Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, dear listeners, it is Tim Harford here with
Speaker 1: an exciting idea up my sleeve. I want to know
Speaker 1: if you'd be interested in joining a cautionary club with
Speaker 1: additional member only content. And with that in mind, the
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales team and I have put together a survey.
Speaker 1: We'd like to find out exactly what kind of content
Speaker 1: you're keen to get your hands on. Would you like
Speaker 1: a cautionary newsletter, perhaps some extra conversations like my last
Speaker 1: one with Adam Grant, or maybe you have another idea
Speaker 1: for us altogether. The link is in the episode description
Speaker 1: and it will take you just a few short minutes
Speaker 1: to answer, so please do take a moment to fill
Speaker 1: it out and let us know your thoughts. We are
Speaker 1: really keen to hear from you. Thank you. Hello. I
Speaker 1: have a frighteningly good episode of Cautionary Tales for you
Speaker 1: this Halloween. It was recorded in front of a live
Speaker 1: audience at the podcast show in London, and I shared
Speaker 1: the stage with actors and our sound supremo, Pascal Wise,
Speaker 1: who not only created grizzly sound effects by hand, but
Speaker 1: played the trombone two. I hope you enjoy this nightmarish
Speaker 1: marriage of true crime and economics. October thirty, first Halloween
Speaker 1: in Edinburgh, Scotland, eighteen twenty eight. A short, middle aged
Speaker 1: woman walks into a bar where a man sits drinking.
Speaker 1: She asks the barkeeper, can you help me?
Speaker 2: I've come to Edinburgh to see my son. He's working here.
Speaker 2: But when I went to the last the dress he
Speaker 2: gave me the landlady said he left three days ago.
Speaker 2: I don't know where he is, and he doesn't know
Speaker 2: him here. I've no money and no place to stay.
Speaker 1: The man who's drinking at the bar looks up.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, you're from Ireland. I can tell by
Speaker 3: your accent.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm from Donegal. My name's Maggie Doherty Away.
Speaker 3: I'm a doughty too, and I'm family in Donegal. Sure
Speaker 3: we must be related. Let me buy you a weed drink.
Speaker 3: What an amazing coincidence. Hey, Maggie, you must stay the
Speaker 3: night with me and my wife.
Speaker 1: The man takes Maggie Doherty back to a room in
Speaker 1: a shared house sixteen feet by seven. In the room
Speaker 1: is a wooden bed with straw for a mattress and
Speaker 1: a pile of straw to the side. He gives her
Speaker 1: a drink and some food and another drink. Then he says,
Speaker 1: right enough, I need to pop out. Now I'll be back,
Speaker 1: Maggie doctor. He goes in search of someone to talk to.
Speaker 1: She pokes her head around the door of the neighboring room,
Speaker 1: introduces herself to the woman there, and tells her sad story.
Speaker 2: You know, I really should be looking for my son.
Speaker 2: I'll go searching.
Speaker 1: Now, leave it till tomorrow, says the neighbor. Halloween's a
Speaker 1: busy night. You don't know the city and obviously had
Speaker 1: a lot to drink. You may not easily find your
Speaker 1: way back here.
Speaker 2: Ah, you're right, I'll just wait till mister Doherty gets in.
Speaker 1: Mister Dartey, says the neighbor.
Speaker 2: Mister Doherty, my relative, your neighbor. He lives in that
Speaker 2: room there.
Speaker 1: He's not called Doughty, says the neighbor. He's called Burke.
Speaker 1: The two women look at each other confused. Does Maggie
Speaker 1: start to sense that something is wrong? Perhaps not, She
Speaker 1: is very very drunk. Mister Dotty, or rather mister Burke,
Speaker 1: comes back. He's with a friend and both their wives.
Speaker 1: The four of them take Maggie Dotty back to Burke's room.
Speaker 1: Then they shove Maggie Dotty down to the bed. Burke
Speaker 1: pins her down well. The other man clamps his hands
Speaker 1: over her nose and mouth. She can't move, she can't
Speaker 1: call for help, she can't breathe. I'm Tim Harford and
Speaker 1: you're listening to Cautionary Tales Live in London. November eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven, a year before Maggie Dotty's fateful Halloween. William
Speaker 1: Hare the problem. Hair runs a cramped and cruddy boarding
Speaker 1: house in a slum part of Edinburgh's Old Town, where
Speaker 1: the buildings are packed tightly together and the smells from
Speaker 1: the nearby tanneries compete with those from sewage hurled from
Speaker 1: windows into the street. One of Hare's lodgers has just died,
Speaker 1: and the dead man seems to have no relatives or
Speaker 1: friends to take the body away. Hair tells the local
Speaker 1: authority and they say we'll get it and bury it
Speaker 1: in a pauper's grave. But a full day passes and
Speaker 1: nobody comes. That body's taking up space I could be
Speaker 1: renting out, Hair complains to his friend William Burke. Burke
Speaker 1: and Hare have both heard rumors that it's possible to
Speaker 1: sell human bodies to medical schools. Could they sell Hair's
Speaker 1: dead lodger. Neither has any idea how to go about it,
Speaker 1: so they take their way to another more prosperous part
Speaker 1: of Edinburgh, where the medical schools have their quarters. They
Speaker 1: ask around, but nervously assume that what they're doing must
Speaker 1: be against the law. Are you a student. We've heard
Speaker 1: that medical schools are sometimes in need of human bodies.
Speaker 3: You'll want to see doctor Knox number ten, Sorogeant Square.
Speaker 1: Burke and Hare make their way to Surgeon Square and
Speaker 1: find number ten. One of the doctor's assistants opens the door.
Speaker 2: The Doctor's not here now, Ah, you have a subject,
Speaker 2: bring it. After dark.
Speaker 1: Back at Hare's boarding house, someone from the local authority
Speaker 1: has been round with a coffin and put the body
Speaker 1: in it. Soon a porter will come to take the
Speaker 1: coffin away. Burke and Hare have no time to live
Speaker 1: if they want to get some cash for their dead lodger.
Speaker 1: They gently pry up the nails on the coffin lid,
Speaker 1: haul the body out and stuff it in a sack.
Speaker 1: And when the porter comes, he's bound to notice If
Speaker 1: the coffin's empty, they'd better put something heavy in it.
Speaker 1: They go to a nearby tannery where piles of barker
Speaker 1: crushed for the tannin used to make leather hides. Burke
Speaker 1: and Hair take a load of the bark They tip
Speaker 1: it into the coffin, nail down the lid again. Then
Speaker 1: they wait for dark to fall. The two friends heave
Speaker 1: the sack with the lodger's body through the streets of
Speaker 1: Edinburgh back to the doctor's place.
Speaker 2: Come on in, then you're new. I take it well
Speaker 2: up the stairs and lay the subject out on that
Speaker 2: table there for the doctor. Oh, and you'll have to
Speaker 2: take the night shirt off it.
Speaker 1: Burke and Hare take the night shirt off the body
Speaker 1: into the room. Come doctor Knox, a striking figure in
Speaker 1: his mid thirties, prematurely baled with just one eye smallpox
Speaker 1: took the other, and always flamboyantly dressed with his gold
Speaker 1: chains and embroidered waistcoat. Doctor Knox glances of the naked body,
Speaker 1: nods his head and says, let's say.
Speaker 3: Seven pounds and ten shillings.
Speaker 1: Seven pounds and ten shillings, that's about what you'd earned
Speaker 1: for three months of hard manual labor. Merk and Hair
Speaker 1: can hardly believe their luck. The assistant gives them the
Speaker 1: money and escorts them back to the door. Is nobody
Speaker 1: going to ask them where they got the body, or
Speaker 1: who it was, or what gives them the right to
Speaker 1: sell it? Apparently not? Can it really be that easy? Apparently?
Speaker 2: So we'll be glad to see you again when you
Speaker 2: have an the body to dispose of.
Speaker 1: Burke and Hare had assumed that what they were doing
Speaker 1: must be illegal. It was not. The law said a
Speaker 1: dead person's possessions pass on to the next of kin.
Speaker 1: That's why Dror Knox's assistant insisted on the night shirt
Speaker 1: being taken off the body. Legally, that night shirt must
Speaker 1: belong to someone, even if it wasn't clear who. Dr
Speaker 1: Knox could get in trouble if he bought it. But
Speaker 1: the body itself was a different matter. When a person died,
Speaker 1: their next of kin didn't own the body. In the
Speaker 1: eyes of the law, a human body was not a
Speaker 1: thing that could be owned at all, and if it
Speaker 1: couldn't be owned, then logically speaking, it couldn't be stolen.
Speaker 1: Burke and Hair had broken no law by taking the
Speaker 1: lodger's body. Dr Knox broken no law in buying it.
Speaker 1: Lecturers like doctor k Ox needed bodies to teach their students.
Speaker 1: For years, the law had given medical schools the bodies
Speaker 1: of criminals had been hanged. Indeed, knowing you'd be publicly
Speaker 1: dissected was seen as part of the punishment. But more
Speaker 1: and more people were training as doctors, and nowhere near
Speaker 1: enough criminals were being sentenced to death. By the eighteen twenties,
Speaker 1: a black market had sprung up to meet the demand
Speaker 1: for bodies. Some, like Hare's Lodger, were taken straight from
Speaker 1: their death beds to the medical school, but most were
Speaker 1: supplied by grave robbers or resurrectionists. They'd sneak into graveyards
Speaker 1: and the dead of night and dig up a recently
Speaker 1: buried corpse. As nobody owned those bodies, it wasn't stealing
Speaker 1: as long as they took the clothes off the body
Speaker 1: and put them back in the coffin. There was one
Speaker 1: law the resurrectionists were breaking. It was illegal to violate
Speaker 1: a sepulcher, but the punishments weren't severe and prosecutions were rare.
Speaker 1: The authorities mostly looked the other way. No one wanted
Speaker 1: to put the medical schools out of business. Still, perhaps
Speaker 1: there was a better way. Some people floated ideas to
Speaker 1: create a legal supply of cadavers, as the author Lisa
Speaker 1: Rosna describes in her book on birken Hair. One proposal
Speaker 1: was to let universities have the bodies of people who
Speaker 1: died in poorhouses. These people had relied on handouts from
Speaker 1: the public purse. The argument went, surely we could dissect
Speaker 1: them when they died, instead of spending yet more on
Speaker 1: a pauper's burial. Great idea, said the radical politician Henry Hunt.
Speaker 1: How about we start with the people who've benefited most
Speaker 1: from public money during their lives.
Speaker 4: Yes, now, I would recommend no, listen, listen, I would
Speaker 4: recommend in the first place, that the bodies of all
Speaker 4: our kings be dissected, instead of expending seven or eight,
Speaker 4: seven or eight hundred thousand pounds of the public money
Speaker 4: for their internment. Next, I would dissect all our hereditary legislators.
Speaker 1: Hunt's objections struck a chord with the public. Poor people
Speaker 1: couldn't afford to get treated by doctors, so why should
Speaker 1: their bodies be the ones doctors trained on that? What
Speaker 1: were the alternatives? Another more imaginative proposal came from the
Speaker 1: Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh creator fully legalized, regulated
Speaker 1: market let living people sell to medical schools the right
Speaker 1: to use their body after they die. It wouldn't be wise,
Speaker 1: they added, for such a market to let relatives sell
Speaker 1: bodies after death. That might create a legally sanctioned incentive
Speaker 1: for murder. But of course there already was a legally
Speaker 1: murky market, and the incentive for murder that created was
Speaker 1: all too clear. A few weeks have passed since Burke
Speaker 1: and Hare received their seven pounds and ten shillings, and
Speaker 1: they sense the possibility of another payday because another of
Speaker 1: William Hare's lodgers has fallen gravely ill, an old man
Speaker 1: with no known relatives. He's delirious with fever, too weak
Speaker 1: to speak. He is going to die, isn't he hopefully soon?
Speaker 1: What's taking him so long? Is there any way he
Speaker 1: might be encouraged to hurry up? Burke presses a pillow
Speaker 1: onto the man's face while hair pins him down to
Speaker 1: stop him struggling. It doesn't take long. Cautionary tales will
Speaker 1: be back after the break.
Speaker 5: Welcome, gentlemen, take your seats. Today we will consider on
Speaker 5: the causes and treatment of lateral curlature of the human spine.
Speaker 1: Doctor Robert Knox ran the most popular medical school in Edinburgh.
Speaker 1: In the winter of eighteen twenty seven, he had two
Speaker 1: hundred and forty seven students, almost twice as many as
Speaker 1: his nearest competitor. That's partly because Knox was such a
Speaker 1: brilliant teacher. As one writer put.
Speaker 2: It in Gifts a speech, he was unequaled his harmonious voice,
Speaker 2: his clearness, his logical precision, the enormous amount of information
Speaker 2: which flowed without effort from his lips.
Speaker 1: Knox was also snooty, even cruel when he described his rivals.
Speaker 1: He mocked them when they didn't have enough cadavers to
Speaker 1: teach with and had to use illustrations instead.
Speaker 3: Gentlemen, would you pay to study at their school of
Speaker 3: pictoral anatomy?
Speaker 1: That's the other reason Knox's school was so successful. He
Speaker 1: ensured his students had a steady supply of corpses. Knox
Speaker 1: would assign six students to each body. They'd rotate around,
Speaker 1: taking turns to practice with a scalpel, forceps and saw,
Speaker 1: peeling back the skin and fat to examine the muscles
Speaker 1: and ligaments on the limbs, cutting through the ribs to
Speaker 1: explore the lungs and the heart, trying out specific surgeries
Speaker 1: such as extracting bladder stones. As another eminent surgeon put.
Speaker 3: It, there's only when we have acquired dexterity on the
Speaker 3: dead subject, so we can be justified in interfering with
Speaker 3: the loving.
Speaker 1: Students knew they could rely on doctor Knox to give
Speaker 1: them that chance to acquire dexterity, and grave robbers knew
Speaker 1: that when they brought a body to Knox, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: haggle too hard orb you off with a credit note.
Speaker 1: He could give you a fair price and prompt payment
Speaker 1: in cash. By April eighteen twenty eight, William Burke and
Speaker 1: William Hare were becoming regulars at doctor Knox's place on
Speaker 1: Surgeon's Square. After the old man that brought the doctor
Speaker 1: an old woman and a middle aged man who clearly
Speaker 1: had jaundice and could plausibly have died from that. They
Speaker 1: knew the routine now that'd bring the body naked in
Speaker 1: a tea chest. They'd follow the doctor's assistant up the stairs,
Speaker 1: lay the body out on the dissection table the doctor
Speaker 1: to examine. But the latest body was quite unlike the
Speaker 1: others they had brought so far. This naked corpse was
Speaker 1: that of a young girl, maybe eighteen years old, young
Speaker 1: and beautiful. The doctor's assistant took one look at her,
Speaker 1: and I know that girl.
Speaker 2: She's called Mary. She lives in Canongate. I saw her
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago, and she looked in perfect health.
Speaker 1: The body was cool, but not yet stiff. Clearly the
Speaker 1: girl had not been dead for more than a few hours.
Speaker 2: Where did you get that body?
Speaker 1: Burke and Hair must have felt the panic rising in
Speaker 1: their chests. Up to now, they'd actually been pretty smart.
Speaker 1: They'd killed people who nobody would notice were missing, who
Speaker 1: were old or obviously diseased. But perhaps they'd been smart
Speaker 1: only by accident, because now they'd got and murdered a healthy,
Speaker 1: young woman whose face was known around town. Standing in
Speaker 1: front of the doctor and his assistant, they must suddenly
Speaker 1: have realized how reckless that was. Burke tried to think
Speaker 1: on his feet.
Speaker 3: And we bought it, Yeah, that we bought the body
Speaker 3: from an old woman on the cannon gid.
Speaker 1: Doctor Knox looked at them. Perhaps he believed them, perhaps
Speaker 1: he didn't. Either way.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, well it's fine, gentlemen. Shall we see it?
Speaker 1: Pounds in the nineteen nineties, the economist Alvin Roth became
Speaker 1: fascinated by kidneys. When a person has kidney failure, their
Speaker 1: life can sometimes be saved by a transplant, but that
Speaker 1: requires not only a donor, but a donor whose kidney
Speaker 1: matches in terms of blood type and tissue type. It's
Speaker 1: possible for a living person to donate a kidney. We
Speaker 1: have two, and most of the time we can function
Speaker 1: just as well with only one. Sometimes a family member
Speaker 1: will offer to donate a kidney to save their loved
Speaker 1: one's life, but often, frustratingly, the would be donor isn't
Speaker 1: a match. Sometimes a patient will get lucky. A total
Speaker 1: stranger will make the offer, motivated by pure altruism. But
Speaker 1: there's one thing a patient can't do, pay someone to
Speaker 1: give them a kidney. Thinking as an economist, Roth wondered,
Speaker 1: why not you have a sick, wealthy person who needs
Speaker 1: a kidney. You have a poor, healthy person who's willing
Speaker 1: to lose a kidney for the right price, two consenting
Speaker 1: adults who want to engage in a transaction that will
Speaker 1: benefit them both. Why should we stop them? And yet
Speaker 1: we do stop them. Selling kidneys is against the law
Speaker 1: in almost every country In the world. Rath is curious,
Speaker 1: what exactly is it we object to about a legally
Speaker 1: sanctioned market in kidneys. Perhaps we're concerned that sellers wouldn't
Speaker 1: fully understand the risks, but could regulate the market to
Speaker 1: make sure consent was informed. Maybe we worry that people
Speaker 1: might be coerced into selling their kidney, but we already
Speaker 1: have safeguards to ensure that family members who come forward
Speaker 1: are not under duress. Or maybe the concern is about
Speaker 1: where it could lead. Legalize kidney sales, and before you
Speaker 1: know it, you might have mortgage lenders requiring your kidney
Speaker 1: as extra collateral. Again, says Roth, you could write laws
Speaker 1: to guard against that. But even if you imagine laws
Speaker 1: and regulations that are completely watertight, Roth found people still
Speaker 1: don't want it to be legal for others to sell
Speaker 1: their kidneys, even if they can't articulate exactly why. Roth
Speaker 1: realized he had stumbled on an idea that didn't have
Speaker 1: a name in the economic literature. In two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: he published a paper that gave it a name, repugnant marks.
Speaker 1: These are markets we ban because we just don't like
Speaker 1: the idea of their being a market makes us go
Speaker 1: yuck Roth pointed to other markets that people find repugnant.
Speaker 1: In many countries, sex is like donating a kidney. It's
Speaker 1: fine to do it for love, but against the law
Speaker 1: to do it for money. Often, though, when we ban
Speaker 1: a repugnant market, we force it underground. There's a global
Speaker 1: trade in kidneys, and banning prostitution doesn't tend to stop
Speaker 1: it happening. Societies must then decide how hard to actually
Speaker 1: try to stamp the market out. Sometimes the answer is
Speaker 1: not very hard at all. Paying for sex in many
Speaker 1: places is technically illegal, but tacitly tolerated. The same could
Speaker 1: be said of that more literally underground activity robbing graves
Speaker 1: for bodies. In eighteen twenties Edinburgh, nobody he wanted to
Speaker 1: mount a serious crackdown on violating sepulchers, but nor was
Speaker 1: there any appetite for setting up the kind of legalized
Speaker 1: market in cadavers suggested by the Royal College of Physicians.
Speaker 1: The thought was far too repugnant. Faced with a hard choice,
Speaker 1: the authorities tried to ignore it. But Burke and Hare
Speaker 1: were about to make it impossible to look the other way.
Speaker 1: On the streets of Edinburgh's Old Town, one of the
Speaker 1: best known characters was a teenage boy whom the locals
Speaker 1: called Daft Jamie. He spent his days wandering barefoot, singing,
Speaker 1: gabbling nonsense, and telling jokes and riddles. Sometimes other boys
Speaker 1: made fun of him, and Jamie got tearful, but fight them,
Speaker 1: because only bad boys fight. People liked Daft Jamie. They
Speaker 1: gave him little gifts of money, food, or clothes. One day,
Speaker 1: William Hare's wife came across Jamie looking for his mother.
Speaker 1: Come with me, she said, back at the boarding house.
Speaker 1: She left Jamie with hair and a bottle of whiskey
Speaker 1: and went to fetch Burke. She ushered Burke into the
Speaker 1: room and locked the door a surgeon's square. Dr Knox's
Speaker 1: assistant recognized the body at once.
Speaker 2: I know who that is. That's daff Jamie.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, I'm sure you must be mistaken. It
Speaker 3: can't possibly be anyone, you know. Still, let's prepare this
Speaker 3: one for these students quickly, A shall I.
Speaker 1: By the time people started to notice that no one
Speaker 1: had seen Daft Jamie for a while, the evidence of
Speaker 1: the murder had been cut up into tiny pieces and
Speaker 1: disposed of. Burke and Hare had got away with it again.
Speaker 1: They must have thought they could get away with anything.
Speaker 1: Then on Halloween in eighteen twenty eight, they made one
Speaker 1: mistake too many cautionary tales will be back after the break.
Speaker 1: Like many young couples in Edinburgh's crowded Old Town, Anne
Speaker 1: and James Gray couldn't have fallen to rent a whole room,
Speaker 1: so they sublet space in a room from someone else.
Speaker 1: William Burke and his wife. The Grays and their infant
Speaker 1: son had been lodging with the Burkes for just a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks when on Halloween William Burke came home
Speaker 1: with a guest he'd met at a bar, Madgie Doherty.
Speaker 1: Burke said to Anne, right, I want you Jay to
Speaker 1: hear for the night. I need your bed for me.
Speaker 3: We rull out over here, Margie.
Speaker 2: Where are we supposed to go?
Speaker 3: I don't worry. My friend Harro's got to be lodging house.
Speaker 3: You can sleep ber at the night.
Speaker 1: Anne and James weren't happy, but they left. When they
Speaker 1: returned in the morning, there was no sign of Maggie,
Speaker 1: and Burke seemed strangely flustered. I have a drink. Burke
Speaker 1: poured them glasses of whiskey, and then he started pouring
Speaker 1: whiskey all over the pile of straw in the corner
Speaker 1: of the room.
Speaker 2: What are you doing that for? You'll make the whole
Speaker 2: room stingle whiskey or.
Speaker 3: I just want to empty the Worsky bottles. Saw their
Speaker 3: dagg and you know, Gordon get some more.
Speaker 1: Very odd? Was there perhaps some other smell? Burke was
Speaker 1: anxious to disguise The Grays kept their clothes near that
Speaker 1: pile of straw and crossed the room to get her
Speaker 1: infant son a clean pair of stockings.
Speaker 2: Get away from there.
Speaker 1: Burke's behavior was getting stranger and stranger. For the rest
Speaker 1: of the day, either Burke or his wife sat close
Speaker 1: to the pile of straw, eyeing the Grays suspiciously, and
Speaker 1: later told the police.
Speaker 2: I thought there was something that was not right.
Speaker 1: At last, just before darkfall and got her chance to investigate,
Speaker 1: Burke had left the house to run some kind of
Speaker 1: errand then Burke's wife stepped out for a moment too.
Speaker 2: The first thing I got on lifting up straw was
Speaker 2: the woman's right.
Speaker 1: Arm, and her husband lifted more of the straw to
Speaker 1: reel the head with blood around the mouth. They both
Speaker 1: recognized the woman they'd met briefly the night before, Maggie Doherty,
Speaker 1: Anne and James Gray pack up their belongings, grab their
Speaker 1: infant son, and make for the door. On their way
Speaker 1: out of the house, they meet Burke's wife coming back in.
Speaker 2: What the hell's going on? There's a corpse in the room.
Speaker 1: Burke's wife falls to her knees. Don't tell anyone, she begs,
Speaker 1: We'll give you money God for a bit. The Grays
Speaker 1: push past Burke's wife and go to a police station
Speaker 1: to tell their story. By the time a policeman arrives
Speaker 1: at Burke's room, the body's gone, but there's blood on
Speaker 1: the straw, and the neighbors say they've just seen Burke
Speaker 1: and another man taking out a heavy looking tea chest.
Speaker 1: If that was a body, thinks the policeman, Where might
Speaker 1: they have taken it? The policeman knocks on the door
Speaker 1: at ten Surgeons Square.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, I've just taken delivery of a cadaver in
Speaker 2: a tea chest. You'd like to see it, of course,
Speaker 2: come on in.
Speaker 1: As the economist Alvin Roth discovered, people find it easy
Speaker 1: to discuss the potential costs of legalizing a market they
Speaker 1: find repugnant, such as a marketing kidneys. It's harder to
Speaker 1: get them to think about the costs of keeping that
Speaker 1: market banned, but those costs are real. The people who'd
Speaker 1: be willing to sell a kidney have to do without
Speaker 1: the money they could have earned. Of course, we hate
Speaker 1: to think of people selling a kidney only because they're
Speaker 1: poor and desperate, but banning kidney sales doesn't make the
Speaker 1: poverty and desperation go away. Then there are the people
Speaker 1: who'd like to buy a kidney but can't. They end
Speaker 1: up spending countless hours tied to a dialysis machine if
Speaker 1: they're lucky. If they're unlucky, they end up dead. Still,
Speaker 1: that widespread feeling of repugnance isn't something you can just
Speaker 1: wish away. Roth asked himself. Is there a way to
Speaker 1: create a mechanism that works like a market so it
Speaker 1: gets more kidneys to more patients, but that doesn't trigger
Speaker 1: a repugnance response? Roth helped to design kidney exchanges. Imagine
Speaker 1: that you and I both need a kidney, and both
Speaker 1: our partners are willing to donate. My partner's kidney isn't
Speaker 1: a match for me, It is for you and your
Speaker 1: partner's kidney isn't a match for you, but it is
Speaker 1: for me, So we swap donors. Roth's exchanges take this
Speaker 1: simple swap and make it work on a bigger scale.
Speaker 1: They can link dozens of donors in one chain. It's
Speaker 1: like a market for kidneys, but instead of paying with money,
Speaker 1: you pay with a willing donor. Nobody finds it repugnant.
Speaker 1: Roth won a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his
Speaker 1: work in designing new kinds of markets. Perhaps if Alvin
Speaker 1: Roth had been around in eighteen twenties Edinburgh, he could
Speaker 1: have found some equally clever way to get more cadavers
Speaker 1: to more medical schools, something like the idea of the
Speaker 1: Royal College of Physicians to reward the living in exchange
Speaker 1: for their body after death. The absence of such a
Speaker 1: mechanism had costs. Just ask Maggie Doherty. William Burke insists
Speaker 1: to the policeman that he has no idea how Maggie
Speaker 1: Doherty ended up dead, none at all. They were all
Speaker 1: drinking and singing and dancing, he says, with William Hare
Speaker 1: and both their wives, and then they suddenly noticed Maggie
Speaker 1: wasn't there anymore.
Speaker 3: Sure she must have crawled into the palist straw.
Speaker 1: And you know dad a likely story. But could the
Speaker 1: public prosecutor prove beyond reasonable doubt that Burke and Hare
Speaker 1: and their wives were guilty of murder. Forensic science was
Speaker 1: less advanced than today. The doctors said. The states of
Speaker 1: Maggie Dochety's corpse was consistent with her having been forcibly suffocated.
Speaker 1: They couldn't say for certain that she didn't choke to
Speaker 1: death on her own vomit. In Scottish law, it was
Speaker 1: notoriously hard to get a jury to convict for murder.
Speaker 1: Other legal systems offer a jury just two possible verdicts,
Speaker 1: guilty or not guilty. Scottish law adds a third possibility.
Speaker 2: Not proven. It means we think you probably did it,
Speaker 2: but we're not quite sure enough to send you to
Speaker 2: the gallows.
Speaker 1: The only way to guarantee at least one conviction, the
Speaker 1: prosecutor reluctantly decided, was to cut a deal with one
Speaker 1: of the accused. Testify and we'll let you off. William
Speaker 1: Hare jumped at the chance to turn King's evidence. Under
Speaker 1: Scottish law, a man couldn't testify against his wife, so
Speaker 1: Hair's wife was off the hook too. With immunity from prosecution.
Speaker 1: Hair confessed to the murder of Magie Doherty and daft Jamie,
Speaker 1: and young Mary, and that sick old man the lodging house,
Speaker 1: and the old woman, and the jaundiced man, and that
Speaker 1: old grandma and a twelve year old grandchild, and sixteen
Speaker 1: murders in all. The police were astonished, but in fifteen
Speaker 1: of those cases the evidence had long ago been dissected away.
Speaker 1: Only Maggie Doherty's body remained. And so it was for
Speaker 1: the murder of Maggie Doherty that Burke and his wife
Speaker 1: stood trial. Burke's wife the jury found.
Speaker 2: Not proven Burke, though guilty.
Speaker 1: The judge left no doubt about what he thought.
Speaker 3: In the whole history of civilized society, there never has
Speaker 3: been exhibited such a system of barbarous and savage iniquity,
Speaker 3: or anything at all corresponding in a cross, So these cold, hypocritical,
Speaker 3: calculating and bloody murder one of the most monstrous delineations
Speaker 3: of human depravity.
Speaker 1: William Burke was sentenced to hang. Burke and Hare's murders
Speaker 1: focused the minds of politicians. They had to remove the
Speaker 1: incentive for Robin Graves and committing murder. They passed the
Speaker 1: Anatomy Act, which gave medical schools the right to take
Speaker 1: bodies from workhouses, prisons or hospitals if no one had
Speaker 1: claimed them within forty eight hours of death. Campaigning politicians
Speaker 1: continued to object. The law was commandeering the bodies of
Speaker 1: the poor, they said, to train doctors whose services only
Speaker 1: the rich could afford. But was there a better alternative?
Speaker 1: If Alvin Roth had been around in the eighteen twenties
Speaker 1: to think that question through, what might he have suggested?
Speaker 1: Roth gives us a clue in his paper Repugnance as
Speaker 1: a Constraint on Markets. He quotes an editorial from the
Speaker 1: Lancet in eighteen twenty four, four years before the Edinburgh murders,
Speaker 1: which argued for ending the historical practice of giving medical
Speaker 1: schools the bodies of hanged murderers. It only keeps up
Speaker 1: the prejudice against dissection, they wrote. That would have been
Speaker 1: a good start in overcoming repugnance, says Roth, Instead of
Speaker 1: seeing dissection as punishment, you'd try to reframe it as
Speaker 1: an altruistic contribution to advancing medical knowledge. Many people see
Speaker 1: it that way today when they leave their bodies to science.
Speaker 1: The present day University of Edinburgh, for instance, assures potential
Speaker 1: donors that were it not for.
Speaker 2: Such acts of selflessness, it would be impossible to maintain
Speaker 2: Scotland's high educational reputation in the medical profession, and for
Speaker 2: this we are extremely grateful.
Speaker 1: Back in eighteen twenty eight, William Burke was sentenced to
Speaker 1: hang and be dissected. No clever attempt at reframing there.
Speaker 1: Thousands of people queued to see Burke's naked body on
Speaker 1: the dissection table. In museums in Edinburgh. You can still
Speaker 1: see his skeleton and a pocketbook made from his skin.
Speaker 1: In the university's archives is a letter written in Burke's blood.
Speaker 1: But what about William Hare and the wives? People in
Speaker 1: Edinburgh were outraged they'd got off scot free. All were
Speaker 1: chased out of town by angry mobs. A mob gathered
Speaker 1: two outside the home of doctor Knox. They hung his
Speaker 1: effigy from a tree. Why hadn't he asked more questions
Speaker 1: about the bodies? He could have stopped them at an
Speaker 1: earlier stage. Knox was unrepentant. He carried on his lectures
Speaker 1: as usual, talking over the shouts of protesters outside his
Speaker 1: lecture room. Ignore them.
Speaker 3: He told his students, you sealants of our piece, maybe
Speaker 3: begging menace, that they are too cowardly in act to
Speaker 3: confront such a falanced body of gentlemen as they see
Speaker 3: before me.
Speaker 1: Dr Knox eventually moved to London, where his notoriety posed
Speaker 1: less of a nuisance. When he died aged seventy one,
Speaker 1: he left clear instructions about what should happen to his body.
Speaker 1: Knox had always insisted on the importance of cadavers to
Speaker 1: train up doctors. So did he make his own final,
Speaker 1: selfless contribution to advancing medical science. He did not.
Speaker 3: Lay me the rest in the churchyard, where the wildflowers
Speaker 3: bloom and the sun might shine on the green sword
Speaker 3: above my grieve.
Speaker 1: This live edition of Cautionary Tales was written by me
Speaker 1: Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. Tonight you heard the voice
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Speaker 1: and live trombonist was Pascal Wise. That additional sound design
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