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
Anatomy murder William Smellie was accused of obtaining cadavers for his illustrated textbook on childbirth through murder. In 1751, Helen Torrence and Jean Waldie were convicted of murdering John Dallas, aged 8 or 9, and selling his cadaver to medical students in Edinburgh. The great expansion in medical education in Great Britain in the early 19th century as a result of the Napoleonic Wars led to increased demand for cadavers for dissection. Body-snatching became more widespread, and local communities reacted by setting guards around graveyards. In 1828, Parliament convened a select committee to examine the means by which cadavers were obtained for