“That was not my business,” said Burke. “I delivered the subject, and he ought to have kept it.”
“But you forget that were the money paid, Hare would have the right to the half of it,” argued the other.
“I have got a tolerable pair of trousers,” explained Burke, musingly, “and since I am to appear before the public, I should like to be respectable. I have not a coat and waistcoat that I can appear in, and if I got that five pounds I could buy them.”
As the time went on Burke was induced to make a confession of his crimes. On the 3rd of January, 1829, he dictated a confession before Sheriff Tait, the Procurator-Fiscal, and the assistant Sheriff-Clerk; and on the 22nd of the same month he supplemented it by a short statement, made in the presence of the same parties, with the addition of the Rev. Wm. Reid, a Roman Catholic priest. Application was made to the Lord Advocate by an Edinburgh gentleman to obtain admission to Burke’s cell to receive a confession from the criminal, but this was refused; and on an appeal being made to the Home Secretary the refusal was confirmed. On the 21st of January, however, the condemned man made another and fuller confession, but this time unofficial, and this document had such a curious history that an account of it must be reserved until the proper time. Between his condemnation and execution Burke was visited by Protestant and Roman Catholic clergymen, and he received the ministrations of both without preference.
CHAPTER XXVI.
“The Complicity of the Doctors”—Numerous Disappearances—Dr. Knox and David Paterson—Paterson Defends Himself—“The Echo of Surgeon’s Square”—The Scapegoat.
As time went on the excitement among the public increased, and the newspapers, thoroughly roused to the importance of the West Port murders, and freed from restraint by the decision of the court, spoke out fearlessly. “The complicity of the doctors,” as it was called, came in for a large share of attention and severe comment; while rumours as to the action the authorities intended to take regarding Hare and his wife were eagerly canvassed. It was stated that Hare, after the trial, made important disclosures, confessing to having been concerned in no less than twelve different acts of murder, in some of which he was the principal, in others an accessory; and that he knew of another, though he was not in any way a party to the commission of it. Then it was said that Burke had confessed to having sold some thirty or thirty-five uninterred bodies during the previous two years, and it was argued that these could only have been obtained by murder, notably the murder of unfortunate women, large numbers of whom had mysteriously disappeared in that time, no one knew how. Natural deaths had become very rare among that class, and for some time the interment of one of them was a thing almost unknown. This, it was argued, showed that a gigantic conspiracy to murder, for the purpose of obtaining subjects for dissection, had been going on in Edinburgh, and it was suspected that the gang was larger than it really was. A medical man informed a journalist that in the autumn of 1828 the body of a woman was offered for sale by some miscreants—“probably of Burke’s gang,” was the opinion hazarded—to the assistant of an eminent teacher of anatomy in Edinburgh. The assistant did not know them, for they were not regular resurrectionists—he knew them well enough—but as he required a subject, he told them to bring the body, and if it were suitable he would purchase it. The body was conveyed to the dissecting-room the same evening, and on being turned out of the sack the assistant was startled to see it was that of a woman of the town, with her clothes and shoes and stockings on. He carefully examined the body, and found there was an enormous fracture on the back of the head, and a large portion of the skull driven in, as if by the blow of a hammer. With an oath he asked them where and how they got the body, and one of them coolly replied that it was the body of an unfortunate who had been popped in a brawl in Halkerston’s Wynd. The “subject” was refused, and the merchants had to take it elsewhere.
This and many similar stories naturally gave rise to a demand for a searching investigation alike in the public interest and in the interests of the teachers of anatomy themselves. It was advocated that all the anatomical teachers, and others who used cadavera for their classes, both in and out of the university, ought to be examined as to the manner in which they were accustomed to receive their subjects. In particular, the assistants and students of Dr. Knox during the two previous sessions ought to undergo an examination as to the quarter whence bodies were procured, the state in which they were received, and the manner in which they were dissected. Without such a complete and thorough examination, it was argued, the public could have no guarantee that every anatomical teacher in Edinburgh had not a Burke in his pay; for it seemed to be the impression in the minds of the people “that one gentleman stands in the same relation to Burke that the murderer of Banquo did to Macbeth.”
The Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle was especially outspoken in respect to Dr. Knox. “With regard to Dr. Knox,” this journal said, “too much delicacy and reserve have been maintained by a part of the press. When the atrocities in question first transpired, it was stated that Knox conducted himself with the utmost civility towards the police officers who went to his house in search of the body, when the fact is, he swore at them from his window, and threatened to blow their brains out; and it was only upon their proceeding to force the door of his lecture-room, that it was opened by one of the keepers.” From Knox, the Chronicle passed on to Paterson, his curator or porter, who, that journal asserted, “actually offered Docherty for sale to a respectable gentleman in the profession before she was despatched; he saw her in Burke’s house immediately after the spark of life had been extinguished; and he then again offered her for fifteen pounds to the same gentleman, who indignantly ordered him out of his house.” The Caledonian Mercury was equally plain, and would give no countenance to the idea that Knox and his assistants had been imposed upon by Burke and Hare, and gave all its weight in favour of the “complicity” idea. It also repeated the story of the supposed negotiations between Paterson and “the most respectable teacher of anatomy” as to the sale of Docherty’s body for fifteen pounds, with this addition that he stated to the gentleman in question, on his second visit, “that the body he wished to dispose of was the body of a woman; and that he had ‘a desperate gang’ in his pay, through whom he could procure as many subjects as he wished for.”