Burke and Hare murders

William Burke and William Hare
Hare and Burke
Born	Ireland
Died	28 January 1829(1829-01-28) (aged 36–37) (Burke)
Cause of death	Hanged
Criminal penalty	Death (Burke)
Killings
Victims	16
Country	Scotland

The Burke and Hare murders, or West Port murders, were a series of murders committed in Edinburgh, Scotland, over a period of about ten months in 1828. The killings were attributed to Irish immigrants William Burke and William Hare, who sold the corpses of their 16 victims to Doctor Robert Knox as dissection material for his well-attended anatomy lectures. Burke and Hare's alleged accomplices were Burke's mistress, Helen McDougal, and Hare's wife, Margaret Laird.^[1] From their acts came the now archaic British word "burking", originally meaning to smother a victim or to commit an anatomy murder but which later passed into general use as a word for any suppression or cover-up.^[2]

Historical background

Old Surgeons' Hall, Edinburgh (substantially altered since the time of the murders)

Before 1832, there were insufficient cadavers legitimately available for the study and teaching of anatomy in Britain's medical schools. As medical science began to flourish in the early nineteenth century, the demand for cadavers rose sharply, but at the same time the legal supply failed to keep pace. One of the main sources—the bodies of executed criminals—had begun to dry up owing to a reduction in the number of executions being carried out in the early nineteenth century.^[3] The situation of too few corpses being available to doctors for demonstrating anatomical dissection to growing numbers of students attracted criminal elements willing to obtain specimens by any means. As at similar institutions, doctors teaching at the Edinburgh Medical School, which was universally renowned for medical sciences, relied increasingly on body-snatchers for a steady supply of "anatomical subjects". The activities of these so-called "resurrectionists" gave rise to particular public fear and revulsion,^[4] but, such were the financial inducements, the illegal trade continued to grow. It was a short step from grave-robbing to anatomy murder.

Burke and Hare

The Hares' lodging-house in the West Port before its demolition in 1902

Burke (1792–1829) was born in Urney, near Strabane, in the very west of County Tyrone, part of the province of Ulster in the north of Ireland. After trying his hand at a variety of trades and serving as an officer's servant in the Donegal Militia, he left his wife and two children in Ireland and emigrated to Scotland about 1817, working as a navvy on the Union Canal.^[5] There he met Helen McDougal. Burke afterwards worked as a labourer, weaver, baker and a cobbler.

Hare's birthplace is variously given as Poyntzpass near Newry, or Derry, both of which are also in Ulster. He was born in 1792 or 1804. Like Burke, he emigrated to Scotland and worked as a labourer on the Union Canal. While working at the Edinburgh terminus of the canal, he met a man named Logue, who ran a lodging-house for beggars and vagrants in the nearby West Port area of the town. When Logue died in 1826, Hare married Logue's widow, Margaret Laird. She continued to run the lodging house while Hare worked at the canal basin.

Something of Hare's origins and character are revealed in the following account from the Newry Telegraph of 31 March 1829.

Hare was born and bred about one half mile distant from Scarva in the opposite county of Armagh and shortly before his departure from this country he lived in the service of Mr Hall, the keeper of the eleventh lock near Poyntzpass. He was chiefly engaged in driving the horses which his master employed in hauling lighters on the Newry Canal. He was always remarkable for being of a ferocious and malignant disposition, an instance of which he gave in the killing of one of his Master’s horses, which obliged him to fly to Scotland where he perpetrated those unparalleled crimes that must always secure him a conspicuous page in the annals of murder.

Murders

Dr Robert Knox, the surgeon implicated in the murders. The press and public deemed him guilty by association.

Shortly after their arrival in Edinburgh in November 1827, Burke and McDougal moved into Tanner's Close where Margaret Hare's lodging-house was situated.^[6] Burke had met Margaret on previous trips to Edinburgh, but it is not known whether he was previously acquainted with Hare. Once Burke arrived in the close, they became good friends.^[7] According to Hare's later testimony, the first body they sold was that of a tenant, an old army pensioner who died of natural causes on 29 November 1827. He had died owing Hare £4 rent, so to recoup the loss they substituted the body by filling the coffin with bark and took the cadaver to Edinburgh University, looking for a purchaser. According to Burke's later testimony, they asked for directions to Professor Monro, but a student directed them instead to Surgeon's Square where they sold the body for £7.10s (2010 values: £731, US$1,130) to an assistant of Dr. Robert Knox,^[8] an anatomist of considerable reputation owing to his knowledge and skill gained as an army surgeon at the time of Waterloo. It has been suggested that, but for this chance encounter, the public opprobrium which later fell on Knox might have attached to Monro.^[9]

Knox was an extramural lecturer who, as was customary at the time, charged fees to medical students and visitors attending his lectures on anatomy. His advertising (see lectures bill) promised "a full Demonstration on Anatomical Subjects" as part of every course of lectures he delivered, and he boasted that his lectures drew a class of above 400 pupils.^[10]

Burke and Hare's first murder victim was a sick tenant named Joseph, a miller by trade, whom they plied with whisky and then suffocated. When there were no other sickly tenants, they decided to lure a victim from the street. In February 1828, they invited pensioner Abigail Simpson to spend the night before her return home to the village of Gilmerton. The following morning they employed the same modus operandi, serving her with alcohol to intoxicate her, and then smothering her. This time they placed the body in a tea-chest and handed it over to a porter sent to meet them "at the back of the Castle".^[11] They were paid £10.^[8]

Mary Paterson

Two further undated murders took place that Spring. One victim was invited into the house by Mrs Hare and plied with drink until Hare's arrival; the other was despatched in similar circumstances by Burke acting on his own.^[12] Next, Burke encountered two women, Mary Paterson and Janet Brown, in the part of Edinburgh known as the Canongate. He invited them to breakfast at his brother's house in Gibb's Close, but Brown left when an argument broke out between McDougal and Burke. When she returned, she was told that Paterson had left with Burke; in fact, she, too, had been taken to Dr. Knox's rooms in a tea-chest.^[8] The two women were described as prostitutes in contemporary accounts, but there is no evidence that this was true.^[13][14][15] The story later arose that one of Knox's students had recognized the dead Paterson, whose acquaintance he had made a few days earlier.^[13][16]

Daft Jamie

One victim was an acquaintance of Burke, a woman called Effie who scavenged for a living and was in the habit of selling him scraps of leather she found which he could use for his cobbling. They were paid £10 for her body. Then Burke "saved" an inebriated woman from being held by a policeman and his assisting neighbour by claiming that he knew her and could take her back to her lodging. He delivered her body to the medical school just hours later. The next two victims were an old woman and her mute son or grandson, aged about 12. While the woman died from an overdose on painkillers, Hare took the young boy and stretched him over his knee, then proceeded to break his back. He later said that this was the murder that disturbed him the most, as he was haunted by his recollection of the boy's expression.^[17] The customary tea-chest being found inadequate, both bodies were forced into a herring barrel and conveyed to Surgeons' Square, where they fetched £8 each.^[18] According to Burke, the barrel was loaded onto a cart which Hare's horse refused to pull uphill from the Cowgate, so that Hare had to call a porter to help him drag it the rest of the way on a sled. Once back in Tanner's Close, Hare took his anger out on the horse by shooting it dead in the yard.^[19]

Mrs Docherty

Two more victims were Burke's acquaintance, Mrs. Hostler, and one of McDougal's relatives, Ann Dougal, a cousin from Falkirk. Burke later claimed that about this time Mrs Hare suggested converting Helen McDougal into merchandise on the grounds that "they could not trust her, as she was a Scotch woman"; but he refused.^[20]

Another victim was Mary Haldane, a former lodger who, down on her luck, asked to sleep in Hare's stable. Burke and Hare also murdered her daughter Peggy Haldane when she called a few days later to inquire after her mother's whereabouts.^[21]

Burke and Hare's next victim was a familiar figure in the streets of Edinburgh, a mentally disabled young man with a limp, named James Wilson. "Daft Jamie", as he was known locally, was 18 at the time of his murder. The boy resisted, and the pair had to kill him together, though later each blamed the other for taking the main part in the crime. His mother began searching and asking for him. When Dr. Knox uncovered the body the next morning, several students recognized Jamie. Knox denied that it was the missing boy, and was reported to have dissected the body ahead of others to render the remains unrecognisable.^[22] While Hare was in the habit of disposing of victims' clothing in the Union Canal, Burke passed Jamie's clothes to his nephews, leaving behind material evidence which was recovered before the trial.

Burke stated later that he and Hare were "generally in a state of intoxication" when the murders were carried out, and that he "could not sleep at night without a bottle of whisky by his bedside, and a twopenny candle to burn all night beside him; when he awoke he would take a draught of the bottle—sometimes half a bottle at a draught—and that would make him sleep".^[23]

The last victim was Mrs Mary Docherty, also known by her maiden name as Margery Campbell. Burke lured her into the lodging house by claiming that his mother was also a Docherty, but he had to wait to complete his murderous task because of the presence of lodgers James and Ann Gray. The Grays left for the night and neighbours later reported having heard the sounds of a struggle and even a woman's voice crying "murder!".^[24]

Detection

The next day the Grays returned, and Ann Gray became suspicious when Burke would not let her approach a bed where she had left her stockings. When they were left alone in the house in the early evening, the Grays checked the bed and found Docherty's body under it. On their way to alert the police, they ran into McDougal who tried to bribe them with an offer of £10 a week. They refused.

Burke and Hare had removed the body from the house before the police arrived. However, under questioning, Burke claimed that Docherty had left at 7 a.m., while McDougal claimed that she had left in the evening. The police arrested them. An anonymous tip-off led them to Knox's dissecting-rooms where they found Docherty's body, which James Gray identified. William and Margaret Hare were arrested soon thereafter. The murder spree had lasted almost ten months.

When an Edinburgh paper reported the disappearances on 6 November 1828, Janet Brown went to the police and identified her friend Mary Paterson's clothing.

Trial and execution

The Hares during the trial. McDougal's defence counsel Henry Cockburn thought Mrs Hare used her baby and its bouts of whooping cough "as an instrument for delaying or evading whatever question it was inconvenient for her to answer".

The evidence against the pair was far from conclusive. In the one case for which the authorities had a body (Mrs Docherty's) the medical experts could not state the cause of death with any certainty, and the prospect seemed real that Burke and Hare would blame each other for the murders, leaving a jury uncertain as to whom to convict for a capital offence. Lord Advocate Sir William Rae therefore offered Hare the opportunity "to turn King's evidence", i.e. be granted immunity from prosecution if he confessed and agreed to testify against Burke. Contemporary accounts suggest that Burke was perceived as the more intelligent of the two, and was therefore presumed to have taken the lead in their crimes. After visiting both men in their cells, Christopher North described them in Blackwood's Magazine (March 1829):- although there was "nothing repulsive" about Burke who was "certainly not deficient in intellect", he was "steeped in hypocrisy and deceit; his collected and guarded demeanour, full of danger and guile", a "cool, calculating, callous and unrelenting villain"; Hare, on the other hand, was "the most brutal man ever subjected to my sight, and at first look seemingly an idiot." Comparing the two women, he observed that Mrs Hare "had more of the she-devil".^[25]

The Lord Advocate's decision was extremely unpopular with the press and public who throughout the trial expressed hostility towards the Hares. A petition on behalf of James Wilson's mother and sister, protesting against Hare's immunity and intended release from prison, was given lengthy consideration by the High Court and rejected by a vote of 4 to 2 against.^[26]

Burke and McDougal faced three charges of murder in respect of Mary Paterson, James Wilson and Mrs Docherty (the third charge to be heard first and, on a successful capital conviction, the other two to remain unheard). The trial took place on Christmas Eve 1828 and lasted twenty-four hours. A journalist who was present described the dismal scene in the packed court-room,

By orders from the Court a large window was thrown open as far as it could be done, and a current of cold damp air beat for twenty-four hours upon the heads of the whole audience... The greater part of the audience being Advocates and Writers to the Signet in their gowns, these were wrapped round their heads, and, intermingled with various coloured handkerchiefs in every shade and form of drapery, which gave to the visages that were enshrouded under them such a grim and grisly aspect as assimilated them to a college of monks or inquisitors, or characters imagined in tales of romance, grouped and contrasted most fantastically with the costume of the bench and the crowded bar engaged in the trial.^[27]

The jury retired to consider its verdict at 8.30am on Christmas Morning and returned fifty minutes later to find Burke guilty of the third charge and the charge against McDougal not proven.

Burke's execution in the Lawnmarket from a contemporary print

Before passing the death sentence,^[28] the Lord Justice-Clerk, David Boyle, addressed Burke with the words,

You now stand convicted, by the verdict of a most respectable jury of your country, of the atrocious murder charged against you in this indictment, upon evidence which carried conviction to the mind of every man that heard it. (...) In regard to your case, the only doubt that has come across my mind, is, whether, in order to mark the sense that the Court entertains of your offence, and which the violated laws of the country entertain respecting it, your body should not be exhibited in chains, in order to deter others from the like crimes in time coming. But, taking into consideration that the public eye would be offended with so dismal an exhibition, I am disposed to agree that your sentence shall be put in execution in the usual way, but accompanied with the statutory attendant of the punishment of the crime of murder, viz.- that your body should be publicly dissected and anatomized. And I trust, that if it is ever customary to preserve skeletons, yours will be preserved, in order that posterity may keep in remembrance of your atrocious crimes.^[29]

The execution, as depicted on a contemporary broadsheet.

The edition of the Edinburgh Evening Courant newspaper that covered the trial sold an extra 8,000 copies, increasing its revenue by £240.^[30]

Burke was hanged at 8.15 am on 28 January 1829, a day of torrential rain, in front of a crowd estimated at between 20,000 and 25,000. Window-seats in tenements overlooking the scaffold were hired at prices ranging from 5 shillings to £1.^[31] On the following day Burke was publicly dissected in the anatomy theatre of the University's Old College.^[32] Police had to be called when large numbers of students gathered demanding access to the lecture for which a limited number of tickets had been issued. A minor riot ensued and calm was restored only after one of the university professors decided to allow the would-be gatecrashers to pass through the theatre in batches of fifty at a time. During the dissection, which lasted for two hours, Professor Alexander Monro dipped his quill pen into Burke's blood and wrote "This is written with the blood of Wm Burke, who was hanged at Edinburgh. This blood was taken from his head."^[33] Following the dissection, the Edinburgh phrenologists were permitted to examine Burke's skull.

Burke's skeleton is now displayed in the Anatomy Museum of the Edinburgh Medical School.^[34] His death mask and a book said to be made from his tanned skin can be seen at Surgeons' Hall Museum. As Robert Knox was the first conservator of the museum there are also specimens, instruments and other artefacts relating to him and the period (the museum is open daily to the public).^[35] Following the execution and dissection wallets supposedly made from Burke's skin were offered for sale on the streets of Edinburgh.^[36] A calling card case made from skin taken from the back of his left hand fetched £1050 at auction in 1988. It was sold by the family of Piercy Hughes, a descendant of one of the surgeons involved in the dissection, and bought by Robin Mitchell and Colin MacPhail of Edinburgh's Cadies & Witchery Tours company. Until 2013 the case was displayed at the Police Information Centre in Edinburgh's Royal Mile. It is now displayed in The Cadies & Witchery Tours shop in Edinburgh's West Bow.^[37][38]

McDougal was released after the charge against her was found to be not proven. Knox was not prosecuted, despite public outrage at his role in providing an incentive for the 16 murders. Burke swore in his confession that Knox had known nothing of the origin of the cadavers.^[8]

Summary of victims

Death mask of Burke and life mask of Hare in the Anatomy Museum of Edinburgh University

Burke made two confessions while awaiting execution: an official judicial confession (3 January 1829) and a statement to the Edinburgh Evening Courant (7 February 1829). While these differ to some extent in chronological sequence and detail, combining their content enables the following list of victims to be compiled (and, where known, the amounts paid for them). Burke asked in his condemned cell whether Knox could pay the £5 share of the money he was expecting to receive for Mrs Docherty so that he could buy a new set of clothes before appearing in public on the scaffold.^[6]

— Donald, army pensioner (£7.10s)

1. Abigail Simpson from Gilmerton, salt seller (£10)

2. Joseph, miller (£10)

3. Drunken female lodger (£10) - Burke acting alone

4. English male lodger from Cheshire (£10)

5. Mary Haldane, prostitute (?)

6. Effie, cinder-gatherer* (£10)

7. Irish woman from Glasgow (£8)

8. Glasgow woman’s son or grandson (£8)

9. Female lodger - Hare acting alone (?)

10. Drunken woman in the West Port (£10)

11. Margaret Haldane*, prostitute (£8)

12. Mary Paterson, also known as Mary Mitchell (£8)

13. Mrs Hostler, washerwoman (£8)

14. Ann McDougal from Falkirk, cousin of Helen McDougal (£10)

15. James Wilson, simpleton (£10)

16. Mary Docherty, Irish beggar-woman, also known as Margery Campbell (—)

(9 were killed in "Hare's House" and 2* in the stables in the courtyard; 4 were killed in "Burke's House" (two closes east from Tanner's Close where he and McDougall had gone to lodge with a carter called Brogan); and 1 at the house of Burke's brother, Constantine Burke, in the Canongate; 12 of the victims were women.)

The novelist Sir Walter Scott commented,

Our Irish importation have made a great discovery of Oeconomicks, namely, that a wretch who is not worth a farthing while alive, becomes a valuable article when knockd on the head & carried to an anatomist; and acting on this principle, have cleard the streets of some of those miserable offcasts of society, whom nobody missd because nobody wishd to see them again.^[39]

Aftermath

The West Port area in 2011. Almost all the buildings now date from the Victorian period. Tanner's Close stood in front of the white building in this photograph (a little nearer the camera position)

McDougal returned to her house but on venturing out the following evening to buy liquor was attacked by an angry mob and had to be taken into police custody for her own safety. She was taken to the police station in the West Port, but after the mob laid siege to it, she was dressed in men's clothes and escaped through a back window to the police lock-up off the town's High Street. After meeting with a hostile reception on returning to her home area of Stirling, she revisited Edinburgh briefly before moving on to Newcastle, where she was again recognised, attacked and taken into police custody. The authorities took her to the county border with Durham, after which her trail went cold. She was rumoured to have died in Australia in 1868.^[40] but that theory has been discredited by later historians.

Margaret Hare was released from the Calton Gaol and almost immediately spotted making her way to the Old Town and surrounded by a hostile crowd, from which she was rescued by police intervention. After a few days in the High Street lock-up, she moved to Glasgow where, according to newspaper reports, she and her child had to be rescued on two occasions from hostile mobs. She was moved secretly from the Calton Police Office to Greenock where the police put her on board a ship bound for Belfast on the way to her family home near Derry.^[41]

When Burke reported delivering Abigail Simpson's body to Knox's assistant "at the back of the castle", he was probably referring to Tanner Street (seen here) which led from Tanner's Close to King's Stables Road.

Hare was released in February 1829 and immediately assisted in leaving Edinburgh by the mailcoach to Dumfries. At one of its stops he was recognised by a fellow-passenger who, as chance would have it, was a junior counsel who had represented James Wilson's family. On arrival in Dumfries the news of Hare's presence spread like wild-fire and a crowd estimated at 8,000 gathered at the hostelry where he was staying the night. Police arrived and arranged for a decoy coach to draw off the crowd while Hare escaped through a back window into a carriage which took him to the town's tolbooth. A crowd surrounded the building; stones were thrown at the door and windows and street lamps smashed before 100 special constables arrived to restore order. In the small hours of the morning, escorted by a sheriff officer and militia guard, Hare was taken out of town, set down on the Annan Road and instructed to make his way to the English border. Two days later the driver of the northbound mail reported having passed him within half a mile of Carlisle. Several days later he was spotted two miles south of the town; the last reported sighting of him on the mainland.^[42]

The Newry Telegraph reported on 31 March 1829.

On Friday evening last Hare the murderer called in a public house in Scarva accompanied by his wife and child and having ordered a naggin of whiskey he began to enquire for the welfare of every member of the family of the house, with well affected solicitude. However, as Hare is a native of this neighbourhood, he was very soon recognised and ordered to leave the place immediately, with which he complied after attempting to palliate his horrid crimes by describing them as having been the effects of intoxication. He took the road towards Loughbrickland followed by a number of boys yelling and threatening in such a manner as obliged him to take through the fields with such speed that he soon disappeared whilst his unfortunate wife remained on the road imploring forgiveness and denying, in the most solemn manner, any participation in the crimes of her wretched husband. They now reside at the house of an uncle of Hare’s near Loughbrickland.

Many popular tales about Hare circulated in the years after the trial. One such told of him being mobbed and thrown into a lime pit, causing him to be blinded and end his days as a blind beggar on the streets of London. However, no evidence has ever been found to confirm these folktales.

The mysterious Arthur's Seat coffins, found in 1836

Knox kept silent about his dealings with Burke and Hare. Although a committee of inquiry cleared him of complicity, the Edinburgh mob held him accountable nonetheless (transactions had been carried out by assistants or servants; and his claim of having no reason to suspect foul play was accepted with some reservations expressed). A few days after Burke's hanging, a crowd converged on his house and began throwing stones at its windows. An effigy of Knox, which had been carried in procession from the Calton Hill was hanged from a nearby tree and set alight by a bonfire underneath. While the police dispersed the crowd, Knox, disguised in his military cloak and armed with sword, pistols and a Highland dirk, escaped through a back door. He continued to lecture on anatomy into the 1840s and eventually moved to London where, from 1856, he worked as an anatomist at the Brompton Hospital and had a medical practice in Hackney until his death in 1862.^[43]

In 1836 five boys hunting for rabbits found a set of 17 miniature coffins containing small wooden figures in a cave on the crags of Arthur's Seat, of which eight survive. Contemporaries believed that they were made for the purpose of witchcraft. No-one at the time of their discovery seems to have linked them to the number of bodies involved in the Burke and Hare case (see above list). However, all of the figures are dressed in male attire, whereas twelve of Burke and Hare’s victims were female. ^[44] Some of the coffins are now displayed in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.^[45]

Anatomy Act 1832

The murders highlighted the crisis in medical education and—along with a series of cases like John Bishop's which became known as the London Burkers—led to the subsequent passing of the Anatomy Act 1832, which expanded the legal supply of medical cadavers to eliminate the incentive for such behaviour. The Act authorised persons who had legal custody of a dead body to send it to a medical school before burial, so that it might be used for the study of anatomy and practice of surgery. If relatives could not be found, Public Health Authorities, Parish Councils and Boards of Guardians etc. counted as legal custodians. About the law, an editorial in The Lancet stated:

Burke and Hare ... it is said, are the real authors of the measure, and that which would never have been sanctioned by the deliberate wisdom of parliament, is about to be extorted from its fears ... It would have been well if this fear had been manifested and acted upon before sixteen human beings had fallen victims to the supineness of the Government and the Legislature. It required no extraordinary sagacity, to foresee that the worst consequences must inevitably result from the system of traffic between resurrectionists and anatomists, which the executive government has so long suffered to exist. Government is already in a great degree, responsible for the crime which it has fostered by its negligence, and even encouraged by a system of forbearance.^[46]

The Act also ended anatomising as part of the death sentence for murder.^[47]

In media portrayals and popular culture

Burke's preserved skeleton

Folk tales about "Burkers" attacking travellers, especially children, to sell their cadavers were once common in Scotland.^[48]

Up the close and doun the stair,
But and ben wi' Burke and Hare.
Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief,
Knox the boy that buys the beef.

—19th-century Edinburgh skipping rhyme

• In 1829 the satirical artist William Heath used the suffocation of Mrs Docherty by Burke and Hare to satirise the Duke of Wellington and Robert Peel in the role of the body snatchers extinguishing the Constitution for catholic emancipation

• The Burke and Hare murders are referenced in Robert Louis Stevenson's short story, "The Body Snatcher" from 1884, which portrays two doctors in Robert Knox's employ responsible for buying the corpses from the killers. The story was the basis of the 1945 film adaptation The Body Snatcher, directed by Robert Wise and starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.^[49]

• Marcel Schwob told their story in the last chapter of Imaginary Lives (1896.) His retelling, as in the rest of the stories in the book, mixes fact and fantasy. Schwob imagined a linen mask filled with pitch that would have been used in latter murders. Jorge Luis Borges, who recognizes Schwob as an influence of his own A Universal History of Infamy, wrote that this story was the most successful one in the book. Borges also translated the story into Spanish.

• The 1939 film The Anatomist was directed by the playwright James Bridie, and was based on his own 1930 play The Anatomist.^[50] In 1956, legendary producer Harry Alan Towers debuted with The Anatomist, based on said play. Dennis Vance directed the movie, which starred Alastair Sim as Dr. Knox and Michael Ripper as William Hare. It was based on an episode of "ITV Play of the Week" earlier the same year by the same name and trio.^[51][52]

• The murders were adapted into a 1948 film with the working title Crimes of Burke and Hare; however, the British Board of Film Censors deemed its topic too disturbing and insisted that references to Burke and Hare be excised. The film was redubbed with alternative dialogue and characters, and was released as The Greed of William Hart.^[53]

• The 1954 Warner Brothers cartoon, My Little Duckaroo, includes a scene with the 'villain,' Nasty Canasta, reading "The Gravedigger's Joke Book," by Burke and Hare.

• A 1963 episode of "The Twilight Zone" called The New Exhibit fearures Burke and Hare as wax sculptures in the Murder's Row of a wax museum. The characters later become animated and exact revenge on a modern day murderer portrayed by Martin Balsam.

• The 1960 film The Flesh and the Fiends starred Peter Cushing as Knox, Donald Pleasence as Hare and George Rose as Burke.^[54] The following year, The Anatomist featured Alastair Sim as Knox.^[55]

• The 1971 film Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde transported Burke and Hare into the late Victorian era and portrayed them as being employed by Dr. Jekyll. Burke was played by Ivor Dean and Hare by Tony Calvin.

• The 1971 film Burke & Hare starred Derren Nesbitt as Burke and Glynn Edwards as Hare.

• The 1985 film The Doctor and the Devils, directed by Freddie Francis, is based on Dylan Thomas' 1953 screenplay of the same name and is a retelling of the Burke and Hare murder story with the names of the characters altered. Timothy Dalton plays Dr. Rock (Thomas' characterisation of Dr. Knox), while Jonathan Pryce and Stephen Rea play the Burke and Hare surrogates.^[56]

• The 2004 Doctor Who audio drama Medicinal Purposes placed the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) amidst the events of the murders; the play featured Leslie Phillips as Dr. Knox and David Tennant (who would later become the Tenth Doctor) as "Daft Jamie".^[57]

Calling-card case made of Burke's skin

• I Sell The Dead, a 2008 comedy horror film, has pub patrons claiming career grave-robbers Willie and Arthur are successful rivals to Burke and Hare's notoriety.

• Burke and Hare, a comedy film loosely based upon the historical case, starring Simon Pegg as Burke and Andy Serkis as Hare, and directed by John Landis, began filming in early 2010, and was released in the UK on 29 October 2010. It received a North American release in 2011.^[58][59]

• The stage musical "Bloodless: The Trial of Burke and Hare" had its Toronto premiere in October 2012.^[60]

• Drunk History Comedy Central (2015) Episode 2 ^[61]

References

Further reading

• Adams, Norman (2002). Scottish Bodysnatchers. Goblinshead. ISBN 1-899874-40-2. 
• Bailey, Brian (2002). Burke and Hare: The Year of the Ghouls. Mainstream. ISBN 1-84018-575-9. 
• Conaghan, Martin; Pickering, Will (2009). Burke and Hare. Insomnia Publications. ISBN 1-905808-12-7. 
• Douglas, Hugh (1973). Burke and Hare. Hale. ISBN 0-7091-3777-X. 
• Edwards, Owen Dudley (1993). Burke and Hare. Mercat Press. ISBN 1-873644-25-6. 
• Howard, Amanda; Martin Smith (2004). "William Burke and William Hare". River of Blood: Serial Killers and Their Victims. Universal. ISBN 1-58112-518-6.  |accessdate= requires |url= (help)
• Leighton, Alexander, The Court of Cacus, or the Story of Burke and Hare, 1861.
• MacDonald, Helen (2005). Human Remains: Episodes in Human Dissection. Melbourne University Press. ISBN 0-522-85157-6. 
• Menefee, Samuel Pyeatt; Simpson, Allen D.C. (1994). "The West Port Murders And The Miniature Coffins From Arthur's Seat". The Book Of The Old Edinburgh Club. vol.3. The Old Edinburgh Club. pp. 63–81. 
• Richardson, Ruth (1987). "Death, Dissection and the Destitute". London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 0-7102-0919-3. Retrieved 16 July 2010. 
• Rosner, Lisa (2009). The Anatomy Murders: Being the True and Spectacular History of Edinburgh's Notorious Burke and Hare and of the Man of Science Who Abetted Them in the Commission of Their Most Heinous Crimes. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-4191-4. 
• Roughead, William; Sante, Luc (2000). "The West Port Murders". Classic Crimes: A Selection from the Works of William Roughead. New York Review of Books. ISBN 0-940322-46-3. 
• Roughead, William, ed., 'Burke and Hare' (Notable British Trials), Wm Hodge & Co., Ltd., Edinburgh, 1921.

External links

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Burke, William.

• The Worlds of Burke and Hare
• The Resurrectionists & Burke and Hare
• Digitised copies of broadsides related to body snatching including several relating to Burke and Hare at National Library of Scotland
• Public destruction of an anatomy school
• Echoes of the Scottish Resurrection Men
• Background to the Anatomy Act of 1832