The Lady and Her Monsters (22 page)

Ure was extremely opinionated and had developed a combative relationship with a fellow medical man, Granville Sharp Pattison, who had irked him from the start. Pattison, who was thirteen years younger, annoyed Ure because of his methods of dealing with cadavers. In one instant Ure had “complained to his managers about the smell and nauseating remnants from the anatomy lectures.” Those complaints and arguments might have seemed like the petty bickering of two ambitious scientists, but they soon turned personal when Pattison was alleged to be having an affair with Ure's wife.

In 1807 Ure had married a young woman named Catherine, who had borne him three children, two sons and a daughter. Their life together had seemed ideal: a growing family as well as a growing reputation that had often allowed Ure to travel across Europe and meet eminent scholars and scientists working in fields like his own. But in 1818, he learned that his wife was pregnant again. A happy occasion turned devastating when Catherine admitted that Ure was not the father of the child and Pattison was.

Ure filed for divorce, claiming his wife had committed “adulterous intercourse with a reputed paramour.” The paramour was Pattison, who, aware of the hours Ure kept, had visited the house when Catherine was alone. Servants had become suspicious of all the time the two spent together and began talking.

By August 1818, Mrs. Ure was unable to hide her pregnancy, and Ure took her to a “boarding house” in the country, where he left her alone. In December, she gave birth to a daughter.

Strangely enough, Pattison didn't say much about the affair. He tried to prove it was the work of a melodramatic woman who yearned for her husband's attention, and of a husband who wanted out of a marriage to a woman who was “weak, compliant, opportunistic.” There was no evidence of the affair between Catherine and Pattison, nor that he was the father of the new child.

The Glasgow community loved all of this gossip, though Ure tried his best to distance himself from it. He wanted to be recognized for his work and not his personal life. He hoped that his anatomy of Matthew Clydesdale would do that for him.

Among those in the auditorium was Peter Mackenzie, who later gave details of what occurred. As Clydesdale's body was brought inside, a small fire was lit in the middle of the room, and as the white garments that covered the deceased were removed, bells began to toll outside the college.

At this point Mackenzie's account steered clear of the more gruesome details, as the galvanic instruments were applied in, as he said, “a few operations . . . swiftly on, which really we cannot describe.” He may have found it difficult to write about this, but others did not, including Ure, who, on December 10, 1818, read a lecture at the Glasgow Literary Society titled “An Account of Some Experiments Made on the Body of a Criminal Immediately After Execution.” “A large incision was made into the nape of the neck, close below the occiput . . . A profusion of liquid blood gushed from the wound, inundating the floor,” his report later read. “A considerable incision was at the same time made in the left hip, through the great gluteal muscle, so as to bring the sciatic nerve into sight, and a small cut was made into the heel.”

When Ure pulled out what he referred to as a “minor voltaic battery,” the audience members began to squirm uncomfortably in their seats as “the pointed rod connected with one end of the battery was . . . placed in contact with the spinal marrow, while the other rod applied to the sciatic nerve.” When the battery was turned on, “every muscle of the body was immediately agitated with convulsions at each new renewal of the electric contact,” so much so that it looked as if the body were “shuddering from cold.”

As the doctors moved to the lower limbs, “the leg was thrown out with such violence as to nearly overturn one of the assistants, who in vain attempted to prevent” the body from injuring those nearby.

The audience may have been startled but Ure argued, “The success of it was truly wonderful. Full, nay, laborious breathing, instantly commenced. The chest heaved and fell; the belly was protruded and again collapsed with the relaxing and retiring diaphragm . . . Every muscle in his countenance was simultaneously thrown into fearful action; rage, horror, despair, anguish, and ghastly smiles united their hideous expression in the murderer's face.”

The last experiment involved placing the electric power near the spinal cord, where it touched the nerve directly connected to the elbow. This caused Clydesdale's fingers to move “nimbly, like those of a violin performer.” Then the fingers seemed to stretch, to extend, so much so that “he seemed to point to the different spectators, some of whom thought he had come to life.”

Peter Mackenzie agreed and told his readers that Clydesdale had opened his eyes and stood watching what was happening to him, astonished at being reawakened. He even said that Clydesdale got up from the table for a few moments, which was startling because that meant his neck had not been broken during the hanging. Some members of the crowds were so overcome with terror that they fled, while others fainted.

According to Mackenzie, when Dr. James Jeffrey saw the corpse rise from the table and fully realized what he had done, he also knew what had to be done next. In a move that very much resembled Victor Frankenstein's, Dr. Jeffrey decided that the newly reborn Clydesdale needed to go back to the land of the dead.

“Dr. Jeffrey pulled out his unerring lancet,” Mackenzie wrote in concluding his account, “and plunged it into the jugular vein of the culprit, who instantly fell down upon the floor like a slaughtered ox on the blow of the butcher!”

Many other accounts described what happened that day, but Mackenzie's has lasted and captured the fancy of the readers because he managed to turn a real-life medical experiment into one of those tales that were overwrought with melodrama and so popular at the time. It made for fantastic reading due to its language, its topic, and the thirst people had for such ordeals. But those present at the galvanization of Matthew Clydesdale knew he hadn't come back to life, much less hopped off the table and taken a look around at the audience. This was not because the instructors had failed but simply because he could not, physically, have done so. As the medical transcripts and reports later noted, the act of respiration had not commenced because “the body had been well nigh drained of its blood, and the spinal marrow severely lacerated. No pulsation could be perceived meanwhile at the heart or wrist; but it may be supposed that but for the evacuation of blood, the essential stimulus of that organ this phenomena might have occurred.”

Ure suggested that if the blood had not been drained, Clydesdale might have been brought back to life. “This event, however little desirable with a murderer,” he said, “and perhaps contrary to law, would yet have been pardonable in one instance, as it would have been highly honorable and useful to science.”

O
n November 3, 1828, the stark city of Edinburgh was awakened from its deep sleep by the brutal news that sixteen—possibly even more—of its inhabitants, living in the West Port district, had been killed and their bodies sold to the renowned anatomist Dr. Robert Knox. It was not news that body snatching was occurring, but now someone had bypassed the usual procedure of digging up a body that had died due to disease, age, or accident and was killing people for their corpses. This sent shock waves across the country and beyond.

The perpetrators, William Burke and William Hare, along with their female companions Helen M'Dougal and Margaret Hare, had, over the course of nearly a year, devised a way of smothering individuals that left virtually no trace of the murder. The bodies were then sold to the anatomists in the area.

William Burke was from Ireland and arrived in Scotland sometime in 1817 intent on working on the Union Canal. Married and already a father to two young children, his wife had refused to follow him to Scotland, leaving him essentially free to start life not only anew, but with a new woman—and that's precisely what he did, soon meeting Helen M'Dougal. He was described as being on the short side, though his body was as compact as a pugilist's. He did not possess that “sinister expression of countenance” it was believed murderers usually had. In the later-published
West Port Murders,
a description was given that summed him up as such: “His face is round, with high check bones, gray eyes, a good deal sunk in the head, a short snobbish nose, and a round chin, but altogether of a small cast. His hair and whiskers, which were of a light sandy colour, comport well with the make of his head.” He was said to have good manners and to walk about so quietly that people were often startled when they noticed he was there.

William Burke met William Hare when they were both laborers on the canal. Unlike Burke, Hare was not married and became involved with Margaret only a few years before the scandal broke out. Margaret had been left a widow for some years and owned a rambling lodging house in the West Port district of Edinburgh, a place called Tanner's Close, described as dark and dank, not to mention lonely enough to allow the eventual tragedies to occur. In time, all four came to live under that roof. Of the two men, William Hare possessed the most “loathsome” appearance and personality. In an article that appeared in
Blackwood's Magazine
in 1829, William Hare was called “the most brutal man,” someone who looked like an “ideot.” More than that, it was the nastiness people discerned in his appearance that disturbed them, the “sullness and squalor . . . native to the almost deformed face of the leering miscreant . . . So utterly loathsome was the whole look of the reptile.”

Neither Burke nor Hare had a criminal record, and though they had held menial jobs before—as everything from laborers to fishmongers to shoe repairers—work itself did not appeal to them. They were always trying to hatch a new moneymaking plan or come up with a get-rich-quick scheme. And as they were spending the few guineas available to them at the local pub, an opportunity presented itself to them.

In November 1827 a tenant of theirs, a pensioner named Donald, died without notice. His death did not cause them any grief, though the old man had died without paying his rent and the men felt wronged, robbed even. They were even more unhappy when they discovered that Donald hadn't left behind anything they could sell.

Of course, they had heard of the resurrectionists, but Burke and Hare were cowards and did not have it in them to rob graves. In the trial that came later, Burke gave the impression that he thought robbing a grave was a much greater offense than murder: “Neither Hare nor myself ever got a body from a church yard,” he said. “All we sold were murdered save for the first one . . . who died a natural death in Hare's house.”

Seizing an opportunity, they quickly made plans to sell Donald's body to Dr. Alexander Monro of the University of Edinburgh Medical School. As they made their way to the school, they crossed paths with a student of Dr. Robert Knox. The young man told them that Dr. Knox was always looking for cadavers, and his price was much higher than Dr. Monro's. Burke and Hare headed toward Dr. Knox's anatomical laboratory.

Dr. Knox had graduated as a physician from the University of Edinburgh in 1814 and had followed a career that had allowed him to become an assistant surgeon in the navy prior to receiving an appointment at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Though his accomplishments in London had been stacking up, it was to Edinburgh that he returned in the early 1820s, where he quickly married and for a long stretch ran the famous Barclay's Anatomy School in Surgeon's Square.

Dr. Knox had been blessed with a prodigious intellect, which he had displayed early on at the Royal High School and the University of Edinburgh Medical School. But he had also been cursed with an ugly face and an even uglier disposition. To counter that, he always dressed in the latest fashionable styles and effused such knowledge and intellect that people, most especially women, tended to look beyond his spotted face (a leftover gift from a severe bout of measles) to the impeccability of his manners. That impeccability became notorious, so much so that as his reputation as an anatomist grew, so did attendance to his classes. By the late 1820s, nearly five hundred students were attending his lectures—so many that he had to split them into several groups over several days. With such a demand for his lectures, he was always in need of fresh cadavers.

Robert Knox, line engraving. The famed Edinburgh physician's involvement with William Burke and William Hare ruined his career and reputation, though he always denied knowing where the cadavers came from.

Burke and Hare knocked on the back door of Dr. Knox's laboratory. His assistant Paterson opened the door and let them in with their wooden chest. Paterson looked inside and said the corpse of Donald was acceptable. He would pay the seven pounds the two demanded, more than they had ever earned at any of their jobs. Of course, they drank the money at the local pub. But as they did so, they could not help but reflect on how easily they had gotten the small wad of cash. The whole ordeal, the whole transaction, Burke later said, “made [them] try the murdering of subjects.”