The narrow tenement at the corner of Tanner’s Close in the West Port area held a cramped, dark lodging house run by William Hare and his wife. In eighteen twenty-eight, William Burke moved in as a fellow lodger. He and Hare began selling…
Resurrection Men and Medicine
This walk traces the dark history of 19th-century Edinburgh, where pioneering medical science was fueled by a gruesome trade in body snatching and cold-blooded murder.
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1. Exact site of Burke`s lodging house, 1828
2. The White Hart Inn
The White Hart Inn wears a white-painted facade and an exterior lantern that distinguishes it from the surrounding stone buildings of the Grassmarket. It stands on foundations dating back to fifteen sixteen, making it one of the oldest pub…
3. Maggie Dicksons
The Maggie Dicksons pub features a bright red facade that stands out sharply against the gray stone of the Grassmarket. It takes its name from a local woman who was hanged here in seventeen twenty-four for concealing a pregnancy. After the…
4. Greyfriars Kirkyard Cemetery Edinburgh
The stone walls of Greyfriars Kirkyard hold thousands of burials within the heart of Edinburgh. This site became a cemetery in fifteen sixty-one, after Mary Queen of Scots granted the land to the town. In the late seventeenth century, a…
5. Old College, The University of Edinburgh
The Old College of the University of Edinburgh stands out for its massive quadrangle and the heavy, bronze-colored dome topping the entrance gate. It occupies the site of the old Kirk o' Field, where Mary Queen of Scots stayed before her…
6. Surgeons' Hall Museum
The Surgeons' Hall Museum sits behind a grand, classical facade of yellow sandstone on Nicolson Street. This is the home of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, a professional institution that began training medical men in the early…