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code LISTEN. Hello

1:33

and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie.

1:35

And I'm Anthony. And today's

1:38

episode is the grisly story

1:40

of Burke and Hare, Scotland's

1:43

most notorious serial killers. Now,

1:46

we wanted to share this episode with you

1:48

again because, well, first of all, it was

1:50

one of our first episodes. It was really

1:52

early on. Don't judge us too harshly. We've

1:54

grown since then. But it's also

1:57

one that sticks with us and with a

1:59

lot of of you guys because you've been

2:01

in touch about it. And so much so

2:03

that Maddie and I were so lucky to

2:06

get to go and film a documentary

2:08

with our incredible director Laura and

2:11

our cameraman Ryan. And we

2:13

spent a week in Edinburgh

2:15

exploring this dark history. And

2:18

it really brought up some new

2:20

ideas, some new thoughts. And

2:22

we thought it would be a good time to revisit

2:24

this particular history. I know for me when we were

2:27

in Edinburgh, Maddie, I just

2:29

remember we filmed a lot at night, obviously,

2:32

and it was so interesting to be in

2:34

those spaces. But the thing that stands out

2:36

for me the most is there are a

2:38

set of stairs in the University of Edinburgh

2:40

in the centre of town. And it's

2:43

just in a computer lab. But if

2:45

you look down through this glass floor,

2:47

you will see the steps wherein Burke's

2:49

body was transported from the gallows right

2:51

up into the medical school that that

2:53

was the medical school building at the

2:55

time. It's no longer the medical school.

2:58

And just to be hovering above those

3:01

stone stairs is

3:03

quite haunting because that's where his

3:06

mortal remains came towards the end. What

3:08

about you? Anything that sticks out? Well,

3:10

I think tangibility is absolutely the key

3:13

here, isn't it? You know, often on this podcast,

3:15

we do a huge amount of research, of course,

3:17

but we do a lot of it on our

3:19

laptops. We don't often get to go actually into

3:22

the archive. And thank God for all the archivists

3:24

out there digitising stuff, we salute you. And

3:26

so things aren't always that tangible for us. And we

3:29

got to go to Edinburgh, as you say, the thing

3:31

that stands out for me is that I got to

3:33

go to the National Library of Scotland, I got to

3:35

go into the archive. And we did some

3:37

amazing interviews in there. But I also got to see some

3:40

of the material relating to the case,

3:42

I could see original newspaper reports.

3:44

And, and this was a

3:46

really powerful moment for me, I saw

3:48

a watercolour sketch done by someone in

3:50

the medical school of one

3:53

of Birkenhaers victims, a woman who had

3:55

been murdered by them sold

3:57

to the medical profession and she had ended

3:59

up. naked on the slab

4:01

ready to be anatomised. And

4:04

it was so moving and it was so horrifying to

4:06

see that and it really brought me

4:09

into that story and it gave me a renewed

4:11

outrage actually for the crimes that

4:14

Birkenhaer committed. I haven't

4:16

actually seen this myself yet. You haven't seen

4:18

it. We haven't seen this documentary ourselves so

4:20

we are rushing instantly after this. Now that

4:22

we're talking about it again I'm like oh

4:24

I need to watch this. So if you

4:26

would like to watch this documentary and why

4:28

wouldn't you? You're listening to After Dark after

4:30

all then you can catch Maddie and I

4:32

on history hit TV and see what we

4:34

have uncovered in this new Birkenhaer documentary. It

4:36

was certainly so interesting to film and I'm

4:38

hoping it's just as impactful when you watch

4:40

it. It's

4:46

a frosty morning in Edinburgh on the 28th of January 1829

4:48

just after 8am. A

4:54

misty chill hangs in the air and

4:57

a crowd of thousands are waiting

4:59

with growing anticipation watching the notorious

5:02

serial killer William Burke spend his

5:04

last moments alive before

5:06

he's hanged at the gallows. Now

5:09

Burke is one half of the murdering

5:11

duo Burke and Hare who killed and

5:13

sold their victims bodies to Professor Robert

5:15

Knox, an anatomist at the University of

5:17

Edinburgh. The case has gripped

5:19

Scotland and the public execution has drawn

5:21

a huge crowd. Some people

5:23

have even hired their rooms in tenements overlooking

5:25

the scaffold at a cost of around 10

5:28

shillings for a better view of the hanging.

5:32

Burke is dressed in black and looks

5:34

composed. The noose

5:36

is placed over his neck. His

5:43

body convulses with the last movements of life.

5:46

It is then cut down and will be

5:48

publicly dissected, fitting for a

5:50

man who killed people purely to serve

5:52

the voracious dissection table. After

5:55

the dissection, they'll put his skeleton on display.

5:58

They'll take his skin to the tanners. and

6:00

turn it into the leather covers of a book. Inscribed

6:03

on the front of the book will be Burke's

6:06

Skin Pocket Book, the

6:09

final resting place of an opportunistic

6:11

killer. Hello

6:35

and welcome to this episode of

6:37

After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the

6:39

Paranormal. My name's Anthony. And I'm

6:41

Maddy. And today we are

6:44

going to transport you to the early 19th century.

6:46

Maddy, this is a little bit more of the

6:48

area that you are comfortable in, right? I'm more

6:50

of an early 17th century person. I

6:52

love this period. So we're talking in

6:55

Britain, the end of the Regency period.

6:57

George IV comes to the throne. Britain

7:00

is coming out of wars. It's defeated Napoleon at

7:02

Waterloo in 1815, and it's rebuilding what

7:08

is already an

7:10

incredible, powerful, violent

7:12

empire across the globe. And it's kind

7:15

of expanding even more. It's building parts

7:17

of London. It's expanding everywhere. There's all this

7:19

kind of new wealth. There's excitement in the

7:22

air. Romanticism is in full

7:24

swing. We've got Frankenstein published. We've

7:26

got Pride and Prejudice published. You

7:28

know, this is a moment

7:31

of British history of incredible

7:33

creativity, incredible inequality as well.

7:37

And those things are absolutely hand in hand. And

7:39

on the one side, you know, we think of

7:41

this period as glittering, elegant.

7:43

You know, think Bridgerton. Think your

7:45

Jane Austen adaptations. On the other

7:47

side, we have a slightly darker

7:50

history. And today I think we're

7:52

going in the pretty dark

7:54

and scary footsteps of

7:56

famous body snatchers, Birkenhaer. But

7:58

were they body snatchers? Well,

8:01

let's get into it. Grave

8:03

robbing in the 19th

8:05

century is this common? I

8:08

mean, it's interesting because what

8:11

you find is it starts to become a little

8:13

bit of a kind of a small business

8:16

onto itself. So obviously there's

8:18

this growth of scientific

8:21

discovery, anatomy, and

8:24

anatomical discovery is really growing at this

8:26

time. And there just simply isn't

8:28

enough bodies to provide

8:31

the anatomists with their cadavers so that

8:33

they can make their discoveries, they can

8:35

teach doctors, medical

8:37

students that will go on to be the

8:39

future anatomists. So this grows up, not just

8:41

in Edinburgh, but Edinburgh, it really attaches itself

8:44

to Edinburgh because Edinburgh was such a center

8:46

of anatomy and it was one of

8:48

the forefront places in Europe at this

8:50

time for medical discovery. Okay, so there's a

8:52

real need, a real hunger.

8:54

And there's plenty of things happening

8:56

in Edinburgh. So obviously we have

8:59

the university, we then have Glasgow

9:01

as well, but we also have

9:03

private practitioners and those people need

9:05

cadavers themselves. So there is this

9:07

trade that starts that's quite informal,

9:09

illegal. And what

9:12

we find is that Edinburgh becomes, because

9:14

of the demand for cadavers for the

9:16

anatomy students, which just keep coming

9:18

by the way, like Edinburgh was the place to

9:21

go. So we will not have

9:23

enough of a supply. So this is how

9:25

this grave robbing phenomenon happens in

9:27

and around Edinburgh. So we know who's having

9:30

these bodies once they've been snatched from

9:32

the graves and why they need them.

9:34

Who are the people who are doing

9:36

the grave robbing? It's presumably not the

9:38

medical professionals themselves. No. And this is a

9:40

really interesting, and it comes up in the case of

9:43

Birkenhaer, which we'll discuss in more detail, but it

9:45

comes up in this, what is the relationship

9:47

between those people who are probably working class,

9:50

poor, who are being used

9:52

in a way as part of this

9:55

trade in human remains that serves people

9:57

who are far more powerful, far more

9:59

rich. far more affluent than they

10:01

are. But those are the people

10:03

who are getting punished. It's those grave robbers that

10:06

are being, you know, they're the ones

10:08

that are receiving the fines, they're the ones that

10:10

are being imprisoned if and when they're caught, they're

10:12

not very often caught actually. It's something they do

10:14

get away with, but there is certainly a class

10:16

distinction between the anatomists are not going to the

10:18

graveyard themselves. So it is a risky

10:20

business for the people who are doing the body snatching. So what

10:23

is the incentive to do it? Why are they going

10:25

to a graveyard taking bodies away with them? This will

10:27

come as no surprise money. So they could earn up

10:29

to £7, £8 depending if it was a particularly fresh

10:31

body. And

10:39

this is in the beginning of the 19th

10:42

century. So the 1810s, 1820s, how much money is that? So

10:46

you're talking about it's roughly equivalent to

10:48

50 days of skilled

10:50

labourers wage. So that's for

10:52

one night's work. So you go out, you

10:54

do this thing, it's partially unpleasant,

10:57

but you can get 50 days

11:00

worth of a wage in

11:02

that one night, two, three hours. If

11:05

you're skilled at what you're doing, it's almost

11:07

a no-brainer. It's absolutely worth it. If you

11:09

have a stomach for it, it's a great

11:11

advantage. Yeah. If you can put that kind

11:13

of moral late George and

11:15

then early Victorian moral attitude towards death aside,

11:18

if you can do that because it financially is

11:20

going to be beneficial, it's a lot of money.

11:23

It's interesting. So what you're saying here is

11:25

that the people who are doing the grave

11:27

robbing, in some ways they

11:29

are part of the lower classes and they

11:31

are serving a higher class, the medical professionals.

11:34

But I suppose they're also kind of violating

11:37

those hierarchies that govern the city. They are

11:39

going to a graveyard and presumably taking people

11:41

of any class out of a grave

11:44

and selling them on. You know, once you're a

11:46

cadaver, we're all the same. So

11:48

what are people doing to stop that? And

11:51

is there a kind of anxiety around the

11:54

way that people are violating not just graves, but

11:56

the kind of the strictures, I suppose, that

11:59

govern 19th century? It's interesting,

12:01

right? Because there is this thing where we say,

12:03

well, it starts with the grave robbers and it

12:05

goes then to the anatomists, but we need to

12:07

go back one step further because it actually starts

12:09

with the sextans or it starts with even some

12:11

of the clergy. It starts with... So people are

12:13

in on this? Oh yeah. No, there's a chain.

12:15

That's kind of what I mean about this business.

12:17

This is an industry. Exactly that. There is a

12:19

chain of commerce that's going on here. And we'd

12:21

be foolish to think that the sextans and the

12:23

clergy weren't taking some of that seven pounds because

12:25

that's how they get access. Okay. I don't know.

12:27

There will be some kind of more, not

12:30

anatomists, but more kind of lonelier kind

12:32

of quack doctors and stuff that we'll know about,

12:34

oh, Mary's about to croak with there. Keep an

12:36

eye on her. She'll... There'll be a few in

12:38

a few days. Okay. So sometimes it's

12:40

even before people have died that maybe writing

12:42

it on a list. The corpse has to

12:44

be as fresh as possible. So they will

12:46

be watching for people to die in order

12:48

for this to happen. So because

12:51

there is this chain of information and

12:53

this chain of kind of corpse

12:55

commerce, I don't know. But because there

12:57

is this chain happening... Great band name.

12:59

Yeah. Yeah. You can take that one

13:02

for free. But they, as

13:04

you asked, people are coming up with

13:06

these things to stop the intrusion of

13:08

people into their loved ones' graves. So

13:10

some of the examples, one of the

13:12

earliest examples is something kind of rudimentary,

13:14

which is layering on the grave.

13:16

So they would put soil on first, which

13:19

is normal. That would happen. Then they put

13:21

like a collection of branches on top of

13:23

that. So they would just make it more

13:25

difficult to dig through. Okay. Okay. Then they

13:27

put soil again and then another collection of

13:29

branches and then cover it off with soil.

13:31

But presumably for the people who are willing

13:33

and excited to earn seven pounds digging this

13:35

grave, that's not going to save poor old

13:37

Granny in the earth, is it? No. No.

13:39

Well, actually, Granny probably might have been that

13:41

valuable to them. They're looking at dad

13:44

who fell down the steps after having a couple

13:46

of drinks. One of them. Okay. So not only

13:48

a fresher corpse, but potentially younger, healthier. They want

13:50

a variety, but the younger corpses will get you

13:53

more money. Yeah. Okay. But in terms of kind

13:55

of counteracting some of that layering, so they didn't,

13:57

you could easily go, right, well, look, they'll just

13:59

dig through it, it's fine, it takes a little

14:01

bit of time, but they don't have time. So

14:03

what they do instead is they find the head

14:05

of the grave, they go a few centimetres beyond

14:07

that again, and they start digging down from there,

14:10

and then they go into the grave from the

14:12

top. So they pull them out by the head

14:14

and drag them up so they'll have a hook and they'll pull them up

14:16

that way. So it's quite technical. Oh

14:18

yeah, but it's like it feeds into

14:20

that kind of industry that you're talking

14:22

about where there's a problem, will we

14:24

solve it? It's ingenuity. Yeah.

14:28

The demand is creating new

14:30

skills being, I don't know, developed.

14:32

Yeah, yeah. And it's almost like

14:35

legitimising it in the way that they can

14:37

come around these things. So that doesn't work

14:39

particularly well. Then they move on to coffin

14:42

collars. So I was quite

14:44

gruesome in a way, your loved one

14:46

dies, and they say, we need her to stay

14:48

in this coffin because we've paid some money for

14:50

it, so she's got to stay in the ground.

14:54

So they affix a colour around the

14:56

person's neck who has passed away, and

14:58

then they affix that colour to

15:00

the bottom of the coffin. But again,

15:02

people work around that really quickly. I'm going to

15:04

suggest people will take the rest of the body,

15:06

maybe, without the head? No, they take the head

15:08

too. They just take off the screws. They just

15:10

take everything. So you're bringing a toolkit with you

15:12

to the graveyard? Yeah, because actually without the head,

15:14

it's going to be worth less money to them.

15:17

So they need... Basically, in

15:19

an ideal world, what they would have is

15:21

somebody dies and hands over a body there

15:23

and then, and you have the freshest corpse

15:25

that you could possibly have. But

15:28

they find ways around the colour too, just

15:30

by loosening the coffin collar and then just

15:32

taking the body out in the same way.

15:34

So this is all very technical and presumably

15:36

involves some level of skill or at

15:39

least ingenuity and inventiveness. People

15:41

aren't doing this in the middle of the day though,

15:44

are they? They're not doing it in broad daylight for

15:46

everyone to see. No, this is all conducted after dark,

15:48

which is why we're featuring it on this podcast. But

15:51

excellent bit of branding. Thanks very

15:53

much. It is done under the

15:55

cover of night. It has to be because, well, first

15:57

of all, usually around cemeteries, you're going to have

15:59

high walls. that are going to lock you in. But people

16:01

come and go through cemeteries all the time.

16:04

But at night, obviously, there's a little

16:06

bit more leeway where you will have

16:08

a period of time, particularly in graveyards

16:11

that are in the middle of cities like

16:13

Greyfriars is in Edinburgh. So you're

16:15

going to have a little bit more time under the cover of darkness. You

16:18

had to be swift, though. That was one of the

16:20

things. They're not in there all night. They're in there

16:23

for an hour, if they can be. They're in there

16:25

as quickly as they can. But the earth is fresh.

16:27

It's not going to take them that long to dig

16:29

up that earth because it's just been placed in

16:31

there. So they'll get in. They'll get out very quickly.

16:33

They had, as I said, with the hook, get that

16:35

body out really quickly and get on your way. They

16:38

would then put the body into a sack, carry it

16:40

over their shoulder as if it was any other piece

16:42

of meat. It could have been a pig that they

16:44

were carrying through town. So they would go through town

16:46

with these sacks on their backs sometimes. So you would

16:49

often – now, I will say often there were roots

16:51

that they could take that was a little bit more

16:53

conspicuous, that they could have been a little bit more

16:55

hidden. But people saw them. They wouldn't have

16:57

known what was in the bags, but people definitely saw them. So

16:59

it's a covert operation. It's covert operation, and it's

17:02

happening at night. And as a

17:04

result, when people's

17:06

loved ones died, for

17:08

a while they were putting people

17:11

in the graveyards to watch over the bodies

17:13

overnight or watch over the graves more accurately

17:15

overnight. And that's where you get these kind

17:17

of watch houses in graveyards

17:19

at this time coming around, where there's somewhere for

17:21

them to sit safely that was lit inside. And

17:23

if people were coming and going through the graveyard,

17:25

they would see that type of thing. So these

17:27

are guards guarding the deck? Yeah, and they're often relatives

17:30

of the family as well. Okay. And are they armed?

17:32

But there are some more formal quantities. They can be

17:34

armed, yeah. Yeah, they can be armed. Okay,

17:36

so this is a dangerous business to get into then. If

17:38

you can pull it off, the rewards are substantial,

17:41

but there are risks. As an escalation then from

17:43

the coffin collar, what happened was people would stop

17:45

you trying to even get into the grave. That

17:47

was thought to be the most foolproof way of

17:49

keeping the corpse safe in the ground. So you'd

17:51

see these mort safes that go up around graves.

17:53

So I don't know if you've been to as

17:55

many graveyards as I have at this point. And

17:58

I know you actually have. Who

18:00

are you talking to here? There

18:02

is those metal railings kind of around the

18:04

graves, and that was supposed to. I mean,

18:07

that to me always felt a little bit.

18:09

Some of them have open tops. And I

18:11

always think to myself, well, you've just wasted

18:14

your time there. But actually, it did. It

18:16

was relatively effective. Others you will see are

18:18

far more heavy duty. But we're only seeing

18:20

a certain aspect of that above the ground.

18:23

That goes down over the coffin as well

18:25

in most cases. Interesting. So they're really encasing

18:27

this. You'd nearly need to go under. I

18:31

mean, that's really substantial. I have seen

18:33

a morte safe recently, actually, in just

18:35

a little graveyard of a church that's deconsecrated.

18:38

I think it's part of the church's conservation

18:40

trust now. And it was the

18:42

only grave in the graveyard to have that.

18:44

And so my next question is about who

18:47

had the morte safes and who didn't. Is this

18:49

a class issue? I mean, do you get more

18:51

elaborate morte safes, the richer you get? What's going

18:53

on? Yeah, it is a class issue, as

18:55

everything, particularly at this time, becomes

18:58

about class, ultimately. And

19:00

I mean, if you are buying a

19:02

morte safe to go down into the ground, it's quite

19:04

a big piece of kit. That's going to cost you

19:06

money. So working classes are probably not

19:09

affording that. Well, they're not. They're simply not affording

19:11

that. The poorest of the poor are being buried

19:13

in mass graves sometimes. So they're sharing their graves.

19:15

And that was often a way for grave robbers

19:17

to go in and take bodies from there because

19:20

they wouldn't even be missed sometimes. But

19:22

the really wealthy

19:24

people are building, I guess, mausoleum-type

19:26

morte safes, where it's this big

19:28

stone structure elaborately decorated with gates

19:30

on the front. I'm sure you've

19:32

seen them if you've been to

19:34

some of those bigger graveyards. Again,

19:36

graffrires is a great example. And

19:40

they memorialize the dead. They show

19:42

their wealth, but they also keep their bodies safe. So

19:44

they're filling so many functions at one time. It's

19:46

so interesting. We think of death as being

19:48

this kind of leveler, that everyone is the

19:50

same. When they die, we're all going to

19:52

the same place, potentially. Actually, in

19:54

this period, social class and economic wealth

19:57

are following you into the grave and

19:59

then out again. you know, that how

20:01

you live when you are alive really is

20:03

going to affect how your body is treated

20:05

after you die. Now there's

20:07

an obvious solution to

20:10

the question of the freshness of the

20:12

corpse. So we're talking

20:14

about Birkenhaer, are they are

20:16

they grave robbers? No,

20:20

is the easiest answer. And there are

20:22

plenty of people, it's funny, there are

20:24

plenty of people who become notorious

20:26

in the 19th century for being

20:29

grave robbers. We have people

20:32

like Patrick Murphy and

20:34

Berne Kraut. These

20:37

people are usually London based actually.

20:39

But I think if

20:41

you were to ask, you know, people don't know those

20:43

names. But if you ask somebody who are the most

20:45

famous grave robbers that you can think of, they

20:48

will say Birkenhaer. But Birkenhaer

20:51

are not grave robbers. So let me tell you a little bit more

20:53

about that. How

20:57

do you live in the 19th century? William

21:00

Burke and William Hare were both Irishmen who had

21:02

come to Scotland in the 1820s. They

21:06

both lived on Tanner's close where Hare ran

21:08

a boarding house with his partner, Margaret Laird.

21:12

When Hare's elderly tenant, Old Donald,

21:14

died of natural causes in December

21:16

1727, he

21:18

owed Hare four pounds in rent. So

21:21

Hare decided to recoup his loss

21:23

by selling Donald's body to Professor

21:25

Robert Knox, the anatomist. He

21:28

enlisted Burke to help transport the body. Knox

21:31

paid a pair seven pounds, 10 shillings

21:33

for the remains of Old Donald. Fresh

21:35

corpses might be bought at a premium price.

21:38

Burke and Hare smelled opportunity. And in early

21:40

1828, when another of Hare's tenants named

21:44

Joseph seemed not too long for

21:46

this world, the duo helped the

21:48

poor suffering creature on his way.

21:52

They loaded Joseph with whisky. They

21:54

carefully suffocated the man together, making

21:56

sure to leave no marks or

21:58

evidence of trauma. to the body,

22:00

which would impact their profits. Then

22:03

they transported the departed once more to

22:05

Knox. Having perfected

22:07

their method of killing, which was later known

22:09

as Birking, a frenzied spree

22:11

of murder ensued. Birking Hare

22:13

widened their victim profile and targeted

22:15

the local poor, who they might

22:17

entice to Hare's lodging house where

22:20

they were killed. Further

22:22

victims included sex workers, the elderly

22:24

and a young blind boy who

22:26

Hare brutally murdered by breaking the

22:28

boy's back across his knee. In

22:31

total, it's thought that the pair killed at least

22:33

16 people in this way,

22:36

though some estimates suggest this could be

22:38

much, much higher. I'm

23:10

Matt Lewis, host of the

23:12

Echoes of History podcast, where

23:14

every week we'll be delving

23:16

into the real life history

23:18

that inspires the locations, characters

23:20

and storylines of the legendary

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us as we explore the narrow

23:27

streets of Medici Ruled Florence, cross

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sand dunes in the shadow of

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ancient pyramids, climb the

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rigging of 18th century brigs sailing

23:36

across the Caribbean and come

23:38

face to face with some of history's most

23:40

significant individuals. Whether you're a history

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whatever you run, even orcas.

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monday.com to dive deeper. It's

26:14

quite an industry that they set

26:16

up really. They go very quickly

26:18

from taking an opportunity that

26:20

presents itself to quite

26:22

routinely and effectively, efficiently getting

26:25

these bodies to Professor Knox.

26:27

So how do they get caught in

26:29

the end? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of,

26:31

gosh, if it wasn't so grim, it would

26:33

be ingenious. You know that, I mean, in

26:35

terms of the ways in which people devise

26:37

for themselves to survive, they definitely

26:40

were doing that. Unfortunately, it was

26:42

kind of a really dastardly way

26:44

to go about things. One

26:47

of the reasons why suspicion starts

26:49

to get pointed in their direction

26:51

is because, and this is kind of a

26:53

bit grim as well, people start

26:55

to recognize some of the victims. Remember,

26:58

Edinburgh is a relatively small city

27:00

at this time. I mean, it's the biggest city in

27:02

Scotland, but it's not London. It

27:05

doesn't sprawl as far as London. So if

27:07

you're in and around the center of Edinburgh

27:09

and you're going between coffee houses and you're

27:11

going to anatomy lessons and you're a medical

27:13

student or whatever it might be, you're probably

27:15

seeing some of the same faces day after

27:17

day. Some of those may be people who

27:19

are begging on the streets, some of those

27:22

may be sex workers that you're familiar with.

27:24

One of the victims that

27:26

definitely raised a few eyebrows

27:28

to begin with was Mary

27:30

Patterson, who was a sex worker

27:32

and some of the medical

27:34

students, for whatever reason, known to

27:36

themselves, started to recognize Mary when

27:39

she appeared on the slab. I

27:41

mean, that's so tragic

27:44

that her body ends up unconcentingly

27:49

in their control for them to

27:52

experiment on it. It's

27:55

so grim. It's just so grim. I mean, it's,

27:58

in some ways, you say it's, you know, it's It's

28:00

part of the reason why Burke and Hare are caught

28:02

in the end, but it's

28:04

such a grim route to get there. One of

28:06

the saddest ones for me is the

28:08

person who's referred to in the newspaper

28:10

articles at the time as Daft Jamie.

28:14

And Jamie was known around Edinburgh

28:16

as this really kind of lovable,

28:18

friendly giant and somebody

28:21

who everyone was fond of, but

28:23

had some vagrancy issues. But

28:25

as a result was really well known. So

28:29

when Burke and Hare decided to pick off

28:31

Jamie, that was a real problem for them

28:33

because he was loved and he was recognizable.

28:36

So as soon as he becomes one of the

28:38

cadavers, that's really causing problems for

28:40

them. So there's a few where towards the

28:42

end, it feels like they're starting to get

28:44

a little bit messy and they're not thinking

28:46

about the consequences of who they're putting

28:49

on Knox's table. It's

28:51

so interesting that that kind of, it's just

28:53

this story gives us so

28:56

much information about life at street level in

28:58

Edinburgh in the early 19th century that we

29:00

can reconstruct some of these lives that

29:02

are tragically lost. They are victims of Burke and

29:04

Hare, but we can kind of step back a

29:06

little bit and see what they were doing in

29:09

the days, weeks leading to that moment when

29:12

their lives are taken and to kind of

29:15

people, individuals who may

29:17

otherwise have disappeared from

29:19

the historical record or never have been there

29:22

to begin with. It also says something

29:24

about the, again, we'll come back to class, but it

29:26

says something about the kind of mixing of class in

29:29

Edinburgh. And I think Edinburgh is unique in this way.

29:31

Obviously, if you've been to Edinburgh, you might be

29:34

aware of the tenement style building that most

29:36

people lived in. And that was an elite

29:38

form of, that was an elite home

29:40

as well as a home for some of the poorer people.

29:43

The way it would work is the poorer people

29:45

lived at the bottom, the richer people lived at

29:47

the top. So when they're throwing their waste out

29:50

the windows at the top and shouting, Gardaloo,

29:53

as it falls down, the poorer people are getting

29:55

the waste on them outside their doors, down by

29:57

their windows, the richer people are not. also

30:00

says something about kind of coexisting in a way that

30:02

probably isn't happening in London to the same extent where

30:05

actually, obviously poverty is very rife in London,

30:07

but they're not living cheek by jowl in

30:09

the same way as they are in Edinburgh.

30:11

Not necessarily in the same building, at least.

30:13

Yeah. And the very poorest are

30:15

not living in those tenement buildings, but certainly there is

30:17

a big disparity between who's living at the top of

30:19

that building and who's living at the bottom. So

30:22

the fact that these people can become known says something

30:24

about that community in Edinburgh and

30:27

the way working class people on the streets

30:29

of Edinburgh have formed this kind

30:31

of safety net in a way

30:33

for themselves. I mean, it doesn't stack up, but they're able

30:35

to help with identification. They know what people's movements have been.

30:38

But the person that really catches them out

30:40

in the end was their final victim and

30:42

she was called Marjorie Campbell-Dockerty. What do we

30:45

know about her? So because, as I

30:47

said before, Hare had this lodging house. Burke

30:50

kind of felt that he was missing

30:52

out a little bit and he was like, you know what

30:54

I need? I also need a

30:56

lodging house because he didn't trust, probably rightly,

30:58

he didn't trust that he was seeing the

31:00

full extent of the profits from Hare. So

31:03

Hare was obviously masterminding most of what was

31:05

going on here and giving Burke

31:07

his dividends and he's not comfortable.

31:10

So the cracks between the pair are

31:12

starting to show their attentions, this mistrust,

31:14

right? I mean, what's that saying? No

31:16

trust amongst thieves or something like that? No honour

31:19

amongst thieves. That's the one, yeah. No honour

31:21

amongst murdering potty snatches. Body snatching, not thieves.

31:23

Who'd have thought it? I

31:26

know. So this kind of

31:28

suspicion is causing a little bit of

31:30

anxiety between Burke and Hare. And

31:32

so Burke has set up his own lodging

31:35

house, which is overseen by himself and his partner,

31:37

Helen. He has two

31:39

other lodgers called James and Anne Grey,

31:42

but this doesn't really make sense. Burke

31:44

said to them, here, would you mind clearing out there?

31:47

Do you know my friend Hare? Just go down to

31:49

his lodging house there just for a while. There's somebody

31:51

I'd like to have over and, you know, it's fine.

31:53

Hare is a friend of ours and she's just visiting

31:55

and I need just to have a bit of time

31:57

with her. So off you go there now and have a lovely time.

32:00

down at Hairs. And the two go, they're

32:02

just like, okay, I've seen a bit. Well,

32:04

I mean, that says so much about itinerant living, if

32:07

the lower classes were right, and this kind of movement around

32:09

that you couldn't expect to be in the same place for

32:11

very long. And so they do accept that quite

32:14

readily. But they do come back. And

32:16

the next day when they come back, they're like, right,

32:18

we had a lovely time there at Hairs. Now, can

32:21

we go into a room?

32:23

And by the way, where's that woman? Where's

32:25

Marjorie that you

32:27

had come visit? And Burke

32:29

and Helen are just like, oh, no, no, we

32:32

don't like her anymore. She was flirting with Burke.

32:34

And so we kicked her out. What a hussy.

32:36

She should never be allowed into any of these

32:38

places. It was such a shame. And they're like,

32:40

all right, that's an interesting story, but

32:42

I'm not getting involved in your family drama. Let me

32:44

go back into my room, please. And they're like, just

32:48

maybe hold on and don't go into your

32:50

room for a second. And they're like, ah, nobody

32:52

let us into the room. I can see

32:54

where this is going. Yeah. And so then

32:56

whatever the comings and goings, basically, they

32:58

do get into the room

33:00

once, I think Burke and Helen take a bit of

33:02

a sidestep somewhere, but they know something's up, basically, because

33:05

they have belongings in that room. So even if they

33:07

were a case of going, something's up here, I don't

33:09

want to stay, they need to get their belongings because,

33:11

you know, the valuables are particularly valuable to the working

33:13

poor. They go in

33:15

and they discover Marjorie's

33:18

dead body under the bed in what

33:20

was their room. So they haven't made

33:22

that much effort to hide what they've done.

33:24

I mean, is she under floorboards? No,

33:27

she's just shoved under the bed. No, yeah, she's just

33:29

shoved under the bed, probably with their belongings, because likely

33:31

as they put some of their belongings under the bed.

33:33

And is she there because they're waiting to

33:36

sell her body? So they'll be waiting for, if you

33:38

were to put two and two together, you would imagine

33:40

she was killed very late, the

33:42

previous, or rather very early that

33:45

morning, because they didn't take them to not. So they're

33:47

waiting for the sun to go down? Yeah, exactly. So,

33:49

but it just also goes to show a little bit

33:51

of a lack of intelligence with

33:54

Burke, because the timing's

33:56

all off. That body is not as fresh as it

33:58

could be now. it's

34:00

not as valuable as it could have been. So there's a

34:02

few things happening here, not to mention, of course, the fact

34:04

that he killed this poor woman. You know, there is also

34:07

that, of course. It's also interesting to

34:09

think about how the women are coming in

34:11

here. So Hare's partner and Burke's

34:13

partner. These women are definitely in

34:15

the know about what's going on

34:18

at these houses. Yeah.

34:20

And there's this kind of really

34:22

fascinating intersection between the domestic space and

34:24

the street that they're kind of drawing

34:26

people in to kill them now. You

34:28

know, I kind of picked them hiding

34:31

down a dark alley ready to bludgeon

34:33

you on the head, but actually they

34:35

are putting on quite a

34:37

respectable show. There's a performance, right? Yeah.

34:40

And they're welcoming people into their home

34:43

where they're renting rooms and

34:45

then killing them there. And actually, it's not

34:47

quite as kind of gothic and violent as

34:49

you might expect. And it's more insidious. More

34:51

insidious. That's exactly the word that I was

34:53

thinking of as you were describing that. I

34:55

was like, yeah, there's something a lot more

34:58

kind of unsettling about the ways

35:00

in which they are doing it and the kind

35:02

of spaces of home and what happens in home

35:05

and what happens when you invite somebody into your

35:07

home, the power that you potentially have over them,

35:09

even if it's this kind of shared lodging house. It

35:12

also says the fact that they're able to run these

35:14

lodging houses means that there is a little bit of

35:16

money traveling between Burke and Hare because there are some

35:18

set of costs. There are some rents that they're going

35:20

to have to pay or at least that they're going

35:23

to have to pay. So there's a little bit of

35:25

money traveling between them, even if they are from poor

35:27

backgrounds, but they're becoming a little bit more affluent in

35:29

some ways. So they offer the

35:31

grays a bribe. Basically, once Marvry's body has

35:34

been discovered, they offer the grays a bribe.

35:36

I mean, that's quite a bold move. Why

35:38

don't they kill the grays? Maddie.

35:41

They're not thinking clearly. They've killed enough people.

35:43

16 people. I don't necessarily want to add

35:46

to the list. I just think in

35:48

their line of work, is that not an opportunity

35:50

that also solves the problem in front of them?

35:53

Here's the thing, right? So say that's the opportunity,

35:55

but it never happened that there was two

35:57

together before. Okay. So they

35:59

usually isolate. and usually usually isolate vulnerable people. It's

36:01

too much of a risk. It's too much. One

36:04

could run and then they're in trouble. Well, they're

36:06

in trouble anyway. Somebody has a moral compass in

36:08

this story. The Grey's refuse the bribe and they

36:10

go to the police. And as

36:12

a result, Helen and Burke

36:14

and Margaret and Hare, they're all arrested and

36:16

they start finger pointing at each other. OK,

36:18

so we have Burke and Hare and they've

36:21

set up this business model

36:23

together where they are

36:25

killing people. They're selling the bodies to

36:27

the professor at the anatomy school. They've

36:30

been caught out. They've done one death too

36:32

many. They're going to be

36:34

arrested. What's going to happen to them now? Sorry,

36:37

this is just a total tangent. But can you

36:39

imagine them going on Dragon's Den trying to sell

36:41

that business model? Who would buy

36:43

in on this? Was it just going, right,

36:45

we're here today and we've got this crook

36:47

in one hand. And what we

36:50

would like to do is take up bodies

36:52

from the ground just to sell them to

36:54

doctors and then be like, hmm, interesting, interesting.

36:56

I've seen this business model before and they're

36:58

just like, I know, but not like this.

37:01

We're actually killing them. So they managed to

37:03

convince these people. Anyway, yeah, the next bit

37:05

of the story kind of unravels and lets

37:07

us know what the kind of formal consequences

37:10

were. OK. So having

37:15

been arrested, the details of Burke

37:17

and Hare's gruesome activities quickly unraveled.

37:20

The police attempted to gather evidence

37:22

of their crimes. But eventually, the

37:24

Lord Advocate, Sir William Ray, determined

37:26

to secure a conviction, and offered

37:28

Hare immunity if he testified against

37:30

Burke. Hare took

37:32

the offer. On

37:37

the 24th of December, 1828, the trial began. And

37:41

by Christmas Day, Burke had been

37:43

found guilty of the murders of

37:45

Marjorie Docherty, Mary Patterson, and James

37:47

Wilson. He was sentenced to

37:49

death. His

37:52

execution was scheduled for the 28th of January,

37:54

1829. And on

37:57

that day, a crowd of over 25,000. people

38:00

gathered at the lawn market to see the

38:02

serial killer's swing. His

38:06

body, perhaps fittingly, was donated to the

38:08

study of anatomy. The medical

38:11

students, we know now, took macabre

38:13

mementos from his dissected body, including

38:15

patches of his skin, which were

38:17

used to cover various types of

38:19

objects, including books and card holders.

38:22

Burke's skeletal remains are displayed at Surgeon's

38:24

Hall Museum in Edinburgh to this day.

38:27

Alongside his remains, you can also see his

38:30

death mask and a moulding of hair's face

38:32

taken while he was in prison. So

39:06

I have a lot of questions. Burke

39:08

is only found guilty of three murders. Yeah,

39:10

they kind of go with what they have, because

39:13

there will be no need to do anything else. I

39:16

mean, they are not so concerned with

39:19

victim status at this point. It's more

39:21

about conviction. And they

39:23

would rather get a conviction of somebody, and in

39:25

this case only one of them, than have nothing

39:27

at all, where some of the other evidence might

39:30

be too sketchy. I mean, bear in mind now,

39:32

those bodies are dissected. Nobody

39:34

seems to have seen anything prior to that, or else they would

39:36

have reported it. The only

39:38

real evidence that we have against other people

39:40

for other murders is that Burke and Hare

39:42

are pointing fingers at one another now. So

39:46

it's Hare's word against Burke, is

39:48

that the thing? Yes. So why does

39:50

he get that offer? Why is he

39:53

seen as the weak link between them? I

39:55

think the opposite, you know. The opposite, okay. I think

39:57

Hare is seen as the one who... The

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talk, text, and data for just $25 a month for

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the rest of your life? I don't know.

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Until your ultimate demise. What

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if we just say forever? Okay. $25

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experience slower speeds. Customers will pay $25

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50:00

plan. You've heard of Charlie Chaplin,

50:02

right? Well, Charlie

50:04

Chaplin was my grandfather, and there was

50:06

a time when he was the biggest

50:08

star in all the world. But

50:11

something happened. Not just to him,

50:14

but to hundreds of artists in Hollywood. They

50:16

were forced to leave. Forced

50:19

out. All episodes

50:21

of Hollywood Exiles from the BBC World

50:23

Service and CBC are available now.

50:26

Search for Hollywood Exiles wherever you get

50:28

your Go to gobhi.org to learn more.