SPEAKER_01 0:56

Hello and welcome back to Behind the Powder Podcast with me, Paulson Victoria. Today I know I say it every episode. I'm very excited about this one. I swear it's the ADHD in me where it comes down to actually enjoying these podcast episodes, letting myself not feel like they're a chore, and then compiling like all the research and putting it into a Google document and putting it all in chronological order and making it make sense. I I love it, it's so fun. I get to learn something new and talk about something I really enjoy and I want other people to know about. So, in this episode, we're gonna be talking about Edinburgh's long history, about serial killers who are talked about, but in a different way than you think in this modern day. We're gonna be looking into William Burke and William Hare. Yeah, they're both called William, I know. Their story has been retold in films, books, tours of Edinburgh, and whispered in PubTales, a bleak chapter of the old town's past where prophet and body parts went hand in hand. Now, we're gonna get into how I know about William Burke and William Hare a little bit later on, but before the word serial killer even existed, these two men found a very lucrative niche supplying freshly deceased bodies to medical schools for specimens. But unlike the grave robbers sulking round nearby graveyards, Birken Hare discovered an easier way. Well, to create their own corpses, of course. Duh So this is the tale of Scotland's most notorious resurrection men. And the autonomy murders that shook the city to its bone. No no no no no. This episode is about the victims and why on earth do we have a strip club named after them? Yeah. There is a strip club in Edinburgh called Burke and Hare. And this is the main reason why I was so intrigued on doing this episode. Why would you name a strip club after murderers who murdered potential sex workers, just women in general? Why are we keeping this tale alive? It's bullshit, honestly. I'm sick and tired of us idolizing killers. Killers are way more known than their victims, and it's not fair. It's certainly not fair to name a building which has women in it who use their labour to pay their bills. It's not fair. But we're gonna vent about that later. We're gonna rewind to the 1820s. Edinburgh back then was basically the Harvard of cutting dead people open, medical students everywhere, but not enough corpses to go around. And apparently at the time, you were only allowed to dissect bodies of executed criminals. The problem was that there wasn't enough executions. I know, so terrible, right? So the solution? Well, people start digging up grandmas. Seriously, like grave robbing was a whole career path. I mean, I feel like again, it comes down to poverty. It comes down to like people weren't just paid enough. Even like many, many years ago. Like, we can talk about like inflation now and things, but poverty has always been there. So grave robbing, right? Surgeons were like, we need bodies, and we don't care where they come from. Enter grave robbers, aka resurrection men. They'd sneak into graveyards at night, dig up the fresh corpses, they had to be fresh, and cash in on it. The city fought back with having the classic cages around the graves, guard towers, and families literally camping out um overnight to protect the coffins to make sure nobody messed with them. Because again, they needed fresh bodies, and it really became a whole tactical warfare situation where there was the protectors of the dead versus the guys with shovels. So surgeons would pay big money for a fresh corpse, and that's where Burke and Hare came crashing into the scene like this is when Beurke and Hare go, I see your shovels, and I arise your murder. So let's talk about the boys. Let's talk about the serial killers. William Burke, friendly. Hell, he's even religious. He's handy with shoes. Everyone said that he was a decent guy. When he wasn't absolutely drunk as a skunk. William Hare If if Bad Vibes was a person, angry, sketchy, always broke. The kind of guy you don't turn your back on at a bar, that's William Hare. They're living in this chaotic little lodging house in the Westport area. Lots of drinking, lots of shouting, probably smelled like feet and whiskey, let's be honest. And one day, an old tenant dies. He owes rent. And instead of doing the respectful thing, you know, reporting a human death, they decide, let's make that money back. They haul the body over to an autonomist named Dr. Knox. He was a top surgeon, huge reputation. Somehow zero interest in asking where where are these bodies coming from? But Kitchen, Fashcash, shortly after, another lodger gets sick, not dead, but just inconveniently alive. And that's when William Hare and William Burke invent a brand new murder technique tailored for the medical business. Burke smothering someone while sitting on their chest. It was silent, kind of quick, and there was no marks. And of course, in the 1820s, forensics, who's that? It looks like natural causes. Knox was overjoyed. He was like, wow, another dead body? Money. There you go. Suddenly, murder doesn't just become their side hustle, it became their main hustle. Basically, their whole catalogue of victims was if they're poor and drunk, they're vulnerable. Travelers, women selling small goods, the elderly, people with no family around, and tragically, disabled folk, like Daft Jamie, who was well known in the community. James Wilson, named Daft Jamie, he had learning difficulties. But he was well known in the grass market, beloved by many. But they killed him anyway. But his body, it had identifying features such as a clubbed foot. Something students recognized instantly. Whispers started, rumors spread. People are like, hey, uh we think that's Jamie. It's the first big crack in the whole murder business For William Hare and Burke. So Dr. Knox, instead of admitting, like this is, you know, this is Jamie, uh, he actually removes Jamie's head and his feet. Because nothing screams innocence, like dismembering the evidence, you know. Yeah. So Beck and Hare, they could charm people easily. Come back to ours. We've got whiskey, we've got rooms, and then bam, another delivery for Dr. Knox. At least 16 murders, probably more. There's not a lot of details when it comes to I mean, it's it's the 1800s. I mean, in when you look into true crime in the in the 19th century, when it comes to like evidence and the police collecting it and everything like that, it there's basically not a lot. Not a lot at all. So you can imagine in the 16th century that it's an even bigger problem when it comes to catching murderers. But the Williams, they weren't fucking geniuses. They were just opportunistic and reckless, which is exactly what finally gets them caught. So we're gonna now talk about their victims, and we're gonna go obviously in chronological order, or at least the order that we do know and we think that it all happened. So Abigail Simpson, 1828, February. Um, she was a traveling salt seller, working class, probably exhausted and freezing. Birkenhair offered her a warmth room. She deserved a chance to grow old. Instead, she became a currency in the autonomy trade. Her murder was one of the first signs that the pair weren't going to wait around for opportunity. They were gonna create it. What is known about the lodger who died of natural causes is nothing, sadly. I couldn't find a name or anything like that. The person who Birkenhare smothered apparently was named Joseph. But that's all I could find. When it came to the first murder, because remember, the first guy he just had the natural causes, and they were like, oh, let's let's make a buck. And then the second guy they smothered. So we've got let's say Joseph, and then we have Abigail, and then we have Mary Patterson, that was apparently in April 1828. So like they are going quite fast with these murders, like so apparently she was around 18 years old. Um, apparently labelled as a prostitute by male historians because that's what happens when women are poor and alive in pubs. But the truth was that she was out with her friend, Janet Brown. Just two young women are having a night out. Birkenhare saw vulnerability. Mary was suffocated while unconscious. Dr. Knox allegedly admired her body, even had students draw her. The violence it didn't end with death. Like that is it's just so disgusting. It really is. You had students commenting on like the body, um, of how beautiful it was. Whether Mary was a sex worker or not, she was still someone, a female who lived in Edinburgh, and her vulnerability was exploited. We then have Effie, who also died in April of that year. She collected bits of used fuel from the street to resell. The literal ashes of wealthier people's fires. Locally known and friendly. She was killed after being offered drink. Imagine a life where a cup of whiskey feels like luck before you realize it's a trap. This is part of why Birkenhare targeted them. If no one with power looks for you, no one with power notices you're gone. People do suspect that Effie may have also done sex work for survival. There are other unnamed victims that had lived experience in the sex trade. These pair specifically targeted women already judged as immoral, so death would seem expected or unimportant. But I feel like at the end of the day, he did try and go for people that they saw weak. And in 1828, the lives of sex work and women weren't considered worth writing down or being spoken about, or I mean, even to this day, with the Emma Caldwell case, the police, the government don't care to investigate. Nobody bothers to write anything down when it comes to sex workers unless it's eye-catchy and it draws in attention. But the next victims that we know of were Mrs. Haldane and Peggy Haldane. And this was in the summer of the same year, so 1828. All these were in the same year, which is like quite rapid. So mother and daughter, both trying to survive in the same neighborhood as Beck and Hare. Mrs. Haldane drinks too much for one night. Boom, easy target. Peggy comes looking for her mother, and she walks straight into danger. They're both dead. Next we have James Wilson, who we've already spoken about. And that was in October. Then we have the last victim. Margaret Docherty, middle-aged Irish woman. So according to historical records, Burke lured Margaret into their lodging home under false pretenses. He reportedly claimed his mother was also a Doherty from the same area of Ireland. Because remember, the boys do come from Ireland. And obviously that was a lie. The evening of the murder, the only other permanent lodgers in the house, James Grey and Anne Gray, were persuaded to spend the night elsewhere, under the pretext that Doherty was a relative. So they removed witnesses. That night, after heavy drinking, Doherty was suffocated. Her body was hidden under straw at the end of a bed. A crude attempt to conceal the crime, honestly. The next morning, when the Greys returned to the lodging, something felt wrong. They were refused access to the spare room where their belongings had been left. Suspicious, they searched the room themselves and discovered Doherty's body under the straw. The murder triggered immediate police involvement. Meanwhile, Burke and Hare rushed to transfer her corpse. They packed her into a tea chest and delivered it to the autonomy school of Dr. Robert Knox. The police later found Doherty's bloodstained clothing hidden at the lodging. Inconsistencies in Burke and his wife's statements about Margaret's departure and timings deepened suspicion. The body later identified, thanks to the witness testimony of James Grey, linking Doherty definitely to Burke and her's crimes. And yeah, you heard that right. They were both married, which is like crazy to think they were doing this, and like yeah. So Helen McDougall was William Burke's wife. Helen was also involved in drinking and some of the cover-ups as well. But she was weirdly acquitted at the trial. William Hare was married to Margaret Lord Laird, often called Mrs. Hare. And they ran the lodging house on Tanner's Close, where many of the murders happened. Margaret is said to have encouraged the income from selling bodies and had a share in the profits. They were all motivated by poverty, alcohol, and very fast income of money. And just like Helen, Margaret, she wasn't like ultimately prosecuted. She was granted immunity. We'll will come to that. So you know, they're captured, they're told, you guys are gonna die. And her hair snitched. Hair was like Burke did this that this is what we did, and everything like that. So he ratted Burke out in exchange for immunity, which I'm assuming the women did as well, and that's why they all didn't get prosecuted, aside from Burke, which like really is kind of sad, honestly. Like, Burke gets convicted, and he's the only one out of all three of them that actually is hanged and gets punished for the crimes. So it was a public hanging, and uh his body actually gets um dissected. Like it's just poetic justice, honestly. And you can see Beck's uh skeleton still in a museum in Edinburgh, which is kind of cool. Um, which is probably the closest you can get to someone losing an argument so hard, they become educational material. Um, I did try to look into where hair went, and he just he fucking vanished. I mean, he probably fled Scotland and like changed his name or something like that, but I cannot find anything on paper about him. Um like he definitely earned a lifetime like supply of like side eye just from humanity. But back then you didn't have TV, like you weren't on the five o'clock news, so it was very easy to get away with the murder, but murders, and run away and start a new life. The museum of where Burke is on display. You can see like his full skeleton, is the museum. The museum is the anatomical museum, University of Edinburgh, housed in the old medical school building. So I also wanted to know like what happened with Dr. Knox. So he never actually um faced trial for his role in Beck and Hair. His position as a leading anatomicist, oh god, these words gave him significant influence, and he basically claimed he couldn't possibly have known where the bodies originated from, which is so bullshit, but okay. He could not, however, escape the court of public opinion. Knox faced a severe backlash that damaged his professional standing and lost him his position in the College of Surgeons. Eventually, Knox moved to London where he ended his days, buried in an unmarked grave in Brookwood Cemetery in 1862. So Birkenhare's legacy in Edinburgh. The crimes of Birkenhare shocked and appalled Edinburgh at the time. They escalated existing fears of grave robbery to new heights, adding the spectra of autonomy murder, and Birking to things that could be lurking in the city's narrow closes after dark. Birking was like a name for like snothering people back in the day. Like that's what people would call it because uh William Burke. Like, yeah. It's so weird where things come from. But yeah, Burking means like murder by suffocation to preserve the body for anatomy. Many feared that more anatomy murders could follow, and it was clear the situation that had to change. The Atomy Act of 1832, particularly a reaction to the Birk and Hare murders, brought greater regulation to the field of anatomical study and opened new sources of cadavers, greatly reducing incentives for body snatching. The legacy of Birk and Hare still lingers in Edinburgh, woven into the fabric of the city's identity as much as its grand Georgian architecture and enlightenment achievements. Today the pair's names remain synonymous with greed, betrayal, and the exploitation of the vulnerable, serving as a chilling reminder of how desperation and opportunity can combine with devastating consequences. Berg and Hare continue to fascinate and horrify in equal measures, ensuring their place in Edinburgh's darker history will never be forgot. So we're now gonna I'm just gonna give you a little snippet of where you can still visit today when it comes to anything to do with Bear and Hare. So Tanner's Close, the spot where Hare's infamous lodging house once stood, you can go see the street that it was on. The Grass Market, the Pears Hunting Ground where many taverns remain, Surgeon's Square, the site of the anatomy school of Dr. Knox, University of Edinburgh Old College, the main medical school at the time, Parliament Square, the courthouse where Burkenhare stood trial, the lawn market, the location where Burke was executed by hanging, Greyfair's Kirkyard, the epic centre of Edinburgh grave robbing epidemic, the old medical school, the anatomy museum here displays Burke's skeleton, Surgeons Hall Museum, housing Burke's deaf masks and some of his physical remains. So we're gonna wrap it up when it comes to Burke and Hair right now. They weren't just masterminds or serial killers, they were just greedy dudes who realized dead bodies were valuable and crossed every moral line imaginable to make a quick buck. That's what poverty does. And just poverty. So now we are going to talk about something which I absolutely hate. The strip club. So in Edinburgh, there is this thing called the Pubic Triangle where there are three strip clubs. I might see if I can dig up some knowledge on the other two, but I'm not making this up. There is a strip club called Burke and Hare. Like, yeah, they named a lap dancing club after two men who literally murdered people for money. So the strip club was established in the 1990s. But like, could you imagine the discussion where it was like, what do we call our sexy nightclub? Well, how about two dudes famous for corpse selling, for murdering potential sex workers, females? And we're gonna have females work in this establishment who are supposed to bring in every bit of money. Yeah? Nailed it. Perfect. Like it honestly says something about Edinburgh, doesn't it? That they've named a strip club after two murderers who murdered women. Wow. This city really has a way of like repacking its darkest history into entertainment at the expense of the women who work there. Birken Hare once terrified people and now they're on pub signs, escape rooms, keychains, and there's a strip club named after them. It's it's it's to me it's not funny. It might be funny to some people, but then you have to remember that these men killed real vulnerable people whose lives were seen as disposable. And now their names get a sign. On paper, the original Birkenhair pub company in Edinburgh was controlled by a male director who held over 75% of the shares and voting rights. Now you can look this up on um Company House. Just um literally type in Birkenhair strip club and Google it, and you can see who is the director, the secretaries, the accountant. Be anonymous if you're you're a sex worker. Um you really need to think out, or you really need to think of a name, like really out of the box, because I I just hate the fact that all your information is out there, but I guess you know, public records, yep. I've got no reasoning for it. I don't know why the government do it. Um like yeah, I don't have like access to like who exactly like runs the place, like who is like the managers or anything like that, or like silent investors, but what I can see on company's house is that it is male-owned. We can see a pattern, the brand, the building, and the profits have sat in male hands while the labor and the erotic performance are performed by women. I personally have not been to Birkenhare. I haven't actually been to any strip clubs because they are a good majority of them are owned by men. And they look gross, in my opinion, honestly. Um, they look CD, they don't have a woman's touch, and you can visibly see that. Uh, it's I I honestly would love. If I could, I would love to own a strip club and be there every day and make it the best. I feel like there is a very visible difference when you can see things are owned by women, like fully owned, not just managed, fully owned by women versus fully owned by men. Like when the pictures which I could see and the videos which I could see of Beck and Hair, it didn't look nice. It there's the ones which I could see was just a metal stage and a little bit of a seating area, that's round that's all I saw. I don't really want to give men my money, and we'll go further into that in a moment, but yeah, I I haven't um I would love to work in a strip club, but again, if it's men man-owned, I don't want to give them any portion of my money. And you'll see why. You'll see why in a moment. So before we wrap up our lovely detour into the modern Birk and Hare horrific weirdness, we need to talk about something that happened just a couple years ago because history just it doesn't just haunt spaces, it really just echoes through them. And a dancer at Birken Hare, the strip club, took the venue to court for unpaid holiday pay. Now you can see this. Um, I did put it in my notes where I got this from. I'll read it in a minute. It's like Edinburgh something newspaper. It was around 1,800 that she felt she was owed for holiday pay. Again, I do have to remind people that sex workers we don't have rights. We don't have labour rights, we aren't entitled to holiday pay. We aren't entitled to maternity pay, we're not entitled to sick pay, we're not entitled to anything like that. And I'm not being funny, 1,800, it's not a fortune, it's not millions, it's certainly a tiny amount that strip clubs make. We don't have any rights here in the UK, and this is why we want decriminalization so we can actually say we are sex workers, we do have rights, we do um want labour laws when it comes to working in the sex industry, but sadly we don't have that right now, and it's just the minimum rights that workers are legally entitled to holiday pay, sick pay, maternity pay, but we don't get that. So going back to the news report, to fight for that pay, she had to be recognized in law as a worker, not self-employed entertainment. Because strip clubs love that fucking loophole, don't they? All the control of an employer, none of the responsibilities. She had a real case. It made it all the way to the employment tribunal, and then an appeal at the employment tribunal, the big leagues of worker rights disputes. The tribunal said, This is the fucking judge, right? You have no idea the rage that I felt reading this. We won't guarantee a mitity if we rule in your favor. Meaning, if she wanted to continue and potentially win the case, her real name, her real identity, her job was gonna be blasted across the news. She knew exactly what would happen next. The stigma, the judgment, potentially family finding out, friends, all sorts. So she had a choice. Keep fighting and risk her whole personal life being exploded exposed or walk away and get nothing.

SPEAKER_00 39:59

It was it's honestly horrible to read.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

And what do you think she picked? She sadly chose to walk away. The claim was dropped. She didn't get any holiday pay. There was no legal precinct. She didn't lose because she was wrong. She lost because shame is still used as a weapon against women. The judge in that case refused the request to keep the identity of her secret. And you know what the judge said? The judge, Lord Summers, concluded saying that she had willingly undertaken the risk of abuse and violence when she worked as a stripper. He also stated the women knew working as a stripper might harm. He also stated the woman knew working as a stripper might harm her career prospects. This was in 2021. And I'm reading from the Edmund News. I just it's fucking honestly infuriating that women are constantly blamed for men's bad behavior. She literally mentioned that there was evidence that customers had threatened to follow her home from the strip club. Keep in mind the strip club did not want to pay her this holiday pay, and they knew of what was happening. In a written summary, Lord Summers said, while there was evidence that strippers were stigmatized, that alone did not justify an amenity order. More serious harms such as verbal abuse and the threat of assault would have justified an order, but on the evidence it had not been established that she had a reasonable apprehension of such matters. She is no longer working as a stripper and it was not possible to identify circumstances where serious harms might occur. It's on it's it's honestly a joke. And the fact that Birkenhare didn't want to give her this money, that is why I will not align the pockets of strip clubs, especially ones who are manned by men. And I did I tried to do some research. I tried. There's no public record found. There's no public record that I found showing Burke and Hare proactively improved working conditions, fought for better pay, or publicly advocated for worker protections. Most coverage paints them as defending business interests, like licensing venue survival, not labour rights. When it comes to Burke and Hare, they didn't say anything when it came to the Edinburgh Council, I think about three years ago, two, two, three years ago, when they wanted to close all the strip clubs. They did not, it seems like they did not care about the workers, they just cared about their license and making more money. And again, I tried to do some more research. There's in the Edinburgh Evening News, there's a dancer that said that she feels supported there, that management backs her and throws out anyone who crosses boundaries. But then you've got the dancer who wanted her fucking holiday pay. I And as I said, when you look up Birkenhair, you see that it is male-owned. And women's bodies, still the product, still the spectacle, still the thing being judged online in reviews and punished by stigma offline. Some women genuinely say this is the best job I've ever had and that the experience matters, but others quietly disappear from the legal record because they can't risk a Google search outing them to their kids' schools or their next employer. And any time the club looks like it's standing up for dancers, like when Edinburgh tried to ban strip clubs entirely, that was really about the club's protecting its licence and profits, while dancers and their union argued for safety and the right to work. So yeah, same side of the courtroom, very different reasons. Because the actual bravery comes from the damn dancers themselves and from their unions and from the people who actually advocate for sex worker rights and our allies who tirelessly try to advocate for decriminalization and for us to have rights all around the goddamn world, not just in the UK. And it is so fucking tiring to be blamed for men and their abuse and for the stigma and for how I'm raising my kids, how I'm earning money to pay bills. The government is shitting on people. We should be taxing the rich. We shouldn't be taxing the people who are trying to get by and paying their bills. We are getting taxed out of our asses. It is ridiculous what the government is trying to do right now and has been doing for many, many years. And I feel like a lot of us need to stand up and say, no, we're not doing this because there are many people who are happy to just stand by because it is not affecting them. And we are seeing this with the war in Palestine, the war in Sudan, Ukraine, people are not giving a shit because it's not affecting them. And it is so frustrating to see that people who are trying to earn a living, people who are trying to put food on the table for their kids, for themselves, to pay bills, to pay the fucking government, getting tear down one after another, all trying to survive. And what? We're getting told that oh we're too liberal. No, we're just standing up for what we believe in, in the ways of we want freedom. We don't want to be told we can't have this, we can't have that. We want everybody to live peacefully.

SPEAKER_00 47:25

It's honestly such a depressing world that we live in. And I hope in the future that this gets better. Life gets better.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

I hope to God right now. Uh the date right now is the 7th of December 2025. I hope Labour get the fuck out. I hope we don't get reform because the UK as it is is disgusting. And Scotland where I live, reformer taking over, and it's scary. Honestly, don't become an adult. Oh, I'm gonna go cry now and eat a tub of mint chock chip ice cream. Um I hope you guys have enjoyed this episode. Um, it definitely got ranty at the end, but it's I'm very done. Thank you very much for listening. I really am appreciative of everybody who listens, especially people who do stick it out to the end. And yeah, I shall catch you at some other point. Bye! Oh, please follow us on the Instagram and leave us a like on like five stars and everything like that.

unknown 49:20

Bye!