Mock retrial for last man to be hanged in Dundee

Prof Dame Sue Black keeps the neck vertebrae of William Bury on her desk

A mock retrial of the last man to be hanged in Dundee will be staged at the city's sheriff court in February.

William Bury was found guilty of murdering his wife Ellen and was hanged on 24 April, 1889, after initially claiming to be Jack the Ripper.

Bury's conviction rested largely on medical evidence which drew uncertainty from the jury at the time.

The evidence will be re-tested in the mock trial by today's forensic science standards.

The trial has been organised by Dundee University.

Students from the university's mooting society, mentored by Alex Prentice QC, will lead the prosecution case, while their counterparts at the University of Aberdeen, mentored by Dorothy Bain QC will defend.

The jury will be drawn from the local public, with an appeal for 15 people to take part.

The event is being staged as part of the 130th anniversary celebrations of the establishment of the Cox Chair of Anatomy at Dundee University.

The case will be tried at Dundee Sheriff Court, where the original trial was held

Prof Dame Sue Black, director of the university's Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification (CAHID), said: "The William Bury trial and his subsequent execution is a fascinating story in so many respects, from the reaction of the Dundee public, who were very much against the death sentence at the time, to the claims linking him to the Jack the Ripper case, and the circumstances of the death of his wife.

"We have excellent records of the original case, through documents held in the National Records of Scotland and press reports of the time.

"William Bury's body was transported to the university for anatomisation and the bones from his neck remain in my office.

"He had been hanged and his neck snapped at his second cervical vertebra, the classical hangman's fracture."

In the original trial, the Crown alleged that Bury strangled his wife Ellen with a piece of rope, then cut her abdomen open, disembowelling her, possibly while she was still alive or very shortly thereafter.

He then crammed her mutilated body into a wooden trunk, breaking both the bones in her leg in the process.

'Self-strangulated'

The defence alleged that it was suicide and that she "self-strangulated" and that the cuts to her body were made after her death.

Prof Black said the jury originally found Bury guilty, but asked for mercy as they found the medical evidence to be conflicting.

She said: "However they could only return with one of three verdicts - guilty, not guilty or not proven.

"On the second return to the courtroom they found him guilty and he was sentenced to death by hanging.

"We will now look at this evidence again in the light of modern thinking and see what the jury decides,

"Will he still be found guilty? We will find out on 3 February."