"performed, or collected by medical doctors, who have access to cadavers, sometimes those of executed criminals, such as the case of John Horwood in 1821 and the Red Barn Murder in 1828. Another tradition, with less supporting evidence, is that books of erotica or the occult have been bound in human skin. The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh preserves a notebook bound in the skin of the murderer William Burke after his execution and subsequent public dissection by Professor Alexander Monro in 1829. What Lawrence Thompson called ""the most famous of all anthropodermic bindings"" is exhibited at the Boston"
"16 deaths; formal charges were made against Burke and his wife for three murders. At the subsequent trial Burke was found guilty of one murder and sentenced to death. The case against his wife was found not proven—a Scottish legal verdict to acquit an individual but not declare them innocent. Burke was hanged shortly afterwards; his corpse was dissected and his skeleton displayed at the Anatomical Museum of Edinburgh Medical School where, as at 2018, it remains. The murders raised public awareness of the need for bodies for medical research and contributed to the passing of the Anatomy Act 1832."
"It was denounced as an attack on faith and morals... read today, it must be regarded as really rather more orthodox in its teaching than some of the lucubrations of the Dean of St Paul's and the Bishop of Durham"". Phrenologists from the Society applied their methods to the Burke and Hare murders in Edinburgh. Over the course of ten months in 1828, Burke and Hare murdered sixteen people and sold the bodies for dissection in anatomy lectures. Burke was executed on 28 January 1829, while Hare turned King's evidence; Burke was publicly dissected by Professor Monro the next day,"
"of rival gangs would often report members of other gangs, or desecrate a graveyard in order to cause a public upset, making it so that rival gangs would not be able to operate. From 1827 to 1828 in Scotland, a number of people were murdered, and the bodies were sold to medical schools for research purposes, known as the West Port murders. Another example of this is H. H. Holmes, a noted serial killer in Chicago, Illinois, US, who sold the skeletons of some of his victims to medical schools. The Anatomy Act of 1832 was created to ensure that"
"is also controversial. Colin Norris Colin Campbell Norris (12 February 1976) is a former nurse and serial killer from the Milton area of Glasgow, Scotland who was convicted of murdering four elderly patients in a hospital in Leeds, England, in 2002. He was sentenced in 2008 to serve a minimum of 30 years in prison. Doubts have since been raised about his conviction by, among others, retired Professor Vincent Marks, an expert on insulin poisoning. Norris worked at Leeds General Infirmary and St James's Hospital. Suspicions were raised when Norris predicted the death of one patient, Ethel Halls, saying she"
"for her murder. His defence was that he had already been acquitted of this charge, but this plea was rejected and he was hanged. The idea that a body was required to prove murder was mistakenly believed by Englishman John George Haigh. Already a convicted fraudster, he believed that dissolving a body in acid would make a conviction for murder impossible. In 1949, the remains of his last victim, Mrs Durand-Deacon, were found to contain part of her dentures. From this, her dentist was able to identify the remains, and Haigh was found guilty, sentenced to death, and subsequently executed"
"name. Pritchard was apprehended after an anonymous letter was sent to the authorities. When the bodies of his wife and mother-in-law were exhumed, it was found that they contained the poison antimony. The major points of interest in the trial were: Pritchard was convicted of murder after a five-day hearing in Edinburgh in July 1865, presided over by the Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Glencorse. He was hanged in front of thousands of spectators at the Saltmarket end of Glasgow Green at 8 a.m. on 28 July 1865. In 1947, Scottish playwright James Bridie wrote ""Dr Angelus"", based on the case."
"local medical fraternity. The public perception was that cholera victims were being removed to the hospital to be killed by doctors in order to use them for anatomical dissection. ""Bring out the Burkers"" was one cry of the Liverpool mobs, referring to the Burke and Hare scandal four years earlier, when two men had murdered people in Edinburgh in order to sell their bodies for dissection to the local anatomy school. This issue was of special concern to the Liverpool citizenry because in 1826, thirty-three bodies had been discovered on the Liverpool docks, about to be shipped to Scotland for"
"to death for it. This was summarised by Drs. Gould & Pyle on pg.409 of ""Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine"". Sawney Bean Alexander ""Sawney"" Bean was said to be the head of a 48-member clan in Scotland in the 16th century. He was reportedly executed for the mass murder and cannibalisation of over 1,000 people. The story appears in ""The Newgate Calendar"", a crime catalogue of Newgate Prison in London. While historians tend to believe Bean never existed or that his story has been greatly exaggerated, it has passed into local folklore and become part of the Edinburgh tourism industry."
"William Smellie was accused of obtaining cadavers for his illustrated textbook on childbirth through murder. In 1751, Helen Torrence and Jean Waldie were convicted of murdering John Dallas, aged 8 or 9, and selling his cadaver to medical students in Edinburgh. The great expansion in medical education in Great Britain in the early 19th century as a result of the Napoleonic Wars led to increased demand for cadavers for dissection. Body-snatching became more widespread, and local communities reacted by setting guards around graveyards. In 1828, Parliament convened a select committee to examine the means by which cadavers were obtained for"
"of Physicians the right to anatomise four felons annually in 1564. Several major hospitals and teaching centres were established in Britain during the 18th century, but with only a very few corpses legally available for dissection, these institutions suffered from severe shortages. Some local authorities had already attempted to alleviate the problem, with limited success; in 1694, Edinburgh allowed anatomists to dissect corpses ""found dead in the streets, and the bodies of such as die violent deaths ... who shall have nobody to own them"". Suicide victims were given over, as were infants who had died while being born and"
"led to an increased demand for human cadavers for dissections. Since few bodies were voluntarily donated for dissection, royal charters were established which allowed prominent universities to use the bodies of hung criminals for dissections. However, there was still a shortage of bodies that could not accommodate for the high demand of bodies. Until the middle of the 18th century, there was a quota of ten cadavers for each the Royal College of Physicians and the Company of Barber Surgeons, the only two groups permitted to perform dissections. During the first half of the 18th century, William Cheselden challenged the"
"Colin Norris Colin Campbell Norris (12 February 1976) is a former nurse and serial killer from the Milton area of Glasgow, Scotland who was convicted of murdering four elderly patients in a hospital in Leeds, England, in 2002. He was sentenced in 2008 to serve a minimum of 30 years in prison. Doubts have since been raised about his conviction by, among others, retired Professor Vincent Marks, an expert on insulin poisoning. Norris worked at Leeds General Infirmary and St James's Hospital. Suspicions were raised when Norris predicted the death of one patient, Ethel Halls, saying she would die at"
"She was finally strangled and burned as a witch. According to ""Newes from Scotland, Declaring the Damnable Life of Dr. Fian, a Notable Sorcerer"", a pamphlet published in 1591, Sampson confessed to attending a Sabbat with 200 witches, Duncan among them. Dr. Fian also suffered severe torture. He endured having his fingernails forcibly extracted, then having iron pins thrust therein, the pilliwinks, and the boot. He was finally taken to the Castlehill in Edinburgh and burned at the stake on 16 December. According to Christopher Smout, between 3,000 and 4,000 accused witches may have been killed in Scotland in the"
"dissection until the 14th century, when the first recorded anatomisation of a cadaver took place in Bologna. Until then, anatomical research was limited to the dissection of animals. In Britain, human dissection was proscribed by law until 1506, when King James IV of Scotland gave royal patronage to the Barber-Surgeons of Edinburgh, allowing them to dissect the ""bodies of certain executed criminals"". England followed in 1540, when Henry VIII gave patronage to the Company of Barber-Surgeons, allowing them access to four executed felons each year (Charles II later increased this to six felons each year). Elizabeth I granted the College"
"two men were hanged in December 1831 for the crime. A bill was quickly introduced into Parliament, and gained royal assent nine months later to become the Anatomy Act 1832. This Act authorised dissection on bodies from workhouses unclaimed after 48 hours, and ended the practice of anatomising as part of the death sentence for murder. The events of the West Port murders have made appearances in fiction. They are referred to in Robert Louis Stevenson's 1884 short story, ""The Body Snatcher"", and Marcel Schwob told their story in the last chapter of ""Imaginary Lives"" (1896), while the Edinburgh-based author"
"written with the blood of Wm Burke, who was hanged at Edinburgh. This blood was taken from his head."" Alexander Monro Tertius resigned as the Chair of Anatomy in 1846 and thus ended the dynastic reign of Monros at Edinburgh University which had spanned 126 years. Among Monro's publications are ""Outlines of the Anatomy of the Human Body"" (1811) in four volumes and ""Elements of Anatomy"" (1825) in two volumes. Although he taught surgery but had never trained or practised as a surgeon. He was Secretary of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh from 1809 to 1819 and elected"
"secretly, in many parts of the country as a result of ineffective laws and poverty. In Dublin, Ireland, the medical schools of the 18th and 19th centuries were on a constant hunt for bodies. The Bullys' Acre or Hospital Fields at Kilmainham was a rich source of anatomical material as it was a communal burial ground and easily accessed. Soldiers attached to the nearby Royal Hospital were always on the alert for grave robbers mainly because many of their comrades were buried there. In November 1825 a sentry captured Thomas Tuite, a known resurrectionist, in possession of five bodies. When"
"that only the corpses of executed murderers could be used for dissection. By the early 19th century, the rise of medical science – coinciding with a reduction in the number of executions – had caused demand to outstrip supply. Around 1810, an anatomical society was formed to impress upon the government the necessity for altering the law. Among its members were John Abernethy, Charles Bell, Everard Home, Benjamin Brodie, Astley Cooper, and Henry Cline. The efforts of this body gave rise in 1828 to a select committee to report on the question. The report of this committee led to the"
"Mary Ann Cotton Mary Ann Cotton (' Robson; 31 October 1832 – 24 March 1873) was an English serial killer, convicted of, and hanged for, the murder by poisoning of her stepson Charles Edward Cotton. It is likely that she murdered three of her four husbands, apparently in order to collect on their insurance policies, and many others. She may have murdered as many as 21 people, including 11 of her 13 children. She chiefly used arsenic poisoning, causing gastric pain and rapid decline of health. Mary Ann Robson was born on 31 October 1832 at Low Moorsley (now part"
"Edward William Pritchard Edward William Pritchard (6 December 1825 – 28 July 1865) was an English doctor who was convicted of murdering his wife and mother-in-law by poisoning them. He was also suspected of murdering a servant girl, but was never tried for this crime. He was the last person to be publicly executed in Glasgow. Pritchard was born in Southsea, Hampshire, into a naval family. His father was John White Pritchard, a captain. He claimed to have studied at King's College Hospital in London and to have graduated from there in 1846. He then served in the Royal Navy"
"of embezzlement, reneging on debts and causing a scandal on his wedding day by demanding money from the bride's father who was enraged and canceled the wedding. On the morning of January 31, 1857, Dr. Burdell's servants discovered his body in his office, at 31 Bond Street, covered with blood, brutally stabbed multiple times and strangled. Upon police interrogation, some of the servants testified that they heard angry words between the victim and his assailant the night before. The police determined that Dr. Burdell had been stabbed at least 15 times by an assailant who was left-handed. Since Emma Cunningham"
"continued until 1812. His career from 1812 to 1819 is unclear but in 1819 he appears as a practicing physician in Edinburgh. In the same year Aberdeen University awarded him a belated doctorate (MD) and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Thomas Charles Hope, James Russell and Sir David Brewster. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1820. He died at home, 6 Albany Street in Edinburgh’s Second New Town on 27 March 1827. He is buried in St Cuthberts Churchyard at the junction of"
"began lecturing in midwifery at the University of Edinburgh alongside Dr Thomas Young becoming a full professor in 1783. He had two houses: Blandfield House (a large mansion between Edinburgh and Leith) and a townhouse at St Andrew Street in the city. He was Deacon of the Incorporations of Surgeons in 1776. In 1791 he founded the Edinburgh Lying-In Hospital. He resigned his professorship in 1800 and died on 23 May 1802 at his home at 1 St Andrew Street in Edinburgh's New Town. He is buried in St Cuthberts Churchyard at the west end of Princes Street. He lies"
"committee concluded that dissection was essential to the study of human anatomy and recommended that anatomists be allowed to appropriate the bodies of paupers. The first bill was presented to Parliament in 1829 by Henry Warburton, author of the Select Committee's report. Following a spirited defence of the poor by peers in the House of Lords, it was withdrawn, but almost two years later Warburton introduced a second bill, shortly after the execution of John Bishop and Thomas Williams. The London Burkers, as the two men were known, were inspired by a series of murders committed by William Burke and"
"whose bodies were not found until 1913. The bodies had been left floating in a flooded quarry, resulting in an almost complete transformation into adipocere. Pathologists Sydney Smith and Professor Littlejohn were able to find more than enough evidence from the preserved remains for police to identify the victims and charge the killer, who was hanged. At the same time, the pathologists secretly took some of the remains back to Edinburgh University for further study; nearly a century later, a relative requested the return of those remains so they could be given a Christian burial. The university agreed to do"
"Lewis Hutchinson Lewis Hutchinson, a Scottish immigrant to Jamaica, was the first recorded serial killer in Jamaica's history and one of its most prolific. Hutchinson, better known as the Mad Master and Mad Doctor of Edinburgh Castle, was born in Scotland in 1733 where he is believed to have studied medicine. In the 1760s, he came to Jamaica to head an estate called Edinburgh Castle. He was said to have legally obtained the house (now a ruin) but to have maintained his group of cattle through the theft of strays from neighbors. This would not be the only accusation made"
"the well. He was undressed, bagged, then sold for eight guineas to a Mr Smith at St Bartholomew's Hospital. The confessions exonerated the other members of the gang, who would often help with delivery, of involvement in the murders. Bishop and Williams were hanged at Newgate on 5 December 1831 for the murder, before a crowd of thirty thousand. May was respited during his Majesty's pleasure, as it was accepted that he had no knowledge of the murders. The bodies were removed the same night, Bishop to King's College and Williams to the Theatre of Anatomy in Windmill Street, The"
"1867 aged 71. He is buried in East Preston Street Cemetery in south Edinburgh. In September 1818 he was married to Eliza Syme (1795–1865), daughter of Alexander Syme, a Dundee merchant. They had a daughter, Anne Katherina Huie (1821–1884). His eldest son Richard Huie was a children's author. Their eldest daughter, Eliza Syme Huie, married George Hair Newall. Their son David Huie (1831–1919) was a prominent figure in the Royal Bank of Scotland. Richard Huie Dr Richard Huie PRCSE (1795–1867) was a 19th-century Scottish surgeon who served as Preswident of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh for the period"
"did not return to Leiden, but settled once more in Edinburgh. He rose to be the first physician in Scotland, and was frequently called into consultation both in England and the Netherlands. Soon after his return to Edinburgh, feeling the great want of the means of anatomical study, he importuned the town council to permit himself and certain of his medical friends to treat without fee the sick paupers in Paul's Work, on condition of being allowed to dissect such of the bodies as were unclaimed by their relatives, and therefore had to be buried at the towns expense. Strangely"
"dissection. Two years later a local surgeon, William Gill, was tried and found guilty of running an extensive local grave robbing system to supply corpses for his dissection rooms. The widespread cholera rioting in Liverpool was thus as much related to local anatomical issues as it was to the national epidemic. The riots ended relatively abruptly, largely in response to an appeal by the Roman Catholic clergy read from church pulpits, and also published in the local press. In addition, a respected local doctor, James Collins, published a passionate appeal for calm. The Liverpool Cholera Riots of 1832 demonstrate the"
"Commissioner Sir Charles Warren to appoint Chief Inspector Donald Swanson to co-ordinate the investigation from Scotland Yard. A German hairdresser named Charles Ludwig was taken into custody on 18 September on suspicion of the murders, but he was released less than two weeks later when a double murder demonstrated that the real culprit was still at large. On Sunday 30 September, the body of prostitute Elizabeth Stride was discovered at about 1 am in Dutfield's Yard, inside the gateway of 40 Berner Street (since renamed Henriques Street), Whitechapel. She was lying in a pool of blood with her throat cut"
"of Edinburgh Medical School. The college expanded to absorb other buildings on Clyde Street over the next 20 years. The process was executed in liaison with the Highland Society, who at the end of the course issued a certificate, following an oral examination, to say the student was competent to practice ""the veterinary art"". After much fame and success Queen Victoria appointed him as Veterinary to the Queen in 1842. By his death in 1866 he had trained 818 students who had gone on to practice around the globe. He died on 4 April 1866 and was buried in New"