The men who killed 16 and sold their corpses
WILLIAM Burke and William Hare smothered at least 16 victims in Edinburgh in 1828.
They sold the corpses to respected anatomical lecturer Dr Robert Knox in the Scottish capital’s famous medical school for use in dissection classes.
At the time, Edinburgh was a hub for anatomical study, yet Scottish law permitted only the bodies of suicides, foundlings, orphans and those who had died in prison to be used for medical research. ‘Resurrection men’, as they came to be known, could therefore make a tidy profit by snatching bodies from graves and selling them to doctors on the black market.
Burke and Hare, however, took their crime a step further. Having realised the easy money they could make when they sold the body of one of
Hare’s lodgers – who died of natural causes – they took matters into their own hands. Over ten months, they plied their trade via a series of macabre killings – known as ‘Burking’ – and their names entered into infamy.
Their murder spree involved luring three men, 12 women and a child back to their lodgings in the West Port district, often plying them with alcohol to subdue them. As they lay incapacitated, Burke would lie on top of them, in a position described as ‘stridelegs’ at their trial, to prevent them from struggling. Hare held his hands over the victim’s nose and mouth.
There may also have been some compression of the chest to aid in the grisly murders. It was this method which was to strike such a telling echo in the case of Clive Freeman.
Burke was hanged in January 28, 1829. After being put on public display, his body was donated to medical science. Hare was released in February 1829 and moved to England.