SUSIE LENNOX: Their'modus operandi' was to get them drunk.

Then they clasped their hands over the nose and mouth and then

sat on their chest to stop them breathing.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Have you ever heard of the Burke and Hare

murders? 16 people killed in the space of 10 months. Their bodies

sold for around £8 and all in the name of medical science.

Have you ever imagined being a fly on the wall of history? Join

me for an inside view of the stories of people, places and

moments that made us.

I'm Historian Helen Antrobus. Lean in for a tale from time.

Back When.

In Edinburgh in the 1700s there's a market for dead

bodies, corpses and cadavers. A medical school is established in

the city in 1726 and fresh corpses are needed by the

students to learn anatomy. As the school grows and student

numbers increase more and more bodies are needed and the trade

of body snatching is born.

Body snatchers take fresh corpses from graves and sell

them to medical schools for around £8. Over £1,000 in

today's money. And that's where Burke and Hare come into the

story.

But they don't snatch bodies from graves. They're murderers.

They don't really plan to become serial killers. Hare runs a

lodging house, and he's owed rent from one of his tenants.

But he dies before he could pay up. And it's his death that

sparks an enterprise that results in Burke and Hare's

lucrative killing spree.

SUSIE LENNOX: Hare was out of pocket and he was like, oh, hang

on, I'm going to sell them to the surgeons. I've heard that

this is quite a good racket. And he sold them and he got a fair

bit for him, cleared his rent. And he basically said, well,

this is, you know, this is really good. I haven't had to do

any work.

My name's Susie Lennox. I'm a Historian. I specialise in body

snatching and anything that is macabre. Somewhere in history,

it has got twisted that Burke and Hare were body snatchers.

They were never body snatchers. Even Burke himself is like, oh,

throws his hands up and says, I am not a body snatcher, such is

the disgust, really.

Burke and Hare are linked to body snatching because they sold

their victims to Dr. Robert Knox in Edinburgh for money. So

essentially, they have missed out the natural death bit and

the burial bit, and just killed victims. We know of 16. There

could be more.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Let's go back a bit before we delve into Burke

and Hare piggybacking the body snatching business.

Edinburgh today is still considered a centre for medical

excellence. And that legacy is in part due to the city having a

medical school for so long. The first was established in 1726,

about 100 years before Burke and Hare capitalised on their dead

lodger.

In the beginning, medical students train using body parts

that have been preserved in formaldehyde, or maybe wax

models, sometimes even dogs. And when there is a fresh corpse or

cadaver available, students gather round in numbers to watch

and to learn. But student numbers are growing, and by the

mid-1700s, every student is required to dissect and learn

from their very own cadaver.

SUSIE LENNOX: And it was said that you needed at least three

bodies in order to become proficient in anatomy. So that's

two to learn the workings of the body and one to learn how to do

operations.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Just one problem then, there's not enough bodies

to go around, unless of course you start taking them out of

their graves. And in the beginning, it's the students and

the anatomists who are doing the dirty work.

SUSIE LENNOX: You read stories where students have gone in and

the graves open and the grave clothes are scattered across the

graveyard and they've just merrily walked off with this

corpse.

HELEN ANTROBUS: But student numbers grow and the unsavoury

habit some trainees have of taking bodies from graveyards

themselves is unsustainable. There aren't enough easily

accessible bodies to go round. In Edinburgh, a new clause in

student contracts. If you're caught, you face being thrown

out of medical school. And so, a new trade is born. The body

snatcher.

SUSIE LENNOX: In the beginning, it's just like opportunists, men

that are on the ground, or maybe even a little bribe to the

Sexton. Can you, you know, make sure that this corpse isn't

perhaps buried deep enough? And then they realise that, hey,

hang on. This could be fairly big business. And then it just

kind of explodes.

HELEN ANTROBUS: There is good money to be made.

SUSIE LENNOX: So back about 1790, the adult corpse could

fetch two guineas, two pounds, two shillings. Children were six

shillings and measured for the first foot and then nine pence

after that. So they were measured. They were on a rolling

scale, as it were.

HELEN ANTROBUS: But prices rise. Body snatchers start demanding

more money. It's becoming a lucrative business. So maybe

it's no surprise that someone has the idea to start killing

people to get their hands on the fresh corpses to sell to the

medical schools.

In 1827, William Burke and William Hare sell their first

corpse, but the men who go on to become serial killers don't

really plan to do so. Their backgrounds are similar, their

paths cross and it is a natural death that sparks an idea that

becomes one of history's most notorious killing sprees.

The men, both Irish, meet working together in Scotland.

Burke separates from his first wife, falls out with his family

and leaves Ireland to become a labourer on the Union Canal. He

originally settles in Falkirk before moving to Edinburgh.

Similarly, Hare moves from Ireland to work on the Union

Canal before then moving to Edinburgh to live in a lodging

house. It's thought that the men are to have met while working a

harvest before going back to live together in Hare's lodging

house. And by now, Hare is running it.

SUSIE LENNOX: They started killing victims originally that

nobody really knew who they were. Like sellers coming

through Edinburgh and passing through to go and sell their

wares. Stayed at Hare's lodging house in Tanner Close and not

seen again.

It started because one of their lodgers died before he was due

to receive his quarterly army pay.

HELEN ANTROBUS: With a dead lodger on their hands and no

rent paid, it is too good an opportunity for the two men to

overlook.

SUSIE LENNOX: Hare was out of pocket and he was like, oh, hang

on. I'm going to sell them to the surgeons. I've heard that

this is quite a good racket. And he sold them and he cleared his

rent. And he basically said, well, this is, you know, this is

really good. I haven't had to do any work.

HELEN ANTROBUS: The next lodger whose body they sell, their

first killing, is another man.

SUSIE LENNOX: He became sickly and they said, well, we don't

want people finding out we've got a sick lodger in our lodging

house. We'll kill him. So they killed him, sold his body. And

they're like, well, this is quite easy. So in the beginning,

they're doing people that... Nobody's going to miss.

HELEN ANTROBUS: And their method for killing their sickly lodger

is to become their trademark. So much so that after their killing

spree, the method is named after one of them.

SUSIE LENNOX: Their'modus operandi basically' was to get

them drunk. So much so that, you know, they probably vomited. But

then they clasped their hands over the nose and mouth and then

sat on their chest to stop them breathing. It's called burking,

taken from William Burke.

HELEN ANTROBUS: With two successful sales under their

belt, Burke and Hare grow in confidence. They start inviting

people back to their lodgings to get them drunk.

SUSIE LENNOX: They start targeting people that are on the

street. So one of them is Mary Patterson, a local girl. Daft

Jamie, so Jamie Wilson, another local figure.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Burke and Hare continue their killing spree.

They've now killed about 15 people. And their next victim is

to be a woman, Mary or Margaret Doherty. This is to be the

beginning of the end of the men's killing spree.

SUSIE LENNOX: Their downfall came on All Hallows' Eve, for

want of a better day for them. And I think that's probably why

as well it's all kind of like whipped up into a frenzy. All of

us macabre history lovers love that it's happened on Halloween.

HELEN ANTROBUS: And unluckily for Mary, who was Irish, like

Burke and Hare, she just happened to be in the wrong

place at the wrong time.

SUSIE LENNOX: Poor little old Mary Docherty. She'd walked,

bless her cotton's, from Glasgow over to Edinburgh looking for

her grandson, I think it was. And she was in just a little

shop at the end of the road, Rymer's Grocers it was, where

Burke used to get a dram every morning or every five minutes on

some accounts that you read.

And she was in there and he overheard her Irish accent and

said, oh, lo, I am from the very same place that you are from.

And my mother, gosh, we could be related.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Poor Mary takes the bait and heads back to

Burke's house, who's now also taking in lodgers. But there's a

problem when they get back there. The other lodgers.

Killing under their noses would be too risky, so they send them

away.

SUSIE LENNOX: In order to do it, they had to temporarily evict

their tenants, Mr and Mrs Gray. So they kind of kicked them out

for the night and said, you go off and stay at Hare's house,

come back in the morning. And all will be well.

HELEN ANTROBUS: But Mary isn't going to go quietly.

SUSIE LENNOX: During the night, there's big arguments.

Neighbours are saying, you know, like, keep the noise down, etc.

And then it all goes quiet.

The neighbours are like, well, what happened to the little old

lady? And Hare's wife, or Burke's wife, says that, oh, she

tried it on with my husband, and so we kicked her out. And in

fact, she's lying dead under the straw.

HELEN ANTROBUS: With suspicions already raised amongst the

neighbours, it's to get worse for Burke and Hare when Mr and

Mrs Gray turn up to collect some belongings.

SUSIE LENNOX: In the meantime, the tenants that they've kicked

out to Hare's house come back because they want to get a, I

think it's a pair of tights funnily enough and noticed a

pile of straw in the corner and Burke was acting very, very

suspiciously like, you know, stay away from there, etc.

HELEN ANTROBUS: When Burke leaves the room, Mr Gray looks

under the straw. And discovers the body. The men offer the

Grays money to keep quiet.

SUSIE LENNOX: They had bribed the Grays and said, look, we'll

give you £10 if you keep it quiet, we'll give you £10 a

week, like, shh.

HELEN ANTROBUS: The Grays don't accept, and instead they go to

the police.

SUSIE LENNOX: And then it just unravelled from there, really.

HELEN ANTROBUS: But Hare escapes punishment for his killing

spree. The police, who don't have enough evidence to convict

Burke and Hare, offer Hare a deal, immunity from prosecution,

but they want him to be their main witness.

SUSIE LENNOX: In order to convict them, Hare turned King's

evidence and threw Burke under the bus.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Burke is found guilty and sentenced to death

and on the 28th of January 1829, he is hanged in front of a crowd

of 25,000 people.

Burke and Hare's endeavours did bring about a heightened

awareness of the need for cadavers for medical research,

and public revulsion at their killing spree, swayed opinion in

favour of a change in the law. Just four years after Burke is

hanged, the Anatomy Act of 1832 is introduced, allowing

students, surgeons and physicians legal access to

corpses of those who had died in hospitals, prisons or

workhouses.

Or... whose bodies go unclaimed. But what became of Burke's body?

Well, there was only one option, really. After being put on

public display, his body is donated to medical science and

he is dissected at Edinburgh's medical school. For any dark

history lovers out there, it's possible to book a visit to see

his skeleton, which is now on display at the Anatomical Museum

in Edinburgh.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Back When. We'll be

back with more soon and if you've liked what you've heard

why not give us a rating or review. In the meantime you

could check out our nature series Wild Tales, but for now,

from me, goodbye.