Burke and Hare murders two men were hanged in December 1831 for the crime. A bill was quickly introduced into Parliament, and gained royal assent nine months later to become the Anatomy Act 1832. This Act authorised dissection on bodies from workhouses unclaimed after 48 hours, and ended the practice of anatomising as part of the death sentence for murder. The events of the West Port murders have made appearances in fiction. They are referred to in Robert Louis Stevenson's 1884 short story, "The Body Snatcher", and Marcel Schwob told their story in the last chapter of "Imaginary Lives" (1896), while the Edinburgh-based author
Transport in Edinburgh in Edinburgh in recent years; in September 2004, a 28-year-old man was killed at the junction of Marchmont Road and Melville Drive. In April 2008, an award winning neuroscientist who worked at the University of Edinburgh, Dr Iain Wilson, was killed in a collision with a truck on the junction between West Richmond Street and Nicolson Street. Pedicabs are a common form of transport for weekend revellers, with the number operating in Edinburgh growing from only 2 in 2000 to 60 by 2008. This has led to a growing number of complaints from taxi cab drivers, who resent the competition.