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Burke and Hare
by Owen Dudley Edwards
ISBN: 9781841589855
Imprint: Birlinn
Publication Date: Oct 2010
Format: Paperback
Price: £9.99
Stock Status: in stock
In a boarding house in the West Port area of 1820's Edinburgh, an old army pensioner dies of natural causes. He owes the landlord £4 rent so, instead of burying the body, the landlord and his friend - one William Hare and William Burke, both Irish - fill the coffin with bark and sell the corpse to Dr. Robert Knox, an ambitious Edinburgh anatomist. Burke and Hare make a profit of £3 and 10 shillings. After this encouraging start, Burke and Hare decide to suffocate another sickly tenant, so beginning the criminal career of the most notorious double act in serial killing that would only end on the gallows with the worst kind of betrayal.
It's a tale of desperation and greed, of outsiders, ambition, corruption, love and betrayal. And it's all true!
Owen Dudley Edwards was initially led to his subjects by something he holds in common with them; he too is an Irish Catholic now making a contribution to higher learning in Edinburgh. Hare's executed body was dissected at the Edinburgh Medical College and his skeleton kept in the anatomy museum.
A noted scholar, Owen is Reader in History at Edinburgh University, and a regular contributor and reviewer for radio, television and the press. His books include The Quest for Sherlock Holmes: A Biographical Study of Arthur Conan Doyle, Mind of an Activist: James Connolly and P.G Wodehouse: A Critical and Historical Study.
