You're tuned to the good stuff
Burke and Hare Song
SKETCH-O-VISION
A VERY GOOD USE OF YOUR TIME.
The setup
Watch on YouTube
Watch onYouTube
The premise
Here’s the bit.
In a candlelit 1827 Edinburgh laboratory, surgeon Robert Knox explains in song how two polite visitors, William Burke and William Hare, began bringing him freshly deceased bodies to study. Delighted by his steady supply of specimens, Knox pays handsomely and never asks questions, until a police inquiry reveals that the pair's departed acquaintances were their murder victims. With the killers arrested, Knox ends on a grimly upbeat note about who winds up on his slab last.
The funny people
Meet the cast. 3
Say it with us
Highly quotable.
Well, it's always a palaver getting hold of a cadaver
Poor Burke was hanged, but happily his corpse was sent to me!
A little extra
Notes from the archive.
The real William Burke was hanged in Edinburgh in January 1829 and his body was publicly dissected, while William Hare avoided trial by testifying against him.
The rabbit hole continues
One more couldn’t hurt.
More from Horrible Histories.
