An Eye for a Killing: 3. The Innocent and the Guilty
Limelight
BBC
4.4 • 698 Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2023
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to hell. The true story of Scotland’s notorious serial killers, Burke and Hare.
In his prison cell, William Burke confesses to a journalist that he took part in 16 murders in the space of ten months.
Jamie Wilson, a young boy living by his wits on the streets of Edinburgh, is one of the victims murdered by Burke and Hare. Neither man is charged with his death – but Jamie’s relatives continue to seek justice.
In the witness box at the High Court, Hare’s wife, Margaret, also accuses Burke of killing Madgy Docherty - who had travelled from Ireland to Edinburgh in search of her son.
Powerful five-part drama-documentary series from BBC Radio 4 with bonus scenes on BBC Sounds.
Written and dramatised by Colin MacDonald.
Narrator ….. Jack Lowden Burke ….. Gavin Mitchell Galbraith ….. Andy Clark Jamie ….. Kyle Gardiner Bobbie ….. James Rottger Margaret Hare ….. Lucianne McEvoy Madgy Docherty ….. Maureen Carr Robert Knox ….. Simon Donaldson Sir William Rae ….. Stuart McQuarrie Other parts played by the cast.
Producer/director: Bruce Young
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.8 | This is an eye for killing, |
| 0:10.4 | the true story of Scotland's most notorious serial killers, |
| 0:13.5 | Burke and Hare. |
| 0:18.2 | Episode 3, The Innocent and the Guilty |
| 0:21.3 | In his prison cell in Edinburgh |
| 0:25.5 | sits the mass murderer William Burke. |
| 0:28.2 | He's chained to a table. |
| 0:30.2 | Across from him is Thomas Galbraith, |
| 0:32.1 | a reporter from the current newspaper. |
| 0:34.9 | In a slaughtering spree lasting 10 months in 1828, Burke and his fellow mass murderer William Hare have killed 16 people and sold their bodies to the anatomist Dr. Robert Knox. Now, in an extraordinary confession, Burke is keen to get things off his chest. |
| 0:59.0 | You want me to list them? |
| 1:04.0 | I do. |
| 1:06.0 | They get mashed up in my head. |
| 1:09.0 | There were so many. I'm waiting. I don't remember them all so clear. |
| 1:22.2 | I might forget one. Just try. The pensioner, Donald, we didn't kill him, but sold his body because he owed hair rent. |
| 1:33.7 | The man who was dying, the miller, smothered and sold. |
| 1:38.4 | Lodgers with the hairs. |
| 1:40.6 | Effie, the woman from Gilmerton, who came to Hare's lodging house. |
| 1:46.0 | An old woman, an Englishman, the woman Hildane. |
| 1:51.0 | Cinder woman, she got drunken hair, suffocated her. |
| 1:57.0 | There was a woman and her grandson, I think. |
... |
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