Notorious Murders, Black Lanterns, & Moveable Goods: The Transformation of Edinburgh's Underworld in the Early Nineteenth Century (review)

The year 1828, which saw the discovery of sixteen murders committed by the infamous William Burke, William Hare, and their wives, provides the focal point for Notorious Murders, Black Lanterns, & Moveable Goods. Based on a detailed analysis of trial pamphlets, the book is a microstudy of the households, networks, and relationships that structured black economies in Georgian Edinburgh. It is well known that the activities of Burke and Hare formed part of an illicit trade in corpses that underpinned the medical research of anatomist Robert Knox, his colleagues, and students. Rather than seeing these activities as unusual or extraordinary, Symonds presents them as an extension of a wider entrepreneurial economy amongst the urban poor in which criminal and licit activities were seamlessly combined, encouraged by the wheels of capitalism. This is certainly a new way of thinking about Burke and Hare, who have tended to receive popular rather than critical attention; although, many of the arguments that are made will be extremely familiar to social historians of crime.

Symonds begins by taking us through the pattern of events; each of the impoverished victims were decoyed, intoxicated with drink, and then suffocated before being packed into a trunk or barrel and sold for a substantial figure of ten pounds. The roles of wives Lucky Log and Helen M'Dougal in this "enterprise" have received scant attention. Symonds argues that Log, in particular, played a formative part as a lodging house proprietor, connected to a range of social and economic networks. This leads her on to a broader discussion of women's offending in the city as she examines judicial papers relating to a further nineteen women who were charged with offenses by the Lord Advocates' Department in 1828 (it remains unclear why men's offending is not similarly discussed). Women were mostly prosecuted for theft and reset (handling stolen goods); stolen goods were re-circulated through pawnbrokers and specialist traders, with whom women were often connected as part of their household role. Subsequent chapters deal with the trial and execution of Burke, with the social geography of the West Port area of Edinburgh, and with what is described as "the transformation of the shadow economy." Hare and Log gave King's evidence, which enabled them to claim immunity;M'Dougal was released since it was alleged she had simply followed her husband's orders.

Symonds is at her best when she pieces together stunningly evocative and detailed descriptions of the spaces, places, streets, and homes that were inhabited by the poor of West Port. Whether this can be labeled an "underworld" is, however, open to question. Symonds seems uninterested in current nuanced debates about the utility of the term. Certainly there is a case to be made that the physical lay-out of Edinburgh, in which neo-classical bridges were built over the top of the tenements and wynds of the Old Town, burying the "rough" beneath the "civilized," literally justifies the use of the term "underworld." Yet, at other points, Symonds indicates that there was a permeable "line between the shadow and the larger economy" (p. 72), suggesting continuities rather than discrete areas of economic activity. Moreover, Log's female neighbors, who inhabited the same lowly streets, were extremely condemnatory of the gang's activities, demonstrating the existence of strong moral codes within poor communities. Given the slipperiness of "underworld" terminology, it should be analyzed as a rhetorical device rather than utilized as a sociological category of analysis. Similarly, the argument that the "shadow economy" was transformed remains unclear (and the chart reproduced as figure 1 is impossible to read). Clearly, the murders exposed the centrality of the "cash nexus" to a shocked audience, but historians of the early eighteenth century would point out that its existence and its relationship to criminality had been commented on in...