Burke & Hare

Owen Dudley Edwards

dic 2014 · Casemate Publishers

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The shocking true story of 19th century Scotland’s most famous serial killers is “gruesome and funny and sometimes both together” (The Observer, UK).
 
In a boarding house just off Edinburgh’s West Port, an old army pensioner dies of natural causes. He owes the landlord rent. Instead of burying the body, the landlord, William Hare, and his friend, William Burke, fill the coffin with bark and sell the corpse to Dr. Robert Knox, an ambitious Edinburgh anatomist. It’s a nice profit for not a lot of work. After this encouraging outcome, Burke and Hare decide to suffocate another sickly tenant.
 
So begins the criminal career of the most notorious double act in serial killing. Here is the unvarnished, human story behind the infamous Burke and Hare murders. We delve into their past, their personalities and the circumstances that made them resort to murder as a money-making scheme. It's a tale of desperation and greed, of outsiders, ambition, corruption and betrayal.

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Owen Dudley Edwards was initially led to his subjects by something he holds in common with them; he too is an Irish Catholic now making a contribution to higher learning in Edinburgh. A noted scholar, he is Reader in History at Edinburgh University and is a regular contributor and reviewer for radio, television and the press. His previous books include The Quest for Sherlock Holmes: A Biographical Study of Arthur Conan Doyle, Mind of an Actvist: James Connolly and P. G. Wodehouse: A Critical and Historical Study.