Catherine, alias Caroline Walsh, in front of Newgate. The unhappy
woman, though convicted on the evidence of her own son, persisted in
asserting that she was innocent of the diabolical act for which she was
about to suffer.
All necessary preparations had been made the night before, and a
considerable number of constables sworn in to preserve the peace and
prevent any accidents. The persons assembled, however, did not exceed
the number on ordinary occasions. Shortly after six, the sheriffs and
under-sheriffs arrived, for the purpose of visiting the criminal, who
had declined all religious consolation from her priest, and begged the
attendance of the Rev. Mr. Cotton, the ordinary.
On Sunday, she expressed her wish that Cook and her son should be
allowed to visit her, which, however, from motives of prudence, was
refused. She retired to rest at an early hour on Sunday night, two
females having been placed in the cell with her, but her slumber was
frequently broken by half-uttered ejaculations; one of which was--'Oh!
Cook, you could have cleared me if you had liked;' another was, 'Oh my
child, my deluded child, thus to hang her who suffered for you!'
Upon her being led into the bread-room on the morning of her execution,
by Slarks, accompanied by the reverend Ordinary, to be pinioned, she in
a firm tone of voice exclaimed, 'Oh, my God! am I going to be hanged
for what I am innocent of!' She then walked firmly to the yeomen to be
pinioned; and while they were engaged in their sad office, she said,
'Oh, my God! why did I leave my country to be thus treated! Oh, Mr.
Wontner, I thought you were more of a Christian than to suffer a poor
innocent woman to be hanged. I left my husband and boy sitting with
the old woman, and I never saw her after. You have now in your custody
one who can prove me innocent, and quite clear me of the charge.
Oh, my poor, my deluded child!' Mr. Cotton, at the request of Mr.
Sheriff Pirie, again addressed her with a view to elicit an admission
of the justice of her sentence, but the only answer returned was, 'I
am innocent: I never touched the old woman. Oh, my God, why did I
leave my native country, thus to die in a foreign land for what I am
guil--innocent, I mean! Oh dear, oh dear!'
On arriving at the foot of the scaffold, she said to Mr. Cotton,
'Pray, Sir, am I going out in the street?' Mr. Cotton answered in the
affirmative, and again conjured her, in the name of God, to make her
peace with the Father of all mercies; 'All hope of mercy on this earth
is past, and a few moments will place you in the presence of him who
knows the secrets of all hearts.' She replied, 'I'm innocent;' which
she persisted in declaring until the fatal drop fell. She died without
a struggle.
A short account of the extraordinary life of this woman, who may with
the strictest propriety be stigmatized as a human fiend, may not be
without its attendant uses. Her ultimate fate may operate as a serious
lesson to those who addict themselves to an indiscriminate use of
spirits, for to that revolting and disgusting habit may, in a great
degree, be traced all the crimes which the wretch committed, for rather
than not satisfy her inordinate passion for drink she would commit
the pettiest theft, and she has even been known when her husband has
brought her home an ounce of tea, to hurry off to some neighbour and
dispose of half of it, in order that she might have the immediate means
of purchasing a glass of gin.
She appears to have been early instructed in the crime of murder, for
about twenty-six years ago we find her living in a brothel in East
Smithfield, at which time a respectable tradesman, a master tailor was
missing, and for some time no tidings could be obtained of him. Through
the medium of one of the girls who frequented the house, some clue was
obtained respecting the fate of the unfortunate man, and in searching
the house, he was found dead in one of the cupboards. The master and
mistress of the house, with Cook, the servant, were immediately taken
into custody, and committed for trial for the wilful murder of the
tailor. The trial came on at the Old Bailey, and the evidence, although
entirely circumstantial, was so conclusive against the keepers of the
brothel, that they were both condemned and executed. Cook was, however,
acquitted, although at the time it was the general opinion that she
assisted in the murder, and the circumstance of her being known to be
in possession of some money immediately after the murder, was in some
degree corroborative of her having partaken of the booty which was
obtained from the murdered man, to obtain which, it was supposed that
his life was sacrificed.
It did not appear on the trial, nor from any of the circumstances that
transpired at the time, that this murder was committed with any view
to the disposal of the body for the purpose of dissection, and yet
little doubt exists that the anatomical schools have been supplied with
subjects, the life of which has been forcibly taken away, long before
the detection of Burke and his associates. It is not to be supposed
that the act of strangling the unfortunate old woman, which led to
the conviction and execution of the malefactor Burke, was the only
murderous act which he had committed, tempted by the facility with
which he could dispose of the bodies of his victims, and the great
gain which flowed in upon him from such horrid practices. He himself
admits in his confession to the murder of several individuals, all
of which were disposed of to the anatomical schools, although the
professional men, in an inquiry which was substituted in Edinburgh
touching these occurrences, were exculpated from any criminal knowledge
of the atrocities committed by Burke and Hare, and, consequently,
of the manner in which the subjects which were offered them came by
their death. This, however, is not saying much for the value of _post
mortem_ examinations, nor for the accuracy of those conclusions to
which professional men arrive respecting the cause of the death of
an individual, and in which opinion, particularly in our courts of
justice, the life of the prisoner is frequently made to depend. To say
that the very freshness of the bodies supplied by the Burkers, is not
in itself sufficient to excite suspicion, would be at direct variance
with the most common experience; for it is at once a distinctive proof
that the subject did not die of any mortal disease, nor that it had
ever been interred. The idea of the subjects being bodies of suicides,
cannot also be rationally entertained, as in that case some preliminary
proceedings and an interment must have taken place, before such bodies
could have found their way to the dissecting-rooms.
No one will, we presume, pretend to deny, that a burked subject is not
more preferable for dissection, than one that has been for some time
interred. The former die in the full vigour of the organic functions of
life, which being in healthy play to the moment of expiration, leave
the arteries, veins, lymphatic vessels and nervous economy so fully
distended, that the demonstration of them must be greatly facilitated
and more clearly traced than when injections are necessary, or the
subject become flabby and on the verge of decomposition; not to mention
other personal conveniences, of the absence of any unpleasant olfactory
sensation, or the hazard of a scratch from the dissecting-knife,
causing an incipient and sometimes fatal mortification, which has
happened, we believe, in more than one instance. These circumstances
considered, it is not surprising that the Edinburgh murders by Burking,
and those which were committed in London previously to the detection
of the murder of Carlo Ferrari, were undetected by the demonstrators'
sagacity, who might have hoodwinked any suspicion by reflecting on
the advantage afforded to the interests of science, as it is termed,
but which does not remove from our mind the belief, that there must
have been a most disgraceful culpability in anatomists in not having
detected the villainous proceedings of the Burkers, by which those
wretches furnished bodies for dissection; at the same time that it
tends materially to call into doubt the pretensions of the medical
profession being able to elucidate the cause of death from _post
mortem_ examinations; for if it cannot be perceived that a person had
died from strangulation, or suffocation, what hypocrisy must it be to
profess they afford the means of ascertaining the remedies of diseases,
when it appears that the cause of death cannot be really known. Had
Cook, at the time of the murder of the tailor, been acquainted with the
ready channel by which she could have disposed of the body, at the same
time that it was attended with considerable emolument to herself, it
is not probable that the body would have been allowed to remain in the
cupboard, to have afforded the immediate instrument of detection, and
thereby expose the perpetrators of the deed to an ignominious death.
It is not to be supposed that the particulars of the life of such
an obscure individual as Cook can be easily traced out; it appears,
however, that wherever she fixed her abode, she soon became the terror
of the neighbourhood. Generally in a state of intoxication, any
personal offence offered to her, whether real or supposed, was sure to
draw upon the head of the offender the whole weight of her indignation.
She would vent her anger in the most abusive language--threatening to
scalp the object of her rage, and brandishing a knife in her hand,
swear to skin him like a sheep--or to pull his skin over his ears--or
to open him like an oyster--or to take his heart and lights out. In
one instance, when she lived in St. Catherine's, the landlord of the
Sampson and Lion offered her some offence, and she was determined to be
revenged upon him: she waited for the opportunity when she could catch
his cat, in which she no sooner succeeded, than she skinned the poor
animal alive, and going into the public-house, when the landlord was
standing behind the bar, threw it violently into his face. In whatever
quarter she domiciliated herself, the cats gradually disappeared;
and the manner in which she was detected in this cruel and barbarous
practice is rather singular: she never lodged in a house in which there
was not a dark cellar, and which, being seldom or never frequented by
the other inmates of the house, was the theatre of her operations on
the cats, which were so unlucky as to be entrapped by her. For some
time it was observed, by her fellow-lodgers, that she frequently left
the house early in the morning, carrying a bag with her, which appeared
to contain some articles of weight, as it was sometimes with difficulty
that she could carry her load. One of the female lodgers, prompted by
curiosity, once followed her in one of these expeditions, and traced
her to a scavenger's dust-yard, where she immediately repaired to
one of the heaps, and began to grope amongst the rubbish, as if in
search of some particular object. The person who was watching her,
judging that bones or rags were the object of her search, as she was
frequently known to roam about collecting these articles, with the
produce of which she immediately hastened to the gin-shop, desisted
from any further attention to her motions; and the cause of her visits
would, perhaps, have remained a secret, had not her frequent appearance
in the yard excited the attention of the proprietor, who perceiving,
contrary to the custom of the collectors of bones and rags, that she
always came with her bag full, and left there with it empty, determined
to watch her motions narrowly; but having some acquaintanceship with
her character, he wisely forbore to enter into any personal rencontre
with her, especially as she always took the opportunity of paying her
visits to the yard, when the people who worked in it were absent at
their meals. One day she was observed exceedingly busy, digging as it
were a hole in the heap of rubbish, and having finished her task, very
deliberately walked away. She was no sooner out of sight, than the
proprietor repaired to the spot, and removing the rubbish, found, to
his great astonishment, the bodies of six cats, which had evidently
been skinned alive, there being no marks of violence about them
indicative of a violent death. This circumstance no sooner transpired,
than the whole neighbourhood rose up in arms against her, every missing
cat was laid to her charge, and she was ultimately taken up, and
carried before a magistrate, on the charge of stealing the animals.
Here, however, as in many other instances, she again slipped through
the meshes of the law; for although several individuals came forward to
prove that they had lost their cats, still, in their skinned state, the
identity of the animal could not be proved, and consequently the charge
fell to the ground.
At the time of the murder of the tailor in the brothel, Mrs. Cook
went by the name of Ross, but that was an assumed name, her real one
being Reardon, her connexions in Ireland being rather respectable;
but impelled, by the violence of her passions, and her proneness
to drunkenness and vice, she emigrated from her native country, to
prosecute her iniquitous actions in the great metropolis. About
sixteen years ago we find her living in St. Catherine's, and shortly
afterwards in Maypole-court, East Smithfield, in which place she was
brought to bed of young Cook, who afterwards, as we have seen, was
the chief evidence against her on the trial for the murder of Mrs.
Walsh. At the time that this child was born, she was in the deepest
possible distress--a half decayed mattress, thrown down in the corner
of her room, was the only bedding she possessed--destitute of all
upper covering, and not another piece of furniture in the room but two
broken chairs, which, with a piece of deal placed upon them, served her
for a table. Not an article was prepared in which to wrap the child,
and from the general dislike which was entertained against her in the
neighbourhood, no person was ready to render her any assistance. Cook,
the father of the child, had not then long left the Royal Marines,
and worked as a labourer; whatever his earnings might have been,
they were no sooner in the possession of Mrs. Cook than the gin-shop
was her hourly resort, and unless Cook had been provident enough to
secure to himself a few shillings secretly, the whole of the week was
passed in a state of want and dependence on any casual circumstance
that might arise by which a few pence could be obtained to satisfy the
exigencies of the moment. Until the new police was established, Cook
was a watchman in Aldgate parish, and it is conjectured, that it was
whilst he was in this situation that he became acquainted with some of
the resurrectionists, whose horrid avocations he afterwards followed,
and, in some instances, with considerable success. In the woman, whom
he had chosen as his companion, he found a most able coadjutor; and, in
some cases, granting her assistance with a spirit which could only have
lived in the heart of a fiend, and which, as appertaining to the female
character, sets all description at defiance. She was as ready to assist
in the extraction of the putrefying mass from its resting place as she
was afterwards in the disposal of it, and then indulging in her brutal
drunkenness, until she was called again by her desperate paramour to
co-operate with him in the violation of the graves. On being dismissed
from his situation as watchman, he obtained a scanty subsistence in
the occupation of a porter in Thames-street and Billingsgate, but it
was suspected that he adopted this line of life as a blind to his real
occupation as a resurrectionist; and he was one of those men on whom
the _fraternity_ could rely in carrying their disgusting masses to the
different hospitals and schools where they were to be disposed of. A
few days before he was taken into custody, he was at work in the St.
Catherine's Docks, and whilst he was there, apparently earning a very
scanty and precarious livelihood, Mrs. Cook occupied herself with
discovering the friendless and unprotected, who, on various excuses and
subterfuges, she enticed to her lodgings, with the ultimate view of
depriving them of life. If she met with an aged, houseless wanderer,
she, with the show of the greatest kindness and humanity, would invite
them to rest for the night in her lodgings, which invitation was seldom
refused; and it is conjectured that, in some instances, they never left
those lodgings again in life.
In regard to the murder of Sarah Vesey by this inhuman wretch, little
doubt can exist, although the actual fact could never be brought home
to her; partly arising from the dread which the neighbours entertained
of her, and the fear of giving her offence, and partly from the close
and secret manner in which she carried on her proceedings. Suspicion
had, for a considerable time, been most busy in pointing at her as
being concerned in some deep and tragical actions; but no one dared
openly to express it, as the consequences which would ensue were well
known, were her violent passions to be aroused, stimulated by revenge,
and a decided indifference as to the means which she might select
wherewith to satisfy it.
It was during her residence in White Horse-court, Rosemary-lane, in
November, 1830, that a girl, of the name of Sarah Vesey, was on a
sudden missing, and no intelligence whatever could be procured of her.
She was then about fourteen years of age, and lived in the capacity
of a nurse girl in a tradesman's family, who resided in the vicinity.
This girl was often observed to go into Mrs. Cook's room with the
child which she had under her charge; and although the lodgers in the
same house were well convinced that the design which Cook had upon the
girl was base and wicked, yet their suspicion did not extend to the
dreadful idea that the murder of the girl was in contemplation. The
manner, however, in which the wretch worked upon the credulity of the
unfortunate girl, is in perfect keeping with the general depravity of
her character. She began to flatter the vanity of the girl, by her
praises of the beauty of her features, and that, if she would only
follow her advice, she would put her in the way of making her fortune,
as well as providing her with the immediate means of obtaining some
handsome clothes, in which to exhibit the neatness and beauty of her
form. She further instilled into the mind of the girl a distaste for a
life of servitude, representing it as one of constant drudgery, and in
which a girl seldom finds a husband. Mrs. Cook soon found out that this
poor girl was a friendless, unprotected creature, having been brought
up in Whitechapel workhouse from the early age of twelve months,
ignorant whether she had a father and a mother living, and neither
friends nor relations, with the exception of two brothers, who have
never seen her, nor have obtained any tidings of her, from the time
that she was missed to the present period.
It was amongst such friendless creatures, such outcasts upon the
world, that Cook sought for her victims; and, in fact, it is the line
of conduct pursued by all the resurrectionists, who, rather than not
supply the subjects required for dissection, have recourse to the
dreadful crime of murder to satisfy the demand.
It is impossible for a person, even of the most limited observation, to
perambulate the streets of this huge metropolis, without being struck
with the number of miserable outcasts who appear to have no home, nor
the means of providing for themselves a single meal. Hundreds daily
present themselves to our observation, to whom death would appear as
a blessing, and who, to outward appearance, have not a single object
belonging to them to render life desirable. Creatures of this stamp
and condition may suddenly disappear from their wonted haunts, and
their absence occasion, perhaps, merely a casual inquiry, and the next
moment, they are forgotten. With no one to interest themselves about
them, it is immaterial as to the fate which has befallen them; and the
friendless beings are enticed to the abode of a Bishop or a Williams,
and, under the plea of kindness or humanity, are offered a dwelling for
the night, from which they never again emerge as a living being.
We have been favoured with a computation, though for the truth of which
no positive grounds have been adduced, that in the metropolis alone,
on an average, there are above five hundred individuals annually of
whom no information can be obtained as to their absolute fate, but who
are supposed to have fallen victims to the horrid practices of the
Burkers. It is at variance with all probability that the Italian boy
was the only victim which had suffered under the murderous grasp of a
Bishop, or that Mrs. Walsh was the only one that had breathed her last
in the hateful den of Mrs. Cook. There are also some existing facts
which have led to the conclusion, that although Burke in Edinburgh
was the first person who was entrapped in the crime of butchering his
fellow-creatures for the sake of gain, yet that it was a practice
which was known amongst the resurrectionists long before his time;
but, like the Greeks, who had no punishment for parricide, conceiving
it a crime which could not be committed, we, even in the depth of our
moral degeneracy, could not conceive it possible that a set of wretches
could inhabit the same world, and breathe the same air as ourselves,
who could attack the unprotected orphan, or helpless old age, for the
avowed purpose of personal profit, and without the instigation of any
of the grosser passions of our nature, as hatred, revenge, or malice,
deliberately deprive them of life, to be mangled by the knife of the
dissector.
We may be allowed in this place to transcribe a few remarks contained
in a pamphlet entitled 'Plain Reflections on Burking,' written by Mr.
Andrew Sleight, and the chief argument of which goes to prove that
an actual visual examination of the human body is not necessary to
constitute a skilful surgeon; but, on the contrary, it is proved that,
in many instances, surgical operations have been performed with success
by individuals who have not been regularly educated, and who, perhaps,
were never present during the whole of their life at the dissection
of a human body. It is fair, in all cases, to hear both sides of a
question; and although we cannot coincide with Mr. Sleight in every
particular, yet there are in his arguments very valuable materials
for the erection of a system contrary to that which is adopted at
the present day, and which would certainly put an end at once to the
horrible crime of Burking.
Mr. Sleight commences his arguments by saying, 'that the idea of the
necessity for a visual anatomical study of the human body seems to have
been very strong in the mind of the public generally, when, shortly
after the discovery of the Edinburgh Burking transactions, a measure
was introduced before parliament, enacting a sale of the dead bodies
of the poor, at, we believe, ten shillings each, and authorising the
establishment of a dissecting-school by any surgeon who might obtain
a licence for that purpose, under the title of a Bill for Regulating
Schools of Anatomy, which passed through the House of Commons without
any public effort to impede the progress or alter the provisions of
that, in my view, most gross legislative proceeding; and so snug was
its progress, not a word that was said upon it, either _pro_ or _con_,
that I ever saw, was reported; so ashamed must the supporters of it
have been, that they would not allow their sentiments on the subject
to have publicity, as truly so nefarious a law it never entered into
the heart of man to conceive since the world began, and that, too, in
the professedly refined, civilized, humane, liberal, and philanthropic
nineteenth century, when some writers were so inhuman, degraded, and
debased in sentiment, as to advocate the passing of such a carnal and
unchristian law.'