{"id":8049,"date":"2012-01-04T05:00:21","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T13:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=8049"},"modified":"2016-02-25T14:41:13","modified_gmt":"2016-02-25T22:41:13","slug":"two-men-murdered-15-people-over-the-course-of-a-year-in-order-to-sell-the-bodies-as-cadavers-for-college-students-to-dissect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2012\/01\/two-men-murdered-15-people-over-the-course-of-a-year-in-order-to-sell-the-bodies-as-cadavers-for-college-students-to-dissect\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Men Murdered 15 People Over the Course of a Year in Order to Sell the Bodies as Cadavers for College Students to Dissect"},"content":{"rendered":"
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William Burke’s Skeleton on Display at the Edinburgh Medical School Anatomy Museum<\/p><\/div>\n

Today I found out<\/a> about William Burke and William Hare: two men who murdered 15 people (though sold 16 bodies overall) over the course of a year to make extra money, selling the bodies as cadavers for university students to dissect.<\/p>\n

These murders took place starting in November of 1827 to October of 1828.\u00a0 At the time, it was very difficult for universities to get human bodies for students to dissect.\u00a0 The only ones that could legally be acquired by universities were those from executed convicts. \u00a0 This had once been an adequate supply, but thanks to certain legal changes that resulted in a drastic reduction of executions and thanks to the fact that the study of anatomy had become more popular as medical science progressed, there began to exist a huge shortage of human bodies.<\/p>\n

In order to get around this problem, college professors and private tutors would sometimes pay under the table for bodies, no questions asked.\u00a0 It was not uncommon for people known as “resurrectionists” or “body snatchers” to watch cemeteries and, when a fresh body was buried, they would dig it up. They’d then take any valuables that may have been left with the person.\u00a0 Finally, if the body was fresh enough, they’d take it to sell.\u00a0 This practice became bad enough that relatives of a deceased loved one would often stand in shifts over the grave for several days to keep the body safe from being stolen while it was still fresh.\u00a0 As author Hugh Douglas noted: “(Resurrectionists) could open a grave, remove a body and restore the soil between patrols of the night watch….\u00a0 Relatives of the subject could mourn by the grave the following day, unaware that their loved one was gracing some anatomy slab in Edinburgh.”<\/p>\n

William Burke and William Hare took this practice a step further.\u00a0 Rather than wait for people to die, they began a year long killing spree, providing a steady stream of bodies for Dr. Robert Knox who was a private lecturer, teaching anatomy classes to University students.<\/p>\n

The murder spree started relatively innocently enough.\u00a0 At the lodging house that Hare operated they had an elderly gentlemen named Donald who owed Hare \u00a34 in rent when the old man died.\u00a0 Knowing that one could sell a body to universities, they decided to fill the coffin with bark and steal the body to sell to make up for the loss of the rent money the dead man owed.\u00a0 They originally intended to sell the body to Professor Alexander Munro of Edinburgh Medical College, but after making inquiries were re-directed to Dr. Robert Knox, a private lecturer, whose assistant instructed them to bring the body after nightfall. \u00a0 When they arrived with the body, it was inspected by Dr. Knox’s assistants and Burke and Hare were offered \u00a37.10s, which would be around \u00a3730 today, or around $1100.<\/p>\n

Hare soon had another sick tenant on his hands, Joseph the Miller.\u00a0 While Joseph wasn’t necessarily sick enough to die, the two decided they thought that he was going to eventually die.\u00a0 Because he was in pain, they reportedly rationalized that if he was going to die anyways, they ought to put him out of his misery sooner, rather than later, and sell his body after the deed was done.\u00a0 They did so by first getting him really drunk to the point that he passed out.\u00a0 Next, one of them pinched his nose and held his mouth shut, while the other laid on his body and held Joseph’s arms and legs down, in case he should struggle.\u00a0 By doing it this way, they left no mark of violence on the body, which might arouse suspicion.\u00a0 It also made it appear the person had died either of illness or over-intoxication.<\/p>\n

The two decided to repeat this process whenever sick tenants popped up.\u00a0 However, they soon found that Hare’s tenants remained annoying healthy.\u00a0 Being short on any other sick or dying tenants, the Burke and Hare decided to simply lure people in from the streets, initially people who wouldn’t be terribly missed; specifically targeting old people who they could easily overpower and would be more likely to be thought to have died of natural causes.<\/p>\n

While exact details of all their murders are hard to discern, due to differing accounts of events by the two and Hare’s wife and Burke’s mistress, as well as the scant amount of direct evidence,\u00a0 from here, it is generally thought their murders went as follows (reportedly receiving between \u00a38-\u00a314 per body):<\/p>\n