Surgeons' Hall demand for bodies for anatomical dissection exceeded supply. Two Irishmen living in Edinburgh, William Burke and William Hare, resorted to murdering victims to supply Knox's anatomy school. Hare turned King's evidence and Burke was tried, found guilty of murder and hanged. His body was dissected by Alexander Monro tertius, the University professor of anatomy, and the museum has on display two items from that notorious episode – Burke's death mask and a pocket book made from his skin. Joseph Bell (1837–1911) was an Edinburgh surgeon who was president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh between 1887–89. He was
Burial in Anglo-Saxon England some cases, the body was mutilated prior to burial, primarily through decapitation, and there are examples of entire cemeteries being filled with these decapitated corpses, leading archaeologists to conclude that these were sites specifically for the burial of executed individuals. There are few examples of these possible execution cemeteries from the early Anglo-Saxon period, with one exception being the barrow cemetery at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. Here, several burials containing the corpses of individuals who had been hanged, beheaded or in other way mutilated were placed around Mound 5 on the eastern side of the cemetery. Using radiocarbon dating, archaeologists