but they were for the most part petty thieves, who
only called themselves resurrection-men in order
to account to the police for being about at
suspicious hours. "Lifters" usually went about in
light carts, and the difficulty was to baffle the
armed watchmen placed in every London burial-
ground, and who fired on persons discovered
searching for bodies. They were frequently
shot at, and the trade became dangerous.
The rich were buried too deep; their favourite
game was workhouse subjects, who were
sometimes laid three or four together. It was a good
living if a man "kept sober and acted with
judgment." It was sometimes their "dodge" to
pass off as relatives of the dead and to claim
workhouse bodies.

At this same time, Edinburgh, too, had its
resurrection-men—wretches perfectly well
known to the police and their neighbours as
engaged in the dreadful traffic, but by no
means shunned by the refuse of the Old Town
if they were sociable, and reasonably liberal
with whisky. On Friday, the 31st of October,
1828, two of these men were to be seen lounging
about the West Port, especially round the snuff,
whisky, and chandlers' shops of that
miserable neighbourhood. One was William Burke,
a short, thickset Irish cobbler, with a round
smirking face, high cheek-bones, and small, pert,
hard features. His deep-set grey eyes had not
a savage expression, but there was a specious
cunning cruelty about them. His hair and
small whiskers were sandy, his complexion
sanguineous. The detestable fawning-looking
fellow was buttoned up in a shabby blue frock-
coat, which almost hid a dirty striped cotton
waistcoat. A black tangled neckcloth graced
his grimy limp collar and bull neck.

This ruffian's companion was William Hare, a
fish-hawker, and, like Burke, an Irishman; a
squalid skeleton of a man, with leering watery
almost idiotic eyes, a thin aquiline nose, the
forehead of an ape, but the bony resolute chin
of a man who would commit a murder for half a
mutchkin of whisky.

Burke's house was one of those towering dens
that the scanty space within ramparts in old
times led men to build; vast burrows for thieves,
ruffians, and beggars, such as many of those with
which the Old Town still swarms. It had five
stories—five layers of vice, sin, and wretchedness;
a few sovereigns would have bought the
furniture of the whole five families. This nest of
misery looked out on a piece of waste ground,
to which a door on Burke's stair led.

Hare's house was of another order of wretchedness
in Tanner's Close, opening off the West
Port, a little beyond Burke's. It was a one-
storied house, with three rooms, and well known
as a beggars' sleeping-place. Its dreary back
windows looked out on the same waste ground
as Burke's. About six o'clock on the 31st of
October, the day on which these two rascals are
seen together, Burke was taking a dram (no
unfrequent habit of his) at the shop of a Mr.
Rymer, close by his house. A little old Irish
beggar-woman from Glasgow—a poor wandering
body in an old dark printed gown and red
striped short jacket—entered the shop to ask for
alms, and Burke commenced a conversation with
her. In his smooth way he asked her name, and
what part of Ireland she came from? He is
astonished and delighted to hear that her name
is Docherty, and that she comes from
Innishowen, his own part of Ireland. Eventually he
asks her home to breakfast (etiquette is not much
cultivated in the West Port), they go home
together, and she has some porridge and milk
with him and Mrs. M'Dougall, the woman who
lives with him. Later in the day the old beggar-
woman comes to Mrs. Connoway, a woman
living in Burke's passage, and under the same
roof; she is then half drunk, and sits talking
about Ireland and the army, for Connoway has
been a soldier. Mr. and Mrs. Hare drop in.
Even that savage skeleton, Hare, looks social
this Halloween, and it's soon "Hoo are ye?"
and "Hoo's a' wi' ye?" and there are songs,
dancing with bare feet on the brick floor, and
much passing to and fro of whisky-bottles. The
little "broad-set" old beggar-woman, to whom
Burke has been so charitable and kind, is the
loudest and merriest of them all. Hare and
Burke are left late at night dancing, and the
beggar-woman is singing to them.

The Connoways are disturbed after midnight
by a scuffling noise. Burke and Hare, drunken
and furious, are fighting and screeching; but
this is no uncommon occurrence; for Burke is
a man who, without doing much cobbling, gets
a great deal of money for drink in some mysterious
way, which is no concern to anybody in the
West Port. One or two neighbours on the same
stair, however, a little curious at the goings on,
looking through the keyhole, see Mrs. Burke
holding a bottle to the beggar-woman's mouth,
and swearing at her for not drinking, as she pours
the pure whisky into her mouth. The woman
cries murder. "For Heaven's sake," screams
one of them, named Allston, "go for the police;
there is murder here;" and then strikes the outer
door of Burke's house. There are then three
cries, as though some one were being strangled
in fighting. Allston goes out at the mouth of
the passage to the West Port and calls for the
police, but none coming, and the sound ceasing
as if the men had got reconciled, Allston turns
and goes to bed.

Early next morning there is quite a party at
Burke's—Mr. Law, a lad named Broggan, and
Mrs. Connoway. The room is a dismal den.
There is a trestle-bed without posts or curtains,
a great tumbled heap of dirty worn-out boots
and shoes in one corner, a huge litter of filthy
straw down by the bed—the shake-down on
which Gray, his wife, or any chance friend sleep
—a pot of potatoes on the fire, here and there a
broken-down chair. Burke is sitting near the
bed in high spirits, a whisky-bottle and a dram-
glass in his hands. He tosses the whisky up to
the ceiling and back, over the bed. Mrs.
Connoway is surprised, and asks him "why he
wastes the drink?" Burke laughs recklessly,
and says he wants it finished, to get more: a tipsy