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Speaker 1: All right, think about the challenges of understanding the human

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Speaker 1: body and medicine. After spiritual mystery took a back seat

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Speaker 1: and science became the thing, there were no X rays

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Speaker 1: or MRIs, not even photos. So the only way to

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Speaker 1: figure out how the human body worked and how to

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Speaker 1: fix what wasn't working was to take a look under

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Speaker 1: the hood by carving up a dead body. The demand

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Speaker 1: for bodies was huge for centuries, and grave robbers or

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Speaker 1: body snatchers made a bundle by digging up fresh graves.

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Speaker 1: But there was another way. I'm Patty Steele. Medical research

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Speaker 1: partners with murder. That's next on the backstory. The backstory

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Speaker 1: is back. For as long as human beings have been

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Speaker 1: aware of life, we have been aware of death for

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Speaker 1: thousands of years. There's been a fascination with doing pretty

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Speaker 1: much everything possible to delay the inevitable. Thousands of years ago,

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Speaker 1: in Egypt, Greece, and Rome, researchers start looking inside the

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Speaker 1: human body to see how it functioned. Frequently, early anatomists

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Speaker 1: settled for dissecting animals, and they did learn a lot

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Speaker 1: from the study of pigs, apes, cattle and other types,

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Speaker 1: but they needed to work with humans. Problem was it

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Speaker 1: wasn't easy to find bodies to take apart, since most

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Speaker 1: folks felt you were desecrating God's work to slice open

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Speaker 1: a human and dismantle it. Primarily they had access to

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Speaker 1: executed criminals, but they needed more. By the time we

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Speaker 1: got to the Middle Ages, the obsession with how we

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Speaker 1: worked had only grown. In fact, Leonardo da Vinci left

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Speaker 1: behind more than seven hundred and fifty drawings from his

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Speaker 1: study of anatomy after he personally dissected about thirty human bodies,

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Speaker 1: and he actually produced the first really accurate drawing of

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Speaker 1: a human spine, but eventually the Pope forced him to stop. Now,

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Speaker 1: the Church tried to put a stop to all the

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Speaker 1: fun of anatomy classes by trying to ban human death dissection,

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Speaker 1: but no such luck. The medical community continued the quest

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Speaker 1: and moving forward, a lot of other famous artists, from

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Speaker 1: Michelangelo to Rembrandt, also studied anatomy, taking part in or

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Speaker 1: at least sitting in on dissections and publishing drawings for money.

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Speaker 1: As the centuries rolled on, the desire to understand the

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Speaker 1: human body from a scientific perspective increased, and that meant

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Speaker 1: more medical schools and more students and the need for

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Speaker 1: more bodies, so all of that basically supported the growing

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Speaker 1: side hustle for folks who didn't mind grave robbing, They

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Speaker 1: would keep an eye on cemeteries and sneak in after

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Speaker 1: burials to help themselves to fresh bodies, which they then

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Speaker 1: quickly sell to medical schools and other researchers. It was

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Speaker 1: incredibly lucrative. Cadavers gave the robbers pretty much the equivalent

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Speaker 1: of three months of a working man's wages for just

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Speaker 1: one body, a tremendous financial incentive for the bodies snatchers

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Speaker 1: willing to dig in. These guys were more politely called resurrectionists. Okay, sure,

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Speaker 1: marketing is everything, right. Of course, folks were desperate to

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Speaker 1: protect their recently deceased loved ones from the anatomist stable,

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Speaker 1: since they believed the dead couldn't rise up to heaven

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Speaker 1: if their body wasn't intact. Cases of grave robbing actually

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Speaker 1: caused riots, damage to property, and even violent attacks. People

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Speaker 1: often used a thing called a mortsafe or mort cage,

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Speaker 1: ultra heavy iron bars shaped into a cage that surrounded

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Speaker 1: a grave with a huge stone on top, making it

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Speaker 1: tougher to get to the body. The rich could afford

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Speaker 1: to buy heavy table tombstones, vaults, mausoleums, and mort cages.

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Speaker 1: But short of that, you could rent them short term,

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Speaker 1: or even have friends and relatives simply take turns or

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Speaker 1: hire men to watch graves throughout each night. That would

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Speaker 1: last for about six weeks until the buried body had

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Speaker 1: decayed ate enough that they were no longer of medical use.

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Speaker 1: A lot of graveyards actually built what were called watch

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Speaker 1: towers for all the watchers to sit in while they

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Speaker 1: were on duty during the night. Now meantime, the government,

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Speaker 1: anxious for research, had sort of ignored grave robbing, but

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Speaker 1: they also wanted to legally help meet the need for

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Speaker 1: fresh cadavers and reduce crime. By the end of the

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Speaker 1: eighteenth century, a lot of countries passed legislation allowing doctors

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Speaker 1: and med schools to dissect the unclaimed bodies of poor people,

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Speaker 1: prison inmates, orphans, and suicide victims, as well as folks

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Speaker 1: in psychiatric and charity hospitals, and some even allowed the

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Speaker 1: use of female bodies, which had been previously a no go.

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Speaker 1: I guess they didn't feel they needed to understand the

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Speaker 1: female body. But when all else failed and the body

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Speaker 1: snatchers needed caches much as researchers needed bodies. Some nefarious

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Speaker 1: types turned from dead bodies snatching to live bodies snatching.

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Speaker 1: It was called an anatomy murder or in England Burking

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Speaker 1: why burking Well. In eighteen twenty eight, William Burke and

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Speaker 1: William Hare began to take advantage of this overwhelming need

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Speaker 1: for fresh flesh, and they started selling the bodies of

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Speaker 1: people they'd murdered. It began when a tenant in a

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Speaker 1: building Hare owned died of natural causes while still owing

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Speaker 1: him rent. He turned to his friend Burke, complaining of

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Speaker 1: the lost rent money. That's when they decided to quickly

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Speaker 1: snag the body and sell it to doctor Robert Knox,

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Speaker 1: a well known anatomist. He gave them what amounted to

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Speaker 1: six months of wages for an unskilled worker. Wow, here's

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Speaker 1: an untapped opportunity, they thought. But wait a minute, what

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Speaker 1: if none of our other tenants die of natural causes? Hmmm.

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Speaker 1: A few months later, when Hare was worried another lodger

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Speaker 1: who had a fever would scare healthy renters away, he

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Speaker 1: and Burke murdered him and sold his body to doctor Knox.

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Speaker 1: Ah Ah, here's the answer. They came up with a

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Speaker 1: plan soon they began to lure people into their lodgings.

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Speaker 1: They'd get them drunk and murder them, usually by suffocation,

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Speaker 1: then they'd sell the bodies. Inspired by the easy cash,

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Speaker 1: they continued their murder spree, and there's evidence their wives

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Speaker 1: were in on it too. Their fatal mistake. All of

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Speaker 1: the bodies went to pretty much the same doctor, doctor Knox,

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Speaker 1: who was oddly unconcerned about where all those fresh corpses

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Speaker 1: were coming from and never asked them. He did tell

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Speaker 1: them how delighted he was when they were able to

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Speaker 1: deliver bodies that were still warm. Yeesh. Doctor Knox's advertising

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Speaker 1: for med students promised they could observe him dissecting fresh

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Speaker 1: anatomical subjects twice a day. Wow. But the unraveling started

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Speaker 1: when it turned out that one of the victims doctor

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Speaker 1: Knox dissected was actually a well known street person in town.

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Speaker 1: Suspicions began to rise. Their actions were uncovered after other

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Speaker 1: lodgers in Hare's house saw the last victim before they

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Speaker 1: got rid of the body and contacted the cops. Over

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Speaker 1: the course of just ten months, Burke and Hare had

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Speaker 1: murdered about sixteen people. Once they were finally caught. It

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Speaker 1: was every man for himself. It wasn't an easy prosecution

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Speaker 1: because there's only the one final body. But the autopsy

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Speaker 1: unheard didn't prove she was actually murdered, so prosecutors had

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Speaker 1: to cut a deal and Hare managed to get immunity

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Speaker 1: from prosecution by spilling the beans on Burke. The trial

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Speaker 1: began on Christmas Eve in eighteen twenty eight. Thousands of

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Speaker 1: people converged early in the morning on the courthouse in Edinburgh, Scotland,

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Speaker 1: with three hundred constables to keep the peace, as well

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Speaker 1: as infantry and cavalry on standby. The trial lasted throughout

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Speaker 1: the day and throughout the night, until nine thirty Christmas morning,

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Speaker 1: when William Burke alone was found guilty. The judge, David

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Speaker 1: Boyle said, your body will be publicly dissected and anatomized,

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Speaker 1: and I trust that if it is ever customary to

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Speaker 1: preserve skeletons, yours will be preserved in order that posterity

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Speaker 1: may keep in remembrance your atrocious crimes. Burke was hanged

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Speaker 1: in keeping with the judge's wish for poetic justice. He

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Speaker 1: was publicly dissected, hair eventually just disappeared, and while only

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Speaker 1: William Burke had to face justice. This rhyme was popular

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Speaker 1: on the streets for a while. Burke's the butcher, Hare's

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Speaker 1: the thief, doctor knocks the boy that buys the beef.

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Speaker 1: Hope you like the Backstory with Patty Steele. I would

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Speaker 1: me if you have a story you'd like me to

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Speaker 1: dig into and cover. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and

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Speaker 1: on Instagram Reel Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstories

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Speaker 1: a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Duran Group,

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Speaker 1: and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our

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Speaker 1: writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.

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Speaker 1: Feel free to reach out to me with comments and

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Speaker 1: even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and

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Speaker 1: on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the

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Speaker 1: Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't

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Speaker 1: know you needed to know