the room, between the foot of the bed and the wall.