It’s not an exaggeration to say that William Burke is one Scotland’s most notorious convicted criminals.
Executed exactly 193 years ago today, Burke, along with his partner William Hare, was branded a cold and calculated graverobber, known for digging up and selling corpses to Dr Robert Knox for dissection in his medical lectures at Edinburgh University.
But few know that the pair never actually plundered coffins. Instead, the gruesome twosome bypassed the dirty work of graverobbing, turning instead to murder - slaughtering at least 16 people in a 10-month killing spree at the lodging house run by Hare and his wife.
