ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Burke and Hare – the legacy lives on

• In Event: Contested Anatomy

English Abstract

In 1827 the demand for bodies for the teaching of anatomy had reached a peak. The increasing ease with which people could study abroad saw students travelling to Leiden and Paris and numbers started to fall in the UK. In addition, the standard of teaching at the University of Edinburgh was poor and multiple private anatomy schools were establishing themselves to provide the desperate students with the necessary education. The requirement for bodies was over 500 a year and although all executed criminals were passed on for dissection, this was not meeting the need. Some schools, such as the prestigious private school ran by Robert Knox, were promising students access to fresh bodies on which to learn and hone their skills. Into this scenario enter two Irish entrepreneurs. Their first delivery to the anatomists had been a guest who had died in their guest house. There was nothing unusual in that, but they would soon establish a line of trade that would offer the anatomists an eighteen-month continuous source of bodies, provide their own pockets with coin, provide the English language with new words and would establish a tale that is still being told 200 years later. This paper looks at the contribution that William Burke and William Hare made to anatomical education and how their legacy lives on in modern anatomical teaching to this day.

Author

• Janet Philp, University of Edinburgh