With a son in medical school, I am interested in all things medical-education related. This book delves into that era when medical knowledge was exploding, when more cadavers were needed for anatomical and surgical learning, and when grave robbing became a trade to fill that need. Enter Burke and Hare to the meaner streets of Edinburgh. Running a low boardinghouse, a customer expires before paying his bill; they sell his body to one of the lecturing surgeons.

“The point was noted however, that any ailing inmate {of the lodging} might on occasion be converted into cash. Pending this desirable opportunity, they conceived the notion that it was unnecessary to await the co-operation of nature; judiciously assisted, and feeble, friendless wanderer would equally serve their purpose.” This line was not written by the author, but quoted from another book on the subject.

The story itself was interesting – the perpetrators' past history, their crimes, the gradual understanding of their community that something was happening to the poorest among them, the discovery, and the trial. A great deal of historical information is contained in the book – transcripts from trials, testimonies, and numerous confessions; writings from Sir Walter Scott, John James Audubon and others; contemporary drawings, etchings, and newspaper articles; broadsheets, fliers and pamphlets; and appendices galore. (Too much, actually, for this particular reader.)

I received my copy through the Early Reviewers program, so I reviewed this book's listing there; I've scoured the cover and looked for evidence inside, but do not find any notice whatsoever that this is an uncorrected proof. Therefore, I'm going to hold it accountable for it's editing problems, and they are pervasive. From the various garden-variety misspellings, to this sentence: The team did not good records of the merchandise they had supplied to Dr. Knox, and certainly the doctor was not, at least officially.(p162) At least one Chapter Note seems out of order. (I didn't follow too many.) Note #50 on page 33, is a quote from Audubon, attributed on the Chapter Notes page to Walter Scott's Wikipedia page.

Even with those problems, though, I did appreciate the book. It was enlightening as to medical education issues and contemporary living issues in 1828 Edinburgh. ( )

Burke and Hare are perhaps the worlds best known grave robbers even though they never, technically, robbed a grave. R. Michael Gordon’s “The infamous Burke and Hare: serial killers and resurrectionists of nineteenth century Edinburgh” is not the first work to be written about the pair but I feel it has to be the best. Armed with a wealth of primary material as well as the modern psychological studies of serial killers that were unavailable to earlier writers Gordon is able to explain the pair’s evolution as serial killers.

The story is told in a strict chronological order, first we are introduced to the main actors then the killings are reconstructed as best possible using the available resources. The next part of the story, the trial, at first seemed awkward to me. Here Gordon used only the knowledge of the murders that came out in the court records and ignoring details that he had already told us. However, by using the court transcript Gordon allows us to hear the words of the killers, their accomplices and their enablers, and we are able to build an image of their personalities through their testimony. The problem I originally had with his method was well worth the results.

Gordon follows the story to the principles’ graves and beyond by looking at the cultural effects the story has had from an J. M. Barrie play, “The Anatomist”, to a verb added to our language, “to burke”. One topic that I felt could have been better explained was why the authorities chose to turn a blind eye to body snatching. We hear through the book the Dr. Knox’s class’ are popular but not why they were important.

“The Infamous Burke and Hare” reads more like a popular history than a scholarly one. Gordon makes good use of primary documents and period illustrations; his sources are well documented and well used. Although he does site several internet sources for peripheral information the core story is told thorough contemporary newspaper accounts and official records. Overall this is a very interesting book and well worth reading. ( )

The title pretty much says what you'll get in this book, the facts behind the career and trial of the Infamous Burke and Hare, although resurrectionists, they were not. If you aren't from the UK, you may not have heard of Burke and Hare. If you are, they've probably become a child story for you. I first learned of Burke and Hare from a Katherine Briggs collection of folktales. In the folktales, usually someone takes a carriage ride next to some stiff old lady, and as they get out of the carriage and it goes on its way, the person realizes the old lady was in fact dead and the drivers were Burke and Hare. The folktales aren't true, but the fact that Burke and Hare were killing people and transporting them to a doctor who was using the corpses for dissection in broad daylight is very much the truth.

This book isn't nearly as funny as the folktales, but it is a riveting read. I found myself just as fascinated and appalled by the practices of the medical education community, by the crass classism that allowed the crimes to go unremarked for one and a half years, and the gap between moral justice and legal justice. This is Scotland during the Irish potato famine. Irish immigrants were everywhere. Tenants of boarding houses came and went weekly. The theft of a dead body from a grave was a lesser offense than the theft of a dead person's clothes. Cadavers from Ireland were shipped to the anatomists in boxes marked "books" at least on one occasion. Criminals were hanged in front of their own homes, and if you were lucky enough to be cut down still alive but appearing to be dead, perhaps the law would forget about you.

It was a time very different than our own, yet the judge, police and lawyers still faced a dilemma that happens today. Do you arrest your criminal before you have enough evidence? If you don't have quite enough evidence, do you cut a deal with someone who is guilty in order to have a witness? Do you stand by that deal? If a mob wants to finish off someone that is "not guilty" according to the courts, but known guilty by information that was inadmissible, do you step aside and let them?

An interesting book, that gives the context for a series of crimes that seem nearly inconceivable. Perhaps not the book for the weak-stomached, but for others, definitely a worthwhile read. ( )

In the early 19th century a revolution in medicine was taking place. Teaching the new science was lucrative and prestigious and the need for well-trained, professional physicians meant that students flocked to Edinburgh -- the preeminent center for surgical and medical education.

Anatomical training centered on lectures in which medical professors would dissect cadavers before large audiences of students, which could number more than 500 in a single class. The burgeoning demand for medical training created enormous pressure to find bodies to use as subjects for these lectures. In the 1800s the idea of “donating one’s body for science” was far in the future -- by law the only cadavers available for research and teaching were those of executed criminals. Demand for bodies far exceeded supply. Something had to give – and it did.

A brisk trade in dead body snatching developed and dealers in these wares became known as resurrectionists. It was a very lucrative business as lecturers would pay up to 10 pounds -- on occasion even more -- for a suitable subject. Sometimes medical students themselves would dig up bodies for the classroom. Common law at the time placed no value on dead bodies, so grave-robbing was not a crime as long as you stripped the deceased and left behind their clothes and any valuables that had been buried with them. But even with all the busy resurrectionists, the price for bodies continued to rise.

Enter William Burke and William Hare. Both were members of the working poor and they met at a cheap and dismal lodging house, Tanner’s Close, run by Hare. The fact that the dead bodies could be sold for ready cash was well-known in Edinburgh. When a lodger named Donald died at Tanner’s Close without paying his rent, Burke and Hare hit on the idea of selling his body to make up for the lost income.

Before long they realized they didn’t need to wait for lodgers to die a natural death to realize a windfall. They began murdering people for profit. It should have been obvious to the medical men that the bodies on offer were suspiciously fresh – but given the competition for good dissection subjects, no questions were asked. Burke and Hare committed 15 murders before they were caught.

Author R. Michael Gordon tells the story of the murdering duo in The Infamous Burke and Hare: Serial Killers and Resurrectionists of Nineteenth Century Edinburgh. The topic should be fascinating, if grisly. Unfortunately, Gordon is a poor and disorganized writer, which greatly detracts both from the macabre aspect of the events (if that’s what you’re looking for) as well as his book’s value as a good history (if that is your preference).

Gordon is more interested in Burke and Hare as serial killers than the underlying issues – the implications of the clash between science and ethics, the psychological justifications of immoral acts, the costs of the birth of modern-day medicine (from which we all benefit), the underlying reasons for the cultural conditions that enabled a certain type of person to go missing without comment from the authorities.

Gordon has amassed a great deal of information on Burke’s trial and the press coverage surrounding the legal proceedings -- and he documents the public outcry targeted at the murderers, the medical community, and the perceived (and probably real) cover-up. To me this was by far the most interesting aspect of the book. And to be fair, I probably should have realized this wouldn’t be a thorough social history or a careful look at one period in the evolution of medicine. Interesting enough if you want to do your own substantive thinking without much help from the author. Gordon has supplied enough detail that you can raise your own questions and weave your own conclusions. But not a nuanced work of intellect. ( )

Although I knew the story of Burke and Hare, I had no real understanding of the dynamics that made such crimes possible. R. Michael Gordon gives the facts of why, how and who clear and comprehensible (if not reprehensible). Sprinkled with actual newspaper reports and trial transcripts, you want to pick up a pitchfork and join the townspeople seeking justice anew. ( )