Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downey. And this is
Speaker 1: our episode un Burke and Hair, in which we learn
Speaker 1: not to die when you owe your landlord Wrent and
Speaker 1: that perhaps a wooden coffin is not the best coffin,
Speaker 1: at least not in the time of the sackam Up men,
Speaker 1: also known as the Resurrectionists. But to start with, we
Speaker 1: are going to uh speak a little song for you
Speaker 1: up the close and down the stair in the house
Speaker 1: with Burke and Hair. Burke's the butcher, and Hair's the thief,
Speaker 1: and Knox is the boy who buys the beef. I
Speaker 1: don't think they're really talking about beef, Sarah, No, I
Speaker 1: think this is a Sweeney Todd kind of situation. Are
Speaker 1: subjects today the Williams Burke and Hair were killers and
Speaker 1: not resurrectionists. We want to make that clear from the beginning.
Speaker 1: But they were part of a society in which gray
Speaker 1: robbing had become a common, if not a publicly accepted
Speaker 1: career for in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The
Speaker 1: only way medical schools could get bodies for dissection was
Speaker 1: from felons who were condemned to death and dissection as
Speaker 1: their fate. Wait a minute, what, Yeah, let's let's back
Speaker 1: up a little bit and give a history of dissection.
Speaker 1: So we have evidence that dissecting humans goes back as
Speaker 1: far as four thousand BC. Then it was thought that
Speaker 1: your innerds could tell the future, although I much prefer
Speaker 1: the Harry Potter approach to the nation and in yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd agree with that. One of our early notable dissectors
Speaker 1: was Leonardo da Vinci, of course, who believed in empirical observation,
Speaker 1: so when he drew the body, he wanted to actually
Speaker 1: understand it, to understand the structure of muscles and nerves
Speaker 1: and what was inside. But at the time you had
Speaker 1: to dissect your cadavers in secret. It was not something
Speaker 1: that was looked upon kindly well, and most people weren't
Speaker 1: even interested. They relied on Galen's texts, which were completely inaccurate,
Speaker 1: and at the time, this was how medical students learned
Speaker 1: about the human body. They would assemble in an anatomy theater,
Speaker 1: which was so crowded they couldn't even see the body
Speaker 1: being dissected, and while they tried to look over each
Speaker 1: other's heads. They listened as an anatomy text was read
Speaker 1: to them. Whether the text matched up to the body
Speaker 1: simply wasn't a matter of concern. You know, who needs
Speaker 1: nerves anyway, You could just ignore them because no one
Speaker 1: can see. And da Vinci was hoping that if you
Speaker 1: actually investigated the body, you wouldn't just learn about how
Speaker 1: everything worked, but maybe you would find the soul, which
Speaker 1: we've talked about that on an earlier podcast. And he didn't.
Speaker 1: But what he did do was author the first real
Speaker 1: anatomy textbook, even though it wasn't considered important until late
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century, but his text was finally widely
Speaker 1: published because this idea of empirical observations suddenly seemed essential
Speaker 1: to science. When more people who go into hospitals are
Speaker 1: ending up sicker or even dead than cured, perhaps we
Speaker 1: can figure out why. But how did dissection go so
Speaker 1: awry and lead to grave robbing? So in this podcast
Speaker 1: we're going to focus on the grave robbing situation in
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom. And the whole thing probably started with
Speaker 1: James the Fourth in Scotland, and in the sixteenth century
Speaker 1: he gave his patronage to the Edinburgh College of Surgeons
Speaker 1: and Barbers. Barber's doesn't really seem to fit in there, right,
Speaker 1: But barbers were surgeons and dentists to back in the day,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't until later that surgeons with actual medical
Speaker 1: training and academic knowledge were separated from barber So I
Speaker 1: think you could be going and getting your haircut, get
Speaker 1: your teeth cleaned, maybe have a little light surgery. It
Speaker 1: would be a time saver if you didn't die. Yeah,
Speaker 1: remembering might be real time favor. But James was the
Speaker 1: one who decided that felons who had been executed could
Speaker 1: also make good lessons for medical men, and they couldn't
Speaker 1: be buried after that, so this was a pretty heavy punishment.
Speaker 1: But the problem was that once medical students started dissecting,
Speaker 1: they all realized how important it was for medical knowledge
Speaker 1: to to really know the body. But there weren't many bodies,
Speaker 1: so few criminals were executed and then donated and they
Speaker 1: all went bad since refrigeration wasn't exactly all figured out
Speaker 1: at the time. They need these bodies, but they can't
Speaker 1: get them. There's demand, but there's no supply, or is there. Well,
Speaker 1: there is the supply, and that's fresh graves, of course,
Speaker 1: and at first the medical students actually do this themselves,
Speaker 1: they go out and dig up the graves, but it's
Speaker 1: soon forbidden by med schools and it's really weird, I think,
Speaker 1: to imagine these young doctors going out and hunting for bodies.
Speaker 1: It's very Dr Frankenstein. So once they're forbidden, someone else
Speaker 1: had to steal the bodies a resurrectionist. So we've got
Speaker 1: some entrepreneurship and flesh. But the resurrectionist would sell the
Speaker 1: bodies to the doctors or the met students, so everybody's
Speaker 1: getting what they want, except perhaps the families of the deceased. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we should talk a little bit about how they
Speaker 1: would actually get these bodies to how a resurrectionists would work.
Speaker 1: And it was easiest to do this in pairs. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we're talking about possibly adult body deadweight that you're logging,
Speaker 1: and one person would be to look out while the
Speaker 1: other one dug and then according to an article in
Speaker 1: History Magazine by Phil Jones, there was a pretty efficient
Speaker 1: way of carrying out the eximation. And here's what you
Speaker 1: would do. You would dig the hole at one end
Speaker 1: of the grave, and then you would crowbar the part
Speaker 1: of the coffin that you uncovered, so sort of popping
Speaker 1: it back against soil to break up. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: would cover that with sacking so that it wouldn't make
Speaker 1: a really loud noise and alert authorities or angry family members,
Speaker 1: and then you would put ropes around the corpse and
Speaker 1: heave it up through that hole that you've made. Um.
Speaker 1: But there's a weird legal loophole here, and to get
Speaker 1: around it, these people had to further desecrate the bodies. Right,
Speaker 1: you had to take all of their clothing and belongings
Speaker 1: and then put that back into the coffin. So they're
Speaker 1: stripping these corpses and returning everything to the grave. And
Speaker 1: that was because it was a crime to steal property.
Speaker 1: But there wasn't anything specifically mentioned about taking bodies. So
Speaker 1: if you just took the corpse, you were fine. But
Speaker 1: if you took a corpse who was you know, dressed
Speaker 1: and perhaps wearing jewelry, well that was just taking criminals
Speaker 1: too far. Yeah, So this obviously doesn't sit well with families,
Speaker 1: and soon we have armed guards at cemeteries and walls
Speaker 1: built with steel housings called mort saves put over graves
Speaker 1: think more actually of like your modern cemetery with that
Speaker 1: concrete casing around upgrades and wealthier people even were buried
Speaker 1: in metal coffin, so families were really trying to protect
Speaker 1: their dead. Our grave robbers are very resourceful. However, they
Speaker 1: started buying bodies directly from the undertakers or pretending that
Speaker 1: they were the relative of a dead person and claiming
Speaker 1: the body. So they're either outright stealing the bodies before
Speaker 1: they're buried, or they're getting them from an undertaker and
Speaker 1: having him fill the coffins with something else. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: in case you're wondering why people want to go through
Speaker 1: the trouble of digging up probably kind of gross old
Speaker 1: bodies and selling them, it's because it was very very lucrative,
Speaker 1: and it turns out to be pretty lucrative for Burke
Speaker 1: and Hair to in eighteen seven and eighteen when they
Speaker 1: start their plan. William Burke and William Hair were both
Speaker 1: irishmen who ended up in Scotland. And to give you
Speaker 1: a little physical description, Burke was about five five and
Speaker 1: considered attractive, while Hair was hideous and stupid looking. And
Speaker 1: this is not my assessment. I would never be so
Speaker 1: mean it's a contemporaries and they were drinking buddies. Jerks
Speaker 1: tend to find each other, and they ended up in
Speaker 1: the same boarding house together. Burke was living with a
Speaker 1: woman named Helen McDougall, and Hair with Margaret Laird, who
Speaker 1: ran the place after her husband died. And an opportunity arises. Yeah,
Speaker 1: an old man who was boarding there died and he
Speaker 1: owed Margaret money, and so Hair suggests that maybe to
Speaker 1: get the money back and maybe even make a little extra,
Speaker 1: we should sell the body. Oh yeah, but didn't I
Speaker 1: think of that one of your guests dies, So it
Speaker 1: was surprisingly easy. A med student told them to go
Speaker 1: see doctor Robert Knox, who was in charge of this
Speaker 1: private anatomy school and must have had a little reputation
Speaker 1: for buying bodies, and he paid them what was then
Speaker 1: several months wages and promises more if they can find
Speaker 1: him a fresh corpse. So these two scoundrel a type
Speaker 1: of guys suddenly have a really good prospect in front
Speaker 1: of them, because how do you get the freshest of
Speaker 1: the fresh and corpses by killing someone and then delivering
Speaker 1: the corpse immediately? And that they do. Their m O
Speaker 1: was to give the person plenty of alcohol, and then
Speaker 1: when he or she was drunk or passed out, one
Speaker 1: of them would immobilize the body while the other suffocated
Speaker 1: the person with his hand over his or her mouth
Speaker 1: and nose. And they killed perhaps fifteen people, older women,
Speaker 1: younger women, prostitutes, beggars in general, the down and out,
Speaker 1: or people who were not as likely to be missed.
Speaker 1: Uh Their cockiness eventually caught up with them, however. They
Speaker 1: murdered a mentally retarded boy that everyone around town knew,
Speaker 1: and when he was brought into the anatomy lab, some
Speaker 1: of the students told Dr Knox that they recognized him,
Speaker 1: they knew who he was, so Knox took off his
Speaker 1: face first, but even then they weren't caught quite yet.
Speaker 1: Their last victim was an older woman named Margaret Dougherty,
Speaker 1: and this found out in a very poor way of
Speaker 1: running their hotel business. So there's another couple staying at
Speaker 1: the lodging house of the time, the Grays, and they're
Speaker 1: asked to leave one night, leave their room, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of weird, they think, And so when they come
Speaker 1: back the next day, Mrs Gray is trying to get
Speaker 1: back into the room to look at some of her
Speaker 1: belongings and she's not allowed in. This is just raising
Speaker 1: their suspicions something something's going on. So they wait and
Speaker 1: when the coast is finally clear, they go back into
Speaker 1: the room, and when she's looking for her belongings instead,
Speaker 1: she finds the body of an old woman under her bed,
Speaker 1: and it is Dougherty and Burke and Hair try to
Speaker 1: bribe them, trying to split the money with them, but
Speaker 1: they refuse and they go to the authorities. So by
Speaker 1: the time the police get there, the body had been
Speaker 1: smuggled out, but it was soon found in doctor Knox's
Speaker 1: school in the trunk they always used to transport their bodies,
Speaker 1: and so now they're caught. But it turns out that
Speaker 1: there wasn't much hard evidence against any of them, not
Speaker 1: against Burke, not against Hair, not against their common law wives.
Speaker 1: So to get pin any sort of crime on them,
Speaker 1: Hair was offered a deal. He and Margaret Laird could
Speaker 1: have immunity if he would testify against Burke, and he
Speaker 1: took it. The trial started on December fifty eight, and
Speaker 1: the very next day Burke was found guilty of Docherty's murder.
Speaker 1: Everyone else got off completely. Scott free, and no one
Speaker 1: knows for sure if the women knew about the murders
Speaker 1: or even had a hand in them, but public suspicion
Speaker 1: and leaned towards yes. I have to think of the
Speaker 1: poor jury on this court on Christmas Day listening to
Speaker 1: this grizzly trial. I probably want to get out there
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. So after the conviction, Burke, in an interview says,
Speaker 1: neither Hair nor myself ever got a body from a churchyard.
Speaker 1: All we told were murdered save the first one. I
Speaker 1: don't know if he thought that was better or if
Speaker 1: he wanted to make more of a name for himself.
Speaker 1: As you know, I mean, clearly he's got a podcast
Speaker 1: about him, so I guess it worked. He was sentenced
Speaker 1: to be hanged and publicly dissected fittingly, and that was
Speaker 1: carried out Janu and twenty thousand people showed up to
Speaker 1: see his hanging, and forty people came to see the
Speaker 1: dissected body. Burke had testified that Knox didn't know where
Speaker 1: the bodies came from, but no one really believed him.
Speaker 1: Public sentiment toward Knox wasn't positive, and his students eventually
Speaker 1: went away, but the public really him after the women
Speaker 1: and also Hair Burke being hanged wasn't enough. They basically
Speaker 1: ran them out of town. And we don't know what
Speaker 1: happened to Hair. He may have become a beggar. He
Speaker 1: may have left for the United States. For the record,
Speaker 1: we did not want you hair and plaster masks were
Speaker 1: made of both of them, perhaps for the edification of
Speaker 1: phrenologists trying to figure out what bumps exactly it turns
Speaker 1: you into a criminal. In February two thousand nine, two
Speaker 1: of them were found at a former prison in Scotland
Speaker 1: and you can see burke skeleton at Edinburgh University and
Speaker 1: supposedly his skin was used to cover books and a
Speaker 1: snuffbox like the skin book at e g A exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: So what happens after this? Though, obviously this doesn't end
Speaker 1: this body shortage. In England we have copycats, the London Burgers,
Speaker 1: who are three guys who try to sell a teenage
Speaker 1: boy's body and he had clearly been murdered. Two are hanged,
Speaker 1: one is sent to Australia and people start riding. Something
Speaker 1: has to be don't imagine how scary this is. It's
Speaker 1: not just your friends and relatives. Bodies being stolen from
Speaker 1: their graves anymore. You could just get bumped on the
Speaker 1: head one day and sold yourself. No one is resting
Speaker 1: in peace. In eighteen thirty two, Parliament took action. They
Speaker 1: passed the Anatomy Act, which detailed that appointed Medical inspectors
Speaker 1: would supervise the teaching of anatomy and also the getting
Speaker 1: of the bodies. But there's more to the legal procurement
Speaker 1: of bodies. The lawment that people in a hospital who
Speaker 1: applied for treatment, basically the poor and died, we're giving
Speaker 1: up their bodies for anatomical examination, whether they liked it
Speaker 1: or not. And the same went for the workhouses. If
Speaker 1: you were too poor to afford burial, which you probably were,
Speaker 1: or you wouldn't have been there, your body could be
Speaker 1: donated against your will. Between eighteen thirty nine and eighteen
Speaker 1: forty one, three hundred poppers had been dissected under the Act,
Speaker 1: which of course was perfectly legal. So it takes several
Speaker 1: decades for this unfair treatment of the poor to end.
Speaker 1: But we were talking about how it's interesting people are
Speaker 1: more willing to donate their bodies to science. Now, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's obviously how we get medical examination. Boy, there still
Speaker 1: aren't enough. There aren't enough. But um, it's perhaps because
Speaker 1: the bodies are eventually returned to the families, you know
Speaker 1: that they're going to be treated with a certain amount
Speaker 1: of respect, people are more willing to donate them. Although
Speaker 1: I'm going to say I don't know about the respect part. Well,
Speaker 1: I do think of that box of twenty heads that
Speaker 1: was just found at an airport. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: I'd completely missed that story a box of heads there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a box of about twenty heads I think,
Speaker 1: found in an airport. They stopped it because it was
Speaker 1: a box of head box of heads being shipped by airliner.
Speaker 1: It turned out to have the appropriate paperwork, but still
Speaker 1: people were quite upset that remains were being shipped in
Speaker 1: this sort of haphazard manner. I would love to see
Speaker 1: that paperwork and how you fill out take care of
Speaker 1: the box. But a little side note on the legacy
Speaker 1: of burke and hair. The word burking is in the
Speaker 1: Oxford English Dictionary, which we English majors snotily referred to
Speaker 1: as the O. E D. And burking means that one
Speaker 1: person immobilizes a body while the other covers the nose
Speaker 1: and mouth of a person to suffocate them. So Burke
Speaker 1: lives on Yeah, this is why he gave that little
Speaker 1: quote that gets see in the dictionary stuff like that.
Speaker 1: We've gotten lots of emails asking for this one, so
Speaker 1: if you have another not entirely too grizzly, please topic
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