Burke and Hare murders Burke and Hare murders The Burke and Hare murders were a series of 16 killings committed over a period of about ten months in 1828 in Edinburgh, Scotland. They were undertaken by William Burke and William Hare, who sold the corpses to Robert Knox for dissection at his anatomy lectures. Edinburgh was a leading European centre of anatomical study in the early 19th century, in a time when the demand for cadavers led to a shortfall in legal supply. Scottish law required that corpses used for medical research should only come from those who had died in prison, suicide victims,
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