Burke, William

William Burke was a 19th-century Scottish murderer notorious for his involvement in a series of killings in Edinburgh. Along with his accomplice, William Hare, Burke murdered at least 16 people between 1827 and 1828 to sell their bodies to medical schools for dissection, as there was high demand for cadavers for anatomical study. Burke was captured, tried, and sentenced to death; he was executed in 1829. His case led to significant reforms in the laws governing the supply of human cadavers, ultimately resulting in the passage of the Anatomy Act of 1832, which regulated the use of bodies for scientific and medical purposes.