William Burke
28
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13
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13
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Search complete. 28 mentions across 13 episodes found for "William Burke".
Nov 10, 2026
CarlosHOST
But in Edinburgh, two men would take the business somewhere considerably darker.
CarlosHOST
William Burke and William Hare were not physicians.
CarlosHOST
They were not scientists.
CarlosHOST
They were opportunists.
GazHOST
Yeah.
GazHOST
The White Hart folklore also is linked to a popular account to the infamous body snatchers, William Burke and William Hare, which was actually just thinking about, you know, obviously, but like when you said about the dodgy people, you've got Burke and Hare.
GazHOST
And obviously those crimes shocked people.
GazHOST
Edinburgh in the 19th century.
Pauline McLeanGUEST
And he was saying, of course, the kind of classic body constantly on display or skeleton on display in a collection in Edinburgh is Burke as a Burke of Hair.
Pauline McLeanGUEST
William Burke, yeah.
Pauline McLeanGUEST
Because that was his punishment, you know, like he had murdered and stolen bodies and, you know, like sort of made his whole career out of that.
Pauline McLeanGUEST
So that was his punishment was to be forever afterwards in in a museum as a skeleton.
Owen InnesHOST
But perhaps the darkest part of this story is that sometimes the resurrection men didn't wait for people to die.
Owen InnesHOST
Which of course leads us to one of Scotland's most notorious true crime stories, one of my favourites, William Burke and William Hare.
Owen InnesHOST
The two men were involved in a series of murders in Edinburgh in 1828.
Owen InnesHOST
That's right, William Burke and William Hare were serial killers.
Owen InnesHOST
They were not grave robbers.
Owen InnesHOST
The victims were not murdered because Burke and Hare hated them.
Neil Orange PeelHOST
Stagnant conditions made the vaults an ideal incubator for cholera, typhus and tuberculosis, causing high infant and adult mortality rates among the underlying population.
Neil Orange PeelHOST
Urban links serial killers William Burke and William Hare to the vaults, urging that the stolen corpse is there before selling them to Robert Knox for medical dissection at the University of Edinburgh.
Neil Orange PeelHOST
While no direct trial evidence confirms that he bodies in the vaults, the pair operate in the immediate neighbourhood.
Neil Orange PeelHOST
And it was also rumoured to turn round and if he wasn't dead, they'd just kill you.
Neil Orange PeelHOST
They'd just smash you off the head of an iron bar and then drag you out instead.
Neil Orange PeelHOST
So if he was asleep in the vaults and you felt your leg being tugged, there's a good chance it might have been William Burke and William Eyre to take you to go and be sold as a cadaver.
Neil Orange PeelHOST
It is haunted by many ghosts.
Neil Orange PeelHOST
You have Mr.
AngieHOST
So in short, just because there is a lot on Burke and Hare, you can go read and it is actually all really fascinating.
AngieHOST
William Burke and William Hare are originally from the north of Ireland.
AngieHOST
They come across the Scotland as what is called navvies on the Union Canal.
AngieHOST
I needed to know what a navvy was because of course I did.
HeatherHOST
It's probably been there for hundreds of years, right? This is like hundreds of years old.
TammyHOST
Yeah, probably the, I don't know, the Burke and Hare, maybe they...
TammyHOST
Took a baby.
TammyHOST
I don't know.
22 MINS LATER
HeatherHOST
So we'll dive into a couple of these stories.
MonicaGUEST
Okay.
HeatherHOST
So we've got Burke and Hare, which is, you know, always discussed, right? So they were the murderers who sold the dead.
HeatherHOST
Sounds like a
GregHOST
Rich families bought heavy iron cages called mort safes to lock over graves or even hired armed watchmen, but eventually the dark economics of body snatching escalated to its horrifying logical extreme, unfortunately.
GregHOST
So why dig up graves when you can just create fresh bodies yourself? Well, in 1828 in Edinburgh, William Burke and William Hare realized they could bypass grave robbing entirely.
GregHOST
In over 11 months, they murdered 16 lodgers in their boarding house by suffocating them and sold the fresh corpses directly to Dr. Robert Knox, a leading anatomy lecturer, no questions asked.
GregHOST
But three years later, the London burghers copied the scheme in the capital, and the public outcry was so intense that the Parliament at this time was forced to act, passing the Anatomy Act of 1832. and this law effectively abolished the resurrection trade by repealing the Dissection Clause of the Murder Act and allowing medical schools to claim the unclaimed bodies of poor people who died in workhouses, hospitals, or prisons.
Charles SkaggsHOST
About Burke and Hare? Yeah.
Charles SkaggsHOST
William Burke and William Hare were a pair of serial killers active in Edinburgh during 1828.
Xan SprouseHOST
They started out as grave robbers.
Charles SkaggsHOST
Right.
JulieHOST
Edinburgh was famous for medical learning, with doctors and students coming from all over to study anatomy.
JulieHOST
William Burke and William Hare started out by selling a body to the famous anatomist Robert Knox, after a man died at Hare's lodging house.
JulieHOST
They discovered there was money to be made, and then they crossed a horrifying line.
JulieHOST
Instead of waiting for people to die naturally, they began murdering victims and selling their bodies.
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