Burke and Hare: A new body of evidence

SHE was a voluptuous beauty whose body was for sale. For a few coins, Mary Patterson would hitch up her skirt in the shadows of Edinburgh's Canongate, a practice for which she had earned many admirers.

In the spring of 1828, in a wood-panelled room, under the flicker of candlelight, she gave her final performance. She lay naked, her head carefully turned towards the surrounding voyeurs, a white sheet draped teasingly over her calves. For a few minutes, a common street whore was elevated to an artist's muse, an Auld Reekie Venus for the budding Botticelli. But on this night she lacked the vigour for which she had become renowned: Mary Patterson, lying so seductively on that couch, was quite dead.

But despite being dead, her body was still for sale – and the price was much greater than she had ever earned for a quick fumble. Dr Robert Knox, the Scottish surgeon and anatomist paid an average of £7 10 shillings for each fresh corpse delivered to his school on Surgeon's Square. But when two men, who had over the past few months delivered four other corpses, arrived with the body of an attractive young lady, he did what he had never done before: he decided to pose her naked and have an artist sketch her form.

The two men were, of course, Scotland's most famous serial killers, William Burke and William Hare, both Irishmen with a taste for easy money and a growing appetite for quick kills. Yet a new television documentary, to be broadcast next Monday, casts fresh light on a familiar tale which is as black as pitch.

The decision to pose and sketch Mary Patterson raises more questions about the already compromised character of Dr Knox. Artists have long studied the female form, and also produced the most wonderful sketches of internal anatomy, but the sketch that was finally produced from this subject has, as Dr Alice Roberts, one of the programme's presenters, explains, a sinister and perhaps salacious quality.

"Throughout history it has not been unusual for artists to draw the dead," she said. "Even Leonardo da Vinci learned the structure of the body and how to draw the living by careful examination and dissection of cadavers, but what is unusual here is that Dr Knox commissioned a sketch of Mary before she was dissected."

Why he did so has divided historians. Was there a scientific reason or was it simply to produce a grim piece of pornography? Professor Matthew Kaufman, emeritus professor of anatomy at Edinburgh University, is prepared to at least give him the benefit of the doubt.

"I think that one interpretation of this is that he probably didn't appreciate that she had been murdered, otherwise if he had any sense at all he certainly would not have advertised the fact," he says. "You could argue he needed a female body to show the anatomical features of the young female body and how the young female body was different from the elderly female body … it was really quite unusual to get a young female (for the anatomy school] and when it arrived I suppose he thought well must make some use of it."

But George Donald from the Royal Scottish Academy, where the programme makers re-created the scene with a live model, said: "It is difficult to tease out what is genuine scientific interest and what is a rather entertaining horror show. I think that anatomy is always going to be dogged by that."

The question of anatomy lies at the heart of the new documentary, which is provocatively subtitled: "A necessary evil?" Under British law in the early decades of the 19th century, the only bodies which could legally be used by doctors studying anatomy were the corpses of criminals who had been hanged. Up until the early part of the century, more than 200 crimes were punishable by death. However, this "Bloody Code" was repealed bit by bit until only the most serious crimes were capital offences. As a result, only three people were executed in Scotland in 1828.

But despite this lack of legally available bodies, the government insisted that all medical students must dissect one body a year.

In France, where Robert Knox studied anatomy after first serving with the 72nd Highlanders, any body which was unclaimed by family or friends within 12 hours was donated to medical schools. Yet as no such law existed in Scotland, he had to obtain corpses in a more clandestine manner.

An arrogant man who aspired to become the world's top anatomist, Knox set up his own anatomy school in 1826 and it quickly became the largest in Britain. The reason was simple: he was a natural showman and a born lecturer. Despite possessing a countenance scarred by smallpox and the nickname "Old Cyclops", he drew in students by the hundreds who were all willing to pay £3 5s for his course. So popular did he become that he began offering two demonstrations per day, at 11am and 6pm. As his flyer explained: "Each of these courses will as usual comprise a full demonstration on fresh Anatomical Subjects."

Body snatchers – resurrection men, as they were known – dug up freshly buried corpses to sell to the anatomy schools to feed this need. So frequent were their desecrations that the rich would build iron cages over the family crypts, while the poor mixed straw in with the dirt in a vain attempt to hamper the progress of the resurrection man's shovel.

Historian Dr Ruth Richardson says: "Dissection was something that was done to murderers and it was OK for them because they had killed somebody, but it's not OK for your mum or dad or grandma. It's not right unless they wanted to do it and if they didn't and feared it, what right did a bodysnatcher have to take the body from the grave and sell them for money to an anatomist?"

When William Burke, who was born in Urney, in County Tyrone, met William Hare, from Newry, a deadly partnership was formed. When a tenant died in the Edinburgh lodging house Hare ran with his wife, the pair decided to sell his body for £7 to cover the £4 he owed in rent. It marked the beginning of a fiendish trade. When a second tenant became ill, the pair plied him with whisky, then suffocated him, one holding him down, while the other held his hands over both nose and mouth, a method that became known as "burking".

The men repeated this act on two more individuals before setting their eye on Mary Patterson, which was to become their first mistake. Owen Dudley Edwards, a former professor of history at Edinburgh University explains: "It is a great mistake to murder somebody who is sexually celebrated because of course people in other classes will know about them. One of the students, the future Professor William Ferguson, who would be Queen Victoria's Surgeon in Ordinary in Scotland, recognised the body in his professional capacity because a couple of days previously he had been looking at it in her professional capacity."

After dispatching a few more anonymous victims, the pair once again targeted a well-known individual. James Wilson – "Daft Jamie" as he was known – was a mentally disabled young man of 18 who was popular around the city centre area. When Dr Knox first revealed the body, several of his students recognised Jamie, and although he insisted it was not the person they imagined, he began to dissect the face first.

Burke and Hare's spree finally came to an end in November 1828 after 17 murders. A fellow lodger spotted the body of their last victim, Marjory Docherty, stuffed under the bed and reported the matter to the authorities. As the evidence against the pair was not overwhelming, the Lord Advocate, Sir William Rae, offered Hare immunity from prosecution if he were to confess and agree to testify against his accomplice. Hare agreed and so Burke was sentenced to death in December 1828. Thousands gathered in the Lawnmarket to witness his hanging on 28 January, 1829.

In an ironic twist, as a condemned murderer, Burke's body was then cut down and sent off to Edinburgh University to be dissected.

William Hare was released in February 1829 and disappeared from the pages of history, although rumour has him portrayed as a blind beggar on the streets of London after an angry mob threw him into a lime pit.

Robert Knox was never prosecuted, as Burke swore in his confession that the doctor was entirely unaware of how the pair had procured the bodies. Yet the court of public opinion found him guilty and a mob almost rioted outside his home. After the fury died away he returned to the teaching of anatomy.

The grim pair had one positive legacy: their crime focused attention on the problems of procuring bodies for medical education and in 1832 the Anatomy Act was passed by parliament, which increased the legal supply of cadavers for medical research. As The Lancet reported in its editorial at the time: "Burke and Hare … it is said are the real authors of the measure."

• Burke and Hare: A Necessary Evil? is on BBC 2 on Monday at 9pm.

Grim tale that still grips us

THE ghoulish story of Burke and Hare continues to exert its influence on the imagination of authors, artists and film-makers. Robert Louis Stevenson was among the first to turn the tale from fact into fiction when he wrote the short story The Body Snatcher, which portrays two doctors in Robert Knox's employ buying corpses from the killers.

The murders have also been adapted a number of times for the cinema. In 1945 Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff starred in The Body Snatcher. But three years later the story was deemed too grim for British audiences, and the film Crimes of Burke and Hare was ordered by the censors to be redubbed, with all mention of the actual figures removed, and retitled The Greed of William Hart.

In 1960, in The Flesh and the Fiends, Peter Cushing played Dr Knox, while Donald Pleasence played William Hare and George Rose played William Burke.

Times, however, have changed – now the story is set to be turned into a romantic comedy by John Landis, the director of An American Werewolf in London. Simon Pegg is set to star in Burke And Hare, which is being produced by Ealing Studios, the company behind the recent remake of St Trinians and which may be partly filmed in Edinburgh next year.

John Landis said: "I am thrilled to be making a picture for Ealing. Burke and Hare have inspired a number of movies over the years, but Piers Ashworth and Nick Moorcroft have written a unique and terrific screenplay which offers me a tremendous chance to make a historically accurate, very black, romantic comedy."