Real Burke And Hare: Serial Killing For Profit

Edinburgh, 1828: A city at the cutting edge of medical progress although inconveniently rather short of actual bodies to cut up. When the demand for cadavers in the city's dissecting rooms outstrips supply, anatomists pay good money to body snatchers for fresh corpses. But why go to the trouble of digging up the deceased if you can provide them to order? Enter William Burke and William Hare; two struggling immigrants with entrepreneurial flair and questionable morals, who soon find themselves at the centre of one of history's most notorious killing sprees. But how many people have to mysteriously vanish from Edinburgh's streets before they are stopped? And exactly how did this series of grizzly murders end up benefiting each and every one of us today? Death on the Mile: The Real Burke and Hare peels back the skin (sometimes literally) of the scandal that shocked Britain, separating fact from macabre fiction, and explores how Scotland's worst ever serial killers managed to leave an indelible mark on the history of medicine and a legacy so notorious it became a verb. Gruesome, gripping and darkly funny, it's a story of greed, treachery, and the uncomfortable place where progress and morality meet - a vivid, unsettling, and occasionally laugh out loud journey through the underside of the Enlightenment. AUTHOR: Heather Main is an award-winning journalist of 20 years with a passion for the murkier side of history. She read History at the University of Glasgow before beginning her journalistic career as a crime reporter in Scotland. She is now a freelance writer, and is widely published in national titles. She now lives in Worcestershire with her husband and three children. This is her first book. 32 b/w illustrations