A major problem facing human anatomy researchers in the early days of medicine was that doctors and students needed human cadavers to dissect and study, but society and religion were opposed to defiling the human body. When sufficient numbers of bodies weren’t available in 19th-century Scotland, scientists had to rely on grave robbing—and even murder.

In the 1700s and early 1800s, Parliament allowed only the bodies of executed criminals to be donated to science, creating a shortage of supplies for the professors and students at the elite Edinburgh Medical School. Doctors and medical researchers asked Parliament to pass an Anatomy Act, that would allow scientists access to the unclaimed remains of people who died in poorhouses and hospitals, but the idea was hotly disputed by the lower class and by the Roman Catholic Church. So instead, scientists turned to a shadowy network of grave robbers that developed across Britain to fill the demand for corpses. These “resurrection men” ransacked graveyards for recently interred bodies and sold them to doctors who turned a blind eye to their provenance. A body might fetch £7, an enormous sum in the early 19th century. The invasion of the body snatchers became so bad that some cemeteries posted sentries or built walls to keep out the thieves.

Two workmen in Edinburgh, William Burke (1792–1829) and William Hare (1792– 1870), took the business model a step further. Grasping the enormous profits to be made selling cadavers, the men decided to forgo grave robbing in favor of murder: They operated boardinghouses in town, where they lured poor people, vagrants, and prostitutes who wouldn’t be missed—at least not by anyone important. To prevent the doctors who bought the corpses from growing suspicious, Burke and Hare suffocated their victims so there would be no visible injuries or signs of foul play.

It’s suspected that the pair killed between 16 and 30 people before being arrested in 1828. Hare testified against Burke and was freed, while Burke was hanged in January 1829, in front of 25,000 people. His body was donated to medicine for dissection, and his skeleton remains on display at the University of Edinburgh’s Medical School Museum.

ADDITIONAL FACTS

  1. It was suspected that the head of the Edinburgh Medical School, Robert Knox (1791–1862), was a knowing accomplice in the plot. A popular street song of the day includes the lines “Burke’s the butcher, Hare’s the thief, Knox the boy who buys the beef.”
  2. Two slang terms coined around this time were Burking, meaning “murdering,” and Burkophobia, referring to the public’s hysteria and paranoia that a murderer lurked around every corner.
  3. In New York City around the same time, grave robbing for the benefit of medical schools was also rampant. Public outcry was strong, leading to occasional street riots when citizens feared that bodies of family members had been stolen.