How can a price be put on life? Every person has something that makes them unique. Their own quirks and traits that are unlike anyone else. To determine which individual is more valuable than another is a near impossible task. In some harrowing circumstances, history makes this decision for us. For a woman like Mary Paterson, a price was already given to her. A price of eight pounds sterling.

Mary Paterson was just a girl. A girl born in Glasgow in 1810. After her parents tragic passing when she was only a child, she decided to move to Edinburgh in search of work. There, she became employed as a maid and hoped that her prospects were finally looking up. Among her peers, she was known to be a beautiful young woman and she quickly began a relationship with an upper-class man. Unfortunately for Mary, she would soon fall pregnant. The man would refuse to take responsibility for this and made false accusations that she was involved in prostitution. When she needed help most, Mary was abandoned and forced to find somewhere, anywhere that would help her.

She turned to a Magdalene Asylum in Dalry. These institutions forced tiresome labour and severe psychological torment onto the women seeking their help. Their inhumane conditions caused the deaths of countless women and children whose lives they were supposed to be protecting. Mary was surrounded by women who were cast out of society. Prostitutes, single mothers and ‘hysterical women’. Christianity was supposed to cure them; to set their morals straight. Unsurprisingly, the women admitted there did not receive the help they were promised. The three gruelling months Mary would spend there was not able to ‘heal her’ from her past.

Mary was facing the world completely on her own. There was no one to protect her when she was abandoned. No one to pull her out of the depths of poverty and squalor when her struggles became too great. The world deserves to know how classism stopped her from creating a better life for herself. It’s too easy for history to shy away from the people who were failed by our society. Finding information on the lives of people like Mary is far too difficult. Her story can only be revealed by scouring newspaper archives from the time she was alive. It’s not possible to know what this experience was like from Mary's perspective. The most important stories are often the ones that go untold.

History is so focused on the bigger picture. We spend hours learning about ‘Great Men’. Men who influenced the path of world history like Churchill or Stalin. Time spent on a woman as insignificant as Mary Paterson is time wasted. So, why is she any less important? We’re missing out on learning about the hardships of those affected by our exclusionary society. By looking at the past, it allows us to shape the future and change the ways we treat the most vulnerable people. By shifting our focus to a woman like Mary Paterson, history doesn’t just become a story, it becomes a reflection of the things in our society that need to fixed. It highlights the unfairness of how women are neglected by our textbooks. There is undeniable value in young girls being able to learn about someone like them. Someone who has shared their experiences and learned to adapt to a society set up for their failure.

Mary Paterson is so much more than just a representation of our ignorance to learning about women’s struggles. She would eventually be released from the Magdalene asylum on the 9th of April 1828. She went into the world seeking a normal, fulfilling life. Her expectations would not be met.

Upon her release, she went out to celebrate with her friend Janet Brown. Now she was finally able to move on from all her troubles and enjoy the life that once punished her. Mary and Janet, sick with their excitement, decided to go to the home of a man they met. They wanted the joyous experience to continue. However, the party came to a grinding halt when the mans wife appeared. She was enraged to find the two young women in her husband's company and wanted them out immediately. Janet obliged and left at the women’s request. Mary however, asleep in a drunken stupor, could not be roused. Unbeknownst to her, she would never leave that house. Not until she had taken her final breath.

Mary made a vital mistake when she put her trust in a man she didn’t know. In her drunken merriment she stumbled upon one of the most prolific killers in Scottish history. William Burke. With the help of his good friend William Hare, Mary became one of the sixteen people that would suffer at their hands. They sold her body for devastatingly low sum. Her value was just eight pounds.

Mary faced nothing but turmoil in her youth. She faced obstacle after obstacle and fought through each one on her own. Her life was a never-ending battle against the men who wronged her, the system that failed her, and the murderers who took advantage of her. Yet Burke and Hare are household names, and Mary Paterson was lost in the sea of victims whose stories aren’t ‘interesting enough’ to share. Despite all she had to suffer through, no one knows her name. To shift the focus away from great men, and to create an environment that addresses and empowers women, history uplifts only the rich and educated. The women with monumental achievements like Mary Somerville or Millicent Fawcett. Women we are taught to believe are more valuable than someone as unimportant as Mary Paterson.

Focusing on the most interesting story doesn’t provide the full picture. It negates the experiences of the people that suffered. Mary Paterson was just a girl, but there is so much value in learning about her life. She didn’t need to change the world to deserve our attention. The fact she was a person, a person with emotions, dreams, and plans, is enough to deserve our respect. Her story is worth so much more than eight pounds. Being granted the ability to learn from her experiences is invaluable.

Of the murders, Sir Walter Scott said that Burke and Hare targeted: “miserable offcasts of society, whom nobody miss'd because nobody wish'd to see them again.” We should miss Mary Paterson, and we should wish to know more about her. Mary deserves greater recognition for the very reason that she wasn’t remarkable, she was normal. There is so much more to learn from history by looking at people like her. Perhaps studying the victims of history, rather than the Great Men and influential women, could help to create a more empathetic society. One that cherishes everyone, regardless of social status, and fosters an attitude of kindness towards those who need it most.