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00:00Oh, no, no, no.
00:01Oh, no, no.
00:30Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
00:57Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
01:20I'm going to kill them.
01:21Whether it's unsolved crimes.
01:24Kelser Cockrell was the victim.
01:25He wasn't the perpetrator of any crime.
01:28Miscarriages of justice.
01:29The last words he said just before he was executed was,
01:34Christy done it.
01:36Wow.
01:37Or milestone cases that have changed the law.
01:40The government agreed to not disclose it to the public.
01:45Wow.
01:46We'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.
02:07The 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, Burke 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,
02:52but what's the real story?
02:55We want to sort out the facts from the fiction.
02:57Who were Burke and Hare?
02:59Why were they snatching bodies?
03:01And who for?
03:04In the early 1800s,
03:06Edinburgh was famously a city of two halves,
03:09the 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.
03:22My 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.
03:36You OK?
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,
03:50but 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?
04:06They never snatched any bodies.
04:08No, they kind of prepared the fresh kill.
04:13If you're a walking class at Edinburgh,
04:15try 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 benefitting from the marginalised and the excluded.
04:31It's fascinating because, you know,
04:33all of these stories does 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.
04:53So everybody lived together, and they'd throw all the faeces and urine out.
04:58So 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,
05:11the stories of the city, for years and years.
05:14Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde very much influenced by it.
05:20Book and Hare, I mean, how do you feel they influenced your work?
05:22My 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
05:35in 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.
05:43So Burke and Hare weren't actually body snatchers dragging bodies out of graveyards.
05:49They 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, right in the middle of the city,
06:36on the Royal Mile, one 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, like a 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.
07:24I'm Vicky, nice to meet you.
07:26Rob Sheppard, good to meet you.
07:27Johnny, lovely to meet you.
07:28Nice to meet you.
07:29We'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 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.
07:47Right.
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.
08:08Wow, mate.
08:09He's looking quite handsome.
08:10He does, yeah.
08:11Not 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 £1
08:36for the use of her boarding house for the murders.
08:39Oh, OK.
08:40Wow.
08:40So Burke in here split the money that it would get,
08:42which would range between £7 during the summer
08:45and £10 during the winter.
08:47Here we'd take the lion's share of that,
08:49Burke would get some,
08:49and Margaret got £1 out of Burke's share.
08:54Ah.
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
09:05that the bodies were found in lodging houses.
09:09Whether she believed it and just decided to,
09:11you know, maybe turn a blind eye instead.
09:13Yeah, yeah.
09:18Hare 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, actually.
09:27Yeah.
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,
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 to the grass market
09:46and they visited bars like the White Hart Inn.
09:50The idea was to take them back
09:52to 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
10:01about 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
10:17and Margaret Hare's lodging house was.
10:21Tanner's close came from the front street down
10:24and would finish round about here.
10:27In November, there was a knock on Burke's door.
10:32It was Hare and he said that old Donald had died.
10:36He's my lodger.
10:37He's died, owed me £4 in rent.
10:39But Hare and Burke had both heard
10:41that 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
10:57and look for Professor Alexander Munro,
11:00who was the head of anatomy there.
11:02Had Alexander Munro been in that day,
11:05the story of Burke and Hare
11:06might have turned out very differently.
11:08As it was in Munro's absence,
11:11Burke and Hare were directed to the house
11:13of his altogether more flamboyant and ambitious colleague,
11:17anatomist Dr Robert Knox.
11:21So they went across to Surgeon Square,
11:23knocked on the door at number 10
11:25and another medical student opened the door.
11:27He says, well, bring the body back here
11:29in the cover of darkness.
11:34Knox was called for.
11:37He did a quick examination
11:40and told the student to give them £7.10.
11:46And Knox said to them,
11:47if you get any more subjects,
11:51we'd be very interested.
11:52Wow.
11:54So that was really the catalyst
11:55for 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,
12:09we're talking hundreds of pounds.
12:10Wow, OK.
12:10They spent all the money they'd earned
12:12on whisky mostly.
12:13Wow.
12:14People died because they got pissed.
12:16Exactly.
12:17Hundreds of pounds.
12:21In terms of the murders themselves,
12:24was there a trend in how they were murdering people?
12:29Yes.
12:29OK.
12:30So there was a trend, actually.
12:34Abigail Simpson was murdered using this method.
12:38It's now come known as Burking.
12:39It's in the dictionary.
12:40Wow.
12:41What is it?
12:42So Burking is named after William Burke,
12:44but in actual fact,
12:45how it took place was,
12:47Hare would basically clamp his hand on the chin
12:50to keep it closed,
12:51and his other hand on the nose.
12:53Right.
12:53I would demonstrate with you, Ricky,
12:56but I'm not murdering it.
12:57I'm all right.
12:57So, you know,
12:58Burke would then lie across the chest
12:59or sit astride the chest.
13:02Either way,
13:03really 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 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,
13:26how short the period of time was.
13:28Yeah.
13:29And serial killing people for money,
13:31you know, the sadistic...
13:32And spending it on booze.
13:33Yeah, not for the sadistic enjoyment
13:34as 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
13:43people like Dr Knox.
13:46Yeah.
13:46How much did Knox know about the murders?
13:48Bearing in mind,
13:49he 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.
14:35OK.
14:36And she's an expert in science, history,
14:38everything that we want to find out in that area.
14:41Oh, amazing.
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
14:56that 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.
15:09We 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, 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.
16:19Right.
16:20Or you come to the anatomist table for dissection.
16:23Right.
16:23OK.
16:24Yeah.
16:25And the reason for this is in order to rise come Judgment Day,
16:29you have to be buried intact.
16:31So, of course, if you're publicly decomposing or 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 who want those dead bodies.
16:47Amazing. So 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.
16:59In that time, there were 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?
17:14It doesn't make it OK.
17:15No.
17:16No.
17:16But it does make sense.
17:20And 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
17:28that point.
17:29But even so, you've only got a very limited amount of time before things are going to get
17:33a bit squishy 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.
17:51And 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,
18:07or from there.
18:08Yeah.
18:08Yeah, 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
18:20doing it at, digging a 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
18:38snatching happening.
18:39So you'd have mort safes put over graves, basically putting a big cage over the grave so you can't
18:44dig 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 to be able to get science, but innocent
18:53people 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 Greyfraa's Kirkyard and you will see a couple of mort safes still in place
19:13there.
19:21Hand in hand through 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, 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, death 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 have 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, a death meat market.
20:09But yeah, this should remain forever, just as a lesson that people will do anything
20:13sometimes for 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 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 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, what role he played, how complicit 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 work so well?
21:36Me, I'm interested in them more.
21:37A little 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.
21:44Yeah.
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.
22:02Including Joseph, Abigail Simpson, Mary Patterson and 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.
22:31She used to live in Edinburgh, but she's in America now, so I'm going to have to Zoom with her.
22:38Hi, Lisa.
22:39Nice to meet you.
22:40You too.
22:41It'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?
22:59Twelve.
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 because 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, which is that she was a
23:40beautiful 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.
23:53She 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 on to it because this was a very well-kept
24:34body 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.
25:40What 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.
26:09What 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.
26:45Take care.
26:46Take care.
26:46Bye-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, Dr Robert Knox.
27:18He'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 specialize at an early stage at 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.
28:40That's awful.
28:42And what happened after Knox left the army?
28:44He got back to Edinburgh, found the best jobs were being held
28:48by 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,
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 that 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, 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,
29:56Knox 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,
30:13including those who went in for grave robbery.
30:16And, of course, when corpses arrived with some questions attached to them,
30:22the students knew enough from Knox who don't ask where corpses come from.
30:26Nor would William Ferguson his prime assistant.
30:32In the case of Daft Jamie, when that body arrived,
30:37William Ferguson took off the foot immediately.
30:41The 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,
30:52William Ferguson evidently knew it also, and so would other students.
31:00So what happened to him during the trial?
31:02Was he sort of seen as somebody that was very much part of this whole process?
31:06Well, 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,
31:17well, of course, the bodies are no longer there.
31:20That's correct, yeah, of course.
31:22And Knox himself denied any knowledge,
31:25and, of course, his students denied any knowledge as to where any other bodies might have come from.
31:34Only one body survived, and investigations were made.
31:39But committees were set up, and the prominent on the committee would be
31:43Professor William Pulteney Allison.
31:47He was very much aware of the fact that Knox, like himself,
31:51and like so many others, would have got the corpses from graveyards.
31:55But if you're going to start probing who won't turn out to be guilty,
32:01at least of some crime like grave robbing, like Knox.
32:05Right, okay.
32:06So, in other words, you have an enlightenment which is trying to pursue truth
32:10and, at the same time, has 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 why a lot of this happened.
32:25He turned the 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 Birkenhair.
32:37How were they finally caught?
32:40And how was Hay punished?
32:46The National Library of Scotland hosts tens of thousands of Scottish newspapers
32:50dating back as far as the 18th century,
32:53so they'll definitely have reports on the Birkenhair 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 Birkenhair
33:08were finally caught on the last day of October, 1828.
33:15They've had this argument, Birkenhair.
33:18So Birkenhair's moved up the road to some other lodge-ins.
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 lodge-ins.
33:35Hay has joined him.
33:36And then they've killed her.
33:38Birked 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,
33:53the Greys, they've said, don't look under the bed.
34:01So they've looked under the bed.
34:07James Grey's mentioned he 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.
34:19So this is Birk's partner saying, don't go to the police.
34:21So she knew.
34:22Yes.
34:24Said she would give him some shillings to put him over till Monday.
34:28So some money for the weekend.
34:29Yeah, yeah.
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...
34:45Yes.
34:46..what might have, how many more people might have been murdered?
34:48Well, I said, just goes to show, James Grey had enough conscience to go,
34:52I don't care about the money, this is, you know, this is wrong.
34:55And he's gone to the, er, to the police.
35:01They got sloppy, didn't they?
35:03Yeah, yeah, massively.
35:05You know.
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
35:20and Birk's landlord, John Brogan.
35:24But with barely any evidence, police offered Hare and his wife, Margaret,
35:30immunity from prosecution if he testified against Birk.
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 Birk, really.
36:00Yeah.
36:01He didn't throw anybody under the bus.
36:02No.
36:03Took 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
36:15got a lot of press coverage.
36:18These headlines say Westport murders,
36:20an intense excitement produced by the disclosures made
36:24in the course of the late trial has 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, which took place yesterday.
36:43His 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,
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,
37:35William 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,
37:54anatomist Dr Robert Knox.
37:57I want to know what happened to William Hare.
38:01I 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.
38:52Gosh.
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, you'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 of the face
39:21that you did of William Burke.
39:23It was the craze at the time to 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.
39:32Right.
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.
39:46It's a skeleton.
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.
40:00Amazing.
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 who could walk past you
40:13in the street now, yeah.
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.
40:44So by the time they got to Dumfries,
40:46everybody 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.
40:52So 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.
41:21Wow.
41:24So ultimately, Hare got his comeuppance.
41:28But what concerns me more is the 16 victims.
41:33What was done to honour them,
41:35to 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 to the anatomy departments
42:04from hospitals and poor houses?
42:06We still do it today.
42:07People donate their bodies now.
42:08That's how medical students are doing.
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?
42:17It's all about having choice over your life and, you know,
42:21whether you become ill and your death.
42:23By legally regulating a supply of bodies,
42:26the 1832 Anatomy Act effectively ended the era of body snatching
42:31by protecting graves
42:32and allowing students and surgeons to improve their understanding
42:37of human anatomy from cadavers supplied in a safe and consenting way.
42:49We came to Edinburgh to find out the 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 while Hare got away scot-free.
43:03Not to mention their wives, Dr. Robert Knox,
43:06and all the others who must have known what Burke and Hare were up to.
43:10It's such a tragedy that 16 people had to die here 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 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,
43:35the other people desperate for money just to survive.
43:38Mm.
43:38Think it's like, there's a massive reason why Burke and Hare is 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 who 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.
44:21He'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.
44:59It really does give me the chills, this story.
45:00And I love this story...
45:05How do I know today?
45:06I love her.
45:07I love you.
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