Burke and Hare: Sweeny Todd Without the Music

The Burke and Hare Case was simply one of demand and supply: The Edinburgh Medical College demanded bodies for their students to dissect and the precocious partnership duly supplied them. Unfortunately, the people to whom the bodies belonged had not been allowed to die natural deaths first - Burke and Hare had hastened the process for them. In a Sweeney Todd sort of way, Burke and Hare managed a lodgings house in Edinburgh and, along with their partners Helen MacDougal and Margaret Hare, specialized in murdering their customers and then selling their fresh corpses to Dr Robert Knox, a leading local anatomist employed by the College.

In the early 19^th century, the need for fresh cadavers in the rapidly growing medical industry had been exacerbated by the recent repeal of the Bloody Code. This Code had set the death penalty as punishment for at least 222 different crimes - such as pickpocketing - and the resulting corpses were usually given to medical establishments for dissection. Burke and Hare were now determined to take up the slack...

The whole affair started in November 1827, when a tenant of the lodging house died while owing four pounds in rent. Burke and Hare seized the opportunity, stole the body out of its coffin and sold it to Dr Knox for seven pounds, nearly double what they were owed in outstanding rent. Realizing that it might be a while before another tenant died of natural causes on their premises, the dynamic duo then took matters in their own hands and, over the next two years, killed seventeen people, and, each time, sold their bodies to Dr Knox. Their usual method of doing away with people was to ply them with liquor and then to suffocate them.

Their undoing came when two guests in the lodging house discovered a fellow guest's body under a bed...and then went to the police. Both Burke and Hare were arrested and charged with the murders but, as there was not much evidence, it at first appeared that a conviction would not be obtained. In order to break the stalemate, the Lord Advocate overseeing the case then offered Hare immunity from prosecution if he would testify against Burke. He did. Burke was found guilty and hanged on January 28^th 1829. His body was then given to the Edinburg Medical College, where it was publicly dissected. Burke's death mask and skeleton, along with items made from his tanned skin, are today still on display at the college's museum.

Hare was never made to pay for his crimes.

Sources:

Wilson, Colin. The History of Murder. Edison: Castle Books (2004)
The Edinburgh Advertiser
Burke, William and M'Dougal, Helen. West Port Murders. Ireland (1829)
William Burke William Burke Wikipedia
Douglas MacGowan William Burke and William Hare TruTV Crime Library