In 1828, Edinburgh University was the premier institution of medical science in the English speaking world. That created a demand for dead bodies to be dissected. Two enterprising Irish immigrants, William Burke and William Hare, saw an opportunity to go into business, and so became the United Kingdom’s first celebrity serial killers.
Sources:
The story of Burke and Hare is adapted from Lisa Rosner’s The Anatomy Murders, published by The University of Pennsylvania press in 2010: http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14677.html
The short stories “Some Terrible Letters from Scotland,” “The Red Man,” “Post-Mortem Reflections of a Medical Lecturer,” and “The Victim” are all collected in The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre, published by Oxford University Press in 2008: https://global.oup.com/ukhe/product/the-vampyre-and-other-tales-of-the-macabre-9780199552412
The trailer for John Landis’s 2010 film, Burke and Hare can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE7KvAyVnbw
Music:
“The Graveyard” by Loyalty Freak Music
“Cold Funk” by Kevin MacLeod
“Ambiment” by Kevin MacLeod
This episode features the voices of Steven Nelson and Mary Shelly, and Andrew Ramsay as Sir Walter Scott. Andrew can be found at 5by12films.com
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