Exact site of Burke`s lodging house, 1828

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 the bodies of people who died there to Doctor Robert Knox at the local anatomy school. When the supply of natural deaths ran out, they turned to murder. This street corner marks the start of sixteen violent, calculated crimes.