Part 13

"But what has become of the little woman who was here yesterday?" he continued.

"She's away."

"When did she leave?"

"About seven o'clock in the morning, and Hare will swear he saw her go."

"Any more to swear that?"

"Oh, a number!" replied Burke, insolently.

Whereupon Fisher began to look about the house, and especially the bed, where he saw many marks of blood.

"How came these there?" he inquired at Helen M'Dougal.

"Oh," replied she, confidently, "a woman lay-in there about a fortnight ago, and the bed has not been washed since; and as for the little old woman, she can be found. She lives in the Pleasance, and I saw her to-night in the Vennel."

"And when did she leave this?" he rejoined.

"About seven o'clock at night," replied the incautious Helen.

Upon this small discrepancy depended the further prosecution of the inquiry, and, consequently, either the present discovery of the conspiracy, or the continuation of it, with, probably, if possible, increased atrocity, for Fisher was satisfied as to the blood as well as to Gray's spite, and, according to his own assertion, came to the resolution of taking Burke and M'Dougal to the Office, only on the mere chance ground of their difference about a time of the day. On arriving before the Superintendent, Fisher mentioned what he had seen, and also what he thought; but the superior, quickened by the mention of the blood, which so far, hypothetically, at least, harmonised with Gray's story, took another view. Yet how far was he from suspecting that he had in his very hands the key to that chamber of horrors, the untraceable existence of which had for a time produced so much deep-breathing oppression in the public mind! He immediately paid a visit to the house, along with the police surgeon, Mr Black, and Fisher himself. There they found a stripped bed-gown, which Mrs Law, who came in, stated belonged to the little old woman, and in addition to what Fisher had seen, a quantity of fresh blood, mixed with fifteen or sixteen ounces of saliva, among the straw now under the bed, but which, as we have seen, lay formerly between the end of the bed and the wall.

On the following morning, the same three parties proceeded to Dr Knox's rooms in Surgeon's Square, and having got the curator formerly mentioned, who felt no hesitation in assisting their inquiries, they were led by him to the cellar. "There is the box," said he, "but I do not know what is in it." On opening it they found the body of a woman quite naked, and Gray having then been sent for, came and identified it as that of the little old woman. Thereupon the body and box were conveyed to the Police-office; and on the day following an examination was conducted by Dr Christison and Dr Newbigging, assisted by Mr Black, which, according to the conjectures of the first, who as yet knew nothing of the real manner of death, harmonised wonderfully with the res gesta. There were several contusions on the legs, probably caused by the heavy shoes of the assailants--another on the left loin--another on the shoulder-blade--one on the inside of the lip, the consequence of pressure against the teeth, and two upon the head, probably from being knocked against the floor in restraint of efforts to rise. Above all, as an index to the modus, there was a ruffling of the scarf skin under the chin, and as a proof of the force, a laceration of the ligaments connecting the posterior parts of two of the vertebræ, whereby blood had effused among the spinal muscles as far down as the middle of the back. There was also blood oozing from the mouth and nose. The body appeared to be that of a healthy person, all the organs of the vital parts being unusually sound. From all which, Dr Christison, and also the two other doctors, drew the conclusion, that the woman had met with a violent death by means of throttling--a form indicated by the ruffling of the skin below the chin as more likely than that of smothering or suffocation. Nor was this conclusion liable to be affected by the fact stated by Mr Black, that many of the intemperate people of the city, and so many that he had seen six cases in the Police-office at one time, were often on the eve of death, nay, altogether deprived of life, through accidental suffocation from drink, produced by chance obstruction of the mouth, or lying with the face on a pillow.

All this information having been obtained, the authorities were at length roused, and the Lord Advocate, it is said, saw at once that he was on the eve of a great discovery, which would explain the recent disappearances. All secrecy was imposed upon officials, yet in spite of the precaution, parts of the story got currency among the people, and, offering a solution as they did of the prevailing mystery, deepened the awe, while they stimulated the curiosity not of the city only, but the kingdom. Hare and his wife were laid hold of, and inquiries in every direction set on foot and prosecuted. Recourse was had to the culprits, in the hope that some one or more of them would confess, but at first there was no success in this direction, each of them maintaining that they knew nothing of the death of the woman, or the fate of any of the prior victims. On the 3d and 10th of November, Burke and Helen M'Dougal, finding that one fact could not be denied, that a dead body was found in their house, issued declarations whereby a story was trumped up to the effect that it was brought there by a stranger, who called one day to get some work performed by the former; but these were disregarded as inconsistent and ridiculous, and the authorities were left to their scent. The evidence of the Grays was of great importance, and other people were found who could speak to isolated facts. Hugh Alston could swear that at half-past eleven on the night of the 31st of October, when he was going to his house, in the same land where Burke resided, he heard a noise coming from the latter's room--men quarrelling and fighting--(the feint preceding the onslaught)--and amidst the uproar the peculiar voice of a female crying murder, then after some minutes the uproar diminished, and he heard a cry as if proceeding from a person or animal that had been in the act of being strangled. This circumstance recurred to him, and struck him forcibly next evening, when he heard that a body had been found in that house.

Additional information was got from Mrs Connoway, who occupied a room on the right hand of the main passage leading to that other which terminated in Burke's apartment. She remembered that, on Hallowe'en night, Burke brought in with him a little old woman; that, on subsequently going into his house, she saw her there sitting by the fire supping porridge and milk, and upon her saying, "You have got a stranger," M'Dougal replied, "Yes, a Highland woman, a friend of Burke's." In the darkening, the woman came into her house, and she was surprised to hear her calling Burke by the name of Docherty, wherein she corrected her. By and by, Hare and the two women followed, one of the latter having a bottle of whisky, part of which the stranger partook of along with the rest. Thereafter they got merry, when they all rose and danced, the little old woman among the rest. When the others left, the woman remained till such time as Burke, who was out, should return to his own house, because she trusted to him for protection. During the night she was disturbed by a terrible noise as of a fight; and in the morning, about nine or ten, having gone ben, she found collected Mrs Law, Young, Broggan, M'Dougal, and Burke, the last drinking whisky, and sprinkling it over the bed and the straw, and M'Dougal singing a song. On inquiring where the little old woman was, she was told by Helen that she had kicked her out, because she was "ower freendly" with her husband. Towards six she was called upon by Mrs Gray, who having previously told her of the dead body, asked her to go in and see it, but when she complied, she got so frightened that she turned and ran out. Further on, her husband told Burke that it was reported that he had murdered the woman; on hearing which he laughed very loud, as well as M'Dougal, who was present, and then said, he "did not regard what all Scotland said of him." Nor did he seem to be in the smallest degree afraid. This information afforded by Mrs Connoway was corroborated to a certain extent by Mrs Law, who occupied a room in the main passage opposite to that of the former; and Broggan was willing to go so far as to admit certain things, among the rest, the charge of sitting on the chair opposite to the straw.

Withal though this evidence could leave no doubt on the mind that murder had been committed, it did not amount to proof against any particular person. All that pertained to the disposal of the body at Surgeon's Square was frankly told by the curator; but, with this exception, there was much to complain of as regards the doctors. Knox and his assistants, all of whom shewed from the beginning a marked, if not determined, refusal to help the authorities in the furtherance of justice. But if all the testimony that could be procured in support of the charge in this case was insufficient, the deficiency was still greater in regard to those of Mary Paterson and Daft Jamie, for unfortunately no one, with the exception of the accomplices and the gentlemen in Surgeon's Square, had seen their dead bodies, or could even say they were dead, so that the corpus delicti was literally little better than a myth. The authorities were therefore placed in a very trying position. The people cried for vengeance; and the Lord Advocate could only respond, "The decrees of the blind goddess are not gropings in the dark;" and he moreover, said, that an ineffectual trial, followed by an acquittal, would not only be injurious to the interests of justice, damaging to the prestige of official dexterity, but dangerous to the country, in the humour in which the inhabitants of Edinburgh felt themselves. That humour had often shewn itself before. The example of the Porteous mob was not only a lesson, but, as regards the crimes, a derision; and it was just as certain as the death of the brisk little old woman, that the big old Edinburgh would take the blind lady into their own hands, and if she would not see that it was right that these four persons should be hanged, whether on a barber's pole or not--they would extract her cataract or cure her amaurosis for the purpose, and then immolate the criminals at her altar.

From this anxiety with which the Lord Advocate was oppressed, there was an impending relief. The diligent officials, all straining for the satisfaction of the people, the vindication of justice, and the comfort of their superior, were continually attempting the prisoners, and at length it was discovered that the crafty, cruel, and cowardly Hare, and also his wife, were beginning to shew signs of inclination to buy their lives at the expense of those of their perhaps less guilty associates. The leer of the "fearful man," when the proposition was made to him, was a repetition of the old satisfaction when a "shot was in the house," and it is not unlikely that he chuckled at the rising thought of sending him to the college for the benefit of science and the good of his fellow-creatures; nor was the indication either unnatural to him or fallacious to the public. In a short time he declared himself, but on the condition of a firm bargain. The "shot" must be paid for by the price of immunity to his person and that of his wife.

When this information reached the law officers of the Crown, they hailed it with that amount of satisfaction which might be felt when a man procures by chemical agents from pollution the means of reproducing health. It could be doubted by no one that the evidence of such a socius criminis as Hare, or socia criminis as the amiable Mary, would be worth less than the value of an old song, insomuch that while the old song might be true, the words of Hare, in a transaction where he himself was concerned, could not possibly be true. He would represent, and the people knew it, the Janus head with one face looking simpering peace to himself, and the other bloody war to his friend. Nor was this foreknowledge of the man, founded as it was upon such an array of actions, belied by the result. The precognition was, from beginning to end, a long train of lies, wherein he represented himself as a good, easy soul--his wife as well--who allowed Burke to have his own way, neither advising him nor assisting him, only not obstructing; and even where he could not avoid some confession of participation, attributing his weakness to the easiness of his nature. How innocently he took a little liquor so as to make him, not drunk, but merely put him in a sort of "drunkish way!" How benignantly he sat on the chair at the side of the bed when the ruffian Burke was fighting like a tiger to squeeze the life out of the little old woman! As for the money, he merely accepted it--never earned it; and who refuses money? So glaring was the falsehood of the man's statement, and not less that of his wife, that the Lord Advocate was by no means sure of a verdict. Socii criminis have shades of character, but they are only to be believed when they shew penitence, and strike with vigour their own persons; but Hare only held on and kicked out; and a jury true to their consciences might, after all, become disgusted, and find a verdict of "Not proven."

The Complicity of the Doctors.

If the world is rife in unknown crimes, it is still more rich in winking toleration, insomuch as there is generally several winkers to one actor, and the former are of various kinds, while the latter is limited in his passion. Some are cowardly accorders, who favour the crime which they have not courage to commit; others are selfish, and expect benefit from their convenient nictation; and some there are who would be injured by the virtue of others having its own reward. So it is that the world, notwithstanding grave faces and simpering moralities, contains within its circumference only a trifle fewer rogues than inhabitants, the residue being God's own--stern beings who have fought the devil at his own weapons and conquered. These have a certain price in another place, where the golden streets are happily not liable to be coined; but here they are of small account, where money is the measure of a man's worth. We have already seen that even such men as Burke and Hare had their sympathisers and secret-keepers; but these were low, and therefore liable to be tempted; and it may be said that we have different men to judge when we go to the halls of science and seek for the winking tolerators of wholesale murder.

So far we admit, and we would be sorry indeed to do these men and youths injustice. We know that great authorities, such as Blackwood, and smaller ones, such as Colonel Cloud, accused them of art-and-partship as resetters, and that the public at large did not hesitate even to vociferate anathemas before a regular trial--with the devil's advocate to plead for them--qualified them for excommunication by book, bell, and candle. All this goes for nothing with us at a time when it was said the fire of passion would be allayed, and sober reason exert her authority.

It is fair, and even necessary, to assume as a fact, which, indeed, we have seen established by the practice of "Merry-Andrew" and the "Spune," that the disinterring craft were in the habit of purchasing dead bodies from poor lodging-keepers or relatives, in all which cases the bodies would be very different in appearance from those procured in the ordinary way. We suspect, from the nature of the Scotch character, with its sympathies and friendships, that those examples were not at any time many; and the best evidence of this is, that under such an easy system, the resurrection trade, always difficult and precarious, would not, especially after the indictment of Dr Pattison of Glasgow in 1814, have been so assiduously prosecuted. Such a system, too, depending upon the character of a people and the feelings of individuals, must be supposed to have been under the regulation of those natural, or, if you like, unnatural, laws to which all organic beings are subjected. If, during a period of a decade, examples of such purchase and sale were only one or two in a year, even increasing paulatim et gradatim to three or four, we would not be prepared for a sudden increase starting up all at once in one year to from sixteen to twenty; and there were many people who calculated the number in our "Court of Cacus" at thirty. We may insist here a little upon this view, because, amidst all the outcry against Knox and his assistants, it was never taken into account.

Nor could this sudden rise have appeared the less startling to any mind below that of an idiot, that this new trade was not spread over a great number of persons--and nothing less than a very great number could have sufficed for watching, ferreting, persuading, bribing--overcoming all the prejudices arrayed against an act of sale--but was altogether engrossed by two poor squalid Irishmen, who had come into the trade by a leap, and all but superseded the old experienced hands. If we were to make the supposition, that now, or at any other period in the history of Scotland, two Irishmen had taken it into their heads to set up a trade of this kind in the city of Edinburgh, we would soon come to an estimate of their success, if the doubt would not rather be, that if they got one body in the course of a whole year, it would be no less a wonder than a shame. Nor was there any reasons which might have led the recipients in the Square to suspect that these two solitary individuals were merely the agents or hands of a "dead-body company," or a joint-stock affair, with one of the crack names, "Association for the purpose of purchasing dead bodies, for the benefit of science and the human race," a supposition which alone could have reconciled men with eyes in their heads, and brains in those heads, to the anomaly before them.

But above all, that which had so much the appearance of justifying the public rage, was the state in which the contents of these bags, boxes, and chests were presented to the purchasers. One example may serve for the whole. There was no reason for supposing that more violence was expended upon Mrs Docherty than upon the others, if we are not rather to suppose that the younger and stronger cases required more vigour, as presenting more resistance. Even in the weakest cases, the præsidia vitæ upon which nature has expended so much labour are not to be overcome by external force weakly exerted, and without leaving marks easily detected, even by the unlettered in anatomy; but we have only to mention the case of Daft Jamie, who fought manfully to the end, as an example of the necessity of leaving upon the body even greater signs of violence than those presented to the eyes of Dr Christison. Taking the little old woman as a fair medium between the young and the old, the weak and the strong--you may remember the examination report: contusions and bruises everywhere, extravasation of blood, blotches of the same crying evidence, and finally the Lydian test of the abraded skin of the throat,--while less or more of these marks must have appeared in every one of the sixteen known cases, we cannot even suppose a solitary example of one where they could have been altogether wanting; and this led many to wonder at the time how the men preferred violence, with so many chances of detection, to the soffana death-drops of some subtle poison, the effects of which were far less likely to be discovered by mere anatomists, curious about structure only, and so far removed from the duty of a post-mortem examination. With no pathological views in their minds, they never would have dreamt of smelling for prussic acid, or searching for the ravages of green vitriol or arsenic, any more than they thought of drawing up their noses under the effluvia of whisky--an evidence which was never absent, and could not be mistaken, and must have led to the curious conclusion that all the bodies sold by friends were those of drunkards, and drunkards alone.

These contusions, and the invariable thumb-mark on the throat, were, according to the gentle supposition, to be overlooked by men all on the alert to see the cloth taken off--curious investigators into the arcana of nature--most zealous inquirers into the structure of the human body--among whom anything abnormal, or departing from ordinary laws or appearances, produced a speculation, fraught not only with the ardour of science, but the contentious conceit of young aspirants. Nay, these sharp professional eyes were not the first examiners, for they came after the decision of the mercantile, which scanned the value to fix the price. We are aware that there never was an enunciation, not excepting the famous what is is, without the condition of being liable to argumentation, and we are far from wishing to deprive these men of their defence; but that they should have treated as they did the imputation cast upon them, of, we do not say winking toleration, but something like pretty wide-awake suspicion, as an Argive calumny, pointed with venom and shot by passion, was going to the other extreme. Offended innocence is not always the meek thing represented by poets, yet it seldom takes on the form of a man at a window threatening to shoot the officials of the law if they dared to question for the ends of justice so innocuous and ill-used a victim of public prejudice.

In all we have said we have assumed that these suspicions were to cast up their shadows in the magic-lantern of minds, quite free from any recollections or surmises of any body having ever been offered, in the Square or neighbourhood, which could be said to have come to a violent death. The assumption which was set forth at the time was not true, for it turned out to have been pretty well known--and what professional scandal is unknown to students?--that some six months only before, and when the Irishmen were in full feather, the body of a female was offered for sale by some ill-looking men--we do not say, as was said, of Burke's gang--to the assistant of another teacher of anatomy in the city. The men were not known to him as regular "Spunes," but as a subject was required, he consented to accept of it, after being satisfied that it suited him. They said that they had it now, and would bring it to the rooms in the evening, between nine and ten o'clock, and at the appointed hour they made their appearance, with a porter bearing the sack. The burden was taken in and turned out of the bag, when it proved to be the body of a woman of the town, in her clothes, with her shoes and stockings on. The startled assistant proceeded at once to an examination, when he found a fracture on the back part of the head, as by a blow from a blunt instrument. "You d----d villains," cried this honest doctor, "where and how did you get this body?" Whereto one, with much self-possession, replied, "It is the body of a w----e, who has been popt in a row in Halkerston's Wynd; and if you don't take it, another will." The assistant then proposed, with the intention of having them apprehended, that they should wait till he sent for his principal; but the men, taking alarm, made off with their cargo, and soon found a less scrupulous customer. This statement, which was given on authority, was accompanied by an assurance that equally suspicious cases were by no means rare.

In addition to this preparation of the mind, as it may be called, to look suspiciously on introductions coming out of the regular way, with the admission made that they had not been exhumed, and with the inevitable traces of violence which could not be blinked, there was the peculiarity on which, perhaps, the greatest stress was laid, that in one of the cases, at least, there was a recognition of the individual by one of the students as having been seen and conversed with by him, in terms of more than ordinary intimacy, only the night before, or at least a very short period, countable by hours. We allude to Mary Paterson, "the study for the artist," who, though naked, was said to have made her appearance on the table en papillote--not to be believed--but who, for certain, attracted so much observation, yea, admiration, that the recognition by the youth could not have fallen as an idle brag. The case of Daft Jamie, the collegians' favourite of almost every day's fun, was so much stronger, that there seemed no mode of accounting for the pure innocence of Surgeon's Square, except upon the supposition that all the students had, in the course of a day, been merged in some Lethe. No great wonder that the most zealous defenders of the craft were here contented with a simple shaking of the head, for, to be sure, even the devil's advocate has not an interminable tether.

These charges are very practical, and even to us, at this distant period, who would be regulated by reason and truth, and cannot be under the influence of passion, are hard bones. Independently of our estimate of youths--putting Knox out of the question,--of good birth and parentage, whose generous hearts would revolt from the thought of a guilty cognisance,--some of these assistants who came in contact with Burke, "and no questions asked," have risen to rank in their profession, and bear a high character for honesty and humanity. "They ken their ain ken;" but their negative defence leaves their friends to the slough of mere metaphysics. We all know that mysterious attractiveness and repulsiveness of the mind which makes such fools of even the most practical of mankind. The man would not look through Galileo's telescope, because he knew beforehand that there was nothing to be seen; but he did no more than every man does every day he lives. We all know that we may look, and not see, hear, and not understand; yea, though the image of the outer thing may be in black and white on the back of the eye, and the words play their intellectual tune on the drum of the ear, you may neither see the one nor hear the other. The bird-lime of acceptance is not present, and there is even more--an absolute recusancy in proportion to some reigning wish in the form of what we call a prejudice. All this is alphabetic, and we might go deeper and get lost, but there is no occasion. The truth is, that these medical students had a strong wish for subjects. This rose out of another wish, that for knowledge, and this again came out of one behind, a wish to shine or make money,--the benefit to mankind being only that thing which we all understand when we hear people getting philanthropical in recommending their leather, as contributing to the good of the eternal sons of God. Then the next truth is, that they did suspect, and becoming the paradoxes which so many unconsciously become, did not know, in the sense of an apprehension, that they suspected. When the thought sought entrance to the mind, always under the cogency of the repulse of unwillingness, it was either thrown out or dissolved; to all which the authority of their leader or lecturer contributed, and not less the generosity of their own hearts, naturally seeking uniformity, and averse to think so ill of human nature, as was required to be implied in an atrocity never before heard of in the world. If the thought had ever come so strong upon them as to have amounted to an active conviction, why, then they must have glided into the crime of winking toleration, and to that, we verily believe, they never came. There were only three of these young men who took an active charge. If there had been a score, we might have conceded that one, perhaps two, might have been found among them capable, by the predisposition of an evil nature, to have quietly succumbed to the force of such startling appearances; but judging of the proportions according to what we find among men, we require a large number for the successful selection of the devil's own. In short, they were very much in the position of resetters, who, standing in great need of the article, take refuge from a suspicion which would injure them in the fallacious eloquence of the naturally selfish heart, and casting up behind them intervening obstructions to the light--a kind of weakness into which all mankind are less or more liable to fall, and against which they are ready to recoil when the passion of possession decays. It requires only superficial looking to bring us to the conclusion, that the world is a great collection of "wee pawns," every man resetting some thought or feeling, false in itself, and improperly come by, and wrongfully retained. The difference here lies in the fact, that we have not yet come to hold this a crime, nor are we likely to do so till regeneration comes wrapt up in the world-wide cloak of the millennium.