Robert Knox
Robert Knox- A Famous Scottish Anatomist
'The boy that bought the beef'
Dr Robert Knox (1791-1862) 'The boy that bought the beef' Knox was to figure in one of the most gruesome episodes of Scottish medical history, which was to cause him to rub shoulders with one of the most callous duos the world has ever known. Educated at the Royal High School, the son of a mathematics teacher from Heriot's school, Knox graduated in medicine at Edinburgh. He saw service as an army surgeon at Waterloo and in the 5th Kaffir War in South Africa. On his return to Edinburgh he under-took a great deal of zoological and ethnological research and became the most prominent lecturer in anatomy. However, his reputation was extremely dented by his methods of securing fresh bodies for his dissection classes. Supplies were limited by the law and it was Knox's need that brought him into the acquaintance of the soon to be notorious Burke and Hare. The evil pair resorted to murder to supply cadavers for the customary fee of 7.50 a time. A police investigation of 16 cases of murder prompted a search of Knox's anatomy rooms where a freshly murdered corpse was found. Burke and Hare were arrested and tried for murder; Burke was hanged in 1829, but Hare escaped the gallows by turning King's Evidence. The Edinburgh mob stoned Knox's residence at Newington and burned him in effigy; he was assailed on all sides for his cynical attitude regarding the source of his specimens. Knox was given further notoriety in James Bridie's play, The Anatomist (1931), and in the film, The Doctor and the Devils (1953), by Dylan Thomas. And for decades the urchins' doggerel ran:
Down the close and up the stair,
But and ben wi' Burke and Hare.
Burke's the butcher,
Hare's the thief,
Knox the boy that buys the beef.
Popular opinion drove him from Edinburgh; for a while he lectured at Glasgow, then took up a medical practice in London, where he died.
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