Margery Campbell, an Irish woman also known as Margaret Docherty, was lured into William Burke’s lodging house in Edinburgh on 31 October 1828 after Burke struck up a conversation with her on the street, claiming a shared homeland. A night of drinking followed, and before it ended Burke and his accomplice William Hare had suffocated her, the sixteenth victim in a killing spree that had run through the city for months.
Her body was found hidden under straw by fellow lodgers Ann and James Gray, who went straight to the police. The discovery ended the partnership for good: Hare turned Crown witness to save himself, and Burke went to the gallows for a murder that finally could not be concealed.
