Page:West-Port murders.pdf/5

5 with an expression in the grey twinkling eyes, far from inviting. The female prisoner is fully of the middle size, but thin and spare made, though evidently of large bone. Her features are long, and the upper half of her face is out of proportion to the lower. She was miserably dressed, in a small grey-coloured velvet bonnet, very much the worse for the wear, a printed cotton shawl and cotton gown. She stoops considerably in her gait, and has nothing peculiar in her appearance, except the ordinary look of extreme poverty and misery common to unfortunate females of the same degraded class. But the prisoners, especially Burke, entered the Court without any visible signs of trepidation, and both seemed to attend very closely to the proceedings which soon were commenced.

The indictment was read as follows:—

"William Burke and Helen M'Dougal, you are indicted and accused at the instance of Sir W. Rae, Bart., his Majesty's Advocate, of the crime of murder: insofar as between the 7th and 16th days of April, 1828, and within the house of Constantine Burke, scavenger, Gibb's Close, Canongate, Edinburgh; You the said William Burke did wickedly and feloniously place your body or part thereof, upon the breast or person and face of Mary Paterson, residing in Leith-street, Edinburgh, when she was in a state of intoxication, & did by the pressure there of, and by covering her mouth and nose, forcibly compress her throat with your hands, and forcibly keeping her down, notwithstanding her resistance, suffocate and strangle her; and this you did with the wicked intention of selling her body when so murdered, as a subject for dissection. And also between the 5th and 26th day of October, 1828, within the house of William Hare, labourer, Portsburgh, you the said William Burke, did assault and attack James Wilson, commonly called Daft Jamie, and did leap or throw yourself upon him when ying [sic] in the said house, and he having sprung up, you did