Burke, WILLIAM

Burke, WILLIAM, born in 1792, the partner with William Hare in a series of infamous murders. Both Irishmen and labourers, the latter started a lodging-house in a West Port close, Edinburgh, to which Burke came to live in 1827. Towards the close of that year they sold for dissection to Dr Robert Knox, instead of burying it, the body of an old pensioner who had died in the house, and the ease and safety with which they had earned this money tempted them to commit a series of murders to procure more bodies. Their plan was to inveigle unknown travellers into the lodging-house, make them drunk, and then suffocate them in such a way that the bodies showed no marks of violence. With the help of their wives they had already murdered fifteen persons, and received from Dr Knox for their bodies sums of money varying from £8 to £14, when their infamous trade was discovered by the police, aroused by the suspicions of the neighbours. Hare, the more execrable wretch of the two, was admitted king's evidence, and after his release found shelter in a nameless obscurity; while Burke was hanged, amid the execrations of the crowd, 28th January 1829. His abhorred name has added a word to the English tongue.