R. Michael Gordon

I mostly agree with the other review of this book. I was looking for a Torso murder history, not a Jack the Ripper book (of which I already possess plenty). I'm aware of both the modern and contemporaneous speculation that both series of murders were committed by the same person or persons, and while that may certainly be possible I don't think it likely.

The author does give us a history of the Torso murders, however it is so interspersed with references to Jack the Ripper and asides regarding Severin Klosowski, who the author assumes to be the murderer in both cases, that it rather ruined the book for me. I'm glad I didn't pay much for this! Bought it used.

Unfortunately there are very few books on this subject. I will give the M.J. Trow book a go; hopefully it's better.… (más)

With a son in medical school, I am interested in all things medical-education related. This book delves into that era when medical knowledge was exploding, when more cadavers were needed for anatomical and surgical learning, and when grave robbing became a trade to fill that need. Enter Burke and Hare to the meaner streets of Edinburgh. Running a low boardinghouse, a customer expires before paying his bill; they sell his body to one of the lecturing surgeons.

“The point was noted however, that any ailing inmate {of the lodging} might on occasion be converted into cash. Pending this desirable opportunity, they conceived the notion that it was unnecessary to await the co-operation of nature; judiciously assisted, and feeble, friendless wanderer would equally serve their purpose.” This line was not written by the author, but quoted from another book on the subject.

The story itself was interesting – the perpetrators' past history, their crimes, the gradual understanding of their community that something was happening to the poorest among them, the discovery, and the trial. A great deal of historical information is contained in the book – transcripts from trials, testimonies, and numerous confessions; writings from Sir Walter Scott, John James Audubon and others; contemporary drawings, etchings, and newspaper articles; broadsheets, fliers and pamphlets; and appendices galore. (Too much, actually, for this particular reader.)

I received my copy through the Early Reviewers program, so I reviewed this book's listing there; I've scoured the cover and looked for evidence inside, but do not find any notice whatsoever that this is an uncorrected proof. Therefore, I'm going to hold it accountable for it's editing problems, and they are pervasive. From the various garden-variety misspellings, to this sentence: The team did not good records of the merchandise they had supplied to Dr. Knox, and certainly the doctor was not, at least officially.(p162) At least one Chapter Note seems out of order. (I didn't follow too many.) Note #50 on page 33, is a quote from Audubon, attributed on the Chapter Notes page to Walter Scott's Wikipedia page.

Even with those problems, though, I did appreciate the book. It was enlightening as to medical education issues and contemporary living issues in 1828 Edinburgh.… (más)

Burke and Hare are perhaps the worlds best known grave robbers even though they never, technically, robbed a grave. R. Michael Gordon’s “The infamous Burke and Hare: serial killers and resurrectionists of nineteenth century Edinburgh” is not the first work to be written about the pair but I feel it has to be the best. Armed with a wealth of primary material as well as the modern psychological studies of serial killers that were unavailable to earlier writers Gordon is able to explain the pair’s evolution as serial killers.

The story is told in a strict chronological order, first we are introduced to the main actors then the killings are reconstructed as best possible using the available resources. The next part of the story, the trial, at first seemed awkward to me. Here Gordon used only the knowledge of the murders that came out in the court records and ignoring details that he had already told us. However, by using the court transcript Gordon allows us to hear the words of the killers, their accomplices and their enablers, and we are able to build an image of their personalities through their testimony. The problem I originally had with his method was well worth the results.

Gordon follows the story to the principles’ graves and beyond by looking at the cultural effects the story has had from an J. M. Barrie play, “The Anatomist”, to a verb added to our language, “to burke”. One topic that I felt could have been better explained was why the authorities chose to turn a blind eye to body snatching. We hear through the book the Dr. Knox’s class’ are popular but not why they were important.

“The Infamous Burke and Hare” reads more like a popular history than a scholarly one. Gordon makes good use of primary documents and period illustrations; his sources are well documented and well used. Although he does site several internet sources for peripheral information the core story is told thorough contemporary newspaper accounts and official records. Overall this is a very interesting book and well worth reading.… (más)

The title pretty much says what you'll get in this book, the facts behind the career and trial of the Infamous Burke and Hare, although resurrectionists, they were not. If you aren't from the UK, you may not have heard of Burke and Hare. If you are, they've probably become a child story for you. I first learned of Burke and Hare from a Katherine Briggs collection of folktales. In the folktales, usually someone takes a carriage ride next to some stiff old lady, and as they get out of the carriage and it goes on its way, the person realizes the old lady was in fact dead and the drivers were Burke and Hare. The folktales aren't true, but the fact that Burke and Hare were killing people and transporting them to a doctor who was using the corpses for dissection in broad daylight is very much the truth.

This book isn't nearly as funny as the folktales, but it is a riveting read. I found myself just as fascinated and appalled by the practices of the medical education community, by the crass classism that allowed the crimes to go unremarked for one and a half years, and the gap between moral justice and legal justice. This is Scotland during the Irish potato famine. Irish immigrants were everywhere. Tenants of boarding houses came and went weekly. The theft of a dead body from a grave was a lesser offense than the theft of a dead person's clothes. Cadavers from Ireland were shipped to the anatomists in boxes marked "books" at least on one occasion. Criminals were hanged in front of their own homes, and if you were lucky enough to be cut down still alive but appearing to be dead, perhaps the law would forget about you.

It was a time very different than our own, yet the judge, police and lawyers still faced a dilemma that happens today. Do you arrest your criminal before you have enough evidence? If you don't have quite enough evidence, do you cut a deal with someone who is guilty in order to have a witness? Do you stand by that deal? If a mob wants to finish off someone that is "not guilty" according to the courts, but known guilty by information that was inadmissible, do you step aside and let them?

An interesting book, that gives the context for a series of crimes that seem nearly inconceivable. Perhaps not the book for the weak-stomached, but for others, definitely a worthwhile read.… (más)