After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Burke & Hare's Serial Killing Dissection Business

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

What did Ancient Egyptians discover while dissecting bodies? What did the first medieval dissecting manual say? Who were the serial killers who supplied 19th century surgeons with bodies in Edinburgh?Joining Anthony today as a special guest co-host is Cat Irving, Human Remains Conservator at Surgeons’ Hall in Edinburgh, to take us back through this bloody history.Edited by Anna Brant and Tim Arstall. Produced by Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer is Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

16 people were murdered in Edinburgh in the year 1828 by the infamous serial killing duo William Burke and William Hare. They intoxicated and smothered their victims, preying on the underclass of the city. Burke and Hare killed in order to supply corpses to the anatomy table of Dr. Robert Knox. So yes, they were serial killers. But what about Dr. Knox and the other mighty medical minds of Edinburgh at this time? How responsible were they? Did they turn a blind eye to the horror beneath their noses as they strove towards fame and glory?

Well, I can think of no one better to help answer these questions than the one and only Kat Irving Human Remains Conservator at the Surgeon's Hall Museum in Edinburgh. Hello, welcome to AfterDark. I am Katz. And I'm Anthony. And today we are talking about Well, it's an episode that combines both of our interests and knowledge, and we've worked on some of this before in a documentary we did for After Dark on the Edinburgh murders.

Yes. And Hair, spoiler. You're going to be hearing a little bit about serial killers and body snatchers. They weren't body snatchers. They were serial killers. But of course, as Maddie is horse wrangling in the outback of Australia, I'm sure you knew that that's what she was doing. That's what she was doing. A hundred percent legitimate explanation there.

We have our guest co-hosts for this month, which is Kat Irving. And Kat, of course, is the human remains conservator at Surgeons Hall in Edinburgh. That is a great time. Do you ever like when you're writing your job title, like when a form says job title and you're like human remains conservator, are people like, what do you do? Yeah. I mean, I will admit there are times, you know, certain audiences and I'll just write conservator because, you know, there are points that's just like, I don't want to get into that conversation right now. Yeah, yeah, if you're tired. just like going through customs at an airport.

You're like, not today. Not today. Let's not have human remains involved. Because eventually everybody has a story as well. Like it's like, oh, once I lost a kidney or something. Yeah. And there's a lot. I always find it really weird when there's people who seem just like,

that must be the worst job ever. You know, why would you want to do that? And I'm just like, but my job is the best in the world. If only I was in any way scientifically minded, which I'm absolutely not at all. But we're not just going to be talking about Burke and Harris today. We are going to be talking about dissection more generally and the history of dissection, which is potentially much, much longer than you think.

Well, for me personally, I always get the idea of Edinburgh in the 18th century. That's where I land myself just off the top of my head. But of course, they didn't just start there. It didn't start Edinburgh in the 18th century. So let's do a whole timeline for people, just to preface what we're going to be talking about more specifically. and take us to, I suppose, ancient Greece. Is that how far back we want to go? Well, ancient Greece is an interesting one

because obviously ancient Greece, you know, you've got, you've got the philosophy and the science and all of that kind of stuff going on. But weren't big on dissection. Oh, they weren't big on us. They absolutely weren't. They had this real taboo about the body, you know. Right.

So in the ancient Greece, And remember ancient Greece is lots of different city-states. It's not one, you know, big... Just centre, yeah. Yeah, lots and lots of different places. But largely they believe that, you know, if you had contact with a dead body, that was polluting in some way. Polluting to the living person?

Polluting to the living person. So, you know, there were a whole range of strictures. So if you were in contact with a dead body, you know, even if it was, you know, your husband had died at home, then you couldn't go to the temple for worship for... you know, a specified amount of days. Oh, wow. Afterwards.

And, you know, if you had a dead body at home, if somebody had died, you had to put a marker outside your house, so nobody could, you know, accidentally end up with that kind of pollution. So they really did not like dead bodies. And, you know, certain places, you know, you always had to be buried away from the town that, you know, wasn't like today when you'll have a church with a burial ground around it, things like that. Burials had to take place outside.

That is so interesting because we've talked before with Dr. Irving Finkel, who I'm sure you're aware, yes, icon legend. And he talks about ancient Mesopotamia burial rights and the proximity of the dead. And they're often, if it was children that have passed, they were sometimes buried in the walls of the houses. They were buried in courtyards. And so I had had this idea, which is very naive in many ways, that ancient cultures generally were in more proximity to death, but not when it comes to ancient Greece. No, no, no, no. And that carries on into, you know, the Roman period as well. However, there is, in that ancient world, there is one place where dissection does happen.

Okay. And that's Alexandria. Right. So, well, there's a lot of things going on. So first of all, Alexander the Great. Yeah. He has, you know, created a big empire. Then he inconveniently dies in Babylon in 323 BC.

And they transport his body back to Alexandria. takes quite a while. They actually preserve him in honey. Yes, I remember. I think we might have done an episode in that maybe. And then the empire is divided amongst four of his generals. Yeah. And Ptolemy, yes. Gets Egypt. Right. Yeah. Tolomi the first, he was called Ptolemy Suta, Ptolemy Savior. I mean, you know, that's quite a name to give yourself, isn't it? He gets Egypt. And he has this idea that he would like to make, particularly Alexandria, you know, the city that was founded by Alexander the Great, that he wants to make that a centre of learning. Right.

You know, and so he sets up an institution called the museum, which is where we get the word museum today. So it seems from what I've read that you would probably think that, you know, it's more like a university. It's a place where, you know, learned men, of course they're all men, would meet and discuss and, you know, generate ideas. Any discipline. Along any discipline, you know.

But one of those. his anatomy. And that's really interesting because you've got to think he's Greek. He's, he's been brought up with these taboos. He knows about them. But we're not in Greece. We're in Egypt. You know, so we're not in Kansas anymore. Yeah. No. No. It's not Kansas. It's true. So, of course, there's a thing being going on with dead bodies in Egypt for quite some time. Oh my God. How do I not think of this? Yeah. So again, you know, that sort of shifting. Where is she going with this? We're no longer in Greece. Now we're talking about Egypt. of course. There is a culture of the dead there already. Right. So for very brief periods,

only about 40 years in Alexandria under Ptolemy and his son, Tolomey the second, they allow dissection to study the human body to be done. And we get two men, we get Arasistratus and Herophilus. Easy for you to say. And they come along to Alexandria to study the body. They're using the bodies of executed criminals. And this is a theme throughout the history of dissection. And, you know, they actually discover things about the body. So, you know, Herophilus tells us things about the brain, you know, the idea that before had been that it was, there had been discussion, but a lot of people thought that the heart was, you know, the intellectual center of the body. And he, you know, he proves that this is actually the brain where this is happening. He sees the ventricles in the

brain. He's looking at the differences between arteries and veins. Even then. Yeah. And then erasistratus, he figures out that blood can only flow one way along veins. Wow. You know, because there are valves. And he almost, almost gets to the point of figuring out the circulation of blood, which is what, like nearly 2,000 years before Harvey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, amazing things going on because they're able to study from the body. But, as I say, it's a very brief flowering of dissection in Alexandria that only lasts about 40 years. And I suppose one of the things to point out contextually here is that, yes, there is a culture of the dead in Egypt, but this is not how they treat them necessarily.

This is not what they do with them, which is why you're talking about it being criminal bodies and whatever. Absolutely. And as I say, the criminal body... We're going to be encountering it over the next few centuries. It's going to get a mention. Right, fast forward then, 14th century. 14th century. So, you know, dissection has again gone underground. I am sure there must have been some people.

Had to have happened. You would have been doing it if nobody else. Yeah, absolutely. There you are in the 12th century, cutting away. Yeah, 1315. Okay. You know, we're in Bologna. And we're now into the Christian era.

And of course, the thing about Christianity is that it doesn't have to be. booze about the dead body. In fact, it's putting the dead body of Christ front and center. And, you know, saints relics, things like that. You know, you're not getting the hand of something, whatever, without doing a little bit of chopping of the body. You know, there's a whole range of things that are already going on with dead bodies in Christianity. And so there isn't this taboo. So in 1315 in Bologna, we get the first dissection of the human body authorized to study anatomy in the modern world. Wow. And it's carried out by a man called Mondino de Luzzi. And he apparently does two that

year, again, executed criminals. Right. And the following year, he writes, what's effectively the first dissection manual, you know, how you go about this. So that's really, really interesting. A couple of years later, we get the first case of body snatching that we're aware of. Oh, I did not know. So that can go back to the 14th. 1319. Four students are accused of digging up a body to take to the hands of the house of their professor. Is this in Bologna still? It's still in Bologna. Again, they've had the example. Now they want a bit more of that.

Sure. And so, you know, this industry. Yeah. We don't know what happened in that case, but, you know. Somebody was dug up. Somebody was dug up. And it's going on. What's fascinating about that then is that we can say, and you will have known this, but for myself and listeners who are coming across that piece of information for the first time, is that anywhere there has been dissection or anatomizing, there has been most likely body snatching happening at the same time, that there will be this complementary,

and we bear this in mind from when we do get to the 19th century, Edinburgh later on in this story, there is a complementary trade that is meant to supply this more official dissection thing. It is also worth pointing out that while even by the time of the early 14th century, there is this idea going, okay, this might be a worthwhile pursuit, or even if we're talking about in Egypt and dissection there.

Yes, this is a worthwhile pursuit. The pursuit of knowledge is good for humanity. We can learn more about ourselves and about help to treat things and all the rest of it. But you don't want to be the one dissected in order for us to gain that knowledge. And this is why we're constantly turning

to the criminal class to give, they've lost control over their own bodies. Even though it's not a desecration, there seems to be the fact, this idea that you don't want this happening to a reputable body. So these two things are there from the very, very beginning, body snatching and not everybody should be dissected. Yeah. And we'll get onto this a bit later, but there was certainly an idea, particularly when we get into more Protestant times, that you have to be buried intact in order to go to head. Of course, of course. So if you're taking off the old fingers or you're removing different organs, then that's a problem. Right, you have mentioned to me before that the incorporation of the barbers and surgeons of Edinburgh

happens at the very beginning of the 16th century, 1505. That is so early. I would have thought it was much later. Again, 18th century is in my head. So maybe in the 17th century, but no, we're here in the 16th century. It's 1505. Why is this happening now? What is happening in the timeline that Edinburgh goes?

We need to regulate this. So the Barbers and Surgeons of Edinburgh starts life as a trade guild. So that effectively makes it like blacksmiths and butchers and fishmongers, people like that. So effectively, the reason they're wanting to become a trade guild is because that gives them a monopoly. This is basically, it's about commerce. It's business. It's how you're making the money. So that's the inspiration for setting this up in 1505. Plus we had a king at the time, James IV, the 4th of Scotland, and he was really interested in medical things. He believed to have tried. tried to extract some teeth and things like that. So, you know, he had that kind of interest going on as well. And he ratifies our founding document in 1506, so the year after. And one of the things that document does is it gives the barbers and surgeons of Edinburgh one executed criminal per year to practice anatomy on. Oh, that's not going to be enough, Cass.

That's not going to be enough. 1540, you get the barbers and surgeons in England set up. Henry VIII gives them four bodies per year. Yeah, but he's got loads lying around. Yeah, yeah. He needs someone to help with the bodies. Yeah, he's killing a lot of folks. So, yeah. So this barber insurgents guild, just doesn't matter of interest,

is that still the Surgeon's Hall Museum now? Is this still part of that? Or is it just the iteration of it now is the Sergians? It's the iteration. In the incorporation of Barbers and Surgeons, in the early 18th century, they lose the barbers. Of course. So they just become the surgeons.

And then later on, the end of the 18th century, they get a royal charter. So they become the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Okay, so now we're very formal by them. Oh, yes. Yeah. We'll get there. Right. How does a murder act in 1752 feed into the history of anatomy?

Right. So again, this idea that I was talking about, that you have to be buried intact to see the pearly gates. And at that point, you could get hanged for a lot of different things. You know, so poachers, pickpockets, you could get hanged for that. You know, children could be hanged for picking pockets. We have an instance in Edinburgh where the first potter, publicly dissected person in Edinburgh. That happens at the beginning of the 18th century. And he was a 17-year-old boy who was hanged for incest.

So a lot of things could get you hanged. And there's an idea that starts, you know, there's a pamphlet, I think it's 1705, is published, which has said that hanging is not punishment enough for murderers. You know, the idea that if you commit this worst crime, that you should have some extra punishment. So I'm guessing then that post 1752? Well, then the judge can say, after 1752, the judge can say if you're hanged for murder,

that he can give you another punishment. And so the options are the judge can say you get gibbeted. E, not great. Yeah. So you're hung up in a cage after you've been hanged to publicly decompose. Birds are going to be picking at you? Birds are going to be picking at you. Bones are just...

It's fallen down. Yeah. juices down onto the street. It's not going to smell nice. No, it's not great. No, it's not good. But, you know, it's not only providing you with not buried intact body, but also going to act as a warning.

But, you know, you can imagine that as you're walking into town and you see jibited body hanging up, you're going to go, don't want that to be made. And this is 1752. Yeah. That feels so medieval, not very 18th century. Okay. Yeah. The other option is that you could get sent to the anatomist too.

I'll take that one then. Yeah. If those are my two. Now, did the criminal get to decide or did the judge decide, of course. And why certain bodies went to be hanged? I don't know. Don't know. There was a case where a father and son murdered the daughter slash sister and one of them

was sent for anatomization and one of them was gibbeted. So, you know, covering both bases there. Women were ever gibbeted. Right. You know, obviously not as many women being hanged for murder as men. But if you were, you would not be. You would not be jibited. That was considered indecent.

So then you would end up on the anatomist tape. Okay. So then that was the only option for, for, in this case, was that everyone who committed murder was going to have one of those two fates? Nobody was just going to go and be put in the ground. It was either gibbiting or... I've came across very occasional cases where they did end up with burial, but very, very, very few.

Right. Was that a class thing, do we think, or connections or something? Yeah. So we're now in 1752. We're going to fast forward a little bit to the beginning of the 19th century. We're still in just about in Georgian times. And I suppose one of the things that so many people go to visit Edinburgh for now is this idea, of course, not just happening in Edinburgh, but this idea of body snatching. And you go to Greyfriars.

I have been for many a walk through that hallowed ground, literally hallowed ground. And it is so atmospheric. And if you've never been to Greyfriars Kirkyard, if you ever, you're in Edinburgh, you must. I mean, it's an absolute must stop. And I know there's some people that live around the edges of it. And if you're going, you see some of the tombs and then there's just somebody washing up in one of the windows above. I actually viewed a flat, which looked over the graveyard. And I was very disappointed that we didn't get that. Oh, yeah, that was. It just looks like such an arbitrary place. I mean, it would be, it would be hellish in terms of the amount of people you had walking past. But it would be a very good backyard. So we get to the 1820s.

There are now watch stations in certain kirkyards and graveyards, not just in Edinburgh, where family members or people that have been appointed to look over the dead are there. Why are they needing to be there? What is happening at this particular time at the start of the 19th century? That means people are going to graveyard such as greyfriars and digging people up. You've got to think there are just not enough people being hanged for murder. You know, if you think in Scotland, which is obviously where I'm based, you know, in Edinburgh, you've got one of the most prestigious medical schools in Europe.

You've also got medical school at the University of Glasgow. And from the 1770s, you've got one in Aberdeen. Not to mention all the free-ranging medical anatomy schools that are just kind of popping up in the 18th century. Yeah, well, that's it. The beginning of the 19th century, you start to get those. They're usually called extramural anatomy schools because the outstomero. outside the walls of the university. And they're not even entitled to the bodies from the Murder Act.

But they still need bodies. But they still need bodies. So they have to get the bodies from elsewhere. There's a huge trade. But it's not new in the 19th century. Like the first case, first known case anyway, of body snatching in Greyfriars Kirk is February 1678. 1678. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me.

Yeah. That adds up to me. And, you know, there are, I think, what, is it 300,000 people buried in that kirkyard or something? I'm not sure of the numbers, but it's a lot. It's a lot of folk. Yeah. So there's been a lot of people going in there for quite some time. This then, and we're just doing this as an overview, we'll get into some more particulars as we go to the next part of our conversation.

But this then very directly leads to the 1832 Anatomy Act. Am I right in that date? So 1832 Anatomy Act will come in. That will end the Murder Act and give a different source of. That relates directly to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's quite a lot of things going on before the 1832 Anatomy Act comes into place. Which we will talk about those things, some of those things in the next part of our conversation.

But before we move on, I do want to talk about why Edinburgh comes up so very often. As, you know, we've talked about the fact that this is happening in Bologna in the 14th century. So this is not an Edinburgh exclusive activity. but it does become fixated in our imagination when we talk about resurrectionists or body snatchers and of course there are two names that are lurking in the air now and those being Birkenhair,

we'll come to them, don't worry. But why is Edinburgh so linked to this trade of body snatching? Well, again, it's a huge story so we'll just get a couple of the points in. But again, this medical school is very, very well-renowned. You know, you have a lot of great teachers there. And it's also the Enlightenment. So it's a city where there's a lot of exchange

of ideas. I mean, you've lived in Edinburgh. It's a very small, manageable city. The way that people can get around and communicate with one another is, it basically fosters that kind of environment. Plus, you've got the fact that, you know, we've just joined on to England. And, you know, all the rich, wealthy folk have gone down there, you know, all the lords and stuff like that. They're decamping to try and be near a royalty. You're effectively left in Scotland with an intellectual elite who, you know, get to do what they want. Plus, you know, it's actually quicker in Scotland. You can get a medical degree in three years.

So obviously there's that kind of impetus. Right. And things like the fact that the teacher, you're still examined in Latin, but the teaching is not in Latin. Okay. So, you know, again, accessibility. Again, accessibility. Plus, there are no religious stipulations. you know, if you've gone to Oxford or Cambridge, you need to be Church of England.

We don't have that at the University of Edinburgh. So there are a whole array of different reasons which are making Edinburgh, you know, a popular place to be coming to study medicine. It's why a lot of the Irish medical practitioners go to Edinburgh as well. For that literally just the religious aspect, most of the population of Ireland or Catholic, so they will go to Edinburgh. James Barry is a good example. Comes from Cork to train. What is also interesting, you mentioned briefly there, Katn, I think it just hit me for the first time, is that in order for the trade, the body snatching trade, to flourish, you almost need to be within a community

that is close enough to know when people are dying and when they're being interred, because you only have a certain window of time. And if you know the geography of Edinburgh at all, what were the medical, schools, but building for the medical school, Robert Knox's medical school is there as well. And there's different, but the university medical schools are within minutes of Greyfriars. And so you will have somebody a slightly on retainer maybe who's linked with the Kirkyard, who's like, by the way, Joan is coming in at 1230 and she's fresh off the, she's fresh off the slab, the kind of thing. And so Edinburgh lends itself in this way. And then nighttime, you are potentially carrying bodies in bags.

You need to be able to go through streets or winds or whatever it is that are dark, they're enclosed, that you're not, you know. So it lends itself geographically in some ways to this trade. But you've got to think that, I mean, people are getting wise in Edinburgh. You know, we've got the protection in a lot of places. People know about this. A lot of the bodies are coming from a lot further afield. You know, so Knox was getting quite a lot of bodies from Ireland. Yeah.

Yeah. Stop it. So you've got this body that's being delivered to James Syne and it's waiting for the mail coach down in Newcastle, but the mail coach is delayed. And then the people suddenly notice that there's, you know, a bit of a smell and something oozing out of it. Please don't be August. Please don't be in the middle of August.

Well, anatomy is usually done in the winter months. Sure. For that reason. But yeah, there is this trade of bodies coming from, you know, far away to get here. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. And this is really, really interesting because in our archive at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, we have a notebook from a man called Thomas Hume, who studied medicine.

Well, he wasn't actually studying medicine, but he went to study a number of medically related subjects, largely because of whose friends were, and he wanted to go along with him. He went to Knox's dissecting classes. So we have handwritten, first-hand account of what it was like to be there. and he talks about the fact that the body was not that fresh and that there was quite a smell from it. And you imagine if the body's travelled a distance, you know, it might have been stuck in a barrel of brine

or something like that to, you know, to get to Edinburgh. But it's not going to be that fresh. That's what I mean. That's why I'm surprised to hear this. It's going to be a wee bit stinky. You've got only a few hours. Well, I mean, let's say 48 hours max before things start to... Yeah, start to get, you know...

Interesting. Yeah. So what we have is, We've got, sorry to harp on about Ireland, but I'm Irish, so I will. So we've got some medical practitioners coming from Ireland because they can practice or learn in Edinburgh because of the lack of restriction over religion. We have got some bodies coming from Ireland that are being dissected there for whatever reason, whether they were criminal or not in Ireland. Who are they probably were under the same act. But we also have two men coming from the north of Ireland named Burke and Hare.

Yeah. William Burke and William Hill. William Burke, all the Williams. And they come over and they are surrounded by Irish people and some of the key players in them being exposed are Irish actually. But there is this community of builders, people are working on the canals, Birkenhara are part of that, but it ain't paying enough. But they decide to feed into this and people have always assumed, we've done episodes on this in the podcast, we've done the documentary, that they then turned

to body snatching in order to facilitate the link between the demand for dissection in Edinburgh at the time and then just death rates that are being whatever else. But these people never, ever stole from a grave. Absolutely no evidence of that. I've heard them getting referred to body snatchers all the time. All the time. I've even seen it on museum labels and things like that. Definitely in tours of Edinburgh. Oh God, I mean, some of the things I've heard on tours of Edinburgh. No, no, no, no, no. Do not rely on a ghost tour of Edinburgh for your facts throughout about working hair.

That should be the lesson that everyone takes away from this podcast. Yeah, yeah, if nothing else, just that. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about them for a little bit. So, as I said, they're immigrants. They've come from the north of Ireland. They are working class. They are now murdering.

And the first victim that they come across is kind of somebody that owes them rent. Well, he's not a victim. Yeah. He actually dies of natural causes. So this is Old Donald. And he was waiting for a pension payout. And he owes hair four pound. For lodging.

For lodging. Hair by this point is running a lodging house. And old Donald dies in the lodging house owing him rent. And it's apparently Burke who has the idea that if they sell the body, then they can recoup hairs. It only makes sense. Just going around selling bodies, willy-nilly to get rent. Of course, you know, you don't want people to know you're doing that.

So Old Donald's coffin is filled with stones so that the people lifting it think they've got a body. And Burke and Hare go off taking his body to sell. And we'll talk about who they take the body to after we've spoken about these two. Now, am I right in thinking, you'll know the figure is better than me, but am I right in thinking that you could get, depending on the specimen, that's given. You could get between seven and even up to 17 pounds. I don't know if I've heard as high as 17.

I thought that was high as well. Yeah, I'm not saying that's wrong. No, no. I've never heard that. But certainly 10 to 12 pounds. Yeah. If it was a child's body, it was, you know, by the length. Really? So, yeah. So it's all very unpleasant.

But it's a lot of money for these people. It's a lot of money. You know, that's, you know, but a couple of months work. Yeah, yeah, it's months in a nice. You know, you can see, you can see why. There's a, I can't believe in saying this, there's a logic to us. There is a logic, you know, you don't have much money.

This is, this is an easy way of getting money. And I say easy, and again, scare quotes, this is an easy way of getting it. Now, that's all Donald. And you're right, he's not necessarily a victim of the murder, but potentially still a victim of the exploitation, but whatever. But now they're inspired because, Because let's say they take Donald and they might not get the 10 or 12, but they might get a good solid 8 or 9.

Well, they get, I think it's £7 and 10 shillings. Oh, do we even know? We know exactly what they get. Oh, my God, I love history so much. Anyway, so he gets seven, they get seven eight for that. And they're like, that's a lot of money. That's, as you say, a couple of months there. Yeah.

Maybe next time, we could hasten. And in fact, one of Knox's assistants said that they'd be glad to see them again. Yes. Yes. If they had another body. We enjoy your body. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, from Knox's point of view and from Knox's assistant's point of view, you've got to think how nice this is going to have, not having, you know, one of those stinky bodies that's travelled. So this is going to seem, you know, win-win situation for everyone, apart from the person who gets murdered, which is where they go. So we now have people who are lodging often in Hares lodging house. They will exploit the fact that they're there, that often they're immigrants themselves, that they do.

don't necessarily have family around. We will often have situations where people are living on the streets or are not necessarily living on the streets, but are part of a class that are vagrant and people locally will know them. I'm thinking about the person that was known as Daft Jamie, who was very beloved in Edinburgh, but certainly was somebody who took a while for people to notice was missing from the usual streets that they were there. And they start to exploit the situation that they find in Edinburgh at that time through what people. became known as burking, which is, as you said, murder. And the fact that they even lend, or William Burke lends his name to this activity really shows how tied in they become to some of the dastardly, dastardly things that they are, that they're doing.

One of the things I want to point out here, and we've spoken about this in the podcast before, I find this so remarkable because it's so rare that you get this close to this type of history. but because you work at Surgeons Hall Museum and because the only one of the two, Burke and Hare, who was tried, convicted and executed, was William Burke. His skeleton has been preserved at the Anatomy Museum at Edinburgh. And I know you have an artefact as well, which we'll talk about at the Surgeon's Hall Museum. But you have worked, I'm right in thinking,

am I on the body of William Burke. I have worked with his skeleton. With his skeleton. So he went on a little holiday. I'm sure he'd need it after that. You know, a couple of years ago, they had a big exhibition at National Museum of Scotland called Anatomy, A Matter of Death and Life.

I was there. Yeah, and Burke's skeleton was taken to the museum for that exhibition. And before it went over there, I was the person who got to go and do conservation work on it. So I have actually been inside Burke's head. That, to me, is just, just when I think about getting up close to history, because you know, as historians, we try and we're trying to recreate these worlds. But then I speak to two people, someone like you or archaeologists,

who are actually hands-on assembling or on assembling or whatever it is. You described to me once that as part of that process to work on his skeleton, you had to put his arm around your shoulder. Yeah. And we think that that was probably one of the ways in which he coaxed. people in as well. And I know it was just the skeletal arm. But come on, Kat. You must have had a moment where you were like, I have the skeletal arm of a serial killer around my neck. Or do you just not? Are you just in work mode? No, no. I mean, it is that kind of sort of thing. You're in work. Because I should say, this wasn't like, I wasn't taking a selfie of him with his arm around my shoulder. It was absolutely nothing like that. But this was a way, and I do it with any articulate

skeleton worker that you just kind of put, just balance it over your shoulder just so that you can get to the ribs. You know, because this is meant to be the way he's been, his bones have been put together, you're meant to be able to move them and see the way that, you know, these joints would move in life. That's the whole point, right? This is the whole point. So it is just an easy way for me to get to the ribs when I'm working on the ribs. So just to make it clear, you know, is anybody from the museum or the university of listening. It's not, it's not that kind of situation. But yeah, there is a moment where, you know, I think about this a lot with, what I do, that there's this kind of slippage.

You know, you have this moment where it is, it's a physical task, it's often a very delicate task, and you know, you're very focused on what you're doing. And then your brain kind of pulls back and you get the long shot and you suddenly go, who is this person? And of course, when that is William Burke, a whole array of different things come into your mind. I'm so jealous. I could never do what you do, because, again, not scientifically minded enough, but I am so so jealous. And you guys at the Surgeon's Hall Museum, you have a book that we think is bound in

Burke's skin. Yes, yes. So it's a small book about the size of my iPhone and it's, you know, a brown leather, some gold detailing on it. And it says Burke's skin pocketbook on the cover. And it has a little loop, you know, just like my notebook does here for a pencil or such like that. No pages left inside it. And yeah, it's an amazing thing. And it's just, I always think of what I do is very, very humbling. But, you know, that kind of thing where you see it and it really does give you a shiver, you know, that kind of connection to what was going on at that time. Yeah, it's a real tangible.

You talked about this idea of slippage and I love that. It's this real, it's almost reaching out and shaking hands or as close as you possibly can. And that's so evocative in so many different levels, not necessarily in a, an amazing way. It's quite dark at times considering what he was part of. But yeah, it just, now one of the people who I think we talk about Birken Hare and when we did our documentary on History Hit TV, which you can go and watch now, it's on YouTube, too actually. The whole documentary is available for free on YouTube. When we did that documentary, one of the key points that I was keen to push home was this idea that it's Burke, Hare, and there's another man. And you've

mentioned him already. And the other man is Dr. Robert. Knox. And it'll be a name that most people won't be familiar with, certainly not on the scale of Burke and Hare. But Burke and Hare needed somewhere to take the victims that they were murdering, or else they wouldn't be murdering them. So tell us a little bit about this enigma of a man, the man that is Dr. Robert Knox. So Robert Knox was in Edinburgh. He trained as a surgeon. He actually went over. He was treating some of the casualties after the Battle of Waterloo. And he returned to Edinburgh. And it's very interesting because Robert Knox actually failed his anatomy exam on first sitting. Of course he did. Yeah. So he had been taught by Professor Monroe, Alexander Monroe Turchase.

No less. Yes. Alexander Monroe Turchis was the third in line of a dynasty of anatomists who hold the position of chair of anatomy at the University of Edinburgh between them for 126 years. Definitely Nepo Babies. Absolutely, absolutely, Neppo babies. So Alexander Monroe, you know, third in line, you know, Alexander Monroe, Primus, Secundus, great anatomous, great teachers, very, very inspiring teachers, apparently. Tertius, not so much. Not so much.

Not so much. And apparently he used to use his grandfather's notes to lecture from, so he's not even giving the most up-to-date information. And, you know, Charles Darwin went to his classes And he said he makes his lectures on anatomy as dull as himself. Great. So they weren't great. And Knox will actually say that it's because of Monroe's terrible teaching

that he fails his anatomy exam first time round. For his resets, he goes to one of the private, these extramural teachers that was talking about. And he goes to a man called Dr. Barkley. So he's got his anatomy school in Surgeon Square right next to Old Surgeon's Hall. And so you can see that he's trying to capture those students as they're coming out of Surgeons Hall. And he's a much better teacher. And Knox goes to him, passes exams, goes off, practices at Waterloo, comes back to Edinburgh. And Barclay actually invites him to help him teach in his anatomy school.

And then Barclay retires in the mids 1820s and Knox takes over that anatomy school. I see. So it's almost straight away then when he takes over. And again, it's really interesting because Barclay, he's got a huge anatomy collection, anatomy and pathology collection that he uses to help his teaching. He leaves that to Surgeons Hall with the condition that they build a purpose-built museum for this. And this is how we get new Surgeons Hall, where we are today in 1832, for this collection. And the man that oversees this being, this collection being installed in the museum, is Robert Knox. He is the first conservator of the museum. Oh my God, he's the first one.

I don't know if I was aware of that. Okay. Oh, that's so interesting, particularly when I'm going to go or I'm going to go with this line of questioning next, which is essentially he's your, your centuries-old boss in that way. But what I want to know then is we talk about these three men coming together in this transaction. And we have victims, of course, and we do really try to highlight those in the documentary. So I do recommend that you go and you watch that to get a better idea of the likes of Mary Patterson or Daph Jamie that we talked about. And these are people who were, Daph Jamie particularly was loved by some of the people in Edinburgh. And am I right in thinking that Jamie in particular was recognised on the slab? Yes. And this is someone who... Apparently,

before he was taken out for dissections. So Knox removes his head and his foot. He had a club foot before he goes out for public dissection. It had been commented on that Jamie had gone missing, you know, that nobody had seen him. And then here he is. So it does seem that Knox is trying to hide the fact that Jamie was there. Now, and this brings me to my point. How much guilt do you think? Is guilt the right word? How much responsibility? do you think, does Knox have? How much knowledge? How aware is he? Because it seems to me he must be aware of how these bodies, you know, he's an anatomist.

He's very familiar with the conditions of bodies, of dead bodies. He knows often probably just by looking at a body how that body has ended up there. Oh, that's a head injury. I can see how that person died. We're getting bodies turn up from Birkenhair that they're like, this body's been suffocated again. And again, there's marks around the neck. What, you know? Well, the method they used became known as Birkin. And effectively, one of them would sit on the chest

while the other one covered the mouth and the nose. So you're not going to have the marks around the neck. And, you know, it was said that you wouldn't be able to tell this to be done until you get into the era of modern forensics. I see. I think you would question how these were not elderly people, usually. You know, Mary Patterson was 18. or 19. So healthy people that suddenly turned up without any signs of a cause of death and very

fresh, that would seem suspicious to me. But Burke said that Knox knew nothing of the bodies. And obviously it was assistants who were receiving the bodies into Knox's anatomy school. I think at one point Knox said that if he had examined the bodies themselves when he came in, that he would have known. Of course. Of course. Of course. So he must have about, at least had suspicions. Must have had. He must have. But we don't know.

Certainly the people of Edinburgh thought that he had something to do it. I think that's key though, right? Yeah. There's this little quote here that says, burks the butcher, hares the thief, knocks the boy that buys the beef. Yeah, this was a skipping rhyme in 19th century Edinburgh after these crimes.

But again, this Thomas Hume notebook that I talked about before, you know, where we're getting a first-hand account, Thomas Hume talks about how he was there when the mob showed up at Knox's Anatomy School and how they had to escort him to his Newington home and basically stand guard and people were throwing stones and breaking the windows of Knox's house. They thought that he had done something wrong. So, you know, there was definitely that guilt in the mind of the public. One of the things that happens afterwards then, after, as you say, they've gone to that,

And I've stood outside that building. They're very close to where he is at that point, although he skips out of the back window, essentially it makes himself very scarce just in time. That's Knox. But Burke does go on to have a trial. He is executed. And then in an irony, although fitting irony,

I suppose, in terms of the legislation at the time, in terms of what he has been supplying a trade for, he is also dissected. Yes. How public is that? That's very public. Okay. The 1752 Murder Act is still in place.

So he is actually condemned to be anatomised after he's hanged for murder. Yeah, of course. But the judge does say that he hopes that his skeleton will be preserved so that people will always remember his crime, which is how his skeleton is still at the University of Edinburgh. Ooh. So this is a public execution and then a public dissection. And apparently so many people wanted to see it. people were allowed half hour shifts to get through.

And when you're talking about that kind of a dissection, what does that look like? If I was one of those people that went in for half an hour, what will I see on a slab? Well, I mean, it depends which half hour you get. Yeah, true. Usually they would start with the head. So you would reflect the skin back

and then you would saw the top of the skull off, the calvaria. And having worked very closely with that skull, it's not a good cut. It's not being well done. God, you're reviewing them now. And again, is that reflecting that Monroe wasn't a good anatomist? Or did you get one of his assistants here? We don't know that. But certainly you would have seen the brain would be the first part.

Then they usually moved on to the intestines. Then they moved on to the abdominal cavity and the thoracic cavity. So you'd look at the heart and the lungs and the digestive organs. And then maybe you would look at. some of the limbs, possibly. They didn't always go as far as going to the limbs. So we don't know exactly what you'd see. Presumably, as this is a show, they would be doing the whole lot.

Okay, so say they were doing this for a show. A, do we know how long Burke's one went on for, and if not, is there any kind of a guidance that we know how long these things went on for generally? I have to admit, I'm not sure how long they took over Burke, but certainly we have reports, like I mentioned that guy that was hanged for incest before he was the first poll of dissection. They dissected him over seven days, like showing a different system every day. So there was a different lecturer doing each bit.

And then at the end, Archibald-Pick Kern gave the sort of summing up. Oh, my, seven days. And then the rule was that after that, that was when they had to go for burial. Yeah, fair enough. Like there's not much left. Not much left at that point. Oh, my God. Okay.

So Knox has done a runner. Burke is dissected. Hair, in case you don't know, runs, essentially, gets away. We don't know where he ends up. Like, there's probably descendants of William. Well, there's maybe descendants. Possibly, yeah. Like, like, there's definitely descendants of William Hare living.

Like, there's some theory that he went to Ireland, back to Ireland. I think that's probably quite a strong one. I think that seems quite likely. But a lot of the stories, you know, like one of them, he falls into a lime pit and he gets blinded. you know, another one where he's beaten by a mob. A lot of them end up with him having some form of justice. You know, something, something has happened. Absolutely no evidence.

If you are living in County Tyrone or another part of the north of Ireland, you think you might be related to William Hare. Get in touch. Afterdark at history hit.com. We want to make that DNAling. Right. So as I went to finish this conversation up, because I could just talk about this forever as well, you know.

We have talked about this a lot. over the years. What is the change then? We've hinted at this a couple of times already that we're heading towards the Anatomy Act. Is it a direct result, do you think, of the Birkenhair and Knox happenings? Or is this something that would have happened anyway? And what is the real change that we see coming after the Anatomy Act? Okay. So saying that Birkenhaer are the direct cause of the Anatomy Act is a stretch. A very, very big stretch. There was a lot going on at the time. So at the same time, as Burke and Hare were carrying their killings out, we actually have men formulating the Anatomy Act down in London, you know. So it's underway. It's underway. So in 1828,

they're getting that together. They try to get that past Parliament shortly after. It fails. You know, Parliament aren't interested in this. This was a medical men who were really trying to get a better source of bodies, so they didn't have to rely on body snatchers. And, you know, there were a lot of reasons for that. You know, first of all, they wanted to avoid body snatching and the cost of body snatching. That made studying in Britain much more expensive than it did in Europe. And of course, Napoleonic Wars have come to an end. People can go to Paris and get their medical learning cheaper over there than they can over here. So there's financial reasons for it as well. Plus, you know, especially for surgeons trying to break that connection with the criminal corpse.

Yes. You know, that's something they really want to do, again, to try and raise their prestige somewhat. As well just, it's an important thing. You know, I can't stress enough how important dissection is to medical research, to medical learning, to medical understanding at this point. This is a necessity. World-changing. Yeah, absolutely. So it is very, very important. It's just really, we just really need to get a better supply of bodies. So they are trying to do that already before William Burke and William Hare and all of that. But as I say, they can't generate. the political influence to be able to get that to pass.

Then you have the crimes of William Burke and William Hare. At the same time, you have, you know, those same men that were trying to get that original anatomy act through. They're rewriting it. They're trying to make it more politically appealing, removing some of the language that might seem to make people feel a bit squeamish, things like that. But, of course, the Birkenhair crimes and then the copycats. You know, we've got London Berkers as well.

well, they're giving some sort of political impetus to, you know, this thing that they're already trying. And so that really, really helps shift the focus, you know, make people understand that there is a need for a better supply of bodies for medical teaching and for medical research. And so this leads to the 1832 Anatomy Act, actually passing Parliament. It is such a long history. And I mean, continues after that. That's not the end of the history of anatomy, but just in terms of that period or those periods, that it's fascinating to see how actually much changed, yes, but the links that you're still seeing back, even to the ancient Greek or in Egypt, the dissection that you're seeing there. And the criminal class is present

the whole way along and this idea that actually to get rid of those bodies with the Anatomy Act is then legitimizing the surgeons as a trade and how, in the middle of all of this, Respectability, commerce, social class, status, starts to really infiltrate. It's not necessarily, although it is, of course, about scientific discovery and about medical discovery. Of course, that's there and it's at the core. And I think that's undeniable, as you were saying earlier. But beneath it all, there's money and finance and commerce and status. And I think that's really interesting.

And it's also what allows, that the commerce side of things allows for the murders of Birkenhair and the body snatching that develops across the world, not just in Edinburgh, because there is money to be made. And when there's money to be made, people will fill those slots, right? Absolutely riveting. I could do 438 episodes on this. Thank you so much for listening to After Dark Today. If you've enjoyed this episode, and I know you have, go and leave us a five-star review, wherever you get your podcasts, because it helps other people to discover us as well. If you have an idea for a future episode, then you can email us on. After Dark at historyhit.com.

You can find Cat at at anatomical cat on social media. Yes. And can I also say that if you want more of this kind of dissection history and medical history, beyond the knife, the surgeon's whole podcast. Yes. It's really good. It is really, really good. And there's so many different periods covered there as well.

It's not just this. It goes from from this kind of stuff up to things that are actually happening in modern medicine. So yeah. And the branding is really good too. I don't know it's another podcast but it's true, it's very good and you can find us on social media as I said

go back and listen to Kat's earlier episodes go and watch the Birken Hair documentary right now for free on YouTube and until next time happy listening