A closer look
The skyrocketing demand for fresh cadavers in 19th-century medical schools created a highly lucrative black market, and some Scottish entrepreneurs decided that digging up graves was simply too much manual labor. William Burke and William Hare realized that Dr. Robert Knox at the University of Edinburgh paid handsomely for 'no questions asked' bodies. Instead of braving freezing graveyards at midnight, the duo spent ten months getting vulnerable locals blackout drunk and smothering them to preserve the merchandise. Their 16-victim murder spree permanently revolutionized anatomical legislation and gifted the English language the grim verb 'to burke.'
