William Burke and William Hare

William Burke (d. 1829) and William Hare (d. 1859?) were Irish-born "resurrectionists" who sold corpses of people they murdered to Edinburgh medical college. They killed 16 people in total. Their favorite customer was Edinburgh doctor Robert Knox who used to give them £7 10/- for corpse.

Burke and Hare originated from Ulster (modern-day Northern Ireland) but moved to Edinburgh, Scotland to work as laborers in the Union Canal.

William Burke had served as an officer's servant in the Donegal Militia and left his wife and two children in Ireland. In the Union Canal he acquired a mistress, Helen MacDougal and afterwards worked as a labourer, weaver, baker and lastly a cobbler.

William Hare, after he stopped working in the Canal, moved to Edinburgh where he acquainted with man named Logue. When Logue died in 1826, Hare and Logue's widow Margaret begun to run an inn as husband and wife. Burke and his mistress became regular tenants. It is not known whether they knew each other from the canal works.

According to Hare's later testimony, the first body they sold was that of a dead tenant who owed Hare £4 rent. They stole the body from its coffin and sold it to Edinburgh medical school for £7. That happened in November 1827. That was also the first time they met their favorite future customer, professor Robert Knox.

Their next victim was a sick tenant Joseph the Miller who they filled with whisky and suffocated. When there were no other "dying" tenants, they decided to lure a victim from the street. In February 1828 they invited pensioner Abigail Simpson to spend the night before her return to home. They got her drunk and smothered her. Because the corpse was so fresh, they were rewarded with £10.

After another killed tenant, Margaret Hare invited a woman to the inn, got her drunk and then sent for her husband. Next Burke brought in two prostitutes, Mary Paterson and Janet Brown but Brown left when an argument broke out between Helen and Burke. When she returned, she was told that Paterson had left with Burke. Next morning some of the medical students recognized the killed prostitute, possibly because they had used her services.

The next victim was Burke's acquaintance, beggar woman called Effie. They got £10 for her body. Then Burke "saved" a woman from police claiming that he knew her and delivered her to medical school hours later.

The next two victims were an old woman and a deaf boy; Burke and Hare argued over the boy but then Burke broke his back and sold both bodies for £8 each. The next two victims were Burke's acquaintances Mrs Ostler and MacDougall's relative Ann MacDougal.

Then Hare met elderly prostitute Mary Haldane. When her daughter Peggy inquired about her whereabouts, she ended up accompanying her mother in the medical school cutting table. However, this disappearance was noticed since Mary Haldane had been a well-known figure in the neighborhood.

Their next victim was an even better-known person, a retarded young man called Daft Jamie. The boy resisted and the pair had to kill him together. His mother began to ask for her boy. When Dr Knox uncovered the body the next morning, several students recognized Jamie; Knox denied that he was Jamie but apparently began to dismantle his face first.

The last victim was Mary Docherty; Burke lured her in by claiming that his mother was also a Docherty but he had to wait because of James and Ann Gray who were lodging with them. The Grays left for the night and neighbors heard the noise of a struggle. Next day Ann Gray became suspicious when Burke would not let her approach a bed where she had left her stockings. When the Grays were left alone in the house in the early evening, they checked the bed and found Docherty's body under it. On their way to alert the police, they ran into Helen who tried to bribe them with an offer of £10 a week. They refused.

Helen and Margaret alerted their spouses and Burke and Hare took the body out of the house before the police arrived. However, under cross-examination, Burke claimed that Docherty had left at 7 o'clock in the morning then Helen claimed that she had left in the evening. Police arrested them. An anonymous tip lead them to Knox's classroom where they found Docherty's body; James Gray identified it. Hares were arrested soon after. The murder spree had lasted eleven months.

When an Edinburgh paper wrote about the disappearances in November 6, Janet Brown heard about and went to the police. She identified Mary Paterson's clothing.

Evidence was scarce so Lord Advocate Sir William Rae offered Hare immunity from prosecution if he turned King's Evidence. Hare's testimony lead to Burke's death sentence December 1828 but Helen MacDougall was released because her complicity to the murders could not be proven. Robert Knox was not prosecuted despite a public uproar.

William Burke was publicly hanged January 28 1829 in Edinburgh's Lawnmarket. The Anatomy Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh holds his death mask and a wallet allegedly made of his skin.

William Hare was released the next February. He migrated to Carlisle, England and disappeared from history. One tale claims that a lynch mob blinded him and threw him into a lime pit but that may be just a legend. Another tale tells that he moved to London and died there penniless in 1859.

Helen MagDougal returned to her house but was almost lynched by an angry mob. She fled to England but her reputation preceded her. She was rumored to have left for Australia where she died around 1868.

Margaret Hare also escaped lynching and reputedly returned to Ireland. Nothing else is known about her.

Robert Knox kept silent about his dealings with Burke and Hare but his popularity among students decreased. His applications to other positions in the Edinburgh medical school were rejected. He moved to Cancer Hospital in London and died in 1862.

The West Port murders have entered the timeless culture of children’s folklore. Threats of visits from Burke and Hare are used by some parents to discipline unruly children, and the pair are even prominently featured in a couple of sing-song rhymes that accompany children’s jump rope and hopscotch games:

Up the close and down the stair,

In the house with Burke and Hare.

Burke’s the butcher, Hare’s the thief,

Knox, the boy who buys the beef.

A close in Edinburgh's old town is a narrow alleyway, usually arched over by the houses fronting on to the High Street or Canongate. The term is also used for the passageway leading from the front door of a tenement past the stair.