Burke and Hare Read Free

streets. They spent the winter quietly waiting for another opportunity to present itself in Hare’s lodging house.
    It is difficult to overstate the brutality of their method of execution. Most of their victims, even though drunk, must have been conscious that they were being murdered for several moments, but were rendered incapable of any physical resistance. The most basic human instinct of clinging to life was suppressed, and they must have been seized by panic as their lungs seemed likely to burst in the struggle for air.
    In Burke’s Courant confession, the nameless Englishman was the second of their victims and he, too, fell seriously ill in Hare’s house. These two old derelicts could be disposed of in relative secrecy. Only Burke and Hare themselves, and possibly their women, would have known anything about it. Abigail Simpson was the unfortunate target, we may surely assume, of two furtive and skulking devils emboldened by the smoothness of their previous transactions with Knox and his men, as well as the implied encouragement to bring as many bodies as they could, and their greed for more easy money.
    Burke remarked in his Courant confession that he and Hare ‘often said to one another that no person could find them out, no one being present at the murders but themselves two; and that they might be as well hanged for a sheep as a lamb’. They certainly took a huge step of mind-boggling recklessness or stupidity with their next victim, who fell into their hands (as mentioned in both of Burke’s statements) in April.
    Early one morning, generally believed to have been Wednesday, 9 April, Burke was drinking rum and bitters in William Swanston’s shop in the Canongate when two young prostitutes came in. They were Janet Brown and Mary Paterson, aka Mitchell, both in their late teens and well known on the city streets. Mary, in particular, was a good-looking girl who had turned to prostitution in desperation, having been orphaned in childhood. She had curling-papers in her hair. Both girls had spent the previous night in the Canongate watch-house, having been arrested for a disturbance of the peace. On their release at six o’clock, they had gone, for some unexplained reason, to their former lodging at the house of a Mrs Lawrie, although they were now lodging with a Mrs Isabella Burnet or Worthington in Leith Wynd. No doubt both landladies were brothel-keepers.
    Burke approached the girls in Swanston’s and bought them drinks, then invited them to his lodgings for breakfast. Mary, the more bold and impulsive of the two, took little persuading and after a time Burke overcame Janet’s reluctance with flattery and extravagant promises. The three left Swanston’s shop with two bottles of whisky. But instead of walking them to Tanner’s Close, Burke took them to his brother Constantine’s place in nearby Gibb’s Close off the Canongate, telling them he was lodging there. He was no doubt anxious to avoid being seen by anyone who might recognise the girls, either in the streets or in Hare’s place.
    A bed hung with tattered curtains and a truckle-bed were among the scant furnishings of a single room reached via a dark passage and a narrow staircase. Con Burke and his wife were still in bed, but Mrs Burke got up and prepared breakfast for the visitors, and they washed down their eggs, bread and smoked haddock with tea and whisky. By the time Con Burke left for work, Mary Paterson was almost senseless. Janet, however, was still wide awake, and Burke persuaded her to go out with him for a breath of air. He took her to a nearby tavern where he plied her with pies and beer, then took her back to Gibb’s Close. They were just sitting down at the table to consume more whisky when the curtains round the bed flew open and the livid features of Nelly McDougal appeared.
    Nelly had called in while Burke was out, to find the young and attractive Paterson slumped across the table and Burke out, as Elizabeth Burke must have told