# The Case So Disturbing it Changed Laws

An episode of [Scary Interesting Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1705969819), 7 Jun 2026, 24 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72087606/london_burkers_pod.mp3

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## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: In the early eighteen hundreds in London, something strange was happening.
[0:04] Speaker 1: Every night for decades, people would attend a funeral for
[0:07] Speaker 1: a loved one. They would watch the coffin be buried
[0:10] Speaker 1: and say their goodbyes. Then they would return the following day,
[0:13] Speaker 1: maybe to visit or to place flowers, only to discover
[0:16] Speaker 1: the dirt disturbed and the body simply gone. And surprisingly,
[0:20] Speaker 1: this wasn't a rare phenomenon. Entire graveyards were actually being
[0:24] Speaker 1: emptied out day in day out, bodies would go missing
[0:27] Speaker 1: in the nights. But maybe strange of all was that
[0:31] Speaker 1: everyone knew this was happening, and yet it happened anyway,
[0:34] Speaker 1: And eventually this practice would escalate into something much more sinister.
[0:39] Speaker 1: So in this video we're going to go over what
[0:40] Speaker 1: this strange phenomenon was, why it was happening, and the
[0:43] Speaker 1: truly disturbing things it would eventually lead to. As always,
[0:47] Speaker 1: of your discretion is strongly advised. In the early decades
[1:01] Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century, many people in Britain feared something
[1:04] Speaker 1: that might seem strange to us today. Funerals at the
[1:07] Speaker 1: time were not always the end of the story for
[1:09] Speaker 1: those who had passed away. In cities like London and Edinburgh,
[1:13] Speaker 1: families often worried that the freshly buried bodies relatives might
[1:17] Speaker 1: not remain in the ground for very long. Instead, there
[1:20] Speaker 1: was a very real possibility that someone might dig them
[1:23] Speaker 1: up in the middle of the night and carry them away.
[1:25] Speaker 1: And this was no urban legend. This was the reality
[1:28] Speaker 1: of the times, and the reason for this might seem
[1:30] Speaker 1: decidedly unreal to us today. The men who did this
[1:34] Speaker 1: were known as resurrectionists, though most people used simpler and
[1:37] Speaker 1: less flattering names. They were called body snatcher, sack them
[1:41] Speaker 1: up men, or sometimes night doctors. But whatever anyone preferred
[1:44] Speaker 1: to call them, their purpose was always the same. They
[1:47] Speaker 1: made money by digging up corpses and selling them to
[1:49] Speaker 1: medical schools. This practice horrified the public, but it also
[1:53] Speaker 1: flourished because it served an overwhelming demand. During the late
[1:57] Speaker 1: eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, medicine was changing. Doctors and
[2:01] Speaker 1: surgeons were beginning to understand that the human body could
[2:03] Speaker 1: not be studied properly through books or animal dissection alone.
[2:07] Speaker 1: If students want to become skilled surgeons one day, they
[2:10] Speaker 1: needed to learn anatomy by examining real human bodies, and
[2:13] Speaker 1: that created a problem. Medical schools needed far more cadaverse
[2:16] Speaker 1: than the law allowed them to obtain. The legal supply
[2:19] Speaker 1: was small and tightly controlled, but the number of students
[2:21] Speaker 1: studying medicine was growing rapidly. As a result, a strange
[2:25] Speaker 1: partnership developed between surgeons and criminals. The surgeons needed bodies,
[2:29] Speaker 1: and the criminals knew how to get them. At first,
[2:32] Speaker 1: this underground trade focused mainly on graves, and as a result,
[2:36] Speaker 1: fresh barrels were watched closely, but even still, the dead
[2:38] Speaker 1: sometimes disappeared under the cover of darkness. A small crew
[2:42] Speaker 1: could slip into a churchyard, dig down just far enough
[2:45] Speaker 1: to expose the coffin prop in the lid, and pull
[2:47] Speaker 1: the body out with a rope. It would then be
[2:49] Speaker 1: stripped of clothing and placed in a sack before being
[2:51] Speaker 1: carried away, and the whole operation could be finished in
[2:54] Speaker 1: less than an hour. For grieving families, the idea that
[2:57] Speaker 1: a loved one's body might be treated this way was
[2:59] Speaker 1: deeply disturb Some people even tried to guard graves themselves
[3:02] Speaker 1: for several nights after a burial. Others paid watchmen to
[3:05] Speaker 1: patrol cemeteries, and in some places, heavy iron cages known
[3:09] Speaker 1: as mort safes were placed over graves to prevent them
[3:11] Speaker 1: from being disturbed into the body inside had decomposed enough
[3:14] Speaker 1: to lose its value. Even with these precautions, though the
[3:17] Speaker 1: trade continued. The money was just simply too good. A
[3:21] Speaker 1: freshly buried at all corpse could bring a surprisingly large
[3:24] Speaker 1: sum from an anatomy school. Unusual bodies with deformities where
[3:28] Speaker 1: diseases or injuries were worth these more and some Most
[3:31] Speaker 1: resurrectionists were content to steal from graves because while it
[3:34] Speaker 1: was risky work, it was highly profitable, and over time,
[3:37] Speaker 1: the demand for bodies kept growing, and as the price
[3:39] Speaker 1: of a corpse rose, some criminals began to see a
[3:42] Speaker 1: far darker opportunity for themselves. If a body was so valuable,
[3:46] Speaker 1: then why just wait around for someone to die, Why
[3:48] Speaker 1: not just create the bodies themselves. That grim realization would
[3:52] Speaker 1: soon lead to some of the most notorious murders in
[3:54] Speaker 1: the history of nineteenth century Britain. Before we get into that, though,
[3:58] Speaker 1: how did the body trade even come to be in
[4:00] Speaker 1: the first place. For a long time, the study of
[4:03] Speaker 1: the human body had been heavily restricted religious beliefs in
[4:07] Speaker 1: much of Europe treated the dissection of human remains as
[4:10] Speaker 1: deeply offensive, and for centuries the practice was either forbidden
[4:13] Speaker 1: or carried out, but only under very limited circumstances. As
[4:17] Speaker 1: a result, early medical knowledge was often based on animal dissections.
[4:21] Speaker 1: That began to change though during the Renaissance period. In
[4:24] Speaker 1: the sixteenth century, the Flemish anatomist Andreas Vesalius challenged long
[4:29] Speaker 1: held assumptions about the body by performing detailed dissections on
[4:32] Speaker 1: human cadavers. His work demonstrated that many traditional anatomical teachings
[4:37] Speaker 1: of the time were simply wrong, and it showed that
[4:39] Speaker 1: accurate medical knowledge required direct study of the human body itself.
[4:43] Speaker 1: From that point on, attitudes toward dissections slowly began to change,
[4:47] Speaker 1: and by the eighteenth century, anatomy had become a central
[4:49] Speaker 1: part of medical training. At the exact same time, British
[4:53] Speaker 1: society was rapidly changing. The Industrial Revolution brought new cities, industries,
[4:57] Speaker 1: and social problems, while it also incur scientific inquiry and
[5:01] Speaker 1: medical advancement. Hospitals expanded in medical schools seemingly opened by
[5:05] Speaker 1: the dozens as the profession of medicine began to gain
[5:08] Speaker 1: greater respectability. This progress, however, wasn't without great difficulty. Medical
[5:13] Speaker 1: students needed bodies to study, and the law provided very few.
[5:17] Speaker 1: In an effort to change this while making the punishment
[5:20] Speaker 1: for murder more severe, the British government passed the Murder
[5:22] Speaker 1: Act of seventeen fifty one. Under this law, the bodies
[5:26] Speaker 1: of executed murderers could not simply be buried. Instead, they
[5:29] Speaker 1: were either publicly displayed or handed over to surgeons for dissection.
[5:34] Speaker 1: The idea was that this additional humiliation after death would
[5:37] Speaker 1: act as a deterrent, and for a time this arrangement
[5:40] Speaker 1: provided medical schools with a modest but steady supply of cadavers.
[5:44] Speaker 1: Public dissections even became something of a spectacle, with crowds
[5:47] Speaker 1: sometimes gathered to witness the procedure. Even still, though the
[5:51] Speaker 1: number of bodies made available on into the law was
[5:53] Speaker 1: never enough to meet the demands. London and Edinburgh together
[5:56] Speaker 1: were home to roughly two thousand medical students by the
[5:59] Speaker 1: early eighteen hundreds, and each year hundreds of cadavers were
[6:02] Speaker 1: needed for teaching and demonstration. The number of criminals executed
[6:06] Speaker 1: annually had dropped sharply, though, where hundreds had once been
[6:09] Speaker 1: sent to the gallows each year, often for relatively minor crimes.
[6:12] Speaker 1: By the nineteenth century, the number had fallen to only
[6:14] Speaker 1: a few dozen as death became a punishment for more
[6:16] Speaker 1: appropriate crimes, and the result was a serious shortage. Medical
[6:22] Speaker 1: schools might require upwards of five hundred bodies a year,
[6:24] Speaker 1: but only a small fraction of that number could be
[6:26] Speaker 1: obtained legally. Students were sometimes forced to crowd around a single,
[6:30] Speaker 1: badly decomposed body, trying to learn what they could before
[6:33] Speaker 1: the body deteriorated beyond use. In some cases, an entire
[6:37] Speaker 1: group of students might be left studying little more than
[6:39] Speaker 1: to preserve limb or fragment. So faced with this dilemma,
[6:43] Speaker 1: many turned to blond eye to the activities of the
[6:45] Speaker 1: men who could supply what the legal system couldn't, and
[6:47] Speaker 1: those men were the resurrectionists. As strange as this might sound,
[6:51] Speaker 1: though the legal system made it entirely possible, at the time,
[6:55] Speaker 1: the law did not consider a buried body to be
[6:57] Speaker 1: property in the traditional sense. That meant that while stealing
[7:01] Speaker 1: items from a grave could bring serious punishment, removing the
[7:04] Speaker 1: body itself occupied a legal gray area. Because of this loophole,
[7:08] Speaker 1: body snatching was rarely prosecuted as severely as ordinary grave robbing.
[7:12] Speaker 1: The work of these resurrectionists. Was typically done after dark,
[7:15] Speaker 1: and on particularly productive nights, several graves might be emptied
[7:18] Speaker 1: before dawn. The bodies were then delivered to the back
[7:21] Speaker 1: doors of medical schools or hospitals. Some surgeons insisted on
[7:26] Speaker 1: maintaining plausible deniability, but many were well aware of where
[7:29] Speaker 1: their newly acquired specimens came from. In some cases, doctors
[7:33] Speaker 1: even directed resurrectionists to graves of the recently deceased patients
[7:36] Speaker 1: whose illnesses they want to study more closely. And with
[7:39] Speaker 1: so much money to potentially be had in the trade,
[7:41] Speaker 1: it was inevitable the criminal gangs would become involved. By
[7:45] Speaker 1: the early nineteenth century, body snatching had developed into a
[7:48] Speaker 1: thriving underground business in several British cities. As demand for
[7:53] Speaker 1: bodies continued to rise, however, a few men begin to
[7:55] Speaker 1: realize there was an even easier way to obtain a
[7:57] Speaker 1: fresh corpse, and this horrify idea was demonstrated most famously
[8:02] Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty eight. The case of William Burke and
[8:05] Speaker 1: William Hare showed just how far the body trade could
[8:08] Speaker 1: go when greed an opportunity came together. Both men were
[8:11] Speaker 1: Irish immigrants living in Edinburgh. Hare ran a small and
[8:14] Speaker 1: rather rough boardinghouse in the city, and was there that
[8:16] Speaker 1: the two first stumbled into the anatomy trade. Almost by accident,
[8:20] Speaker 1: one of Hare's elderly lodgers died while owing rent. So
[8:23] Speaker 1: faced with the prospect of bearing the men and losing
[8:26] Speaker 1: the money he was owed, Hair came up with another idea.
[8:29] Speaker 1: The two men removed the body of the elderly man
[8:31] Speaker 1: from his coffin and took it to the office of
[8:33] Speaker 1: doctor Robert Knox. Robert was pleased to receive the cadaver
[8:37] Speaker 1: and paid the men for it, and once they realized
[8:39] Speaker 1: how easily a corpse could be turned into cash, Burke
[8:42] Speaker 1: and Hair began to see new possibilities. Their victims were
[8:45] Speaker 1: usually poor and vulnerable people who would not be immediately missed.
[8:49] Speaker 1: Many were drifters, laborers, or women living on the margins
[8:52] Speaker 1: of society. Burke and Hare would invite a victim back
[8:55] Speaker 1: to the boardinghouse, offered them plenty to drink, and wait
[8:57] Speaker 1: until they were heavily intoxicated before they struck. To avoid
[9:01] Speaker 1: leaving marks that might raise suspicion during an anatomical examination,
[9:04] Speaker 1: Burke Andhair developed a method that relied on smothering one
[9:08] Speaker 1: man would hold the victim down while the other pressed
[9:10] Speaker 1: in the chest and covered the mouth and nose. The
[9:13] Speaker 1: process was quick and quiet and left very few obvious signs.
[9:17] Speaker 1: Once the victim was gone, the body was taken to
[9:19] Speaker 1: Robert and sold just like any other cadaver. Over the
[9:22] Speaker 1: course of several months, the two men repeated this routine
[9:24] Speaker 1: again and again. By the time they were finally caught,
[9:27] Speaker 1: they were believed to have killed at least sixteen people,
[9:30] Speaker 1: although rumors of the time suggested that the number could
[9:33] Speaker 1: have been much higher. When authorities eventually arrested Burkenhair, the
[9:36] Speaker 1: two men quickly turned on one another. Hare agreed to
[9:39] Speaker 1: testify for the prosecution in exchange for immunity, leaving Burke
[9:42] Speaker 1: to face the consequences of their actions alone. In January
[9:46] Speaker 1: of eighteen twenty nine, Burke was found guilty of murder
[9:48] Speaker 1: and sentenced to death. His execution drew a massive crowd,
[9:52] Speaker 1: with thousands gathered to witness in Edinburgh's Lawnmarket, and, in
[9:56] Speaker 1: a final twist that many people saw as fitting, Burke's
[9:58] Speaker 1: body was handed over for a dice section after his death.
[10:01] Speaker 1: Thanks to the Murder Act of seventeen fifty one, during
[10:05] Speaker 1: the procedure. Pieces of his skin were reportedly used to
[10:07] Speaker 1: create a small pocketbook that still survives to this day.
[10:11] Speaker 1: William Hare meanwhile avoided the gallows, but did not escape
[10:14] Speaker 1: public anger. After being released, he left Scotland and eventually
[10:17] Speaker 1: returned to Ireland corn to later accounts, he was recognized
[10:21] Speaker 1: there and attacked by a mob that threw him into
[10:23] Speaker 1: a pit of lime, leaving him permanently blind. He is
[10:26] Speaker 1: said to have spend the rest of his life begging
[10:28] Speaker 1: on the streets. The Burken Hair case was then widely
[10:32] Speaker 1: reported across Britain, but instead of discouraging others, the story
[10:35] Speaker 1: showed that their trade could bring in a great deal
[10:37] Speaker 1: of money in the crowded streets of London. A group
[10:40] Speaker 1: of resurrectionists was paying close attention to this, and before
[10:43] Speaker 1: long they would begin to follow a similar path. By
[10:46] Speaker 1: the early eighteen thirties, this small group, calling themselves the
[10:50] Speaker 1: London Burkers, was operating out of the East End. Their
[10:53] Speaker 1: leader was John Bishop, a labourer who had spent many
[10:55] Speaker 1: years working as a resurrectionist. With him were Tom Williams,
[10:59] Speaker 1: a bricklayer, and James May, a butcher who was sometimes
[11:01] Speaker 1: known by the nicknames Jack Sturbout or Black Eyed Jack. Together,
[11:05] Speaker 1: they formed a loose gang that began making money through
[11:07] Speaker 1: the trade of bodies. Like many resurrectionists, John and his
[11:11] Speaker 1: group had connections with several medical institutions. Bodies they obtained
[11:15] Speaker 1: were sometimes sold to surgeons associated with several different hospitals.
[11:19] Speaker 1: The gang's activity centered around a rundown patch of ground
[11:22] Speaker 1: in Bental Green known as Nova Scotia Gardens. The area
[11:26] Speaker 1: had once been used as a clay field where material
[11:28] Speaker 1: was dug out for brickmaking. After the clay had been exhausted,
[11:31] Speaker 1: the land was left scarred with pits and depressions, so
[11:33] Speaker 1: it was eventually used as a dumping ground for human
[11:35] Speaker 1: waste from nearby districts. Over time, a few cottages were
[11:39] Speaker 1: built on the lower ground of the old clay pits,
[11:42] Speaker 1: and because the land drained poorly and was prone to flooding,
[11:45] Speaker 1: not to mention the smell, the houses were considered undesirable
[11:48] Speaker 1: and cheap to rent for men involved in a questionable trade. However,
[11:52] Speaker 1: the location offered cover that allowed them to blend in.
[11:55] Speaker 1: John and Thomas eventually rented two of the cottages, number
[11:58] Speaker 1: two and number three, Nova Scotia Gardens, which they used
[12:01] Speaker 1: as their base operations. To those around them, they were
[12:04] Speaker 1: simply hard working men living in a poor part of
[12:06] Speaker 1: the city. But behind the facade, John alone had already
[12:09] Speaker 1: spent twelve years stealing nearly countless bodies taken from graves
[12:12] Speaker 1: around London. For years, the London Borkers seemed to have
[12:15] Speaker 1: limited themselves to grave robbing, much like other resurrectionists. That is,
[12:20] Speaker 1: until they learned about the example set by Burke and Hare.
[12:23] Speaker 1: In the fall of eighteen thirty one, the London Borkers
[12:25] Speaker 1: were changed the preferred method of procuring corpses, and their
[12:28] Speaker 1: crimes might have never come to light if not for
[12:30] Speaker 1: the delivery of a single body to a London anatomy school.
[12:33] Speaker 1: In early November of that year, a body arrived at
[12:36] Speaker 1: the King's College School of Anatomy in London that immediately
[12:38] Speaker 1: raised suspicions. John and James had shown up earlier with
[12:42] Speaker 1: the body of a boy who appeared to be around
[12:43] Speaker 1: fourteen years old. At first glance, there was nothing unusual
[12:47] Speaker 1: at resurrectionists bringing at corpse to an anatomy school, but
[12:49] Speaker 1: something about this particular body didn't seem right. Before arriving
[12:53] Speaker 1: at King's College, John and James had actually tried to
[12:55] Speaker 1: sell the corpse elsewhere. They first approached Guy's Hospital, hoping
[12:59] Speaker 1: to make a quick sale, but the hospital refused the
[13:01] Speaker 1: body for reasons that aren't entirely clear. Undeterred, though, the
[13:05] Speaker 1: men carried the corpse to King's College and demanded twelve
[13:08] Speaker 1: guineas for it. The anatomous there were only willing to
[13:11] Speaker 1: offer nine, but a deal was eventually struck. The man
[13:14] Speaker 1: who examined the boy was Richard Partridge, a demonstrator of
[13:16] Speaker 1: anatomy at the College, and as soon as he began
[13:19] Speaker 1: to look over the corpse, several details struck him as troubling.
[13:22] Speaker 1: The boy's face appeared swollen, and his eyes were heavily bloodshot.
[13:26] Speaker 1: The limbs were rigid, suggesting that death that occurred quite
[13:28] Speaker 1: recently too. Even more alarming was the overall condition of
[13:32] Speaker 1: the body. It showed none of the signs a doctor
[13:35] Speaker 1: would normally expect from a corpse had been buried and
[13:37] Speaker 1: then exhumed. In short, the body seemed far too fresh.
[13:42] Speaker 1: Richard immediately began to suspect that the boy had not
[13:44] Speaker 1: been dug up from a grave at all. If that
[13:47] Speaker 1: was true, then the corpse had to have come from
[13:48] Speaker 1: somewhere else concerning the foul play may be involved. Richard
[13:52] Speaker 1: reported his suspicions to a professor of anatomy at King's College,
[13:55] Speaker 1: who agreed that the situation merit an investigation and notified
[13:58] Speaker 1: police from the police station soon arrived to examine the situation.
[14:03] Speaker 1: After hearing Richard's concerns and looking at the body themselves,
[14:06] Speaker 1: they came to the same conclusions he did. John, Thomas,
[14:10] Speaker 1: and James were swiftly taken into custody and a formal
[14:12] Speaker 1: investigation followed. Just a few days later, on November eighth,
[14:16] Speaker 1: a coroner's jury convened, and after reviewing the available evidence,
[14:19] Speaker 1: the jury returned with a verdict of murder. Although the
[14:23] Speaker 1: jury could not yet determine exactly how the boy died,
[14:25] Speaker 1: many of its members made it clear that they strongly
[14:27] Speaker 1: suspected the men who had delivered the body. The police
[14:30] Speaker 1: investigations soon turned its attention to the cottages at Nova
[14:33] Speaker 1: Scotia Gardens, where John and Thomas lived. If the boy
[14:37] Speaker 1: had indeed been murdered, the authorities believed that the truth
[14:39] Speaker 1: might be found there, but what they actually discovered in
[14:42] Speaker 1: those small houses would suggest that the dead boy was
[14:44] Speaker 1: not the gang's only victim. On November nineteenth, police Superintendent
[14:49] Speaker 1: Joseph Sadler Thomas carried out a thorough search of the property,
[14:52] Speaker 1: and as it progressed, several disturbing discoverers were made. Investigators
[14:57] Speaker 1: found items of clothing hidden in unusual places around the property.
[15:01] Speaker 1: Some garments were recovered from a well in one of
[15:03] Speaker 1: the gardens, while others were discovered in a nearby outhouse.
[15:07] Speaker 1: The clothing appeared to have been cut or torn violently,
[15:09] Speaker 1: as if it had been stripped from someone's body rather
[15:11] Speaker 1: than removed normally. Police then circulated descriptions of the garments
[15:15] Speaker 1: and hopes that someone might recognize them. In the meantime,
[15:18] Speaker 1: a great deal of attention remained focused on the body
[15:20] Speaker 1: of the boy that started the investigation. Authorities work to
[15:23] Speaker 1: identify him, and they soon came to believe that he
[15:25] Speaker 1: might be Carlo Ferrari, a young Italian boy from the
[15:28] Speaker 1: region of Piedmont. Carlo had reportedly been seen in the
[15:31] Speaker 1: area not long before, and like many young emigrants and
[15:34] Speaker 1: travelers in London at the time, he likely supported himself
[15:37] Speaker 1: through small jobs and street work. Boys in similar circumstances
[15:40] Speaker 1: were often found around the markets and busy commercial districts
[15:43] Speaker 1: of the city, and in fact witnesses recalled seeing a
[15:46] Speaker 1: boy matching his description and carrying a small cage with
[15:49] Speaker 1: two white mice inside. As police continued to gather evidence,
[15:53] Speaker 1: the case against the accused men grew stronger, and the
[15:56] Speaker 1: body itself provided troubling clues. Medical examine nation suggested that
[16:00] Speaker 1: he had died suddenly and violently. There were indications of
[16:04] Speaker 1: a severe injury to the back of the neck, and
[16:06] Speaker 1: the condition of the internal organs suggested the death occurred
[16:09] Speaker 1: shortly after the victim had eaten a meal that undigested meal, however,
[16:13] Speaker 1: smelt strongly of alcohol. It was also discovered that John
[16:17] Speaker 1: and Thomas had purchased half a gallon of rum at
[16:19] Speaker 1: a nearby public house not long before the boy was
[16:21] Speaker 1: last seen alive. Taken together, these facts painted an increasingly
[16:25] Speaker 1: horrifying picture. The case soon moved toward trial, and public
[16:29] Speaker 1: interest grew rapidly as the story spread throughout London. By
[16:33] Speaker 1: the time the proceedings began in early December of eighteen
[16:36] Speaker 1: thirty one, the crime of the London Borkers had already
[16:38] Speaker 1: become one of the most talked about scandals in the City.
[16:42] Speaker 1: On December tewond John, Thomas, and James were brought before
[16:45] Speaker 1: the court to answer for the death of the boy
[16:46] Speaker 1: believed to be Carlo. Throughout the trial, the prosecution portrayed
[16:50] Speaker 1: the men as calculating criminals who had turned a profitable
[16:53] Speaker 1: business into murder. In addition to the clothing and rum
[16:56] Speaker 1: as evidence of the defendant's guilt, there were also smaller
[16:59] Speaker 1: details that came out during the trial. One witness testified
[17:02] Speaker 1: that James had sold Carlo's teeth to a dentist, and
[17:05] Speaker 1: that he had openly admitted that the specimens came from
[17:07] Speaker 1: a body that had not been buried. Another witness reported
[17:11] Speaker 1: that the two white mice Carlo was seen with were
[17:13] Speaker 1: later spotted in the possession of John's children, which was
[17:15] Speaker 1: a particularly damning revelation. The defense, meanwhile, attempted to distance
[17:20] Speaker 1: each of the men from the killing. John claimed that
[17:22] Speaker 1: he'd obtained the boy's body only after he had already died,
[17:25] Speaker 1: and insisted that neither Thomas nor James knew anything about
[17:28] Speaker 1: how the corpse came into his possession. Thomas argued that
[17:31] Speaker 1: he had simply shared the profit from selling the body,
[17:33] Speaker 1: but had no knowledge of any murder. James meanwhile maintained
[17:36] Speaker 1: that he had only helped deliver the corpse and had
[17:38] Speaker 1: played no part in obtaining it. James also produced a
[17:42] Speaker 1: witness who testified that she had been with him late
[17:44] Speaker 1: the evening on the night the boy was believed to
[17:45] Speaker 1: be killed, providing him with an alibi. Despite these arguments,
[17:49] Speaker 1: though the evidence against the defendants appeared overwhelming. After two
[17:53] Speaker 1: days of testimony, the case was handed over to the
[17:55] Speaker 1: jury on the evening of December third, and they didn't
[17:57] Speaker 1: deliberate for long. After only thirty two minutes, they returned
[18:01] Speaker 1: to the courtroom with a guilty verdict, and all three
[18:03] Speaker 1: men were sentenced to death later that same evening. Not
[18:06] Speaker 1: long after the verdict was announced, Thomas appeared to break
[18:09] Speaker 1: under the wait of what happened. Sitting in his jail cell,
[18:12] Speaker 1: he became visibly distressed and began to weep. During this breakdown,
[18:16] Speaker 1: Thomas said he wanted to unburden himself and revealed the
[18:19] Speaker 1: truth about what had taken place at Nova Scotia Gardens.
[18:22] Speaker 1: The following morning, John also expressed a desire to make
[18:25] Speaker 1: a full confession. On December fourth, the two men attended
[18:29] Speaker 1: services in the prison Chapel, and afterward they were placed
[18:32] Speaker 1: together in a cell where officials recorded their statements. In writing.
[18:36] Speaker 1: What they described confirmed many of the suspicions investigators already
[18:39] Speaker 1: had and revealed the chilling details behind Carlos end. According
[18:44] Speaker 1: to John's confession, Carlo had been taken on November three
[18:46] Speaker 1: from the Bell, which was a public house in Smithfield.
[18:50] Speaker 1: The men approached him with the promise of lodging at
[18:52] Speaker 1: Nova Scotia Gardens. Once he arrived at the cottage, Carlo
[18:55] Speaker 1: was given rum mixed with laudanum, a powerful opium based
[18:58] Speaker 1: drug that was widely available at the Tomme time. After
[19:01] Speaker 1: he lost consciousness, John and Thomas left the house for
[19:03] Speaker 1: a time and went drinking at another nearby tavern known
[19:06] Speaker 1: as the Feathers. When they returned, Carlo was still unconscious,
[19:09] Speaker 1: so at that point they carried him outside to well
[19:11] Speaker 1: on the property. A cord was then tied around his
[19:14] Speaker 1: feet and he was forced headfirst into the well. Apparently,
[19:18] Speaker 1: the shock of the water rouse Carlo in A brief
[19:20] Speaker 1: struggle ensued, but it didn't last long. Within moments he
[19:23] Speaker 1: was gone. John and Thomas then left to drink again
[19:26] Speaker 1: for a short time before returning to retrieve the body.
[19:29] Speaker 1: They then removed Carlo's clothing, placed the body in a bag,
[19:32] Speaker 1: and prepared it for sale. This was obviously quite the
[19:36] Speaker 1: shock and conclusion to the case, but the confessions didn't
[19:38] Speaker 1: stop there. John and Thomas also admitted to an earlier
[19:42] Speaker 1: taking of a woman named Fanny Pigburn, who had disappeared
[19:44] Speaker 1: several weeks earlier. Fanny was about thirty five years old
[19:48] Speaker 1: and supported herself by working as a laundress in the
[19:50] Speaker 1: Shortage area. Her disappearance had been something of a mystery
[19:53] Speaker 1: at the time too, According to those who knew her.
[19:55] Speaker 1: Fanny had returned home one evening after spending the day
[19:58] Speaker 1: washing clothes for a climb. She stayed only briefly before
[20:01] Speaker 1: putting on her cloak and saying she needed to run
[20:03] Speaker 1: an errand after leaving the house, though she was never
[20:06] Speaker 1: seen by her family again. During the investigation of Nova
[20:10] Speaker 1: Scotia Gardens, police had discovered a bundle of women's clothing,
[20:13] Speaker 1: and when descriptions of the garments were circulated, friends and
[20:15] Speaker 1: family of Fanny quickly identified them as hers, and, just
[20:19] Speaker 1: as they had with Carlo, John and Thomas provided the
[20:21] Speaker 1: details of what they did with her. According to John,
[20:24] Speaker 1: Thomas had encountered Fanny while she was sleeping outdoors and
[20:27] Speaker 1: brought her back to the cottage with the promise of
[20:28] Speaker 1: a place to stay for the night. Then, also like Carlo,
[20:31] Speaker 1: she was given drinks until she fell asleep. Once she
[20:34] Speaker 1: was unconscious, a cord was tied around her feet and
[20:36] Speaker 1: she was carried to the well. Fanny was then pushed
[20:39] Speaker 1: in headfirst into the water. Per their confessions, there was
[20:43] Speaker 1: also another victim, a boy known only by the name Cunningham.
[20:46] Speaker 1: John and Thomas found him sleeping near the Pig Market
[20:49] Speaker 1: in Smithfield on October twenty first, and lured him back
[20:51] Speaker 1: to Nova Scotia Gardens with the same promise of lodging.
[20:55] Speaker 1: Like the others, he was taken to the well and
[20:56] Speaker 1: his body was later sold for eight guineas. Maybe the
[21:00] Speaker 1: most shocking part of John's confession, though, came when he
[21:02] Speaker 1: described his earlier activities. Supposedly over the course of twelve
[21:06] Speaker 1: years as a resurrectionist. He claimed to have stolen between
[21:09] Speaker 1: five hundred and one thousand bodies from graves around London
[21:11] Speaker 1: before selling them. These confessions Alls declared James of direct
[21:15] Speaker 1: involvement in the murders themselves, while James had up transport
[21:19] Speaker 1: bodies and oranged sales. John and Thomas admitted that the
[21:21] Speaker 1: killings had been carried out by the two of them alone.
[21:24] Speaker 1: As a result, James's sentence was converted to life in
[21:26] Speaker 1: prison instead. As for John and Thomas, though just two
[21:29] Speaker 1: days after the verdict came down, their sentence took place.
[21:33] Speaker 1: On the morning of December fifth, eighteen thirty one, large
[21:35] Speaker 1: crowds gathered outside the Newgate Prison gallows. These were still
[21:39] Speaker 1: a common spectacle in Britain at the time, and events
[21:41] Speaker 1: like this drew enormous audiences, and in this case, the
[21:44] Speaker 1: notoriety of the London Burkers brought in and estimated thirty
[21:48] Speaker 1: thousand people to watch with much fanfare. John and Thomas
[21:51] Speaker 1: were brought out to the scaffold before the cheering crowd,
[21:55] Speaker 1: as had happened in the case of Burke a few
[21:57] Speaker 1: years earlier. They were then handed over for dissection. In
[22:00] Speaker 1: the days that followed, large numbers of people line up
[22:02] Speaker 1: to view their dissections, as many were actually eager to
[22:05] Speaker 1: see the fate of the London Burkers up close. As
[22:08] Speaker 1: for James, he was placed aboard a convict transport ship
[22:11] Speaker 1: bound for Van Diemen's Land, the penal colony that would
[22:13] Speaker 1: later become the Australian state of Tasmania. In eighteen thirty four,
[22:17] Speaker 1: he died at the settlement and was buried in an
[22:19] Speaker 1: unmarked grave on the Isle of the Dead, which was
[22:21] Speaker 1: a small island used as a barrel ground for convicts
[22:24] Speaker 1: and settlers alike. With these sentences carried out, the immediate
[22:28] Speaker 1: case of the London Burkers had come to an end,
[22:30] Speaker 1: but the scandal surrounding had stirred public outrage on a
[22:32] Speaker 1: much larger scale. For many people. The case is proof
[22:36] Speaker 1: that the systems surrounding anatomical study had become dangerously corrupt.
[22:40] Speaker 1: The demand for bodies had grown so intense that it
[22:42] Speaker 1: encouraged criminals to move from grave robbing to worse, and
[22:45] Speaker 1: the case of the London Burkers wasn't even the last
[22:47] Speaker 1: of its kinds. By this point, it was clearly a
[22:50] Speaker 1: problem the government could no longer ignore, so, faced with
[22:53] Speaker 1: growing outrage and increasing pressure from the public, the British
[22:55] Speaker 1: government passed the Anatomy Act of eighteen thirty two. This
[22:59] Speaker 1: new ladge ramatically changed the way medical schools obtained bodies.
[23:02] Speaker 1: Instead of relying on the bodies of criminals or the
[23:04] Speaker 1: question activities of resurrectionists. Anatomists were now allowed to use
[23:08] Speaker 1: the unclaim bodies of people who had died in workhouses, hospitals,
[23:11] Speaker 1: or other public institutions. These remains could then be legally
[23:15] Speaker 1: provided to medical schools for dissection. By creating this legitimate
[23:19] Speaker 1: supply of cadavers, the law removed the financial incentive that
[23:22] Speaker 1: had driven the body snatching trade, and within a few
[23:25] Speaker 1: years the passage of the Anatomy Act, the grizzly business
[23:27] Speaker 1: of stealing bodies from graves had largely disappeared.

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