half-past six, went to Newington, where they
were paid at a public-house, and he got five
shillings.

David Paterson, keeper of Dr. Knox's
Museum, and who lived at No. 26, West Port,
also deposed that about twelve o'clock on the
Friday he went home, and found Burke waiting
at his door. He went with him to his house,
and found Hare and the two women there.
Burke told him, in a low voice, he had procured
something for the doctor, pointed to some
straw near the bed, and added, "It will be ready
to-morrow morning." Paterson sent his sister
to him in the morning, and he came alone, and
was told he must see Dr. Knox, and agree with
him personally. Between twelve and two Burke
and Hare came to Dr. Knox and told him they
had a dead body which they would deliver that
night, and Dr. Knox told Paterson to be in the
way to receive it. About seven the two men
and a porter brought in the tea-chest, and it was
placed in a cellar. They then went to Newington,
and Dr. Knox sent them out five pounds.
The rest, if Dr. Knox approved of the subject,
was to be paid on the Monday. When the
police opened the chest, they found the body of
an old woman. It presented marks of
strangulation and suffocation.

The trial took place on the 24th of December,
1828, before the Right Honourable the Lord
Justice Clerk, and Lords Pitmilly, Meadowbank,
and Mackenzie; Sir William Rae, the Lord
Advocate, assisted by counsel, prosecuted. The
counsel for Burke and his reputed wife gave
their services to the wretches gratuitously.
Hare having been received as king's evidence,
proved the murder. He said he had been ten
years in Scotland, and had known Burke a year.
On the Friday, Burke had come to him in a
public-house, and told him he had got an old
woman off the street, who would be a good shot
for the doctors (that was the phrase of these
men for a person they had fixed on to murder).
In the evening he and Burke fought, and the
old woman cried for the police, as she said
Burke had treated her well, and she did not
wish to see him ill used. Mrs. Burke dragged
the old woman back. He then, as they were
struggling, knocked down the old woman, and
as she lay on her back drunk, crying out not to
hurt Burke, Burke flung himself on her, his
breast on her head. He then put one hand on
her nose, and the other under her chin, and kept
them there for ten minutes; she was then
dead. He stripped the body, doubled it
up, covered it with straw, and put her
clothes under the bed. When Paterson came in,
Burke wanted him to look at the body, but he
refused. When he (Hare) awoke, about seven
o'clock, he found himself in a chair, with his
head on the bed, in which were the two women
and Broggan (Mrs. Burke's nephew); Burke
was sitting by the fire.

The prisoners' defences were most criminating.
Burke declared that the old woman left
his house at five o'clock on the Friday, to go
and beg in the New Town; but a week afterwards
he confessed that she returned, drank
hard, and then lay down in the straw, where,
finding her dead, he went and sold the body.
He had previously sworn that the body found
was one left in his house by a stranger who
had come to have his shoes mended. His wife
had in the mean time declared that the old
woman left the house for good about two o'clock
on the Friday.

The trial lasted twenty-four hours. The jury
returned a verdict of guilty against Burke, after
nearly an hour's consultation, but acquitted his
wife. The Lord Chief Justice, in passing
sentence, expressed a doubt as to whether
Burke's body should not be hung in chains, and
trusted that his skeleton would be preserved in
remembrance, of his atrocious crimes. He then
adjudged Burke to be hung in the Lawnmarket
on the 28th of January.

During the trial Burke maintained a tranquil
self-possession. He conversed with his wife,
and smiled at part of the evidence. He was
anxious for dinner, and ate heartily when it
came. While the jury were "enclosed," Burke
prepared his wife for her probable fate, and told
her to see how he behaved when the sentence
should be pronounced. When his wife was
acquitted, he turned to her and said curtly, "Nelly,
you are out of the scrape." Hare, after the
trial, chuckled, capered, laughed, and chatted as
if exulting in his own escape and his comrade's
doom. When in the witness-box, whenever he
wished to avoid answering a criminating
question, he gave a diabolical nod of the most
repulsive cunning.

Mrs. Burke was a thin spare large-boned
dissolute Scotchwoman, with large but good
features, and full black eyes disfigured by a
painful frown. Mrs. Hare, who carried a
repulsive and neglected child in her arms, was
coarse, short, stout, and red-faced. While in the
Lock-up,Mrs. Burke stated that one night, while
her husband and Hare were carousing in Hare's
shambles on the profits of a recent murder, she
and Hare's wife saw from a further room Hare
toss his hand up, and heard him exult that he
and Burke should never want money; for, when
they were at a loss for "a shot," they could
murder and sell their wives. There was then
a long discussion, and Hare finally succeeded in
persuading Burke to let his wife go first, when
the time came for it.

Burke having obtained his priest's permission,
made a full confession of his crimes. He owned
to sixteen murders between the spring and the
October of 1828. He and Hare had been first
set on to it by an old drunken pensioner named
Donald, dying of dropsy in Hare's house. After
his coffin was closed, they decoyed the undertaker
away with drink, took out the corpse, and
filled the coffin with tanner's bark. They took
the body in a sack to Dr. Knox, who gave them
seven pounds ten for it. The first person they
murdered was a woman from Gilmerton, who
came to lodge with Hare. After a revel, Hare
closed her mouth and nose, and Burke lay upon
her to keep down her arms and legs. They