Burke and Hare: Anatomy Murderers

"Up the close and down the stair, in the house with Burke and Hare, Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief, Knox, the boy who buys the beef." (Nineteenth century children's rhyme)

Thanks to changes in the law, the medical pioneers of nineteenth century Britain found themselves with a deficit of fresh cadavers. Lacking modern anatomical models, physicians had to be trained on real human bodies... so institutions often asked few questions when people turned up with a corpse to sell.

It was into this niche that Burke and Hare fell. Here's the story of how these murderers were able to turn corpses into cash - and how their scheme fell apart.

Grave Consequences: The medical practitioners of Britain once trained using the corpses of executed criminals. Harsh laws (described as a "Bloody Code") provided them with a steady stream of bodies, since even stealing a handkerchief could be punished with execution.

That all changed in 1823 with the "Judgement of Death" act, allowing judges to exercise discretion in capital crimes. Rather than sending the condemned to the gallows, the judge would simply have "death recorded" entered into the record and commute the sentence.

Despite its good intentions, the act had an unforeseen consequence - it dramatically reduced the number of criminal corpses available in the UK. This might seem like a good thing, but medical institutes depended on the remains of condemned criminals for dissection. Without computers and hi-tech models, medical institutions found it difficult teach anatomy.

The lack of supply meant that people with a corpse to sell could charge a financial premium. Faced with a pressing need and limited funds, it's not that surprising that some anatomy schools avoided asking questions when a reasonably priced body came on the market...

Grave Necessities: Where there's demand, it's only a matter of time before someone tries to supply. It didn't take long for the less scrupulous inhabitants of Britain to turn to grave robbing. These ghoulish professionals were even nicknamed "resurrectionists" as they seemed to make corpses get up and leave.

Though illegal, institutions desperate for cadavers viewed these body snatchers as a necessary evil and often turned a blind eye. To give an example, a pub in London called The Fortune of War was designated as a receiving house for bodies recovered from the Thames... despite being several streets back from the river. The bodies (both drowned and "drowned") were laid out in a private room for anatomists to browse like a meat market.

The body-snatching epidemic got so bad that well-off families played guards to watch over the recently deceased. Some cemeteries (such as St Cuthbert's Church in Edinburgh) were even modified with watchtowers!

Stealing bodies from graves was all well and good, but the real payouts came from the freshest, most-intact corpses. It was only a matter of time before some go-getters got a little more proactive.

Old Donald's Final Rent: William Hare and Margaret Laird were running a boarding house in Edinburgh when William Burke and Helen McDougal became lodgers. The two men became friends, possibly helped by their shared origins of Ulster in Northern Ireland.

Their morbid escapades began in 1827 with the death of Donald, one of Hare's boarders. Donald still owed Hare a bit of back rent, which Burke and Hare decided to collect by selling his body to Edinburgh University.

Donald was placed in a coffin and left in his room pending burial, so Burke and Hare stashed his body under the bed and filled his coffin with bark from a local tannery. Their ruse worked, allowing them to cart the corpse to the university and sell it to Dr Knox. While there, the two ghouls were informed that they would be paid for any other bodies that ended up in their possession.

Murder as a Cottage Industry: When another of Hare's lodgers became ill in 1828, the pair decided to give nature a little push. The victim (a man named Joseph) was plied with spirits to get him drunk, before the pair restrained and smothered him with a pillow. The resulting body showed no signs of violence and Knox purchased the cadaver without question.

With no further sick lodgers but a burning desire for easy cash, the pair began luring the poor and unmissed into the boarding house. Each time, the victim would be lulled with drink and warmth before being restrained and suffocated with fabric or even a bare hand over the mouth and nose.

It seems unlikely that Dr Knox was entirely unaware of the nature of his cadavers. Occasionally students supposedly recognized some of the bodies, particularly that of James Wilson. Wilson was fairly well known in Edinburgh as "Daft Jamie" and could be easily identified due to his deformed foot - something that Dr Knox hastily removed (along with Wilson's head) while denying the identity of the body.

Getting Greedy: Though the pair had been doing pretty well out of their scheme, tensions arose when Burke discovered that Hare was killing other victims and not cutting him in. Burke subsequently moved in with a nearby cousin and began taking in lodgers like a murderous franchise.

The two soon reconciled and on Halloween 1828, the pair would take their last life. Burke was playing host to Margaret Docherty and a couple called James and Ann Gray. Feigning that Docherty was a distant relative, Burke asked the Gray couple to stay at Hare's house for the evening and leave Docherty to stay with himself and McDougal.

McDougal kept Docherty entertained while Burke retrieved Hare, then the two proceeded to asphyxiate their guest. They hid the body under the bed, intending to sell it later.

The Harsh Light of Dawn: Everything went wrong for the killers when Burke tried to keep the returning Grays away from the bed. Curiosity aroused, they had a better look later in the day when Burke was absent... and found the body of their fellow lodger.

When the Grays attempted to report Burke, they were intercepted by McDougal and offered a significant weekly bribe to keep their discovery quiet. Perhaps seeing themselves as being prime candidates for the slab of Dr Knox, the couple elected to go to the police instead.

Burke and Hare had used this time to sell the cadaver, but a police search of the Edinburgh University dissection rooms found Docherty's body.

Dead to Rights: Though the authorities had plenty of circumstantial evidence, the fact that the bodies had been disposed off by Dr Knox made things tricky. Investigators put the suggestion to Hare that he turn King's Evidence (provide a full confession that incriminates any accomplices in exchange for leniency) and he accepted.

Hare was granted immunity from prosecution and didn't have to testify against McLaird due to "spousal privilege." Charges against McDougal were deemed "not proven" resulting in her release, but Burke took the fall (literally) for the crimes. He was sentenced to the gallows, with the judge ordering that his body be publicly dissected after the execution.

Dr Knox also avoided prosecution, though the public perception that he was the ringleader of the murderous group made him unwelcome in Scotland and ostracized by his peers. He eventually moved to London in an attempt to outrun his reputation.

Grisly Remains: While his co-conspirators largely escaped justice, Burk was hanged in front of a crowd of 25,000 in 1829. His body was dissected at the University of Edinburgh, with huge numbers of medical students filing through to witness the spectacle.

His skeleton remains at the University of Edinburgh, along with a death mask and a pocketbook bound in Burke's skin. The act of murdering someone for their body became known as "Burking" and an English group with similar methods became known as the "London Burkers!"

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Sources and Further Information:

• Punishment Sentences at the Old Bailey
• The Statutes of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, George IV, 1823
• Walk In The Footsteps of London’s Body-Snatcher Gangs
• Tower built to ward off bodysnatchers Burke and Hare could be Scotland's spookiest office
• The Story of Burke and Hare
• Broadside account of the trial and sentence of William Burke, 1828
• The skeleton of William Burke
• Pocketbook made from Burke's skin
• The history of the London Burkers