William Hare was never tried for any crime. In the winter of 1828 the Lord Advocate of Scotland, Sir William Rae, chose him as the witness who would let the Crown convict William Burke, and offered him immunity from prosecution in return. Hare gave evidence at Burke's trial on Christmas Eve 1828. Burke was convicted and hanged. Hare was released from prison on February 5, 1829, and within days had vanished from the record.
The killings that bear both men's names took place in the West Port of Edinburgh in 1828. Burke, in confessions made after his conviction, said there had been sixteen, that every body after the first had been obtained by murder, and that his only accomplice was Hare. The bodies were sold to the private anatomy school of Robert Knox. The University of Edinburgh's medical school and its Anatomical Museum describe Burke and Hare together as having killed at least 16 people. Those are the findings of the court in Burke's case, his own statements, and the judgment of later institutions. No court ever ruled on Hare's part.
Hare's early life is thinly reported. The University of Edinburgh's Anatomical Museum says he was born near Newry and came to Scotland as a navvy, a manual laborer, to work on the Union Canal in the 1820s; it describes him as uncouth, illiterate and quarrelsome. The National Library of Scotland also says he crossed from Ireland to work on the canal, which opened in 1822. Dickens's weekly All the Year Round, retelling the case in 1867, called him a fish-hawker. According to the same account, Hare told the court at Burke's trial that he had lived in Scotland for ten years and had known Burke for about a year. His year of birth was not reported with any consistency: the Gazetteer for Scotland gives his birth date as unknown, and other reference works offer dates that cannot be reconciled.
By the mid-1820s he was in Edinburgh. The National Library of Scotland says he lodged with a man named Logue and his wife, Maggie, and that after Logue's death he moved in with her and married her in 1826. The Anatomical Museum gives her name as Margaret Laird and tells it slightly differently: Hare became attached to the lodging-house keeper's wife and was put out of the house, then moved back in and took over the business when her husband died soon afterward. Either way, by 1827 Hare and the woman known as Margaret or Maggie Hare kept a lodging house in the West Port.
In 1827, according to the National Library of Scotland, Hare met William Burke while both were working the harvest at Penicuik, south of the city. Burke, born in 1792, was also Irish; All the Year Round called him a native of Tyrone who had served as a soldier and tried many trades, and the University of Edinburgh says he too had come to Scotland as a laborer on the Union Canal. Burke and his partner, Helen McDougal, moved into the Hares' lodging house.
Edinburgh's medical schools in the 1820s had what the University of Edinburgh's medical college calls a chronic shortage of bodies for anatomy classes. Legally available bodies were scarce, and grave robbers, known as resurrection men, filled the gap. Robert Knox, a freelance anatomy teacher, ran private classes in competition with the university.
The first body Burke and Hare sold came from a death they did not cause. An elderly pensioner who lodged in Hare's house, an old soldier named Donald, died owing Hare rent. Encyclopaedia Britannica dates his death to November 29 and puts the debt at four pounds. Hare and Burke took the body and sold it to Knox's school. The Anatomical Museum says Knox reportedly let it be known that he would be glad to see them again in like circumstances. In his confession Burke said that this first body was of a person who had died naturally in Hare's house, and that all the bodies sold after it were of people who had been killed.
Almost everything known about the individual deaths comes from Burke. The Caledonian Mercury printed his confessions on January 5, 1829, and a penny broadside taken from that report was sold in the streets; in it Burke insisted that Hare was his only accomplice and said the two of them had carried out sixteen killings. A chapbook printed in Paisley in 1829, after the execution, gives his confession at more length. It says that Hare introduced him to the trade and implicates Hare throughout.
The National Library of Scotland places the killings in the Old Town between January or February and October 31, 1828, and says most of the victims were poor local women. It names the three best known: Mary Paterson, James Wilson and Margery Campbell, also known as Margaret Docherty, the last. Many of the others are known only by the descriptions Burke gave.
All the Year Round, drawing on Burke's confession and on the trial evidence, gave the first as a woman from Gilmerton, outside the city. Burke said that Hare had taken the leading part in her death. He also told of an Irish woman whom Hare brought in with her grandson, a boy, and said both were killed. He said that a married cousin of Helen McDougal's died at Hare's hands while Burke stood by, because Hare was no relation of hers. And he said that while he was away at Falkirk, Hare killed a woman on his own and sold the body without telling him, and that he learned of it only later from Knox. Burke also accused Margaret Hare of urging him to kill Helen McDougal, which he said he refused to do. These are Burke's accusations, made in the condemned cell; Hare never answered them in any court.
James Wilson was 18. Known in the West Port as Daft Jamie, he was a familiar figure in the streets who entertained local children, according to a broadside printed after his death. Burke's confession, as the Paisley chapbook reports it, says that Margaret Hare drew Jamie in and that Hare and his wife killed him; the version in All the Year Round has Hare helping Burke. The two accounts differ on who did what. Both put Hare in the room. Jamie's body, like the others, was sold to Knox's school.
The last death came at the end of October. On October 31, 1828, according to All the Year Round, Burke met an elderly Irish woman named Docherty in the West Port, learned that she came from Innishowen, his own part of Ireland, and took her back with him. That evening Mr. and Mrs. Hare joined the company. The published trial report names her as Margery Campbell; the National Library of Scotland and the Faculty of Advocates call her Margaret Docherty.
The next day two of Burke's lodgers, a man named Gray and his wife, went to the police. Helen McDougal had offered them money to stay silent. The National Library of Scotland says that Burke and McDougal gave differing accounts of the woman that raised suspicion.
The dates of the arrests vary between sources. The University of Edinburgh's medical college says police raided Burke's house on November 1, 1828, and that Hare was arrested the day after Burke. The National Library of Scotland says Burke, McDougal and both Hares were detained on November 3 and charged with murder after specialists examined the body.
The Crown had one body and little evidence of how the woman had died. The University of Edinburgh's Anatomical Museum and its medical college both say there was not enough evidence to convict.
The Lord Advocate, Sir William Rae, decided that one of the four would have to give evidence against the others. According to the National Library of Scotland, he chose Hare, who was to be "turned King's evidence" and was offered immunity from prosecution if his evidence would lead to the prosecution of Burke and McDougal. Margaret Hare could not be compelled to give evidence against her husband. The Faculty of Advocates, in a 2019 note on the case, says that because the Crown might not otherwise have proved its case, both Hare and his wife were invited to turn King's evidence. Encyclopaedia Britannica says both gave evidence against Burke and McDougal.
Burke and McDougal were tried before the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh for the murder of Margery Campbell or Docherty. The trial began on December 24, 1828, and ran without a break through the night; the jury's verdict came on Christmas morning, just under 24 hours later. Christmas was not then a public holiday in Scotland. The courtroom used is now the Law Room of the Advocates Library, which holds a transcript of the trial.
Hare's evidence was the center of the Crown's case. According to the Faculty of Advocates, he described to the court how Mrs. Docherty was killed but said he had no hand in it himself. Margaret Hare gave evidence holding her infant, who had whooping cough, in her arms. All the Year Round, writing in 1867, said that on the stand Hare would give a knowing nod to avoid a damaging question, and that after the trial he seemed pleased with his own escape.
The jury found Burke guilty as libelled. The charge against Helen McDougal was found not proven. Burke was sentenced to death, and the sentence also required that his body be publicly dissected.
Burke had his own view of Hare's evidence. In the confession printed in Paisley he said that Hare had perjured himself about the Docherty killing and that Hare had in fact taken an active part in it. All the Year Round reported that Burke regarded Hare as the more guilty of the two, saying that Hare had committed the first murder and drawn him in. The Anatomical Museum's own catalog note on Hare's life mask says that historians now hold Hare more to blame than Burke.
Burke was hanged in the Lawnmarket, Edinburgh, on January 28, 1829. Sir Walter Scott watched from a window, according to the National Library of Scotland. The size of the crowd is given variously: about 20,000 by History Scotland, more than 25,000 by the Faculty of Advocates, and about 40,000 by All the Year Round and by a broadside printed in 1829. The Paisley chapbook reports that the crowd called again and again for Hare to be brought out as well, and that the demand for his punishment became general. Burke's body was publicly dissected, and his skeleton is held by the University of Edinburgh's Anatomical Museum.
Robert Knox was not called as a witness and was never charged. The National Library of Scotland says a crowd hung an effigy of him outside his home on February 12, 1829, and that he was caricatured and gradually shut out of the city's academic circles. The University of Edinburgh says the Royal College of Surgeons soon pressed him to resign as curator of its museum, and that he later moved to London and died in Hackney in 1862.
The Faculty of Advocates notes the disquiet in Edinburgh when Hare, who had told of the killings, was freed from prison. A private prosecution was brought against him for the murder of James Wilson. It failed. A correspondent writing in History Ireland described Hare as having received immunity for murders he might have committed while admitting to none of them, and placed his flight after the Wilson prosecution collapsed.
The National Library of Scotland says Hare was held in prison for his own protection until his release on February 5, 1829.
Hare tried to go home to Ireland. A penny broadside sold in 1829, taken from the Edinburgh Evening Courant of February 9, reported that he was on his way to Ireland when he reached Dumfries, where a crowd threatened his life. He took shelter in the Dumfries jail under the name "Mr Black," was smuggled out of the town under police guard, and was left on the road to Carlisle. A second broadside on the same events, "Riot at Dumfries! Hares Arrival," called him one of the West Port murderers.
The Gazetteer for Scotland says the crowd broke into the room he had taken in Dumfries. All the Year Round described him as besieged in an inn by a crowd calling for "the murderer," which followed him to the jail and threatened to burn its door; it said he later got away from a port in Cumberland and reached London. History Scotland says the crowd forced him out of Dumfries and that he fled to England. The History Ireland correspondent put the last reliable sighting of him on the road to Carlisle on February 7, 1829.
Neither woman was convicted of anything. The National Library of Scotland says Helen McDougal left Edinburgh two days after the trial and that what became of her is not known. A broadside printed in 1829 claimed that she, and Hare too, had been beaten to death by a mob; the National Library of Scotland's description of the sheet notes that Hare in fact survived and apparently died in obscurity in London around 1860. The History Ireland correspondent judged McDougal almost certainly innocent of any crime and noted a legend that she was killed by a crowd in Gateshead, which he thought might be true or might be the story of an attack on someone mistaken for her.
Margaret Hare went to Ireland, the National Library of Scotland says, and nothing is known of her later life. All the Year Round wrote that she was pelted with snowballs, mud and stones, was nearly killed at Glasgow, and escaped to Belfast. The History Ireland correspondent said she left from Greenock about a week after her husband.
What happened to Hare after Carlisle is not known, and the stories began almost at once. In 1829 a ballad sheet called "Hare's Dream!" imagined him tormented by his victims until his death. In 1841 a broadside published by G. Whitelaw announced the "Awful Death and Confession of Hare," claiming that he had died in the parish of Orrey, County Tyrone, on May 29 of that year; the National Library of Scotland's catalog note questions the report and points out that he may instead have died in London, possibly as late as 1860.
The best-known story places him in London. All the Year Round said in 1867 that he had found work under a false name with a tanner, that his fellow workmen discovered who he was and threw him into a lime pit, which blinded him, and that a London paper had more recently reported his death in Canada. The University of Edinburgh's Anatomical Museum repeats the London story of the lime pit and a life as a blind beggar, while noting that the evidence of his departure from Edinburgh points to Dumfries and that he is believed to have gone back to Ireland. The National Library of Scotland mentions a version in which he was blinded at a lime kiln, but stresses how little is certain. The Gazetteer for Scotland says he is thought to have died in poverty in London around 1860. The History Ireland correspondent, against all of these, thought it likely that Hare went on to a reasonably successful life under another name, and recalled that Sir Walter Scott had been shown several supposed paupers' graves.
None of these accounts rests on a record that has been traced. The University of Edinburgh's Anatomical Museum holds a life mask of Hare; its catalog says there is, so far as is known, no death mask.
The broadsides of 1829 helped fix the case in memory. Hare is often described as acquitted, but he was never put on trial. A ballad on Burke's execution records the crowd shouting for Burke to be "burked," which the Library describes as probably the first use of the verb that came to mean killing by suffocation. The literature of the time often called the killings simply "Burke's."
The portrait painted of Burke in 1829 by Thomas Clerk and George Andrew Lutenor, now in the National Galleries of Scotland, carries a description saying that Hare turned King's evidence and walked away free. A lithograph of Hare as he appeared in the witness box, published in the 1829 account West Port Murders, is held by the National Library of Scotland.
Hare's legal position never changed after he became the Crown's witness. He was never tried and never convicted. Sixteen killings were confessed by Burke, who named Hare as his only partner; Hare himself, in the only evidence he gave, described one death and said he took no part in it.
1820s: Hare, from Ireland, works as a laborer on the Union Canal and then settles in Edinburgh, lodging with a man named Logue and his wife.
1826: after Logue's death, Hare marries his widow, according to the National Library of Scotland, and takes over the lodging house in the West Port.
1827: Hare meets William Burke at the harvest at Penicuik; Burke and Helen McDougal move into the lodging house.
November 29 (before the killings): a lodger named Donald dies naturally owing Hare rent; Burke and Hare sell his body to Robert Knox's anatomy school.
January or February to October 1828: sixteen killings in the West Port, by Burke's later confessions, with the bodies sold to Knox's school.
October 31, 1828: Margery Campbell, also called Margaret Docherty, dies in the West Port.
November 1, 1828: police act after two lodgers report the body.
November 1 to 3, 1828: Burke, McDougal and the Hares are detained (dates differ between sources).
Late 1828: the Lord Advocate, Sir William Rae, offers Hare immunity in return for his evidence.
December 24 to 25, 1828: trial of Burke and McDougal; Hare and his wife give evidence for the Crown. Burke is convicted; the charge against McDougal is found not proven.
January 5, 1829: the Caledonian Mercury prints Burke's confessions.
January 28, 1829: Burke is hanged in the Lawnmarket; his body is publicly dissected.
Early 1829: a private prosecution of Hare for the murder of James Wilson fails.
February 5, 1829: Hare is released from prison.
February 1829: Hare is threatened by a crowd at Dumfries, sheltered in the jail as "Mr Black," and taken out of the town under guard.
February 7, 1829: last reliable sighting, on the road to Carlisle, according to a correspondent in History Ireland.
February 9, 1829: the Edinburgh Evening Courant reports the riot at Dumfries.
February 12, 1829: a crowd hangs an effigy of Knox outside his home.
1841: a broadside published by G. Whitelaw claims Hare has died in County Tyrone; the claim is unconfirmed.
1867: All the Year Round repeats the London lime-pit story and a report of his death in Canada.