Burke
was smuggled from his condemned cell at four o’clock in the morning of January
27th, to a lock-up in Liberton’s Wynd, as the police were afraid
that if he was conveyed to the Lawnmarket on the morning of the execution a
riot would ensue, as the multitude tried to tear Burke into pieces. At noon on
the same day, preparations were made at Lawnmarket for the next day’s
proceedings; strong poles were placed in the streets and chains positioned to
hold back the expected crowds. When word of these preparations went round,
these crowds began to congregate and stayed throughout that day and on through
the night.
 |
| The Gibbet in Lawnmarket |
In heavy, driving January rain, they cheered as the gibbet was
raised at half past ten at night, and at two in the morning, in dismal,
freezing conditions, they began to take up their positions in the courts, on
the stairs and on wall tops, as the sightseers preferred to suffer not
inconsiderable hardship rather than lose their vantage points. Every window
overlooking the Lawnmarket had been hired days in advance, at prices ranging
from five to twenty shillings, and by seven o’clock in the morning of Wednesday
January 28th 1829 a crowd of
25,000 people had assembled.
Burke himself slept most of that night, arose at
five o’clock and dressed in a black suit provided for him. He received Catholic
and Protestant ministers and prayed with them, before asking for his shackles
to be removed – as they were knocked off, some of the fetters fell with a loud
clang and Burke theatrically declared,
“So may all my earthly chains fall!”
 |
| William Burke in chains |
He was taken to a keeper’s room, where he sat by the fire and was heard to sigh
periodically, before being moved to adjoining apartment, but he encountered
Williams, the executioner, on the way. “I am not just ready for you yet,”
said Burke, waving him away, but Williams followed him and pinioned his arms.
Burke was given a glass of wine and he offered the toast, “Farewell to all
my friends,” before, supported on either side by a Catholic priest, and led
by two bailies, a solemn, formal procession led him from the prison, up
Liberton’s Wynd and onto the scaffold. The baying crowd jeered and hurled
insults and threats, and Burke hastened his step lest they break through and
rend him apart, and as he mounted the steps, cries of ‘Burke him,” “Choke
him” and “No Mercy, Hangie” resounded across the packed Lawnmarket.
Burke knelt and prayed again, which removed him momentarily from the view of
the throng, who took up a cry of, “Hare, Hare, bring out Hare,” whilst
others called, “Knox, hang Knox, the noxious morsel.”
 |
| Execution and Confession of Burke |
Burke rose, picked
up the silk handkerchief on which he had been kneeling, folded it neatly and
placed it in his pocket. He mounted the steps of the drop and faced Williams
calmly, who placed the noose over his head and made to tighten it about his
throat. He met a little difficulty with Burke’s neckerchief and was told, “The
knot is at the back,” the only words he spoke aloud on the gibbet. A white
cotton night cap was placed on his head and pulled down over his face, and in a
low whisper he began to recite the Creed. As he reached the words ‘Lord
Jesus Christ’ (the prearranged signal), Williams drew the bolt and Burke
dropped into the void.
 |
| Execution of William Burke |
At every convulsive twitch and kick, the crowd jeered
and yelled - he kicked and struggled, as
if seeking some platform beneath his feet, but the undertakers below grabbed
his legs and spun his body around until it was raised level with the gallows.
The drop was made at a quarter past eight and the body was left to hang until
five minutes to nine, when Williams took out his blade and cut it down. The
gloating multitude swept forwards but were held back by the police, as souvenir
hunters tried to lay their hands on anything – the rope, naturally, but
shavings from the coffin and parts of the gallows would suffice. When Burke’s
body was safely in its box, the crowd dispersed, and in spite of being the
largest gathering in Edinburgh’s history, there had not been a single mishap.
 |
| Death Mask Bust of Burke |
On
the following morning, the body was transferred to the Medical College and laid
out on a table, where several eminent scientists examined it and Mr Joseph, the
sculptor, took a cast of the head, from which a bust was made later. The body
was,
“…that
of a thick-set muscular man, with a bull-neck, great development about the
upper parts, with immense thighs and calves, so full as to have the appearance
of globular masses,”
Which
is only to be expected in that of a former navvy, a race of men famed for their
immense, almost super-human, physical strength.
Tickets
were issued to the authorised students and the doors to the lecture room were
unlocked at 1 p.m., and Dr Munro had already removed the top of the cranium to
expose the brain (which was noted to be very soft, something not unusual in a
hanged man). Munro, ghoulishly, dipped his quill pen into Burke's blood and
wrote on a sheet of paper,
‘This is written with the blood of Wm Burke, who
was hanged at Edinburgh. This blood was taken from his head.’
 |
| Dr Munro the Anatomist |
The
ticket-holding students were admitted and other interested students attempted
to gain admission, but many more were left outside in the quadrangle, and these
began to get so unruly that the police were sent for. Fights broke out between
police and students, the police drew their staves and the students broke the
windows of the lecture theatre; the College Provost and his bailie intervened
but had to retreat under a hail of abuse. At length, Professor Christison saved
the day by promising the students that he had arranged for them all be admitted
in to see Burke’s body in parties of fifty, and he had given the authorities
his own personal guarantee for their good behaviour. The same information was
circulated in the City - that every interested person would be permitted into
the lecture rooms in ordered, supervised groups on the promise of their good
behaviour.
 |
| The Skeleton of William Burke |
Thus it was that on Friday January 30th 1829, the body of
William Hare was laid out, naked, on a black marble slab in the dissecting room
of the Edinburgh Medical College, ironically, he was yet another a strangled
victim made available for anatomical study. The top of the skull removed by
Munro had been replaced and a barely noticeable scar was the only evidence of
the operation.
“The
spectacle was sufficiently ghastly to gratify the most epicurean appetite for
horrors,”
wrote
Alexander Leighton, an eye-witness and author of a later, not entirely
reliable, book, The Court of Cacus, or The Story of Burke and Hare
(1861).
 |
| Alexander Leighton - The Court of Cacus - 1861 |
The doors were opened at ten in the morning and
throughout the day a steady procession filed through the narrow room, at a rate
of sixty a minute until, it was estimated, twenty-five thousand people had seen
the executed man. By far and away the majority were men – seven or eight women
tried to gain entry, but they were roughly handled and had their clothes torn,
before being turned away. Many of the sightseers returned on the following
morning, hoping to be re-admitted, but found the doors were firmly locked.
 |
| Pocket Book bound with Burke's skin |
After the public display,
Burke’s body was divided into quarters, which were salted and, with an apt
poetical justice, were stored in barrels. The skin was flayed and some parts
tanned; Leighton records a former medical student who received that of the neck
which he had made into a tobacco pouch (which still bore the mark of the rope
after tanning), and the skin from the right arm which was bleached white and printed with portraits of Burke, McDougal
and Hare, and presented to Mr Fraser, a jeweller, antiquarian and collector of
curiosities. A correspondent to Notes and Queries (Sept 27th
1856) wrote of Burke’s skin,
“A portion of his skin
was tanned. It was very thick, of a dark blue colour, and much resembled that
of Morocco leather. I remember well that the publisher of Burke's Trial at the
time had a good piece of it, which he cut up and gave to various of his
friends.”
 |
Letter to Notes and Queries - Sept 27 1856
|
The
phrenologists sought to use the measurements of Burke’s head as proof of their
theories, publishing detailed comparisons of its dimensions and finding all
kinds of significance in the associated elements. A new verb entered the
language, ‘to Burke’, meaning to suffocate someone by lying on them and
pressing down, but ‘burking’ eventually came to mean ‘to kill by suffocation’.
It has no connection at all with the insulting epithet ‘berk’, which is rhyming
slang for Berkley Hunt, and I will leave you to work that one out for yourself.
 |
| Phrenological Development of Burke |
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