Edinburgh was one of the great centres for medical education in the early 19th century, where ambitious medical students arrived to study the human body in the city’s anatomy theatres. But since the lectures delivered by the University’s hereditary chair of anatomy were so dull, students went to private anatomy teachers, the most flamboyant of whom was the renowned Dr Robert Knox.
Knox played an important role progressing the study of anatomy in Britain. Working out of 10 Surgeon Square, Knox and his practice’s immense demand for corpses also played an important part in the murderous saga of Scotland’s most famous body snatchers, Burke and Hare.
William Burke and William Hare’s 1828 murders are the subject of a History Hit film investigating the notorious serial killers, presented by the After Dark podcast’s Maddy Pelling and Anthony Delaney.
“Doctor Robert Knox was the superstar anatomy teacher in Edinburgh in his day,” Cat Irving, Human Remains Conservator at Surgeons’ Hall Museums, explains in the documentary. Knox practised the Paris manner of dissection, which meant that students would dissect cadavers themselves, rather than observe a teacher.
“Everyone was enthusiastic about his teaching, they came away really knowing what they were doing inside the human body.”
Of course, independent anatomists like Knox, who were linked to but not part of the university, required a supply of bodies. As many as 90 cadavers were needed for a year of Robert Knox’s classes.
There was a legitimate supply for cadavers and these came from executed criminals. However, as a private anatomy school, “they’re not entitled to any of that legitimate supply, and the legitimate supply wasn’t enough for the medical schools at the time,” says Irving.
They still somehow secured cadavers: an advert for one of Robert Knox’s classes, includes the reassurance that “arrangements have been made to secure as usual an ample supply of Anatomical Subjects.”
The Edinburgh Murders: Burke and Hare
Image Credit: History Hit
“They’re definitely having to get more underhand methods of body supply,” says Irving. “We’re talking about the body snatchers. We’re talking about bribing people in hospitals, undertakers, things like that.”
These illicit corpses cost Knox dearly – seven or eight pounds sterling for one body.
Burke and Hare
Burke and Hare recognized the anatomists’ growing demand for bodies. Up to this point, they had dealt in the recently dead. Burke had sold a recently deceased lodger in his house to Knox for £7 and 10 shillings. Their opportunism then took a darker turn. Their subsequent murder rampage took the lives of 16 people, their bodies sold for the anatomist’s table.
After a media frenzy, forensic investigation, and trial, Hare walked free after serving as the state’s witness, while Burke was executed and publicly dissected. (His skeleton ended up displayed in Edinburgh Medical School.)
Watch NowHow aware was Robert Knox that his school’s demand for bodies was fuelling not just a clandestine but murderous trade in cadavers? “It seems very likely that he would have some inkling of what was going on,” says Irving. “But he escapes legal justice in that sense. He was never prosecuted.”
Though Burke signed a confession saying Knox had no knowledge of the murders, “the public certainly felt he was guilty,” says Irving. An enraged Edinburgh crowd hung an effigy of Knox and demanded he faced justice, but a committee cleared him of complicity.
Burke and Hare’s murder rampage through the streets of Edinburgh is explored in The Edinburgh Murders: Burke and Hare on History Hit.
