IN DAYS OF OLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 23, 28 January 1928, Page 3 (Supplement)

IN DAYS OF OLD.

TRADE IN DEAD BODIES.

BURKE AND HARE'S LINE,

On November 29 over a hundred years ago the four fiends of Tanner's Close, Edinburgh, made their first sale—£7 10/, cash down and no questions asked. On that day Hare rushed into Burke's room in the lodging-house to cry that old Donald, an army pensioner who had lain sick for weeks in the house, was dead— dead and owing three pounds! Hare, in his rage, blurted out the dreadful suggestion—"Sell the body." William Barke and William Hare were both Irish. Burke had served years in the Militia and soon after his discharge he abandoned his wife and three children in Tyrone, going to Glasgow. While working as a navvy on the Union Canal he became acquainted with Helen McDougall, and when the job was finished picked up some knack of cobbling and settled with her in Edin-J

burgh. In 1826 they moved to Tanner's Close. Hare, too, had worked on the Union Canal. When the landlord of the lodging-house died he took up with the widow, Margaret Laird.

On November 29, 1827, the old soldier died. The Parish officer sent a carpenter to nail up the wasted corpse in a rough coffin for pauper burial. From the tanner's yard at the back, Burke bought a bag of bark, and one of the women fetched a tea-chest; The bag was substituted for the body, and at nightfall Burke carried the chest to Dr. Knox, 10, Surgeon's Square, and sold "the thing." He was told "they would be glad to see him again if he had another to dispose of on the same terms." This Knox was a clever, eccentric surgeon running a school of surgery in rivalry with that connected with the University. Surgery was then making great strides, with the growing number of students, and required many more "subjects" for purposes of demonstration than the law made provision for. Body-snatch-ing, the rifling of graves by "resurrection men," like Jerry Cruncher in "A Tale of Two Cities," was rife. In Edinburgh the legal Supply of "foundlings, suicides, and criminals" was insufficient even for the official school. Knox had to depend on private purchases and gladly paid high' prices. The four in Tanner's Close soon

swilled down the profit of the first transaction. Then another lodger, a friendless vagrant, fell ill of fever. «• He was a long time dying. They grew impatient. Burke pressed a pillow over his face while Hare held his legs. They had crossed the-awful gulf—murder. From ghouls they became fiends. "The thipg," being in rather better condition, fetched £10 from Knox. In the subsequent carousal they lamented there was no steadiness about their new trade. A succession of friendless lodgers was not to be depended on. Hare, with a laugh, undertook to go hunting. The first quarry was Abigail Simpson, an old pedlar, decoyed in with whisky, made drunk, and stifled. They got £10 for her. They were now fairly established in the business of purveyors to Knox's school. A regular supply was maintained and Burke was usually complimented on the "freshness" of his wares, for the best of which the surgeon or his porter or any one of his seven assistants readily paid £12 or £14 each. The money was spent on drink and flashy finery. For a time they picked their victims from those who were without family or friends to make inquiries and whose sudden disappearance would provoke least notice. Beggars and street-

walkers were their staple merchandise, varied by such chance bargains as a nameless Englishman, ill with jaundice. Impunity induced recklessness. They no longer selected their raw material cautiously but seized any of the class that would respond to their preliminary wiles. Enough of the ghastly business was laid bare. All was never elucidated. But legal proof could be furnished, apart from confession, only froni Knox's books, and he must then be charged with them. That the authorities would not do. The clever surgeon, head of a renowned school, must be protected whatever his wilful blindness or worse. The mob broke his windows, burnt his effigy, tried to lynch him. After some time of snarling defiance, he was hounded out of Edinburgh, and sank to ruin. Hare was allowed to turn "King's evidence." Burke alone was hanged, his corpse taken for dissection not to his old pAtron, of course, but to the rival establishment of Dr. Munro, where all fashionable Edinburgh flocked to view it. What became of the women after release is unknown. Hare obtained employment in a cement factory under a false name. The workmen, discovering his identity, threw him into a limepit and his eyesight was destroyed. He survived for forty years as a blind beggar selling matches at the Burlington Arcade, London.