BURKE’S HOUSE FROM THE BACKCOURT.
A. Burke’s Window.
B. Back entrance where the Bodies were brought out.
A sagacious personage, who is troubled with none of Mr. Alston’s scruples, observing that Hare’s house was an object of great attraction, rented it for a specific time, and shows it for a trifle to the visitors. His speculation will probably be a profitable one, as scores are frequently waiting their turn for admittance.
Both places seem admirably adapted for the deeds of darkness that were carried on in them; a happier choice could scarcely have been made, although the occupation of them had been the result of design instead of accident, as it certainly was in Burke’s case. Situated in the heart of a swarming population, and the resort of every sort of vagrant, they are still retired and apart from observation. In approaching Burke’s you enter a respectable looking land from the street, and proceed along a passage and then descend a stair, and turning to the right a passage leads to the door, which is very near to Connaway’s and almost directly opposite to Mrs. Law’s; a dark passage within the door leads to the room; to this passage the women retreated while the murder was committed. The room is small, and of an oblong form; the miserable bed occupied nearly one end of it, (that next the door,) so that the women must have almost stepped over the poor old woman, while Burke was stifling her, when they went into the passage. For some days after the trial, every thing remained in the position in which it had been when they were arrested, and presented a disgusting picture of squalid wretchedness; rags, and straw, mingled with implements of shoemaking, and old shoes and boots, in such quantities as Burke’s nominal profession of a cobbler could never account for. A pot full of boiled potatoes was a prominent object. The bed was a coarse wooden frame, without posts or curtains, and filled with old straw and rags. At the foot of it and near the wall was the heap of straw under which the woman Campbell’s body was concealed. The window looks into a small court, closed in by a wall. At the top of the stair leading down to the room is a back entrance from a piece of waste ground, across which the body was conveyed by M‘Culloch. There are several outlets from it. Nobody can, however, discover where the cellar is situated in which it is said the subjects were concealed; they were apparently conveyed direct from the shambles to the dissecting-rooms.
Hare’s house is a little further west, in a dirty, low, wretched close called Tanner’s Close, which also opens off the West Port, from which it descends a few steps. It has likewise a back entrance, which communicates with the waste ground behind Burke’s. It is a dwelling of more pretension than Burke’s, being self-contained and possessing three apartments. It is a one storey house, and though the interior is liable to be observed by any passer-by from the close, it is not immediately connected with other dwellings. It was, before the trial, completely divested of furniture: when occupied, it was fitted up as a lodging for beggars and other wanderers, and “beds to let” invited vagrants to enter, frequently to their destruction. The outer apartment is large, and was all round occupied by wretched beds; one room opening from it is also large for such a place, and was furnished in the same manner. So far from any concealment being practised, the door generally stood open, and we have mentioned above that the windows were overlooked by the passengers in the close; but there is a small inner apartment or closet, the window of which looks only upon a pig-stye and dead wall, into which it is asserted they were accustomed to conduct their prey to be murdered. No surprise could have been excited by cries of murder issuing from such a riotous and disorderly house, but it was unlikely that any could reach the ear from the interior den; and even though they had, the house might have borne a fair semblance in front, while the murderous work went on behind. In the inner apartment Burke used to work when a lodger in Hare’s, when he did work, which was seldom.
When we consider this most singular and atrocious conspiracy, and the characters of the different actors in it, as we understand them to be, it should seem as if they had each of them their allotted parts in the bloody drama. Hare, as far as we can learn, is a rude ruffian, with all the outward appearance of a ruffian; drunken, ferocious, and profligate; and far likelier to repel than to ensnare any one by a specious show, which he is quite incapable of assuming. He appears, however, to have been the more deeply designing of the two; and to have over-reached his associate, Burke, whom he succeeded in always thrusting forward, with a view, we have no doubt, of turning short upon him, as he has done at the last, and consigning him to the gallows, when this should be necessary, in order to save himself. Burke was indeed the only one of the two qualified to manage the out-door business of the copartnery, and he it was, accordingly, who always went out to prowl for victims, and to decoy them to their destruction. In his outward manners he was entirely the reverse of Hare. He was, as we learn from good authority, quiet in his demeanour; he was never riotous; was never heard cursing and swearing; and even when he was the worse of drink, he walked so quietly into his own house, that his foot was scarcely heard in the passage. He was of a fawning address, and was so well liked by the children in the neighbourhood, that each was more ready than another to do his errands. The riots which often occurred in the house, and in which Hare always bore a conspicuous part, were, there is every reason to believe, got up on purpose, either when they were in the act of committing murder, or that the neighbours might not be alarmed at the noise which inevitably accompanied the mortal struggle between them and the unhappy inmates whom they had enticed into their dwelling.