Part 29

We have already alluded to the murder of an idiot. His name was James Wilson; but he was more commonly known by the appellation of "Daft Jamie." The circumstances attending his assassination were even, if possible, more revolting than those of the women Campbell or Paterson. The appearance of this creature showed at once the imbecility of his mind, and was such that he was universally regarded with a feeling of tenderness and sympathy. He was quite harmless and kind-hearted; and was on this account generally liked, and well treated; and there were certain houses where he was admitted as a familiar guest, and kindly entertained. It is probable that he had been for some time watched by this gang of murderers, and marked out as one that might be easily taken off without exciting suspicion. Accident unfortunately threw him in their way. He was met by Burke at nine o'clock one morning, in the beginning of October 1828, wandering about in his usual manner in the Grass-market. He instantly accosted him in his fawning manner, and inquired of him whether he was in search of any one; he told him he was seeking his mother, to whom, as he was a creature of kindly dispositions, he was warmly attached. The wretch at once saw that he now had him within his grasp, and instantly commenced his schemes for drawing him away to some convenient place where he might be murdered. He contrived to persuade him that he knew where his mother had gone, and would take him to the place; and by coaxing and flattery he at length decoyed him into Hare's house. Here those monsters of iniquity, exulting over their deluded victim, began to pretend the greatest affection for him, and having procured liquor, they pressed it upon him. He at first decidedly refused, but they so far wrought upon his good nature by their assumed kindness, that they induced him to join them in their cups, and they plied him so effectually, that he was soon overpowered, and lying down on the floor, fell asleep. Burke, who was anxiously watching his opportunity, then said to Hare, "Shall I do it now?" to which Hare replied, "He is too strong for you yet; you had better let him alone for a while." Both the ruffians seem to have been afraid of the physical strength which they knew the poor creature possessed, and of the use he would make of it, if prematurely roused. Burke accordingly waited a little, but impatient at the delay, and anxious to accomplish his object, he suddenly threw himself upon Jamie, and attempted to strangle him. Oppressed as he was with the influence of liquor, he was roused at once by this assault to a full sense of his danger; and, by a dreadful effort, he threw off Burke, and sprung to his feet, when the mortal struggle began. Jamie fought with all the fury of despair, and would have been an overmatch for either one of the ruffian assailants. Burke had actually the worst of the struggle, and was about to be overpowered, when he called out furiously to Hare to assist him. Hare rushing forward, turned the balance of the unequal conflict by tripping up Jamie's heels, and afterwards dragging him along the floor, with Burke lying above him. In the course of this contest, the unhappy object of this dreadful violence contrived to lay hold of Burke with his teeth, and to inflict on him a wound which occasioned a cancer, that would in all probability have shortened his days, even if he had escaped the vengeance of the law. None were present at this murder, which was completed before mid-day, except the two ruffians themselves; but the body was recognised in the dissecting-room by one of the students.

We have stated that the confessions of Hare were fully corroborated by the statements made by Burke subsequent to his conviction. The following conversation, which took place between him and one of the officers of the jail, sufficiently indicate the state of his mind at this time, and the respective degrees of guilt attributable to him and to Hare:--

Before a question was put to him concerning the crimes he had been engaged in, he was solemnly reminded of the duty incumbent upon him, situated as he was, to banish from his mind every feeling of animosity towards Hare, on account of the evidence which the latter gave at the trial; he was told, that, as a dying man, covered with guilt, and without hope, except in the infinite mercy of Almighty God, he, who stood so much in need of forgiveness, must prepare himself to seek it by forgiving from his heart all who had done him wrong; and he was most emphatically adjured to speak the truth, and nothing but the truth, without any attempt either to palliate his own iniquities, or to implicate Hare more deeply than the facts warranted. Thus admonished, and thus warned, he answered the several interrogatories in the terms below stated; declaring at the same time, upon the word of a dying man, that everything he should say would be true, and that he would in no respect exaggerate or extenuate anything, either from a desire to inculpate Hare, or to spare any one else.

After some conversation of a religious nature--in the course of which he stated, that while in Ireland his mind was under the influence of religious impressions, and that he was accustomed to read his Catechism and his Prayer-book, and to attend to his duties--he was asked, "How comes it, then, that you, who, by your own account, were once under the influence of religious impressions, ever formed the idea of such dreadful atrocities, of such cold-blooded, systematic murders, as you admit you have been engaged in--how came such a conception to enter your mind?" To this Burke replied, that he did not exactly know; but that, becoming addicted to drink, living in open adultery, and associating continually with the most abandoned characters, he gradually became hardened and desperate, gave up attending Chapel or any place of religious worship, shunned the face of a priest, and being constantly familiar with every species of wickedness, he at length grew indifferent as to what he did, and was ready to commit any crime.

He was then asked how long he had been engaged in this murderous traffic? To which he answered, "From Christmas 1827, till the murder of the woman Campbell, in October last." "How many persons have you murdered, or been concerned in murdering, during that time? Were they thirty in all?"--"Not so many; not so many; I assure you," "How many?" He answered the question; but the answer was, for a reason perfectly satisfactory, reserved.

"Had you any accomplices?"--"None but Hare. We always took care, when we were going to commit murder, that no one else should be present--that no one could swear he saw the deed done. The women might suspect what we were about, but we always put them out of the way when we were going to do it. They never saw us commit any of the murders. One of the murders was done in Broggan's house, while he was out; but before he returned, the thing was finished, and the body put into a box. Broggan evidently suspected something, for he appeared much agitated, and entreated us 'to take away that box,' which we accordingly did; but he was not in any way concerned in it."

"You have already told me that you were engaged in these atrocities from Christmas 1827 till the end of October 1828: were you associated with Hare during all that time?"--"Yes: we began with selling to Dr. ---- the body of a woman who had died a natural death in Hare's house. We got 10_l._ for it. After this we began the murders, and all the rest of the bodies we sold to him were murdered."

"In what place were these murders generally committed?"--"They were mostly committed in Hare's house, which was very convenient for the purpose, as it consisted of a room and a kitchen; Daft Jamie was murdered there; the story told of this murder is incorrect. Hare began the struggle with him, and they fell and rolled together on the floor; then I went to Hare's assistance, and we at length finished him, though with much difficulty. I committed one murder in the country by myself; it was in last harvest; all the rest were done in conjunction with Hare."

"By what means were these fearful atrocities perpetrated?"--"By suffocation. We made the persons drunk, and then suffocated them by holding the nostrils and mouth, and getting on the body; sometimes I held the mouth and nose, while Hare knelt upon the body; and sometimes Hare held the mouth and nose, while I placed myself upon the body. Hare has perjured himself by what he said at the trial about the murder of Campbell; he did not sit by while I did it, as he says; he was on the body assisting me with all his might, while I held the nostrils and mouth with one hand, and choked her under the throat with the other; we sometimes used a pillow, but did not in this case."

"Now, Burke, answer me this question: were you tutored or instructed, or did you receive hints from any one, as to the mode of committing murder?"--"No, except from Hare. We often spoke about it, and we agreed that suffocation was the best way. Hare said so, and I agreed with him. We generally did it by suffocation."

"Did you receive any encouragement to commit or persevere in committing these atrocities?"--"Yes; we were frequently told by Paterson that he would take as many bodies as we could get for him. When we got one, he always told us to get more. There was commonly another person with him of the name of Falconer. They generally pressed us to get more bodies."

"To whom were the bodies so murdered sold?"--"To Dr. ----. We took the bodies to his rooms in ----, and then went to his house to receive the money for them. Sometimes he paid us himself; sometimes we were paid by his assistants. No questions were ever asked as to the mode in which we had come by the bodies. We had nothing to do but to leave a body at the rooms, and to go and get the money."

"Did you ever, upon any occasion, sell a body or bodies to any other lecturer in this place?" "Never. We knew no other."

"You have been a resurrectionist (as it is called), I understand?" "No, neither Hare nor myself ever got a body from a churchyard. All we sold were murdered, save the first one, which was that of the woman who died a natural death in Hare's house. We began with that: our crimes then commenced. The victims we selected were generally elderly persons. They could be more easily disposed of than persons in the vigour of youth."

Such were the horrible disclosures made by this man--disclosures of the truth of which there cannot be the smallest doubt. The general impression raised by Burke's declaration was, that he had been originally the dupe of Hare, and that the latter having been before engaged in a similar traffic had driven him on, after having once enlisted him in the service, to commit atrocities of which he would not otherwise have been guilty.

With such a belief almost universally pervading society, it may well be imagined that a notification which was given that no prosecution would take place against Hare was received with no small degree of surprise. A cry that he, like Burke, should be subjected to the punishment due to his crimes, was raised, but was met by a positive refusal on the part of the public prosecutor to permit any proceedings to be taken against him of a criminal nature. Great excitement was created by this determination being made known, but its propriety must be now, as indeed it was then upon mature consideration, admitted. No one, we believe, will deny that immense advantages would have been derived by society from the visitation of condign punishment upon every one of the wretches, male and female, who had disgraced the human form, by aiding and abetting the perpetration of these unheard of atrocities; but it was felt that care must be taken that in the anxiety which existed to visit the guilty with the reward of their criminal acts, the great landmarks of conservative law were not overthrown. Whatever the terms were upon which the evidence of Hare was obtained, it behoved the public authorities of the country to act upon them to their fullest extent; and although probably, according to the strict rule, he would have been liable to be brought to trial upon any one of those murders in which he had been engaged, except that of Mrs. Campbell, the expediency of such a proceeding may well be doubted. His arraignment for any offence, without the certainty of his conviction, might have been to place the authorities in a position, in which they would have been triumphed over by this ruffian. Who, we ask, could have been produced as a witness to fix any crime upon him? His own confession was taken for another purpose, and was a privileged communication which could not be produced in evidence against him;--that of Burke would be equally useless, for before any trial could take place, he would be a "hanged man," and his statement being _ex parte_, could not legally be laid before the jury. Mrs. M'Dougal, burning with vengeance for the loss of her paramour, would be so prejudiced as to render her testimony impossible to be believed, and Mrs. Hare could not be examined as a witness against her own husband. The other witnesses on the trial had deposed to facts and circumstances which were in themselves vague and uncertain when stripped of the admissions, positive and negative, of Hare and Burke, which alone served to flash upon them the light of truth in a horrid and appalling glare, but which, as we have already said, could not be used in any new inquiry. If a new investigation had commenced in which Hare was the person charged, the peace of the community might have been disturbed. Great excitement would undoubtedly have been created, and it was deemed impolitic for the sake of the character of the nation, when a conviction was uncertain, to expose a wretch like this prisoner to popular outrage. Edinburgh had already had her share of those commotions, in which the people had snatched victims from the protection of the law, and wanted no other sacrifice; and however all men would have rejoiced, if in due course of law the whole of this band of wretches could have been punished by the gibbet, all right-minded persons must have shrunk, even for such a purpose, from straining the law to sharp interpretations. Hare, therefore, it was felt, must be protected from the penal consequences of his crimes, and permitted to live a little longer. Such a wretch, however, could not have escaped with impunity. To a mind capable of reflection death would have been comfort, compared with such a state of existence as that to which he was doomed. With whom, now that Burke was gone, could he associate? Where could he hide his head? The brand of "murderer" was on his brow,--the finger of the Almighty was upon him, as one for whom the chance of mercy was small and uncertain.

Notwithstanding these considerations, however, frequent reports were circulated that the friends of Daft Jamie were determined to commence a prosecution against his murderer; and a petition was actually presented to the High Court of Justiciary in the name of his mother and sister, for a warrant to detain the prisoner in jail to answer the charge; but the court declined to interfere, as such a step would be unnecessary, the right of prosecution lying in the hands of the Lord Advocate, who was bound to take such steps as were proper and requisite.

In the meantime Mrs. M'Dougal having been again suffered to quit the jail, succeeded in making her escape from Edinburgh unperceived. Upon the night on which she was taken to the prison for security by the police, she affected to be sensible of her condition, but assured the officers that she was herself nearly falling a victim to the horrible system in which Burke had been engaged. She then related a plausible tale of her having overheard Burke and Hare come to a determination to murder her in case of their wanting a subject. She stated, that one night Burke and Hare were carousing in one of the apartments of Hare's human shambles on the profit, of a recent murder. In the midst of their unhallowed orgies, Hare raised his hand, and in a fit of fiendish exultation, stated that they could never want money; for when they were at a loss for a "shot"--a body for dissection--they would murder and sell, first one and then the other of their own wives. Being in the adjoining apartment, the females overheard, and were petrified by this horrible resolution, as they had every reason to believe that the monsters would certainly carry it into effect. A discussion of some length ensued, and Hare finally succeeded in persuading Burke to consent, that when the dreadful emergency did arrive, M'Dougal should be the first victim. Upon her leaving the prison she was seen to go in a direction as if she intended to quit the city of Edinburgh, and unsought, and unasked for, she was never again seen within the limits of the place which she had polluted by her presence.

On Wednesday the 28th of January, pursuant to his sentence, Burke underwent the last penalty of the law. During the latter portion of his confinement, he declared that his confession had tended materially to relieve his mind; and he professed great contrition for his crimes. On the day of his execution he was removed from the jail to the lock-up, at the Court-house, where the scaffold had been erected, under a strong escort of police. The crowd which had assembled to witness his final exit from the scene of life was tremendous; and seats commanding a view of the gallows were let at a large price. Upon his coming forth upon the platform, he was assailed by the hideous yells of public execration, with a species of ferocious exultation. The concluding moments of his existence must have caused him the most acute suffering, for, stung to madness by the horrible shrieks with which he was greeted, he appeared anxious to hurry the executioner in the performance of his duty, as if desirous to escape from that life which he had spent so ill. Very soon after eight o'clock, he was tied up to the gallows in the usual way; and he immediately gave the signal for the falling of the drop, by throwing down his handkerchief. A short, but apparently a severe struggle succeeded; and in less than two minutes he ceased to move. His body hung suspended for half an hour, when it was cut down, and placed in a shell, which had been brought to the scaffold for its reception. A struggle took place among the officials present for scraps of the rope with which he had been hanged, shavings of his coffin, and other relics of a similar character; but by nine o'clock, the crowd had dispersed, and in a few hours afterwards, all appearance of his execution had vanished.

The case of Hare was argued before the Scotch judges on the 5th of February; and by a majority of four to two, they determined that the public faith had been pledged to him, when his evidence was received against Burke, that he should be borne harmless, and he was ordered to be discharged. It was found, however, that by an ancient form of law he might be detained for the costs of the suit, and his final deliberation was therefore delayed; but on Thursday, the 12th of the same month, he and his wife were set at liberty. They appear upon their discharge to have parted company; for Mrs. Hare was nearly sacrificed to the fury of the mob at Glasgow, to which place she wended her way, while her husband proceeded by mail to Dumfries, where he was near meeting a similar fate. The mail, it appears, landed him at about seven o'clock in the morning; and although there was no intimation of his arrival, he was recognised by the mob, who immediately assailed him with the bitterest execrations, and with stones and other missiles. He succeeded in effecting his escape from them into the King's Arms Inn, where he obtained a refuge; but a crowd of persons surrounded the house, and demanded that he should be given up to their fury. For a considerable time consequences of a dangerous nature were apprehended; but night having arrived, the people dispersed; and when all was quiet, Hare quitted the house, and made a precipitate retreat from the town--whither, it was not known. The subsequent history of this atrocious ruffian, and of his wife and Mrs. M'Dougal, must, we believe, for ever remain a mystery. Their crimes and their notoriety would be sufficient, to prevent their acknowledging their names, or the fact of their being the participators in these horrible transactions; and it is to be hoped, that when they quitted the scene of their dreadful offences, they did so with sincere thankfulness to the Almighty for the escape which they had had from a sudden and ignominious death, and with a firm determination to make use of that period which was granted them to live, to atone, by their repentance, for their sins.

We cannot quit this subject without remarking upon the effects which were produced by these revolting murders. It was on the 28th of January, that Burke expiated his crimes upon the scaffold, and Parliament met on the 5th of the ensuing month of February. On the 12th of the same month, Mr. Warburton gave notice of his intention of bringing the whole subject before the House of Commons. Rumours by this time had become general throughout the metropolis that the same system which had been carried on in Edinburgh had been discovered to exist in London; and the public, whose fears were easily alarmed by such a statement, immediately concluded that every report of a missing person confirmed that which now became a pretty general belief. The daily papers were filled with accounts of persons who had suddenly disappeared, and who were supposed to have been "burked," the term now universally employed in the description of the murders committed by the atrocious gang, whose villanies had just been brought to light; and the universal alarm which prevailed was rendered greater by the absurd practice of idle or drunken fellows who stopped persons whom they met in lonely situations, pretending to clap a plaister over their noses and mouths, with an intention to suffocate them. Complaints were made to the police of the system of creating alarm which was carried on, and their utmost vigilance was called for to protect the public from absolute danger, as well as from the terror which was everywhere excited. Accounts were sometimes received of dead bodies having been discovered packed in brine tubs, on their way to Edinburgh from London, and every case of this description was tortured into proof of the existence of a scheme of murder in the latter place, even more dreadful than that which had been discovered in Scotland.