The Crimes of Burke and Hare By Douglas MacGowan Ironically, the duo known as the foremost of the 19th century’s Scottish grave-robbers were neither. William Burke and William Hare were natives of Ireland, and there is no evidence that any of the bodies they sold to an Edinburgh medical school were taken from cemeteries - but both eventually confessed to obtaining bodies by a more direct method: murder. Sep 11, 2019 • 4 min read