Burke and Hare murders

Who was Burke and Hare murders?

The Burke and Hare murders were a series of murders committed in Edinburgh, Scotland over a period of about ten months in 1828. The killings were attributed to Irish immigrants William Burke and William Hare, who sold the corpses of their 16 victims to Doctor Robert Knox as dissection material for his well-attended anatomy lectures. Burke and Hare's accomplices were Burke's mistress, Helen McDougal, and Hare's wife, Margaret Laird. From their method of killing their victims came the word "burking", meaning to smother and compress the chest of a murder victim, and a derived meaning, to suppress something quietly.