Philp - Burke Now and then

Burke Now and Then

Janet Philp

Published by Anatomy Fundamentals

First published by AnatomyFundamentals 2016

47 Liberton Gardens,Edinburgh EH16 6JT

ISBN 978-0-9955101-1-1

Text Janet Philp

Illustrations Seonaid Philp

Facial reconstruction image Christopher Rynn

A catalogue record of thisbook is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No partof this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, ortransmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.

The publisher has made everyeffort to contact copyright holders of images in this book. Any errors areinadvertent and anyone who for any reason has not been contacted is invited towrite to the publisher so that full acknowledgement can be made in subsequenteditions of this work.

Published by AnatomyFundamentals

E book version

This book isdedicated to

everyone whose bodyhas

been used by science.

Aswith any production there are many people to thank.

Ineed to thank my family who have been supportive during this obsession with aserial killer. They probably know more about William Burke than they will everneed to.

Ineed to thank my colleagues in the Anatomy Department without whose support andencouragement my interest in all things anatomical might have waned.

Ineed to thank the people in all of the archives and special collectiondepartments that I have consulted both within the University, Edinburgh, Londonand the numerous Royal Colleges and Societies without whose expert knowledgethis volume would have taken much longer to produce.

Ineed to thank various colleagues in numerous places who have offered advice andassistance on many things from genealogy to the pathology of testicular cancerand facial reconstructions. Thank you for fielding what must have appeared tobe very strange questions at the time.

LastlyI suppose I should note David Boyle, without whose ruling we would not have theskeleton of William Burke, which inspired the whole volume.

Asan anatomist at the University of Edinburgh, it is very hard to escape thelegacy of Burke and Hare. Although it is nearly 200 hundred years since Burkeand Hare went on their murdering spree, the fascination that the public has forthese notorious characters has not waned. Plays and films have been made aboutthem and numerous books written about their exploits all with varying degreesof accuracy; in some cases there is no documentary evidence to support thespeculative statements made in some of the books written about them.

Thishowever cannot be said of this account of the Burke and Hare story. In anentirely novel approach, Janet Philp very cleverly retells the 'story' of Burkeand Hare from Burke's view of events. Written in the first person, it givesBurke's account of events from the delivery of the first body to the anatomyrooms of Dr Robert Knox to the hanging of Burke in the Lawnmarket on the 28thJanuary 1829. In contrast to most other books on Burke and Hare, it verynicely combines factually correct information, or what is believed to befactually correct information, in a very readable way. She gets right into thecharacter of Burke and despite the dark subject matter - murder and the sellingof bodies for money - she writes with an element of humour.

Shealso very cleverly links the old with the new and brings the story right up todate. The very first sentence in the very first chapter accurately describesBurke's current residing place and the current condition of the space in whichhe is on display. The glass paneled ceiling is indeed needing cleaned and themuseum roof does leak!

Forthose wishing to source the material on which this account of Burke and Hare isbased, Philp includes notes on every chapter at the back of the book. This isan extremely valuable resource and its comprehensiveness is an indication ofthe research that has gone into the writing of this book and her meticulousattention to detail.

Ofall the accounts of Burke and Hare that have been written, this is one of theeasiest to read, giving a factually accurate account of events but presentedin a very accessible way. It is altogether a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Gordon Findlater

Professor ofTranslational Anatomy

University of Edinburgh

Facial reconstructionof William Burke

Table of Contents

The pane of glass hadnot been cleaned for many years. In a way I wish it were still dirty. Sincethey tried to clean it I have a big smear that runs across the right hand sideof my vision it distorts my world. They are working their way around theroom cleaning up some of the bigger exhibits, the crowd pleasers, the ones thatpull in the visitors; my windows were done first. The light coming in fromabove is disturbed by the dirt on the external panes that missed out on thegrand clean up. The morning rays play across the other display cases,highlighting the dust and reflecting on lingering rain drops2. Itcan be a quiet reflective place.

I dont have a problemseeing the people who come and stare at me3. They get so close tothe glass I sometimes imagine I can feel their breath on my face. They peer atme from every possible angle, they point, they mutter, they judge; Im sure ifthe glass were not there they would poke me. I wonder if they would get soclose if I was not so restrained. How brave would they feel then?

Im shut in my prison,an image of my former self only a few feet from my face4, a constantreminder of the past, my past, the mistakes I made. I have had plenty of timeto reflect, to run the scenarios over and over in my head. Where did I gowrong? What should I have done? The answer is simple really I have a clearview of that now.

It is a clear view ofthe outside world I miss the most, the humdrum of people coming in and out ofthe room, the passing conversations, the cups of tea being made, the connectionto the normal world that I left so many years ago.

I know I am in this oldglass case because of what I did. I was cheated and double-crossed, and yes guilty

I know I must serve mysentence for I am William Burke.

(Although I have noidea where the e came from I always spelt it Burk5.)

In the years I havespent in the museum I often wonder what my life would have been like if Ihadnt travelled down the road that I did1. Might Nellie2and I have made a go of it? My retraining as a cobbler was starting to paydividends3. The streets were so rough and everybody walkedeverywhere so shoes wore out in a short time; there was always work for acobbler. Maybe we would have managed to put aside some funds and get largerrooms, maybe have some children4 my life could have been sodifferent, although maybe by 35 I was getting a bit too set in my ways. If Ihad known the path down which I was to travel I might have thought twice abouthelping out my landlord that November day in 1827.

I was working in myroom, rummaging through some of the small bits of leather that Effie5had given me a few days earlier, when the door opened and William Hare, mylandlord, stumbled in. He had clearly been drinking but that was not unusual to be fair we both enjoyed a drink. I had met his wife, Margaret, on one of mytrips across to Edinburgh a few years earlier6. At that point shehad been married to Logue but he had died the previous year and she had setherself up with William, one of her young lodgers. It seemed a bit quick afterLogues passing but who was I to judge. Nellie and I bumped into them againjust after the Penicuik harvest. We were about to move away to set up mycobbling business down south but Margaret persuaded us to give it one more tryin Edinburgh, using a room at their house and the old stable out the back.