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00:00Oh, no.
00:01Oh, no.
00:53I'm Vicky McClure.
00:54I've spent years playing police officers on screen.
00:57My husband, Johnny Owen, is a historian and filmmaker.
01:02We share a passion for finding out the truth.
01:06Together, we're going on a journey back in time
01:09to explore murder cases that have changed modern Britain.
01:14Oh, God.
01:15He's basically saying, I'll do time for these people,
01:18but when I come out, I'm going to kill them.
01:21Whether it's unsolved crimes...
01:23Sir Cockrell was the victim.
01:25He wasn't the perpetrator of any crime.
01:28...miscarriages of justice.
01:29The last words he said just before he was executed
01:33was, Christy done it.
01:36Wow.
01:37Or milestone cases that have changed the law.
01:41The government agreed to not disclose it to the public.
01:45Wow.
01:45We'll examine what really happened
01:47and how the legacy of these crimes continues to be felt today.
02:01Well, here we are in the beautiful capital of Scotland, Edinburgh.
02:06I love the city, the Athens of the North, as they call it.
02:09Yeah.
02:10That's because it was a world leader in the 19th century,
02:12a bit like Athens was in the ancient world.
02:16Philosophy, medicine.
02:18And that ties in nicely with a famous story about the city,
02:21a macabre story.
02:23Burke and Hare.
02:24So who are Burke and Hare?
02:26All I know is that they were the body snatchers
02:28and they provided bodies for doctors to look at.
02:33So they're snatching bodies?
02:34Yes.
02:35This morning when I left the hotel,
02:37I was talking to the concierge and he says,
02:39what, are you both filming here?
02:40And I said, we're here doing Burke and Hare.
02:42And he went, ooh.
02:43Did he?
02:43Yeah.
02:44So should we find out more?
02:45Let's do that.
02:51Everyone's heard of Burke and Hare, but what's the real story?
02:55We want to sort out the facts from the fiction.
02:58Who were Burke and Hare?
02:59Why were they snatching bodies?
03:01And who for?
03:05In the early 1800s, Edinburgh was famously a city of two halves,
03:08the rich and the very poor, the haves and the have-nots.
03:13The average life expectancy was only about 35 years old.
03:17So it definitely has a tough, dark side.
03:22My old mate Irving Welch has written about social division in Edinburgh
03:26many times, most famously in Trainspotting.
03:29Let's go.
03:31He once wrote a screenplay based on the story of Burke and Hare.
03:35Wow.
03:35Good to see you, mate. You OK?
03:37Yeah.
03:37We're in your lovely city, your native city of Edinburgh,
03:40and we are trying to find out the story of...
03:42Burke and Hare.
03:43Burke and Hare, yeah.
03:47They were often kind of described as body snatchers, but they weren't.
03:50They were mass murderers.
03:54They would get people drunk, kill them,
03:57and then sell the bodies for medical research.
04:00Oh, OK.
04:01So I always thought they'd be the body snatchers.
04:02That's how they've sort of known in popular culture.
04:04So they never actually snatched any bodies?
04:07No, they kind of prepared the fresh kill.
04:13If you're working class at Edinburgh, try and get money at the bourgeoisie.
04:16It's not an easy task, like, you know,
04:18so I don't think it would be particularly easy back then.
04:20Yeah, it's quite an Edinburgh story of the very wealthy and privileged
04:25kind of benefiting from the marginalised and the excluded.
04:31It's fascinating because, you know, all of these stories
04:33does all tend to fall back into class most of the time.
04:37Yeah.
04:38When you think back to what Edinburgh was like then,
04:40before they built the new town,
04:42the old town here, everybody lived together.
04:45So you had quite wealthy professions on the top floors,
04:48and then you had kind of tradesmen in the middle,
04:50and then you had the labourers on the bottom floor of these big tenements.
04:54So everybody lived together,
04:55and they'd throw all the faeces and urine out.
04:58So it was quite a tough life for people,
05:00particularly on the bottom floors.
05:02Gosh.
05:03So the higher social classes literally lived on top of the working class.
05:08It's been ingrained in the DNA of the city,
05:11the stories of the city, for years and years.
05:15Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde,
05:17very much influenced by it.
05:19Book and Hare, I mean,
05:21how do you feel they influenced your work?
05:23My book, Dead Men's Trousers,
05:24was very much about this body parts thing,
05:27which is a modern version of the, you know,
05:29of the cadaver who was selling the body parts.
05:31So these stories and these characters
05:33are pretty much ingrained in the literary culture of the town.
05:37Yeah.
05:37There's a lot to delve into there.
05:39Yes, I think so.
05:40So dark.
05:44So Burke and Hare weren't actually body snatchers
05:47dragging bodies out of graveyards.
05:49They were serial murderers,
05:51who sold the corpses of their so-called fresh kills
05:54for medical research.
06:00So how and why did they come to be so mythologised
06:03and their crimes misrepresented?
06:08I think part of the reason lies in the dark nature of their crimes,
06:12which made them Scotland's first serial killer celebrities.
06:18So this is the world-famous Royal Mile.
06:21This goes right up to the castle.
06:25Here we go.
06:28This is where Burke was hung.
06:33The very spot.
06:34And can you imagine,
06:34right in the middle of the city,
06:36on the Royal Mile,
06:38one in four people in Edinburgh here.
06:40Up to 30,000 people hanging out the windows.
06:44One in four?
06:45One in four.
06:46A quarter of the population.
06:47Wow.
06:48Had come to see him being hung,
06:49a public spectacle.
06:50That says a lot about how the city felt about him.
06:54Yeah.
06:54And that, you know,
06:55that story and everything that happened.
06:57So we know William Burke came to a sticky end.
07:02But how did he and William Hare get started?
07:08So this is the very famous grass market area.
07:11This is where Burke and Hare lived, socialised, drank,
07:15and also the people who were their victims, unfortunately, also.
07:18And now we're going to meet Rob,
07:20who is an expert tour guide,
07:22who has studied Burke and Hare.
07:24Yes.
07:24I'm Vicky, nice to meet you.
07:26Rob Sheppard, good to meet you.
07:27Johnny, lovely to meet you.
07:28Nice to meet you.
07:28Nice to meet you.
07:29We're hoping that you'll be able to give us
07:30lots of information on Burke and Hare.
07:32Yeah, absolutely.
07:33Well, Burke and Hare murdered 16 people
07:35in a ten-month period.
07:37That's shocking.
07:38There's so many victims in such a short time.
07:41Let's talk about William Burke.
07:43Yeah.
07:44He was born in Ireland in 1792.
07:47Right.
07:48But there was not much money kicking around then,
07:49so he decided to leave, come to Edinburgh,
07:51and he met a lady by the name of Nellie McDougall.
07:55And he actually lived as man and wife for about ten years.
07:59And they eventually came into Edinburgh.
08:02They met Margaret Laird, married to a chap called William Hare.
08:06William Hare, there he is.
08:07Right, OK.
08:08Well, look at him quite handsome.
08:10Does he?
08:10Tell him my time.
08:12Well...
08:15November 1827 was the very first time Burke and Hare met.
08:19By the time the final murder took place,
08:22they'd only known each other for a year.
08:24Oh, wow.
08:27I'm really intrigued by the two women who were involved in this as well.
08:30Do they know about it?
08:32Margaret?
08:32Yeah.
08:33Here, first of all, she was actually getting paid one pound
08:36for the use of her boarding house for the murders.
08:39Oh, OK.
08:40So Burke and Hare split the money that it would get,
08:42which would range between seven pounds during the summer
08:44and ten pounds during the winter.
08:47Hare would take the lion's share of that,
08:49Burke would get some,
08:51and Margaret got one pound out of Burke's share.
08:54So she knew exactly what was going on.
08:56Oh, wow.
09:00Nellie McDougall was infatuated with Burke,
09:03she loved him,
09:04and Burke just told her the story that the bodies
09:06were found in lodging houses.
09:09Whether she believed it and just decided
09:11to maybe turn a blind eye instead.
09:17Hare taking most of the money,
09:19his wife being more involved,
09:21seems to be more sort of manipulative of the two, maybe.
09:25Yeah, I would say so.
09:26Yeah.
09:27Hare was a despicable character.
09:32Burke, however, was quite likeable.
09:33Yes.
09:34I mean, if you met Burke in a pub,
09:35you'd probably have a dram with him, you know?
09:37Yeah.
09:38I think that was key.
09:41Because he managed to lure people back
09:42because he trusted him.
09:44Right.
09:44They came down here at the grass market
09:46and they visited bars like the White Hart.
09:50The idea was to take them back to the lodging house
09:53where it was private and then do the deed there.
09:55The murders took place in their houses.
09:57Absolutely.
10:00I'd like to know more about Margaret Hare's
10:03notorious lodging house and how the murders began in late 1827.
10:12Right, so we are now at the site of where William Hare
10:17and Margaret Hare's lodging house was.
10:21Tanner's close came from the front street down
10:24and we'd finish round about here.
10:28In November, there was a knock on Burke's door.
10:33It was Hare and he said that old Donald had died.
10:36He's my lodger.
10:37He's died for me four pounds in rent.
10:39But Hare and Burke had both heard that if you could sell a body
10:43to the anatomy school, you could actually get quite a bit of cash for it.
10:47So that was the plan.
10:50So it all started with a dead body, not a murder.
10:53Yes, exactly.
10:55So the next move is to go to Edinburgh University
10:57and look for Professor Alexander Munro, who is the head of anatomy there.
11:02Had Alexander Munro been in that day,
11:05the story of Burke and Hare might have turned out very differently.
11:08As it was in Munro's absence,
11:11Burke and Hare were directed to the house of his altogether
11:14more flamboyant and ambitious colleague, anatomist Dr Robert Knox.
11:21So they went across to Surgeon Square, knocked on the door at number 10
11:24and another medical student opened the door.
11:27He says, well, bring the body back here in the cover of darkness.
11:34Knox was called for.
11:38He did a quick examination and told the student to give them seven pounds and ten shillings.
11:46And Knox said to them, if you get any more subjects, we'd be very interested.
11:52Wow.
11:54So that was really the catalyst for them to think,
11:57how can we take advantage of the situation?
12:05Must have been intoxicating for them, isn't it?
12:07Oh, absolutely.
12:07In money nowadays, we're talking hundreds of pounds.
12:10Wow, OK.
12:10They spent all the money they'd earned on whisky mostly.
12:13Wow.
12:14People died because they got pissed.
12:16Exactly.
12:16Hundreds of pounds.
12:21In terms of the murders themselves,
12:24was there a trend in how they were murdering people?
12:28Yes.
12:29OK, so there was a trend, actually.
12:34Abigail Simpson was murdered using this method.
12:38It's now come known as Burking.
12:40It's in the dictionary.
12:40Wow.
12:41What is it?
12:42So, Burking is named after William Burke.
12:44But in actual fact, how it took place was,
12:47Hare would basically clamp his hand on the chin to keep it closed,
12:51and his other hand on the nose.
12:53Right.
12:53I would demonstrate with you, Vicky, but I'm not going to it.
12:57I'm all right.
12:57So, you know, Burke would then lie across the chest or sit astride the chest.
13:02Either way, really quite an ingenious form of murder
13:05because it left no trace on the body.
13:07Suffocation would mean the preserving of the body.
13:11That's exactly what anatomists would want,
13:13almost like a pure body with no scratches marks.
13:15It's insane, isn't it?
13:24I was shocked by a few things, how short the period of time was.
13:28Yeah.
13:29And serial killing people for money, you know, the sadistic...
13:32And spending it on booze.
13:33Yeah, not for the sadistic enjoyment as we imagine a modern-day serial killer.
13:36And their wives were in on it.
13:39Okay, so we know quite a lot about Burke and Hare now.
13:42I think the next thing is to find out about people like Dr. Knox.
13:45Yeah.
13:46How much did Knox know about the murders?
13:48Bearing in mind, he was a celebrated anatomist of the day
13:52and the fellow of the prestigious Royal Society.
13:55Were Burke and Hare killing to order?
14:061828 Edinburgh.
14:08William Burke and William Hare are murdering people
14:11and selling their cadavers to Dr. Robert Knox
14:13for dissection at his private anatomy school.
14:19The poor being killed so their bodies could be dissected
14:22and examined by medical students.
14:24It's shocking.
14:26We need to know more about how and why this was able to happen.
14:32So I've managed to track down a lady called Kat Irving.
14:35Okay.
14:35And she's an expert in science, history, everything that we want to find out in that area.
14:41Amazing.
14:42She's the woman in the know.
14:44Hi.
14:45Hello.
14:46Lovely to meet you. I'm Vicki.
14:47I'm Kat.
14:48Nice to meet you.
14:48Hi, I'm Johnny. Nice to meet you. Are you okay?
14:50And you. Welcome to Surgeon's Hall.
14:52What's this replicator?
14:53So this is actually the type of anatomical theatre that was common across Europe.
14:58You would have people who would watch the dissection taking place.
15:02Right.
15:02So they would overlook it.
15:04It's fascinating.
15:05It is.
15:06Yeah.
15:06Enlightenment Edinburgh in the 18th century, we have a medical school.
15:11So you have lots of people flocking to Edinburgh to learn medicine.
15:16People are starting to think about it in relation to the body.
15:19And of course, to understand the body, you need to look inside it.
15:22And it's better to do that when the person isn't alive.
15:25You know, so you're dissecting dead bodies.
15:32So that's why you start to get this demand for anatomists, for medical men to have dead bodies to dissect,
15:40try and further this kind of medical knowledge.
15:45So how did anatomists of the time actually get hold of bodies for dissection?
15:50There's something called the Murder Act.
15:52And this comes in in 1752.
15:55And what this says is that if somebody commits the crime of murder, the judge is likely to commit them
16:02to be hanged.
16:04What the judge can do at that point is say, well, you can have a further punishment.
16:09And that can be you're either gibbeted.
16:12So that means that you're hanged and then afterwards your body is put in a cage to publicly decompose.
16:19Right.
16:20Or you come to the anatomist table for dissection.
16:23Right.
16:24OK.
16:24Yeah.
16:25And the reason for this is in order to rise come judgment day, you have to be buried intact.
16:30So, of course, if you're publicly decomposing or being chopped up by anatomists, this is denying the murderer the chance
16:39of getting to the pearly gates.
16:41And, of course, in the meantime, you help the anatomists who want those dead bodies.
16:47Amazing.
16:48So in Edinburgh, you've got the demand.
16:50Yeah.
16:50And so there's not enough murderers, I don't suppose.
16:52There's not enough bodies getting to them, is there?
16:53There is absolutely not enough bodies.
16:56This act is in place from 1752 to 1832.
17:00In that time, there are less than 100 people hanged for murder in all of Scotland.
17:04Oh, all right.
17:05OK.
17:06And so there starts to be a bit of a demand for other forms of supply.
17:12God, this makes so much sense now, doesn't it?
17:14Yeah, it doesn't make it OK.
17:15No.
17:16But it does make sense.
17:19And so you'd need a fresh body.
17:21And how long would they last at that time?
17:23I always say that anatomy was a winter sport because decomposition would happen slower at that point.
17:28But even so, you've only got a very limited amount of time before things are going to get a bit
17:33squishy and very, very stinky for doing that kind of dissection.
17:39So is this where the grave robbers or body snatchers come into it?
17:43Yeah, so they would work in gangs and they would go out at night under cover of darkness.
17:49Oh, yeah.
17:50And then they would use their spades to break the coffin.
17:55And then you would use hooks to literally pull the body out.
17:59My problem is that I'm imagining it.
18:02You know what I mean?
18:03Like, if they're laying like that in the ground, they're pulling them out from the top, I guess, or from
18:08there.
18:08Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
18:12Selling a body wasn't a crime.
18:14OK.
18:14You could get arrested for disturbing a grave, but regardless of what time of year you're doing it at, digging
18:22a body up is hard work.
18:23Yes.
18:24You know, and if a mob realized what you were up to, they would be outraged.
18:28And it's likely that you would have a mob descend on you.
18:33There was a whole array of different things that people would do to try and prevent body snatching happening.
18:39So you'd have mort safes put over graves.
18:41Basically putting a big cage over the grave so you can't dig into it.
18:45It sort of created this almost death market, really, didn't it, you know?
18:48Yeah. I get, you know, the fact that there's less people to be able to get science,
18:52but innocent people just being killed in the face of it.
18:57Yeah.
19:03Kat, are there any examples nearby where we can go and have a look at the mort safes?
19:07Oh, absolutely.
19:08Oh, OK.
19:08You can go to Greyfraer's Kirkyard and you will see a couple of mort safes still in place there.
19:21Hand in hand through the graveyard? Very romantic.
19:25I quite like graveyards, though.
19:27There's something very soothing about them, I think.
19:29There's only one time I want to be in a graveyard.
19:33Well, it's some sight, isn't it?
19:36Put me through this, then.
19:38So this is a mort safe.
19:39So the word mort is death or dead in Latin.
19:43Death safe.
19:44Cell tells you everything.
19:45You're safe from being smatched.
19:48So there's graves underneath?
19:49Yeah, there'd be people in this.
19:52Makes you want to shiver.
19:55But the working class, they've had no chance.
19:57They wouldn't afford that.
19:59Your body would have been taken and given to medical science without your consent.
20:05Meat market, basically.
20:07Yeah.
20:07A death meat market.
20:09But yeah, this should remain forever.
20:11Just as a lesson that people will do anything, send them some money.
20:15It's so macabre.
20:21Unenamored with the squalor of grave robbing, Burke and Hare set their sights higher.
20:26They wanted fresh kills, for which they would receive top dollar from the likes of Knox and his fellow anatomists.
20:33And they would choose their victims from packed public houses and taverns around Edinburgh's city centre.
20:49Well, here we are, in the White Heart, one of the oldest pubs in Edinburgh.
20:53And also somewhere, as we know, Burke and Hare could have been.
20:56Grass market.
20:57They're still the centre of Edinburgh to this day.
20:59Fascinating that they could have come here.
21:01Met their victims.
21:02Lulled them in.
21:03Sort of quite sinister, really, when you think about what they were like and how they were operating, didn't you?
21:07Yeah.
21:08Like you say, if they'd have found them possibly in this pub, what would have been their reason for choosing
21:12those people?
21:14That's what I'm going to know.
21:15Yeah, so we're going to split up now.
21:17There's a why in the road, as they say.
21:19I want to go and see somebody about Dr Robert Knox.
21:22I'm intrigued about him.
21:23What role he played.
21:24How complicity was.
21:25Well, I want to find out about the victims.
21:28Who are the people that lost their lives and why were they chosen?
21:32I love that about you.
21:33Always on the victim's side.
21:34Why would it work so well?
21:36Me, I'm interested in them more.
21:37A little practical.
21:38Yeah.
21:39Or a double axe.
21:39But not like Birkenhead.
21:40No.
21:41No.
21:41More like, what would you say?
21:42More like what?
21:43Georgia Mildred.
21:44Yeah.
21:44Yeah.
21:45Yeah.
21:53We know there were 16 victims.
21:55Their identities are mostly unknown.
21:58But after more research, I found that some of their names are on record, including Joseph, Abigail Simpson, Mary Patterson,
22:08and Jamie Wilson.
22:10So I'm going to focus on those victims.
22:13I want to know who they were and how did they become victims of Birkenhead.
22:19I've managed to track down a lady called Lisa Rosner.
22:22She's a historian.
22:24I'm told that she knows a lot about the victims, which is something that I'm really keen to get more
22:29information on.
22:32She used to live in Edinburgh, but she's in America now, so I'm going to have to Zoom with her.
22:38Hi, Lisa. Nice to meet you.
22:40You, too. It's a great honor to meet you.
22:42I'm curious as to whether or not Birkenhead were specific about who they were targeting.
22:47They didn't want to be caught, so they looked for people that, in their view, would be easy to take.
22:53And so, of course, that's largely women.
22:56And so, out of those 16 murders, how many of those were women?
22:59Twelve.
23:00Okay.
23:01So, Lisa, who was Birkenhead's first victim?
23:04The suggestion was made by Sir Walter Scott that the first murder would have been the man we know as
23:10Joseph, because he was already sick.
23:14So, that would be the next stage to murder someone who was already, perhaps, at death's door.
23:21And after that, they got a kind of a taste for the crime. They got a taste for the money.
23:28Will you tell me a bit more about what happened with Mary?
23:32Mary Patterson has long been one of the great myths of Birkenhead, which is that she was a beautiful prostitute,
23:42murdered, and then her body was recognized in the dissection room later by one of the students who had been
23:48with her.
23:49And the fact is that she was very young. She was perhaps 16 or so. She agreed to go into
23:57the Magdalene Asylum, which was entirely voluntary.
23:59And it was a kind of a cross between a reformed school and workhouse, I suppose. And she left about
24:07a week before her body ended up at Knox's anatomical dissecting rooms.
24:14She was actually accosted by Birkenhead in a whiskey shop, who invited her to come home for breakfast.
24:26Mary Patterson's body was kept for three months. I think the most straightforward reason is that he held on to
24:32it because this was a very well-kept body indeed.
24:35And Knox wanted to see if anybody was going to ask any questions.
24:44I've also heard of someone called Daft Jamie, a 19-year-old local lad with learning difficulties and a limp
24:52caused by his club foot.
24:54Jamie had a nickname, and even in the nickname just makes you feel like he was a sweet soul.
25:01I wouldn't have imagined he was, you know, much of a drinker.
25:05The nickname they had for him, Daft Jamie, would be considered very inappropriate and disrespectful now.
25:11But it seems to have been an affectionate term.
25:15And he was very well-known in the neighborhood.
25:19They invited him in and they tried to get him drunk, but he didn't drink.
25:23So they had to actually assault him and hold him down and smother him.
25:29And that's something that raised a lot of outcry later.
25:41What can you tell me in terms of what we can learn of the representation of the people that Burke
25:47and Howe chose?
25:48What I would like to see is that the victims be recognized for who they were.
25:57They had families that they were looking after or that they intended to go back to.
26:02They were out for a good time, which many people in Edinburgh can relate to.
26:09What I would always wish to emphasize is the tragedy of it simply because their bodies, in some sense, had
26:19more monetary value than they themselves did as living people.
26:27Yeah, every life is, you can't put a cost on it.
26:31You can't put money on anybody's lives, no matter what your status is.
26:35Everybody's here.
26:36Everybody deserves a shot at life.
26:38A human being's life is of incalculable worth.
26:42Absolutely.
26:43That's brilliant.
26:44Thanks, Lisa.
26:44Take care.
26:46Take care.
26:46Bye-bye.
26:47Bye-bye.
26:51While Vicki's been learning about the people Burke and Hare murdered, I'm meeting up with the author, Owen Dudley Edwards,
26:57to find out more about the man who bought and dissected the victims' bodies in the name of science.
27:03How complicit was Dr Robert Knox in the Burke and Hare murders?
27:09I'm intrigued to find out something about the Burke and Hare story, but I'm particularly interested in somebody that's fascinated
27:14me in this whole story.
27:16Dr Robert Knox.
27:17He's the man that received the bodies and performed his anatomy on them.
27:22Tell me about him.
27:24Knox was a brilliant intellectual, born in 1791 in Edinburgh.
27:31An authority on corpses in certain ways, experience of the army,
27:34where he had ample opportunities to investigate bodies.
27:38He'd had various adventures, but began to specialise at an early stage as anatomy,
27:43and Knox became more and more qualified for the study of bodies and the different races of the bodies in
27:50South Africa.
27:51He afterwards became one of the leading and most pernicious racists, theory racists.
28:08200 years ago, Burke and Hare murdered 16 people here in Edinburgh and sold their victims' bodies to anatomist Dr
28:16Robert Knox for dissection.
28:18Whilst Burke would hang for their heinous crimes, Knox got away scot-free.
28:23And I've just learned that even before he became entangled with Burke and Hare,
28:26he had a dark past in the army in South Africa, where he was a vigorous supporter of race theory.
28:35But I didn't realise he was a huge propagandist, a race theory.
28:39That's awful.
28:42And what happened after Knox left the army?
28:44He got back to Edinburgh, found the best jobs were being held by a professor of anatomy, Alexander Monroe III.
28:52And so Knox himself built up a school outside in Surgeon Square.
29:00That meant that they were in rivalry with one another, and Knox had to get hold of the bodies wherever
29:06he could get them.
29:08This is a big question for me.
29:11Do you think he turns a blind eye to the fact that somebody gets these bodies to him?
29:16He would have known that his rivals would be having students and others getting bodies from graveyards.
29:23And he would quite lightly encourage them.
29:27You know in the old days of school teaching, you brought an apple to teacher?
29:32Yeah.
29:33In this case, you brought a body for teacher.
29:35Wow, okay.
29:40But when the murders began, a murderer arrives, a second of the corpses.
29:45And Knox simply says, another nice fresh corpse gentleman.
29:49Wow.
29:52And from that point of view, we can say with confidence, Knox knew enough to know he mustn't know.
30:01Okay, wow.
30:06Did he have people helping him, do you think?
30:08Knox won the support and enthusiasm of his own students, including those who went in for grave robbery.
30:16And of course, when corpses arrived with some questions attached to them, the students knew enough from Knox, you don't
30:25ask where corpses come from.
30:26Nor would William Ferguson, his prime assistant.
30:32In the case of Daft Jamie, when that body arrived, William Ferguson took off the foot immediately.
30:40The foot was twisted, and everybody knew Daft Jamie through that twisted foot.
30:47Now, not only did Knox know enough to know that he mustn't know, William Ferguson evidently knew it also, and
30:55so would other students.
31:00So what happened to him during the trial? Was he sort of seen as somebody that was very much part
31:04of this whole process?
31:05Well, in the investigation of corpses, the first thing you need is a corpse.
31:13If you're investigating corpses which have been dissected by Dr. Knox and his students, well, of course, the bodies are
31:19no longer there.
31:20That's correct, yeah, of course.
31:22And Knox himself denied any knowledge, and of course, his students denied any knowledge as to where any other bodies
31:29might have come from.
31:34Only one body survived, and investigations were made, but committees were set up, and the prominent on the committee would
31:43be Professor William Pulteney Allison.
31:47He was very much aware of the fact that Knox, like himself, and like so many others, would have got
31:53the corpses from graveyards.
31:55But if you're going to start probing, who won't turn out to be guilty, at least of some crime like
32:03grave robbing, like Knox?
32:05Right, okay.
32:07So, in other words, you have an enlightenment which is trying to pursue truth, and at the same time, has
32:12to cover up like all crazy.
32:14And therefore, Knox got off.
32:17It's remarkable, isn't it?
32:22For me, Knox is the reason why a lot of this happened.
32:25He turned a blind eye, and he and his students got away scot-free.
32:31It's unbelievable.
32:33Knox may have got away with it, but we need to find out what happened to Burke and Hare.
32:37How were they finally caught?
32:40And how was Hare punished?
32:46The National Library of Scotland hosts tens of thousands of Scottish newspapers dating back as far as the 18th century,
32:52so they'll definitely have reports on the Burke and Hare story.
32:57I see the price there, seven pence.
33:01The Caledonian Mercury, I love the names of them.
33:04It doesn't take long to find reports explaining how Burke and Hare were finally caught on the last day of
33:10October, 1828.
33:15They've had this argument to Burke and Hare.
33:18So Burke has moved up the road to some other lodgings.
33:22And he's gone out.
33:23And he's met Margaret Docherty.
33:27Got her drunk, lulled her in.
33:33Got her back to the lodgings.
33:35Hare's joined him.
33:36And then they've killed her.
33:38Burked her.
33:44They've left the body under the bed to go and tell Knox they've got another body.
33:49And when they leave him, two other people that live in the lodging house with them, the Greys,
33:54they've said, don't look under the bed.
34:01So they've looked under the bed.
34:07James Grey is mentioned.
34:09He was present when his wife found the body.
34:10And he knew it to be that of the old woman Docherty.
34:13Mrs B fell on her knees and implored that he would not inform of what he had seen.
34:18Here we go.
34:18So this is Burke's partner saying, don't go to the police.
34:21So she knew.
34:24Said she would give him some shillings to put him over till Monday.
34:28So some money for the weekend.
34:31And there was never a week after that he might be worth £10.
34:35So she'd say to him, I'll give you £10 a week if you keep quiet.
34:38But he said his conscience would not let him do it.
34:41Good.
34:41Good man, James Grey.
34:43Yeah, good.
34:44Well, if he hadn't have done, what might have, how many more people might have been murdered?
34:48Well, I said, it just goes to show James Grey had enough conscience to go, I don't care about the
34:52money.
34:53This is, you know, this is wrong.
34:55And he's gone to the police.
35:01They got sloppy, didn't they?
35:03Yeah, yeah, massively.
35:05This all suddenly exploded with the finding of this body.
35:08Blew it all open, really, and it became a national story.
35:17Burke and Hare were arrested, along with their wives and Burke's landlord, John Brogan.
35:25But with barely any evidence, police offered Hare and his wife, Margaret,
35:30immunity from prosecution if he testified against Burke.
35:36Hare accepted, fessed up to all 16 murders,
35:39and gave police all the detail they needed to charge William Burke and his wife, Nellie McDougal.
35:50William Hare was a grass.
35:51Oh.
35:52You know, he was almost worse than he was a murderer.
35:54He did it, and he got away with it by grassing.
35:59Everything's pinned on Burke, really.
36:00Yeah.
36:00He didn't throw anybody under the bus.
36:02No.
36:02Took the rap for everything.
36:04And two of them, Hare and Knox, got away with it.
36:08Yeah, they did.
36:11You can see here, William Burke and Helen McDougal's trial got a lot of press coverage.
36:18These headlines say Westport murders,
36:20an intense excitement produced by the disclosures made in the course of the late trial,
36:25has in no degree subsided, so the public interest is massive.
36:29And you can see all these newspapers are running with this.
36:31No trial in the memory of any man now living has excited so deep as that of William Burke and
36:39his female associate,
36:41which took place yesterday.
36:43This public feeling has worked up to the highest pitch of excitement.
36:47It's weird that they say excite.
36:50Yeah.
36:50Like, people have died.
36:53The papers then reported that Burke's wife, Nellie, was let off due to lack of evidence.
36:59But on Christmas Day, 1828,
37:03William Burke was found guilty of Margaret Docherty's murder.
37:09And sentenced to hang.
37:16I want to find out what happened to Burke's body after he was hanged.
37:20And what I'm desperate to know is what happened to William Hare.
37:31On Wednesday, 28th of January, 1829, William Burke was hanged for the murder of Margaret Docherty.
37:39And it happened right here in the middle of Edinburgh.
37:45William Hare, his partner in crime, literally got away with murder.
37:50As did, many believe, the man to whom the bodies were supplied, anatomist Dr. Robert Knox.
37:57I want to know what happened to William Hare.
38:01I also want to know, did this murder case change anything when it came to providing bodies for dissection?
38:10Hi, Janet.
38:11Hello.
38:12Becky, nice to meet you.
38:13Janet Philp has written a book about the murders told from the unique perspective of Burke's skeleton,
38:19which still hangs here in the Anatomical Museum at the University of Edinburgh.
38:26We know William Burke was hanged for the murder of Margaret Docherty in January 1829.
38:32So what happened to Burke's body?
38:35So he was executed.
38:36His body was then transferred to the anatomy department.
38:40But so many people wanted to go and see the body.
38:43There was actually a riot at Old College.
38:45So they opened the doors the next day.
38:495,000 people went past his body to see it there.
38:54He was dissected by Monroe, who was Knox's opposition.
38:58And Monroe actually took a pen, dipped it in the blood of Burke and wrote a letter that says,
39:05this is written in the blood of William Burke.
39:10That is macabre.
39:13In a way, though, you've sort of brought Burke back to life with a striking image on the cover of
39:17your book.
39:18Tell us a little bit about the recreation of the face that you did of William Burke.
39:23It was the craze at the time to take casts of people's heads because they believed in phrenology,
39:28which is the idea that you can tell somebody's personality from the shape of their head.
39:32Oh.
39:32We were doing work at the time with Dr. Chris Wrynn, who was up in Dundee,
39:37and he scanned the death mask and he did a facial reconstruction of Burke for us.
39:43Can we see it?
39:44Yes.
39:47So that would be the death mask?
39:48That's the death mask, yeah.
39:51Oh, wow.
39:53Oh, that's amazing, isn't it?
39:54Oh.
39:57Wow.
39:59That is amazing.
40:01I didn't expect that.
40:02That's terrifying.
40:04It really brings it to life, doesn't it?
40:06It reminds me of someone I know.
40:08Does he?
40:08I can't think who it is.
40:09You know when you see her face and go, oh, he looks like somebody.
40:12He just looks like somebody who can walk past you on the street now, yeah.
40:16Amazing.
40:16That is incredible.
40:18And it's unsettling.
40:20Yeah.
40:21Because that could be anybody.
40:22You could have a pint with him, absolutely.
40:24Yeah.
40:26That's how Burke's story came to an end.
40:30So, what can you tell us about Hare?
40:33So, they took Hare and they put him on a coach under the pseudonym of Mr Black and sent him
40:39down towards Dumfries.
40:40Now, unfortunately for Hare, he was recognised.
40:44Oh, wow.
40:44So, by the time they got to Dumfries, everybody knew who Hare was.
40:48Is it a mob waiting for them, is it?
40:50It's a mob just waiting outside to rip him to bits.
40:53So, they took him into the coach house and they sneaked him out a window at the back and they
40:57escorted him down to the border and they just set him free into England.
41:02Common story is that he was recognised and he was thrown into a lime pit that blinded him.
41:07And then he lived the rest of his life as a beggar on the streets of London.
41:12What's becoming the accepted story now is that he went back to Ireland into a workhouse and he is now
41:19buried in the graveyard where that workhouse used to be.
41:22Wow.
41:24So, ultimately, Hare got his comeuppance, but what concerns me more is the 16 victims.
41:33What was done to honour them, to try and prevent anything like this happening ever again?
41:38So, the Anatomy Act was actually going through Parliament for the first time whilst this was happening.
41:43Oh, wow.
41:43And then shortly after Burke and Hare, when the Anatomy Bill came to Parliament for the second time, it just
41:49went straight through.
41:50So, now we have the 1832 Anatomy Act, which put the grave robbers out of business, essentially.
41:58But how it did that was it supplied bodies to the anatomy departments from hospitals and poorhouses.
42:06We still do it today. People donate their bodies now. That's how medical students are doing.
42:09Yeah, donating your body. I mean, it's such a wonderful thing to do, isn't it, if people are willing to
42:14do that for science.
42:15It's the choice, isn't it? Yes.
42:17It's all about having choice over your life and, you know, whether you become ill and your death.
42:23By legally regulating a supply of bodies, the 1832 Anatomy Act effectively ended the era of body snatching by protecting
42:32graves.
42:32And allowing students and surgeons to improve their understanding of human anatomy from cadavers supplied in a safe and consenting
42:41way.
42:49We came to Edinburgh to find out the real story of Burke and Hare, and why their legacy still lives
42:55on today.
42:56Two merciless serial killers, but Burke was the only one who faced justice while Hare got away scot-free.
43:03Not to mention their wives, Dr Robert Knox, and all the others who must have known what Burke and Hare
43:08were up to.
43:10It's such a tragedy that 16 people had to die here in this wonderful city.
43:17What a city.
43:18Yeah, what a city.
43:20What a story.
43:21Yeah, there's been a lot that you can compare to today's world.
43:24And yeah, it was 200 years ago.
43:26Yeah.
43:26And it still lies very heavy in the city, doesn't it?
43:29Yeah.
43:29This can teach us great lessons about the modern world.
43:31You know, how people can behave in such an abhorrent way.
43:34One profession desperate for bodies, the other people desperate for money just to survive.
43:38I think it's like, there's a massive reason why Burke and Hare is such a world famous story.
43:42Why there are tour guides packed down there now, nearly 200 years later.
43:46Why this city there, this magnificent city, produced such amazing storytellers.
43:51Well, yeah, Irvine and Owen and all these brilliant...
43:54Robert Louis Stevenson, all these people wrote in this city.
43:58And you can see how the echoes of this story...
44:00Was the beginning.
44:01Yeah.
44:02Yeah.
44:02Was the beginnings of it.
44:15Next time...
44:16It was here that an infamous serial killer, the name of Christie, lived.
44:20He's killed eight people, including a baby.
44:24They hung an innocent man.
44:26His name was Timothy Evans.
44:27He shouldn't have been hanged on the basis of these statements.
44:30It really does give me the chills, this story.
44:33But I think it's quite a bit more difficult, and it's worth it.
45:03You
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