Edinburgh’s notorious body snatchers who provided corpses for the city’s nineteenth-century medical schools.

William Burke and William Hare, Irish labourers, lived in the west port area of Edinburgh. In this sleazy district they lodged with Maggie Laird and Nell Macdougal, women of low virtue. Maggie let rooms, and when one of her lodgers died Burke and Hare took the corpse to Dr Knox, whose demand for bodies for dissection exceeded the regular supply. Since they received a handsome price for their corpse, with no questions asked, they decided to go into business.

Nature failing to their needs quickly enough, Burke and Hare resorted to murder. In the course of nine months they delivered sixteen bodies to the dissection rooms. Their greed led them to murder persons whose disappearance was reported. In due course they were brought to justice. Burke and Nell Macdougal were tried. Hare and Maggie Laird turned Kings Evidence. Nell won a verdict of Not Proven, while Burke paid the supreme penalty. He was hanged at Edinburgh on 28 January 1829 before a large crowd.