ment, situated on the lowest floor, sunk below the level of the street. There were two other rooms in this basement, tenanted by families of the name of Law and Connoway; Burke was living with a woman, Helen McDougal, who passed as his wife, and though their room was by no means a large one, they shared it with lodgers, a married couple called Gray. All the inhabitants of the sunk flat were Irish of the poorest class. The stranger was given some porridge and milk and set down to rest; it was Hallow E'en; whisky was produced, and the neighbours came in and took their drams. Burke questioned the guest about her old home and family, and grew more and more friendly, till finally he offered her a lodging for the night. There were limits, however, even to Westport hospitality, and to accommodate her it was necessary to evict the lodgers, so Burke arranged for them to sleep at the house of his friend Hare in Tanner's Close hard by. This was settled, and the old woman was only too glad to sit down by the fire and feel that for that day, at any rate, she had no further cares.

About nine the next morning Burke sent up for Gray and his wife to come and have breakfast, and on their arrival they found that Mrs. Campbell, or Docherty, was no longer there, and they heard McDougal say that she had been so troublesome in the night they had turned her out. After breakfast there was more whisky and plenty of merriment, but there was something about Burke and his anxiety lest any one should go near a heap of straw and litter at the foot of the bed which aroused Mrs. Gray's curiosity. This, however, she found no means of satisfying till late in the afternoon when it had grown dark and she was left in the room with her husband; then she went straight to the straw, and, groping in it, felt a human arm, and there, half under the bed, lay the naked and lifeless body of the beggar woman. Horrorstruck at what they had seen, the Grays hastened from the room, spurning the entreaties of Helen McDougal, whom they met in the doorway, that they would say nothing. They at once informed the police, who were on the spot by eight o'clock, and arrested Burke and his female companion as they were coming up the stair. The corpse was not to be found, but it was ascertained that shortly after six o'clock Burke and McDougal with Mr. and Mrs. Hare had all been seen coming up from the sunk flat accompanied by a porter carrying a packing-case, the top of which was stuffed with straw. The next morning it was

resolved to search the dissecting-rooms, and the first place visited was the museum of Dr. Knox, the foremost anatomical teacher of the day, in Surgeon Square. The police learnt from Paterson, the porter, that a subject' had been brought in the night before, and on entering a cellar they found in an old tea-chest the body of a woman which Gray and his wife identified as that of Docherty. From what Paterson told them with regard to how he had become possessed of it, the police immediately arrested the two Hares.

On the following day the prisoners' declarations were taken. Burke's was to the effect that a strange man whom he had never seen before had left a box, which proved to contain a dead body, in his room on the Friday, and had returned the following day with a porter and taken it to the surgeon's. The body found in the cellar bore no resemblance to Docherty, whom he said he had met on the Saturday morning and had taken home to breakfast, keeping her till three in the afternoon, when she went away. A week later, however, he made a totally different statement; he admitted that it was on the Friday morning that he made acquaintance with Docherty. She was in his house all that day, and late in the evening he and Hare had a drunken quarrel, in which McDougal and Mrs. Hare interposed. When peace was restored they missed the old woman, and at last found her lying doubled up in the straw, quite dead. They stripped her, hid her under the bed, and next day, by agreement with Paterson, took her body to Surgeon Square. No violence of any kind had been offered to the woman.

The other prisoners were examined on the same occasions, but they insisted that Docherty had received no hurt in their presence; while McDougal not only denied that she knew of any dead body being in the house, but she declared that she did not see the woman at all after two o'clock on the Friday afternoon. The authorities were now in a position of grave difficulty. Of the guilt of the parties there could be little doubt, but the proof was very deficient, and the medical opinions were far from conclusive as to the manner in which the deceased had met with her death. Scotch jurors have always the loophole of Not Proven, and it seemed hopeless to expect a conviction where the fact of a murder having been committed was not put beyond the possibility of doubt. The only method of procuring the requisite information was to admit some of the accused as king's evidence. It was a distasteful

alternative, but the scandal, and the danger to the public, if the entire gang were let loose to resume their horrible work, was even more serious. There were rumours that this was no isolated transaction; there had been mysterious disappearances to which this crime seemed to afford a clue, and finally overtures were made to Hare which he accepted, on receiving an assurance that, if he would disclose the facts relative to this case and any similar crimes, he would not be brought to trial on account of his accession to any of them. Out of the tale of horror unfolded by him two other murders were selected in which it was found possible to obtain corroboration from witnesses of credit. Hare's wife was included in the assurance of safety, as his evidence would have been inadmissible against her.

The trial took place on Christmas eve. The Court was composed of the Lord Justice Clerk (Lord Boyle), and Lords Pitmilly, Meadowbank, and Mackenzie. The Crown was represented by the Lord Advocate, Sir William Rae, and three other counsel, including Archibald Alison, the historian. Though the prisoners were utterly destitute, the merciful custom of Scotland ensured their being defended by the ablest members of the Bar. The Dean of Faculty, Sir James Moncrieff, led for Burke, and Henry Cockburn for Helen McDougal. Had they been tried in England, not all the wealth of the Indies could at that date have rendered it possible for counsel to do more than cross-examine witnesses on their behalf.

The Court sat at a quarter past ten. The indictment contained three counts, each charging a separate murder. That of Docherty, in which alone McDougal was concerned, came last; the other two related to a young woman of great beauty, named Mary Paterson, and to Daft Jamie,' a half-witted boy well known on the streets of Edinburgh, both of whom had met with their deaths in Hare's house. To this the prisoners' counsel objected, on the ground of the prejudice which must be caused by joining three several offences, and of the hardship on McDougal, who was only charged with one of them. The Court upheld the objection, and the Lord Advocate elected to proceed with the case of Docherty.

A plan of the houses in the Westport was first put in. It has been stated that Burke occupied a room in a sunken flat. To obtain access to it from the street you passed through the passage to the back and descended the common stair into an area,

from which a corresponding passage led past the door of the Connoways on the right and the Laws on the left, straight up to Burke's door, inside which a second passage, turning sharply to the right, led past the Connoways' wall up to another door which admitted you into the room itself. It was meanly furnished, with a press cupboard between the window and the fireplace, a solitary chair, a truckle bed, and some common cooking utensils; while at the foot of the bed against the wall was a heap of straw and litter. At the back of the house was a piece of waste ground, by which the stair could be approached from the adjacent closes without going through the common passage, thus affording easy communication with Hare's house.

After one or two unimportant witnesses, the prosecution called the shopboy, who remembered a beggar woman coming into his master's shop on the Friday morning, and that Burke said she must be some relation of his mother's, offered her breakfast, and took her away with him. Later on in the day Burke had come back and selected an old tea-box, like the one in which the body was found, and Mrs. Hare fetched it away.

Mrs. Connoway said that about midday on the Friday she went into Burke's room and saw a stranger woman supping porridge by the fire, while McDougal was washing some clothes for her. Later on she went again to Burke's room, and found the stranger there alone. She was the worse for liquor, and wanted to go out and try and find her son; but witness induced her to come to her own room, where she became very communicative, talked about Ireland and the kindness of Docherty, as she called Burke, who had promised to give her a bed and her supper. Soon Hare and his wife came in, and were joined by McDougal. Mrs. Hare produced a bottle of whisky, of which they all partook, and then Hare and McDougal and the beggar woman got to dancing. When the party broke up, the latter refused to go until Docherty' had returned, and it was not till between ten and eleven that he was seen in the passage, and then she got up and followed him. Witness went to bed, but her slumbers were disturbed by sounds of fighting in Burke's room. In the morning she went in there, and found him with Mrs. Law, McDougal, and a lad called Brogan. They were drinking spirits, and, before the bottle was empty, Burke tossed the contents up to the ceiling, so that some of it fell on the bed and heap of straw. Witness asked McDougal what had become of the old woman, and she said

'Burke and her had been ow'r friendly together,' and she had kicked her out of the house. Before they separated McDougal had testified to the general hilarity by singing a song. About six in the evening Mrs. Gray came in and told her that she had found a dead body under the straw, and she went off to see for herself, but was too frightened to do more than look into the room. Later on, Burke came in, and her husband told him there was a report he had murdered the woman, and that Gray had seen a corpse in the house and gone for the police. Burke replied he did not regard what all Scotland said about him, but he would look for Gray; and he was going out up the stair when the police gripped him.

The Dean of Faculty asked a question or two, and Mrs. Law was then called. Her evidence was for the most part in corroboration of Mrs. Connoway; but she spoke more strongly as to the scuffling and fighting, during which the only voice she was sensible of was Burke's; in the morning McDougal had asked her if she had heard Burke and Hare fighting through the night time. She had been shown the body in the police court and recognised it as the same woman she had seen in Burke's house on the Friday.

Next came Hugh Alston. He lived in the same 'land' as Burke; above the sunken flat was the shop, and above that his own flat. On the evening of Friday he was coming home about 11.30, when, in the passage on the line of the street, he heard from beneath the voices of two men quarrelling and fighting, and a woman's cry of murder.' He went down the stair and along the passage as far as Connoway's door. Above the sound of fighting there was a strong female voice calling 'murder,' and 'for God's sake get the police,' but not in that way as I would consider her in imminent danger herself.' It continued for a moment, and then there was something gave a cry as if proceeding from a person or animal that had been strangled.' This noise ceased, but the men continued quarrelling, and the female voice still cried murder,' and there was the sound of a hard slapping on the outer door leading into the passage. Witness went for the police, but could not find one, and then, as quiet was restored, he retired to his own flat. In answer to the Lord Justice Clerk, he said that the voice which cried murder' and police' was distinct from that of the person uttering the strangled cry.