At length the time for “doing it” arrives. Burke and Hare got up a sham fight, to produce a noise of brawling and quarrelling, common enough in their horrid abode; and when this has been continued long enough as they think, Burke suddenly springs like a hungry tiger on his victim, whom one of his accomplices had, as if by accident, thrown down,—flings the whole weight of his body upon her breast,—grapples her by the throat,—and strangles her outright. Ten minutes or a quarter of an hour elapse while this murderous operation is going on, and ere it is completed; during the whole of which time Hare, by his own confession in the witness-box, sat upon the front of the bed, a cool spectator of the murder, without raising a cry or stretching out a hand to help the unhappy wretch thus hurried into eternity by his associate fiend Burke. As to the women (Helen M‘Dougal, Burke’s helpmate, and the wife of the miscreant Hare) they seem to have retreated into a passage closed in by an outer door, “when they saw him (Burke) on the top of her” (Docherty), and to have remained there while he was perpetrating the murder; without, however, uttering a single sound or doing a single act, calculated to interrupt the murderer in his work of blood, or to procure assistance to the dying victim. These she-devils were familiar with the work of death; and one of them, the wife of Hare, confessed it in the witness-box. She had seen, she said, such “tricks” before.
No language can add to the impression which these facts are calculated to produce. The succeeding events, however, are not less picturesquely horrifying. The murder was committed at eleven o’clock, and in an hour after, or at twelve, Burke fetches Paterson, the assistant or servant of a teacher of Anatomy in Edinburgh, to whom he was in the habit of selling the bodies of his victims, to the spot—the murdered body being by this time stuffed under the bed and covered with straw; and, pointing to that truly dreadful place, tells him that he has got a subject for him there, which will be ready for him in the morning. The demons then appear to have recreated themselves with fresh dozes of liquor; and about four or five in the morning, the two women already mentioned, with a fellow of the name of Broggan who had joined the party, after the deed was done,—laid down in the bed, beneath which the murdered body of Docherty, not yet cold in death, had been crammed, and went to sleep, some of them at least, as coolly as if nothing of the kind had occurred. When daylight returned, the tea-box, so often mentioned in the course of the trial, was procured, and the slaughtered body crammed into it, and sent off by the porter M‘Culloch, to Surgeons’ Square; after which Burke and his accomplice Hare set off for Newington to obtain the whole or part of the price of the subject they had procured by murder, and actually got five pounds, being one-half of the price agreed upon.[1]
Such is an imperfect and feeble outline of the facts of this case, in the course of which was disclosed the horrid and appalling fact, that, in certain holes and dens, both in the heart and in the outskirts of this city, murder had been reduced into a system, with the view of obtaining money for the bodies murdered; and that it was perpetrated in the manner least likely to leave impressed upon the body any evident or decisive marks of violence, being invariably committed by means of suffocation or strangling, during partial or total intoxication. The public is therefore to consider the present as only one out of many instances of a similar nature which have occurred. Hare’s wife admitted that she had witnessed many “tricks” of the same kind; and Hare himself, when undergoing the searching cross-examination of Mr. Cockburn—a cross-examination such as was never before exemplified in any Court of Justice—durst not deny that he had been concerned in other murders besides that of Docherty;—that a murder had been committed in his own house in the month of October last;—that he himself was a murderer, and his hands steeped in blood and slaughter: we say he durst not deny it, and only took refuge in “declining to answer” the questions put to him; which the Court of course apprised him he was entitled to do in regard to questions that went to criminate himself so deeply, and but for which caution we have little doubt that he would have confessed not merely accession, but a principal share in several murders. In fact, this “squalid wretch,” as Mr. Cockburn so picturesquely called him, from the hue and look of the carrion-crow in the witness-box, was disposed to be extremely communicative, and apparently had no idea that any thing he had stated was at all remarkable or extraordinary. Daft Jamie was murdered in this miscreant’s house, and he has mentioned some circumstances connected with the destruction of this poor innocent, calculated to form a suitable pendant to the description we have already given of the murder of Docherty. Jamie was enticed into Hare’s house by Burke, the usual decoy-duck in this traffic of blood (the appearance of Hare himself being so inexpressibly hideous that it would have scared even this moping idiot,) and he was plied with liquor for a considerable time. At first he refused to imbibe a single drop; but by dint of coaxing and perseverance, they at last induced him to take a little; and after he once took a little, they found almost no difficulty in inducing him to take more. At length, however, he became overpowered, and laying himself down on the floor, fell asleep. Burke, who was anxiously watching his opportunity, then said to Hare, “Shall I do it now?” to which Hare replied, “He is too strong for you yet; you had better let him alone a while.” Both the ruffians seem to have been afraid of the physical strength which they knew the poor creature possessed, and of the use he would make of it, if prematurely roused. Burke, accordingly, waited a little, but getting impatient to accomplish his object, he suddenly threw himself upon Jamie, and attempted to strangle him. This roused the poor creature, and, muddled as he was with liquor and sleep, he threw Burke off and got to his feet, when a desperate struggle ensued. Jamie fought with the united frenzy of madness and despair, and Burke was about to be overpowered, when he called out furiously to Hare to assist him. This Hare did by tripping up Jamie’s heels; after which both the ruffians got upon him, and, at length, though not even then without the greatest difficulty, succeeded in strangling him.
And all this has happened and has been carried on in a Christian country, and in the Metropolis of Scotland, without a breath of suspicion having been excited as to the existence of such hellish atrocities, till Gray lodged information at the Police Office of the murder of the woman Campbell or Docherty. It was said at the trial, that the public mind had been excited and inflamed on the subject to a degree wholly unprecedented; but how is it conceivable or possible that even the lightest whisper of such infernal deeds—of an organised system of murder—could find its way to the public, without producing this excitement, without kindling up every feeling of horror and indignation which the darkest and most unheard-of atrocities could possibly rouse in virtuous and untainted minds? This was a natural result of a great and unparalleled crime, or rather system of crimes; it was a result which no power or influence could prevent; it was a result which, even if it had been possible, ought not to have been prevented. But as this excitement existed—as it had more or less pervaded every mind—and as it might eventually, if not controlled, have interfered with and affected the administration of stern justice, it was right, nay it was necessary, both for the sake of public justice and also for the satisfaction of the country, that the prisoners should be ably and powerfully defended. Under this conviction, the head of the Bar of Scotland, in conjunction with some other of its brightest ornaments, came forward to offer their gratuitous services on the occasion; and certainly never was there a defence in any case conducted with more consummate ability—never perhaps was there a trial in which higher talent, greater experience, or more splendid and overmastering eloquence were displayed. And we rejoice that such has been the case. Conduct like this reflects eternal honour on the Bar; because there are instances in which it may throw a shield around innocence; while, in every case, it is calculated to preserve the course of justice pure and undefiled, as well to give additional satisfaction to the country, to create additional confidence in the purity of the law, and to beget a stronger feeling of security in the protection which it affords. The most atrocious crimes are precisely those which ought to be most cautiously and fully investigated; where prejudice of all sorts ought to be most anxiously excluded or counteracted; where every facility in the power of the Court to give, ought to be afforded to the prisoner, both in preparing for his defence and on his trial; where the rules of evidence ought to be most strictly adhered to, in so far as regards either the admissibility or credibility of testimony; where the accused should have the fullest benefit of every presumption in his favour; and where his defence, ought if possible, to be conducted with the greatest legal ability. Now Burke had all these advantages. The Court, in the exercise of the discretion with which it is entrusted, adjudged the trial of the prisoner to proceed upon only one of three separate acts of murder charged against him in the indictment; while the splendid array of Counsel, who voluntarily and gratuitously undertook the conduct of his defence, exerted their whole skill, talents, and eloquence, in his behalf. And we repeat that we rejoice at this; for, as was well observed by the Lord Advocate in addressing the Jury for the Crown upon the evidence which had been led, if the prisoner had any good defence, it was thus sure to have ample justice done to it; and if a conviction was obtained, it would be more satisfactory to the country, and infinitely more important to the purity and efficacy of the law.
In these circumstances, however, a conviction has been obtained against the pannel Burke—the prime murderer—the immediate and direct agent by whom the crime charged was committed—the agent also, we firmly believe, by whom not three but thirteen persons were slaughtered, with the intent of excambing their murdered bodies for gold; this monster, we say, has been convicted, and adjudged to suffer the highest punishment of the law: and, with a sort of poetical justice, he who made subjects of others, is to be made a subject himself, and he now knows that his vile carcass, when the hangman is done with it, will be subjected to the same process with the bodies of his murdered victims. The idea of hanging him in chains would have been out of all keeping with his crime; and hence, though once entertained, it was most properly and judiciously abandoned. But the conviction of Burke alone will not satisfy either the law or the country. The unanimous voice of society in regard to Hare is, Delendus est; that is to say, if there be evidence to convict him, as we should hope there is. He has been an accessory before or after the fact in nearly all of these murders; in the case of poor Jamie he was unquestionably a principal; and his evidence on Wednesday only protects him from being called to account for the murder of Docherty. We trust, therefore, that the Lord Advocate, who has so ably and zealously performed his duty to the country upon this occasion, will bring the “squalid wretch” to trial, and take every other means in his power to have these atrocities probed and sifted to the bottom.
Trial of William Burke and Helen M‘Dougal.
No trial in the memory of any man living has excited so deep, universal, and, we may almost add, appalling an interest as that of William Burke and his female associate, Helen M‘Dougal, which took place on Wednesday, 24th December, 1828. By the statements which from time to time appeared in the newspapers, public feeling had been worked up to the highest pitch of excitement, and the case, in so far as the miserable pannels were concerned, to a certain extent prejudiced by the natural abhorrence which the account of a new and unparalleled crime was calculated to excite. This, however, is an evil inseparable from the freedom, activity, and enterprise of the press, which is necessarily compelled to lay hold of the events of the passing hour, more especially when these are of an extraordinary or unprecedented kind: but it was more than atoned for by many countervailing advantages of the greatest moment to the interests of the community; and, besides, we are satisfied that any prejudice or prepossession thus created, was anxiously and effectually excluded from the minds of the jury, by whom this singular case was tried, and that they were swayed by no consideration except a stern regard to the sanction of their oaths, the purity of justice, and the import of the evidence laid before them. At the same time, it was not so much to the accounts published in the newspapers, which merely embodied and gave greater currency to the statements circulating in society, as to the extraordinary, nay, unparalleled circumstances of the case, that the strong excitement of the public mind ought to be ascribed. These were without any precedent in the records of our criminal practice, and, in fact, amounted to the realization of a nursery tale. The recent deplorable increase of crime has made us familiar with several new atrocities. Poisoning is now, it seems, rendered subsidiary to the commission of theft: stabbings, and attempts at assassination, are matters of almost every day occurrence: and murder has grown so familiar to us, that it has almost ceased to be viewed with that instinctive and inexpressible dread which the commission of the greatest crime against the laws of God and society used to excite. But the present was the first instance of murder alleged to have been perpetrated with the aforethought purpose and intent of selling the murdered body as a subject for dissection to anatomists: it was a new species of assassination, or murder for hire: and as such, no less than from the general horror felt by the people of this country at the process, from ministering to which the murderers expected their reward, it was certainly calculated to make a deep impression on the public mind, and to awaken feelings of strong and appalling interest in the issue of the trial.
Of the extent of the impression thus produced, and the feelings thus awakened, it was easy to judge from what was every where observable on Monday and Tuesday. The approaching trial formed the universal topic of conversation, and all sorts of speculations and conjectures were afloat as to the circumstances likely to be disclosed in the course of it, and the various results to which it would eventually lead. As the day drew near, the interest deepened; and it was easy to see that the common people shared strongly in the general excitement. The coming trial, they expected, was to disclose something which they had often dreamed of, or imagined, or heard recounted around an evening’s fire, like a tale of horror, or a raw-head-and-bloody-bones story, but which they never, in their sober judgment, either feared or believed to be possible; and hence, they looked forward to it with corresponding but indescribable emotions. In short, all classes participated more or less in a common feeling respecting the case of this unhappy man and his associate; all expected fearful disclosures; none, we are convinced, wished for any thing but justice.
As it was morally certain that a vast crowd would be assembled early on Wednesday, arrangements were made on Tuesday, under the immediate superintendence of Mr. Sheriff Duff, for the admission of jurymen by the door which connects the Signet Library with the Outer House, and also for the accommodation of the individuals connected with the public press. One half of the Court, the narrow dimensions of which have been often complained of, and in fact were never more seriously felt, was, as usual on such occasions, reserved for the members of the Faculty and the Writers to the Signet in their gowns.
So early as seven o’clock in the morning of Wednesday, a considerable crowd had assembled in the Parliament Square, and around the doors of the Court; and numerous applications for admission were made to the different subordinate functionaries, but in vain. The regulations previously agreed upon were most rigorously observed; while a large body of police, which was in attendance, maintained the utmost order, and kept the avenues to the Court unobstructed. The individuals connected with the press were conducted to the seats provided for them a little before eight o’clock; the members of the Faculty and of the Society of Writers to the Signet were admitted precisely at nine; and thus, with the jurymen impannelled, and a few individuals who had obtained the entrée in virtue of orders from the Judges, the Court became at once crowded in every part.