But and ben wi' Burke and Hare.
Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief,
Knox the boy that buys the beef.
— 19th century Edinburgh rhyme
William Hare, on the other hand, was considered nasty, uncouth and violent by those who knew him. Also originally from Ireland, he had travelled around Britain working as a labourer. Hare ended up in Scotland, also working on the Union Canal, and then moved to Edinburgh where he got a job delivering coal. He lived at a lodging house owned by a Mr. Logue and his wife Margaret. When Logue died- hopefully of natural causes- Hare took up with Margaret who by all accounts was just as uncouth and hard living as he was... also Irish, I mention as an aside. While living there, Hare travelled out into the countryside at harvest time to earn extra money picking crops. This is where he met Burke and Nelly McDougal, who were also working the harvest. Burke and Hare struck up a friendship, perhaps because they were both Irish, or because they'd both worked on the Canal, or because they were both boozers. Or maybe one devil just recognized a fellow traveler. Whatever the reason, when they returned to Edinburgh Burke and Nelly moved into Hare and Margaret's lodging house which soon gained a reputation for hard drinking and carousing.
As for Dr. Knox, he was never charged as it couldn't be proved that he knew the bodies he purchased were murder victims. Though it strains credulity that he and his assistants didn't at least suspect... one of the bodies was still warm when Burke and Hare sold it to them. More damning, however, was Knox's behaviour with the second to last victim, James Wilson, an 18 year old boy who was mentally deficient and had a deformed foot. Unlike most of their other victims, "Daft Jamie" lived in the area with his family and was a familiar sight limping through the streets. After Burke And Hare lured him in and killed him, as usual they took the corpse to Knox. This time though, several of his students said they recognized the body as Wilson but Knox insisted that they were mistaken. Then, as word was going around town that Jamie's family was searching for him, Knox decided to dissect the body right away despite the fact that he had several other cadavers in storage which should have been used before Wilson's. And, when Knox dissected the body in his operating theater, he did so with both the head and feet cut off, meaning neither Jamie's face or deformed foot could be identified. Nevertheless, he escaped prosecution, which didn't sit well with the general public as you can imagine.
The serial murders obviously caused great shock and scandal in Edinburgh, leading to the composing of the rhyme I started this post with, and also to a new word being added to the lexicon: burking. To burk someone was to kill them by asphyxiation, or to kill them for medical anatomy use. Also the public, understandably outraged, were not having it that so many involved in the murders were getting off scot-free. Nelly McDougal returned home after the trial but was confronted by a mob of angry citizens. The police took her to the station for her own protection but the mob converged on that location as well. McDougal went out a back window to escape and left Edinburgh for good soon after; she tried to see Burke in prison before she left but was refused entrance.
When Margaret Laird was released, she too headed for Glasgow in order to get passage on a ship back to Ireland. While there, she was recognized and attacked by an angry mob and had to flee to a police station for protection. Later she was given a police escort to a ship bound for Belfast; nothing is known about what happened to her after that, or the infant daughter she had with Hare.
As for William Hare, his release was held up because Jamie Wilson's mother and sister petitioned the court to overturn Hare's immunity. This was considered by the court but eventually rejected. After his release from custody, Hare left Edinburgh in disguise, taking a mailcoach to Dumfries. Unfortunately for him, one of his fellow passengers recognized him and told everyone else who he was. At the hostelry in Dumfries where the coach stopped another angry mob formed, necessitating the arrival of the police who managed to sneak Hare out the back way and take him to the jail for safekeeping. Once the crowd realized this, however, they headed for the jail and surrounded the building, throwing rocks and smashing windows and lamps. A squad of 100 special constables had to be sent for to disperse the mob and, in the early morning hours, the militia escorted Hare out of town and deposited him a safe distance down the road, advising him to head for the English border. There's no reliable information about Hare's ultimate fate, though there were rumors that he died a beggar in London.
Back in Edinburgh, the authorities may have let Dr. Knox off the hook, but the public was having none of it. The once celebrated surgeon was lampooned in the papers, and in February 1829, a crowd formed outside his residence and burned him in effigy. Despite being cleared of complicity by a board of inquiry, Knox ended up resigning his position as curator of the College of Surgeons museum due to strong encouragement from the members of the Royal College and found himself shunned by his peers at the University of Edinburgh. His classes were more popular than ever though, no doubt because of his notoriety, and he was soon back to his old practice of buying corpses from shady characters. But when the Anatomy Act was passed in 1832, bodies became readily available to all anatomists and Knox lost the competitive advantage his black market cadavers had given him. In 1837 he applied to be chair of the pathology department at Edinburgh University, but he was blocked by the other professors who said they'd abolish the position before letting him have it. He left the city in 1842 for Glasgow, opening an anatomy school there but it didn't go well. In 1847 he was found guilty of falsifying a student's record by the Royal College of Surgeons which meant he could no longer teach in Scotland, and he was expelled from the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Knox then went about England and Europe giving lectures on anatomy and wrote several books. He eventually ended up working as an anatomist at a hospital in London, where he stayed until his death in 1862.
As mentioned, William Burke was hanged and then taken away for dissection, though not by Knox. Afterwards, his skeleton was taken to the Anatomical Museum at Edinburgh Medical School where it remains to this day. There's also a book, supposedly bound with his tanned skin- ew- on display along with his death mask at the Surgeons Hall Museum.
There have been a number of songs written about Knox, Burke, and Hare; below is one of them.
Burke and Hare were a terrible pair, their deeds were beyond belief
They worked underground in Edinburgh town, the cruelest kind of thief
[Verse 1]
Aye they stole the lives from the city's poor, the city's waifs and strays
Got them drunk, layed them on a bunk and smothered their lives away
And in the Tanner's Close in the old Westport, those rottens had their lair
And manys poor wretched, from there was fetched in a box up to Surgeon's Square
Ten pounds each was the priced they reached for the contents of every box
And denied folks lives to satisfy the knife of anatomist Dr. Knox
[Chorus}
Burke and Hare were a terrible pair, their deeds were beyond belief
They worked underground in Edinburgh town, the cruelest kind of thief
[Verse 2]
Sixteen souls departed this life at the hands of the villainous crew
"Sure beats work", says lazy bugger Burke and Hare took a similar view
But their evil ways and their drunken days, nine months were cut short
For they grew too smart and the Devil was shocked and very soon were caught
[Chorus}
Burke and Hare were a terrible pair, their deeds were beyond belief
They worked underground in Edinburgh town, the cruelest kind of thief
[Verse 3]
William Hare got a terrible scare, turned super-grass with glee
He snitched on his mate and left him to his fate, and he got away Scot free
William Burke, dangled and jerked as the hangman ended his life
And,a final twist, that famed anatomist cut him up with his surgeon's knife
[Chorus}
Burke and Hare were a terrible pair, their deeds were beyond belief
They worked underground in Edinburgh town, the cruelest kind of thief
For they stole the lives of the city's poor, the city's waifs and strays
Got them drunk, layed them on a bunk and smothered their lives away
The swine, smothered their lives away