BURKE AND HARE (Burke) (Hare) 1792-1829 C.1807-UNKNOWN

The world’s most infamous bodysnatchers murder to meet demand!

Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Body-snatcher (1844) is a dark tale of a doctor whose anatomy table is kept well-stocked not by the Grim Reaper, but by remorseless killers who are happy to do whatever it takes to keep him in cadavers.

Edinburgh-born Stevenson grew up with tales of William Burke and William Hare, the fearsome resurrection men who had wreaked havoc in the city of his birth in 1828. Employed by Robert Knox, one of the country’s foremost anatomy lecturers, Burke and Hare provided fresh cadavers for the doctor’s use. When the demand began to outstrip supply, Burke and Hair turned to murder to ensure that their stocks never ran dry and between them killed sixteen people.

In Stevenson’s story, Doctor ‘Toddy’ Macfarlane exacts his own revenge on a murderous bodysnatcher but for the real Burke and

Hare, justice was rather more formal. William Hare turned on Burke and his evidence sent his former colleague first to the gallows then, ironically, the anatomist’s table. Hare, meanwhile, was freed and disappeared from the historical record. And what of Robert Knox, that distinguished gentleman physician? He was cleared of any wrongdoing and resumed his career, but the spectre of the bodysnatchers haunted his name for the rest of his days.

Don’t be fooled by William Burke’s respectable manner, he was responsible for multiple murders William Hare saved his own skin by testifying against Burke, sending him to his death

The crowd clamour to watch the hanging of the notorious William Burke