In the early nineteenth century Edinburgh was a hotbed of scientific and medical research. The only problem was there were never enough bodies to satisfy the anatomists needs. This was exacerbated by the law that stated that only the bodies of executed criminals could be used for the purposes of dissection. So great was the need for bodies though that few questions were asked by the schools of anatomy who paid well for fresh subjects.
Into this environment came William Burke and William Hare, two Irish men who came to Edinburgh to work on the Union Canal. After the canal was finished they found themselves unemployed. Hare attached himself to the widow who owned a profitable lodging house in Tanner's Close at the West Port and this is where he met Burke who took up residence in the house.
It is fair to say that Burke and Hare did not set out to become murderers, but they took advantage of a situation and then were lured to murder by the money that could be made from it. When a man in Hare's lodging house died without paying the rent, Burke suggested that they sell the body to recoup the moneys owed to Hare. The body was sold to a Dr Robert Knox, who paid the princely sum of £7 10s, and told them that should they come across any more bodies they would be gratefully received. When another tenant fell ill in the lodging house, Burke and Hare saw the opportunity to sell his body too. They were however to be disappointed when the man made a recovery and so they made the fateful decision to "help" him die. They plied him with copious amounts of whisky and then smothered him as he lay unconscious.
The pair then went on to murder 15 people, including 12 women, a sick man, a deaf boy and a slow-witted teenager. Usually their methods were the same - they enticed the person to Hare's lodging house and plied them with whisky and when the person was asleep they smothered them.
When Ann Gray, a tenant in the lodging house, discovered a body under a bed, Burke and Hare's time was up. Police then began to hear tales of other missing people and quickly pieced together what had been happening at Tanner's Close. Hare agreed to give evidence against Burke in return for immunity and Burke was found guilty and sentenced to "suffer death upon the gibbet.and thereafter be given for dissection". William Burke was hung on the 28th January 1829 and was the only one to pay for his part in the West Port murders. The case led to a change in the law with the introduction of the 1832 Anatomy Act, which required bodies for dissection to have come from people who died in hospitals.
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