Killer Quartet: The Burke-Hare Murders

In Great Britain during the 1800s, there was a widespread interest in medical science. More and more students signed up for medical school and classrooms were filled to capacity. It was a requirement at the time for anatomy classes to use human cadavers for the purposes of education and demonstration. British law asserted that the only cadavers permitted to be used in medical school were those of recently executed criminals. As there was an insufficient number of executed criminals to meet the growing needs of medical science programs, many people sought ways of producing cadavers for personal monetary gain. Grave robbing increased significantly. Although the medical schools suspected that the cadavers came to them as a result of grave robbery, they readily accepted them to ensure that their classes remained filled with paying students. As disturbing as grave robbery is, the madness did not end there. Some were so desperate for money that they went so far as to kill living people and sell their corpses to medical colleges. Among this small group of sick individuals were William Hare, William Burke and their wives.

William and Margaret Hare operated a small boarding house in Edinburgh, Scotland. William Burke and his wife, Helen McDougal, had just moved to the capital city when they met Margaret Hare. She invited the couple back to the boarding house and introduced them to her husband. Pleased with the room that they were offered, Burke and McDougal became paying tenants of the Hares. The two couples were far from friends. They argued often, but were linked by a common love for alcohol and easy money... at any cost.

In November of 1827, a tenant of the Hares, an old man named Donald, became gravely ill and passed away. The couple did not care about the man's death, but they were very angry over the fact that the man had died without ever paying them the four pounds in rent that he owed them. William Hare devised a plan to get his money and he enlisted Burke's help. The two men snuck into the cemetery the following night and stole Donald's corpse from his coffin. They replaced the old man's body with an equal weight of tree bark and then headed off with the corpse. They spoke with the assistants of Professor Robert Knox and made arrangements to bring the body to them. Upon examining the cadaver, Knox's assistants agreed to pay the two men seven pounds. The men eagerly accepted the offer, pleased with themselves for making a (at the time) large amount of money with minimal effort.

Several days later, Joseph, another of the Hares' lodgers, became ill. He did not owe any rent and was not terminally ill. Although neither man had any medical training or expertise, William Hare and Burke agreed that Joseph was going to die and decided to put him out of his misery. They forced Joseph to drink whisky until he lost consciousness and then they suffocated him. The two men had unintentionally discovered a fail-safe method of murder. The method made it appear as though death was the result of illness/intoxication and there were no incriminating marks left on the body. The Hares' remaining lodgers were in good health, which caused Hare and Burke to look outside of the Hare boarding house for potential "merchandise."

On April 9, 1828, William Burke was visiting a local tavern when he spotted Mary Paterson and Janet Brown, two 18-year-old prostitutes. He invited the two women back to his home for breakfast and after some persuading, they agreed to go with him. He took them to his brother's house where the trio ate breakfast and drank whisky. Mary fell asleep at the table and continued to sleep even after Burke's wife showed up unexpectedly and shouted angrily at her husband and Janet. Burke and his wife fought for several minutes before he violently threw her out of the room. Janet was bothered by the incident and decided to leave. Burke tried to persuade her to stay, but was unsuccessful. She said that she would not return until Helen, who was still screaming from outside the door, had left.

After leaving Burke's brother's home, Janet stopped to visit a mutual friend of herself and Mary, Mrs. Lawrie. After hearing the events of the day from Janet, Mrs. Lawrie woman grew concerned for Mary's safety and sent Janet and a servant to go get her. The two young women headed back to the house where Janet had left Mary earlier that day. Upon their arrival, they were told by the Hares and McDougal that Mary and Burke had gone out and would be returning shortly. Janet sent the servant to relay the message to Mrs. Lawrie and then she sat with the Hares and McDougal to wait for her friend to return. Little did she know, her friend had been killed by the very people with whom she was sitting at that very moment. The servant told Mrs. Lawrie what had happened and the older woman grew even more suspicious. She ordered the servant to head back to the house and bring Janet back with her. The young girl quickly complied. Had she not, Janet would most likely have met the same untimely end as Mary.

William Hare and Burke sold Mary's cadaver to Professor Knox. They hit a small obstacle when several of Knox's students recognized Mary. The two cunning men lied about how the body came to be in their possession and the would-have-been crisis was quickly averted.

After Mary's death, the murders became more frequent. Burke was acquainted with an old vagrant from whom he occasionally purchased leather. He brought the old woman, Effie, back to his home. He gave her whisky until she passed out and then he called William Hare over. Later that night, Professor Knox paid the two men ten pounds for Effie's body.

Over the next few months, the death count rose. The two men killed several more people, including: a drunken woman who they met on the street; an old woman and her deaf grandson; a visitor of the boarding house; a distant relative of McDougal's; and an elderly prostitute named Mary Haldane. When Haldane's daughter traced her mother's disappearance back to the boarding house, she too was added to the list of victims.

Pleased with the fact that they had not yet been caught, the two men grew bolder. James Wilson, an 18-year-old wanderer who was well known throughout the town, was walking the streets in search of his mother in early October of 1828. William Hare told the young man that he knew the whereabouts of his mother. Hare invited Wilson back to his home to wait for her. While Hare was entertaining Wilson, McDougal and Margaret Hare summoned Burke from a local tavern. They all rendezvoused at the Hares' boarding house where they persuaded Wilson to drink whisky. The young boy had only one glass before falling asleep on a spare bed. Hare and Burke proceeded with their usual killing method, but were taken by surprise when Wilson awoke and fought back. Eventually, the two men overpowered the young boy and later that night they sold his cadaver to Professor Knox.

The last of the Hare-Burke murders took place on October 31, 1828. On that morning, Burke was in a local tavern. There he met an older woman, Mary Docherty, with whom he conversed for a while. He managed to convince the woman to return to the boarding house and spend the night there. At the lodging house, Burke, McDougal and Docherty were joined by a couple named James and Ann Gray. The couple was staying at the house as well. The group spent the night drinking whisky in celebration of Halloween. Docherty fell fast asleep. The Grays left for a few hours, but planned to return the following morning for breakfast. While the couple was gone, an upstairs tenant claimed to have heard screaming. The cries for help soon died down, so the tenant assumed that all was well again.

The next morning, the Grays returned to the boarding house and noticed that Docherty was no longer there. The couple asked about the older woman's whereabouts and McDougal told them that she had asked Docherty to leave because she was getting too friendly with her husband. When Ann Gray went to the spare bed to retrieve a pair of socks that she had left, Burke shouted for her to stay away from the bed. She thought his reaction was odd, but she complied. Later that afternoon, the couple was left alone in the house for a short while. Overcome by curiosity, they looked beneath the spare bed and were horrified to find the dead body of the woman with whom they celebrated the previous night. They were heading out of the house, when they were stopped by McDougal. They asked her what she knew about the dead body. She implored the couple not to say anything, but they stormed out in search of a police officer.

McDougal and Mrs. Hare promptly warned their husbands and the two men worked quickly to hide all evidence that Docherty had been killed. By the time the police arrived at the boarding house, the body had already been sold to Professor Knox. A neighbor told the officers that he had seen Hare and Burke leave the house carrying a large tea chest earlier. The killing quartet was brought to the local police station for questioning. The four were questioned separately and there were several inconsistencies in their stories. This, along with the fact that an anonymous tip led the officers to Professor Knox's home where the body of Docherty was identified by James Gray, landed the foursome in prison.

As time went on, the police discovered that the Hare-Burke clan was responsible for many other disappearances/deaths that had previously remained unsolved. After a thorough investigation and many interviews, the four were brought to trial. The prosecutor correctly assumed that the two women played lesser roles in the murders and that neither woman would be willing to testify against her husband. Operating under the assumption that Burke was the leader of the two men, the prosecutor offered William Hare immunity in exchange for his testimony against Burke. He happily accepted the deal.

Burke and McDougal were both charged with Mary Docherty's murder. In addition, Burke was also charged with the murders of Mary Paterson and James Wilson. Their trial began on Christmas Eve 1828. The Hares testified against their partners in crime. The following morning, after a 50 minute deliberation, the jury decided the verdict: Burke was found guilty and McDougal was cleared of the murder charge.

On January 28, 1829, William Burke was executed. At his execution, the outraged public shouted for the executions of William Hare and Professor Knox. Upon her release, McDougal was driven out of Scotland by vigilante mobs. She died in 1868. Professor Robert Knox continued living and teaching in Edinburgh until the number of students in his classes dropped drastically. He applied for a job at another medical university, but was rejected twice. He later moved to London and worked in a hospital until his death in 1862.