A Tale of William Burke and William Hare

I would like to take you back in time , to the 19th Century, around 1827, to Edinburgh, a small town off the out skirts of Scottland. Where a man named William Burke and William Hare became fellow partners and began and odd and grusome killing spree that shocked Scottland and many other surrounding areas. Some say they were known as the “The Graverobbers”, but it wasent actually proven if they had actually robbed any graves. They went on to lead a series of 16 murders, spanning from a peroid of just under a year.

William Burke had traveld to Scottland to work on the Union Canal, it is there that he met a young lady by the name of Helen McDougal. They left Scottland together to journey to Edinburgh, where they had to work on farms,sell old clothes and mend shoes just to earn enough money to eat on. WIliam Hare had also moved to Scottland to work on the Union Canal, after the Canal was completed Hare moved to Edinburgh and found cheap lodging in a boarding house in a small area called West Prot . The owner was ill and soon would pass away, Hare provided moral support and comfort for the owners wife Margret and not shortly after his passing the two were living as common-law husband and wife, taking care of the Boarding house needs. The four of them met by chance one day when Burke and Helen were out and ran into Margaret Hare and she invited them back to the boarding house for dirnks and to introduced them to her husband William Hare. It wasent too long after that, that they were paying lodgers of the Hares. They had began a freindship of some sort you could say, loved to drink, and easy money making schemes no matter what method they had to use. During this time there was an increase in the number of students wanting anamotacial training and the medical classrooms soon became full to capisity. The anatomy classes were taught by a popular anatomists named Dr. Knoxx.ad the sepecial requirements of a corpse for lecture and demonstration purposes. The law provided that only the bodies of recently executed criminals could be used, due to religious beliefs. This lead to a shortage of cadavers for the medical students at the University. This in turn lead to the tail of the so called “Grave robbers”, and soon became the occupation of many low-life characters. When the University would receive

a corpse from someone not authorized to transport and they suspected that they were those from graves, theystill said nothing, in oder to keep the anatomy classes full of PAYING students. Kind of a “No questions asked” type of thing. It wasent just Burke and Hare, it dates back as far as the 1700's , but what makes them different is that there corpses werent from the graves at all, they were murdered by a special form of strangulation that Burke and Hare had perfected. It wasent until an older gentlemen by the name of Donald that had been staying in the Boarding house had suddenly became ill and died, that Burke and Hare became interested in taking advantage of the dieing need for corpse at the University. Hare was outraged by the death of Donald and not at the fact that this man had died, but because she still owed him 4pounds in rent. Hare talked it over with Burke and the two realized what had to be done. They would take the corpse before the funeral and replace the weight with some bark and sand, and then take the body to the Anatomy office of Dr. Robert