Edinburgh The Hairy Bikers' Pubs That Built Britain

Pubs have been at the heart of Britain for hundreds of years.

Cheers, mucker!

-In city taverns...

-..and village inns...

..landlords have pulled pints for locals,

travellers,

and, well, the odd King or two, myself included.

Try and have a drink now!

But with 30 pubs closing every week,

our historic taverns need defending.

Step! Step!

We're heading out to discover amazing stories linked to the

nation's watering holes.

-Not far to go.

-How far?

-Oh, a couple of miles.

-What?

From the Wars Of The Roses...

..to shipbuilding on the Clyde.

We've ditched our bikes so that we can sample an ale or two.

Get in!

This is very good.

So join us for...

Edinburgh, Scotland's stunning capital.

But it's a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde.

Respectable and intellectual on the one hand...

..dark and menacing on the other.

A bit like yourself, Kingy!

Yeah, yeah. Well, today we're delving into what happened when

those two worlds collided,

in a tale of murder, mystery and medicine.

The story of Burke and Hare and, as ever,

great pubs were at the heart of the...

operation.

-BOTH: Oh!

-Butterfingers.

-Practice makes perfect.

-This is true.

Which is why, in 1827, the medical students of Edinburgh University

needed the real thing to practise on, dude.

Dead bodies.

Funnily enough, there was a shortage of volunteers.

Cue the dastardly Burke and Hare, and their evil, murderous plan.

SINISTER LAUGH

We're turning back the clock to Edinburgh, 1827.

Auld Reekie, as the city is known, was, well, a bit reeky.

You mean stinky? No wonder!

Poverty and squalor where rife, as was crime,

in the dark underbelly of this Gothic city.

One of the most notorious areas was the Grassmarket, where the

numerous boozers were dangerous dens of iniquity.

And in the 1820s, when a certain William Burke and William Hare

were propping up the bar, you really had to watch your back.

Well, mate, what a great place to start a historic pub crawl

in the centre of Edinburgh - The White Hart Inn.

Aye, but if you'd've come to The White Hart Inn in the 1820s,

-you could have been putting your life at risk.

-Really?

I mean, I know the Scots were fond of a dram or two, dude,

but that's ridiculous.

Aye, which made them ripe for the plucking when

Burke and Hare came out to hunt their prey.

The White Hart Inn dates back to 1516.

It's had its share of celebrity punters over the years.

But Burke and Hare

are its most infamous.

Rumour has it, this deadly duo scoped out vulnerable victims here.

Writer Martin Conaghan has brought them to life

in a rather special graphic novel.

-Martin.

-Oh, hello, guys. How you doing?

Hello, how are you? Very nice to meet you.

-Yeah, good to see you.

-What have you got there?

I've got a graphic novel about Burke and Hare, a comic book,

all about the two murderers that went around Edinburgh in the 1820s,

killing people and selling their bodies off to the doctors.

The two of them were Irish immigrants that came over

here in the 1820s to work on the Union Canal.

They hung about most nights, having a drink.

You see, I always think of, like, two shady men, you know,

with top hats and lanterns, in a graveyard

at the dead of night with a pickaxe.

How did they get the bodies, then?

So what they did was, they came to places like this

and they sat, and they would have a drink with, you know,

some of the people, the locals, a bit of a song and a joke,

and things like that.

They would get the people drunk, they would take them

back to the lodgings where they lived, just up the road,

and they would get them a bit more drunk.

The people would fall asleep, and then they would smother them.

Now, how did they smother them?

Well, what they did was they lay on top of them,

held them down, and then pinched their nose, hands over the mouth,

and that became known as "burking".

Because William Burke was one of the duo.

That was their modus operandi of how they got rid of people.

BOTH: Oooh.

Having a method of murder named after you

certainly is a dubious honour.

Aye, but Burke and Hare, they didn't care.

They cracked on, getting plenty of practice burking their victims.

Turns out dead bodies made you dead rich.

Why was there a market for, well, dead bodies?

The people who were learning anatomy and learning to perform surgery

needed bodies to practise on.

So a bit of a gold rush developed around the universities,

all around the country, in London, in Glasgow, in Edinburgh,

where the surgeons needed to get hold of dead bodies to practise on.

So Burke and Hare obviously realised,

"We can make a bit of money out of this."

So they turned, like, body snatching into murder.

Well, what actually happened was the very first

victim that they disposed of to the doctors was someone

who actually died in their lodging house owing them money.

And they thought, "Well, we don't have to bury this guy,

"we'll just hand his body into the university,

"they'll give us money."

And they took the body along

and they were given seven pounds and ten shillings for the first body.

And then they thought, "Well, we can't just wait on people dying,

"so can we hurry this along a bit?"

One sniff of cash

and they spent the next year knocking off 16 poor folk.

And the man buying up the bodies was Dr Robert Knox,

an anatomist from the Royal College of Surgeons.

So did Dr Knox, did he get implicated with the murders?

Well, it was always suspected that he knew that Burke and Hare

were committing murder to bring in the bodies, because he had

the most regular supply, he had the biggest attendance of students.

It was just they needed the bodies, Burke and Hare needed money,

and nobody asked any questions.

So how did all of this come to an end?

On the occasion of their final victim, they got caught.

How? How did they get caught?

Well, they didn't have time to dispose of the body.

They stuck the body under a bed and hid it with some straw.

And then there was a bit of a commotion

and the police were called.

-Bodies under the bed.

-HE SHUDDERS

That's the stuff of childhood nightmares.

You're right.

Just like Burke and Hare, Martin didn't work alone.

This bloke in the corner is Will, the comic's illustrator.

And he's scribbling a bit suspiciously, if you ask me.

So what's Will been drawing over there?

I don't know, he's been at it a while.

Let's have a look, Will. Come here, mate.

Come here. How are you doing?

-It's the Burke And Hairy Bikers.

-THEY BOTH CHEER

Oh, that's really quite sinister.

Oh, flipping heck, isn't it?

Oh, you know, Si, that conjures up quite an atmosphere.

That's you and I, depicted as Burke and Hare, standing at the bar.

-It feels quite chilling, doesn't it?

-It does.

In this very spot, that Burke and Hare may have stood,

just to entice their victims into their clutches.

Behold, the newly christened Burke And Hairy Bikers.

And there have been a few other shady characters around these parts.

Including more than a few ghosts.

The White Hart Inn claims to be one

of the most haunted pubs in the city.

Ewan Irvine is a ghost hunter, while Susan and Katrina work here.

They're all convinced ghostly guests regularly drop in.

I've heard that Edinburgh's, like, one of the most haunted

cities in Europe.

Have you got any tall tales?

It was actually just last week and I needed to change a keg,

so I'm sort of bolting down the stairs, went past the chef.

Got downstairs. As I got through to the office,

I saw someone at the side of me.

So, of course, I just went, "All right? Hiya."

And I kept running through, because I was in a hurry.

I changed the keg and as I got to the cellar I was like,

"There shouldn't be anyone down there."

Everyone else was upstairs.

So I quickly changed the keg and went through,

thinking someone had got past us and they'd got downstairs,

but there was no-one there.

And what about you, Sue? Have you had any experiences?

Sometimes I've heard, like, footsteps.

So I've came all the way up the stairs and there was nobody there,

and went all the way back down. Heard it again.

All the way back up. And that's happened a few times.

Still in doubt?

Well, here's some more spook-tacular evidence.

Oh, yes.

In 2013, some Australian tourists took this photo,

which appears to show a figure, with a hand clearly visible.

Intrigued by the photo, Ewan and his gang of ghost hunters

held a late-night paranormal investigation.

We came along one evening, from about 11 o'clock

to around about 2:30, and we spent these hours within the pub...

..and took pictures of the same area

where that original picture was taken.

And our picture shows an image

almost identical to the first one that was taken.

That's the photo, here.

-There's a hand.

-It's a hand.

-Oh!

-It's lost on there.

It's quite chilling, isn't it?

Not half. I'm getting goose bumps all over, mate.

How would you explain that, Ewan?

It's the ghost.

Let's scarper, Dave. No offence to ghosts,

but I prefer my spirits in liquid form.

Did you know that 30 years before the time of Burke and Hare

one of Scotland's greatest minds visited this pub?

Well, I did know, as a matter of fact, cos you know why?

It says it up there. Mr Rabbie Burns.

And I can trump your poet with another poet - Willie Wordsworth.

He stayed here in 1803, so you can stick that in your pipe

and smoke it.

Oooh! Charming, mate. So it's the battle of the facts, is it?

Well, I'll trump your trivia easily with some pub signs.

And being Edinburgh, I hope they're suitably gruesome. Hit me, Dave.

Maggie Dickson's is named after a woman

hanged in the Grassmarket in 1724.

Before being buried, there came a knocking from the coffin.

Turned out the hanging hadn't worked

and she lived the rest of her days

called "Half-hangit Maggie".

Well, did you know the Jolly Judge, near Edinburgh's High Court,

is named after Robert McQueen,

notoriously known as "the hanging judge"?

What's jolly about that? I'd have him barred!

Ha-ha, get it? Legal bar?

Oh, whatever.

The Last Drop overlooks the spot where the city gallows

stood for over 120 years.

So hanging with your mates down the boozer

had a different meaning then.

Back on our Burke and Hare tour and 1828 was definitely a dodgy year

to be staggering Edinburgh's streets after one pint too many.

Do you know what, mate?

It sends a shiver down my spine to think of the poor, unsuspecting,

albeit inebriated souls that crossed the path of Burke and Hare.

Aye, these Edinburgh closes are still dank and dangerous.

I wonder what they were like back in those days.

Hey, well, you know what?

I'm just about to meet a bloke to tell us just that, and he's going

to take me back in time to when your body was worth more dead than alive.

And I'm going uptown to find out what they did to your dead body once it was sold on.

Hmmmm, nice.

Oh, well, Dave, you can keep your dead bodies.

I'm off to Edinburgh's creepy closes to delve into the darker

side of 19th-century life.

Local historian John Baxter's got all the gruesome details.

-Now, you've got to be John.

-I am, indeed.

-I sincerely hope you are. How are you, sir?

Si, how are you doing? Good to see you, welcome.

-Good to see you, too. Thanks very, very much for meeting me.

-You're very welcome.

Well, this, to say the least is, well, atmospheric, I think is the word.

-Or claustrophobic, one of the two.

-Very. Yeah, absolutely.

Can you tell me what this would have been like back in the day?

-Well, this is where everyone lived, cheek by jowl, the rich and the poor, both together.

-Wow!

The rich at the top of the buildings, away from all the nasty smells and the poverty,

because at the ground level,

that is where you have the poor in society.

Was it the same in Burke and Hare's day, then?

-Well, it had actually gotten worse by that point.

-Got worse?

1820s, by this point the New Town had been constructed,

so all the very wealthy in society had moved north,

but that left behind the jumble of the Old Town.

You had the very poor in society living here,

and it wasn't very pretty.

There was crime, was on the up here. There was prostitution,

there were brothels and there were lots of illegal drinking dens.

Illegal drinking dens selling ale, whisky and all sorts of home-made moonshine.

If you don't mind, I've got some stuff that may have actually been drunk at that time.

It's quite potent, so it's up to yourself if you want to try it.

Well, you know, I, er...I wouldn't say no.

So this would be what they were drinking at the time?

This is very similar. It's come straight out of the still and right into the mouth, essentially.

Crumbs!

Well, I'll tell you what, it smells strong.

It's quite the stuff, isn't it?

Cor, it sets fire to your nasal hair.

That is as rough as a badger's bum.

I can see why Burke and Hare used this stuff to help knock out their victims.

Mind you, they weren't the only ones dying to make money from dead bodies.

John's brought me to the city's famous Greyfriars Cemetery,

where another gruesome profession was rife.

So, John, tell me why you've brought us here?

It's a place where graverobbers, body snatchers

or resurrection men would come into the graveyards in the dead of night

and raise bodies from the ground.

What did their relatives think of that, then?

Well, you can imagine they weren't too pleased with that whatsoever,

so they employed a number of methods.

If you had anything of wealth, you could perhaps use one of these.

This is a gridiron, or a mortsafe. Essentially, a six-foot cage

that would go into the ground around the coffin.

So that was one method. If you were extremely poor,

your relatives would just have to sit on top of the grave long enough

to render the body useless, so... Essentially, maybe about nine to ten days.

-Now, useless, as in decomposed?

-Decomposed.

No use at all to the medical profession.

There's this kind of sinister cloud that sits over Edinburgh,

and that thirst for and quest for knowledge...

Absolutely. Yeah, it's like a really grim profession

and there were a number of gangs operating.

With bodies worth over 900 quid in today's dosh,

and the likes of Dr Robert Knox champing at the bit to buy them,

it's no wonder graverobbers were chancing an arm.

And less than a mile across town,

I'm getting a sneaky peek at some human remains from that very era.

I've come to Edinburgh's Anatomy Museum to meet

Professor Gordon Findlater.

So how far back does the teaching of anatomy go in Edinburgh?

-1505.

-1505?

King James IV of Scotland gave the approval of the body

of a hanged criminal to be used for the purpose of dissecting.

And that, in fact, was effectively the establishment

of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

Executed criminals were the only bodies surgeons were

legally allowed to dissect until 1832.

As for Burke and Hare, well, once police got wind of the duo, they were both arrested,

but justice wasn't necessarily dished out equally.

Well, Burke got hanged, didn't he?

Burke got hanged and Hare got a free pardon,

because he gave evidence against Burke, and so poor old Burke

was the only one that was found guilty of the murders.

And Burke's final resting place?

Here at the museum.

Oh, yes. I'll just show you this.

So that is William Burke, the notorious murderer.

He was condemned to be hanged, dissected and to be put on display.

That was actually part of his sentence.

Good grief!

So he's been hanging here since he was hanged in 1829.

That was a cruel irony, isn't it?

That he's ended up in perpetuity at the very place

-he was servicing, as it were.

-Absolutely.

So, in those days, you talk about the anatomist as almost being like, a bit like a pop star.

He has an entertainment factor.

Was there entertainment involved in this?

Undoubtedly so. I mean, people could come in

and watch dissections taking place in the old lecture theatre.

Er, and in Burke's case, however,

it was never meant to be a public dissection, but there was such

a clamour by the public to see Burke being dissected that they

opened up the anatomy department to the public

so they could actually watch Burke being dissected.

Blimey! Dissection as a spectator sport.

It's a bit different from a night at the movies.

As for how they captured your mugshot?

That's another matter altogether.

So if you come round the corner here, you can actually see a

life mask of William Burke and a life mask of William Hare,

and on the top shelf there we have the death mask of William Burke

and the life mask of Robert Knox, who received the bodies from Burke and Hare.

Crikey, what a collection.

Given that there was no way of taking photographs in those days,

this was the way they actually made likenesses of individuals.

And if that wasn't a vivid enough portrait,

Gordon's got one more gruesome treat for me.

So, Gordon, why have you brought me here?

Well, this is a scrapbook which somebody put

together at the time of the Burke and Hare murders.

Right.

And it's a collection of newspaper cuttings...

Actually from that time?

From that time.

"This is written with the blood of William Burke,

"who was hanged at Edinburgh on 28 January 1829 for the murder

"of Mrs Campbell or Doherty.

"The blood was taken from his head on 1st February 1829."

So it's a letter written in Burke's blood.

I suspect, obviously, by an anatomist or

a surgeon in training who was present at the dissection of Burke,

because there's no way he would have had access to the blood of his head.

But he took it on himself to write that letter,

obviously realising the infamy of Burke and how maybe 100

and however many years later we'd be standing and reading it.

-What an extraordinary tale.

-Isn't it just?

Don't know about you, but I fancy a drink now.

I'm not surprised, Myers.

All that gore's enough to send you straight down the boozer, isn't it?

And we all know traditional pubs would be nothing without their

passionate punters.

So let's meet an Edinburgh local who loves his local.

The Sheep Heid Inn -

that's Scottish for head, in case you were wondering -

claims to be Edinburgh's oldest surviving public house.

You'll find it in Duddingston, an ancient village in east Edinburgh.

It's full of history and tradition

and is the regular watering hole of Anthony Martin.

Cheers.

I love this pub because there's local people come in,

there's people I know, there's people I can talk to, there's people

I can share the good and bad of life with.

It's a remarkable place.

It's so old, it's got so much history,

and personal history as well as ancient history.

I've been coming here since I was at school across the road just round the corner.

It's a lovely local.

This goes way back to the 14th century.

There must have been so many characters in here over the years.

Topping the list of supposed dram-drinking visitors

are Bonnie Prince Charlie

and Mary, Queen of Scots.

Mary, Queen of Scots, this was seemingly the stopping point

or halfway house between Holyrood Palace and Craigmillar Castle.

It's very, very likely that she was sitting in these rooms with

her courtiers while they're preparing the horses to

carry on for the final part of the journey.

Bonnie Prince Charlie did his battle plan

for the Battle of Prestonpans here.

September 1745, he was sitting in here...

..getting wined and dined,

enjoying his evening and up for it,

and getting his lieutenants up for it.

And that's brilliant.

But Anthony reckons this pub's a knockout for another reason.

Skittles, anyone?

Ohhh!

It's quite painful in the morning when you get up,

cos you do thump yourself about, landing on your knees.

Skittles dates back to around 1630,

and this alley is one of the oldest in Scotland.

King James VI is even said to have played here and had such a good time

that he gave the landlord a ram's head snuffbox.

Anthony is certainly bowled over by the Sheep Heid.

See what I did there, Kingy?

Genius, dude, genius.

BAGPIPE MUSIC

Back on our historic Edinburgh pub tour, we've come to the Royal Mile.

Yep, time to "hang out" in another boozer.

Here, mate, what happened, then, to Burke and Hare?

Well, I can tell you all about that. I mean, Hare, well, he literally got

away with murder, as did Dr Robert Knox. But Burke...

..hanged.

Crumbs. Here, what about Deacon Brodie's, then?

Well, I do believe that it witnessed the whole very, very public spectacle.

Did it?

Sitting on the Lawnmarket since 1806, Deacon Brodie's has

witnessed its fair share of public executions.

Even its namesake, Deacon Brodie, went to the gallows in 1788.

But if you were in this pub 40 years later in January 1829,

you would have had a cracking view of Burke's hanging.

Professor of Law Lindsay Farmer can give us the lowdown on the stringing up.

-Hello, Lindsay. Dave, nice to meet you.

-Hi, nice to meet you.

-Nice to see you.

-I've got some beers in for you.

-Ah, you kind man!

-What a nice fellow! Cheers for those.

Lindsay, I believe that this pub had something to do with

the Burke hanging. Is that right?

After 1785, the public executions in Edinburgh took place here in the Lawnmarket.

So William Burke was hung just outside of the front door of the pub here,

and there was said to be a crowd of around about

-20-25,000 people on the Lawnmarket.

-Really?

-Wow!

Which, it was claimed, was the biggest crowd at the time for a public execution.

So I've got here a picture, also.

This is a contemporary print and you can see the platform.

-So would that be us here? The building we are in now?

-That's right.

That's remarkable! People are hanging out of the windows and everything.

Outside on the streets of the execution, there would be hawkers,

there'd be people selling pies, people selling food.

There would be, you know, there'd be drinks.

You know, you have to remember, this was in the days when there wasn't TV.

This was how the message of the law was got across.

Crikey, Kingy! These hangings sound brutal.

A drunken crowd eating pies and baying for blood.

That sounds like an average Saturday afternoon at the footy, if you ask me, Dave.

Burke was one of the last public executions, so it kind of fell out

of fashion then as a public spectacle.

It did, and people's attitudes changed. So people,

instead of seeing this as a kind of a public lesson,

they started to regard it as something horrifying,

as something that no respectable member of society would want to see.

I can't say I blame them.

A public hanging would definitely put me off my pint.

Hear, hear, mucker. But, as you know, Burke wasn't the only infamous

Edinburgh villain to be snared by the hangman's noose outside this boozer.

It connects in an interesting way to Deacon Brodie...

Oh, right! This is where we are now, the pub, the Deacon Brodie.

Deacon Brodie was a famous Edinburgh citizen,

the model for the Jekyll and Hyde story for Robert Louis Stevenson.

He was a cabinet-maker. He would visit the homes of his clients,

he would take impressions of keys, and then he and his gang would go

back at night and use the keys they'd made to break in and burgle.

So Deacon Brodie was also one of the first people to be

hung here in the Lawnmarket, and he was launched into eternity, as they say.

-What a thought!

-I'm very glad it's a thing of the past.

Yes, me, too. Indeed.

The days of hanging might be over, but that gruesome duo Burke and Hare

live on in Edinburgh's pub music.

And here is a man who can give us a wee tune - Robin Laing.

Hello, Robin, it's Dave.

If we can hear him above the Rabbie, that is.

So, Robin, what sort of events inspire your music?

Stories about things that happened in Edinburgh.

Stories about industrial heritage.

Interesting stories. I love stories, especially the gruesome ones.

So have you got any ones for - particularly the gruesome ones -

have you got any ones for Burke and Hare?

I have, yes. I wrote a song, oh, many years ago now in the 1980s,

about Burke and Hare.

I probably was under the same misapprehension,

as most people in Edinburgh these days, that they were body snatchers.

-Aye.

-Yes, yeah.

-They were just serial murderers.

-Aye.

Mm, that's pretty gruesome.

So what was it that inspired this song?

A great story, and I came across it listening to kids doing

skipping rhymes about, er...

Up the close, and doun the stair But and ben wi' Burke and Hare.

Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief,

Knox the boy that buys the beef.

And, you know, kids love this story of Burke and Hare.

-So can we hear it?

-Of course. It's called Burke And Hare.

# Burke and Hare were a terrible pair

# Their deeds were beyond belief

# They worked underground in Edinburgh town

# The cruellest kind of thief

# For they stole the life from the city's poor

# The city's waifs and strays

# Got them drunk, laid them on the bunk

# And smothered their lives away, the swine.

# They smothered their lives away. #

That's brilliant.

From murderous schemes and ghostly goings-on

to a couple of public hangings.

Crikes, it's been a striking 19th-century Edinburgh pub crawl.

Tell you what, though, glad I was only born 30 years ago.

Tee-hee-hee! Give over, will you?

Si, we have to end a great day in the city of contrasts with a wee dram.

Och, aye.

Pub trivia time. Do you know the difference between a surgeon and a barber?

Well, one cuts hair - not that we've seen that for a while -

and the other one dissects bodies.

Well, up to 1745, they were one and the same,

and the barber-surgeon would be responsible for such tasks as

shaving your beard, pulling your teeth, lancing your boils, letting your blood

and even performing minor surgery.

-Really?

-Yep.

-Flippin' heck!

Well, I'll tell you what, mate.

Next time I go to the barber's, I'm going to be careful what I ask for.

TOGETHER: Slainte!