Of all the possible get - rich - warm schema you could need yourself in , many of us would barricade short ofserial violent death , even if it intend you ’d be aid the forward motion of science . But that ’s not the character for everybody . Take William Burke and William Hare , both Irish immigrant who run a boardinghouse in Edinburgh , Scotland , and killed a minimum of 15 multitude during a 10 - month flow in 1827 and 1828 . You know why they did that ? Because they made a small fortune doing it .
Burke and Hare had no deplorable record book before they got into the murdering business — Burke was a deep-dish pie and Hare was a laborer who own a lodging house with his wife . When a boarder who owed the Hares a good deal of back rent give-up the ghost one day in November 1827 , Hare kick to his ally Burke . The two decided the dependable mode to recuperate Hare ’s financial expiration was to deal the man ’s corpse to an anatomy professor at the University of Edinburgh .
Anatomy research was a booming job in Edinburgh in the early nineteenth century , and though many human dissections were conducted every mean solar day in the city , human remains were hard to come by . grave accent - robbing was glower upon , but anatomist were allowed to study the bodies of deceased prisoners , suicidevictims , abandoned infant and orphans . This did n’t imply Edinburgh was n’t crawl with body snatchers — since the demand was in high spirits for stiff and the supply comparatively low , many anatomists used the services of " Resurrection Men " to fill up their human corpse prerequisite . It was not technically illegal to poke up a deadened consistence and sell it , since the dead did n’t officially belong to to anyone , but the world-wide publichatedthis exercise , so anatomists do-or-die for clay were uncoerced to pay for body — sometimes in terrible term — without asking questions about where the trunk came from .
A doctor and anatomist bring up Robert Knox was a pop reader at the University of Edinburgh when Burke and Hare get along to him with their first remains . Knox paid them £ 7.10 ( a little over $ 9 ) for the body — almost £ 750 ( $ 986 ) today — and almost double what the dead man owed Hare in back split . The body was pretty fresh , which please Knox . He was even more proud of a few months later with the eubstance of Burke and Hare ’s first murder dupe — a boarder who fall ill with fever in the boarding theatre , and who the two man suffocated . Knox pay them £ 10 ( $ 13 ) for that remains — over £ 1,000 ( $ 1,300 ) today .
Over the class of the next year , Knox bought a total of 16 bodies from the duo — mostly women . Most of their victims were kill , most likely with the knowledge of the murderer ’s wife , by plying them with whiskey and then choke them . Burke and Hare preyed on people who were piteous and alone or disabled : During the test , the three victim named in the indictment were a mentally handicapped young man , a young woman reputed to be a prostitute and their last victim — the one who get them catch — a mediate - older Irish woman , reportedly in Edinburgh searching for her missing son .
Burke and Hare were describe by a couple staying in Hare ’s boarding house — they ascertain the two men drinking with the woman in the eve , and the next morning time she had disappeared . They found her eubstance packed in straw under a layer , ready to be taken to Knox . After the match alerted the constabulary , the authority raided Knox ’s cadavers and find the woman ’s consistency among them .
In the trial , Hare take the stand against Burke , and he and his married woman were released . Burke ’s wife was also release , but Burke was execute . Knox was exonerate of all charges because Burke testified that Knox did n’t know about the birthplace of the bodies he was buying .
