Authors: Brian Bailey
Perhaps Professor Wilson saw it after it had been cleared of all its contents by the police.
Burke and Mrs Docherty, at any rate, were seen entering by both Mrs Connoway and Mrs Law, who were sitting together by Mrs Connoway’s fireside with the door open. Four others were present in Burke’s house – Nelly McDougal, and a Mr James Gray and his wife Ann, with their infant child, who were lodging there. Burke and Nelly had not been slow to sub-let the premises they now occupied. Ann Gray’s maiden name was McDougal and her father was none other than the man Nelly had lived with, bearing him two children before she left to live with Burke.
Having introduced Mrs Docherty to everyone and settled her down with food and drink, Burke left, ostensibly to buy enough drink for the Hallowe’en party they were to have that night. But in Rymer’s shop he found Hare, and told him that he had ‘a good shot for the doctors’. Hare went to Burke’s house to have a look, saw the ‘old woman’ washing her striped shift, and left after a few minutes.
The woman’s married name was Campbell, but she was commonly known as Docherty and repeatedly referred to as an ‘old woman’. We may again doubt if she was old. The only person who was at all specific later with regard to the woman’s age was a Mrs Stewart with whom Mrs Docherty had stayed for one night when she came to town looking for her son Michael. Mrs Stewart thought she was ‘between forty and fifty’, and in ‘as good health as any woman could be, to all appearance’. William Noble, Rymer’s shop-boy, described her as ‘middle-aged’. Professor Christison, who later carried out a post-mortem examination, testified that except for a ‘very slight incipient disorder of the liver’, all her internal organs were ‘unusually sound’ and there were no signs of any disease.
During the afternoon, Burke told the Grays that he wanted the bed that night for Mrs Docherty, who was a relation of his, and that he would pay for them to lodge somewhere else. He fixed them up at Hare’s place. Mrs Connoway turned up briefly and was introduced to the stranger, who was sitting by the fire ‘supping porridge and milk’. Nelly McDougal told her that Mrs Docherty was a Highland woman, a friend of her husband’s.
At about four o’clock, young Broggan, the former tenant’s son, who called Nelly McDougal ‘aunt’, came in and saw Burke and Nelly, Hare and Maggie, the Grays and two ‘strange women’, one of whom was Mrs Docherty and the other Mrs Connoway. The Grays left shortly afterwards and went to Tanner’s Close with Maggie, who must have come straight back, because Mrs Law saw her there between six and seven. Soon after dark Nelly McDougal called at Mrs Connoway’s and asked her to keep an eye on her door until she came back, as it did not lock. John Broggan left at about seven o’clock. At about nine, the Grays came back briefly to get their child’s clothes, and saw Burke and Hare drinking, their two women dancing, and Mrs Docherty singing.
Some time later, Mr Connoway remarked to his wife that he thought someone had gone into Burke’s. His wife took a light to have a look, but found only Mrs Docherty there, somewhat the worse for drink. Mrs Docherty followed her out, saying she was going to meet someone in St Mary’s Wynd who had promised to ‘fetch her word about her son’. Mrs Connoway dissuaded her from going out in that condition, as she would get lost or be picked up by the police. Instead Mrs Docherty went into the Connoways’ house and stayed with them for about an hour and a half. She told them that her own name was Docherty and her married name Campbell, and she would not hear of it when Mrs Connoway told her Burke’s name, insisting it was Docherty like her own because he had told her so himself.
While Mrs Docherty was with the Connoways, Hare, Maggie and Nelly turned up with a bottle. They all started drinking again and Hare, Nelly and Mrs Docherty started dancing. The others soon left, but Mrs Docherty would not go until Burke came home. Mrs Connoway was anxious for her to leave, as it was getting late and she had to be up by four in the morning to get her husband’s breakfast before he went to work. But Mrs Docherty bade her not to be cruel to strangers, and only left when Burke came home between ten and eleven o’clock. Mrs Connoway then locked her door and went to bed.
At ten o’clock, Burke had knocked at the door of David Paterson, who lived in the Wester Ports burgh nearby, but was told by his sister that he was out. Amid all the comings and goings of the late afternoon and evening, the notable absentee was Burke. We have no account of his whereabouts between about four o’clock, when young Broggan saw him, and ten o’clock when he knocked at Paterson’s door. No one appears to have asked him what he was doing during those six hours. Meanwhile, Hare and Maggie had gone home for their supper and Nelly McDougal joined them, but they were not there long, all three leaving again before Mrs Gray went to bed at around eleven. About half an hour later, neighbours heard a disturbance in Burke’s house – not, it appears, an infrequent occurrence. Mrs Connoway thought she heard fighting. Mrs Law heard scuffling and fighting, and recognised Burke’s voice in the noise that went on for some time before she fell asleep.
Hugh Alston, a grocer who lived in a flat above the shop which fronted the building, came home with his wife at about half-past eleven and heard a noisy quarrel between two men as well as a woman’s voice crying ‘for God sake get the police, there’s murder here’. The noise came from Burke’s house, and Mr Alston went to find a policeman, but without success. When he came back the noise had subsided and the woman had stopped crying out.
Around midnight, David Paterson came home to find Burke rapping at his door. He told Paterson he wanted to see him at his house, so Paterson followed him there, noticing that Burke walked ‘a little drunkish ways’. Burke and Hare were there with their women. Burke told Paterson that he had ‘procured something for the doctor’, and pointed to the straw at one end of the bed. Burke was evidently hoping for some money on account, but Paterson told him that only Dr Knox could deal with that. Paterson then left.
At two o’clock in the morning of Saturday, 1 November, John Broggan came back to find Hare and his wife in bed and Burke and Nelly standing and talking by the window. At about eight, Nelly McDougal went to Mrs Law’s and asked to borrow her bellows to get a fire started. She asked Mrs Law if she had heard Burke and Hare fighting. Mrs Law enquired about the ‘little woman’. Nelly replied that she had been ‘using too much freedom with William’, so she had ‘kicked the damned bitch’s backside out of the door’. Soon afterwards, Mrs Law was with Mrs Connoway when they heard Hare in the passage calling for Mrs Law, but they did not answer. At about nine, Burke went to see Paterson, who had sent his sister Elizabeth to fetch him. She had been directed to Burke’s door by Mrs Connoway. Paterson told Burke that if he had anything to say or do with Dr Knox, to go and settle direct with him. Burke said he would and left. Shortly afterwards, Burke went to Hare’s looking for Gray, to ‘give him a dram of spirits’, and met Gray outside with his child in his arms. Burke asked him to come back to his house for breakfast. Gray and his wife returned to Burke’s, where they found Burke and Nelly, Mrs Law and Mrs Connoway, and young Broggan. Mrs Gray and Mrs Connoway asked Nelly about the old woman, and got similar replies to the one Mrs Law had received, that she had been turned out of the house for being too familiar with Burke.
Burke suddenly started splashing whisky about the room. He threw some from his cup towards the ceiling, and sprinkled more about the bed and the straw on the floor, and over his own chest. This was seen by Mrs Connoway, Mrs Law, Mrs Gray and Broggan. Burke said he wanted the bottle ‘toom’ (empty) to get more. Mrs Gray, who was smoking a pipe, looked around the straw at the foot of the bed for her child’s stockings, and Burke, with an oath, told her to ‘keep out there’. Around midday, when the neighbours had left, Burke told young Broggan to sit on a chair in the corner near the straw until he came back, and not let anyone near it. But after Burke went out, Broggan left too.
Early in the afternoon, Paterson saw either Burke or Hare – he could not remember which – standing with Dr Knox and Jones in Knox’s premises in Surgeons’ Square, telling them that he had a subject. Knox told Paterson that if they brought a package he was to take it from them.
There were more comings and goings at Burke’s house in the afternoon, but later on, ‘in the darkening’, Mrs Gray was in the house with her husband and child when, suspicious of Burke’s strange behaviour, she lifted some of the straw at the foot of the bed and uncovered first an arm, then the naked body of a woman whom she and her husband immediately recognised as Mary Docherty. There was a little blood on the face. Mr Gray went out at once and met Nelly McDougal on the stairs. He asked her about the body. (Mrs Gray overheard the conversation outside and testified that her husband told McDougal that ‘he had found a corpse in the house’.) Nelly fell on her knees and begged him to ‘hold his tongue and she would give him a few shillings, and if he would be quiet, it might be worth £10 a week to him’. Mrs Gray then spoke to Nelly herself and got a similar offer. Mrs Gray said, ‘God forbid that my husband should be worth that for dead bodies,’ and asked McDougal what she meant by bringing her family into disgrace by it. Nelly said, ‘My God, I cannot help it,’ and Mrs Gray replied, ‘You surely can help it, or you would not stay in the house.’ Mr and Mrs Gray left with Nelly hot on their heels and met Maggie Laird in the street. Maggie tried to persuade them all to go back in the house and not attract attention by quarrelling in the street. But the Grays went to a public house for a while before Mr Gray went off to inform the police. Mrs Gray had told Mrs Connoway that a dead body had been found in the house, and later took her in, while everyone else was out, to show her the corpse, but Mrs Connoway was afraid to look and went back home.
Burke, meanwhile, had been to Rymer’s shop and bought a tea-chest, which he said he would send Maggie Laird for, and she duly turned up to collect it. At about six o’clock, Burke knocked at the door of a porter, John McCulloch, in Allison’s Close, off the Cowgate. He asked the man to come with him, as he had a job for him. McCulloch followed Burke to his house and was shown a tea-chest. Hare was there, too. McCulloch saw Burke put the body, together with some straw, into the box. He saw some hair hanging out and stuffed it in before the lid was put down, which required some pressure.
The box was then roped and McCulloch was given instructions to carry it along the Cowgate to the head of the High School Wynd, where Burke would meet him. The porter was in the wynd when Burke and Hare and their women caught up with him and led him to 10 Surgeons’ Square. McCulloch took the box into the house, where Paterson was waiting, and put it down in the cellar. He was then asked by Burke to come with them all to Newington. It was about seven o’clock. The five all trooped off to Newington with Paterson and Jones, waiting outside while Paterson and Jones went into Dr Knox’s house and told him about the delivery. Knox gave Paterson £5 to divide between the two suppliers, with instructions to call at Surgeons’ Square on Monday, by which time Knox would have seen the subject and would give them the rest of their money. In a public house, Paterson gave £2 10 shillings each to Burke and Hare, and they gave the porter five shillings. When Burke came home, he met Mr Connoway, who told him that local gossip had it that Burke had murdered the woman. Burke laughed and said he did not care what all Scotland said about him.
At approximately the same time as the tea-chest was being deposited at Surgeons’ Square, James Gray arrived at the police office and reported his suspicions to Sergeant John Fisher, who went with him and an officer named Findlay to Burke’s house. They met Burke and Nelly coming up the stairs from the apartment, and Fisher asked them to go back inside. The place was empty and there was no body. Fisher, learning that the Grays had been evicted the night before, suspected that they were causing a scene out of spite. He asked Burke what had happened to the woman who had been there the day before, and Burke said that she had left about seven o’clock that morning. Hare and several others, he added, had seen her go. Fisher looked round and found bloodstains on the bed and the straw. He asked Nelly McDougal how they came to be there, and she said that a woman having her period had been there a fortnight ago and the bed had not been washed since. McDougal told Fisher that this woman lived in the Pleasance and could be found.
Nelly added that she had since seen Mrs Docherty, who had apologised for her behaviour the night before. Fisher asked her what time she had left the house. McDougal’s answer was that she had gone at seven o’clock on the Friday night. This discrepancy between Burke and Nelly led Sergeant Fisher to take them both to the police office, where they were interviewed by Lieutenant Paterson, who, later that evening, went to Burke’s house with Sergeant Fisher and Mr Black, a police surgeon. They saw the signs of fresh blood and took away a striped nightgown which was lying on the bed.
At about seven o’clock on Sunday morning, Lieutenant Paterson and Sergeant Fisher called on David Paterson, at his home, and he went with them to Dr Knox’s premises, where he unlocked the cellar and showed them the tea-chest, still tied with rope. The box was opened and the naked corpse of an elderly woman was found doubled up inside it. The face had a livid colour and there was blood round the mouth. Mr Gray was sent for, and he identified the body as that of the woman he had seen alive in Burke’s house on Friday and dead under the straw on Saturday. The body was removed to the police office, where Mrs Law also identified it. The corpse was examined by Alexander Black, who considered that the woman had probably died by violence, but he could not say so with certainty. When it was shown to Burke and McDougal, they denied ever having seen the woman, dead or alive. The Hares and Broggan were then arrested at Tanner’s Close and taken to the police office where they, too, denied all knowledge of the woman.
Meanwhile, the press had got hold of the bare facts, and rumour began to spread through the city. The uncertainty surrounding the first revelations of events is well illustrated by the
Evening Courant
’s account of 3 November: