Anthropodermic bibliopegy performed, or collected by medical doctors, who have access to cadavers, sometimes those of executed criminals, such as the case of John Horwood in 1821 and the Red Barn Murder in 1828. Another tradition, with less supporting evidence, is that books of erotica or the occult have been bound in human skin. The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh preserves a notebook bound in the skin of the murderer William Burke after his execution and subsequent public dissection by Professor Alexander Monro in 1829. What Lawrence Thompson called "the most famous of all anthropodermic bindings" is exhibited at the Boston
Burke and Hare murders and for regulating Schools of Anatomy" in mid 1828—six months before the murders were detected. This was rejected in 1829 by the House of Lords. The murders committed by Burke and Hare raised public awareness of the need for bodies for medical purposes, and of the trade that doctors had conducted with grave robbers and murderers. The East London murder of a 14-year-old boy and the subsequent attempt to sell the corpse to the medical school at King's College London led to an investigation of the London Burkers, who had recently turned from grave robbing to murder to obtain corpses;