West Port: Burke and Hare

In the early 19th century Edinburgh was one of Europe's great medical capitals, and its anatomy schools needed corpses. The law only gave them the bodies of executed criminals, who were very few, and so the trade of the grave robbers flourished.

1A lodger who owed rent

William Hare ran a lodging house in Tanner's Close, an alley off this street. William Burke, an Irishman like him, lived there. In November 1827 a lodger who owed rent died of natural causes, and the pair sold his body to Dr Robert Knox's anatomy school. They were paid more than seven pounds, a fortune.

From then on they stopped waiting for people to die. During 1828 they murdered sixteen people, most of them poor or strangers to the city, getting them drunk and smothering them so as to leave no marks. In November, two other lodgers found a body under a bed and went to the police.

'Up the close and doon the stair, but and ben wi' Burke and Hare; Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief, Knox the boy that buys the beef.' Popular rhyme of the time.

Hare gave evidence against his partner in exchange for immunity. Burke was hanged on 28 January 1829 and his body was publicly dissected; his skeleton is still held by the University of Edinburgh. Knox was never tried. The scandal led to the Anatomy Act of 1832.

2What to look out for

• The curve of the street, following the medieval line towards the old gate.
• The second-hand bookshops, in 19th-century buildings.