When Doctors Paid Body Snatchers for Fresh Corpses - The Burke and Hare Murders

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Two Irish immigrants turned Edinburgh's medical schools into their personal marketplace. William Burke and William Hare started simple in 1827. Dig up fresh graves, sell the bodies to doctors who asked no questions. But demand was growing faster than people were dying.

[00:00:15]So they stopped waiting for natural death. 16 victims lured to their boarding house, suffocated, then wheeled to anatomy classes the next morning. The respected [music] surgeons paid premium prices for the freshest specimens. When police finally caught them, the entire medical establishment's dirty secret was exposed. Burke hanged, Hare walked free.

[00:00:35]His [music] testimony changed medicine forever.