大象传媒 Scotland - 大象传媒 Scotland - Burke and Hare: do Edinburgh鈥檚 notorious murderers deserve their other gruesome reputation as 鈥榖ody snatchers鈥�?

Burke and Hare: do Edinburgh鈥檚 notorious murderers deserve their other gruesome reputation as 鈥榖ody snatchers鈥�?

5 September 2018

The names of William Burke and William Hare are inextricably linked to a particularly gruesome period of Scottish history.

In the late 1820s they supplied Edinburgh’s anatomists with fresh cadavers for their research, earning the reputation of ‘body snatchers’.

The start of a murderous enterprise

Burke and Hare's first transaction with an anatomist.

Burke and Hare were not alone in this trade.

The illegal practice of stealing bodies from graves in return for payment had been going on in Edinburgh since 1678. The Irishmen, however, took a different route from most body snatchers and actually murdered people before passing on their bodies.

explained that, despite their greed and murderous ways, Burke and Hare never actually plundered any graves.

Instead, as presenter Magnus Magnusson noted, “It’s a curious irony of legend that these two men – who became a byword for body snatching and grave robbing – actually never robbed a single grave or dug up a single body themselves.

“They simply created corpses.”

The popularity of anatomy shows led to the demand for ‘fresh anatomical subjects’.