In the dark underbelly of 19th century London, where murder was as rife as the many diseases that contaminated our cobbled streets, a group of killer men were building a body snatching empire that made them filthy rich. Despite murdering far more victims than the infamous Jack The Ripper, the treacherous gang - who worked in the 1820s and early 1830s - hid in the shadows for over a decade, committing countless crimes and callously cashing in on the hefty profit that followed.
The cunning criminals were eventually known as The London Burkers, thanks to staggering similarities between their deeds and the notorious Scottish grave-robbers, Burke and Hare. The gruelling gang was made up of four men called John Bishop, Thomas Williams, Michael Shields and James May, with Shields being a Covent Garden porter and May an unemployed butcher.
