Surgeon's Square (Burke & Hare 3)

Continuing the story of Burke & Hare from where we left them on 11 August, setting off at night for the University with the dead Mr Donald knowing the name of an anatomy lecturer.  A student at the University seeing they had a body suggested they go instead to 10 Surgeon’s Square where a Dr Robert Knox ran an anatomy school.  Knox paid Burke & Hare £7 for old Mr Donald. Burke and Hare were delighted in their good fortune, and struck a deal with Dr Knox to sell him any other bodies that they happened across. The price they agreed was £10 per corpse in winter and £8 in summer.
The temptation of ready money was too much for the two men. Two months after selling Mr Donald's’ body to Knox, they were back with another of Hare’s lodgers.  Joseph the Miller had been ill and in pain, and Burke and Hare decided that he was going to die.  Rather than wait for events, they got him drunk and smothered him. Dr Knox bought the body, and asked no questions. 
This exhausted the ready supply of residents of the lodging house.  In February 1828 Burke and Hare offered accommodation to Abigail Simpson, before getting her drunk and smothering her, then carting her off to Knox's anatomy school. Because her corpse was so fresh,  Knox  paid Burke and Hare £15.  Another tenant of the lodging house followed; then a woman invited into the house by Maggie Laird. 
Next, Burke brought two prostitutes to the lodging house, Mary Patterson and Janet Brown. Brown left after an argument and when she returned, she was told that Patterson had left with Burke.  Next morning some of Knox's medical students recognised Mary Patterson on the dissecting table, presumably because they had used her services.  
The grisly spree continued.  Further victims included a beggar woman called Effie, who earned them £10; a woman who Burke had "saved" from the police by vouching for her character; an old woman and a deaf boy who they sold for £8 each; Burke's acquaintance Mrs Ostler; and Helen McDougal's relative Ann McDougal.  They were followed by the elderly prostitute Mary Haldane, and then her daughter Peggy Haldane; when she tried to find out what had happened to her mother.
Mary Haldane was well known in the area and (finally) suspicions began to be voiced about Burke and Hare. Their next victim was even better known, a young man known as Daft Jamie. Several of  Knox's students recognised him. Knox denied that the corpse was Daft Jamie, but unusually commenced the dissection on this face.  In early November 1828, Burke and Hare killed their 17th and final victim, Mary Docherty.  Her body was discovered hidden under a bed in the lodging house by two lodgers, James and Ann Gray. Helen MacDougal tried to prevent them going to the police by offering to pay them £10 per week: they reported what they had found anyway.  Burke and Hare removed (and sold) Mary Docherty's body before the police arrived, but told inconsistent stories about her when arrested: and then Docherty's body was found at Knox's anatomy school.
 
Did Dr Knox know that Burke and Hare were making their own corpses? He denied it vociferously, in court and in letters to the local papers. Even though students recognised the subjects of at least two of Dr Knox’ dissections, Knox dismissed their questions, and nothing further came of it.
Should Dr Knox have known, or suspected that something was wrong?  Almost definitely. But the business of buying the dead was illegal in itself.  Having begun to break the law, he must have found it easier to turn a blind eye to worse crimes than grave robbery.  He was never tried, but the scandal ruined his career.
This building in Surgeon’s Square was the home of the Edinburgh surgeons from 1697 until 1832.  Knox’s anatomy school was next door, perhaps the dark pillared entrance in the corner………...  

The script is thanks to http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk