If a Body Need a Body, Just Call Burke and Hare (AFRTS)

Good evening. This is Crime Classics. I am Thomas Highland with another true story of crime. Listen, that's the way a room sounds. A particular room in a narrow street in Edinburgh, Scotland. Someplace in the wall there was a drip. When the room was still, when there was a larger in it, a sleep, that was the sound.

But listen again. That's the way it sounded when it rained because the room was just below gutter level. The rainwater rushed by the room's only window. Many lodgers caught cold in this room. They were lucky. Many other lodgers wound up on a dissecting table.

They were murdered by Mr. Burke, who smothered, by Mr. Hare, who held. So tonight, I report to you if a body need a body, just call Burke and Hare. Crime classics. A series of true crime stories from the records and newspapers of every land from every time.

Your host each week, Mr. Thomas Highland, connoisseur of crime, student of violence, and teller of murders. Now once again, Mr. Thomas Highland. Edinburgh in 1826, a city famous for lassies, laddies, the people coming through the rye, scotch, kilties, and medical schools. It is this last I'd like to speak a word about.

Now when a student entered medical school, he studied anatomy right off. No Roman in the Gloamen. And her school cut up a cadaver. Except there weren't enough cadavers. Executed criminals were the only legitimate source of supply.

Therefore, a new occupation sprang up and flourished. Grave snatching. Peace work in corpses. A rob a grave of its contents and sell it to science. Yet the supply didn't meet the demand. So, as in every profession, there were those who looked for shortcuts.