The Westport Murders part 2

[00:00:02] He says, I'm going to make an example of you.

[00:00:05] He says, not only are you going to be publicly hanged,

[00:00:08] but your body is going to thereafter be given to the surgeons for dissection.

[00:00:14] Public dissection and public display.

[00:00:18] So not only was his body going to be given to the surgeons,

[00:00:21] of course, which is ironic to an extreme,

[00:00:25] but all this was going to be public.

[00:00:26] He was going to be dissected publicly

[00:00:29] and thereafter his skeleton to be displayed publicly.

[00:00:33] A great majority of the people who attend

[00:00:35] the public dissection of William Burke are women.

[00:00:39] A lot of them are middle class, well-to-do.

[00:00:42] Some of the medical students are taking an opportunity

[00:00:45] to nip forward and take a bit of skin from William Burke

[00:00:48] and take a finger and all the rest of it.

[00:00:50] So as time goes on, William Burke is a rapidly diminishing cadaver.

[00:01:00] Good evening, Tom. How are you?

[00:01:02] I'm very well, Simon. I'm very well. How are you today?

[00:01:05] I'm fantastic. It's great to see you and chat to you again.

[00:01:08] I'm looking forward to this because last time we covered a case

[00:01:12] that everybody feels so familiar with it, don't they?

[00:01:15] Because it's so long ago, the movies have been made,

[00:01:18] the books have been written.

[00:01:20] But here we are getting your cold case take on it,

[00:01:23] which is absolutely fascinating.

[00:01:25] I'm talking, of course, about Burke and Hare back in 1828.

[00:01:30] Now, in the first episode, we covered so much talking about the victims

[00:01:34] and them getting caught out at the end, Dr Knox,

[00:01:38] all of these characters that you brought in.

[00:01:41] I'm interested now that they've been caught and they're in prison.

[00:01:45] What's your take on that?

[00:01:46] Because it's quite a lengthy process back then, wasn't it,

[00:01:48] of bringing them to the High Court?

[00:01:50] It wasn't, Simon. It was a very, very quick process back then.

[00:01:53] But in the first episode, we covered the whole business

[00:01:56] about the shape and form of Edinburgh and the rich and the poor

[00:02:01] and the university and the demand and supply,

[00:02:05] the demand for bodies for the fabulously famous

[00:02:08] and wealthy lecturers in anatomy.

[00:02:12] And where could they get the bodies?

[00:02:14] They couldn't get them legally.

[00:02:15] And so Burke and Hare, who are just two opportunist thugs,

[00:02:19] basically, they don't fancy about Burke and Hare at all.

[00:02:23] They move into the gap.

[00:02:24] They see the demand and they fulfill the supply.

[00:02:28] And by picking on the waifs and strays,

[00:02:32] the flotsam and jetsam of society who are in Edinburgh

[00:02:35] seeking work and seeking a pittance of life, basically,

[00:02:39] because it was a time of desperate poverty,

[00:02:42] the like of which, frankly, we don't really understand nowadays.

[00:02:47] So anyway, we know that they were supplying these bodies,

[00:02:50] but we know that there were such bad criminals,

[00:02:52] there were such hopeless criminals that they very soon got caught.

[00:02:57] And they got caught with the death of Marjorie Campbell,

[00:03:00] who was a woman they had lured into their house,

[00:03:03] they'd subdued her with strong drink,

[00:03:05] which was Dirt Modus Operandi,

[00:03:07] and then they had smothered her and sold her

[00:03:10] to Dr Nox's agent William Patterson.

[00:03:13] What we also heard was that there was a very good detective,

[00:03:16] a Detective Fisher, who was a Sergeant Major,

[00:03:19] which is a rank we don't know about in the police these days.

[00:03:22] He was a Sergeant Major of Criminal Police,

[00:03:25] and he was right on the job.

[00:03:26] And we discussed how even looking back over all this time,

[00:03:31] almost 200 years,

[00:03:33] you could actually recognize a good detective

[00:03:36] who was on the front foot

[00:03:37] and got to grips with the thing straight away,

[00:03:40] secured the locus, secured the evidence,

[00:03:43] got back the body.

[00:03:44] We left the story with William Burke and his wife

[00:03:48] and William Hare and his wife, all in jail,

[00:03:52] separated, and now we've got to find the evidence.

[00:03:55] When you say this guy, the detective,

[00:03:58] were there detectives in those days, Tom?

[00:04:01] No, they were called criminal police.

[00:04:03] The force was basically structured.

[00:04:06] Vast percentage of people were called night police,

[00:04:09] and they were basically night watchmen

[00:04:10] who controlled the streets.

[00:04:12] And they also switched on and off the lamps,

[00:04:15] the street lamps, and they dealt with the rubbish collection.

[00:04:17] They did a whole lot of things

[00:04:19] apart from what we now know as policing.

[00:04:22] But 80% of the force were working at night,

[00:04:25] and the other 20% were working during the day,

[00:04:28] and there were a handful,

[00:04:29] and I mean a handful of criminal police

[00:04:32] who were there actually to investigate crime.

[00:04:35] But you couldn't call them detectives by any shape

[00:04:39] or by any understanding

[00:04:40] or our understanding of what detectives were.

[00:04:44] But Fisher, Sergeant Major Fisher,

[00:04:46] he could have stepped right into the 21st century

[00:04:49] if you look at the way he conducted himself

[00:04:51] on the night of Halloween 1828,

[00:04:54] the way he moved, the way he recovered the evidence,

[00:04:56] the way he secured the locusts,

[00:04:58] the way he got the suspects in.

[00:05:00] There was a man who really behaved

[00:05:03] in a much more modern way than he could have done

[00:05:05] in 1828.

[00:05:06] When you look at the case,

[00:05:08] can you see the hallmarks of what we would do today?

[00:05:12] For instance, were they interviewed?

[00:05:14] The caution?

[00:05:16] Did he speak to them individually

[00:05:18] and did he take productions?

[00:05:20] Was there any,

[00:05:21] would the courts look for real evidence

[00:05:24] as opposed to just witness evidence and allegations?

[00:05:27] Did they look at,

[00:05:29] there wouldn't be any forensics as we know it then,

[00:05:32] but there might still have been a jacket,

[00:05:34] bloodstained clothing or something of that description.

[00:05:37] As I described in the first episode,

[00:05:39] the point about Marjorie Campbell was

[00:05:41] if you were selling a body

[00:05:42] then it's better to sell it naked

[00:05:45] because first of all, you destroyed any connection.

[00:05:48] Somebody said, oh, that was the dress

[00:05:49] that woman was wearing.

[00:05:51] So you stripped them of clothes.

[00:05:53] The other thing they were always frightened about,

[00:05:54] funnily enough, was getting accused

[00:05:56] of theft of clothing.

[00:05:59] That was a much more realistic thing to be charged with

[00:06:01] than actually the theft of a body.

[00:06:03] So Fisher did recover forensic evidence

[00:06:06] and he recovered blood, covered straw

[00:06:09] and he recovered Marjorie Campbell's dress,

[00:06:12] very, very brief sort of,

[00:06:14] almost like a Hessian sacking dress

[00:06:17] which had been chucked on the floor

[00:06:19] in William Burke's house.

[00:06:20] And so laxative had they been,

[00:06:23] they were all drunk,

[00:06:23] a lot of them when the crime was committed

[00:06:26] that they haven't even bothered tidying up

[00:06:28] even the most elementary of evidence.

[00:06:30] Simon, I tell you, this is a crime.

[00:06:33] It was brutal, but it was very, very simple.

[00:06:35] It was a type of crime

[00:06:36] that even you boys in the West could have saw.

[00:06:38] You really could.

[00:06:40] You mentioned that they're all in prison now

[00:06:42] and the four of them are locked up

[00:06:44] and there's an interview process then takes place.

[00:06:47] Is this when Hayer turns King's evidence

[00:06:49] as it was at the time?

[00:06:51] The first thing that happens is

[00:06:52] that the post-mortem on Marjorie Campbell,

[00:06:55] and that's where the problem started

[00:06:57] because there was no cause of death

[00:06:59] and there were no marks of violence on the body.

[00:07:01] It's easy to understand that

[00:07:03] because as we've discussed, she was smothered.

[00:07:06] She was actually overlaying.

[00:07:08] So there were no marks of violence on her body

[00:07:11] and any marks that were on her body

[00:07:13] could be explained by post-mortem injury

[00:07:16] because as I think I described to you,

[00:07:18] she was actually folded in two

[00:07:21] and stuffed inside an old tea chest

[00:07:23] and then carried up to the doctor's house.

[00:07:25] So none of the doctors who examined her

[00:07:29] could agree that there were any marks

[00:07:31] to suggest that she had met a violent death.

[00:07:33] Now, many of the newspapers of the day,

[00:07:36] and the newspapers played a huge role in this,

[00:07:38] and then some of the newspapers of the day

[00:07:40] suggested that perhaps it was because

[00:07:42] these self-same doctors were associated with Dr. Knox.

[00:07:46] Perhaps they were a wee bit reluctant

[00:07:48] to find out cause of death,

[00:07:50] but whatever the reason, there was no cause of death.

[00:07:54] So this put the Crown and the prosecution service

[00:07:57] in a really difficult position

[00:07:59] and that's where they had to make a very hard choice.

[00:08:03] Either they lose the case altogether

[00:08:07] or they allow William Hare and his wife

[00:08:10] to turn King's evidence.

[00:08:12] Now this was hugely controversial,

[00:08:15] not least because all of this was public knowledge

[00:08:19] because there was no Lord Advocate's guidelines,

[00:08:22] there was no contempt of court act then,

[00:08:25] so the newspapers were running literally commentary

[00:08:29] throughout the whole investigation

[00:08:32] and the people of Edinburgh who were outraged

[00:08:35] by what had happened,

[00:08:36] particularly over the death of Jamie Wilson

[00:08:40] and the girl called Mary Patterson

[00:08:42] who we discussed before.

[00:08:43] They were local people that Burke and Hare had killed

[00:08:46] or were suspected of killing

[00:08:47] and there was very high public feeling about these two.

[00:08:50] So Edinburgh was a tinderbox literally,

[00:08:54] a sort of a primed bomb waiting to go off

[00:08:57] and so the Crown were very aware of that

[00:08:59] and they had to move quickly.

[00:09:01] So they made the decision,

[00:09:02] the Lord Advocate himself made the decision

[00:09:04] that William Hare and his wife

[00:09:07] would be able to turn King's evidence

[00:09:09] even though they were clearly implicated in the crime

[00:09:13] and of course hugely controversial.

[00:09:16] You talked about interviewing the suspects,

[00:09:18] actually they were examined,

[00:09:20] they were judicially examined at that time

[00:09:22] by a procurator fiscal and by another lawyer

[00:09:26] and they were given a chance to explain themselves.

[00:09:29] Quite interesting, almost like a precognition

[00:09:32] but under oath

[00:09:33] and because they'd all been separated,

[00:09:36] because Fisher had the presence of mind to separate them,

[00:09:39] they all came up with very different

[00:09:41] cock and bull stories.

[00:09:43] William Burke's first story was wonderful.

[00:09:45] He'd been in his house,

[00:09:47] minding his own business

[00:09:48] when this stranger had arrived with this box

[00:09:50] and had said to William Burke,

[00:09:52] would you mend my shoes?

[00:09:53] And Burke was a part time half-baked cobbler

[00:09:58] although no evidence he was particularly good at it

[00:10:00] but anyway, this guy had said yes,

[00:10:02] please mend my shoes and I said,

[00:10:04] if I give you a shilling, will you keep this box for me?

[00:10:07] I'll come back for it tomorrow.

[00:10:10] And Burke had said, being the trusting man he was,

[00:10:12] said yes of course and he'd mended his shoes

[00:10:15] and this mysterious man, not further described,

[00:10:18] had left leaving this box

[00:10:20] and it was only after he'd left

[00:10:22] that Burke had looked in the box

[00:10:23] and said oh my goodness, there's a dead body here,

[00:10:26] what are we going to do?

[00:10:27] And you'll have met people like that before

[00:10:31] who really didn't think through.

[00:10:33] Some things never change, Tom,

[00:10:34] that's for sure, almost 200 years later.

[00:10:37] Tom, you mentioned there that the interviews

[00:10:39] or if you like, the examinations that they got,

[00:10:43] would you say having looked at this case in great detail

[00:10:46] and I know that you have,

[00:10:47] you probably regarded as an expert in this case,

[00:10:50] if Hare and his wife, I think it was Margaret,

[00:10:53] if they had kept quiet,

[00:10:55] do you think they would all have got off with it?

[00:10:58] There's a possibility of that

[00:11:00] but of course the risk for them

[00:11:02] was that they end up in the court in the box themselves

[00:11:06] and the risk was then that they would be convicted.

[00:11:10] There was no loyalty between Burke and Hare,

[00:11:13] they weren't friends,

[00:11:14] they were just criminal associates

[00:11:16] and as soon as Hare recognized it,

[00:11:19] his head might be on the line,

[00:11:21] he very quickly turned against Burke.

[00:11:24] Remember that this had been,

[00:11:27] some of the earlier murders had been Hare's adventure,

[00:11:30] Hare had tracked down, Hare had seen the victim,

[00:11:33] Hare had lured the victim back

[00:11:35] and Hare had actually killed the victim.

[00:11:39] Jamie Wilson, it's every suggestion that it was Hare

[00:11:42] who actually physically powerfully

[00:11:44] overpowered Jamie Wilson

[00:11:46] but Marjorie Campbell was Burke's enterprise

[00:11:50] and he had spotted her,

[00:11:52] he had lured her back and he had killed her.

[00:11:55] So Hare wasn't gonna take the rap

[00:11:58] for something he hadn't been involved in

[00:12:00] even though he chaired in the proceeds of the crime.

[00:12:03] So Hare was always gonna turn.

[00:12:05] The other risk of course the crown saw

[00:12:09] and you and I have experienced this

[00:12:12] was if you put Burke and Hare accused

[00:12:15] together in the dock and they blame each other,

[00:12:19] then the jury can become confused about what's happening

[00:12:22] and how often have you seen that happen?

[00:12:25] If you had four of them,

[00:12:26] Burke and his wife and Hare and his wife

[00:12:29] in the dock together,

[00:12:30] the chances are they would all have blamed each other,

[00:12:33] it would all become terribly confused

[00:12:35] and the jury would have found insufficient evidence

[00:12:38] to convict anyone

[00:12:39] and the crown were very aware of that

[00:12:41] and the crown knew that if they went to trial

[00:12:45] and the trial turned out to be a farce

[00:12:47] and if they all walked away

[00:12:49] and nobody was held to account for it,

[00:12:51] then Edinburgh would go up in flames

[00:12:54] and I mean quite literally go up in flames.

[00:12:58] So the decision was taken,

[00:12:59] it was a very, very difficult decision to take

[00:13:02] and the press were all over it

[00:13:04] and some of the press commentary was absolutely lurid.

[00:13:07] I mean there was no restraint at all

[00:13:09] about presumption of innocence,

[00:13:12] quite the reverse and through it all comes

[00:13:16] a very, very strong anti-Irish, anti-Catholic sentiment

[00:13:22] because of course both Burke and Hare were Roman Catholics,

[00:13:26] Hare's wife was also Irish Catholic.

[00:13:29] Only Helen McDougall who was William Burke's partner,

[00:13:33] common law wife was Scottish

[00:13:35] and so there was a lot of stuff in the press

[00:13:37] about these men behaved abominably,

[00:13:40] being of the Catholic persuasion, that sort of thing.

[00:13:43] Feelings were running high.

[00:13:44] Tom, that maybe preempts this question

[00:13:47] that I was going to ask you

[00:13:48] because I'm interested that Knox was never pursued

[00:13:52] although it was him that instigated all of this

[00:13:54] with accepting the bodies and paying for the bodies

[00:13:58] without asking any questions or involving any authority

[00:14:01] and also Helen McDougall who didn't turn count evidence,

[00:14:05] Burke's partner, but wasn't prosecuted.

[00:14:09] What's the position with those two?

[00:14:11] Robert Knox was to get his comeuppance later.

[00:14:14] At the moment, the focus of the mob

[00:14:16] and the focus of the justice system

[00:14:18] was on William Burke and William Hare

[00:14:20] but as we'll hear in a few minutes,

[00:14:21] Robert Knox was to become the focus

[00:14:24] of the anger of the mob after the trial of William Burke.

[00:14:29] Helen McDougall was prosecuted.

[00:14:31] She did appear in the court

[00:14:33] but she was discharged from the court.

[00:14:34] I'm just going to talk about the trial in a minute.

[00:14:37] Okay.

[00:14:38] The time scale is this

[00:14:39] that the murder took place on Halloween 1828

[00:14:43] and on Christmas Eve, 1828,

[00:14:46] the trial was conducted in the High Court to Edinburgh.

[00:14:50] On Christmas Eve, there is a full bench of judges.

[00:14:53] There are three of the most senior judges in Scotland

[00:14:56] and the president of the court

[00:14:58] is the Lord Justice Clark himself.

[00:15:01] Okay.

[00:15:02] The most senior as it were operational judge in Scotland.

[00:15:06] Prosecuting is the Lord Advocate himself

[00:15:11] and defending William Burke

[00:15:13] is the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates

[00:15:16] and defending Helen McDougall

[00:15:20] is none other than William Coburn

[00:15:23] who later becomes extremely famous

[00:15:27] as the protector of the architectural heritage

[00:15:29] of Edinburgh, the Coburn society.

[00:15:32] Coburn is one of the cleverest men.

[00:15:35] He's a polymath, he's an academic,

[00:15:37] he's one of these people who's good at everything

[00:15:39] and he's an extremely astute lawyer as well.

[00:15:43] So it is a star cast that assembles

[00:15:47] on Christmas Eve, 1828 for the trial of William Burke

[00:15:51] and Helen McDougall for the murder of Marjorie Campbell

[00:15:56] and Jamie Wilson and Mary Patterson.

[00:15:59] At first there are three names on the indictment,

[00:16:02] not just one because by this time

[00:16:04] the police have managed to gather evidence

[00:16:07] about the death of Jamie Wilson

[00:16:09] and the voluptuous Mary Patterson

[00:16:11] who I described to you before.

[00:16:13] They were Edinburgh people

[00:16:14] so there was some degree of evidence

[00:16:16] so the whole, the three of them

[00:16:17] were put on the indictment.

[00:16:20] And right from the start this caused problems

[00:16:21] because it was then not unusual but unheard of

[00:16:27] that there would be three different crimes

[00:16:30] placed on one indictment

[00:16:31] and straight away the defense objected.

[00:16:34] The Dean of the Faculty of Advocates objected

[00:16:36] and said that this could not be,

[00:16:37] these were entirely different crimes

[00:16:39] committed at different times

[00:16:41] in different places by different people

[00:16:43] and they could not be in the same indictment

[00:16:45] and the Lord Justice Clark had to agree with it.

[00:16:48] And so right at the very start

[00:16:50] the murders of Jamie Wilson and of Mary Patterson

[00:16:54] were dropped from the indictment

[00:16:55] and it was only for the murder of Marjorie Campbell

[00:16:58] that Burke and McDougall stood trial.

[00:17:02] So the evidence starts at 10 o'clock

[00:17:03] in the morning sharp.

[00:17:04] There was legal argument about the indictment

[00:17:06] but the evidence really starts at 10 o'clock

[00:17:09] pretty sharp and it goes on right through the day

[00:17:11] and the trial lasts almost a full 24 hours.

[00:17:16] Remarkably, Simon, at that time

[00:17:19] once the trial started it continued,

[00:17:22] it was not interrupted.

[00:17:24] And so it seems like some sort of bizarre theory story

[00:17:28] that this trial would take place

[00:17:30] right through Christmas Eve into Christmas morning

[00:17:34] and right through to 10 o'clock in the morning

[00:17:36] at Christmas morning, but that is exactly what happened.

[00:17:40] And of course, the court was packed with people.

[00:17:43] There were press people there,

[00:17:45] there were people coming and going.

[00:17:46] It was the legal and social event of the year

[00:17:51] without a question of a doubt.

[00:17:53] And there were newspapers and news sheets being written

[00:17:56] as the trial was taking place.

[00:17:58] So somebody would be taking copy,

[00:18:00] they would run out of the court,

[00:18:02] they would go down to a printing press,

[00:18:04] they would produce these news sheets

[00:18:06] and they would hang them out in the streets.

[00:18:08] The court was surrounded by a mob of people

[00:18:12] so much so that Edinburgh police

[00:18:13] had to call in reinforcements.

[00:18:15] They had to mobilize the old honorary

[00:18:18] sort of special constables,

[00:18:19] the high constables of Edinburgh,

[00:18:21] they had to come out.

[00:18:22] They did everything but call out the army

[00:18:24] and talk about this in a minute

[00:18:26] because that's the last thing they wanted to do

[00:18:28] was to call out the army.

[00:18:29] They wanted to deal with this civilly and not militarily.

[00:18:33] So trial went on and because it was only Marjorie Campbell

[00:18:37] it was on indictment was shortened,

[00:18:39] various witnesses were not called

[00:18:41] including Dr. Robert Knox.

[00:18:43] Knox never gave evidence remarkably

[00:18:47] but his agent did.

[00:18:50] And his agent, William Patterson,

[00:18:52] there's a lot of Patterson's in this story

[00:18:54] we shouldn't get confused

[00:18:55] but William Patterson is the agent

[00:18:57] and he goes into the box

[00:18:58] and he's really one of the prime witnesses

[00:19:01] and he's asked about the body trade

[00:19:03] and he starts to gain confidence.

[00:19:05] He at first thinks he's maybe gonna stand a chance

[00:19:08] of being prosecuted but eventually he gains

[00:19:11] a bit of confidence and he starts to be effusive

[00:19:13] in his comments,

[00:19:13] oh yes he says there's a body trade in Edinburgh,

[00:19:16] of course there is

[00:19:17] and by the way Dr. Knox is not the only one

[00:19:19] who's purchasing bodies.

[00:19:20] Lord Justice Clark knew that

[00:19:22] and the Lord Justice Clark intervenes

[00:19:24] and says Mr. Patterson only answer

[00:19:26] the questions you're asked.

[00:19:29] So they want to keep this very focused.

[00:19:31] So this goes on but of course the star witness

[00:19:34] of all was William Hare

[00:19:36] and he is really the witness

[00:19:37] that everybody's waiting for

[00:19:38] and he shuffles into court

[00:19:41] and gives a very subdued evidence

[00:19:46] and he's warned right from the very start

[00:19:48] the Lord Justice Clark,

[00:19:49] the judge says to Hare,

[00:19:51] he said, he says to Hare,

[00:19:52] you are here as a witness.

[00:19:54] He said and if you tell the truth

[00:19:57] you will not be prosecuted

[00:19:59] for any matter here discussed

[00:20:01] but if you are found to be telling lies

[00:20:04] you will be prosecuted

[00:20:05] to the full extent of the law.

[00:20:07] And all this is written down

[00:20:09] in the account of the trial

[00:20:10] and you can see this candle lit court

[00:20:13] with the Lord Justice Clark

[00:20:15] the way up at his bench

[00:20:16] looking down at this guy

[00:20:17] and of course the judges hated the idea

[00:20:21] that William Hare who was the most

[00:20:24] reprehensible of creatures

[00:20:26] was actually getting away with it

[00:20:28] and giving evidence.

[00:20:29] They didn't like it

[00:20:31] but they had to swallow it.

[00:20:33] So William Hare,

[00:20:34] he doesn't see very much

[00:20:35] but what he does see convicts Burke

[00:20:39] and interestingly Helen McDougall

[00:20:42] is found not proven

[00:20:44] and Coburn, William Coburn

[00:20:46] who is defending a very interesting approach

[00:20:50] he says to the jury,

[00:20:51] look Helen McDougall

[00:20:52] was associated with William Burke

[00:20:55] and there's no doubt about it

[00:20:56] she's been involved in all this sordid stuff

[00:20:59] that you have heard about

[00:21:00] it's all terrible.

[00:21:01] But he says Helen McDougall

[00:21:04] was not in the room

[00:21:05] when Piers Marjorie Campbell was killed

[00:21:09] and therefore you cannot prove

[00:21:13] beyond reasonable doubt

[00:21:14] that she was actually involved in the murders

[00:21:16] there is a chance she didn't know

[00:21:17] what was gonna happen.

[00:21:18] It may be a slim chance

[00:21:20] but there's a chance she didn't know

[00:21:21] what was gonna happen

[00:21:22] and therefore what you must do

[00:21:25] is find a case against her not proven.

[00:21:27] He never said she was not guilty

[00:21:29] he never ever said she was not guilty.

[00:21:32] He told the jury,

[00:21:34] look of course she was involved in it to some part

[00:21:38] but there's just a little bit chance

[00:21:40] she did know what was going on

[00:21:41] so you must find her not proven.

[00:21:43] Very very clever tactics.

[00:21:44] So William Burke is found guilty

[00:21:47] and the sentence is read out

[00:21:49] and obviously the law justice class

[00:21:51] had decided what was gonna happen

[00:21:53] the way ahead of time.

[00:21:55] And so the sentence is read out

[00:21:57] and it is the most damaging of judicial remarks

[00:22:01] about the conduct of William Burke

[00:22:03] being beyond the pale of desecration

[00:22:06] of human bodies of murder, most foul, et cetera.

[00:22:10] He says I'm going to make an example of you.

[00:22:12] He says not only are you going to be publicly hanged

[00:22:16] he said but your body is going to thereafter

[00:22:18] be given to the surgeons for dissection

[00:22:22] and public dissection and public display.

[00:22:25] So not only was his body gonna be given to the surgeons

[00:22:29] of course which is ironic to an extreme

[00:22:32] but all this was going to be public.

[00:22:34] It was going to be dissected publicly

[00:22:36] and thereafter his skeleton to be displayed publicly.

[00:22:40] It's real medieval stuff this

[00:22:43] and this is all to try and assuage

[00:22:46] the temper of the crowd

[00:22:48] who were in Edinburgh at that time

[00:22:50] and it really was reaching boiling point

[00:22:53] and any little flash

[00:22:55] and the city could have been literally overwhelmed

[00:22:58] by the mob of people.

[00:22:59] But this time of course,

[00:23:00] people were coming in from outside as well.

[00:23:03] They knew something great was happening.

[00:23:04] People coming from all over the place

[00:23:06] people making their way through

[00:23:07] from remote places like Glasgow.

[00:23:11] Top why do you think or do you know

[00:23:14] why there was such a furore

[00:23:16] or why it created this emotion within the city

[00:23:20] and created this powder cake?

[00:23:22] There was other Birkenhares,

[00:23:23] there were other murderers about.

[00:23:24] There were other pathologists

[00:23:26] who were colleagues of Dr. Knox.

[00:23:28] He wasn't the only one.

[00:23:30] There was this whole marketplace

[00:23:32] of bodies being supplied for scientific purposes.

[00:23:35] Why did Birkenhair catch the imagination

[00:23:37] the way it did?

[00:23:38] The body market

[00:23:40] and the fact that there were other people

[00:23:42] as well as Birkenhair

[00:23:43] only became evident after the conviction of William Burke.

[00:23:47] So this was a horrendous thing.

[00:23:49] This was about the desecration of dead bodies,

[00:23:53] murder most foul.

[00:23:54] And of course,

[00:23:55] the local connection was that Jamie Wilson,

[00:23:58] that Jamie Wilson and Margaret Patterson,

[00:24:01] the young voluptuous young casual prostitute

[00:24:03] in the grass market.

[00:24:04] They were people a lot of people knew

[00:24:07] and there was huge public sympathy for them.

[00:24:09] Am I right in saying then that Tom

[00:24:11] that there was never any case

[00:24:13] for those other murders?

[00:24:15] For the other 15 murders or whatever it was

[00:24:18] that was never tried for them.

[00:24:19] There was an attempt.

[00:24:20] What happened after the trial,

[00:24:22] of course William Hare had been granted immunity

[00:24:26] for the prosecution of Marjorie Campbell

[00:24:29] but not for anything else.

[00:24:31] And so while the Crown declined to take action

[00:24:34] against William Hare,

[00:24:35] there was a private prosecution mounted

[00:24:38] by the family of Jamie Wilson

[00:24:40] against William Hare for the murder of their son.

[00:24:44] And it failed.

[00:24:44] As you and I know

[00:24:46] in the history of the Scottish criminal justice system

[00:24:49] there's only been one or two private prosecutions

[00:24:51] ever succeeded and theirs did not succeed.

[00:24:54] But what I was gonna say to you Simon

[00:24:55] was you said why was the mood

[00:24:57] of Edinburgh so febrile?

[00:24:59] The mood of a lot of Scottish cities was febrile.

[00:25:03] They were on the point of riot for quite a long time.

[00:25:07] We don't realize or appreciate that in our lifetime,

[00:25:11] things have been fairly calm really.

[00:25:14] But back in these days,

[00:25:16] there were riots took place regularly

[00:25:19] in a lot of major cities.

[00:25:21] Both before this and after this

[00:25:23] time of the great reform,

[00:25:24] a lot was to do with religion,

[00:25:26] we do with politics,

[00:25:28] it was do a whole lot of social unrest

[00:25:30] and the Edinburgh mob were famous

[00:25:32] for being able to rise up

[00:25:35] and cause a lot of problems

[00:25:36] almost at the snap of a finger.

[00:25:39] It was a very volatile time.

[00:25:41] So they moved very quickly.

[00:25:42] Burke had been convicted.

[00:25:44] There was an appeal of course,

[00:25:45] the appeal was heard within days.

[00:25:47] There was no room for appeal

[00:25:49] and his execution date was set

[00:25:51] for January 1829,

[00:25:53] the end of January 1829.

[00:25:55] And this was another flash point

[00:25:57] and the police knew it.

[00:25:58] There was gonna be a riot

[00:25:59] because public executions were well known

[00:26:02] for scenes of great disorder.

[00:26:04] That's why public executions

[00:26:05] were actually brought to a halt.

[00:26:07] Wasn't that they didn't want

[00:26:08] to show people getting hanged,

[00:26:10] it was because they didn't want to deal with the mob

[00:26:12] who always attended these public executions

[00:26:15] and got drunk and then went on the rampage.

[00:26:17] So public execution was confirmed

[00:26:21] and the police took control

[00:26:23] of the whole of the city center

[00:26:24] around about the lawn market

[00:26:26] where the present high court is actually

[00:26:28] just up from St Giles tourist area.

[00:26:30] And they took control of that early in the morning,

[00:26:33] they barricaded it off,

[00:26:34] but a crowd of around about 25,000

[00:26:37] turned out for the execution.

[00:26:39] It was a foul morning.

[00:26:41] It was raining, it was cold, it was January,

[00:26:44] but still 25,000 people turned out for the execution.

[00:26:48] It strikes me Tom that maybe this was a precursor

[00:26:50] to association football in Edinburgh

[00:26:53] because that's quite a good crowd

[00:26:54] at Tyncastle or Easter Road.

[00:26:57] Maybe that's why we invented those clubs

[00:26:59] and those people could go to those stadiums instead.

[00:27:03] Well that's right, well of course

[00:27:04] it was only 50 years later that these clubs were formed.

[00:27:07] You're absolutely right, it was a living memory.

[00:27:08] But interestingly, talking about association football

[00:27:12] was that a lot of people who attended

[00:27:14] the execution of William Burke

[00:27:16] actually paid for their tickets

[00:27:18] because the people who lived in the houses nearby

[00:27:20] recognized a commercial opportunity

[00:27:24] and rented out their top floor windows

[00:27:26] for people to overlook the execution.

[00:27:28] So come the time,

[00:27:29] the eight o'clock in the morning,

[00:27:31] William Burke's brought out,

[00:27:33] there's an immediately a surge in the crowd.

[00:27:35] They surged forward to try and get a look at this guy

[00:27:38] and they're shouting, where's here?

[00:27:40] Where's here?

[00:27:41] Where's Robert Knox?

[00:27:42] There's a real bloodlust in the crowd.

[00:27:44] They literally want their pound of flesh

[00:27:47] from William Burke.

[00:27:48] But the police are wise to it very, very quickly

[00:27:51] get Burke onto the scaffold

[00:27:53] and without further ado in a few minutes,

[00:27:56] Burke is hanged and he's dead in a few minutes.

[00:27:59] But then the real trouble starts

[00:28:02] because the crowd surges forward again

[00:28:04] trying to seize the body.

[00:28:06] And what they want to do is get some sort of memento

[00:28:10] from the clothes or the person of William Burke.

[00:28:13] This is a medieval scene

[00:28:15] and the police have great difficulty

[00:28:17] in fighting back the crowd

[00:28:19] to allow the medical attendees

[00:28:22] to remove the body of William Burke.

[00:28:23] But as they're doing so,

[00:28:26] the medics who are attending the body of William Burke,

[00:28:28] they're taking souvenirs.

[00:28:30] They've taken bits of his clothes,

[00:28:32] they've taken bits of his hair

[00:28:33] and all that sort of stuff.

[00:28:35] So eventually they get the body away

[00:28:37] and up to the university for the second act,

[00:28:41] which is going to be the public dissection of William Burke.

[00:28:45] And here we have another set piece

[00:28:47] public disorder situation because of course,

[00:28:50] a mob of people go up to the university

[00:28:52] because they all want to see William Burke

[00:28:54] and they all want to see him being cut up.

[00:28:56] Literally there's a riot

[00:28:57] within the medical dissection rooms

[00:29:00] at Edinburgh University.

[00:29:01] The police attend,

[00:29:02] the police have to take a baton charge

[00:29:04] to clear the room.

[00:29:06] And then a professor appears,

[00:29:09] a senior professor to say,

[00:29:10] listen, I've got an idea.

[00:29:12] He said, we'll do this public dissection in shifts.

[00:29:15] We'll allow in a hundred people at a time.

[00:29:18] And the professor of anatomy will dissect Burke's scalp

[00:29:24] and then somebody else will come in

[00:29:27] and another crowd will come in

[00:29:28] and they'll see his entrails being taken out

[00:29:30] and all this sort of stuff.

[00:29:31] So that's what you do.

[00:29:33] A great majority of the people who attend

[00:29:35] the public dissection of William Burke are women.

[00:29:39] A lot of them are middle-class, well-to-do Edinburgh women

[00:29:44] who want to be part of this spectacle.

[00:29:46] And as this is going on,

[00:29:49] some of the medical students are taking an opportunity

[00:29:51] to nip forward and take a bit of skin from William

[00:29:54] but then and take a finger and all the rest of it.

[00:29:57] So as time goes on,

[00:29:59] William Burke is a rapidly diminishing cadaver.

[00:30:04] It's an incredible dramatic,

[00:30:06] as I've seen to think of this.

[00:30:08] Eventually after another full 12 to 14 hours,

[00:30:13] they've more or less done everything

[00:30:14] they want to do with William Burke.

[00:30:16] And of course, one of the interesting things they do

[00:30:19] is they're desperate to examine his brain and his skull

[00:30:24] because there is a theory at that time,

[00:30:26] the theory of phrenology.

[00:30:28] And now phrenology more or less says that

[00:30:30] all parts of the human body are unique, et cetera.

[00:30:33] But what it also says and the theory was then

[00:30:35] that the criminal brain is different

[00:30:39] from anybody else's brain.

[00:30:40] And you can tell by looking at the brain

[00:30:43] and you can tell by examining the shape of the skull

[00:30:46] that this person is criminal.

[00:30:48] And the people went to incredible lengths,

[00:30:51] collected specimens, hundreds of specimens

[00:30:54] of human skulls so they could do comparisons

[00:30:57] to see whether they could detect

[00:31:00] the shape of the criminal head.

[00:31:02] So this was the big thing and who better to do it on

[00:31:04] than William Burke, one of the most famous criminals.

[00:31:07] So Burke is now out of the way,

[00:31:09] but the mob are not assuaged at all

[00:31:13] and their attention is then turned to William Hare.

[00:31:15] Where's William Hare?

[00:31:17] And William Hare is kept in custody.

[00:31:19] There's a private prosecution attempted against him.

[00:31:21] That fails.

[00:31:23] So at the beginning of February,

[00:31:25] the prison authorities in Edinburgh say,

[00:31:26] we've got to get rid of William Hare

[00:31:28] because as long as he is here, there's going to be a riot.

[00:31:31] And so William Hare has driven to the outskirts

[00:31:33] of the town in the dark

[00:31:35] and then he's put on a stagecoach heading south.

[00:31:38] Of course, everybody knows what William Hare looks like

[00:31:41] because while there's no photography at that time,

[00:31:44] in every newspaper for weeks and months before

[00:31:48] there's been sketches,

[00:31:49] quite accurate sketches of what he looks like.

[00:31:52] So everybody recognizes him.

[00:31:54] People on the stagecoach know it's him.

[00:31:56] It's quite interesting.

[00:31:57] He goes down various towns.

[00:31:58] He arrives at the town of Moffat

[00:32:00] just before the English border

[00:32:02] and he's given some money to go to get some rest

[00:32:05] in a pub and a mob appears from nowhere

[00:32:08] with the fiery torches wanting to lynch William Hare.

[00:32:11] So again, the police take him into protective custody

[00:32:15] and they take him down to the English border

[00:32:17] and they shoo him across the English border

[00:32:20] and he's last seen walking south

[00:32:22] and nobody really knows what happened to William Hare.

[00:32:26] They're after.

[00:32:27] But the women are also a problem

[00:32:29] because particularly Margaret here,

[00:32:32] she decides to go back to,

[00:32:35] they're separate by this time.

[00:32:36] She decides to go back to Ireland where she comes from.

[00:32:40] So she is taken through the West

[00:32:43] but everywhere she goes, people recognize her

[00:32:47] and the Glasgow police have to intercede

[00:32:50] to prevent the mob tearing her apart

[00:32:53] and the Glasgow police actually take her to a boat,

[00:32:56] to a ferry to put her on the ferry

[00:32:59] to Ireland to get rid of her.

[00:33:01] So the principals have all gone,

[00:33:04] have all left Edinburgh.

[00:33:05] The mood is still extremely febrile

[00:33:07] and of course now it turns to Robert Knox

[00:33:10] because Burke and Hare have gone,

[00:33:12] their wives are gone.

[00:33:14] What about Robert Knox?

[00:33:16] And the mob turns against Robert Knox

[00:33:19] and right up until middle to late February,

[00:33:22] there are a series of disturbances and riots in Edinburgh

[00:33:27] where the house and the surgery of Robert Knox

[00:33:30] are attacked by mobs of people,

[00:33:33] sometimes up to 200 strong

[00:33:35] and the Edinburgh police successfully fight them off

[00:33:40] but it's with great difficulty that they do.

[00:33:42] Filling off, it's at this stage

[00:33:43] that the decent public of Edinburgh

[00:33:45] and the newspapers start actually

[00:33:48] to appreciate the new police service.

[00:33:51] And they actually write that we've had our doubts

[00:33:53] about this new policing system.

[00:33:55] We never thought they would step up to the mark

[00:33:58] but actually they've done very well

[00:34:00] and there was one night in particular in late February

[00:34:03] which was the showdown where there were two riots

[00:34:06] fought back by Edinburgh police,

[00:34:09] not just did they win the fight

[00:34:11] but they also made substantial numbers of arrests

[00:34:14] who of course went to the court the next day

[00:34:15] and got severe punishment.

[00:34:16] So there was a real feeling

[00:34:18] that the police had done a good job

[00:34:19] and that they'd held the line

[00:34:21] and that they had not turned and run

[00:34:23] which everybody expected them to do.

[00:34:25] There would be a little experience

[00:34:26] of that kind of mob behavior

[00:34:29] which had ruled up until then

[00:34:31] and the Edinburgh police were quite a new innovation

[00:34:33] at that point, they were only 20 years or so old.

[00:34:37] So I don't think that was just for Edinburgh police,

[00:34:39] Tom, I think that was for policing

[00:34:41] in a much, much broader scale.

[00:34:43] It maybe gave us some credibility with the public

[00:34:46] that we were gonna stand up.

[00:34:48] The thin blue line was maybe invented right then.

[00:34:51] Certainly in terms of Edinburgh,

[00:34:54] there's no doubt at all that the trial of William Burke

[00:34:57] and the riots that followed was a turning point

[00:34:59] because it was the first time

[00:35:01] where there'd been the disturbances

[00:35:03] where the civil police had managed to hold the line

[00:35:07] and to do their duty.

[00:35:08] Before that time, they'd always had to call in the army

[00:35:12] and of course the trouble was

[00:35:13] once you called in the army,

[00:35:15] was getting rid of the army

[00:35:17] and the civil authorities did not want,

[00:35:20] above all they did not want to call out the army.

[00:35:23] They'd been a, I think I told you before,

[00:35:25] they'd been a tremendous disaster

[00:35:27] at St. Peter's Field in Manchester in 1819

[00:35:30] where 40 odd people had been killed

[00:35:32] when the dragoons had charged into the crowd.

[00:35:35] The question was,

[00:35:36] we've got this fancy new policing system,

[00:35:38] can it do the job?

[00:35:40] And it had done the job

[00:35:41] and there was no experience in crowd control

[00:35:43] but the superintendent of police in Edinburgh at that time

[00:35:47] was an ex-military captain

[00:35:50] and he obviously knew a little bit about

[00:35:52] confronting crowds and mobs and things like that

[00:35:55] and he himself showed tremendous personal courage

[00:35:58] in leading his men in two absolutely bloody encounters

[00:36:03] because at that time, Simon,

[00:36:05] there was no tarmacadam so the roads were paved

[00:36:08] with rocks.

[00:36:10] You can imagine the stone throwing

[00:36:12] and quite a few police officers were seriously injured

[00:36:15] during the riots following Burke's execution

[00:36:19] but they held the line

[00:36:20] and it's funny because at that time,

[00:36:22] and I suppose to some extent,

[00:36:24] different now with social media,

[00:36:25] but at that time there was a great habit of children

[00:36:29] to make up rhymes about topical events

[00:36:34] and sort of street urchins would sing these rhymes

[00:36:37] and quite often they got to the very heart of the matter

[00:36:41] and the famous one at that time was

[00:36:43] up the close and doing the stare

[00:36:46] buttoned Ben with Burkean hair,

[00:36:48] Burke's the butcher,

[00:36:49] here's the thief,

[00:36:50] Knox the boy who buys the beef.

[00:36:53] Now actually, if you were to encapsulate

[00:36:58] the case of Burkean hair in five lines,

[00:37:00] that would be about right.

[00:37:02] The police summary.

[00:37:04] I'm sorry.

[00:37:06] But at the end of the day,

[00:37:08] the case of Burkean hair does a number of things

[00:37:11] First of all, you mentioned,

[00:37:12] there's no doubt about it,

[00:37:13] William Hair,

[00:37:15] he gave various statements afterwards

[00:37:18] about how many murders there were.

[00:37:20] Some say there were 15,

[00:37:22] some say there were 20.

[00:37:24] The truth of the matter is they were usually drunk,

[00:37:26] they couldn't remember how many there'd been.

[00:37:29] They needed 10 pounds a week

[00:37:30] to keep themselves in drink and opiates.

[00:37:33] A body brought them 10 pounds

[00:37:36] so it's not unreasonable to suppose

[00:37:37] that Burkean hair killed 50.

[00:37:40] In their year of terror,

[00:37:42] because they knew each other only for a year,

[00:37:44] we know that.

[00:37:44] So that's the parameter of the crime.

[00:37:46] We think that probably they killed up to 50.

[00:37:49] But as you mentioned,

[00:37:52] Robert Knox was not the only surgeon in business.

[00:37:54] He was not the only person buying bodies.

[00:37:57] And it might be that over that period,

[00:38:00] we might be talking about three or 400 people

[00:38:04] went to the surgeon's table

[00:38:06] under what we'd describe now as suspicious circumstances.

[00:38:10] We'll never know.

[00:38:12] We'll never know because life was cheap.

[00:38:15] And there's one accurate survey done in 1841

[00:38:19] of street sex workers in Edinburgh.

[00:38:22] And it was reckoned that there were 800

[00:38:23] street sex workers working in Edinburgh at that time.

[00:38:26] Thousands in Glasgow, by the way,

[00:38:28] absolutely thousands in Glasgow.

[00:38:31] But seriously,

[00:38:32] what they measured was and calculated

[00:38:35] was that a third of these women died every year.

[00:38:38] So it was between 250 and 300 sex workers died every year

[00:38:45] from disease, tuberculosis, from alcohol,

[00:38:49] from suicide, and some of them murder as well.

[00:38:53] Life was incredibly cheap.

[00:38:54] So nobody will ever know

[00:38:56] how many people were dissected by surgeons.

[00:38:59] We could find out the average lifespan in those days,

[00:39:02] Tom, but even child mortality

[00:39:05] most babies wouldn't make it at that time.

[00:39:07] Everything was different.

[00:39:09] You touched on it right at the start of this evening

[00:39:11] when you said, we can't even imagine the social situation,

[00:39:15] the poverty and the way people led their lives.

[00:39:18] There was no benefit system.

[00:39:19] There was no safety net for people.

[00:39:21] There was no health service.

[00:39:23] It was a different world entirely

[00:39:25] that these people were living in.

[00:39:27] And as you say, people could disappear

[00:39:29] and there'd be no trace.

[00:39:30] This was a hugely important case

[00:39:31] for a number of reasons.

[00:39:32] One, it brought to the public attention

[00:39:35] the extent of urban squalor,

[00:39:37] the conditions in which these people were living.

[00:39:39] A few years later,

[00:39:40] when Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1832,

[00:39:44] started the huge Victorian reforms of public health

[00:39:47] and of the demolition of slums.

[00:39:49] It also brought to the attention

[00:39:51] the dependency on alcohol.

[00:39:54] And I'm not talking about the kind of alcohol

[00:39:56] that we would drink.

[00:39:57] I'm talking about fire water.

[00:39:58] I'm talking about alcohols homemade

[00:40:01] of all sorts of strengths.

[00:40:02] And again, a few years later come in the licensing acts

[00:40:07] and actually definitions of what whisky should be.

[00:40:10] It should be 40%, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:40:12] It also brought to attention this rancid anti-Irish,

[00:40:17] anti-Catholic sentiment that was abroad in Scotland.

[00:40:21] And some may say it still is.

[00:40:25] Some may say it still is

[00:40:26] in certain parts of the country.

[00:40:28] It tested the Scottish justice system

[00:40:32] and the Scottish justice system

[00:40:33] showed that it could cope with these extraordinary events,

[00:40:37] albeit with great difficulty, but it did.

[00:40:39] It tested the new policing system.

[00:40:41] We've spoken about that.

[00:40:42] It proved the concept of the new policing system.

[00:40:45] And as importantly,

[00:40:47] it brought in the Anatomy Act of 1840,

[00:40:50] which brought the powerful medical profession

[00:40:52] under some control.

[00:40:54] After the trial,

[00:40:55] there was obviously some concern in very high places,

[00:40:59] law and law advocate, et cetera, et cetera,

[00:41:01] that actually with the crimes of Burkin here,

[00:41:03] we're seeing the tip of the iceberg

[00:41:05] and that regulation was required.

[00:41:07] And the Anatomy Act of 1840 controls the way

[00:41:11] that the medical profession

[00:41:12] deal with the bodies of the deceased.

[00:41:15] And it still does.

[00:41:16] The Anatomy Act of 1840 is still the guiding statute

[00:41:21] which controls the way that the medical profession

[00:41:25] deal with the remains of the dead.

[00:41:27] And it's a very powerful, very prescriptive act.

[00:41:31] All of these revelations happened

[00:41:34] because of two drunken Irishmen

[00:41:37] who had a plan to make a few quid.

[00:41:40] I suppose if you were to sum it up and say,

[00:41:43] if you were to say to William Burkin, William Hare,

[00:41:47] that they by their actions

[00:41:50] brought about enormous social reform,

[00:41:52] I think it would be the last thing

[00:41:53] they would ever imagine.

[00:41:55] Tom, it's brilliant.

[00:41:56] If you go to Edinburgh University now,

[00:41:58] which I did last year,

[00:42:00] and you can see the skeleton of Burke

[00:42:02] hanging in his glass cage,

[00:42:04] and they're very, very strict about any photography

[00:42:07] or about anything like that in there.

[00:42:10] The masks are there,

[00:42:11] the face masks that were taken in prison.

[00:42:14] It's a great place for a visit

[00:42:15] and it's open to the public,

[00:42:16] although you have to book to get in

[00:42:18] and it's very busy,

[00:42:19] then it's very well worth a visit.

[00:42:21] Tom, that's fantastic.

[00:42:22] Can I just ask you,

[00:42:24] because of some of the information

[00:42:26] you were giving us there,

[00:42:27] I want to stress that on Crime Time Inc.

[00:42:29] we don't deal in fiction at all.

[00:42:31] And you've many times stated that we don't need to

[00:42:34] because the facts are much more interesting

[00:42:36] than fiction ever could be.

[00:42:38] Can you cite some of your sources

[00:42:40] for the court case and for the interview,

[00:42:43] for that kind of thing for our listeners

[00:42:45] so that they get an idea

[00:42:46] of where this information is available?

[00:42:48] The great thing about Scottish legal system

[00:42:50] is they are fastidious collectors of the records.

[00:42:54] And so I was able to get access to

[00:42:56] the complete transcript of the trial of William Burke.

[00:43:00] And I mean, the complete word for word transcript,

[00:43:03] everything that was said in that court,

[00:43:07] arising from and everything

[00:43:09] leading to the court proceedings.

[00:43:12] I had access to all of that.

[00:43:13] And as you just said,

[00:43:15] Edinburgh University have extensive records

[00:43:18] and indeed more than records.

[00:43:19] They have the skeleton of William Burke,

[00:43:21] which they guard very jealously.

[00:43:24] In fact, only last year,

[00:43:25] it was allowed to leave the university

[00:43:28] for the first time since 1829.

[00:43:31] And it went up to the National Museum of Scotland

[00:43:34] for a special exhibition.

[00:43:37] And the professor of anatomy at Edinburgh University,

[00:43:41] as well as being the professor of anatomy

[00:43:43] has a separate title quite distinct

[00:43:46] as the keeper of Burke's skeleton.

[00:43:49] Now imagine introducing yourself.

[00:43:50] Hello, I'm the keeper of Burke's skeleton.

[00:43:55] All of my research comes from publicly accessible data.

[00:43:59] What's interesting is that all the myth

[00:44:04] and fairy stories about Burke and Eyre,

[00:44:08] they're all quite easily researchable

[00:44:10] and yet they still prevail.

[00:44:13] It's not that I found a cache of secret documents.

[00:44:17] It's all there.

[00:44:18] You just need to read it and interpret it.

[00:44:20] I think that the real story behind William Burke

[00:44:23] and William Eyre and what actually happened

[00:44:26] over the year 1828 and 1829 is much more interesting

[00:44:31] and much more compelling than some fairy story

[00:44:34] about body snatchers, which is just nonsense.

[00:44:37] And you don't have to be the former retired

[00:44:40] deputy chief constable of Oldenham Borders Police

[00:44:43] to access this information,

[00:44:44] just to make that perfectly clear.

[00:44:46] All you need is a library ticket.

[00:44:48] Ha ha ha, fantastic.

[00:44:53] We'll speak soon, Tom.

[00:44:54] Really enjoyed that.

[00:44:55] Thanks for doing that for us.

[00:44:57] The story of Burke and Eyre,

[00:44:58] the story that I've just been speaking about,

[00:45:01] will appear in my new book of collected stories,

[00:45:04] which will be coming out later this year.

[00:45:06] Next time on Crime Time, Inc.

[00:45:09] But they said that this child had last been seen

[00:45:11] in the company of a known pedophile.

[00:45:15] Again, I arrived.

[00:45:16] This little boy had been reported missing

[00:45:18] by his mother and a search revealed

[00:45:20] that the wee soul was dead.

[00:45:25] Spent the entire night painstakingly

[00:45:28] photographing, videoing the scene

[00:45:30] while they recovered Mark's remains.

[00:45:36] There was a police cordon around the place.

[00:45:38] They knew from CCTV who he was.

[00:45:41] He was nowhere to be found.

[00:45:46] And then during the course of the evening,

[00:45:47] he turned up at the cordon with a pizza,

[00:45:50] asking for access to his house.

[00:45:52] And the cops asked him what his name was

[00:45:53] and he said Stuart Leggett.