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“The Body Snatcher” is partially set in Scotland with a mysterious professor referred to as Mr. K—. This character is based on a historical figure named Robert Knox who came from Edinburgh, Scotland. Known for excellence in anatomical studies, Edinburgh’s medical schools were filled with students seeking to study. Unfortunately for them, the Judgment of Death Act in 1823 led to a decrease in executions which resulted in a shortage of cadavers since schools were only allowed to use bodies for dissection from prison deaths, executions, or through suicide. As a result, medical schools increased their payment for cadavers to try to meet the demand.

Unscrupulous men stepped up to cash in. Graverobbing, which was not illegal at the time, became such a common practice that paid guards and even family members would stand lookout in cemeteries to protect their loved ones until the bodies were no longer fresh and, therefore, not valuable. Some men took the next step and committed what became known as anatomy murder, which is murder for the sake of studying the cadaver.

There is a reference in “The Body Snatcher” to an execution in Edinburgh of a man named Burke who called for his employer, Mr. K—, to be brought to justice. William Burke and William Hare became infamous for reportedly committing at least sixteen anatomy murders in about ten months in 1828. Burke’s mistress Helen McDougal and Hare’s common-law wife Margaret Laird were allegedly complicit in the murders. It was revealed in their trial that the first victim was an elderly tenant of Hare’s who died of natural causes before paying his rent. Burke and Hare weighed the man’s coffin and sold his body to Edinburgh University where they were paid were paid the equivalent of approximately $12.40 by Professor Robert Knox. The men escalated to murdering another one of Hare’s tenants who was very ill. Instead of waiting for him to die, Burke and Hare got the man drunk and smothered him, a technique that became their signature method and was ultimately known as “burking.”

The chilling story of Burke and Hare’s scurrilous exploits became a sensation in the popular press and remained well known even many decades later, inspiring Stevenson and other writers. “The Body Snatcher” is the most well-known of the fictionalized accounts of the real-life murders.

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