Burke And Hare: 8 Facts About The Bodysnatchers Who Weren't

Robert Knox was an doctor and anatomist who was born in Edinburgh and regularly gave lectures to students in the time period when Burke and Hare were active. In order to effectively teach his students, Knox found the supply of "assigned" corpses that he was given to be far too low.

With another few associates, the work that was being done at Edinburgh had led to its anatomical study being renowned worldwide and pushing the science far forward. There was, however, a very real shortage in the bodies that they could use for their demonstrations and lectures.

At the time in Scotland, the only bodies that were to be used in this manner were predominantly people who had taken their own life or died in prison. However, there was an odd oversight in Scottish law which punished the digging up of a body to steal valuables, but not the act of exhuming or removing the body in and of itself.

This meant that there was relatively common knowledge that certain men would pay good money for corpses to be used for dissection or study and the criminal penalties for the robbers were not too severe.

Robert Knox was known to be a man open to such propositions.