Before the Anatomy Act of 1832 was passed in the United Kingdom, the only legal supplies of cadavers available for dissection were of prisoners who were sentenced to death by the Courts. While hundreds of prison inmates had been executed for trivial crimes during the bloodthirsty 18th century, by the 19th century only about 55 people were being sentenced to capital punishment each year, medical students be damned. However, with the expansion of the medical schools, as many as 500 cadavers were needed a year for dissection. To make matters more difficult, there was no electric power to supply refrigeration at that time, so bodies would decay rapidly and become unusable for study. Therefore, the medical profession turned to the grisly art of body snatching to supply the deficit of bodies fresh enough to be examined.

So arose the sinister trade of the Body Snatcher and so good were they at their gory trade they also earned the nickname of the ‘resurrectionists’. So widespread was Body Snatching in Edinburgh that certain graveyards erected large walls, railings and watchtowers, such as St. Cuthberts at the foot of Lothian road and that of the Canongate Kirk. Some graves had added protection against the exhumation of their occupants by having their own walls and railings.

William Burke and William Hare (often colloquially referred to as Burke and Hare), are probably the world’s most famous (infamous) grave robbers… even though some historians dispute whether they actually ever robbed a grave at all. The Irish duo had initially travelled to Scotland to work as laborers on the building of the Union Canal. However, the two ambitious chaps grew weary of spending their evenings digging up corpses, and many of the bodies they exhumed were already in poor condition and weren’t worth much money. However, a fresh, well preserved corpse could fetch as much as ten pounds, a LOT of money in those days. This led Burke and Hare to settle on an obvious, albeit grisly tactic: murder!

One of Burke and Hare’s main clients was Edinburgh University professor Dr Robert Knox. His anatomy classes were more akin to entertainment than science and could attract as many as 500 “students”. He needed a steady supply of corpses. From 1827 Burke and Hare went on a killing spree around Edinburgh. No-one knows exactly how many of their victims ended up on Dr Knox’s table however it could be as many as thirty. Luck finally ran out for Burke and Hare with their killing of Irish immigrant Mary Docherty. Questions were asked and Mary’s body discovered in Doctor Knox’s possession. Links were made back to Burke and Hare who were both arrested. Hare agreed to testify against his buddy Burke in exchange for his own freedom. In the face of the overwhelming evidence against him, Burke confessed to some sixteen murders but always denied having ever robbed a grave.

Burke was found guilty and hanged in January 1829. Hare was released and reportedly died a pauper in London. Knox never faced trial. With wonderful irony, Burke’s body was given to the Edinburgh medical school for research purposes.

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