Burke and Hare

I began reading this book knowing little to nothing about Burke and Hare, and having read the book I think that my perception of it would be better had I read a book or two about the subject matter first. This book provided no overall summation of the crimes of Burke and Hare, which I found unusual for a book as normally there is some kind of introduction to the subject matter. I found myself turning to Wikipedia and YouTube in order to provide this basic background information. So I recommend any potential buyers to read a different book on Burke and Hare first before turning to this one for its additional details.Whilst I am by no means illiterate, I also found the book to be written in quite an unnecessarily complicated way, in terms of being long-winded. It reminded me of my time at university whereby if one wanted to increase the word count of their thesis you would say the same thing but in a longer, more complicated way. Everything seemed to be written in a convoluted way. I also found that the author did not remain objective when discussing not just Burke and Hare, but Catholicism and Ireland. Indeed, the first 100 pages focused almost entirely on the latter two topics, which was frustrating as I just wanted to learn about Burke and Hare and their crimes.Perhaps, as I said above, this would have been a much better read had I read a book or two on Burke and Hare before turning to this one. Had I known more about Burke and Hare I may have found the details of the world they lived in more interesting to learn about. But I found the details about Burke and Hare and their crimes far too scattered, with too little of the text devoted to the actual subject matter. In summary, I don’t feel like I learnt much about Burke and Hare or their crimes, but rather about the state of the world that they lived in at that time. Which I’m sure is very interesting if one already knows lots about Burke and Hare. But I didn't.

The Burke and Hare murders, during the era of Victorian bodysnatching and anatomical dissection, exposed the failings of the current system. Burke and Hare’s story is relatively well known, but in this book the author attempts to go beyond the stereotypical view and personalise the two men and their accomplices. It’s a detailed, historical work, looking at the backgrounds of Burke and Hare, contextualising their crimes and investigating the investigation. Don’t expect a Horrible Histories style book which emphasises the blood and guts – this is more academic in style. Occasionally a little too detailed and dry, this is nevertheless a good history for those who want to dig deeper into the Burke and Hare legend.

Great