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An anatomy murder (sometimes called burking in British English) is a murder committed in order to use all or part of the cadaver for medical research or teaching. It is not a medicine murder because the individual body parts do not have any medicinal use. The motive for the murder is created by the demand for cadavers for dissection, and the opportunity to learn anatomy and physiology as a result of the dissection. Rumors concerning the prevalence of anatomy murders are associated with the rise in demand for cadavers in research and teaching produced by the Scientific Revolution. During the 19th century, the sensational serial murders associated with Burke and Hare and the London Burkers led to legislation which provided scientists and medical schools with legal ways of obtaining cadavers. Rumors persist that anatomy murders are carried out wherever there is a high demand for cadavers. These rumors, like those concerning organ theft, are hard to substantiate, and may reflect continued, deep-held fears of the use of cadavers as commodities.
The great expansion in medical education in Great Britain in the early 19th century, as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, led to increased demand for cadavers for dissection. Body snatching became more widespread, and local communities reacted by setting guards around graveyards.Lisa Rosner (2010), The Anatomy Murders. University of Pennsylvania Press In 1828, Parliament convened a select committee to examine the means by which cadavers were obtained for medical schools.Ruth Richardson (2001). Death, Dissection, and the Destitute. University of Chicago Press. This was the same period when the most famous of the anatomy murders were carried out by William Burke and William Hare. They killed 16 people over the course of a year, selling the cadavers to the anatomist Robert Knox.Sherwin Nuland (2001), "The Edinburgh Anatomy Murders" Two years later, the London Burkers, John Bishop and Thomas Williams, murdered a boy identified as Carlo Ferrari, and attempted to sell his cadaver to a London surgeon.Sarah Wise (2004). The Italian Boy. Metropolitan Books.
The need for dead bodies mainly affects poor people. Autonomists gather unclaimed bodies from workhouses and prisons using legal loopholes. This unfair system made it easy for the illegal body collection, which drove crimes like those of Burke and Hare. The crimes of Burke and Hare are the most well-known; the same practices were carried out worldwide. In Australia and New Zealand during the clonal period, autonomists obtained bodies from the indigenous population and prisoners. In the U.S., medical schools relied on the unclaimed bodies of the poor and the African American population
The most recent account of anatomy murders was in 1992, when a Colombian activist, Juan Pablo Ordoñez, claimed that 14 poor residents of Barranquilla, Colombia, had been killed to provide cadavers for the local medical school.Mary Roach (2003). Stiff. W.W. Norton. One of the alleged victims managed to escape from his assailants and his account was publicized by the international press.
The exploitation was extended beyond class to racial targeting. 19th-century American medical schools disproportionately recruited Cadaver from Black communities and Native populations, with some anatomists collecting skulls for racist "scientific" studies. This was facilitated by legislation that rendered unclaimed bodies - typically those of enslaved individuals or institutionalized minorities - legal material for dissection. The effects of these policies persisted well into the 20th century.
Besides laws, forensic science also became a significant deterrent. by the 1880s, fingerprinting, blood testing, and photographic proof made it increasingly difficult to hide anatomy murders. The London Burkers case in 1831 was a breakthrough wherein medical professionals began keeping records systematically of cadaver sources - something that grew into modern-day chain-of-custody techniques.Mike (Forensic scientist) Silverman (2025). 9780593071892, London : Bantam Press. . ISBN 9780593071892
For these reasons, legislation from the 19th century on has focused on removing the motive for murder by providing legal sources of cadavers for medical research and teaching. In Great Britain, the Anatomy Act 1832 provided for cheap, legal cadavers by turning over the bodies of those who died in caretaker institutions to medical schools. Although there were public protests at using the bodies of the poor as raw material for medical students, proponents of the act were able to use fear of burking in order to get it passed. The Massachusetts Anatomy Act of 1831 was also inspired by the anatomy murders."Anatomy Laws V. Body-Snatching" (1896). British Medical Journal Vol. 2, No. 1878, p. 1845
It is clear that the legislation reduced the demand for illegally obtained cadavers and may have acted as a deterrent against grave-robbing, as the latter practice persisted in localities without adequate provision for cadavers to dissect. It is likely, however, that the main deterrent against anatomy murders was the increasing sophistication of forensic science from the 19th century onward.Colin Evans (2007), The Casebook of Forensic Investigation. Berkley Trade.
Medical anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes makes a comparison between the anatomy murders of the 19th century and the current organ trafficking networks. the fieldwork in ten nations, the poor are compelled to sell kidneys and other organs to wealthy customers, much like the poor were exploited for dissection during the past. Similar to the Burke and Hare scenario, these contemporary behaviors illustrate how the demand for medical procedures can lead to the exploitation of human bodies as commodities, particularly among the marginalized.
There are forensic parallels too: while 19th-century anatomists were prone to blind eyes towards disreputable sources of corpses, some modern transplant centers have been known to accept knowingly organs obtained illegally. Such parallels suggest that the moral issues in treating bodies as commodities, first exposed by anatomy murders, remain unresolved in global medicine.
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