Trial of William Burke and Helen M'Dougal : before the High Court of Justiciary, at Edinburgh, on Wednesday, December 24. 1828, for the murder of Margery Campbell, or Docherty / Taken in short hand by Mr John Macnee, writer. With an illustrative preface.

  • Burke, William, 1792-1829.
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Trial of William Burke and Helen M'Dougal : before the High Court of Justiciary, at Edinburgh, on Wednesday, December 24. 1828, for the murder of Margery Campbell, or Docherty / Taken in short hand by Mr John Macnee, writer. With an illustrative preface. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    fetches Paterson, the assistant or servant of a teacher of anatomy here, to whom he was in the habit of selling the bodies of his victims, to the spot — the murdered body being by this time stuffed under the bed and covered with straw ; and, point- ing to that truly dreadful place, tells him that he has got a subject for him there, which will be ready for him in the morning. The demons then appear to have re- created themselves with fresh dozes of liquor; and about four or rive in the morn- ing, the two women already mentioned, with a fellow of the name of Brogan, who had joined the party after the deed was done, laid down in the bed, beneath which the murdered body of Dochcrty, not yet cold in death, had been crammed, and went to sleep, some of them at least, as coolly as if nothing of the kind had oc- curred. When daylight returned, the tea-box, so often mentioned in the course of the trial, was procured, and the slaughtered body crammed into it, and sent off'by the porter M'Culloch, to Surgeon Square. After which Burke and his accom- plice Hare set off'for Newington to obtain the whole or part of the price of the subject they had procured by murder, and actually got five pounds, being one half of the price agreed upon. Such is an imperfect and feeble outline of the facts of this case, in the course of which was disclosed the horrid and appalling fact, that, in certain holes and dens^ both in the heart and in the outskirts of this city, murder had been reduced into a system, with the view of obtaining money for the bodies murdered ; and that it was perpetrated in the manner least likely to leave impressed upon it any evident or de- cisive marks of violence, being invariably committed by means of suffocation or strangling, during partial or total intoxication. The public is therefore to consider the present as only one out of many instances of a similar nature which have oc- curred. Hare's wife admitted that she had witnessed many tricks of the same kind ; and Hare himself, when undergoing the searching cross-examination of Mr. Coekburn—a cross-examination such as was never before exemplified in any Court of Justice — durst not deny that he had been concerned in other murders besides that of Docherty,—that a murder had been committed in his own house in the month of October last,—that he himself was a murderer, and his hands steeped in blood and slaughter; we say he durst not deny it, and only took refuge in declining to answer the questions put to him; which the Court of course apprised him he was entitled to do in regard to questions that went to criminate himself so deeply, and but for which caution we have little doubt that he would have confessed not merely accession, but a principal share in several murders. In fact, this squalid wretch, as Mr. Coekburn so picturesquely called him, from the hue and look of the carrion-crow in the witness-box, was disposed to be extremely communicative, and apparently had no idea that any thing he had stated was at all remarkable or extraordinary. The conviction of Burke alone will not satisfy either the law or the country. The unanimous voice of society in regard to Hare is, Delendus est; that is to say, if there be evidence to convict him, as we should hope there is. He has been an ac- cessory before or after the fact in nearly all of these murders; in the case of poor Jamie he was unquestionably a principal; and his evidence on Wednesday only protects him from being called to account for the murder of Docherty. We trust, THEREFORE, THAT THE LORD ADVOCATE, WHO HAS SO AELY AND ZEALOUSLY PER- FORMED HIS DUTY TO THE COUNTRY UrON THIS OCCASION, WILL BRING THE SQUALID WRETCH TO TRIAL, AND TAKE EVERY OTHER MEANS IN HIS POWER TO HAVE THESE ATROCITIES PROBED AND SIFTED TO THE BOTTOM.