Mark Collins Jenkins > Quotes

“The fresher the corpse, the better the pay. This led to burking—the murderous practice of clapping a pitch plaster over a victim’s nose and mouth, ensuring a speedy death that left few or no signs of the violence responsible. It also produced the freshest corpse possible. Burking was named for William Burke, an Irish ne’er-do-well who, between 1827 and 1828, with his accomplice William Hare, murdered 16 people in Scotland and sold their bodies to an esteemed Edinburgh anatomist, Dr. Robert Knox. The doctor escaped prosecution, Hare turned King’s evidence, and Burke was hanged for the crimes in 1829. In a pitiless twist of lex talionis, Burke’s body was then dissected at the University of Edinburgh, and his skin was made into pocket-books and other macabre trophies. His skeleton still hangs in the college’s medical school today. Horrors”
― Mark Collins Jenkins, Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend