Burke & Hare 4 - The Final Resting Place

The last back blip - but this one needed research. 
We left Burke and Hare on 19 August having been arrested after one of the lodgers found a dead body under the bed that was subsequently found at Knox’s Anatomy School.  Surprisingly, there was insufficient evidence of who actually killed the bodies to be sure of a conviction until Hare turned King’s evidence and gained protection from prosecution. 
The Lord Justice Clerk in his summing up at the trial of Burke on Christmas Day 1828 stated “
I am disposed to agree that your sentence shall be put into execution in the usual way but accompanied with the statutory attendant of the punishment of the crime of murder, viz. — that your body should be publicly dissected and anatomised. And I trust that if it is ever customary to preserve skeletons, yours will be preserved, in order that posterity may keep in remembrance your atrocious crimes.
Burke was hung on 27 Jan 1829.  His diet in prison was better than the normal bread and water in order to keep his body as fit as possible for dissection.  He was dissected by  Dr Munro of Edinburgh Medical School; Dr Knox’s rival.  Munro wrote a note in Burkes blood which can be seen in the Surgeons Hall Museum.  At some point parts of his skin were taken and made into various note books and cards that can be viewed in Surgeons Hall Museum, Stirling Museum  and the Witchery shop in Victoria St (extra).
His skeleton has been preserved in accordance with the judgement   I tracked it down to the the University of Edinburgh Anatomy Department Museum and was delighted to find the museum was open today; my last day in Edinburgh and the first time since May. . This main photo is the entrance hall.  I was very disappointed not to be able to photograph Burke’s skeleton.  The staff explained that there were restrictions over the public taking photographs of human remains which they could not ignore even for Blipfoto.  I chatted at length to Janet Philip on the staff in the Anatomy Department who has recently written a book on Burke and Hare after 4 years of tracking down new evidence and checking all the old stories. Of course I had to buy the book and have taken the liberty of photographing the skeleton from the book. See extras.

I was interested to read in her book that Burke and Hare were supplying less than 10% of the bodies Knox dissected.  At the time, executed murderers were the main legal source of bodies, hence Burke’s fate.  Many of Knox’s specimens can be still viewed in the Surgeons Hall Museum.  He fled South to escape the notoriety and is buried in Woking