1
00:00:01,840 --> 00:00:07,640
Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,

2
00:00:07,680 --> 00:00:10,799
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and this is another classic episode of

3
00:00:10,840 --> 00:00:14,840
Speaker 1: the podcast. This one goes into one of my favorite

4
00:00:15,040 --> 00:00:20,120
Speaker 1: super morbid, very weird pieces of science history, that time

5
00:00:20,320 --> 00:00:24,080
Speaker 1: when the easiest way to obtain research cadavers was by

6
00:00:24,160 --> 00:00:29,320
Speaker 1: grave robbery, which humans, being entrepreneurial, led to at least

7
00:00:29,440 --> 00:00:34,720
Speaker 1: a few murders. Hey brain Stuff, I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And

8
00:00:34,960 --> 00:00:37,320
Speaker 1: of all the possible get rich quick schemes you could

9
00:00:37,320 --> 00:00:39,919
Speaker 1: involve yourself in, I'm betting you would stop short of

10
00:00:39,960 --> 00:00:43,040
Speaker 1: serial killing. Yes, even if it meant you'd be aiding

11
00:00:43,080 --> 00:00:47,120
Speaker 1: the advancement of science. But that's not the case for everybody.

12
00:00:47,560 --> 00:00:50,879
Speaker 1: Take William Burke and William Hare, two Irish immigrants who

13
00:00:50,960 --> 00:00:53,600
Speaker 1: ran a boarding house in Edinburgh, Scotland, and killed at

14
00:00:53,720 --> 00:00:56,680
Speaker 1: least fifteen people during a ten month period across eighteen

15
00:00:56,720 --> 00:01:00,240
Speaker 1: twenty seven and eighteen twenty eight. And we're not trying

16
00:01:00,280 --> 00:01:03,160
Speaker 1: to aggrandize serial murders here, but they made a small

17
00:01:03,200 --> 00:01:07,120
Speaker 1: fortune doing it. Burke and Hare had no criminal records

18
00:01:07,120 --> 00:01:10,080
Speaker 1: before they got into the murdering business. Burke was a

19
00:01:10,120 --> 00:01:13,039
Speaker 1: cobbler and hair a laborer who owned a lodging house

20
00:01:13,040 --> 00:01:15,919
Speaker 1: with his wife. When a boarder who owed the Hares

21
00:01:15,959 --> 00:01:18,319
Speaker 1: a good deal of background died one day in November

22
00:01:18,360 --> 00:01:21,679
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty seven, Hare complained to his friend Burke. The

23
00:01:21,720 --> 00:01:24,399
Speaker 1: two decided that the best way to recoup Hare's financial

24
00:01:24,440 --> 00:01:26,880
Speaker 1: loss was to sell the man's corpse to an anatomy

25
00:01:26,880 --> 00:01:30,760
Speaker 1: professor at the University of Edinburgh. Anatomy research was a

26
00:01:30,800 --> 00:01:33,920
Speaker 1: booming business in Edinburgh in the early eighteen hundreds, and

27
00:01:34,000 --> 00:01:36,880
Speaker 1: though many human dissections were conducted every day in the city,

28
00:01:37,160 --> 00:01:40,199
Speaker 1: human remains were hard to come by. A grave robbing

29
00:01:40,319 --> 00:01:43,760
Speaker 1: was frowned upon, but anatomists were only technically allowed to

30
00:01:43,800 --> 00:01:47,560
Speaker 1: study the bodies of deceased prisoners, suicide victims, orphans and

31
00:01:47,640 --> 00:01:52,320
Speaker 1: abandoned children. So Edinburgh's underbelly was crawling with body snatchers.

32
00:01:52,640 --> 00:01:55,120
Speaker 1: Since the demand was high for gadavers and the supply

33
00:01:55,240 --> 00:01:58,840
Speaker 1: relatively low, many anatomists used the services of so called

34
00:01:59,040 --> 00:02:04,200
Speaker 1: resurrection men to fill their human corpse requirements. Resurrection men

35
00:02:04,240 --> 00:02:06,720
Speaker 1: were folks who made a business of body snatching or

36
00:02:06,880 --> 00:02:10,240
Speaker 1: clandestinely removing a body from a burial site. There was

37
00:02:10,280 --> 00:02:12,320
Speaker 1: no law against digging up a dead body and selling

38
00:02:12,400 --> 00:02:15,600
Speaker 1: it since the dead didn't officially belong to anyone. Oh

39
00:02:15,639 --> 00:02:18,840
Speaker 1: what an innocent time, but the general public was perhaps

40
00:02:18,960 --> 00:02:23,120
Speaker 1: understandably dismayed by this practice, in addition to the living's

41
00:02:23,160 --> 00:02:26,480
Speaker 1: emotional attachment to loved ones remains. At the time, many

42
00:02:26,560 --> 00:02:29,560
Speaker 1: Christians were concerned that the dissection of bodies after death

43
00:02:29,680 --> 00:02:33,880
Speaker 1: would prevent the deceased from rising during the final judgment. However,

44
00:02:34,040 --> 00:02:37,200
Speaker 1: anatomists desperate for cadavers were willing to pay good money

45
00:02:37,200 --> 00:02:41,239
Speaker 1: for bodies, sometimes in terrible condition, without asking questions about

46
00:02:41,280 --> 00:02:46,560
Speaker 1: where those bodies came from. A doctor and anatomist named

47
00:02:46,680 --> 00:02:49,919
Speaker 1: Robert Knox was a popular lecturer at the University of Edinburgh.

48
00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:52,120
Speaker 1: When Burke and Hare came to him with that first

49
00:02:52,120 --> 00:02:56,000
Speaker 1: cadaver from the boarding house, Knox paid them seven pounds

50
00:02:56,000 --> 00:02:58,320
Speaker 1: ten for the body. In today's money, that's almost seven

51
00:02:58,400 --> 00:03:00,280
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty pounds or over nine huns durding and

52
00:03:00,280 --> 00:03:02,799
Speaker 1: fifty American dollars, and was almost double with the dead

53
00:03:02,800 --> 00:03:05,840
Speaker 1: man owed hair in back rent. The body was pretty fresh,

54
00:03:05,919 --> 00:03:08,560
Speaker 1: which pleased Knox, and he was even more pleased a

55
00:03:08,600 --> 00:03:10,720
Speaker 1: few months later with the body of Burke and Hare's

56
00:03:10,760 --> 00:03:14,040
Speaker 1: first murder victim. She was a lodger who fell ill

57
00:03:14,080 --> 00:03:16,880
Speaker 1: with fever in the boarding house. Perhaps worried that her

58
00:03:16,919 --> 00:03:19,160
Speaker 1: illness would mean bad business for the boarding house, or

59
00:03:19,240 --> 00:03:21,640
Speaker 1: perhaps looking to make a quick buck, the two men

60
00:03:21,720 --> 00:03:25,560
Speaker 1: suffocated her. Knox paid them ten pounds that's thirteen dollars

61
00:03:25,560 --> 00:03:28,400
Speaker 1: for that cadaver, worth over one thousand pounds or thirteen

62
00:03:28,480 --> 00:03:31,560
Speaker 1: hundred dollars today. Over the course of the next year,

63
00:03:31,760 --> 00:03:34,160
Speaker 1: Knox bought a total of sixteen bodies from the Pear,

64
00:03:34,440 --> 00:03:37,760
Speaker 1: mostly women. Most of their victims were killed, likely with

65
00:03:37,760 --> 00:03:40,040
Speaker 1: the knowledge of the murderer's wives, by applying them with

66
00:03:40,080 --> 00:03:43,560
Speaker 1: whiskey and then suffocating them. Burke and Hare preyed on

67
00:03:43,640 --> 00:03:46,440
Speaker 1: people who were poor and alone or disabled. During the

68
00:03:46,440 --> 00:03:49,080
Speaker 1: eventual trial, the three victims named in the indictment were

69
00:03:49,120 --> 00:03:51,800
Speaker 1: a mentally disabled young man, a young woman reputed to

70
00:03:51,800 --> 00:03:54,280
Speaker 1: be a prostitute, and their final victim, the one who

71
00:03:54,360 --> 00:03:57,600
Speaker 1: got them caught, a middle aged irishwoman named Margaret Doherty.

72
00:03:57,840 --> 00:04:01,840
Speaker 1: Reportedly in Edinburgh's searching for her misas son, Burke and

73
00:04:01,880 --> 00:04:04,440
Speaker 1: Hare were discovered by a couple staying in Hare's boarding house.

74
00:04:04,800 --> 00:04:06,840
Speaker 1: They saw the two men drinking with the woman in

75
00:04:06,880 --> 00:04:09,880
Speaker 1: the evening, and the next morning she had disappeared. They

76
00:04:09,880 --> 00:04:12,320
Speaker 1: found her body packed in straw under a bed, ready

77
00:04:12,360 --> 00:04:15,560
Speaker 1: to be taken to Knox. After the couple alerted the police,

78
00:04:15,680 --> 00:04:18,599
Speaker 1: the authorities rated Knox's cadavers and found the woman's body

79
00:04:18,720 --> 00:04:22,680
Speaker 1: among them. In the trial, Hare testified against Burke, and

80
00:04:22,800 --> 00:04:25,960
Speaker 1: he and his wife were released. Burke's wife was also released,

81
00:04:25,960 --> 00:04:29,599
Speaker 1: but Burke was executed. Knox was exonerated of all charges

82
00:04:29,600 --> 00:04:32,280
Speaker 1: because Burke testified that Knox didn't know about the providence

83
00:04:32,279 --> 00:04:35,479
Speaker 1: of the bodies he was buying. The case was extremely

84
00:04:35,520 --> 00:04:39,880
Speaker 1: high profile, and along with other murder cases, including copycat crimes,

85
00:04:40,040 --> 00:04:41,880
Speaker 1: it led to the passing of the Anatomy Act of

86
00:04:41,920 --> 00:04:46,840
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty two. This controversial legislation opened up anatomist's options.

87
00:04:47,200 --> 00:04:50,760
Speaker 1: Any donated body could not be dissected, but with dissections

88
00:04:50,760 --> 00:04:53,880
Speaker 1: still considered a sort of desecration, the only people who

89
00:04:53,920 --> 00:04:56,640
Speaker 1: considered such a donation tended to be those in poverty.

90
00:04:57,440 --> 00:05:00,040
Speaker 1: The Act therefore shifted dissection from being a sort of

91
00:05:00,040 --> 00:05:03,440
Speaker 1: of secondary punishment for criminals after execution to being a

92
00:05:03,440 --> 00:05:05,960
Speaker 1: sort of punishment for not having the family or funds

93
00:05:05,960 --> 00:05:08,520
Speaker 1: to provide for yourself after death and led to riots

94
00:05:08,560 --> 00:05:12,040
Speaker 1: at the Cambridge Medical School. Though attitudes and laws have

95
00:05:12,160 --> 00:05:15,200
Speaker 1: changed since then, the issue of the ownership transfer and

96
00:05:15,240 --> 00:05:22,479
Speaker 1: treatment of the dead is definitely still under discussion. Today's

97
00:05:22,480 --> 00:05:25,760
Speaker 1: episode is based on the article Burke and Hair Murderers

98
00:05:25,800 --> 00:05:28,640
Speaker 1: for Money and Science on how Stuffworks dot com, written

99
00:05:28,640 --> 00:05:31,840
Speaker 1: by Jesslyn Shields. Brain Stuff is a production of iHeartRadio

100
00:05:31,880 --> 00:05:34,240
Speaker 1: in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced

101
00:05:34,240 --> 00:05:37,800
Speaker 1: by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit

102
00:05:37,800 --> 00:05:40,880
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

103
00:05:40,920 --> 00:05:41,760
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.