"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."
As the Edinburgh Festival comes to an end I attended a retelling of the story of Burke and Hare. The grisly tale of two people doing anything for money (The 19th Century equivalent of appearing in "I'm a Celebrity").
What had faded from my memory, and I suspect for others, was that the Doctor, Dr Robert Knox, who obtained the dead bodies from the "butcher and thief" was, in fact, not even prosecuted. He apparently stuck to the sensible course of making "no comment".
I can only assume he also had an excellent criminal defence team behind him.
As well as being a historically important tale, there is also a continuing lesson for those who find themselves in legal difficulty!
Whilst we have a strong history of our own, we weren't around as a firm back in 1829 - but if we had, we would have represented Doctor Knox...
#nocomment #duncanandmcconnell #criminaldefence #edinburghfringe