Burke & Hare, Part 1 | Morbid | Forensic Files

hey weirdos I'm Elena and I'm Ash and this is morbid [Music] Den [Music] hey guys hey what's up what's up fellas
what's up fellas and Fellers Flores faunas and boxes okay getting cute with the Spring Equinox I see the spring of
it all um what is it ostara I just learned about something like that yeah it's something something like that it's
witchy yeah it's like welcoming spring yeah and I feel like we're all kind of feeling this way usually I'm I never
want to hang on to winter but I've never super eager to get out of it I'm usually
just like okay spring is coming like cool that's how I feel that's usually here but this year I was like get me the
[ __ ] out of winter this has been a [ __ ] terrible winter it's well we had a lot of family stuff going on we had
which sicknesses sicknesses yeah like it's just been a [ __ ] winter too much going on yeah I've lost lots of gloss up
in the air that's yeah just it's it's been [ __ ] a lot of stress so much stress
like you guys were all feeling it in our voices I think because we got so many which like we can't say it enough like
we really appreciate that you guys give a [ __ ] because the amount of messages we've gotten that are like you guys okay
but it's so crazy like clearly we've been going on this for a while with you guys because like you you know you can
hear the change in our voice even when we don't think we're showing it we think we're putting on the show like The Show
Must Go On get rid of whatever's going on behind the scenes I feel that sentiment so hard it's true because it
has to and you never want to like we never want to let you down when [ __ ] happens like we we are here to entertain
you you know I mean to yeah to inform you of things you know so it's like we're very much in that mindset of the
show must go on but to know that like you said you guys always know yeah even when we think we're hiding it like that
tells us like how close we are to this community Amelia and it's and we just appreciate
you this is like it's like really nice it's nice but I also it was like a slap because I was like oh [ __ ] so it's
leaking out a little bit I know the good news is like where spring is here yeah we're feeling a lot more
we feel like we are in a good place like schedule wise like you know how we went
we kind of changed it to the OG way of things it's feeling good well and astrologically things are changing a bit
right now and like planets are moving into different um signs and houses that like things are
a little more stable that's what we need except I think Aquarius is moving into Pluto next week and that's gonna bring
like some kind of major transformation um the last time that Aquarius was I think it's Aquarius entering Pluto is
what it is and the last time it happened was in the 1700s oh damn isn't that nuts
and it's a time of like um what's the word the war that happens it's the time of like Revolution oh wow yeah crazy so
that could be like great or really bad well I think like Revolution like Revolution or it could be really bad
it's gonna probably coincide with like all the alien [ __ ] that's happening right now I'm not even joking your butt
I mean I'm not even joking your butt I'm not even I'm not even [ __ ] you Nick no way you're not I can tell yeah but
you know what we're in a good place it's Spring's aside Happy Spring I'm feeling
good I got some good cases coming up that I'm feeling excited to tell you guys about just because like you know I
love an old-timey one like his weird history case you do and I got it I got a good one here that I'm really excited
about and it just burped a little I'm sorry that's okay it happened in the microphone sometimes you just you can't
you can't make a stop it's just a rough can't stop won't stop you know but I'm gonna be doing Birkin hair today
and it's gonna be a two-parter so it's going to be this week I'm going to be doing Birkin hair damn girl you're on a
two-parter like yeah you know I love the multi-part yeah I'm gonna know I like when you do that I love some really
really intense long cases when it gives me a little more time to wrap mine there
you go so it works out and I just think it's good you know you get a whole week of one really intense long case I like
it I'm excited about it this one's a wild one and it also takes place in Edinburgh for at least part of it
and this is a wild one because we're going to do I'm going to do this case and then we're going to talk about maybe
next week or whenever we're going to talk about those um these little mini coffins that were found okay way later
and we're gonna get into detail don't worry but they there's a theory that it's connected to this case which is a
nice like continuation okay so you have to look forward to a lot of Birkin hair in the recent in the coming days okie
dokie so throughout the first three decades of the 19th century doctors and Med schools
all across Europe they really struggled to find enough bodies that they could use because this is the time when they
were using bodies like corpses for anatomical teaching surprising that they were having a hard time finding bodies
back in that time because they didn't want to get like plague bodies or anything like that you know you wanted
like fresh yeah fresh bodies that were not sick presumably you know if you could get them where some there's no
trauma and stuff it would be helpful because you're really trying to do like I mean those would be good too for
certain things but yeah now um they basically this demand for fresh bodies and how it was becoming so hard
to find them this led to the rise of what was called Resurrection men oh which that doesn't sound good cool band
name um this is kind of a tongue-in-cheek name that was given to grave robbers yeah who medical students turn to a lot
for fresh corpses isn't that crazy thinking of like just like like hoity-toity people in the medical field
like yeah well it is because they're looking they're basically overlooking the crime
of gray bro yeah and the ethics surrounding that just for the pursuit of medical advancement and they're like
really I guess but you kind of have to you know you don't have to but at the time that's what was going on it was
very frequent Resurrection men were a real thing it wasn't like a weird thing and in Edinburgh Scotland Dr Robert Knox
was a very highly respected surgeon and he found what he believed to be a very reliable pipeline of fresh bodies okay
and he found because and it was really hard to find that you would find this Resurrection man maybe you could get a
couple out of them but you were gonna have to look around for it it was not easy this guy however was like I found a
good steady stream of bodies to use see that makes me feel like he's working alongside a serial killer well he was
working alongside William Burke and William Hare the two Williams no it's like Tom and Tom yeah that's not good
did anyone see that mid-season trailer the mid-season trailer those in case you don't know what we're talking oh my God
the end of it I when he says what can I do for you can I get you anything I think or no she says do you want
anything do you want anything and she says I want you to die she says for you to die like whoa yeah but that's that's
for another day but once we get to the just wait once we get to those reunions and those episodes come and we'll talk
more about it real but yeah so this Dr Robert Knox he was absolutely comfortable with the fact that William
Burke and William Hare were providing him a steady stream of bodies to use in his medical teachings and throughout
1828 Burke and Hare supplied Knox with nearly 20. corpses uh-huh uh they got a very decent
profit out of that I bet they did but we're we're working here just Resurrection men no I don't think so
they just really good at their jobs no always finding fresh bodies nothing is like ever like if it's too good to be
true it's not true exactly so during the late 18th and early 19th centuries the Western World kind of strayed away from
the original thinking that you know a dead body was the most it's hard to explain like you know how in the
beginning in Victorian times and whatnot death and bodies were treated a certain
way there was a lot of respect it was a big to do it was a big to do like a lot of Ethics surrounding a dead body a lot
of virtual importance placed on the body a lot the body itself was a real like Beacon of ethics and all that kind of
stuff sure this you know in the late 18th early 19th century that's when they began to stray away from that a bit and
it was more like a bodies a body it kind of did it was like a more enlightened era where advances in medical science
were kind of reshaping this thought process a lot because people didn't think that anybody was still lurking
around in their body right it became more of a clinical situation you know like medical theaters became more of a
thing people were watching these dissections it was just it really flipped the whole thing on its ear and
in the early 19th century England uh trainee doctors so medical students and those hoping to become surgeons were
required to dissect at least three corpses before moving forward in their training that's which I like that now
that's a similar thing you're required to do gross anatomy you're required to do that so it stuck around and as these
trainees needed more and more hands-on experience the availability of bodies for dissection kind of became
entangled a bit with the with the medical school student fees okay so to put it simply the more bodies a school
had access to the more Hands-On training they could offer and the more Hands-On training they could offer the more they
could charge in student fees makes sense so this what once was like we need to do
this training that's important so they can become good doctors suddenly became entangled with money and then it becomes
something totally different money is the root of all so of course for the purposes of
training exercises like we were saying only recently deceased bodies would really suffice
here that's where that issue came from that we were just talking about um so this created a demand that was far
outweighing the supply at the time and the only legal supply of bodies for the purpose of dissection were those who had
actually been executed at The Gallows oh okay yeah would that make sense which at
the time was only about 50 people per year okay well so that's good but good enough for this it's not giving you a
great supply of people um but like the like at the time executions themselves were heavily
attended by Spectators the dissections were also heavily attended social events they often took on kind of like a like a
carnival atmosphere yeah there was a lot of Showmanship involved a lot of theater
it's like the I think you did a whole episode on that um way early on in the podcast it's like
and we were talking about how like the uh how execution executions yeah yeah and that's definitely what happened with
like dissections in medical theaters well it was like a new a new Carnival to go to that's probably how they saw it
Macabre thing that was happening before your very eyes um and at the Royal College of Surgeons
in London for example um early 19th century instructor professor professor professor Giovanni
aldini he was known to perform tricks in the form of like basically Macabre experiments on corpses don't love uh he
would make disembodied heads open their eyes with like electrical shock oh no uh he
would have like a a dead hand clutch things he's having a little too much fun with it yeah he would use galvanic
experimentation and this involves using electrical Sparks like static electricity to demonstrate that it could
cause different muscles to Twitch and even move a dissected specimen wow it's yeah it's interesting and it's
fascinating that you can do that it's just a matter of should you do things exactly that's the thing you can do that
yes which should you also you saying took me to a place of failing every science course I've ever there you go
well and this made me look into galvanism a little bit because I was like I'd never heard of that so I I
heard like a little bit about making things move yeah but a little side note about galvanism it's really fascinating
in 1751 England passed the murder Act and this act allowed the bodies of recently executed murderers to be used
for medical experimentation so that's how they were able to get the bonds from The Gallows this way the demand for
corpses for medical colleges would be aided and also the murderer in their eyes was suggested to also subjected
excuse me to having his body dissected which at that time was still considered a desecration and just another form of
posthumous punishment um okay so this is important in a second so just remember that putting it in my pocket but in 1780
in that Italian Professor Luigi galvani was the one who suddenly found or excuse
me wasn't that Professor it was a relation to that other sure um he was the one who suddenly found
that he could use jolts of electricity to make the muscles of deceased and dissected frogs at the time uh twitch
around and look like they were alive I love frogs once he discovered this others quickly started using this method
of experimentation on other animals as well dead end yes um galvani's nephew a physicist named Giovanni aldini who just
talked about actually used the body of an ox to do this wow he cut the ox's head off and used electricity to make
its tongue move around it's like don't think you have to I just like like don't want to I don't want to
go to that show yeah I'm all set a little weird but yeah it's a little weird and once word got out about this
though people began to attend the demonstrations where people where they would like Electrify cows pigs other
animal heads as like a show the human species species a human species yeah um so in November 1818 a Scottish
chemist Andrew Yuri I believe it is took [ __ ] to another level oh no he had not
only conducted these experiments but he did so on recently executed murders because of the murder act and he did it
for the reason of believing he could use electricity not just to reanimate particular muscles in a corpse he
believed that he could bring an entire corpse back to life well Dr Frankenstein on this November evening in 1818 Yuri
did a truly theatrical demonstration in front of a theater of onlookers on a 35 year old murderer named Matthew
Clydesdale he had murdered his fellow coal miner who is an 80 year old man Jesus Christ yeah that guy and he had
used a pickaxe oh my God monster so you're gonna try to bring this man back to life that's the thing so he was in
the anatomical theater full of people watching and he managed for over an hour to use electrical current directed
through rods at different nerve points to make it look like the dead murderer was breathing like his chest went up and
down and they made his hand point at people in the crowd wow they needed a hobby they need a different topics yeah
they did something I was going to say this was their home maybe unfortunately Bravo they need a Bravo uh so he
actually wrote about these experiments and the demonstration and some of the entries that were found in his like
journals and on Atlas obscura I found some of those entries and one of them says every muscle in his countenance was
simultaneously thrown into fearful action rage horror despair anguish and ghastly Smiles ew United their hideous
expression in the murderer's face surpassing far the wildest representations of a fuseli or Akin an
actor and a painter at this period several of the spectators were forced to leave the apartment from Terror or
sickness and one gentleman fainted same and he said he thought the experiment was important but not really fruitful
because even if he had managed to revive this man from the dead he was bringing back a murderer exactly and that's not
awesome so either way interesting and since this was something happening at the time in a medical colleges it seemed
like an interesting side quest for me to take I just had to so back to the resurrection man of this
time in the early 19th century skilled trades people could kind of they could expect to make in their trades like
regular trades they could make between 5 and 10 Shillings for a 72-hour grueling
Work Week yay yeah by contrast selling a fresh cadaver could net you as many as 20 Guinea guineas which is around 420
Shillings oh [ __ ] that's from the medical training schools under the circumstances the imbalance between
supply and demand created an economic opportunity that while it's pretty ghoulish and a little hideous it would
be hard for a lot of people of the time to pass up yeah because remember like this is these are people hard up in
really bad situations they're a little desperate at this point makes sense so that's at least what you have to think
of when you think of the perspective at the time I'm not saying I would do it I'm just saying I'm not in those Dire
Straits that they were in right now also in England the penalty for unlawful disinterment was a small fine or up to
six months in jail wow so certainly horrified the public grave robbing but grave robbing in general
wasn't really taken that seriously by the authorities either because that's not that big of a penalty penalty at all
yeah so in fact while procuring fresh bodies was typically left to Crave robbers and Resurrection men
and sometimes to a lesser extent students would actually go out and find them themselves it was like a like a
hazing ritual yeah literally it was not entirely unheard of for a professor to help in the process getting desperate
especially if they hope to obtain a special prize so there's that now it was the promise of good money that caused
normal people to head out to cemeteries and collect these bodies they would use grappling hooks and wood Spades
um because these were less noisy than like metal tools that would get them caught in the act and these Resurrection
men um they would also be called ex exumators I believe it's how you say yeah or lifters that's also what they're
called they could put in like very little effort with the right tools and they earned you know more than they
would earn in a week's time in one night damn yeah now in Edinburgh several safeguards were actually installed in
cemeteries across the city to make sure this wasn't happening because it was such a big problem yeah these included
watchtowers they had Mort safes which were large you can look them up online they're large iron cages that sat over a
grave site to prevent body snatching oh I might have seen photos at the obituary
show they yes they showed a picture so if you haven't gotten your tickets to the obituary uh US tour you should do
that because it's [ __ ] hilarious and you learn a lot yeah uh but these protective measures they definitely
limited more the procurement of cadavers which was making things harder and making medical the medical colleges in
Edinburgh get cadavers from London Liverpool or Ireland they were costing more money in that situation and
probably the reward went up because it was a harder thing to do exactly so the more the harder it is to procure
something people find nefarious ways to get it I love the way that you just said
nefari I know I don't know why I said it like that you were in Scott but I don't know why I was like
nefarious yeah um oh what was I gonna say I don't know and that's that's where the problem lies
it's like if something's harder to get people are gonna find nefarious ways to get oh that's what I was gonna say yeah
it's not the catch it to the chase exactly so with the dissection of dead human bodies serving both a scientific
and entertainment attention at the time and the value of the recently dead now shooting up there at a premium it was
only a matter of time before the criminal and pretty unscrupulous people turn to not only
digging these bodies up oh God but turn two other ways murder you get bodies that's exactly we're gonna turn to
murder to meet demand oh no and at the time none were going to be as prolific or dare I say efficient at doing this
than Edinburgh is Birkin here oh no so let's talk about Birkin hair both Burke and hair had a tendency to
um exaggerate their lives okay both of them their origin stories their achievements it's giving Henry Lee Lucas
and an artist tennis tool yeah so at this point it's difficult to really discern fact from fiction and you know
there's some things frustrating I know because they're just liars they lie out of their face into your face so it's
just not good but there are definitely some facts that we know are true okay so William Burke was born in Liam de burka
in 1792 in County Tyrone Ireland he was the son of Neil Burke who was a laborer and while many in late 18th century
Ireland were very poor and made a meager living performing manual labor William Burke's upbringing seems to be a little
more fortunate than those around him huh he received a fair education it's described as okay he created right you
know and he found work as a servant to a presbyterian minister but it didn't take long for him to get a
little tired of that work and he moved on so from there he tried his hand at being a weaver a baker a Shoemaker a
Candlestick maker I was waiting for that and then he turned to the Donegal militia in 1809 where he served as a
personal attendant to one of the senior officers I was gonna say that sounds intense it is and it was during this
time that the militia with the militia that William Burke married Margaret Coleman who was a young woman from the
town of balina well that's a pretty Town name right bolina he that's actually uh
it's like the chicken's name in Return to Oz bellina I believe it's bellina look at you yeah look at you quoting
horror films go watch Return to us I love that that's a horror film I love it it is it really is uh but he went to
live with Margaret Coleman after um after the militia was disbanded in 1816 and he found employment with a quote
Country Gentleman and continued living with his wife and her family okay that wasn't until that they lived together
with the family until an ongoing argument with her father made it a little unlivable that'll do it the main
point of their contention was Burke's obsession with leasing his father-in-law's land but his
father-in-law refused to transfer the lease of his land into Burke's name so Burke was just pissed and just straight
up abandoned the family in 1817. that wasn't even his yeah he was like [ __ ] you guys and he just went to
Scotland he never returned to Ireland and he never saw his wife again holy I was gonna say they were married
I'm out what did well that goes to show you exactly who this man he is we're working with his father-in-law wouldn't
transfer the lease of his land into his name and he was like well I'm out he's like I don't know her I don't know her
no way rolls up the window so while there are some surviving documents to verify William Burke's origin
we can't say the same for William Harris his life before and after this whole story is a little mysterious but
some of it's questionable we can find bits and pieces of it but by most accounts he was born in Ireland in the
early 1790s according to George McGregor who is the author of um a history surrounding this case and the
resurrectionist times and movement okay um hair was quote brought up without any
education or proper moral training and rapidly slipped into a vagabonding kind of Life his temper was brutal and
ferocious and when he was in liquor he was on perfectly unbearable oh no uh like his later pal Burke William Hare
left Ireland for Scotland in late 1817 or maybe early 1818 and he found work as a lumper at the docks in hopetone what's
that basically Lumbers unloaded the shipments they were just called lumpers which is hilarious uh but in the it was
1818 during his early days of working at the canal that William Burke met Helen McDougall she was a widower at a very
young age and McDougall had two children to support so she took up with Burke in
Madison and the couple lived for all intents and purposes as a married couple I was going to say they just couldn't
get married because he already had a wife back although they would remain together for the decade leading up to
Burke's eventual death it seems they never really had a uh loving or nice relationship they both were heavy
drinkers they fought constantly their Arrangement seemed like it was tolerable and acceptable to both of them but it
wasn't like a lovely situation out of convenience yeah which is unfortunate for everybody especially the kids yeah
and due to economic instability Burke and McDonald Dougal moved around a lot and eventually made their way to
Edinburgh in 1827. there they took up residence in a boarding house in portsburgh portsburgh excuse me where
Burke had planned to set up a cobbler shop the home was actually owned by ding ding
ding William Hare I knew it and Margaret Laird so I wish it was Lair Lair and hair layer and hair uh Burke had
actually William Burke had met Margaret Laird a few months before actually so he
knew her that's how they got the room at the boarding house and Laird had convinced Burke and McDougall to move
into the boarding house she had inherited from her previous husband who had died I think two years earlier
everybody dying it's that time you know yeah like many accommodations in edinburgh's
Westport at the time the boarding house was not great yeah it was known as Tanner's close
um it catered to poor immigrants who'd come to the city looking for work so they didn't they were not treated well
you know so this house was not well maintained it was what historians have since described as dirty low and
wretched awesome the rooms of these boarding houses were filled with a ton of beds as many beds as you could get
Windows were at Street levels so they looked directly in so there was no privacy
um but there was one smaller room at the back of this boarding house that had only one window looking out over a
pigsty nice so you know we're actually moving on outside um and this is actually the particular
setting where a lot of the crimes of Birkin Hare would eventually unfold looking out over a pigsty oh God that's
awful yeah it's giving Willy picked in yeah it's not great so it would be easy and probably reasonable to assume that
body snatching for profit was the work of lazy men hoping to get rich on a very short night of work yeah but like we
said before that's not necessarily true in the case of Birkin hair both were very hard workers like that is one thing
you can say about them that's what it sounds like they actually continued to work their respective trades Burke was a
cobbler and hair was a Boatman or a Salesman and to keep up with appearances even after they were selling bodies and
in fact looking at the year where their spree began author of broken hair broken
hair the book Owen Dudley Edwards describes them as quote excellent examples of immigrant Enterprise whose
ultimate business diligently answered the needs of the host culture basically despite the horrific acts and very
ghoulish nature of the business that they were entering Birkin hair saw need for cadavers and were able to meet the
need through hard work and Ingenuity making them a good representation of work ethic at first
keywords at first at first but then because remember we are talking about a time where people are desperate we're
talking about a time where people are living in [ __ ] terrible conditions especially immigrants yeah we are
talking about people just desperate to get enough food on the table for their family or feed their you know feed their
kids keep a roof over the kids house those are the people that would turn to this for quick money yeah
Birkin hair in the beginning we're doing just that yeah but then they turn to murder and that's not okay I'm not
saying the grave robbing is okay I'm saying that desperation is a part of this story totally in the
beginning right this is where it ends this is where the desperation Meeker working you know living conditions all
this stuff that's where we there's always a line we're drawing a line right here so nobody say that I'm saying that
it's fine that you murder people for medical schools I'm saying that right now no don't say that this is where it
ends not okay so again this is before [ __ ] got really real oh so Burke hair and their women Laird and McDougall
we're all trying to make at least a slightly on honest living again they were working at Burke was a cobbler hair
was a Boatman Laird was a landlady and McDougall was selling Burke's shoes Okay so they were all working together they
were all working an honest living but around November 29 1827 things turned nefarious and then imagine saying that
you had a pair of Burke shoes yeah I bet sales went down that'd be wild now this
evening one of Laird's tenants who was an aged pensioner that's how he's described named Donald he died in the
house sure and he died of natural cause oh okay he actually did this is one where he actually did
um some sources say he died of dropsy which is edema um and it that was honestly so this was
often the case for pensioners and transients at the time Donald was live was on living credit
which means he had an arrangement with Laird that he would pay for his um living his the roof over his head
when his pension came okay he would receive that quarterly but unfortunately Donald had died before receiving his
next pension so Laird and Hare had also loaned him money at one point so they are like the the runners of the sporting
house obviously they'd loaned him money they were letting him live on this like you pay me when your pension comes so
now he's gone they're not getting the pension they're not getting their money back so he actually owed them a fairly
large sum of money which is not like a bad thing they they loaned him the money yeah everything was fine it was on the
up and up they were now expected to Forfeit that but in his confession later given after
his arrest Burke explained that hair had informed the authorities of the man's death as you should and he was hoping
that if nothing else they would just take the body out and the Paris Parish would pay for the burial because he was
like not only am I not getting paid for the living expenses I'm not getting the money back that we loaned him and now
I'm expected to bury this guy oh but he would have been expensive to pay for the
burial so he was like I'm not doing that so he called the authorities being like
you just got to take him out of here yeah and again the parish would hopefully pay for it okay so they waited
because they were like sure we'll come pick him up and they waited for the coffin to come and hair continued to be
really pissed and bummed about the Lost income and expenses that he wasn't going
to get back and this is when Burke suggested why don't we just sell the body to the surgeon for the purposes of
dissection because he's got no one around he's got no family well that's really we can't pay for him he owes us
money anyways again I'm not saying this me I'm saying this is what they were thinking right right so they're thinking
you know and although the practice was illegal and very seriously discouraged from
social speaking a lot of people were doing it Burke had extensive experience experience with medical practitioners
from his days in the militia and he knew that they were often willing to pay a pretty good sum for a recently deceased
body that didn't have signs of trauma so he's looking to get his money back so they talked a little bit about it and it
was decided that they were going to sell Donald's body and recoup pair's losses but they are how he saw it didn't they
already call the people to come pick him up well this so this is what ended up happening because when I read that too I
was like what did you tell those people that came yeah they were just coming to drop off the coffin they hadn't even
arranged yet for the parish to bury him okay but these authorities were coming to bring the coffin gotcha gotcha so
they figured they could recoup pair's losses get this whole thing taken care of get him out of the house get a new
person and there you go and they said Burke was the one that was going to do the negotiating for the price and two
days later when the coffin was delivered birkenhair stood by they watched as the
delivery men loaded the body into the car often nailed it shut then they left and it was going to be picked up by
whoever was going to transfer it to the cemetery but as soon as those people were out of sight
broken hair Pride open the lid removed Donald's body they hid it in a nearby bed and
they uh stuffed things in the casket that would uh make it heavier mimic the weight of a human being oh my God
exactly I think they used Tanner's bark that they collected from the backyard then they resealed it and then they had
it picked up to be interred at the West churchyard [ __ ] so it was a filled casket of something else that was
interred oh my God so with the first part of the plan success in their eyes broken hair next set about finding a
buyer for Donald's body so they first stopped at the surgical college and they asked a student where they could find Dr
Monroe who they assumed they would want to see for selling a body he was like the head guy right so the student gave
them directions to Monroe's home but through a series of like weird really weird mistakes and coincidences
they instead found themselves at another doctor's home it wasn't intentional okay
this doctor was Dr Robert Knox who was I don't know if you remember him from the beginning that's what he talked
about right I thought you said his name he was from the top of the episode um he was a private Anatomy teacher who
had the most students and they used the most bodies in the city okay so they just happened to come across this guy
when they were looking for another doctor right and they've come across the doctor who needs the most bodies that
they can get I see so whether or not things would have been different if they had come to Monroe's door
or some other teacher that had some more snorkels there you go we don't know right maybe honestly I
think most doctors at the time would have taken this body they were just because of the way [ __ ] was but who
knows things could have been different we'll never know if they were turned away and they couldn't find anything
they didn't get paid for it I think they would have ended up murdering people for
some other reason right later down the line because I don't think these are good men so I think it would have gone
down that road differently but I think it could have been a different story okay but whatever Knox was desperate for
bodies so he was thrilled by this offer yeah so he gave the men 10 Shillings for
Donald's corpse this one transaction was the thing that set into motion the awful
chain of events that was going to happen after this the deaths of at least 16 people 16 in one of the worst crimes
freeze in Scottish history wow so until this point birkenhair's only crime and this is what I was talking about before
if they committed one at all in the eye of the time was unlawful disinterment okay because they had they hadn't killed
him right they hadn't done any that's all they had died yeah however they hadn't actually exhumed the
man's body they only sold this corpse so it's unclear whether there was even a crime here at all because they didn't
because technically nobody had really done he was never buried yeah unlawful disinterment was digging up a body grave
robbing rice man was never buried because nobody thought they would have to make another law of like hey if you
know someone that died yeah like this so there's like a a loopy hole here that I
think they were banking on but technically I wonder if they could have been charged with disinterment because
he was in the coffin and they took him out of his car and that's what I wondered yeah I wondered if maybe who
knows I couldn't I didn't find what the specific language of the um crime would be sure but I wonder that's a that's a
very good point because I wonder if them prying open that coffin even though he was only in there for a moment you're
disintering him you are yeah you know like technically so I I guess it would be like how a jury would see it yeah so
it's like you can't you can look at this as like all right they haven't murdered
anyone yet but then you also look at it and go well maybe you did commit a crime
here yeah you disturbed ability committed an ethical crime but like a technical crime like a crime perhaps
yeah but either way the what would be looked at at the time as a pretty petty crime that they had
just committed like somebody died naturally in their home they owed these people a debt that they
didn't pay they were put in a coffin these people just took them out of the coffin and
sold them for that debt yeah at the time that would be like wow that was [ __ ] up but like that's really all that would
happen so that being such in the in the eyes of the time of petty crime makes it
really surprising how brutal and quick they escalated from that so they probably like you were just saying like
you were like oh I think they would have done it anyway I think you're right because it's like you don't just go from
that to this what they end up doing oh no it's just it's one thing to sell the body of a man who dies by natural causes
again and settling you with getting rid of the body at the time it's quite another
thing to systematically seek out a particular type of victim and murder them purely to be paid right that is a
very different series of girls yeah that's you're so it's kind of like a Hitman and I think that point yeah and I
think that's why it's so shocking the crimes have broken hair because it is such a
like they went so quickly and just really brutality um and to sell a body outside of proper
channels well in poor taste is in again entirely understandable given the impoverished circumstances of Scotland's
immigrant working class at the time but that next step would never be murder for
most of these people like most of these people that would be the end of it it would be tough you're gonna have trouble
sleeping at night with what you did but you didn't murder anybody yeah but that's what that's why this also doesn't
make sense I'm like there's got to be more in here that we don't know about and people do think there are more
murders that we don't know about from them really that maybe aren't even tied to this medical industry that like
because it really there's not a lot of sense here for this jump one I wonder too if there's murders that they
couldn't have used the bodies because they had to be more pristine exactly I wonder there's got to be more right now
when it comes to identifying the first victim of Birkin hair there is a little bit of a discrepancy with their
confessions but you just work with what you have because this was a long time ago according to Burke the first victim
of their scheme was Abigail Simpson she was a minor Hawker which is like a like they would Hawk things you know what I
mean like oh oh oh I see like did you say Throw yeah like [Music] um but she was a minor Hawker from the
nearby Village of Gilmerton who stopped at the boarding house for an evening in hair's confession he identifies the
first victim as a man named Joseph so Joseph was a Miller who was also staying at the boarding house at the time and
was very ill with a fever oh it's so they both died so it's like whether they were first or not well they
probably killed so many people that that's why there's a discrepancy and we kind of go with hare's confession here
because Harry's confession was the most consistent and unchanging oh Goldbergs would kind of jump around a little bit
um it's generally generally believed that hair's version of events is probably the most accurate
um it also makes more sense that they went from the first crime of somebody dying naturally in them just selling the
body to maybe killing someone who is ill already and dying yeah it does make more
sense if we want to make any sense out of it but either way it's [ __ ] but I'm just trying to make some sense of the
escalation here yeah now it was in late January or early February 1828 just a month or two after having sold the body
of pension or Donald that Joseph the Miller became very ill with a fever that I think made him stay in bed he couldn't
get out of bed uh he was unable to speak he was like delusional oh God and fearful of having a man so very
close to death in their home Laird so um though the other owner of the boarding house
she was eager to get rid of this man as soon as possible yeah and she had no idea how to go about
doing it she she wasn't staying until like let's kill him she was just like we gotta get him out of here because I
don't want him to die in my boarding house which is oh my God that is the like mentality and brutality and
callousness of the time no it's true it's get it I keep saying it's giving it reminds me a lot of the Jack the Ripper
when you hear like you can't die in my boarding house you know like it wasn't even it's foreign to us but at the time
that was it was desperation there was such a lack of empathy there was and it was it was a lack of empathy that was
beaten into people like this it wasn't a lack of empathy that there was something
you know like yeah exactly it was like no this was like beaten into people who just were treated like [ __ ] scum
twazas Harry would say a sign of the times it truly was a sign of the times but sensing so this so this was
happening Laird is a little like what do we do here yeah sensing another opportunity to make a quick buck and
hair began discussing the best ways to get rid of this man woof ultimately they decided they should suffocate him oh yes
Scottish historians Sir Walter Scott suggested that rather than a giant like crazy Olympic leap from
opportunistic body snatcher to Cold's blooded killer this killing might be that like I said that like line in
between yep the gray area sent them into that whole thing like the the really dark area because they would frame it as
a mercy killing right and an act to protect the rep the reputation of hair and Laird's sporting house because you
don't want people dying in your boarding house people are going to hear about it
right that's how they framed it and that's how they were kind of taking it as that like little transition period
between being a totally just shitty grave robber and being a [ __ ] life killer the cold
blooded killer so whatever the case it was here that Burke's preferred method of killing was
established he placed his hand over Joseph's mouth and nose and he instructed hair to lay across the man's
chest to prevent flailing and to make it harder for him and to breathe wow and that's how they can do it like hand over
mouth and nose the other one would lay on the chest so it was a very brutal way of killing someone very scary and
terrifying and awful for the person that was being killed yeah now before the evolution of modern forensics this
murder method which had become known later as birking oh I don't like that at all yeah it was very ideal for what they
needed to do because it wasn't leaving anything right and there was again without the modern forensics we have
that somebody could tell when somebody is suffocated right right you couldn't tell back then hit one hand over the
nose and mouth or sometimes they would force the jaw shut uh it was very difficult if not
impossible for the victim to draw any breath that way and then the weight of the second man on
the victim's chest prevented the diagram of diaphragm and lungs from expanding so
it was very fast it was effective for what they were trying to do and there were no visible signs of trauma that
would affect the price that Knox was going to offer is there particular hemorrhaging when
you get suffocated yeah but they just didn't know what that was they didn't know what that was that was not a a very
common thing that they would be like oh you suffocated this person um this technique was used in the murder
of Abigail Simpson very shortly after this or what we believe was shortly after this
according to Burke's confession Abigail Simpson had arrived at the boarding house on February 11th and quote was
decoyed in by hair and his wife the three spent the evening drinking and after several drinks uh Simpson began
talking about how difficult it had been to support her daughter as a single mother oh God that's what makes this
even worse to me is like she literally brought that Force to you well in like you spent hours drinking with her and
got to know her yeah like then did whatever you did and got to know that she was talking about how hard her life
was how she had a child that's fine she was Raising that child by herself like you're an [ __ ] now you're just gonna
like orphan a baby yeah so at some point hair told Abigail that he was a single man and suggested that he would marry
her and provide financial support yeah right which convinced her to stay the night at least
the next day Abigail was violently ill and was vomiting from drinking the night before so hair gave her quote some
Porter and whiskey which caused her to become so intoxicated that she passed out in the
bed in the back room do you think were doing anything to her drinks beforehand I could see that for sure but there's no
indication of it like no like you know official indications but I could see that happening for sure yeah but she
passed out on that bed in the back room the one that overlooks the Pigs die and once she'd passed out Burke entered the
room and then he laid across her legs and feet while hair covered her nose and mouth with his hand until she suffocated
so scary when the sun had gone down and it was darker outside They carried her body to knox's dissecting room where he
paid them 10 ceilings for the body and remember Knox isn't asking where they're getting these bodies from see that's the
problem because it's you're turning a blind eye yeah like sure the blindest device um and there's a point which I
believe we're probably gonna get to him part two where there's one that you're like you turned a real Blind Eye on that
one yeah so the pair's third victim uh which Burke mentioned in his confession he called him simply an Englishman a
Nader of Cheshire uh he said not even a name just an Englishman yeah he was killed under
circumstances that were pretty similar to Joseph the Miller so the man was described as being 40 years old and he
used to sell spunks in Edinburgh he's got spunk what we could see is that spunks are like some kind of like a
woody Tinder okay I don't know why it's called spunks but at the time that he met broken hair he was unemployed
and he'd come to the boarding house and when he'd come to the boarding house he appeared to be ill he was suffering from
jaundice they believe um just like the others the man was taken to the private back room near the
pigsty he was smothered and then the body was removed once it got dark that night taken to Knox paid him out 10
Shillings and didn't ask any questions now if there was any kind of emotional conflict over the murders of these three
the first three victims neither Burke nor hair seems to have indicated any kind of like you know emotional turmoil
guilt any kind of remorse so they probably would have murdered even if it weren't for the money they seemed like
they were total they just went about their lives though nothing was affecting them they didn't seem off to people
around them like you know how you'll hear that sometimes like I don't know we seemed off like you know he didn't none
of them seemed off and the people that were around these schemes meaning the two women in The Boarding House
specifically Laird they didn't seem like they were really asking questions either oh I don't like
that at all yeah and what would happen was Burke would explain to Dr Knox that the men had come across these bodies
either through a relative or some kind of close you know a relative a personal friend or some
kind of acquaintance there's always close to them but not close to them far enough away where it wasn't weird yeah
it was always like that arm's length like I know this person who knows this person but and obviously that's a very
flimsy explanation like he like Knox is like oh yeah you got another one and they're like oh yeah like my cousin's
brother's friend you know he died and why not he said it was fine and Knox is just like okay like I don't need to ask
anything else I was like maybe ask like two questions at least and then wildly in at least one of the murders Abigail
Simpson Margaret Laird is implicated in that crime she was drinking with them she
knew what was going on she was in the house when it happened like she was at the very least to an active participant
in luring Abigail into the house that's what I was going to ask I had a feeling at some point she was going to be
involved in this all and author of the anatomy murders the book of another book about this case which will like um we'll
put them in the sources Lisa Rosner she said the earnings for each body were split three ways with hair getting six
Burke getting four and Laird getting one so she was an active participant weird and and active in the sense like she got
one shilling because she was luring or getting them drunk and turning a blind eye not actively like physically
murdering someone but she was an accessory yeah so Burke and McDougall who is Burke's lady Yup she's the other
piece of this four-person puzzle Burke maintained until his death that McDougall knew nothing of these murders
well you don't really hear much about her other than nope he married her and that's why she was never really and she
wasn't included in the split either like that I split three ways it wasn't split four and she would have been in it
if she was part of it and she wasn't so interesting that's interesting or did hair get more because and like like she
she was cut into his like his Shillings were part of her earnings her earnings it absolutely could have been the case
because it's like how because hair is coming home with all this money and you're not wondering where it's coming
from well that's the thing I don't think she had a physical part in it I don't even think she had really the physical
part that Laird did but she had to know something was awry like he's getting money somewhere like you said exactly
she's got to be asking where's this coming right and who knows maybe he again these people are good liars like
he could have said anything oh I did some extra work at The Boarding House these guys are [ __ ] bags so it's like
you know you're with a [ __ ] bag you know he's not getting money via wholesome means like come on like
you gotta know I'm sure you don't know that this is what's going on but then at the same time you're in the boarding
house true you're not seeing anything I don't know yeah maybe she just kept quiet but he maintained Burke was very
clear till his death said she knew nothing about it did not participate in it had nothing to do with it damn or
hair right um yeah sorry yeah um but for the most part Burke and Hare chose their victims like most serial
killers choose their victims they were typically transients so it was like one of those things and honestly
marginalized people they would pick so it was like the less dead fewer social connect connections people that weren't
going to be in their opinion missed right um there are however a few exceptions to
this method that they went with um their fourth victim Mary Patterson was definitely going to be missed she
was known by a lot of people in town by face and name according to her landlord lady Mary quote much was quote much
given to drink and had even been jailed or uh for at least 10 days the previous year for being drunk disorderly and
creating a Crowd Oh which meant she was also known to police which is another reason to not pick this person see it
now this is where I wonder if they were escalating and they wanted some more excitement out of it that's the thing
like this wasn't just financially profitable but they wanted a little more right now on the evening of April 8th
the Mary went out to a public house with her friend and roommate Janet Brown the
two of them ran into William Burke so he was apparently liking the two ladies and he ordered a bottle of
whiskey and invited them to join him at his table because these really good guys yeah
totally during the trial Janet Brown the friend said that that Burke's Advantage
Vance has made her uncomfortable and she was actually very reluctant to join him
but Mary was quote always a forward Fearless disposition and had no reservations so they stayed there they
drank with him all night the following morning Burke took both women to the nearby Home of his brother Constantine
there they had a big breakfast they drank two more bottles of whiskey [ __ ] and after that Mary passed out and she
was moved to a small bed while Burke and Hare went out to get more food and more
alcohol okay several hours later the scene was discovered by Helen McDougall she was pissed to find Burke hanging out
with two women who he was clearly like wooing yeah and so they began arguing the couple okay and during this it got
violent and during this whole thing Burke hit her hard enough to open a huge gash on her forehead oh my God yeah like
pieces of absolute [ __ ] and Janet Brown the friend of Mary would later tell the
court that she was quote much alarmed by their proceedings and tried to wake her
friend Mary so they could get the hell out of there yeah but Burke ushered her out the door before she could wake up
her friend what the [ __ ] so even though he wouldn't let her go wake her friend
she was like okay well I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna get her later yeah I'm gonna get her and she said return
within a half an hour to get her now brown is gone Janet Brown she's out of the house and McDougall is sitting in
the adjacent room remember McDougall supposedly doesn't know anything about this she's
turning a blind eye okay and Burke and Hare decided to employ their usual method of Suffocation and they killed
Mary Patterson so when Janet Brown came back a half an hour later to remember this isn't even
the boarding house this is Constantine's house right this is the brother she comes back a little while later and
she's told that Mary had gone out to town with Burke and it was unknown when they would return
okay so she was like um I don't know about that so she came back to the house again several hours later but this time
she was told that Mary and Burke had never returned what okay so Janet Brown was like um I'm gonna come back again so
she returned back later and even reported Mary's disappearance to the police but because of their low social
status and having a reputation of being heavy Drinkers and you know other unsavory in the time behaviors the
report wasn't taken seriously at all and it was never investigated good so they just didn't investigate it we're like
well that's probably fun that's really shitty now four or five hours after killing Mary Patterson the two men
loaded her body into a large tea crate and They carried it over to knox's dissection room when they got there with
the body one of knox's assistants recognized Mary from town and asked about how they'd come into
possession of her body right to which Burke replied that he'd purchased it from an old woman at the back of
Canongate so the student at Dr knox's School were like what the [ __ ] but they were also so
taken with Mary's Beauty they said that she was quote so handsome a figure and well-shaped in body and limbs that the
professor called in a local painter to create a portrait of her instead of inquiring further y'all as to how this
man these two men are saying they bought this woman's body from a woman behind somewhere they're like yeah that
probably checks out she's so hot though we should get a painter in here and we should get a [ __ ] portrait taken of
her like wow what oh and what's crazy is before he painted her the painter asked
Burke to cut off the woman's hair till they cut off some of the hair gave him a pair of scissors to do it and
before leaving Knox gave birth eight Shillings and allowed him to keep the two and a half Shillings that were found
clutched in Mary's hand when she arrives I have to go at this point in time yep I
actually have to leave yep so the murder of Mary Patterson was definitely a large departure from
birkenhair's pattern yeah Not only was the woman known to tons of people in town and they actually she was
recognized immediately but other unlike other victims he'd been seen socializing
with her at a public house for hours yeah like even gone so far as to seduce her and go back to his brother's house
with her like that's a lot of like Brazen yeah a lot of a lot of eyes on you and the surprisingly limited details
of the murder that basically were only provided by Burke's confession um they it suggests that Burke kind of
felt differently about this killing than he did to others because the way he described this one was different
the amount of time he spent with the victim was different people are like what the [ __ ] happened there like it's a
that's a weird departure and the you know the weird intimacy that were shared was shared between Burke and Patterson
put the scheme and both of their freedom at risk to be honest like Burke really put them in a really bad position here
one might call it a pickle a very big pickle they again they had been seen multiple places by multiple people
countless people and she was well known she was well known people know her by name and face and the last place she's
seen alive is that Constantine Burke's home right like Burke's own brother that does how that doesn't
the fact that they weren't arrested really can only be explained by really bad policing and a complete disinterest
in the safety and Welfare of the lower social classes here totally because even her friend knows the last two people she
was seen with and they're like yeah and we're telling the authorities sorry yeah
they were just like yeah I don't know like that sucks to suck I guess like what the [ __ ]
so given the inconsistencies in their confessions and the namelessness of most of their victims it's pretty impossible
to create like a really accurate chronology chronology chronological order of the murders committed between
April and October 1828. instead you can you can like group them together to kind
of form an approximate picture I would say of when the really big things happened
Burke's friendliness with Mary Patterson had caused a number of minor problems for the pair who whether they knew it or
not made the decision to return to the more convenient and less familiar victims I don't know if that was a
conscious effort like they were like we can't do that again or they just did it because they were like well that was
attic right and just like didn't think about it but either way they went back to the beginning where it was like
people they didn't think were going to be missed very well now the first of these victims unfortunately was
Elizabeth haldane who showed up at Harris boarding house sometime in early spring of 1828. he knew nothing more
about her than her name but he described her as quote a stout old woman she had but one tooth in her mouth and that was
a very large one in the front oh that's how he described her that's [ __ ] now Burke found the woman sleeping off drink
in a pile of straw in the stable that's so sad and retrieved more alcohol to give to her once she was sufficiently
drunk and very unstable and unable to take care of herself they suffocated her with the usual Manner and left her in
the barn until the following day and that's when they took her body to Knox a few months later Elizabeth haldane's
daughter no Margaret was also murdered by Burke what and was murdered by Burke alone and did they did he know that
there was a connection there so that's the thing we're not really sure so she was briefly staying at the boarding
house and this murder is one that you can read a lot about and it gets distorted a lot through a lot of
fictional accounts for the murder um a lot of them portray her as like this daughter searching for her mother
and then the woman's Killers get the jump on her before she can find them out like this really like intensified you
know detective Noir kind of thing yes in reality Burke described marbet as someone quote of idol habits and much
given to drinking and it's really likely that they met at a public house or just
somewhere else okay he enticed her back to the boarding house with drink so just
a terrible one she passed out laid uh Burke laid her face down on the bed and pressed her face until the bed until she
suffocated Jesus and it really does seem like purely coincidence that she had been killed by the same Killers who
killed her mother that is so beyond bizarre it really is and tragic it's so sad now around the same time of Margaret
haldane's murder Burke had gone into town looking for another victim and that's there that he made friends with a
frail elderly man who he believed was the perfect fit for the next victim but just as Burke was about to invite
the man back to the boarding house he spotted what he would describe to police as quote an old woman and a dumb boy her
grandson from Glasgow oh through conversation he learned that the woman and child were Irish and had walked from
Glasgow to Edinburgh they were looking for shelter along the road like um during the night yeah and the woman was
not from this area and was completely unfamiliar with Edinburgh she's lost and so this made them ideal victims to him
because no one Edinburgh doesn't know her either exactly so the elderly man with who Burke was talking he just kind
of abandoned that whole thing he was like well you were going to be next which I can't imagine wow Batman someone
was with him yeah but he invited the woman and boy back to the lodging house now by most accounts the woman had been
traveling to Edinburgh to visit friends and was told by Burke that her friends resided at The Boarding House of his
friend William Burke or excuse me William hair once they'd reached the boarding house and they
settled in Burke brought out the bottle of liquor which immediately they got drunk the woman retired to bed for the
evening and according to George McGregor the author the two killers snuck into the room quote at the dead hour of the
night and she was murdered by the human ghouls while Burke and Hare were murdering the
old woman her grandson was in an adjoining room with Laird and McDougall who are attempting to soothe his
agitation over his grandmother's absence McDougall was there uh-huh unsure of what to do the men decided
they needed to get rid of him as well so they suffocated him as well and looted both bodies into an old Herring barrel
and then Burke was quick to note that the ball that the barrel was quote perfectly dry there was no brine in it
oh just in case you were worried about that so that was a Briny Barrel I would have
been pissed but I mean I'm pissed either way like hello but so that implicates McDougall now too so goodbye and I feel
later sitting there going she has nothing to do with it she didn't know anything
so what did she never she never said like hey what happened to that little boy that I was [ __ ] calming down
while you murdered his grandma in the Next Room exactly like this is just hi Eric yep that's how I feel now later
that morning the two men tried to transport the barrel to knox's dissection room by horse and cart but
after a few miles the horse refused to go any further because the horse was like you guys are [ __ ] and I'm not
doing this yeah the horse was like I'm not being implicated in this [ __ ] so I guess they got a Porter's cart from a
nearby shop and pushed it the rest of the way they got to knox's Burke carried the barrel the remaining distance to the
dissection room the students struggled to get the bodies out of the barrel because they were so stiff and cold and
as a result Knox paid them a slightly reduced rate nice of 16 Shillings now according to Burke the pair shot the
horse on their return to the boarding house because it wouldn't walk any further I did not need to know that so
there like the worst kind of people soulless women children elderly animals they
don't give a fish no there's no line with them and shortly after the murder of this
woman and her grandson birkenhair murdered a cinder gatherer that Burke thought maybe went by the name Effie
maybe possibly who knows during the spring and summer months most laborers left the city to work in the farms and
Fields that surround the city and this kind of limited Birkin Harris victim pool during that time because laborers
are gone so according to Lisa Rosner the author Effie was a hawker who would occasionally sell odds and ends
door-to-door and she was actually known to Burke like Burke knew her and because
she had sold like bits of leather to him I think for you says like um in his cobbling business that's crazy and
despite being known to both the killers and many people in town as well the pair
enticed Effie into the barn with alcohol and they said you can rest in the barn as well and once she had fallen asleep
they quote laid a cloth over her and suffocated her as they did the others and then they transported her to knox's
dissection room where they were paid 10 Shillings for the body oh my God and that is where we're going to end for
part one of broken hair uh good when we return we are going to talk about the final
murders things are gonna go awry for the two of them we're gonna talk about how they were caught and we're going to talk
about what happened to them I'm excited yeah it's I'm excited to talk about what
happens to them like and when they get caught and sentenced to prison because I'm like you need to be caught at this
point and again like thinking about like um at the very least two people but most
likely a group of people that are willing to do this kind of [ __ ] and like the most vulnerable people too the most
vulnerable vulnerable people and like two just yucky scary terrible couples oh it always freaks me out when couples
yeah I don't like it yeah so this is this is quite a tale and a real sign of the times for real
but that is part one of Birkin hair well thanks for listening to that guys hope you keep listening and we hope you keep
it weird but not this weird because that's too weird no it's not that time anymore or guys don't go gray Robin it's
not that time [Music] foreign [Music]

Throughout the first three decades of the nineteenth century, doctors and medical schools across Europe struggled to find adequate supplies of bodies that could be used for the purposes of teaching in a medical theater. The outsized demand for fresh cadavers led to the rise of “resurrection men"", AKA Graverobbers. Disgusting duo William Burke and William Hare found what they believed to be a wildly easy way to provide doctors with a steady stream of recently deceased bodies. In the end, they brutally killed at least sixteen people. The crimes left a chilling mark on Edinburgh specifically, and all of Scotland in the end.

Thank you to Dave White for research assistance.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Brief Summary

Burke and Hare's gruesome murders of vulnerable victims for medical cadavers in 19th century Edinburgh are detailed in this episode.

Key points

Welcome Spring. Elena and Ash discuss their eagerness for spring after a tough winter.
Resurrection Men. The rise of grave robbers during the 19th century due to a shortage of bodies.
Galvanism and the Macabre. Exploring the bizarre experiments conducted on corpses in the name of science.
Burke and Hare's Descent into Darkness. Burke and Hare's initial crime of selling a body escalates into murder for profit.
The Brutality of Body Snatching. Burke and Hare's transition from grave robbers to murderers raises chilling questions about morality.
The Tragic Fate of Abigail Simpson. Abigail's story highlights the callousness of her murderers and the desperation of her life.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

What was called Resurrection men.

Elena introduces the term used for grave robbers in the medical field.

6:01WatchMar 28, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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