Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles
available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The Burke and
Hare murders (also known as the West Port murders) were serial murders
perpetrated in Edinburgh, Scotland, from November 1827 to 31 October
1828. The killings were attributed to Irish immigrants William Burke and
William Hare, who sold the corpses of their 17 victims to provide
material for dissection. Their purchaser was Doctor Robert Knox, a
private anatomy lecturer whose students were drawn from Edinburgh
Medical College. Their accomplices included Burke's mistress, Helen
M'Dougal, and Hare's wife, Margaret Laird. From their infamous method of
killing their victims has come the word "burking", meaning to
purposefully smother and compress the chest of a victim. Before 1832,
there were insufficient cadavers legitimately available for the study
and teaching of anatomy in British medical schools. The University of
Edinburgh was an institution universally renowned for medical sciences.
