I first embraced the idea of death when the first body we delivered gave me and Willie 7 pound a working wage each.
I was never grim myself. Death was something that came natural to everyone, I was no different to it more than you are. But when I found you can make a living from the dead…That’s what intrigued me.
It was a solid business. For 10 months me and Willie had everything sorted.
Starting with tenants at our lodging house, then on to prostitutes and working on our way to strangers. I mean in all honesty who is really going to miss a whore. Or strangers for that matter.
But these weren’t any ordinary bodies. No no. These were scientific canvases. If it wasn’t for the bodies we brought you, your entire bloodline would be dead. Knox knew what he was doing, with them and with us.
And yet his body, wasn’t on the docks next to mine. He wasn’t caught. He was innocent. A noble and honest doctor. And why on earth didn’t Willie grass him up the same way he did me. Last I heard he died on the streets of England. Blinded. Serves him right the rat bastard.
There are 2 dates in your life that make you. The day you were born and the day you die. On January 28th in the most miserable of Scottish weather I was sent to be hung. The bastards didn’t even give me the courtesy of giving me a long rope.
They wanted to watch me choke. Why is it when my death on the gallows by choking is called justice, yet when I’m scraping by and bringing bodies for the sake of living..Its murder?. Murder. I’m a murderer. That’s everything I’m not. I was a supplier. I wasn’t killing for fun, it was fortune.
All thanks to the great Doctor Knox. Not only did he bring me into the medical game as an unofficial mortician, but he also was the man who waited for my body to be completely dead for him to gut me and disembowel me like a pig in a butcher’s window.
He says he didn’t know the corpses, he knew who I was. And now you do to. I’m famous after I’m dead. People come day after day, stare at my skeleton through a pane of glass and wonder in amazement that they’ve come close to a murderer.
They have books about me and Willie’s work. Mind you “Burke And Hare” is a better name for the 2 of us. The west port murders just don’t have the same effect to it as our names do.
I still don’t understand why they had to see what it was in my brain that made me “Evil”. It’s not the brain that turned me.
The secret is that real evil comes from the pockets. Those whose pockets are full influence those who are empty by making them feel the weight of what could be in there’s. Let me tell you 7 pound a working wage felt good then. It still does. But all I can feel now is this hook in the back of my skull that’s holding me up straight. While endless tourists and medical students look on at me and wonder and amaze at the body of a killer.
Unchristening my grave so I don’t go to heaven isn’t a problem, but being made to sort out my life sentence after death for people to look at me and point like I’m some sort of weird freak show attraction, that is hell.
In my own nightmarish way, I’m not dead. They’ve immortalised me. Through the stories of what me and Willie done. To the books next to my skeleton, funnily enough cost £7. There is a bar where women get naked and dance which bears me and Hare’s name. At least after all that’s changed, we can still profess that in Edinburgh, flesh is always for sale.
I have heard that an American was using our method of “Burking” people. Look at that, far and wide people know of our reputation. It exceeds even now after 200 years.
Maybe it’s good to have a legacy. Even if I’m not a good example, I’m glad to be a bad warning. And the warning is that there is Burke And Hare in all of you. Think about that next time your pockets are empty.