Burke & Hare: Murder for Anatomy in Enlightenment Edinburgh

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Most of what is known comes from the trial, Burke's two confessions and contemporary pamphlets, which were sensational. The number of victims depends on Burke's confessions. Hare's fate after his release is uncertain. Burke and Hare were murderers, not grave robbers, though they are often lumped in with the "resurrection men".

The demand for bodies

established In the early nineteenth century Edinburgh was a magnet for medical students from across Britain and beyond. Anatomy was central to their training, and students and private lecturers competed for bodies to dissect. The only legal supply was the bodies of executed criminals, far too few. The gap was filled by grave robbers, the "resurrection men", who dug up fresh corpses and sold them to anatomists. Families protected graves with iron cages called mortsafes and built watchtowers in kirkyards.

From a natural death to murder

established William Burke and William Hare were Irish immigrants who had come to Scotland as labourers. Hare and his wife, Margaret, ran a lodging house in Tanner's Close in the West Port, where Burke and his partner, Helen McDougal, also lived. In November 1827 an old lodger, Donald, died of natural causes owing Hare money. Burke and Hare sold his body to the anatomy school of Dr Robert Knox at 10 Surgeons' Square for £7 10s.

established Finding the trade profitable, they began to kill. Over the following year they murdered at least sixteen people, mostly the poor, the sick, the elderly and the marginal, lured to the lodging house, plied with drink and smothered. Smothering left no wounds, so the bodies looked fresh and natural, and Knox's assistants asked no awkward questions. The method became known as "burking".

established Among the victims were Mary Paterson, a young woman whose body was reportedly recognised by Knox's students; James Wilson, "Daft Jamie", a well-known, harmless young man of the streets; and finally Margaret Docherty, an Irishwoman murdered on 31 October 1828.

Discovery and trial

established On 1 November 1828 two lodgers, James and Ann Gray, found Margaret Docherty's body hidden under straw and went to the police. Burke and McDougal were arrested, and the Hares the next day. The evidence was weak, so the Lord Advocate offered Hare immunity in return for testifying against Burke. Burke and McDougal were tried at the High Court in Edinburgh on 24–25 December 1828 for Docherty's murder alone. Burke was found guilty. The charge against McDougal was found "not proven".

Execution and dissection

established Burke was hanged at the Lawnmarket on 28 January 1829 before a crowd of perhaps 25,000. As the court had ordered, his body was publicly dissected at the University of Edinburgh. Thousands queued to see it. His skeleton is still displayed in the University's Anatomical Museum, and a book said to be bound in his skin is held by Surgeons' Hall Museums.

Hare and Knox

established Hare was released in February 1829 and fled. His fate is uncertain: one popular story says he was blinded by a mob and ended as a beggar in London, but evidence suggests he went to Dumfries and then to Ireland. Robert Knox was never charged. A committee cleared him of knowing about the murders, but public opinion did not; a mob burned his effigy and he was forced to resign as a museum curator. He later moved to London and died in Hackney in 1862.

The Anatomy Act

shared The Burke and Hare case, together with similar murders in London, the "London Burkers" of 1831, pushed Parliament to pass the Anatomy Act 1832. It allowed anatomists to take the unclaimed bodies of people who died in workhouses and hospitals, ending the market in stolen corpses. Historians note that the Act shifted the burden of dissection from criminals to the poor, a source of lasting fear and resentment.

Popular memory

shared Burke and Hare became a staple of horror, from the skipping rhyme "Up the close and doon the stair, / In the hoose wi' Burke and Hare" to films and Robert Louis Stevenson's story The Body Snatcher. They are usually remembered as grave robbers, but they did not rob graves; they murdered.

A body trade older than Burke and Hare

established Edinburgh's anatomists were short of bodies long before 1828. The only legal supply was the corpses of executed criminals: the surgeons' charter of 1505 granted them one a year. A grave-robbing scandal in the mid-1720s, with allegations that bodies were being taken for the anatomists, led Alexander Monro primus to ask the Town Council for rooms inside the University walls in 1725, a move that helped create the medical school. The historian Helen Dingwall notes that the scandal faded without changing the law, which stayed the same until the Anatomy Act of 1832.

shared By the 1820s the private extra-mural schools, such as Robert Knox's, offered more practical, dissection-based teaching than the University's anatomy chair under Monro tertius, and so needed more bodies. Dingwall argues that this market for practical anatomy, together with ever stricter dissection requirements for surgical diplomas, created the demand that Burke and Hare supplied. From 1828 the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh required every candidate to show that he had dissected a human body.

• Burke and Hare were murderers, not grave robbers.
• "Burking" became a word for murder by smothering.
• Their first sale was a lodger who had died of natural causes.
• Hare walked free by testifying against Burke.
• Burke's skeleton is on display at the University of Edinburgh.
• The charge against Helen McDougal was found "not proven".

• Myth: Burke and Hare were grave robbers. They did not rob graves. They murdered their victims and sold the bodies, unlike the "resurrection men" who dug up the dead.
• Disputed: What became of Hare. One popular story says a mob blinded him and he died a beggar in London, but the evidence suggests he went to Dumfries and then to Ireland. His fate is uncertain.
• Myth: Dr Robert Knox was convicted of the crimes. He was never charged. A committee cleared him of knowing about the murders, but public opinion did not, and his reputation was ruined.
• Disputed: The number of victims. At least 16 people were killed, but the total depends on Burke's confessions.