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The subsequent investigation revealed that 16 people had been killed in a 12 month period from November 18 27 to November 1st. Early hours of the morning. Eighteen twenty eight and all of the bodies had been sold to the anatomy lecturer Dr. Robert Knox. The two men involved were arrested here they are. This is William Burke and this is William William hair. Hence the name Burke in him murders. Also arrested was the woman Burke lived with us his wife for though technically they weren't married. Helen McDougal and also Margaret Herr William Harry's wife. The prosecution convinced William Hare and his wife to turn prosecution witnesses in exchange for immunity. Basically they peached on their friends. Burke and McDougal were tried. McDougal was the verdict against McDougal was was found to be not proven.

That's a verdict distinctive to Scots law it counts as an acquittal so she was released. But Burke was found guilty. He was hanged in the public square. And then he was given over to the anatomy professors to be dissected in turn. William hare and Margaret hare as well got away scot free. Now the story has been told and retold. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a short story about it called the Body Snatcher that's been turned into a number of movies the most famous is called the Body Snatcher. It has Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in it. It has turned up in CSI in an episode called burped appropriately enough. I'll be explaining what working is as we go along and now actually John Landis I understand is making a movie about it as well a comedy which will be very interesting to see. I mean historian of medicine and I got interested in this because of the medical angle the bodies being sold for to an anatomy professor for dissection. But once I started to work on it I found out that there were all kinds of

archives and manuscripts and recollections that had not been looked at before. So what I'm going to do today is I'm going to focus in on one of the victims and it's my favorite story and it's also the historical detective work that I did is some of the fav my favorite research that I did for the for the case I should explain that what I do in the book is I go around the year with Burke and Hare cadaver by cadaver. So we are now on actually the fifth murder victim I'm going to first locate you in place. This is en route in the 19th century. And where we're are is we're in a balloon perched high above the old town which is one of the most obvious landmarks. How is West Port where Burke and Hare lived and which incident if you're up on serial killer jargon their comfort zone with them

here in the west part of town again kind of on the western road towards Glasgow but the action for today's story is going to take place. The stench in of the Royal Mile and in the 1820s it decidedly if the area there was some fashionable districts and historic districts. But it's also where a certain amount of the crime in the institutions of poverty were held so that locates us in space we're going to now do is locate us in time. The first cadaver who actually died of natural causes was sold to Robert Knox in November 18 27. Then there were four murders and were now on the fifth murder in the fifth cadaver Coincidentally I talk about it in my fifth chapter which is called based on a true story. It tells the story of Mary Patterson which is one of the earliest stories I ever heard about Burke and Hare. I was new in Edinburgh I was visiting a friend who was taking me around who told me oh no. And then there was Burke and Hare these these notorious murderers and they were caught. I was told when

a beautiful prostitute disappeared in Edinburgh and she was recognised by her student lover the next morning as she lay on the dissecting table. So that's the story. And again it's a famous story it's been told over and over and I'm now going to read from my book just a little bit to kind of set the stage of what happened to her. And then I'm going to again show give you a little show and tell of what happened to the story afterwards. Should I pause do you want to come sit down. You're OK. OK. The most notorious cadaver and the first to arouse conjecture arrived at Dr. Robert Knox's dissecting rooms sometime during the second or third week in April 18 20. And I'm going to ask you to remember that day. In life she had been Mary Patterson aged about 18 and she lodged with Isabella Worthington in lease. She'd been out the night before with her friend and fellow lodger Janet Brown according to Worthington. Mary was much given to drink and

Janet in her late 20s had spent 10 days the previous June in prison for being drunk disorderly and creating a crowd. And this is Edinburgh so to be drunk enough to be arrested means she was very very drunk and disorderly. Now William Burke had comparatively little to say about Paterson he actually did offer up a full confession before he was executed but he didn't have much to say about this particular cadaver. All he said at least about meeting her was he fell in with the girl Patterson and her companion in the house of his brother Constantine Burke in the Canongate. They had breakfast and he and hair disposed of her in the same manner as previous victims. Now at this point I should explain what the manner was and actually became famous enough that it was given its own name. It consisted of getting the victim very very drunk and then lying her or him down and compressing the chest so that the victim could not expand the diaphragm which is what you need to do to take a breath. Then

cover it. They also would cover the mouth and nose with their hands so that so that again the victim would suffocate. This left no marks that could have been detected by the forensic knowledge of the period because any bruises that there might be would be. Just look like any other kind of bruising that could happen to a dead body. And in fact it generally wouldn't have been bruised bruises because the victim wouldn't have been in any position to struggle. I've actually tried this on my husband. Well it's hard to find total strangers who will let me lie on their chest and try to compress it. It's not easy to do in fact because any living person really of any size will struggle. So it is in fact requires the victim to become very drunk. And that became one of the distinguishing features of the Burke and Hare victims is they had to be willing to drink. Oh my. Well that's what Burke had to say about Mary Patterson but we know more about it from Janet Brown who was the chief witness for Mary Patterson's

murder. I had a version of the testimony that she told the police was taken down and published in contemporary newspapers. It was the only eyewitness who as far as anybody knew lived to tell the tale. And her testimony form the cornerstone of all subsequent accounts. So again I'm going to go into in some detail the Describe of the journalist who interviewed her as a girl of the town we did which meant she learned at least part of her living through prostitution. She was a credible witness. Prostitution was not illegal in Great Britain and Janet Brown had no reason to hide from the authorities. Furthermore she was according to the journalist possessed of considerable intelligence. Brown had therefore spoken to the police on her own once rumors started circulating about strange disappearances in Edinburgh. And this is the story she told on the night of April 8th. She said she had Mary had been taken to the police station on the canning city watchman made a practice of admitting young women intoxicated or homeless to the police office overnight for protection. Though it's not clear whether it's for the protection of the

women or for the passers by. Mary and Janet were not charged with any offense and were released early in the morning. They went to a nearby spirit dealers for breakfast and that's where they met William Burke. His brother did live nearby and it's possible he was paying an innocent visit. But his presence in a whiskey shop early in the morning suggests a shift in his behavior. Instead of waiting for victims to come to the lodging house in the West Port he was taking a more active and predatory role in seeking them out. From this point on he and hair seem to have made it their business as Burke later said to be on the lookout for persons to murder. He may have noticed like social reformers that whiskey for breakfast poured from pipe jars and junk out of teacups was a staple among women in marginal circumstances. This they called the morning budge according to a mid century writer and they unanimously declared that they would rather pawn their last shift than want it. Indeed they said they could not do without it. They could not help it. It had become essential to them. Bird gave Janet and Mary

each a glass of rum. Then bought them each a bottle of whiskey and invited them to breakfast. Janet later claimed that she had been reluctant to go with him in contrast to Mary who was always of a forward fearless disposition. But Burke kept up a continual banter to allay her fears. He was very urgent that she should go Janet remembered saying he had a pension and could keep her handsomely and make her comfortable for life. Social breakfasts were pretty common in Edinburgh's back streets and accompanying Burke would save them the price of their own breakfast and I usually ask at this point I don't know if anybody here has ever ever gone to a party at a friends of a Friends of a friends that you don't really know. People do it all the time when they're you know again when they're of student age. They don't necessarily expect to be murdered for it. And in fact Burke didn't take the girls anywhere nefarious he took them to his brother's house where they also found Constantine's wife Elizabeth with their two sons. They had a good breakfast of tea bread eggs and Finnan Haddocks. They also

consume the two bottles of whiskey. Constantine left for work during breakfast later disclaiming all knowledge of subsequent events. I am off and out upon my lawful business he replied indignantly to Janet Brown. A few weeks later when she asked for news of her friend. How can I answer for all that takes place in my house in my absence. What had taken place by the end of the of the breakfast is that Paterson was unconscious at the table. Janet and Burke may have moved her to a small trundle bed and then they went out for more food and drink. Mary was still unconscious when they returned and she did not wake up. Even when Helen McDougal appeared on the scene and quarrelled loudly with Burke over his entertaining the two young women. McDougal had perhaps been alerted to the possibility of another victim though that was never proven. Janet became much alarmed by the proceedings and insisted that she had to leave Burke. At her request. Conductor passed McDougal she promised to return in a quarter of an hour. Well after she left she went to see a friend Mrs. Clark

and told her the whole story. Apparently as a kind of a joke. But Mrs. Clarke thought the whole thing sounded very suspicious. She sent Janet back with her maid to get Mary out of there at once. Jenny could not find the house again on her own and had to ask the shop where she had first met Burke. By the time they located Constantine Burke's residence Mary Patterson had disappeared reportedly out somewhere with William Burke. Janet sent the maid back to Mrs Clark and sat down to wait. But in fact well that's the way to seem to Mrs Clarke and she said to me back right away with instructions that Janet should get out of there at once. Fortunately for her she did as she was told. She did go back to the Canongate that evening to ask after her friend but was told she was still out with her. Janet never saw Mary Patterson again. Nor did your landlady Isabella Worthington who also went to look for her. Janet asked after Mary whenever she saw Constantine in the street. She got off to Glasgow

he told Sharon it only later admitting he didn't know where she was. How the hell can I tell about you sort of folk you here today and gone tomorrow. In fact Mary Patterson was away at Knox's dissecting rooms within four hours of her death. By early afternoon. Close. It been removed. Margaret Hare took her skirt and petticoat and they were later found in the possession of Helen McDougal. Constantine Burke knew perfectly well what had become of Mary Paterson for he later testified he had seen her body when it was put into a tee box which she helped transport to Dr Knox. He told his wife about it but not their sons who remembered seeing the two women at breakfast but didn't know what became of them. By this time Burke remembered he had grown more bold and the two brothers carried the tea chests through the streets in broad daylight. They were a great many boys about who followed them crying they were carrying a corpse but they got her safe delivered at surgeon's Square. Mary's cadaver

brought eight pounds. It was cold but not very stiff Burke said. And for the first time the staff at Knox is dissecting rooms grew uneasy. Dr. Knox wasn't there at the time. It was a student assistants who received the body. Well you know Ferguson Knox chief assistant later to beef is a physician to the queen who seem to have known the woman by sight. Asked where they had got the body. One of the other students said she was like she was like a girl he had seen in the Canongate as one pea is like another. Ferguson even said he thought he knew the lass that she lived in the Canongate and that his opinion his opinion. She had died in her usual health so recently it seemed as if he could bleed and recover her which would have been the ordinary treatment if she had fainted. Knox's lab technician David Patterson but no relation to Mary had also noted the beautiful symmetry and freshness of the body. And he later claimed that he too asked her where he got the body. But when Burke responded he had purchased it from an old woman at the back of the Canongate which is the equivalent of the modern.

Oh it fell off the back of a bus. Right. I said explanation for stolen property. No further questions were asked one of the students gave Burke only gave Burke a scissors to cut off or cut off her hair. Now when the case became known public outcry was loud that this was the moment to ascend for the police. Knox's assistants have been presented with the young girl recently dead never buried with no obvious signs of disease brought into the dissecting rooms with no better explanation than her body had been bought from an old woman in the Canongate. But Knox when he arrived was delighted with the cadaver treating it like a prized possession rather than a piece of contraband and preserving it in whisky for three months before dissection. He brought in a painter Burke said to look at her. She was so handsome a figure and well shaped in body and limbs. According to David Paterson many of the students made their own sketches of the women's body one of which she claimed to have kept. There's no sign that Knox attempted to conceal his possession of Mary's

corpse and supporters argue argue that had he suspected murder he would not have displayed it so publicly. David Paterson later said that he had not this light. Suspicion as to the deceased having met with a premature death. This is what he testified to when the police asked him. Instead he really did think it was sold by some of the relatives or by someone who kept a brothel a lodging house for paupers for whom the resurrection is purchased subjects. This became the Burke and Hare story that everyone remembers its elements repackaged and incorporated into both fiction and also of true crime. It actually does show up in all of the movies and in the CSI and so forth. The story was told and retold of a young girl strikingly beautiful strikingly promiscuous betrayed by her own immoral life into the hands of her callous murderers only to be recognized by her medical student lover as she lay upon the dissecting table. This image got a kind of a stamp of approval. Why the author of

the preface to the published version of the Burke and Hare trial the trial was published very quickly the transcript soon after it happened it was published with a preface giving a kind of a background to the case and the author of the Preface gave a little description of the murder victims some of them he described to Mary Patterson as a person of disorderly life who was said to have been well known to Burke before he married her well known to Burke before he married her. She was cut short in his sinful career and hurried. Oh dreadful thought how much unprepared. Before the judgment seat of her offended maker. This is the 1820s. At the early age of 21 the preface assured Marius posthumous notoriety and all subsequent writers have followed its lead up till about a month ago when the Scotsman published an article on the Burke and Hare case in conjunction with a BBC special done on it where the lead article explained that Mary Patterson was a voluptuous

beauty whose body was for sale for a few coins she would hitch up her skirt in the shadows of Edinburgh's Canongate a practice for which she had earned many admirers. I wrote all of Chapter Five to contradict that. And in fact I did what I do in Chapter 5 is I show how the story built up from the original rumors to the sort of full blown account the book was written before the Scotsman article so I couldn't include that. And then I deconstruct it and show where the truth really lies about Mary Patterson. I don't have time to get to do that for you now I'm going to give you some of the highlights and also give you a kind of a show and tell. As far as the author to the Preface who in a way started the whole ball rolling. We actually have his letters that he has manuscripts that he was working on at the time he wrote the preface. And so we know perfectly well that well he was just repeating rumors. He didn't do any

investigative reporting. In fact for several reasons but he couldn't have done investigative reporting because the Scottish judicial procedure was very strict between the time that the indictment was served and the time of the trial. Newspapers were not allowed to publish anything about the case and no one connected with the investigation was allowed to go out and interview witnesses. That was to protect the defendants when the trial finally finally came on. The preface had to be written in exactly that blackout period so that the trial could be published within an hour that the transcript of the trial could be published very shortly after the trial itself. So that means that the author of the Preface would have had no way of knowing any kind of any kind of sort of personal or for hand information about Mary Patterson and of course the current writer of the Scotsman doesn't have any first hand information about Mary Patterson but as a kind of a juicy a way to pursue this. One of the things that started to happen is a number of pictures circulated. You remember the

story of Dr Robert Knox bringing in an artist to draw the beautiful Mary Patterson as she lay upon the dissecting table. Well by the mid-nineteenth century a number of different pictures have circulated purporting to show just that. And one of them was published in nineteen twenty one twenty twenty one. Say when you hear and I haven't watched it I thought you'd like to see it. This purports to be Mary Patterson actually published it is published with a caption that says Merry flying by J Ola font. And you would certainly think reading that book that the author must have known that this was Mary Patterson and must have known who the artist was. The author by the way is William rough and he is a legal scholar and also a true crime writer. So subsequent generations of scholars as well as ordinary people reading this have assumed that this must indeed be Mary Patterson and there's even a scholarly literature on it because if

you look at it this is not an ordinary pose in an anatomical or dissecting room. If you assume she's dead then clearly that took a little bit of work and there's been a good bit of discussion of what an earth Knox could have been thinking to have done there. And actually there's a lot of interesting discussion about that and I can talk about it when we get to the discussion section. One of the recent articles that's been published on it has even gotten so far as to say this picture is no longer extent but it is in fact when I was in the room of the Edinburgh Central Library there I was looking through a collection of ephemera. I found the original of this very picture. One look at it and it was clear that let's say William Ruff head did not tell all he knew because she's not she is clearly supposed to be Mary Patterson but she is identified in the picture only by a pencil inscription that calls her Jessie Patterson. Which is a strong suspicion suggestion that the picture is not contemporary

with the events she was always called Mary Patterson and all the contemporary 1820s records she was never known as Jesse. Also the pictures and signed by anyone named J Ola font. It's just got again a pencil inscription saying drawn by j o a font which could mean that it was done by anyone. Or it could have been a copy or it could have simply been that that was the name that the owner of the illustration knew there was a John Doe Lafond who was an artist in Edinburgh but he's not listed in the city directories until 1831 and I have seen paintings for him you can Google him and find some in various collections not very many and they're all from a later period. So what we have here it seems to also is clear from the original that it's a living woman. I mean if she has to be living there isn't any way that this could be a dead person. Not only so it seems to me clearly that this was a picture an artist's rendition and if that were not then there's even more because as I turned the page I found another picture of the supposedly dead Mary Patterson.

Now this is. This is a second version of that second picture. So this is the third picture I can't show you that one but this is the third picture found in a different collection of ephemera in a different archive also proportioning to be Mary Patterson and the handwriting here is what I've written here. The unfortunate girl Hunter said as she lay exposed on the table of Dr. Knox the day after her murder one of Knox's students had been with me the night preceding and his feelings may be well conceived. When he saw the body which for a few hours had been clasped in his embrace is thus exposed. So there's the story again I'm guessing this was circulating by the 1860s all of these three pictures of two different supposedly dead obviously naked women. They can't all be the picture of Mary Patterson that was drawn by the artist and in fact I don't think any of them were. I think they were artists conceptions that were sold like

lots of other prints are. If you look at this one you may be thinking that her pose is actually a little bit odd if she's lying flat down. It is kind of awkward. And where's her left arm. I mean if it had been dissected away trust me there would be blood. And so what you need to do. Is turn it over. That's the way it's supposed to be hell. And as you can see now she's a woman lying on her side to get a hold clearly holding herself on her side so she's not dead. And my guess is that just as we know by the mid-1980s that artists models would dress up as any number of different historical characters Rob Roy the various characters from Sir Walter Scott novels. My guess is that some number of artists also painted women in the nude and said they are pretending to be Mary Patterson lying on the dissecting table. So it's

an artist's point. It's not a true to life picture just like these two artists prints this is in fact a print again purporting to be Mary Patterson from the 1820s that circulated but it's not an eyewitness account. In fact Janet Brown is the person in the best position to know about Mary didn't like the prince she didn't think it was very like her and she did not like the fact of all the things that were being said about Mary she said she was irregular in her habits but not as low as she'd been painted. And this is. Will you print the Canongate in again you don't expect it to be a photograph of something that actually happened it's again an artist's rendition of what the street would look like. Well having found those illustrations I really didn't think I'd ever find the real Mary. I looked through the fantastic Edinburgh archives police records parish registers the I couldn't find. I found plenty of Patterson certainly it's a very common name. I found plenty of

Marys but I didn't find any. Mary Patterson of the right age. And again if she's so notorious. If everybody knows about it or. Why was there no evidence for her. And then I did find her. I was in the Edinburgh City Archives which you enter through the High Street and then you go down the five flights of stairs in a very well either in stairs or rickety elevator and you're still in a room with windows looking out because it's built into the side of the hill as a lot of the old and row tenements are. Looking through the records of something called the Edinburgh Magdalen asylum the Magdalen asylum was a kind of a cross between a refuge and a reform school for young girls who had been late led astray. You entered it was entirely voluntary it was not connected with the prison system. But once you entered you weren't supposed to leave you were supposed to cut yourself off from all your former associates. Reform and you know go out and live a respectable life thereafter.

And in going through the records I want to make sure I have the dates right. Because when girls were admitted they were young women were admitted they had to say their name and why they were there and so forth. And in going through those records I found that on September 18th 18 26 Mary Patterson age 16 daughter of a local Mason applied for admission. She had been in service to an engraver she that is she to act as a maid but she'd been dismissed and subsequently spent four months on the town. It's a fair and a guess that she was no longer a virgin but we don't precisely know what it means and she was tested and was not found to have an aerial disease that is in the way she would have been examined for the time and otherwise had a good character so she was admitted. She stayed for just over 18 months until April 8th. Eight hundred twenty eight when she appeared before the asylum directors desirous to be permitted to leave.

She was admonished she was supposed to stay for at least two or three years but to no avail and she was permitted to go with the money she had earned while she was there. You worked in the Magdalene asylum and you got to keep a portion of your proceeds. Did any of you know that date April 8th 1828. That is exactly the date. One day before according to Janet Brown's account she and Marian counted Burke in a whiskey shop and in good historical fashion because we always have to split hairs and qualify. It could have been anywhere within one day or one week after that time because Janet Brown didn't have a little date book that she noticed these things but that's what the police investigation where they put it again between that April 8th let's say April 17th. So what that means is that Mary Patterson did not have time to become a notorious prostitute. She did not have time to sleep with her with Burke. She did not have time to sleep with any of the medical students. She didn't have time to do

anything except meet a murderer in a whiskey shop. And if you want additional evidence for it we can think of the two things that we know about her that have never been contested by any account. One is that she got drugs very quickly at breakfast by the end of breakfast she was unconscious and although in the 19th century that was seen as a sign of her dissolute life. In fact it is just the opposite is likely to be a sign that she was not used to strong drink. Again that would go along with her having been ineffectively in confinement for 18 months because if there's one thing that the Magdalen asylum was not going to let any of their inmates have it was alcohol. And the other thing we know about her was that she was a very pretty cadaver. And again that argues against her having been the kind of prostitute who hitched up her skirt in the back streets of Edinburgh. We do have contemporary descriptions of them. They were starving destitute dirty. Not at all the kind of bodies that would make medical students or technicians talk about their beauty and

her beauty and freshness. And so what should have happened of course is that that should have been a tip off to the medical students and to Knox that there was something wrong. The very fact that she was so apparently beautiful should have been a sign that well there was something going on. They should have gone to the police. And I think that may have been one reason why the story persisted particularly in the 19th century particularly when all of the medical students and indeed Dr. Knox were still alive because if you think about it again this is April 18 28. There were another 11 in cadavers to go. Before Burke and Hare were finally caught. And so what I think may have well have happened is that the medical students Dr. Knox and David Paterson may have had to do some quick thinking and come up again with the reason why had they not called the police. Well of course because

everybody knew everybody knew that's what happened to those kinds of women everybody knew there were that there that they lived immoral lives they ended up dead. And so they didn't go to the police. And so again there were another 11 cadavers and incidentally by the end of it Knox's own career was in shreds. So I hope you'll agree with me that it was quite a price to pay for believing a good story. Thank you very much. Well I have to say I'm not a forensic expert. But what happens is within a day or so the body will go into rigor mortis which is very stiff. OK so once it's gone into rigor as I understand it you can't pose it. Now I suppose I get I don't know if there's anyone in the audience who knows more about it. I suppose it could have been possible for her to have been posed and then to have gone into rigor but I think she wouldn't.

Sorry. It's does not look to me as though she is in any kind of rigor. And again also there is the story itself you know she was preserved an alcohol for three months there's really no time for this kind of a of a post so that that's that's my understanding of it. And again it's been that's why it's been something that has had to have been explained by so many people have looked at it. How why she looks so artistic in the way that she does and is in fact scholars have pointed out she's actually posed in a manner that is reminiscent of Alaska is one of his reclining. So again that isn't the ordinary way you would expect a cadaver to live. That is actually one is that one of the great questions the Edinburgh and it was this was unusual in having a police force. Police say police forces were still unusual in a lot of these cities and the way it worked is that someone reported a crime to the police and then they investigated. Now they did not ordinarily investigate surgen Square

because having bodies available was very helpful to the medical school and so there was a kind of don't ask don't tell kind of thing that went on. So unless somebody swore out a warrant and said My Which actually did happen my uncle my father my somebodies you know body has disappeared from a graveyard the police wouldn't investigate. The question was why the doctor Dr. Robert Knox did not notice anything. Sixteen now just 16 bodies he got bodies from all over we know from his notebooks but they had usually been buried or they were packed and sent from Dublin or Manchester or Glasgow or even London other big cities where there were more cadavers. So this is 16 UN buried bodies. Some of them in very fresh condition and no less than the home secretary at the time was very insistent that he be THAT IS NOT be investigated. The Home Secretary was a businessman by the name of ser Robert Peel

he's also famous in the history of crime because he's a name that he's a man that bobbies are named after he started the Metro metropolitan police force in London. So when he heard about the case he wrote a whole series of questions like Colombo you know as this as that as this other thing to the to the prosecuting attorney in Edinburgh. The person who saved Knox paradoxically from indictment he was very close to being indicted for complicity in the murders. Was William Burke himself who in his confession swore up and down that no one except he and Hare were ever involved in the murders. Not Helen McDougal not even Margaret Hare who at that point he had no reason to like and not Robert Knox. And so with that out Burke being willing to implicate Knox the prosecution had no case against him. Whether he should have known is something that people have gone up and down about ever since they were Edinboro Body Snatchers resurrection it says they are called back in the day in

the earlier days. Surgeons and their students anatomist and their students would go up and dig dig up their greens themselves and their lot of stories that were told about that people in Edinburgh and elsewhere did not wish to have their graveyards dug up and they started keeping a neighborhood watch with guns there were actually a couple of you know a sort of unfortunate accidents that occurred. So the the anatomy professors and their students did not want themselves to be the one digging up the bodies. So a black market trade arose throughout Britain and actually it function flourished here in the United States as well and I think it's absolutely flourished here in Boston anywhere there was a medical school where people for a price would dig up dig up cadavers from graves. They were typically professional thieves a kind of you know as a specialized version of thieves because they needed to have informers. They needed to know when someone had died. And in Scotland in any case they needed to know when the young lads who would

ordinarily be part of the neighbor hood watch were off doing something else that is when there'd be a celebration a funeral or whatever you know that would a party or a wedding whatever that would keep them out of the graveyards. So they were a specialized group Birkenhead themselves had no criminal record whatsoever. What got them started was that a lodger in a boarding house that Margaret hare ran died. The story is owing here £4 And so we had the idea that he could recoup his losses by selling the bodies to an anatomist. Everybody knew that went on and so he or he and Burke and Dr. Knox found each other and much to Burke and Hare surprise as Burke himself said Knox asked no questions and paid a lot of money the equivalent of half a year's wages for a cadaver. And it seems to have been after that that they got the idea that why wait for nature to take its course. Let's you know

let's speed up the process. And so that's that's how it happened. Whether it was widespread I doubt that is the body snatching was definitely widespread. Whether the murder was widespread I don't know. Having spent a lot of time investigating the police procedure and reading about comparable cases in other cities I don't think it was so easy to murder a lot of people. Although you think of there being a large homeless population that's not really true everybody had friends or neighbors or relatives and people who went missing. You know people ask questions Janet Brown never stopped asking questions for her friend. And again the way I started is this is this is the first murder that take Burke and Hare out of the Westport. It's also the last murder. It's the only time they left again that their home ground. And I think a good reason is because there are so many questions that Mary Patterson's friends kept asking that they decided never to go back to that area at least for the for the purpose of murder.

I want to say all my life. It's actually hard for me to say how long it took overall. I'm a history professor so I teach most of the time and I teach in New Jersey which is not conveniently located to Edinburgh. But I've also been doing research on medicine there for a good many years probably for some 20 years this is I call this my third book in my Edinburgh trilogy so I've been spending a lot of time doing it. And for this book in particular I would I would go every spring break to Edinburgh and spend days and days and days in the archives and each time I went I would find more and more things it became easier than it used to be because now a lot of the resources are resources. Are available online are there a finders guides today. So for instance when I wanted to look at the records of the Edinburgh Magdalen asylum I emailed the city archives in advance and said By the way do you happen to know where the record records of the Edinburgh Magdalen asylum might be and the archivist

wrote back to me and emailed me and said yes we have them here. In fact you're in luck because they were in storage somewhere and nobody even knew where they were and they've just been they've just turned up so. So so I guess I'm not sure exactly how to say that the writing took about. I do know because I had a year sabbatical for that so I'd say it took me a full year to write it all up again going around the year with broken hair. Absolutely it did. In fact by one of the ironies of history at the same time as Burke and Hare were committing their murders there was at that moment in Parliament a committee to investigate the method by which medical schools got bodies for dissection. In Britain. The British medical profession felt very aggrieved. The laws governing the acquisition of bodies were very archaic. The only legal bodies they were entitled to were people who had been executed of capital crimes and in fact there

weren't very many of them whereas in France there was a whole you know bureaucratic but effective system whereas But whereby people who died in public institutions were treated with the appropriate religious rights and then given to the hospitals and professors for dissection for students that was very very hard to get across in Britain and the what's called the Committee on anatomy made a number of recommendations about this which had a lot of opposition in part from poor people themselves. I mean people in poor houses did not wish to feel that their bodies were going to be given over to dissection just because they happen to be poor. And the arguments that were made back and forth is one of the political figures of the day who champion the poor said if you tell us that because we die in a poor house we owe it to the state to give our bodies to dissection because the state supported us when we start.

The royal family the royal family is supported by the state why don't they give their bodies for dissection. So it's a very hard fight. And then along came Burke and Hare. And the medical reformers seized upon it as a good propaganda in fact for a good argument for why there were worse things then than having your body given to dissection. If you don't have friends or family to claim you in those worst things included Burger King it still wasn't enough. There was a copycat crime in London where two London resurrection ist's reading about Burke and Hare thought what a good idea. And they killed a Italian musician a young boy. They tried to sell his body to an anatomist but in fact the anatomist having been aware of recent events turned them in and they were executed for it but it's really that second set of murders that. That got rid of the opposition and led to the

passage of the Anatomy Act which in fact did. Still it did legislate that people who died in caretaker institutions if their bodies were not claimed by family or friends or if they did not expressly say I don't want my body to be given to the anatomists the unclaimed bodies were given over to the anatomy professors. The price of cadavers went way down as a result perking also virtually disappeared. And one of the other things that happens the anatomy professors were required to pay for burials for many of the book endeavors that they got so they would be issued the medical certificates were filled out you know cause of death all of that. They would be issued the bodies but they weren't really given to them that they were in effect anatomist were renting the bodies and then they were required to pay for them to have a decent burial so that whereas before the Anatomy Act you hear a lot about the now Anonymous subjects old women brought into the dissecting room child brought into the dissecting room

after the Anatomy Act they all have names and ages and you know and again were given a decent burial. So so that was a very significant reform that came about as a result of as a result of Burke and Hare and in fact that was what people said at the time. Burke and Hare with the true authors of the Anatomy Act of 1832. Thank you it was a pleasure.