The London Burkers
The case became notorious as the murder of the Italian Boy, and the killers became infamous as the 'London Burkers'. The case spawned a new wave of terror known as 'burkophobia', in which rumours of multiple murders spread, as they had after the discovery of Burke and Hare. Before their execution, the men were said to have confessed to over 60 murders. -The King's Collections London Burkers, who claimed to have stolen upwards of 1,000 bodies from nearby cemeteries. That made the Burkers the largest known exploiters of the anatomical trade.- "Executed Today" |
The London Burkers started their crimes by digging up fresh corpses from graveyards and then selling the bodies to colleges and hospitals. However, this started to get a bit dangerous. The families of people who had been recently buried started to mount vigils at their gravesides to deter body snatchers. The gang then decided that the best way to get valuable bodies was to make them, as they could avoid attack from angry relatives. This also allowed them to create their own supply of bodies rather than having to rely on people dying to order. |
For several years [in the late 1820s] there prevailed what would now be called a “burking scare.” The detection of the Burke and Hare murders*, which were committed merely for the value of the bodies for dissection, and the Italian boy’s murder, frightened people for a while literally out of their wits. Burke added, like Mr. Boycott, a new verb to the English language. In fact, people went about at night in terror of being burked. Surgeons were accustomed to buy “subjects,” as they were called, from body-snatchers and others, of whom no questions were asked so long as the corpse brought for sale was cold and stiff. But the murderers of the Italian boy were in so great a hurry to grasp their reward, that they offered the body of their victim for sale while it was yet warm. -Charles Dickens, "All The Year Round" |