How did Burke and Hare obtain the victims whose bodies they sold to anatomist Robert Knox?

They murdered them. The killings took place in Edinburgh in 1828, and the bodies were sold for dissection at Knox's anatomy lectures.

Burke and Hare: murder, a tea chest, and the evidence from 1828

Burke and Hare supplied Robert Knox's anatomy rooms with the bodies of people they had killed. The surviving documents also distinguish those murders from their first sale, involving a lodger who died naturally. At the December 1828 prosecution, the decisive events concerned the last victim, Margaret Docherty, also named Campbell in the proceedings. Witnesses traced her from life in an Edinburgh lodging house to a concealed corpse, a delivery to Surgeons' Square, and a payment. The trade depended on killing living people rather than emptying recent graves.

The first sale by Burke and Hare appears in Burke's January 3, 1829 confession, reproduced in George Mac Gregor's 1884 history. Burke said a sick pensioner named Donald died owing Hare £4. The two men removed his body from its coffin and substituted tanner's bark before the coffin went for burial. They carried the corpse in a sack to Knox's premises and received £7 10s. Burke described a student directing them toward Knox, whose assistants accepted the body. This was concealment of a body after a natural death, followed by a sale; the confession did not describe Donald as a murder victim.

The same confession then describes deliberate suffocation. A woman lodging at Hare's house became insensible after drinking. Burke said Hare covered her mouth and nose while Burke restrained her body; they subsequently delivered her corpse through the same medical establishment. He also described killing a sick miller named Joseph. In a further declaration on January 22, 1829, Burke explicitly denied that either man had obtained their dissection subjects by digging bodies out of graves. These admissions came after conviction, and Mac Gregor noted discrepancies between the separate confessions. They document Burke's statements without making every chronological detail equally secure.

For Docherty's death, testimony was available before Burke confessed. The 1829 printed trial records Hare describing drinking and a struggle at Burke's house, followed by Burke attacking the woman. Hare testified under protection from prosecution, a circumstance central to assessing his evidence. His version and Burke's later confession differed over their individual actions during the killing. The prosecution therefore also depended on people outside the partnership, on the recovery of the body, and on the commercial transaction connecting the lodging house with the anatomy rooms. Witness testimony and the recovered body supplied evidence independent of Burke's later confession.

Ann Gray's testimony supplies a particularly concrete sequence. Looking for her child's stockings, she approached straw near the bed, and Burke told her to stay away. Later she and her husband investigated the straw and discovered the naked body. Gray also identified the body at the police office as Docherty's. These observations placed a particular woman in the lodging house before death and connected the concealed corpse with the subsequent investigation. The National Library of Scotland's collection history confirms that the residents' discovery preceded the body's removal to Knox's rooms.

David Paterson, Knox's museum keeper, described the delivery and payment in testimony printed in the contemporary volume West Port Murders. He saw Burke and Hare at Knox's rooms arranging to supply a body. That evening they arrived with a porter and a tea chest, which was locked in a cellar. Paterson then obtained £5 from Knox and divided it between the two men, with more money expected after inspection. The next morning he accompanied police to the cellar and handed over the still-roped package. His evidence connected an identifiable delivery with money changing hands.

The medical evidence was more qualified than a simple assertion that the corpse disclosed everything. West Port Murders records Dr. Christison describing bruises, injuries around the head and neck, and otherwise generally sound organs. He considered violent death extremely probable when the physical findings were combined with the surrounding circumstances. He also conceded that some injuries could have arisen after death when the body was forced into a chest. The distinction between injuries inflicted during life and damage from packing mattered. The medical findings were evaluated alongside testimony about the woman's recent condition and the concealed body.

The National Library of Scotland explains why only Burke and Helen McDougal stood in the dock: prosecutors granted Hare immunity in exchange for evidence. The trial began on Christmas Eve and continued into Christmas morning. Burke was convicted, while McDougal was acquitted. Burke was hanged on January 28, 1829, and his body was subsequently dissected. Hare was released on February 5. Knox was neither called as a witness nor charged with a crime. Those different legal outcomes should not be collapsed into a single collective conviction.

Contemporary prints preserved a wider public response. The library holds trial broadsides, victim portraits, and caricatures of Knox, including a lecturer depicted as a dog holding a bone. Such satire records hostility toward the purchaser of the bodies; it is different evidence from sworn testimony about an individual killing.

Burke and Hare: murder, a tea chest, and the evidence from 1828

Burke and Hare: murder, a tea chest, and the evidence from 1828

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