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Roughead, William.
Notable British Trials: Burke and Hare.
Publisher: William Hodge & Company, Ltd, Edinburgh & London;
Date of Publication: 1921
Stock Code: 12581
First edition. Octavo, pp. x, [2], 280, [15] catalogue, [1]. 13 plates including frontispiece of Burke and McDougal at the Bar, as called for. Publishers’ maroon cloth with gilt titles to spine. A very good copy with no annotations or inscriptions. Spine a touch sunned, with slight wear to spine tips and corners. Paste-downs a little wrinkled & endpapers lightly toned; scattered minor foxing, mainly to text-block edge. Report of the trial in the grisly case of the Edinburgh body-snatchers and murderers, William Burke and William Hare in 1828. The shortage of available cadavers for medical research at the time led to the friends’ successful sale of corpses to physician Robert Knox for dissection at his anatomy lectures; from this it was a short step to murder to provide a lucrative supply, mainly from lodgers who shared the building where they lived. Eventually other residents became suspicious of their behaviour and searched the house, discovering the corpse of the final victim which they reported to the authorities. Hare turned King’s Evidence and was given immunity from prosecution; he confessed to 16 deaths in 1828 and Burke was hanged for murder; appropriately his body was dissected by Professor Munro (not Knox!). The notorious events attracted huge public interest and Burke and Hare entered Scottish folklore as legendary villains; their name lives on today in fiction and on stage and screen. The Anatomy Act was passed in 1832 allowing the legal dissection of donated bodies under licence, influenced by the events in Edinburgh. £60.00