Burke, Hare, and the Anatomy Murders of Edinburgh

Contrary to popular belief, the famous body-snatching duo of William Burke and William Hare were not actually body snatchers. They never robbed graves at all -- they had their own way of supplying anatomists with fresh corpses, and it didn’t involve the graveyard. They simply killed people. And a new word was coined from the pair’s murderous practices: ‘burking'.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Up the clothes and down
the stair in the house with Burke and Hair. Burke's
the butcher, Hair's the thief, Knox the man who buys
the beef. Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria t. Marquis and

(00:26):
I'm Holly Fry. Guess what we're not talking about? Actual beef.
William Burke had a charming, outgoing manner. Originally from Ireland,
he moved to Scotland in eight seventeen and began working
for the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal, known more simply
as the Union Canal, which runs about thirty one miles

(00:47):
from Falkirk to Edinburgh. Some reports suggest that Burke had
a wife and perhaps a few children in Ireland, and
that he deserted them. We do know that while living
in Scotland, Burke was with a woman named Helen mcd google,
who is sometimes referred to as his wife, sometimes as
his mistress. More accounts do call her his wife, though,

(01:08):
so that's what we're gonna do too, but just now
there are question marks. In eight seven, Burke moved into
a lodging house in Edinburgh, and that move would change
his life. William Hare was also originally from Ireland, and
he too moved to Scotland for work opportunities on the canal.
The men were the same age, give or take a year.

(01:28):
Both are believed to have been born in seventeen ninety two.
Unlike Burke, he's described as quote uncouth, a lean quarrelsome
violent and amoral character, with the scars from old wounds
about his head and brow. In eight ish he married
a woman named Margaret Laird. Margaret was a widow and

(01:48):
her husband had run a lodging house in Tanner's Clothes
off Edinburgh's Westport. She took over running the business after
his death. It's during her time at this boarding house
that Burke and Hair are believed to have met. The
Burke and Hair murders, which you'll see reference to as
the Westport murders, happened in Edinburgh, Scotland between November eight

(02:10):
in October thirty one eight and their story begins when
one of Hair's tenants, an army pensioner named Donald, died
while he was still owing four pounds rents. While complaining
to his friend Burke about the loss of that income.
The two men hatched a plan they would sell Donald's
corpse to the local medical school to recover their money.

(02:33):
Enter doctor Robert Knox, before his now infamous involvement with
broken Hair, Knox was a renowned lecturer of anatomy, as
well as an esteemed ethnologist and zoologist. He was born
in sevente the eighth child of Mary and Robert Knox.
After suffering from smallpox as a child, which left him
blind in one eye, Knox was initially educated at home

(02:57):
by his father. He went on to study at the
High School of Edinburgh before enrolling in the University of
Edinburgh in eighteen ten. He graduated as a Doctor of
Medicine in eighteen fourteen, publishing his thesis entitled on the
Effects of Stimulants and Narcotics on the Healthy Body. He
went on actually to become a prolific author. From there,

(03:18):
Knox obtained a commission as assistant surgeon in the Army
in eighteen fifteen. After posts in Brussels, France and South Africa,
Knox returned to Scotland in eighteen twenty two. Back home,
he was instrumental in the establishment of the Museum of
comparative anatomy and pathology at the Royal College of Surgeons
in Edinburgh, he built a school of anatomy, possibly the

(03:40):
largest in Britain at the time, and in only a
few years he had hundreds of students. As we have
spoken about in other episodes, the demand for cadavers among
anatomists and medical schools in the nineteenth century could not
be met through legal means, and that's because subjects for
dissection were limited to body of executed criminals, individuals who

(04:02):
had died in prison, or those who were orphaned or
who had died by suicide. Many medical schools took matters
into their own hands and paid for fresh corpses, usually
with no questions asked. Knox, for instance, had more than
five hundred students in the academic year eighteen eighty nine,
considered the demands he alone had for cadavers for his

(04:26):
daily lectures. Brokenhair's first delivery to Dr Robert Knox was
on November seven, but it wasn't actually meant for him.
During burke confession, he testified that the first body they
sold was originally meant for Alexander Monroe, a physician and
professor of anatomy and surgery at the University of Edinburgh

(04:47):
Medical School. The body ended up with Knox because one
of his medical students intercepted and redirected Burkenhair to Knox
his rooms on Surgeons Square, promising more money than Monroe
would pay for this corpse and any additional corps is.
Prices ranged from four to about fourteen pounds per corpse
during the time Broken Hair were part of the trade.

(05:07):
The men received seven pounds ten shillings for that first body. Now,
so we used to do this all the time, but
we haven't jumped through time with currency in quite a while.
So let's eight pounds in eighteen seems to have been
equivalent in purchasing power to about nine six pounds today.
No one could argue the body trade wasn't good money.

(05:30):
So we're going to take a break for a word
from our sponsor. Burke and Hair were so famous that
their activities coined a new word, and we're going to
talk about that when we're back. Welcome back to Criminalia.

(05:53):
Let's talk about Broken Hair's victims and about a woman
named Maggie Dougherty who became their final target. Contrary to
popular belief and a lot of things you might read
on the internet, Burke and Hair were not actual body snatchers. Quote.
One misconception, according to Janet Philip, author and staff member

(06:14):
at the University of Edinburgh's Deanery of Biomedical Sciences, is
that they robbed graves. She goes on quote, but they
actually never robbed graves at all, and we know this
is true just by reading the account of Burke, who
in his confession states this as a fact. They had
their own way of supplying anatomists with fresh corpses, and

(06:35):
it did not involve a graveyard at all. They simply
killed people. The pair worked like this. First they would
get their victim drunk. Each man then had his own role.
Hair suffocated the victims well. Burke lay across their stomach
to prevent any sort of resistance. Their technique made it
so the corps never showed any sign, or at least

(06:56):
any obvious sign that the person had been murdered. A
new word was coined from the pair's murderous practices. Burking,
used as a verb, would mean to smother a victim
or to commit an anatomy murder. Most historical sources agree
that their first murder happened in January, the victim, a

(07:17):
miller named Joseph, who was lodging in Hair's house, fell ill.
Hair and his wife worried the illness would spread to
the other tenants that were staying with them and that
would be very bad for business. So Hair called in
Burke for help, and the men plied Joseph with alcohol
and Hair suffocated him while Burke lay across his chest

(07:38):
to immobilize him. This time, Knox paid ten pounds for
the body. As soon as the men saw how easy
they could make money this way, they were really all in.
It was the ease with which they were able to
sell the body, plus the high price they were able
to sell it for confessed work that quote made them

(07:58):
try the murdering for subject X. Despite statements and testimony
given by both Burke and Hair, the timeline of the
Deadly Duo's murders doesn't actually lay out a solid and
consistent series of events, but we know that from January
through October of eighty eight, they killed at least sixteen people,
including three men, twelve women, and one child. A woman

(08:20):
named Mrs Haldane was murdered while lodging at the house.
Mrs Haldane's daughter is also said to have been murdered there,
as was a woman named Effie. A domestic worker named
Mrs Ostler, who came to the property to do the laundry,
was another victim of the pair. Yet another was assault
seller named Abigail Simpson. While they chose victims among the

(08:41):
lodgers at Hair's boarding house, they also targeted the poorest
people in the city. They murdered street sweepers, sex workers,
an elderly grandmother and her young grandson, and one of
their victims, and McDougall was a relative of Burke's wife.
All were intoxicated before they were suffocated. In April of eight,
Burke invited two women, Mary Patterson and Janet Brown to

(09:05):
his home for drinks. Janet left after a few hours,
but Mary fell asleep at the table. She was murdered
by the two men and her body was sold to Knox.
A few months later, Burke and Hair killed and sold
the body of a well known local character in the community,
a man named James Wilson. He was also known as

(09:25):
Daft Jamie. Knox bought all the corpses they supplied, and
he never asked questions, but then that really wasn't unusual.
It was pretty standard practice not to ask, But some
of his students began to grow a little suspicious of
where the bodies were coming from when they began to
recognize the bodies being sold to them, such as Daft Jamie.

(09:48):
The pair's final murder took place on Halloween in eight
a married couple by the names of James and Ann
Gray grew suspicious regarding the unexpected disappearance of a fellow boar,
Margaret Maggie Doherty. Burke had invited Maggie to a Halloween
party at the boarding house that night. She took him
up on that offer, but she didn't leave the party alive.

(10:11):
The men murdered her, and her body was hidden under
a bed until the next morning, which is when they
planned to deliver her to Knox. That next day, though,
the Grays discovered Maggie's hidden body, but when they were
on their way to alert authorities, the corpse was taken
to Knox, and that meant that by the time the
police arrived on the scene, there was nothing left behind

(10:34):
to show there had been a crime. One version of
their Downfall also includes this detail when asked by police
when Maggie left the party. Burke and his wife gave
different answers. One stated that she left by seven pm,
while the others stated she left at seven am. Doherty's body,

(10:55):
it said, was found on the dissection board at the university,
and now that there was actually a body, there could
be a crime. Of the murders we've talked about, there
were three that caught the attention of the public. Mary Patterson,
who sometimes went by the name Mary Mitchell, and James
Wilson were both well known in the community, known enough

(11:15):
to be recognized by those dissecting them. As we said,
Margaret Dougherty, sometimes known by the surname Campbell, was the
men's final victim and the only body remaining as evidence.
These were the only victims named in the indictment. A
warrant for the arrest of Hair and their wives was
issued on November three. We're going to take a break

(11:36):
for a word from our sponsor. When we return, we're
going to talk about the trial, the sentencing, and what
happened to Burt Hair and Knocks. Welcome back to Criminalia. Obviously,

(12:00):
Burke and Hair knew what was going on, but did Knox.
Let's talk about it. The case, a capital crime, was
tried by the High Court of Justiciary in Parliament Square.
This is the supreme criminal court in Scotland. The public
prosecutor was the Lord Advocate, Sir William Ray, Scotland's chief
legal official. Burke and his wife were defended by two

(12:24):
esteemed Edinburgh lawyers, James Moncrief and Henry Cockburn. Hair, however,
was offered immunity if he provided the details necessary to
convict Burke of the murders. He agreed to the deal.
Turning King's evidence, Hair admitted his guilt and gave evidence
against Burke in regard to the murders of Mary Patterson,
James Wilson and Margaret Doherty. The jury deliberated for less

(12:48):
than an hour over Burke's case. On the morning of
December William Burke was sentenced to death, and the judge
added to that sentence that his body be given to
anatomous for public dissection. Burke was hanged outside St Giles
Cathedral on January nine. Historical records suggest there was a

(13:11):
large turnout like Mega large like most concerts wish they
sold this many tickets actually went looked up the number
a second time. I was like, is that all the
zeros that are supposed to be there? Yes. Historians estimate
upwards of twenty five thousand people gathered to watch this execution.

(13:33):
Those who lived in the tenement housing nearby offered their
rooms with a view of the scaffold to onlookers for
a fee between five and twenty shillings just to watch,
and the dissection of Burke's body on February one drew
a large crowd as well. Because more people showed up
to watch the dissection than had tickets to the show,

(13:53):
local authorities were brought in for crowd control. Burke's corpse
was publicly dissected by Dr Alexander and Row and yes,
that is the same man who they had planned to
sell their first cadaver too. It took two hours, and
during the procedure, Monroe dipped a quill into Burke's blood
and scribbled the following sentence. This is written with the
blood of William Burke, who was hanged in Edinburgh. This

(14:16):
blood was taken from his head. After the dissection, Burke's
skeleton was donated to the Anatomy Museum at the University
of Edinburgh, where it hangs still today. That's not all
that became of Burke's body, though a book was made
from his skin and can be viewed at the Surgeons
Hall Museums. There was not enough evidence to convict Burke's wife,

(14:39):
and she was released after the jury found that charges
against her work quote not proven. Hair could not be
brought to testify against his wife, so she, like he
was immune from prosecution. Hair was released from custody on
February nine am. He just sort of disappeared. Seriously, Even now,

(15:00):
two hundred years later, no one is really certain what
became of this man. No one doubted the men were guilty.
Most agreed that Margaret Hare knew about the murders and
may have assisted in some of them, but there was
no proof. Burke and Hair split the money they earned,
and Margaret, it's reported, always took one pound for quote
the use of her house. It's assumed that Burke's wife, Helen,

(15:23):
was at the very least complicit in the murders, but
there was little direct evidence against her too. She had
the clothing of one victim, Mary Patterson, in her possession,
but that's the only tie. Burke claimed his wife knew
nothing about the murders and that she believed his work
was simply as a resurrectionist, which didn't involve murder. Knox

(15:47):
was hardly the only one seeking out and paying for
fresh corpses, but most anatomists were not working with murderers.
They were working with people who snatched dead bodies from
gravest people who were creating a supply of dead bodies.
Surely he thought there was something slightly different about his
supply chain, but there's really no way to know. Knox

(16:11):
was questioned, but it was determined he had not broken
any laws. A committee including his peers, John Robinson, who
was Secretary to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and William
Poulteney Allison, professor of Medicine, was formed to investigate the
charges against him. They concluded that they had quote seen
no evidence that Dr Knox or his assistants knew that

(16:34):
murder was committed in procuring any of the subjects brought
to his rooms, and they continued they quote firmly believed
in his innocence. Forensics are an essential part of today's
crime investigations, but in the mid eighteen hundreds in Scotland,
the science was really still in its infancy. It wasn't
until eighteen thirty five, when Scotland Yards Henry Goddard first

(16:58):
used bullet comparison to catch a killer. The detective branch
at Scotland Yard wasn't established until eighteen forty two, and
the development of the technique of fingerprint analysis didn't happen
until eighteen eighty. No one was looking to see if
these bodies had suspicious injuries, but the public assumed Knox
should have known just by looking. In a second confession

(17:20):
published in the Edinburgh Kurant shortly before his execution, Burke
exonerated Knox of all knowledge of the murders. Knox was
never prosecuted for his involvement, but he was never able
to escape guilt by association. The public just did not
believe his innocence. On February twelve, eighteen twenty nine, and

(17:42):
effigy of Knox was publicly hung before being torn to
pieces in the street outside his home. He was also
vilified in popular folk songs and tales, and he was
caricatured in Prince. His reputation was severely damaged and he
was unable to continue his career in Scotland. The press
published editorials accusing him of encouraging the murders. The Royal

(18:05):
College of Surgeons pressured him to resign his role of
curator of the museum, which he did in eighteen thirty one.
In the early eighteen forties, after the death of his
wife during childbirth in eighteen forty one and the death
of their son John at age four in eighteen forty two,
Knox relocated to London. There he produced articles for medical

(18:27):
journals and wrote books on a range of subjects, from
anthropology to fishing. Doctor Robert Knox died in December of
eighteen sixty two and was buried at Brookwood Cemetery in
northwest Surrey, England. The actions of burke Hair and Knox
did lead to changes in how bodies were used in
medical research, in particular with the passing of the Anatomy

(18:49):
Act of eighteen thirty two by Parliament in the United Kingdom.
Burke Hair and Knox were very high profile and the
case outraged the public. In response to public disgust over
the illegal body trade, the Act allowed doctors, teachers of
anatomy and medical students to also dissect the corpses of
the poor, those who were homeless, and those bodies that

(19:12):
were donated to medical science, and it was the first
law to make the middleman of the trade no longer necessary.
About fifty years later, embalming allowed medical schools to keep
cadavers for months, finally closing the door on this chapter
of the body trade. Would you like a little embalming

(19:35):
fluid to quit your whistle whistle? Please? Just don't don't
invite me to a Halloween party, never coming to me.
Mine are only fun and everyone leaves happy and safe.
Everyone leaves there is right there intact conscious. So, in

(19:57):
thinking about this episode this week, it so grizzly and
dark in some ways, I wanted to do a simple
drink that's still nodded to the story itself without being
grizzly at all. I wanted to figure out a way
to deliver something that you had gotten simply, rather than
going through all the work of digging up ingredients. So

(20:19):
it's a very basic cocktail, but it has some complexity
to it because so this one is called the Shortcut,
and it's an easy, peasy little cocktail. But the thing
that's fun about it is it tastes like there's more
going on than there is, because two of the ingredients
really bring out the complexity in one another. It is

(20:39):
based very roughly on a gimlet, which is usually gin
and lime juice or gin and sometimes specifically roses lime juice,
which is a pre sweetened lime juice. However, there is
no one recipe for a gimlet because there are a
lot of different variations, because everyone has opinions on what
the right ratios are, and as we often allude to,

(21:04):
the right ratio is the one that tastes right to
For example, for some of the ratios, just to give
you a sense of the variance, some people will tell
you that it's a half and half affair, like half
gin half of the roses lime juice. Others that it's
like a two to one proportion. Others that will be
like two parts lime juice, two parts of gin, one
part lime juice, one part roses lime juice, one part

(21:26):
unsweetened lime juice. Like, there are lots of different variations.
So I decided that we would do the slight variation,
which is a basic vodka gimlet. It's the same idea,
just sums out vodka for gin. It gets a little
complexity though, because we're going to drop in another ingredients,
So you're gonna start for this is where I like
to be again, all of these are variable. Two ounces

(21:47):
of vodka. I like a nice, just clean, simple vodka
for this, three quarters of an ounce of roses lime syrup,
and then three quarters to one ounce of vamaretto. You're
gonna shake this with ice, You're gonna strain it into
a chilled cocktail glass, and then that's it. It's so easy.
But the thing is, the lime and the armoiretto together

(22:10):
make this taste way more complex than it is, Like
they offset each other and you're like, what is in this, Trea,
I don't this tastes like it tastes like a very
grown up drink. It definitely tastes like alcohol. It's not
one where that's masked. It makes it seem like it's
probably got more ingredients than three, and that it took
more steps and just the dump and shake. Its super basic.

(22:34):
And again, obviously play with those proportions because different palettes
like different stuff. Even I like the lime or the
armoretto to dial up or down sometimes just depending on
the day, it just depends. The mock tail for this
one is really quite tasty. It's also very simple. So
this one you won't shake because you're starting with club soda.

(22:54):
If you put in a shaker, it's gonna explode him.
No one likes that, So I just start with four
ounces of soda. I add a half to an ounce,
a half ounce to an ounce of almond syrup I
like or jab, but if you like a different almond syrup,
that's fine. And then a half ounce of Roses lime syrup.
If that is too sweet for people like Maria they

(23:14):
don't like too much sugar, you could just use straight
lime juice. It's great. It's still offsets the almond flavor
there in the syrup, and it's quite yummy and refreshing
as well. And that's another mock tail that kind of
tastes like an actual cocktail something. So that's a handy
and easy way to whip out a mocktail that makes
you feel very much like you're actually imbibing if that's

(23:36):
something you're after. If it's not that, it's still yummy,
it's very refreshing and crisp because you have bubbles. So
that is the shortcut, which seems like you did more
work than you actually did. See much like birken hair
seemed like they did more work than they actually did.
The public never believed Knox. They those two guys were

(23:58):
not shovel ers. That's just what we know. They want
to simplify that chain. Hopefully this libation takes the edge
off of knowing that people would just happily and casually
kill their acquaintances for money. Uh, relatives, neighbors, everybody's just
We would never do such a thing, and we are

(24:18):
very grateful that you spend this time with us taking
a peek at these moments in history. We will be
right back here next week, and we hope you join
us again for more resurrectionists or potentially murderers, and more libations.

(24:44):
Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership
with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio,
please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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