The Anatomy Murders

From the Pennsylvania Hospital Newsletter of the Friends of the Historic Collections (Philadelphia):

Please join us on Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 5:30pm in the Zubrow Auditorium for our last lecture in a series highlighting our exhibition, From Pastels to PDA’s: Medical Education from the 18th c. to the 21st. c. Professor Lisa Rosner (Stockton College) will discuss her book The iAnatomy Murders: Being the True and Spectacular History of Edinburgh's Notorious Burke and Hare, and of the Man of Science Who Abetted Them in the Commission of Their Most Heinous Crimes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).

On Halloween night 1828, in the West Port district of Edinburgh, Scotland, a woman sometimes known as Madgy Docherty was last seen in the company of William Burke and William Hare. Days later, police discovered her remains in the surgery of the prominent anatomist Dr. Robert Knox. Docherty was the final victim of the most atrocious murder spree of the century, outflanking even Jack the Ripper's. Together with their accomplices, Burke and Hare would be accused of killing sixteen people over the course of twelve months in order to sell their corpses as "subjects" for dissection. The story of their misdeeds would become the basis for chilling fiction and film.

Professor Rosner will talk about the art and science of anatomical dissection that created the demand for these grisly murders, and a world in which a dead body can be far more valuable than its living owner.

Please RSVP by Dec. 7th stacey.peeples@uphs.upenn.edu or 215-829-5434.

You can purchase the book over here at Amazon.