West Port Murders
As West Port murders ( English : West Port murders ) are identified by William Burke and William Hare in the years 1827 and 1828 in Edinburgh called committed 16 murders. The motive of the perpetrators was financial, the corpses of their victims killed for this purpose they sold as anatomical corpses to the Edinburgh Medical College . Your main customer there was Robert Knox .
Historical background
The historical background for this series of murders is the fact that a law was only passed in the United Kingdom in 1832 that placed the supply of anatomists with corpses for study and teaching purposes on a legal basis. Before that, developing science moved in a legal gray area, with its need for supplies also attracting criminal elements such as grave robbers or, as in this case, murderers.
History of the murders
In 1827 Burke and his mistress Helen MacDougal were long-term renters at the Edinburgh guesthouse run by Hare and his wife Margaret. Burke and Hare might have met as colleagues, both of whom had worked for the Union Canal . According to Hare's later testimony, the idea of their source of income came to them because a tenant who had died naturally owed him £ 4 in rent. So in November of that year they stole his body from its coffin and sold it to Knox for £ 7. After that, they first dug up freshly buried dead in cemeteries.
Series of murders
But because the demand could not be satisfied by this alone, they started killing. Their victims belonged to both sexes (seven women, three men) and mostly came from the lower classes of society. Burke developed a specific method of killing, called " burking " after him . The series lasted eleven months.
The first victim was a sick tenant Hare named Joseph the Miller. When there were no sick roommates, they lured victims from the street to the boarding house. Most of them were already drunk. This was the first thing that happened to retiree Abigail Simpson in February 1828. Because her body was so fresh, they received £ 15 for it. Another tenant followed, and after that Margaret Hare invited a woman to the adjoining pub, got her drunk with beer, and sent for her husband. Next, Burke brought in two prostitutes named Mary Patterson and Janet Brown. The latter left the hostel after an argument between Burke and MacDougal, and when she returned she was told that her colleague had left with Burke. The next morning, Patterson was recognized by some medical students, possibly because they had previously used her services. The next victim was an acquaintance of Burke's, a beggar named Effie. They received £ 10 for her body. This was followed by a woman whom Burke had triggered to the police by pretending to know her and who was turned over to anatomy just hours later. An old woman and a deaf boy died next. Hare initially opposed killing the child, but Burke prevailed. The price achieved this time was £ 8 each. Then it was Mrs. Ostler's turn, another of Burke's acquaintances. MacDougal's relative, Ann MacDougal, was not spared either. The older prostitute Mary Haldane and, when she inquired about her whereabouts, her daughter Peggy followed. The disappearance of these two women did not go unnoticed, however, because Mary Haldane was a well-known figure in the neighborhood. Even better known was a retarded young man named Daft Jamie. This offered resistance so that Burke and Hare could only kill him together. His mother began inquiring about him, and when Knox revealed his body the next morning, the boy was recognized by some students. Knox denied identity and began the dissection on the dead man's face. The last victim, named Mary Docherty, lured Burke into the house by pretending that his mother was also named Docherty and so might be related to her. He had to wait until the tenants James and Ann Gray had left the hostel to carry out the crime.
Exposure
On the night this couple was absent, however, neighbors heard fighting noises. Ann Gray became suspicious the next day when Burke refused to let her near a bed where she had forgotten her stockings. When the Grays were alone in the house in the early evening, they found the body of Abererty under this bed. They met MacDougal on their way to the police station. She tried unsuccessfully to bribe them by offering them to pay them £ 10 hush money every week.
MacDougal and Margaret Hare alerted their life partners, who managed to get the body out of the house before the police arrived. However, during interrogation they made contradicting statements. Burke stated that Docherty left at seven in the morning, while MacDougal claimed she left that evening. The two men were then arrested. An anonymous tip led the investigators to Knox's lecture hall, where they found Docherty's body. James Gray identified the dead. The arrests of MacDougal and Margaret Hare soon followed.
After an Edinburgh newspaper reported the events on November 6, 1828, Janet Brown found out about it, reported to the police and was able to identify Mary Patterson's clothes.
process
Since the burden of evidence was still not overwhelming, the Scottish Chief Prosecutor, Lord Advocate Sir William Rae Hare, offered not to prosecute him if he confessed and testified against Burke. Hare's testimony led to Burke's death sentence in December 1828. On January 28, 1829, Burke was publicly hanged . Subsequently, his body was by Alexander Monro III. dissected in the anatomical room of the University of Edinburgh . His death mask is kept in the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh , as is a wallet supposedly made from his skin. A notebook, the cover of which is said to be made from the same material, is kept by the Edinburgh police. His skeleton is now in the Edinburgh University Museum. Helen MacDougal was released because her involvement in the murders was unproven. Despite public outrage, Knox was not charged.
Another fate of the other participants
Knox was silent about his dealings with Burke and Hare. However, its popularity among students suffered. His applications for other positions within Edinburgh Medical School were rejected. He moved to the London Cancer Hospital and died in 1862.
Helen MacDougal first returned to her home and narrowly escaped the mob. She fled to England , but her reputation preceded her. Rumor has it that she finally emigrated to Australia and died there in 1868. Margaret Hare also escaped the lynch mob and allegedly returned to Ireland .
Political Consequences
The series of murders highlighted conditions in medical training and contributed significantly to the enactment of the Anatomy Act of 1832. This law expanded the legal possibilities of obtaining corpses to remove the incentive to engage in illegal activities.
The Lancet Editorial wrote:
“Burke and Hare (...) are said to be the real authors of this measure, and what would otherwise never have been sanctioned by the wisdom of Parliament has been enforced by its fears (…) It would have been better if these fears had manifested themselves and would have been implemented before sixteen people fell victim to the indolence of government and legislature. It did not require any extraordinary acumen to foresee that the interplay between corpse thieves and anatomists, which the executive has tolerated for so long, would inevitably lead to the worst consequences. The government is to a high degree jointly responsible for the crime which it has made possible through its negligence and which it has even encouraged through systematic tolerance. "
Adaptations
Threats of a visit from the two of them are used in the Anglo-Saxon-speaking area by some parents to discipline unruly children. They have thus become child horrors.
Children's names are also used in some counting rhymes, such as the following:
"Up the close and down the stair,
In the house with Burke and Hare.
Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief,
Knox, the man who buys the beef. "
literature
The short story The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson , which was also filmed under the same title in 1945, refers to the West Port murders .
The novel of the twenty-two résumés (“Vies imaginaires”, 1896) by Marcel Schwob closes with a literary sketch of the West Port murders.
Film adaptations
The story of the murders themselves was first filmed in 1948 under the working title Crimes of Burke & Hare . However, the British Film Censors found his historical subject too troubling and demanded that all references to Burke and Hare be removed. The film was therefore re- dubbed and released under the title The Greed of William Hart . The original text, however, is obvious to anyone in the art of lip reading . The 1971 film adaptation of Burke and Hare was less squeamish .
Burke and Hare also appear in the hammer film Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde from the same year. In 1985, Freddie Francis directed another film adaptation called The Doctor and the Devils .
Irvine Welsh wrote a screenplay entitled The Meat Trade , which was originally to be filmed with Robert Carlyle and Colin Firth and directed by Antonia Bird .
In 2010, director John Landis filmed the material under the title Burke & Hare , this time as a comedy with black humor . Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis took on the roles of Burke and Hare.
Other adaptations
The radio play Medicinal Purposes - a spin-off of the television series Doctor Who - also revolves around Burke and Hare.
The second season of the US television series CSI contains an episode with the original title “Burked” in which someone commits very similar acts to the Burkes and Hare.
Folk musician Robin Laing composed a song Burke and Hare .
The episode Burke & Hare of the second season of the US series Lore also deals with the two killers.
literature
English
- N. Adams: Scottish Bodysnatchers . Goblinshead, Musselburgh 2002, ISBN 1-899874-40-2 .
- B. Bailey: Burke and Hare - The Year of the Ghouls . Mainstream, Edinburgh 2002, ISBN 1-84018-575-9 .
- H. Douglas: Burke and Hare . R. Hale, London 1973. ISBN 0-7091-3777-X
- OD Edwards: Burke and Hare . Mercat Press, Edinburgh 1993, ISBN 1-873644-25-6 .
- HP MacDonald: Human Remains: Episodes in Human Dissection . Melbourne Univ. Press AT, Carlton 2005, ISBN 0-522-85157-6 .
- R. Richardson: Death, Dissection and the Destitute . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2001, ISBN 0-226-71240-0 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/people/burkehare.aspx
- ↑ Lancet Editorial, 1828/29 (1), pp. 818–821 (March 28, 1829)
- ↑ The word "close" refers to both a narrow alley in the old town of Edinburgh and the corridor between the front door of a house and the stairs.