,

 

Credits and Sources

Published Contemporary Sources

• The Trial of William Burke and Helen M’Dougal, before the High Court of Justiciary, at Edinburgh. Edinburgh: Robert Buchanan, 1829. This provides the most accurate transcript of the trial. It was often bound with Supplement to the Trial of William Burke & Helen M’Dougal, dealing with additional legal procedings against William Hare, and Appendix to the Trial of William Burke and Helen M’Dougal, containing William Burke's confessions as well as newspaper articles and pamphlets.
• These three publications were reprinted in William Roughead, ed. Burke and Hare. London: William Hodge and Company, Ltd., 1920. They are now more widely available on Google Books.
• The West Port Murders. Edinburgh: Thomas Ireland, 1828/9. Ireland included articles originally published in newspapers and pamphlets as well as some original material. It is also available on Google Books.
• David Syme, Reports of Proceedings in the High Court of Justiciary, from 1826-1829. Edinburgh: Thomas Clark, 1829.

Archives, Ephemera, and Artifacts

• The National Archives of Scotland has manuscript sources relating to the arrest, indictment, and trial of William Burke, Helen M'Dougal, William Hare, and Margaret Hare.
• The Edinburgh Room of the Edinburgh Central Library has collections of ephemera relating to Burke and Hare, including newspaper clippings, pamphlets, broadsheets, caricatures, and illustrations.
• The National Library of Scotland has collections of ephemera as well as contemporary caricatures, including R. Nimmo's Wretches Illustrations of Shakespeare. Edinburgh, 1829.
• The Library of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh has collections of ephemera and contemporary caricatures. Its holdings also include anatomical textbooks by Robert Knox.
• Special Collections in the Edinburgh University Library has the collection of ephemera kept by Alexander Monro, Professor of Anatomy, as well as a notebook with anatomical observations kept by Dr. Robert Knox in 1828.
• The Museums of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinbugh have a display of Burke and Hare artifacts, including plaster casts of the William Burke's head and a pocketbook allegedly made from Burke's skin. The Library and Archive holdings include books and pamphlets by and about Robert Knox, his assistants, and his students.
• The Museum of the Department of Anatomy at Edinburgh University has William Burke's skeleton. West Port Tours provides pictures in their gallery.
• The Library of the Society of Writers to Her Majesty's Signet has William Roughead's collection of published works relating to Burke and Hare, including a copy of the Trial of Burke and M'Dougal owned by Robert Christison, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence and medical inspector during the trial.

Digital Collections

• The Resurrectionists: Burke and Hare in Song and Story, from the New York Academy of Medicine.
• Burke and Hare broadsheets can be found in The Word on the Street, from the National Library of Scotland.

19th Century Retellings

• Murderers of the Close. London: Cowie and Strange, 1829. Includes illustrations by Robert Seymour.
• Alexander Leighton, The Court of Cacus; or, The Story of Burke and Hare. Edinburgh: W.P. Nimmo, 1861.
• Henry Lonsdale, A sketch of the life and writings of Robert Knox the Anatomist. London: Macmillan & Co., 1870. Available on Google Books.
• Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Body Snatcher." Pall Mall Christmas Extra,  No. 13. London, 1884. Available as a Gaslight ebook.

Drama and Graphic Novels

• Dylan Thomas, The Doctor and the Devils and Other Scripts. New York: New Directions, 1970.
• James Bridie [Osborne Henry Mavor], The Anatomist. London: Constable, 1979.
• Martin Conaghan, Will Pickering, Burke and Hare. Insomnia Publications, 2009. View Trailer.

Movies Based on Burke and Hare

• Currently in production:
• Burke and Hare. Directed by John Landis, written by Piers Ashworth and Nick Moorcroft, starring Simon Pegg, Andy Serkis,Tim Curry, Isla Fisher, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Davis, 2010; Ealing Studios. Synopsis (spoiler alert).
• Earlier versions:
• The Anatomist. 1939; BBC. Based on the play The Anatomist by James Bridie.
• The Body Snatcher. DVD. Directed by Robert Wise, starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. 1945; Turner Home Entertainment, 2005. Based on the Robert Louis Stevenson short story, "The Body Snatcher."
• Horror Maniacs: The Greed of William Hart. DVD. Directed by Oswald Mitchell, starring Tod Slaughter. 1953 (US); Alpha Video, 2003.
• The Flesh and the Fiends. DVD. Directed by John Gilling, starring Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasance. 1960; Image Entertainment, 2001.
• The Anatomist. DVD. Directed by Dennis Vance, starring Alistair Sim. 1961; Televista, 2009. Based on the play The Anatomist by James Bridie.
• Burke and Hare. DVD. Directed by Vernon Sewell. 1972; Sinister Cinema, 2008.
• The Doctor and the Devils. DVD. Directed by Freddie Francis, starring Timothy Dalton, Jonathan Pryce. 1985; 20th Century Fox, 2005. Based on the screenplay The Doctor and the Devils by Dylan Thomas.

Selected Secondary Sources

• Lisa Rosner, The Anatomy Murders. Being the True and Spectacular History of Edinburgh's Notorious Burke and Hare and of the Man of Science Who Abetted Them in the Commission of Their Most Heinous Crimes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).
• Andrew Patrizio and Dawn Kemp, eds., Anatomy Acts; How we come to know ourselves. Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd, 2006. Digital exhibition, http://www.anatomyacts.co.uk/exhibition/exhibition.htm
• Mary Roach, Stiff. New York: Norton, 2003.
• Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection, and the Destitute. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
• Owen Dudley Edwards, Burke & Hare. Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1993.
• Evelleen Richards, “The ‘Moral Anatomy’ of Robert Knox: The Interplay between Biological and Social Thought in Victorian Scientific Naturalism.” Journal of the History of Biology 22 (1989): 373-436.
• Isobel Rae, Knox the Anatomist. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1965.
• William Roughead, Classic Crimes. New York: New York Review Books, 2000.

Edinburgh Maps and Images

• The National Library of Scotland has an excellent digital map collection.
• The Royal Mile Gallery and the Carson Clark Gallery in Edinburgh sell both original maps and excellent reproductions.
• West Port Books, Four Hundred Old Edinburgh Illustrations.
• Edinphoto website, http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/index.htm
• Picturesque Views of Edinburgh, J. Ewbank, engraved by W.H. Lizars, Edinburgh, 1825.
• Thomas Shepherd, Modern Athens, displayed in a series of views, or Edinburgh in the Nineteenth Century. London: Jones & Co., 1831, reprinted by Arno Press, 1979.
• James Drummond, Old Edinburgh. Edinburgh: G. Waterston Sons and Stewart, 1879.
• Edinburgh in the Olden Time. Edinburgh: Thomas George Stevenson, 1880.
• Daniel Wilson, Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1891. Available on Google Books.
• Bruce Home, Old Houses in Edinburgh. Edinburgh: William J. Hay, 1905.

Anatomy Images

• Joanna Ebenstein, Anatomical Theatre: Depictions of The Body, Disease, and Death in Medical Museums of The Western World. Her blog Morbid Anatomy includes a very extensive list of links to medical museums and online anatomical illustrations.
• George Viner Ellis, Illustrations of Dissections, 2 vols. (New York: William Wood and Company, 1882).
• Henry Gray, Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical, ed. William Keen (Philadelpha: Lea Brothers and Company, 1887).
• John Lizars, A System of Anatomical Plates of the Human Body (Edinburgh: W.H. Lizars, 1822-6). Illustrations courtesy of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

Additional Website Credits

• Music by the Ebony Hillbillies
• Slideshow from Andres Cayon, http://www.tecnorama.org.

Special Thanks

• Historical Studies Program, Stockton College
• Lees Seminar, Department of History, Rutgers University Camden
• History of Medicine Seminar, Johns Hopkins University
• Edinburgh History of Medicine Group
• Centre for the History of Medicine, Glasgow University