advantageous for him to think lightly of the evil potentialities of his
nature. We cannot deny that these men and women were sane; and we have
higher authority than a wish-born logic or a self-gratifying rhetoric to
satisfy us that "the heart of man is deceitful above all things and
desperately wicked." The authority is from heaven, and there is no want of
verifying examples upon earth; nay, if we abate the "putrid coruscations,"
or what have been called "the blue lights of necromancy" that play round
these sordid murders, and which are at least nourished by the fancy, we
may find every day cases scarcely less cruel and scarcely less sordid,--if
we might not even say that it requires some analysis to find the
difference in mere turpitude between a man who murders for the money that
is about the body and one who slays for that which the body will bring.
Then the repetition adds nothing to the atrocity of the individual act,
while the premeditation is as signal in the slouching highwayman as in him
who wiles the victim to the fatal den. In short, we may make what parade
we please of the gradations of atrocity and the shades of our feelings,
but we must always come back to the beginning, that there are no degrees
of wickedness in those who have renounced God.
Not only, however, were these individuals sane; one among them, and the
leader, was intelligent, had wit and humour, could feel the superficial
sentiment of a pathetic lyric, and, above all, possessed ingenuity to the
extent of inventing a new crime which has gone, with his name, over the
world. The women, too, were intelligent and apt; nor has it been said that
Mrs Hare did not feel the yearnings of a mother, or that M'Dougal was
false to the affection, however low, which bound her to the tyrant who
enslaved her. Even Hare was not a fool--a character inconsistent with a
will-power which could govern a woman of his wife's acknowledged
adroitness, and lead, if not rule, a man such as Burke, so that we may say
that, so far as regards mere intelligence, the quaternity were a fair
enough specimen of the people of their class, in which certain parts of
our city abound; while Burke may be safely pronounced as being
considerably above the average of uncultivated minds, left as a waste for
the culture of the devil. But not only in this aspect were they worthy of
study--they were perfect in their moral organisation as embodiments of
evil, with no scruples, no misgivings, no backcomings of penitence, no
fear of the future, and no remorse for the past. They were not only "clear
grits"--they were "crystals." They were, out of millions, creatures suited
to the work they did--the work was suited to them, and they did it with
all that concentration of purpose and uniformity of action which proclaim
the being under alienation from the Almighty.
In what we here venture to say we have a sufficient apology for
disinterring these people and their deeds, as constituting the great
lesson, that it is the _occasion_ that tests the man; even as it is true
what the proverb says, that a man is never known till he is invested with
power. As an abstract aphorism, that proverb has but little influence; it
is only when we see it reduced to the concrete that we feel its truth and
lay it up in our hearts; and this we are the more ready to do that, while
we are well penetrated by that horror which is fear, we are not the less
under the influence of that other horror, which is hatred. And here we
insist for a distinction which may silence those who indulge in the fancy,
that it is not useful or good to pander to an appetite for details which,
while they harrow the heart, are yet, by some strange peculiarity in our
nature, not without a grim charm calculated to fascinate and yet not to
deter. The fault here lies at the door of the chronicler, for it is he who
holds the wand, and it requires only the mode of using it to change the
appetite into a revulsion, and to make the horror which is hatred
paramount for good. It is only man who is false to nature, never nature to
herself. Such deeds she exhibits in their true colours, and he who
interprets her can only be true to his office when he produces those
emotions which she produced in him uncoloured by the lights of a
factitious fancy.
We may thus, even without going further, find a final cause in these
terrible acts done by creatures made after the image of God. We have no
more right to inquire why evil should be made to deter from evil, than to
investigate into the origin of evil itself. Enough if we know and
experience that the wages of sin is death; but we have here even more to
consider. While we can have no doubt that the tragedy of Burke and Hare is
calculated to deter not only from that sin which it involves, but from all
those lesser ones which follow from the temptations of mammon, we have to
recollect that it put an end to a pre-existing evil of gigantic magnitude,
and which all the adjurations of a distressed people were not able
otherwise to effect. That evil, as we have seen, was body-snatching. No
sooner were the murders which the temptations of that practice induced
brought to light, than our legislators took to their powers and duties,
and righted the nation. They saved the affections of the heart without
annulling the aspirations of the intellect, served the purpose of science
in its remedial application to physical ills, without desecrating the
temple where burned the light of the spirit, and through which these ills
are felt.
BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Scotland, with her open church-yards in secluded places, groaned under
this infliction for centuries. See "An Account of the most horrid and
unchristian actions of the Grave-makers in Edinburgh, their raising and
selling of the dead, abhorred by Turks and heathens, found out in this
present year, 1711, in the month of May." We offer an extract:--
"Methink I hear the latter trumpet sound,
When emptie graves into this place is found,
Of young and old, which is most strange to me,
What kind of resurrection this may be.
I thought God had reserved this power alone
Unto Himself, till He erect'd His throne
Into the clouds with His attendants by,
That He might judge the world in equity;
But now I see the contrair in our land,
Since men do raise the dead by their own hand."
The price was known too, as a fixed thing apparently--
"As I'm inform'd the chirurgeons did give
Forty shillings for each one they receive."
[2] Take this specimen of his self-esteem:--"Gentlemen, I may mention that
I have already taught the science of anatomy to about 5000 medical men now
spread over the surface of the earth, and some of these have turned out
most remarkable for their knowledge, genius, and originality, for they now
occupy some of the most conspicuous and trying positions in Europe. As a
piece of curious testimony to my capabilities of communicating to you
knowledge, I may venture to mention to you an interesting fact which took
place last summer while on a visit to my distinguished friend and pupil,
the Right Honourable the Earl of Breadalbane, at his beautiful and
picturesque seat of Taymouth Castle, in the shire of Perth. At a large
party given by the noble Earl to the leading nobility and gentry of
Scotland, where, to use the beautiful language of Byron,
'A thousand hearts beat happily, and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
And all went merry as a marriage-bell;'
I, who was there as the Earl's guest, and knew personally none of the
noble Earl's distinguished personages of the party, happened to fall
accidentally into conversation with a noble lord--an adjoining proprietor
of our generous host's--on the subject of the breeding of cattle; and,
although our conversation originated in the slightest possible
observation, it went on naturally enough, until, by imperceptible degrees,
I was forced to open up the whole extensive stores of my anatomical and
physiological knowledge, (especially the comparative departments of these
subjects,) and before I had addressed myself to the noble lord for ten
minutes continuously, for I actually felt myself inspired by my situation,
the whole beauty and fashion of the large suite of rooms were surrounding
me, and seemed entranced with the deep thought that poured from my lips. I
naturally felt somewhat abashed that I had drawn upon myself so much
observation, but the direct and indirect compliments that were paid to
knowledge and eloquence amply compensated for this painful sensation.
Among other things, I shall never forget the observation of an old,
fashionable, and distinguished dame, evidently belonging to the middle
portion of the last century, in these memorable words, 'He's a cunning
loon that, he would wile the lav'rock frae the lift,' for her quaint
remark seemed to embody, in few words, the entire sentiment of the large
and distinguished company, all illustrating the adage of Bacon, that
knowledge is power; and, when brought to bear with eloquence and
propriety, it affects equally all conditions of life with its mighty
overwhelming strength."
[3] The following, extracted from the MS. notes of a student, may be taken
as a specimen of Knox's mode of dealing with his brethren:-"Before
commencing to-day's lecture, I am compelled by the sacred calls of duty to
notice an extraordinary surgical operation which has this morning been
performed in a neighbouring building by a gentleman [Mr Liston] who, I
believe, regards himself as the first surgeon in Europe. A country
labourer from the neighbourhood of Tranent came to the Infirmary a few
days ago with an aneurism of considerable extent, connected with one of
the large arteries of the neck; and, notwithstanding of its being obvious
to the merest tyro that it was an aneurism, the most distinguished surgeon
in Europe, after an apparently searching examination, pronounced it to be
an abscess. Accordingly, this professional celebrity--who, among other
things, plumes himself upon the wonderful strength of his hands and arms,
without pretension to head, and is an amateur member of the ring--plunged
his knife into what he thus foolishly imagined to be an abscess; and the
blood, bursting forth from the deep gash in the aneurismal sac, the
patient was dead in a few seconds. This notable member of the profession
is actually an extra-academical lecturer on surgery in this great
metropolis; and on this occasion was assisted by a gentleman similarly
constituted, both intellectually and physically, who had been trained up
under the fostering care of a learned professor in a certain university,
who inherited his anatomical genius from his ancestors, and who has
recently published a work on the anatomy of the human body, in which,
among other notabilities, no notice is taken of the pericardium. Tracing
the assistant of our distinguished operator further back, I have
discovered that he had been originally apprenticed to a butcher of this
city, but that he had been dismissed from this service for stealing a
sheep's head and trotters from his employer's shambles. It is surely
unnecessary for me to add that a knowledge of anatomy, physiology,
pathology, and surgery, is neither connected with nor dependent upon brute
force, ignorance, and presumption; nor has it anything to do with an utter
destitution of honour and common honesty."--(Roars of applause, mixed with
a few hisses.)
[4] However little connexion there seems between our indifference as to
what becomes of the body and our belief in the immortality of the soul, it
is, nevertheless, certain that believers and unbelievers do not view the
subject in the same light. The ancients, in spite of Aristotle, (as we
find him construed by Pomponatius,) were greater _natural_ believers in
the doctrine of the soul's immortality, than the moderns, in spite of Des
Cartes. And see how they venerated the dead! The Athenians put to death
six generals who had achieved for them the greatest of their victories,
because they had omitted to bury those who had been killed. When Alcyoneus
took the head of Pyrrhus to his father Antigonus, that king struck the
bearer with a staff, covered his eyes, and wept, and ordered that the dead
body and the head should be honourably put on the pyre. The rabbinical
fable of the _Luz_, or little bone of the size of a grain, which could not
be destroyed even by fire, and from which _nostrum corpus animate
repullulascet_, seems to have spread beyond Judea. We need not speak of
Egypt and its sacred mummies.
[5] If, in these narratives, it may be found that I depart in some details
from the discrepant confessions of Burke, I have to plead such authority
as I possess, in a collection of notes taken at the time by one who
intended to use them in a fuller account than that comprised in the two
pamphlets published by Buchanan.
[6] She had been once a lodger in Log's house.
[7] On examining the animal, the knackers found that many old sores become
hollows had been filled up with tow, and then plastered over with a thin
skin.
[8] They are fully described, for the first time we believe, in
"Curiosities of Crime in Edinburgh."
[9] We adopt this version in preference to another, which substitutes
Burke.
[10] It was never believed that the cases confessed to by Burke exhausted
the real list. One in particular, that of a little Italian boy, Ludovico,
who went about with white mice, was a favourite story which could not be
doubted, when it was known that the people of Tanner's Close saw, for
years afterwards, the two little animals haunting the dark recesses, where
their young master had been sacrificed. And many other visions were seen
there besides those of the white mice. But, apart from these
superstitions, it is certain that there was found in Hare's house a cage
with the mice's turning-wheel in it, which clearly had belonged to one of
these Italian wanderers. The silence of Burke on the subject is of no
importance, for his confessions did not agree, and, besides, it was
properly asked, might not poor Ludovico have been the subject which Hare
managed "on his own hook" unknown to Burke? Like the others, he would be
mourned, but it would be far away in some little hamlet among the
Apennines.
[11] A subscription was raised for Gray. He had saved the lives of
probably a score of men and women; but so poorly was he remunerated, that
he did not get a pound a head for these _lives_, or a tenth of that got by
Burke for his _bodies_.
[12] The fury against the doctors ran so high not only in Edinburgh, but
in Dumfries, that they were exposed to the risk of the fate they
experienced under Cato the Censor:--"Romani quondam, sub Catone Censorio,
medicos omnes et urbe tota et tota Italia pepulerunt eorum funesta
mendacia crudelitatemque aversati."--_Agrippa de Van. Scien._ cap. 83.
See, too, Montaigne:--"Les Romains avaient este six cens ans avant que de
recevoir la médecine; mais après l'avoir essayée, ils la chassèrent de
leur ville par entremise de Caton le Censeur." This proscription of
doctors lasted to the time of the first emperors; but even if they had
been tolerated, the national reverence for the dead would have been an
effectual bar to such practices as Scotland groaned under for centuries.
We are not left to wonder how they contrived to keep the body right in
these ancient times, for we know that Cato purged his household; and
Horace lets us up to the knowledge the old women had of simples.
[13] The allusion is to Knox. His house was afterwards surrounded by a
furious mob, who smashed his windows, and he was obliged to secrete
himself for a time.
[14] The entire Parliament Square rang as by the echoes of a jubilee.
[15] The story that the cancerous affection arose from the saliva of Daft
Jamie, communicated by a bite, was resolutely held to by the people.
[16] "He struggled a good deal," says an eye-witness, who was very near,
"and put out his legs as if to catch something with his feet; but some of
the undertaker's men, who were below the drop, took him by the feet, and
sent him spinning round,--a motion which was continued until he was drawn
up above the level of the scaffold."
[17] An eye-witness, whose notes we have, says, "He (Burke) was one of the
most symmetrical men I ever saw, finely-developed muscles, and
finely-formed, of the athlete class."
[18] "After this exhibition," says an eye-witness, "Burke was cut up and
put in pickle for the lecture-table. He was cut up in quarters, or rather
portions, and salted, and, with a strange aptness of poetical justice, put
into barrels. At that time an early acquaintance and school-fellow was
assistant to the professor, and with him I frequently visited the
dissecting-room, when calling on him at his apartments at the College. He
is now a physician in the Carse of Gowrie. He shewed me Burke's remains,
and gave me the skin of his _neck_ and of the right arm. These I had
_tanned_--the neck brown, and the arm white. The white was as pure as
white kid, but as thick as white sheepskin; and the brown was like brown
tanned sheepskin. It was curious that the mark of the rope remained on the
leather after being tanned. Of that neck-leather I had a tobacco-doss
made; and on the white leather of the right arm I got Johnston to print
the portraits of Burke and his wife, and Hare, which I gave to the noted
antiquarian and collector of curiosities, Mr Fraser, jeweller, and it was
in one of his cases for many years--may be still, if he is alive."
[19] The portraits of Burke and M'Dougal were got by the artist's having
been introduced into the judges' private room, behind the bench. To
complete the group, Mr Johnston, the engraver, managed through the
governor to get an artist into the passage between the airing-grounds,
when Hare was taking his walk. Hare saw the party sketching, came right up
to the iron grating, and stood like a soldier at attention, until the
sketch was completed. He then said, "Now, sir, peetch me a shilling for
that."
[20] For much of what follows of Hare's flight we are indebted to the
pencil-pen of Mr M'Diarmid of the _Dumfries Courier_.
[21] We might, perhaps, say, except till now. Not long ago, we were told
by a lady, who was in Paris about the year 1859, that, having occasion for
a nurse, she employed a woman, apparently between sixty and seventy years
of age. She gave her name as Mrs Hare, and upon being questioned whether
she had been ever in Scotland, she denied it, stating that she came from
Ireland. Yet she often sung Scotch songs; and what brings out the
suspicion that she was the real Mrs Hare the more is, that she had a
daughter, whose age, over thirty, agrees perfectly with that of the infant
she had in her arms when in court. In addition to all this, the woman's
face was just that of the picture published at the time.
[22] After Burke's execution, M'Dougal is said to have made a wonderful
revelation. One night, when the two men were deep in an orgy, Burke put
the question, "What they would do when they could get no more bodies?" to
which Hare answered, "That they could never be absolutely at a loss while
their two wives remained, but that would only be when they were hard up."
The conversation had been overheard by one of the women.
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