The Anatomy Murders: Being the True and Spectacular History of Edinburgh's Notorious Burke and Hare and of the Man of Science Who Abetted Them in the Commission of Their Most Heinous Crimes (review)

The Anatomy Murders is a meticulous study. The details of the many twists and turns, contexts and circumstances of the infamous "anatomy murders" of Burke and Hare in 1827–28 present a persuasively argued, painstakingly researched account. But one thing does not persuade: Rosner's claim that "I am drawn to these sixteen murders for what they reveal about medicine, but I stay with them because I am also fascinated by what previous accounts have left out" (7). I suspect that Rosner, just like so many writers before her, was mostly attracted by the juicy story itself: the intriguing tale of the first serial killers sensationalized by mass media, and the enigmatic Dr. Knox who was duped into buying murdered corpses (or was he?). Rosner clearly delights in performing the "historical detective work" which provides the basis for her fresh look at these heinous crimes. She analyzes previously unexplored archival material (account books, medical notebooks, letters, police reports), and so brings known and unknown actors to life again on the streets of Edinburgh.

The city of Edinburgh, as space, place, social geography, plays a large role in this account. There are the narrow alleys and backyards, public outhouses, crowded derelict tenements, dark passageways, jails and whiskey houses of the poor, and the altogether brighter and more sanitary dwellings of the wealthy. Then there are the streets, markets, doorways where the worlds intersect and the people of different classes interact: Burke and Hare who transport their dead victims from their alley (or wynd) to Knox's establishment at Surgeon's Square; the mentally challenged, barefooted but clean "Daft Jamie," a well-known face to rich and poor before his murder; the unfortunate Mary Ann Haldane, who crosses boundaries to break, enter, and steal from wealthy households and is sentenced to deportation; the attractive Mary Paterson and many more. Edinburgh of the late 1820s comes alive in Rosner's book, and it strikes me that, with all the details and dialogue, the book could easily be turned into a motion picture. But all the detours into contemporary court-cases, criminal law, social conditions and theories, phrenology, the patterns of seasonal migration, the price of a bonnet, and so on, disrupt the narrative flow of the text and make it difficult to keep the larger picture in focus.

There are other problems too. Rosner's attempt to balance scholarly precision with a novelistic, popular writing style is sometimes successful, but she indulges in too much speculation. The frequent use of "perhaps," "it may have been," "it seems likely," and "we can only imagine" to fill in the gaps raises flags of doubt. This is unfortunate, since the material used is rich enough to make up a solid base for a credible narrative. Straddling the boundary between popular and academic history-writing is difficult, and while reading The Anatomy Murders I kept wishing the author had chosen one or the other. In trying to please two target audiences she risks alienating them both (I, for one, find the footnotes wanting, and I would have liked more discussions of a theoretical nature).

But the structure of the book is clever: the murder victims, one by one, or sometimes a few of them together, are used to open windows onto specific aspects of the social landscape that made these events possible at this particular time and place. And some of the chapters are very well executed. My favorite chapters (Chapters 4 and 7) deal with Robert Knox and are serious attempts to understand him as a scientist and what his work was about: his years in South Africa and their influence on his interests in comparative anatomy and race; his...