[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.