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Short filmTranscript
00:01Oh, there.
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 to explore murder cases that have changed
01:12modern Britain.
01:14Oh, God.
01:15He's basically saying, I'll do time for these people, but when I come out, I'm going to kill
01:20them.
01:21Whether it's unsolved crimes...
01:24Kelser Cockrell was the victim, he wasn't the perpetrator of any crime.
01:28Miscarriages of justice.
01:29The last words he said, just before he was executed, was, Christy Dunnett.
01:35Wow.
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 and how the legacy of these crimes continues to be
01:50felt 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.
02:09That's because it was a world leader in the 19th century, a bit like Athens was in the
02:13ancient world.
02:16Philosophy, medicine.
02:18And that ties in nicely with a famous story with the city, a macabre story, Burke and Hare.
02:24So, who are Burke and Hare?
02:26All I know is that they were the body snatchers.
02:29And they provided bodies for doctors to look at.
02:33So, they're snatching bodies?
02:34Yes.
02:35This morning, when I left the hotel, I 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, and he went, ooh.
02:43Did he?
02:43Yeah.
02:44So, should we find out more?
02:45Let's do that.
02:50Everyone'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, the rich and the very poor,
03:11the 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.
03:23My old mate, Irving Welch, has written about social division in Edinburgh many times,
03:27most famously in Trainspotting.
03:29Let's go!
03:31He once wrote a screenplay based on the story of Burke and Hare.
03:35Good to see you, mate. You OK?
03:37We're in your lovely city, your native city of Edinburgh,
03:39and 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, and then sell the bodies for medical research.
04:00Oh, OK.
04:01So, I always thought they were the body snatchers.
04:02That's how they're 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.
04:30It's fascinating because, you know, all of these stories does all tend to fall back into class most of the
04:36time.
04:37Yeah.
04:37When you think back to what Edinburgh was like then, before they built the new town, the old town here,
04:43everybody lived together.
04:45So, you had quite wealthy professions on the top floors, and 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, and they'd throw all the faeces and urine out.
04:57So, it was quite a tough life for people, particularly 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, the stories of the city, for years and years.
05:15Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, very much influenced by it.
05:20Book and Hay, I mean, how do you feel they influenced your work?
05:23My book, Dead Men's Trousers, was very much about this body parts thing,
05:27which is a modern version, you know, of the cadaver selling the body parts.
05:31So, these stories and these characters are pretty much ingrained in the literary culture of the town.
05:37Yeah.
05:37There's a lot to delve into, though.
05:39Yes, I think so.
05:40So dark.
05:44So, Burke and Hay weren't actually body snatchers dragging bodies out of graveyards.
05:50They were serial murderers who sold the corpses of their so-called fresh kills for medical research.
06:00So, how and why did they come to be so mythologised and 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, and can you imagine?
06:34Right in the middle of the city, on 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, a 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, that 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, who is an expert tour guide,
07:22who has studied Burke and Hare.
07:24Yes.
07:25I'm Vicky, nice to meet you.
07:26Rob Sheppard, good to meet you.
07:27Johnny, lovely to meet you.
07:28Nice to meet you.
07:29We're hoping that you'll be able to give us lots of information
07:31on Burke and Hare.
07:32Yeah, absolutely.
07:33Well, Burke and Hare murdered 16 people in 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.
07:46Right.
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, right, OK.
08:08Well, look at him quite handsome.
08:10He does, yeah.
08:11Not my time.
08:11Well...
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? Yeah.
08:33Here, first of all.
08:34She was actually getting paid ÂŁ1 for the use of her boarding house for the murders.
08:39Oh, wow.
08:40So Burke and Hare split the money that it would get,
08:42which would range between ÂŁ7 during the summer and ÂŁ10 during the winter.
08:47Hare would take the lion's share of that, Burke would get some,
08:51and Margaret got ÂŁ1 out of Burke's share.
08:54Oh, wow.
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 were found in lodging houses.
09:09Whether she believed it and just decided to, you know,
09:11maybe turn a blind eye instead of it.
09:17Hare taking most of the money, his 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, I see.
09:34I mean, if you met Burke in a pub, you'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 because he trusted him.
09:44Right.
09:44They came down here at the grass market and they visited bars like the White Hart.
09:50The idea was to take them back to the lodging house where it was private
09:54and then do the deed there.
09:55So the murders took place in their houses?
09:57Absolutely.
10:00I'd like to know more about Margaret Hare's notorious lodging house
10:04and how the murders began in late 1827.
10:12Right, so we are now at the site of where William Hare and Margaret Hare's lodging house was.
10:21Tanner's close came from the front street down and would 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, won me four pounds in rent.
10:39But Hare and Burke had both heard that if you could sell a body to the anatomy school,
10:45you 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 and look for Professor Alexander Munro,
11:00who was the head of anatomy there.
11:02Had Alexander Munro been in that day, the story of Burke and Hare might have turned out very differently.
11:08As it was in Munro's absence, Burke 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,
11:25and 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.
11:37He 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, how can we take advantage of the situation?
12:05It must have been intoxicating for them, isn't it?
12:07Oh, absolutely. In 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.
12:17Hundreds of pounds.
12:21In terms of the murders themselves, was there a trend in how they were murdering people?
12:28Yes, OK, so there was a trend, actually.
12:34Abigail Simpson was murdered using this method.
12:38It's now come known as burking. It's in the dictionary.
12:40Wow. What is it?
12:41So burking is named after William Burke, but in actual fact, how it took place was,
12:47Hare would basically clamp his hand on the chin to keep it closed and his other hand on the nose.
12:53I would demonstrate with you, Ricky, 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.
13:01Either way, really quite an ingenious form of murder because it left no trace on the body.
13:07Suffocation would mean the preserving of the body.
13:11That's exactly what anatomists would want, almost 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.
13:28And 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.
13:39OK, 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.
13:46Yeah. How 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 and selling their cadavers to Dr Robert Knox for dissection at his
14:15private anatomy school.
14:19The poor being killed so their bodies could be dissected and examined by medical students. It'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.
14:35OK.
14:36And 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 OK?
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.
14:57You 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,
15:38to have dead bodies to dissect, to try 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,
16:00the judge is likely to commit them to be hanged.
16:04What the judge can do at that point is say,
16:07well, you can have a further punishment.
16:09And that can be you're either gibbeted.
16:12So that means that you're hanged,
16:14and then afterwards your body is put in a cage to publicly decompose.
16:18Right.
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,
16:28you have to be buried intact.
16:31So, of course, if you're publicly decomposing
16:34or being chopped up by anatomists,
16:36this is denying the murderer the chance of getting to the pearly gates.
16:41And, of course, in the meantime, you help the anatomists
16:44who 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?
16:54There is absolutely not enough bodies.
16:56This act is in place from 1752 to 1832.
16:59In that time, there are less than 100 people hanged for murder
17:03in 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, that does.
17:14It doesn't make it OK.
17:15No?
17:16No.
17:16It does make sense.
17:19And so you'd need a fresh body, and how long would they last at that time?
17:23I always say that anatomy was a winter sport
17:25because decomposition would happen slower at that point.
17:29But even so, you've only got a very limited amount of time
17:32before things are going to get a bit squishy
17:33and 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.
17:44So they would work in gangs, and they would go out at night
17:48under 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,
18:05they're pulling them out from the top, I guess, or from there.
18:08Yeah, absolutely.
18:12Selling a body wasn't a crime.
18:14OK.
18:15You could get arrested for disturbing a grave,
18:18but regardless of what time of year you're doing it at,
18:22digging a body up is hard work.
18:23Yes.
18:24You know, and if a mob realized what you were up to,
18:27they 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
18:37to 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
18:43so you can't dig into it.
18:45So it created this almost death market, really, didn't it?
18:48You know?
18:48Yeah.
18:49I get, you know, the fact that there's less people
18:51to be able to get science,
18:52but innocent people just being killed in the face of it.
18:56Yeah.
19:03Kat, are there any examples nearby
19:04where we can go and have a look at the mort safes?
19:07Oh, absolutely.
19:08Oh, OK.
19:08You can go to Greyfra's Kirkyard
19:10and you will see a couple of mort safes still in place there.
19:21Hand in hand from the graveyard?
19:23Very 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, there's some sight, isn't there?
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
20:03without your consent.
20:05Meat market, basically.
20:07Yeah.
20:07A death meat market.
20:09Yeah.
20:10But, yeah, this should remain forever,
20:11just as a lesson that people will do anything
20:13sometimes for money.
20:15It's so macabre.
20:21Unenamoured with the squalor of grave robbing, Burke and Hare
20:24set their sights higher.
20:25They wanted fresh kills, for which they would receive top dollar
20:29from the likes of Knox and his fellow anatomists.
20:33And they would choose their victims from packed public houses and taverns
20:37around 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 grass market.
20:57They're still the centre of Edinburgh to this day.
20:59Fascinating that they could have come here, met their victims, lulled them in.
21:03Sort of, quite sinister, really, when you think about what they were like
21:06and how they were operating, didn't you?
21:07Yeah.
21:08Like you say, if they'd have found them possibly in this pub,
21:11what would have been their reason for choosing those 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 something about Dr Robert Knox.
21:22I'm intrigued about him, what role he played, how complicity he 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.
21:35Why would it work so well?
21:36Me, I'm interested in them more.
21:37It's practical.
21:38Yeah.
21:39We're a double axe, but not like Burke and Hare.
21:40No.
21:41No.
21:41More like, what would you say, more like what?
21:43George and Mildred.
21:44Yeah.
21:44Yeah.
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.
22:02Including Joseph.
22:04Abigail Simpson.
22:06Mary 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 Burke and Hare.
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 Burke and Hare were specific about who they were targeting.
22:47They didn't want to be caught.
22:48So they looked for people that in their view would be easy to take.
22:53And so, of course, that's largely women.
22:55And so, out of those 16 murders, how many of those were women?
22:5912.
23:00Okay.
23:01So, Lisa, who was Burke and Hare'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.
23:11Because he was already sick.
23:14So that would be the next stage to murder someone who was already perhaps a death's door.
23:21And after that, they got a kind of a taste for the crime.
23:25They 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 Burke and Hare,
23:37which is that she was a beautiful prostitute, murdered,
23:42and then her body was recognized in the dissection room later by one of the students who had been with
23:48her.
23:49And the fact is that she was very young.
23:52She was perhaps 16 or so.
23:55She agreed to go into the Magdalene Asylum, which was entirely voluntary.
23:59And it was a kind of a cross between a reformed school and workhouse, I suppose.
24:05And she left about a week before her body ended up at Knox's anatomical dissecting rooms.
24:14She was actually accosted by Burke in a whiskey shop, who invited her to come home for breakfast.
24:26Mary Patterson's body was kept for three months.
24:29I think the most straightforward reason is that he held onto it because this was a very well-kept body
24:34indeed.
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, and 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.
25:40What 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.
25:56They 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.
26:10What I would always wish to emphasize is the tragedy of it,
26:15simply because their bodies, in some sense, had more 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 life, no matter what your status is.
26:35Everybody's here. Everybody deserves a shot at life.
26:38A human being's life is of incalculable worth.
26:42Absolutely. That's brilliant. Thanks, Lisa. Take care.
26:46Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
26:51While Vicky's been learning about the people Burke and Hare murdered,
26:54I'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,
27:12but I'm particularly interested in somebody that's fascinated me 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.
27:27Born in 1791 in Edinburgh.
27:31An authority on corpses in certain ways.
27:33Experience of the army.
27:34He had ample opportunities to investigate bodies.
27:38He'd had various adventures.
27:40But he began to specialize at an early stage in anatomy.
27:43And Knox became more and more qualified to study of bodies
27:46and the different races of the bodies in South Africa.
27:51He afterwards became one of the leading and most pernicious racists, theory racists.
28:09200 years ago, Burke and Hare murdered 16 people here in Edinburgh
28:13and sold their victims' bodies to anatomist Dr Robert 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
28:29where he was a vigorous supporter of race theory.
28:35But I didn't realize he was a huge propagandist for race theory.
28:39That's awful.
28:42And what happened after Knox left the army?
28:44He got back to Edinburgh,
28:46found the best jobs were being held by a professor of anatomy,
28:50Alexander 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
29:03and Knox had to get hold of the bodies wherever he could get them.
29:08This is a big question for me.
29:11Do you think he turns a blind eye to the fact
29:13that somebody gets these bodies to him?
29:16He would have known that his rivals would be having students and others
29:20getting bodies from the graveyards?
29:23And he would quite lightly encourage them.
29:27You know in the old days of school teaching,
29:30you 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,
29:42a murderer arrives, a second of the corpses,
29:45and Knox simply says,
29:47another nice fresh corpse gentleman.
29:49Wow.
29:52And from that point of view, we can say with confidence,
29:56Knox knew enough to know he mustn't know.
30:01Okay.
30:02Wow.
30:06Did he have people helping him, do you think?
30:08Knox won the support and enthusiasm of his own students,
30:13including those who went in for grave robbery,
30:16and of course,
30:17when corpses arrived with some questions attached to them,
30:22the students knew enough from Knox,
30:24who don't ask where corpses come from,
30:26nor would William Ferguson, his prime assistant.
30:33In the case of Daft Jamie, when that body arrived,
30:37William Ferguson took off the foot immediately.
30:40The foot was twisted,
30:42and everybody knew Daft Jamie through that twisted foot.
30:47Now, not only did Knox know enough to know that he mustn't know,
30:52William Ferguson evidently knew it also,
30:54and so would other students.
31:00So what happened to him during the trial?
31:02Was he sort of seen as somebody
31:03that was very much part of this whole process?
31:06Well, in the investigation of corpses,
31:10the first thing you need is a corpse.
31:13If you're investigating corpses
31:14which have been dissected by Dr. Knox and his students,
31:17well, of course, the bodies are no longer there.
31:20That's correct, yeah, of course.
31:21And Knox himself denied any knowledge,
31:25and, of course, his students denied any knowledge
31:27as to where any other bodies might have come from.
31:34Only one body survived,
31:38and investigations were made.
31:40But committees were set up,
31:41and a prominent on the committee would be,
31:43Professor William Pulteney Allison.
31:47He was very much aware of the fact
31:49that Knox, like himself,
31:51and like so many others,
31:52would have got the corpses from graveyards.
31:55But if you're going to start probing,
31:58who won't turn out to be guilty,
32:01at least of some crime like grave robbing,
32:04like Knox.
32:05Right, OK.
32:07So, in other words,
32:07you have an enlightenment
32:08which is trying to pursue truth
32:10and, at the same time,
32:12has to 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
32:24why a lot of this happened.
32:25He turned a blind eye,
32:27and he and his students got away scot-free.
32:31It's unbelievable.
32:33Knox may have got away with it,
32:34but we need to find out
32:36what happened to Burke and Hare.
32:37How were they finally caught?
32:40And how was Hare punished?
32:46The National Library of Scotland
32:48holds tens of thousands
32:49of Scottish newspapers
32:50dating back as far as the 18th century,
32:53so they'll definitely have reports
32:54on the Burke and Hare story.
32:57I see the price there, seven pence.
33:01The Caledonian Mercury,
33:02I love the names of them.
33:04It doesn't take long to find reports
33:07explaining how Burke and Hare
33:08were finally caught
33:09on the last day of October 1828.
33:15They've had this argument, Burke and Hare.
33:18So Burke has moved up the road
33:19to some other lodge-ins,
33:22and he's gone out,
33:23and he's met Margaret Docherty,
33:28got her drunk, lulled her in,
33:33got her back to the lodge-ins.
33:35Hare's joined him,
33:36and then they've killed her,
33:38burked her.
33:44They've left the body under the bed
33:46to go and tell Knox they've got another body.
33:49And when they leave him,
33:50two other people that live
33:51in the lodging house with them,
33:53the Greys,
33:54they've said,
33:55don't look under the bed.
34:01So they've looked under the bed.
34:07James Gray 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
34:15that he would not inform of what he had seen.
34:18Here we go.
34:19So this is Burke's partner saying,
34:20don't go to the police.
34:21So she knew.
34:22Yes.
34:24Said she would give him some shillings
34:25to put him over till Monday.
34:28So some money for the weekend.
34:29Yeah, yeah.
34:31And there was never a week after
34:32that he might be worth ÂŁ10.
34:35So she'd say to him,
34:36I'll give you ÂŁ10 a week if you keep quiet.
34:38But he said his conscience would not let him do it.
34:41Good.
34:41Good man, James Gray.
34:43Yeah, good.
34:44Well, if he hadn't have done...
34:45Yes.
34:46..what might have,
34:46how many more people might have been murdered?
34:48Well, I said, just goes to show,
34:50James Gray had enough conscience to go,
34:52I don't care about the money.
34:53This is, you know, this is wrong.
34:54And 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,
35:19along with their wives and Burke's landlord, John Brogan.
35:25But with barely any evidence,
35:27police 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
35:41to 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.
36:09They did.
36:11You can see here,
36:13William Burke and Helen McDougal's trial
36:15got a lot of press coverage.
36:18These headlines say Westport Murders,
36:20an intense excitement produced by the disclosures
36:23made in the course of the late trial
36:25has at no degree subsided,
36:27so the public interest is massive.
36:29And you can see all these newspapers are running with this.
36:32No trial in the memory of any man now living
36:36has excited so deep as that of William Burke
36:39and his female associate,
36:41which took place yesterday.
36:43His public feeling has worked up
36:45to 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,
36:56was 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
37:19after he was hanged.
37:20And what I'm desperate to know
37:22is what happened to William Hare.
37:31On Wednesday, 28th of January, 1829,
37:36William Burke was hanged
37:37for the murder of Margaret Docherty.
37:39And it happened right here in the middle of Edinburgh.
37:45William Hare, his partner in crime,
37:47literally got away with murder.
37:50As did, many believe,
37:52the man to whom the bodies were supplied,
37:55anatomist Dr. Robert Knox.
37:57I want to know what happened to William Hare.
38:00I also want to know,
38:02did this murder case change anything
38:04when it came to providing bodies for dissection?
38:10Hi, Janet.
38:11Hello.
38:12Becky, nice to meet you.
38:14Janet Philp has written a book about the murders,
38:17told from the unique perspective of Burke's skeleton,
38:19which still hangs here in the Anatomical Museum
38:22at the University of Edinburgh.
38:26We know William Burke was hanged
38:28for the murder of Margaret Docherty in January 1829.
38:32So what happened to Burke's body?
38:35So he was executed.
38:37His 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.
38:53Gosh.
38:54He was dissected by Monroe,
38:56who was Knox's opposition.
38:59And Monroe actually took a pen,
39:01dipped it in the blood of Burke,
39:03and wrote a letter that says,
39:05this is written in the blood of William Burke.
39:10That is macabre.
39:13In a way, though,
39:14you've sort of brought Burke back to life
39:15with a striking image on the cover of your book.
39:18Tell us a little bit about the recreation
39:20of the face that you did of William Burke.
39:23It was the craze at the time
39:24to take casts of people's heads
39:26because they believed in phrenology,
39:28which is the idea that you can tell somebody's personality
39:30from the shape of their head.
39:31Oh.
39:32We were doing work at the time with Dr. Chris Wrynn,
39:36who was up in Dundee,
39:37and he scanned the death mask,
39:40and 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.
39:53That'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,
40:11oh, he looks like somebody.
40:12He just looks like somebody
40:13who could walk past you in the street now.
40:14Yeah.
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
40:36under the pseudonym of Mr Black
40:37and sent him down towards Dumfries.
40:40Now, unfortunately for Hare, he was recognised.
40:44Oh, wow.
40:44By the time they got to Dumfries,
40:46everybody knew who Hare was.
40:48Is it a mob waiting for them?
40:50It's a mob just waiting outside to rip him to bits.
40:52So they took him into the coach house
40:54and they sneaked him out a window at the back
40:56and they escorted him down to the border
40:59and they just set him free into England.
41:02Common story is that he was recognised
41:04and he was thrown into a lime pit that blinded him
41:07and then he lived the rest of his life
41:09as a beggar on the streets of London.
41:12What's becoming the accepted story now
41:15is that he went back to Ireland into a workhouse
41:18and he is now buried in the graveyard
41:20where that workhouse used to be.
41:22Wow.
41:24So, ultimately, Hare got his comeuppance.
41:28But what concerns me more is the 16 victims.
41:33What was done to honour them
41:34to try and prevent anything like this happening ever again?
41:38So, the Anatomy Act was actually going through Parliament
41:41for the first time whilst this was happening.
41:43Oh, wow.
41:43And then shortly after Burke and Hare,
41:46when the Anatomy Bill came to Parliament for the second time,
41:48it just went straight through.
41:50So, now we have the 1832 Anatomy Act
41:53which put the grave robbers out of business, essentially.
41:58But how it did that was it supplied bodies
42:01to the anatomy departments from hospitals and poorhouses.
42:06We still do it today.
42:07People donate their bodies now.
42:08That's how medical students are taught.
42:09Yeah, donating your body.
42:10I mean, it's such a wonderful thing to do, isn't it,
42:13if people are willing to do that for science.
42:16It's the choice, isn't it?
42:17Yes.
42:17It's all about having choice over your life
42:19and, you know, whether you become ill and your death.
42:23By legally regulating a supply of bodies,
42:26the 1832 Anatomy Act effectively ended the era
42:30of body snatching by protecting graves
42:32and allowing students and surgeons
42:35to improve their understanding of human anatomy
42:38from cadavers supplied in a safe and consenting way.
42:49We came to Edinburgh to find out
42:51the real story of Burke and Hare
42:53and why their legacy still lives on today.
42:56Two merciless serial killers,
42:58but Burke was the only one who faced justice
43:00while Hare got away scot-free.
43:03Not to mention their wives, Dr Robert Knox,
43:06and all the others who must have known
43:07what Burke and Hare were up to.
43:10It's such a tragedy that 16 people had to die
43:14here in this wonderful city.
43:18What a city.
43:18Yeah, what a city.
43:20What a story.
43:21Yeah, there's been a lot that you can compare
43:22to 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?
43:28Yeah.
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,
43:36the other people desperate for money just to survive.
43:38Mm.
43:38Think it's like, there's a massive reason why Burke and Hare
43:41is such a world-famous story.
43:43Why there are tour guides packed down there now,
43:45nearly 200 years later.
43:46Why this city there, this magnificent city,
43:49produced such amazing storytellers.
43:52Well, yeah, Irvine and Owen and all these brilliant...
43:54Robert Louis Stevenson.
43:56All 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,
44:18the 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.
44:28He shouldn't have been hanged on the basis of these statements.
44:30It really does give me the chills, this story.
44:33That's true, I think...
44:36That's true, there is a cosmopolitan,
44:40was the guy who was in theé«.
44:40He doesn't really know what to do.
44:40Here.
44:40That is something that he is.
44:40That is a beautiful desire.
44:40I have to know.
44:42That's a beautiful picture.
44:50I can't find that you.
44:51It's a beautiful view.
44:51It's beautiful, it's beautiful.
44:51You can tell anyone...
44:51Though I don't know.
44:52Yeah.
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