William Burke

Skeleton of William Burke, in the Anatomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh. Photo by Hugh Pastoll.

William Burke (1792 - 1829) was hanged in Edinburgh's Lawnmarket on 28 January 1829 for his role in the 'West Port Murders'. It is thought that he, and his associate William Hare, were responsible for between 16 and 30 murders, but he was prosecuted for only one - a Mrs Docerty, newly arrived in Edinburgh from Ireland. Only Burke stood trial; Hare had turned King's evidence and testified against his partner. As ordered by the judge, Burke's body was publicly dissected by Professor Alexander Monro primus. His skeleton remains in the Anatomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh, his death-mask and a wallet made from his tanned skin remains preserved in the Anatomy Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh.

William Burke was an Irish navvy, born near Strabane, in Ulster, who came to Scotland to work on the New Union Canal. When that ended, he moved into Edinburgh taking up lodgings in Tanner's Close in the West Port area of Edinburgh (near Tollcross), at the home of fellow Ulsterman and navvy William Hare. The pair sold bodies to Dr Robert Knox (1791 - 1862), a private anatomy teacher who had set up classes in competition with those run by Alexander Monro primus of Edinburgh Medical College, part of the University of Edinburgh. The first body they sold was that of a fellow lodger who had died of natural causes, but on discovering how much Dr Knox was willing to pay with no questions asked, they set about finding victims to murder whose disappearance would not be noticed. Their accomplices included Burke's mistress, Helen M'Dougal, and Hare's wife, Margaret Laird. They are said to have lured victims to their lodging house, where they plied their victims with drink before smothering them - a form of murder that came to be known as 'burking'.

Life mask of William Hare, in the Anatomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh. Photo by Hugh Pastoll.

Robert Knox's School of Anatomy was an extremely profitable business, attracting up to 500 students, but was very short of bodies for dissection; it was allowed just one body of an executed criminal each year. The demand led to the trade in "ressurectionism" - digging up freshly buried bodies for dissection. However, such was the public revulsion at this that gates, railings and watchtowers were erected at graveyards, and grieving relatives took to mainting a vigil at the graveside until enough time had elapsed that putrefaction made the corpses unsuitable for dissection.

The first murder which he charged against Burke, although it is surmised that several had been committed before that time, was that of a girl named Paterson, who was about eighteen or twenty years of age. It appears, that this girl, with one of her associates, Janet Brown, had been lodged in the Canongate police-office, on Tuesday night, the 8th of April. They were kept till six o'clock the next morning, when they went to the house of one Swanstoun, to procure spirits. Here they were met by Burke, who asked them to drink. He afterwards prevailed on them to go with him to breakfast, and gave them two bottles of spirits to carry along with them. They accompanied him to his brother Constantine Burke's house, in the Canongate. This man was a scavenger, and went out at his usual hour to work After they had been in the house for some time Burke and his wife began to quarrel and to fight, which seems to have been the usual preliminary to mischief. In the midst of this uproar, Hare, who had been sent for, and who was a principal agent in this scene of villainy, entered, and in the meantime Janet Brown, agitated seemingly, and alarmed by the appearance of violence, wished to leave the house, and to take her companion along with her, By this time it was about ten o'clock, and Paterson was asleep in one of the beds, totally unconscious of her approaching fate, The other girl went out, and was absent about twenty minutes. When she returned she asked for Paterson, and was told that she had left the house. She came back in the afternoon in search of her, and received the same answer. By this time she was murdered. Burke had availed himself of the short interval of twenty minutes, during which her companion, Janet Brown, was absent, to execute his horrid purpose, when she was asleep, by stopping her breath; and that very afternoon, between five and six o'clock, her body was taken to the dissecting-room and disposed of for eight pounds. The appearance of this body, which was quite fresh -- which had not even begun to grow stiff -- of which the face was settled and pleasant, without any expression of pain -- awakened suspicions; and Burke was closely questioned as to where he procured it. He easily framed some plausible excuse that he had purchased it from the house where she died; which silenced all further suspicion. From The Newgate Calendar<ref<WILLIAM BURKE Who, with his accomplice Hare, murdered persons to sell their bodies to the anatomists. Executed 28th of January 1830 from The Newgate Calendar</ref>