Alexander Monro (tertius) Charles found the sight of surgery so upsetting that he stopped trying and turned his attention to natural history. During Monro's tenure as Professor of Anatomy, Edinburgh was rocked by scandal due to the notorious "Burke and Hare murders" in which healthy individuals were intentionally killed in order to supply cadavers for dissection by anatomy lecturers and their students. One of the murderers, William Burke, was hanged on 28 January 1829, after which he was famously dissected at the Edinburgh Medical College by Monro himself. In a letter, Monro dipped his quill pen into Burke's blood and wrote, "This is
Capital punishment in Australia men (and one woman, Martha Rendell) were hanged there. The first execution under British law was that of Midgegooroo, who on 22 May 1833 was executed by firing squad while bound to the door of the original Perth Gaol. John Gavin, a Parkhurst apprentice, was the first British settler to be executed in Western Australia. In 1844 he was hanged for murder at the Fremantle Round House, at the age of fifteen. Bridget Larkin was the first woman to be executed in Western Australia, for the murder of John Hurford, in 1855. The last execution was that of Eric Edgar