HALLOWEEN - SPOOKY WRITING FROM OCTOBER 2022

Many years ago, in faraway Edo-Japan, there lived a young samurai named Masa. While his peers admired and respected Masa for his bravery and loyalty to his daimyo, Lord Fujino, he had a reputation amongst the townsfolk for being somewhat of a ladies’ man. Despite what you think you know about the women of Masa’s time, not all were as chaste as you’ve been led to believe. Women threw themselves at his feet whenever Masa strode past and flashed one of his beaming smiles. They couldn’t help it. He was ever so handsome and charming. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, to learn that Masa was never short of lovers eager to fulfil his most carnal desires. He was often seen about town, socialising and having his way with one (or more) of his many winsome companions.

One spring, Lord Fujino’s daughter, Kinu, returned to her father’s castle after having spent seven years in Kyoto’s most prestigious finishing school. Kinu was still a child when Fujino sent her away, but she had returned an elegant young lady, sophisticated beyond her age. And what a beauty she was! Her satiny, black hair shone like polished ebony, her pale complexion—flawless as alabaster, and her full lips shimmered the shade of peony blossoms in May. Fujino intended to offer Kinu to a powerful Shogun, for only a true noble was worthy of his daughter’s hand in marriage.

Masa first laid eyes on Kinu during the Wisteria Festival celebrations that same spring. Kinu strolled past him dressed in her finest silk kimono, which had embroidered delicate lilac wisteria flowers cascading down the front panel. Masa had never seen such an exquisite beauty in all his life. Needless to say, he was instantly smitten and vowed he would never bed another woman if the lovely Kinu would have him. Kinu, too, had glimpsed Masa amongst the crowd and felt her heart might burst under the weight of her lustful longings. The moment their eyes met, the die was cast—they fell madly in love. Night after night, Masa and Kinu met in secret under the avenue of wisteria trees on the castle grounds. From there, they hastened to Masa’s lodge outside the walled fortress and spent the night away entwined in each other’s arms.

When Lord Fujino learnt of his daughter’s clandestine visits to his vassal’s home, he was furious. How dare Masa tarnish his precious Kinu’s purity! The scandalous affair must be stopped at once! But Masa was a loyal and courageous warrior—one of his best. So instead of ordering his execution (as was the custom in those days), Fujino sent Masa away on a mission to the bleak landscape of Japan’s northernmost island. Before he set off, Masa pledged his devotion to Kinu and promised that when he returned, they would run away together and make a life for themselves.

A year passed, and true to his word, Masa remained faithful to his beloved Kinu. On the evening of his return, he visited the avenue of wisteria trees with his heart hopeful and his groin full of desire. What joy he felt when Kinu appeared from behind the trees, dressed in her wisteria kimono! She looked as lovely as ever. Naturally, the lovers soon found themselves at Masa’s lodge, where they made passionate love under the full Flower Moon.

A nosy neighbour happened to walk past when he heard moans coming from Masa’s garden. He peered through the bamboo trees and what he saw chilled him to the bone. Masa lay on the ground with his arms wrapped around a young woman’s corpse swathed in a tattered silk kimono! The terror-stricken neighbour immediately sent for the priest. To his horror and despair, Masa soon learnt that shortly after his departure, Lord Fujino had betrothed Kinu to a mighty Shogun in the south of Japan. In defiance, the heart-sore Kinu had hanged herself from one of the wisteria trees along the avenue where she and Masa had met and fallen in love.

The priest set to work at once, hanging talismans and scrolls at all doors and windows of Masa’s home to ward off Kinu’s unsettled spirit. Despite his efforts, Kinu’s ghost appeared in the garden night after night, pleading with Masa to allow her entry. He resisted at first, but his grief soon got the better of him. He ripped apart the scrolls and tossed the talismans onto the street so that Kinu may enter his home. The reunited couple once again spent the night in a passionate embrace.

When the priest visited Masa’s home the following morning, he discovered Masa was missing. He sent out a search party to look for the handsome samurai, but he was nowhere to be found. Masa had vanished without a trace. On a hunch, the priest sought Lord Fujino’s permission to open Kinu’s tomb. And there, wrapped in Kinu’s decomposed arms, lay Masa, lifeless, but with a contented smile upon his lips.

We find ourselves in ‘Auld Reekie’, Scottish for ‘Old Smokey’ as Edinburgh used to be known. The nickname was coined when smoke from open coal and peat fires hung over the city in a foul smog.

In the early hours of a bleak night in January 1828, a grisly scene is unfolding in an upstairs room of a lodging house in Tanners Close owned by William Hare. On the bed is an intoxicated lodger, Joseph, a miller by trade. Hare has his hand clasped tightly over Joseph’s mouth and nose whilst his friend William Burke is laying across his upper torso to restrict Joseph’s movements and breathing. This became their distinctive murder modus operandi. It would have been practically undetectable until the era of modern forensics. The evil pair’s victims were usually Hare’s lodgers or people who had been invited in for a night of drinking. Joseph’s killing was the first of at least sixteen murders they committed.

In the early nineteenth century Edinburgh was a leading European centre of anatomical study. At the time, the law allowed the dissection of bodies in cases where the individual had died in prison or committed suicide. But providing a legal supply of bodies for dissection proved difficult. Supply couldn’t keep up with demand and Edinburgh saw a sharp increase in grave robbing.

Burke and Hare took this practice a step further, by killing their victims rather than waiting until they died of natural causes. They then sold the cadavers to Dr Knox and his medical students for the sum of £10, equivalent to close to £1,000 in today’s money.

Their final victim, Margaret Docherty, was killed on 31st October 1828 and before Burke and Hare could deliver the body to Dr Knox it was discovered by two other lodgers, hidden in straw with blood and saliva on the face.

The trial was a major cause célèbre and a rhyme circulated around the Edinburgh streets.

Up the close and doon the stair

But and ben wi’ Burke and Hare

Burke’s the butcher, Hare’s the thief

Knox the boy that buys the beef

A new word ‘burking’ was coined meaning to smother a victim or commit an anatomy murder.

Burke was hanged in front of a crowd estimated at 25,000. Hare was given immunity from prosecution for turning king’s evidence. On February 1st 1829 Burke’s corpse was publicly dissected by Professor Monro. During the procedure, Monro dipped his quill pen in Burke’s blood and wrote, “This is written with the blood of Wm Burke. It was taken from his head.”

There are a few other macabre facts.

Burke’s death mask and a book said to be bound with his tanned skin can be seen at Surgeons Hall Museum.

Hare shot his own horse at the peak of their murdering spree. The pair had murdered two lodgers on the same day and the tea chest they normally used to transport the bodies was too small. They transferred the corpses to a herring barrel and loaded it onto a cart. Hare’s horse refused to pull the heavy load further than Grassmarket and a porter had to be called to help transport the makeshift hearse. After returning home Hare shot the horse dead.

Madame Tussaud was present at Burke and Hare’s trial. Within a fortnight of his execution she had a wax model of Burke on display in Liverpool.

David Paterson, Knox's assistant, contacted Sir Walter Scott to ask the novelist if he would be interested in writing an account of the murders, but he declined, despite his long-standing interest in the events. Scott later wrote extremely uncharitably:

There has been a great discovery of Oeconomicks, namely, that a wretch who is not worth a farthing while alive, becomes a valuable article when knockd on the head & carried to an anatomist; and acting on this principle, have cleared the streets of some of those miserable offcasts of society, whom nobody missed because nobody wished to see them again.