The family of the condemned man sometimes tried to get the body back as soon as possible, since in some rare cases it was possible to revive a recently hanged man. It therefore, was difficult for students of anatomy to get access to others. Public executions provided only one legitimate source of corpses, (the others being transients who died of natural causes). There were an excess of trainee surgeons, but only a small amount of reasonably fresh bodies to study. Cheselden, seeking respectability for this practice, unwittingly set surgery on a darker path. Most started out using bodies of executed criminals or unknown vagrants who'd died of natural causes. Physiology and anatomy was a relatively new science, and the only way for the medical experts to clearly study the human body, and to show and teach students, was growing. The Buisness of Grave Robbing: The Resurrectionstsĭoctor's all across Europe in the early 19th century were in great need of bodies for medical school examination and dissection. In this essay on the infamous pair, spurred on by the demand for fresh human corpses for dissection, we shall look at the facts of this sinister case. But the story we usually get is incorrect and often embellished legend. Their story is a bit different from the usual 'body snatchers' and is a loathsome tale. All in all the duo are a perfect pare, thick as thieves and as funny as, well, horrible murderers.Most of us have heard the names of Burke and Hare and other awful grave robbing deeds. Simon Pegg has the straighter role, though not by far, as he gleefully goes from love-struck puppy-eyed romantic to monstrously suffocating old ladies in the blink of an eye, his facial expressions, mostly of dim witted 'innocence' perfectly contrast with Serkis (Burke's reaction to Hare's coinage of the term 'burking' is hilarious). Andy Serkis proves that he is the most easily likable man in the world with his earnest, all or nothing approach to acting, and as he reasons that mankind's fate is sealed the moment they're born, you almost find yourself nodding along happily when he suggests 'helping them along the way'.

Harking back to the good old American Werewolf days, Burke and Hare joyfully plays with your expectations, creating characters you like and sympathise with and then making you squirm as they nonchalantly murder their way through Edinburgh. Burke and Hare is a fast-paced, fun filled riot and the title roles are inhabited brilliantly by Simon Pegg (as William Burke) and Andy Serkis (as William Hare).

Burke and Hare by Owen Dudley Edwards