William Burke
During the early 19th century those studying for the medical professions needed cadavers on which to perform dissections. Since Scottish law limited the bodies available for such purposes to those of suicide victims, prisoners, or foundlings there was soon a shortage of available cadavers. The profession of grave robbing soon expanded, and as it did its risks grew correspondingly. The public did not respond kindly to their loved one’s bodies becoming the basis of medical experimentation and education. But the amount of money which physicians were willing to pay for cadavers made the acquisition of newly dead bodies a lucrative enterprise.
Matthew Burke was a wandering agricultural laborer who eventually became a cobbler. When his friend William Hare found a lodger dead in his (Hare’s) house, Hare solicited Burke’s advice regarding disposal of the corpse. When Burke and Hare discovered that the body could be sold for a nice profit they commenced a string of killings to provide cadavers to a doctor without the inconvenience of digging one up.
To avoid suspicion, Burke – a strong, burly man – came up with a way to suffocate victims without leaving strangulation marks around the head and throat. Burke used heavy pressure on the chest to prevent his victims from breathing, a style of suffocation which became known as “burking.”
When the pair were finally caught, because a witness managed to place a recently deceased victim in their company shortly before an inexplicable demise, Hare turned state’s witness to avoid the gallows. Burke was convicted for a total of 16 murders of victims intended for dissection. After Burke was hanged in January 1929, his body was dissected (by court order as part of his sentence) by surgeons from the Edinburgh Medical School, where his mounted skeleton remains preserved. A book bound with his preserved skin is kept in Surgeon’s Hall Museum nearby.