Hare accepted, and on January 28, 1829, William Burke was hanged amid a torrential rain and in front of a crowd numbering 20,000 or more. As a result, Hare-who many people believed had followed Burke’s lead in the violence-was offered immunity from prosecution in exchange for testifying against his partner. Although the deceased had disappeared by the time constables arrived, an anonymous tip led them to Knox’s surgery, where her remains had been sent.Ī month’s interrogation ensued, and still police couldn’t build a conclusive case against Burke and Hare. Hare discovered a dead woman tucked beneath a bed and squawked to police.

They were brought down only after a couple staying with Mrs. Hare’s lodging house and even a relative or two in order to acquire dissectible carcasses. Rather than wait around for people to die naturally, and then dig up their bodies (which was becoming a dicey matter as graveyards hired night watchmen), the pair suckered and exterminated acquaintances, tenants of Mrs. (There were once more than 200 such offenses on the books.) These changes encouraged the activities of “resurrectionists,” who filched stiffs from fresh graves under cover of darkness and sold them for scientific research.īurke and Hare brought innovation to this endeavor. At the time, British medical schools had trouble acquiring cadavers for teaching and study purposes, in part because the number of misdeeds punishable by hanging had been significantly reduced. It was alleged that during the previous 10 or 11 months, they’d killed at least 15 people (possibly as many as 30) and peddled their corpses to a renowned anatomist, Dr.

So here are the bloody facts of the case: Just after Halloween, 1828, William Burke and William Hare-immigrants from Ireland’s northern Ulster province, who had come to work in Scotland on canal excavations-were arrested in Edinburgh, along with Hare’s wife and Burke’s mistress.

Hare by Peter Ranscombe