What Happened to William Hare? March 17, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Introduction
William Burke and William Hare were two ne’er-do-wells who, in 1828, discovered that murdering people in the Edinburgh slums and selling their corpses to doctors made for good money. They were finally arrested after an incredible sixteen men and women had been done away with. Burke was tried, found guilty and hung; his common law wife Helen McDougall was very lucky to escape the noose. William Hare, however, turned king’s evidence and escaped the sentence of his partner in crime, being let off scot free. This was doubly unjust: first, because Hare had carried out the murders with Burke and was arguably the driving force behind the killings; and second because given Hare’s sociopathic proclivities it was only a matter of time before he killed again.
What Happened to Hare?
The great mystery of William Hare is what happened to him. 5 Feb 1829 (after two months in protective custody) Hare was disguised and put on a coach for Dumfries. He was recognized, however, and an angry mob came for him. The police placed him again in a cell and tried to protect the building as locals pressed in scenting blood. In the end he was smuggled out of the city and told to make his own way to the English border. The Scottish constabulary effectively washed their hands of their ward and it is unlikely that too many tears would have fallen had someone taken justice into their own hands on a lonely Borders road. And that is the last good documentary proof we have of Hare. He was between 21 and 30* at the time and apparently vanished into the ether. Perhaps he was killed an hour after the police cut him free; perhaps he lived into the 1880s under a new identity. The only useful information we have is that we know that Hare had talked with the police about going to his native Ireland. This was an age without photographs, though images of Burke and Hare had been produced in the newspaper: the image at the head of this post comes from a courtroom sketch. It was also an age when you changed your surname by deciding to change your surname: today there is inevitably a paper trail. Hare, in any case, managed to vanish without being noticed. There have been a couple of theories thrown around about what happened to Hare. There is a web tradition (which seems to be based on no contemporary documentation) that he ended up in the Scottish town of Applecross. But here follow three others, two of which are not apparently known to modern Burke-and-Hare writers.
William Hare in London
The most common theory resorted to is that Hare became an old blind beggar who worked the streets of London as late as the 1860s or 1870s. This allegation appears in Atlay’s Famous Trials of the Century in 1899: ‘It will be within the recollection of many Londoners, who are you yet past middle age, that when their childish walks took them on the north side of Oxford Street, one of the principal attractions consisted in the view of a certain blind beggar, who, with dog and stick, was wont to solicit alms of the passers-by. His story was on the lips of every nursemaid, and he was pointed out to awe-struck children as William Hare, one of the actors in the West Port murders.’ Atlay did not invent this. In 1881, in a newspaper, we read: ‘It may be interesting to state that up to within a short time ago Hare, stone blind, might be seen begging in the streets of London under an assumed name, and led by a dog which he held on a string.’ (Grant Jour, 31 Dec 1881, 7). This, though, was all a farrago. The man in question was Thomas Ware, who had been blinded by falling into a lime pit. We know this because he appeared in a court in London in December of 1842 (Glob 9 Dec 1842, 4). ‘Thomas Ware, a remarkably tall blind man, who is led about by a sharp terrier dog, attended before Mr. Norton, and requested his assistance in relieving him from a serious stigma upon his character.’ It transpired that Ware was widely believed to be Hare or the brother of Hare. He gave the judge a remarkable document, a letter from the Police Court at Edinburgh, signed by a judge, by an inspector of Police and by a clerk of the police. The letter states that ‘William Ware, is not William Hare, and does not in the least resemble that person, either in feature or stature’. The uselessness of fighting against this charge is shown by the subsequent reports from the 1880s and 1890s. Poor Thomas had become, however unwillingly, part of the capital’s mythology, a local bogey.
William Hare in Canada
The next account was taken down by a correspondent in the Scotsman. ‘About twelve or fourteen years ago [late 1840s], one of the most popular and best-known men in Upper Canada (from whose lips I have the following story) was travelling in the stage in the township Ekfrid, in the county of Middlesex, C. W. [Ontario]. In the vehicle with him were two persons residing in the neighbourhood. On entering into conversation with the one sitting next to him, he discovered that he was the doctor of the district, and that he had graduated at Edinburgh. Being himself a native of your city, the conversation naturally turned on Edinburgh affairs, and the Doctor having informed him that he had studied under Dr Knox, whose name acquired an unenviable reputation in connection with Burke and Hare, the circumstances connected with the trial of these criminals were recalled and talked over. The doctor then said that he presumed he was not aware that it was supposed that Hare was buried in the township, and my informant having expressed considerable surprise and interest, he proceeded to relate the circumstances connected with his death. Several years before, a man named Hare arrived with his wife in the district, and settled on a clearing removed at a considerable distance from any of his neighbours. Here he lived inoffensively for some years, and it was observed that, as the settlements increased, he removed further into the forest. Among the settlers who arrived from the old country, there was Scotchman, who brought with him a copy of a pamphlet containing an account of the trial of Burke. In this pamphlet there was a portrait of Hare, and also a minute description of his appearance and height. It was handed about from one farmer to another, and in the long cold nights of the Canadian winter, its contents were perused with much interest, not unmixed with horror. By-and-bye, some one began to imagine that he fancied he saw striking resemblance to the portrait in their neighbour Hare. Another thought the description corresponded exactly with his appearance, and others, believing that his shy and retiring life must be the consequence of some great crimes, began to view him with suspicion. Soon suspicion became changed into a confirmed belief that their solitary neighbour was none other than the notorious Hare, and it was not long till he came to be shunned by the settlers, who regarded him with ill-concealed awe and aversion. The cause of the odium with which he was regarded was soon communicated to Hare, who, on learning it, went to the owner of the pamphlet and asked permission to read it. It was at once given him. He took it with him to his lonely clearing, and began to read it. Before he finished it, however, he was seized with violent paroxysms of mental agony, and with fearful convulsions. He sent for a priest, but before his arrival he expired in dreadful torments. As Hare had pretended to be Protestant, the neighbours considered the circumstance of his sending for a priest to be a confirmation of their suspicions. On his death some of them went to the house, and, having measured the body and compared the marks on it with the description given in the account of the trial, they found that they corresponded with it in every particular.’ (Dun Peo Jou, 7 Dec 1861, 4) Of course, most of this could be true without Hare being the William Hare: in other word, some backwoodsmen got overly excited at a story. The one really problematic part of the story is the surname. William Hare was clearly an intelligent man. Would he really have used the same surname in Canada?
William Hare in Australia
A final account alleges that Hare ended up in Australia as a convict. This is the most entertaining account but also the most incredible so get ready for a bumpy ride. After the trial Hare ‘hid himself among the wynds and closes of Edinburgh for a short time after his liberation; by then, in the dead of the night, he made his way to Glasgow, changed his name to Pat Lynch, and was engaged there as a mason’s labourer for about a month. He then crossed over to the north of Ireland, in the Rob Roy steamer, landing at Belfast, where he joined a roving band of vagabonds, known as the Clones fleet, who went from fair to market throughout Ulster picking pockets and committing other acts of theft of every description. Ultimately, Hare was apprehended at some fair in the north of Ireland, for some petty theft, and sentenced as a vagrant to seven years transportation. He arrived in this colony under a feigned name, of course, and was assigned to the service of a gentleman named John Hawdon, Esq, J.P. of Elderslie, near Camden. While in Elderslie, Hare was a worthless man, got punished, and turned into the service of the government. He was again assigned to the service of Edward Riley, Esq., on the far-famed Raby Estate, on the Cowpasture Road. It was then harvest time, and there were a great many men on the estate reaping, etc, and one among them had, by chance, come across the pamphlet in Sydney, with the trial, confession, and execution of the fearful murderer Burke. It so happened that after the labours of the day were over, one or other of the reapers would read portions of the pamphlet aloud, the rest sit listening to the awful recital. At some periods of Burke’s confession, Hare would start up and cry out, ‘Boys, boys, that is wrong. Devil a word of truth is in it. I know better.’ Then he would sink down on his berth, and not speak another word for hours. The men could not form an idea what the man could mean, and began to have a suspicion that he had committed some fearful crime in his time, as he could not rest day or night, muttering to himself apart from his fellows, and everyone shunned him as much as possible. Harvest was finished at Raby, and Hare, or rather ‘Bonyparte’, as he was nicknamed, from a peculiar way he wore his hat, was again sent into Government employ a worthless man. He was sent to a road party, near Liverpool [New South Wales], where he fell sick, and his appearance soon proclaimed him to be a living object of confirmed despair. He became an inmate of the Convict Hospital in Liverpool, in 1832 or 33. The patient in the next bed was a man of the name Clarkson, a native of Edinburgh, and was in the prison of that city with Burke and Hare, and knew them both. He had vague recollection the features of the poor miserable-looking being in the next bed, but where he had seen him before was past his comprehension. Clarkson asked him if ever he had been in Scotland. ‘No.’ ‘Was he ever in the North of England!’ ‘No, never in any place but the north of Ireland.’ The conviction on Clarkson’s mind that he knew him under some remarkable circumstance, was shortly after confirmed, by being awoke about midnight, by the restless miserable man asking him if he was in Edinburgh when Burke and Hare were tried. Clarkson started up, and, by the light of the lamp, recognised the emaciated being, and said, ‘you are that notorious villain, William Hare’. He had an unearthly appearance, and smiled grimly and said, ‘George, George, it matters little now who or what I am, I have suffered ten times more than Burke; keep my secret till after my death.’ Early next morning Charles Hodges, wardsman of No. 3 ward, found Hare a corpse; in the course of the same day the body was placed in a shell and carried to the cemetery in Liverpool, in a hand cart, unpitied and unknown. Such was the end of one of the greatest villains that ever disgraced humanity. (Glas M Jour, 23 Jul 1862, 2) This extraordinary account was sent in by a reader in Bathurst, New South Wales, who had been irritated by the claim that Hare had died in Ontario. Local pride… There are a few problems with the account: two stand out though. First, note the inaccuracy that Hare hid in Edinburgh after release. Second, while it is quite credible that Hare might be recognized in a hospital in New South Wales, where did the rest of his biography come from? Did Clarkson milk it from him or ask around after Hare’s burial?
Challenge
Can anyone hunt down farmer Hare in Ontario, Bonyparte in New South Wales or find out anything else about poor old Thomas Ware? drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com Or perhaps there are other reports?
* He declared himself to be 21 but doubts were expressed.