William Hare, 1829. The Burke and Hare murders were a series of sixteen killings committed over ten months in 1828 in Edinburgh, Scotland, by Irish immigrants William Burke (1792-1829) and William Hare (1792-?), who sold the corpses to Robert Knox (1791-1862) for dissection at his anatomy lectures. Hare avoided conviction by giving evidence against William Burke, who was hanged and publicly dissected in 1829. The murders and trade in illegal corpses so reviled the public that the Anatomy Act was passed in 1832, giving license to medical practitioners to dissect donated bodies.

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