Ah yes, another Burke and Hare story, and it's only fitting that Hitchcock would take another stab at one. Actually, the characters are only bystanders in this episode, as poor John McGregor (Andrew Duggan) shuffles through the story bemoaning the fact he's married to a lay about alcoholic wife, admirably portrayed by Elsa Lanchester. McGregor's occupation of hauling wooden boxes, presumably filled with 'tanbark', to a medical college run by Dr. Knox (John Hoyt) eventually gives him ideas for what might become of wife Aggie (Lanchester) if only he could find a way to orchestrate her demise. To my thinking, any of those dreamlike sequences would have worked, but McGregor talked himself out of them, preferring to leave the dirty work to Burke (Arthur Malet) and Hare (Michael Pate), who were real historical figures self-employed in the body snatching business of 1828 Edinburgh, Scotland. It's not too hard to figure out how this one would end, seeing as how Burke and Hare could allow no witnesses to their chosen profession. Which left me to ruminate on the frequent mention of tanbark in this story, a term I'd never heard before, and wondering if there was such a thing. But yes indeed, tanbark is the bark from oak or other trees from which tannin is extracted, and then left to cover the ground for walking, playgrounds and gardening. So, even though it sounded humorous when Dr. Knox mentioned it, it was indeed used for 'spreading around'.
Review of The McGregor Affair
