The South Bridge Vaults, a dark and dripping labyrinth beneath Edinburgh’s Old Town, are not only a hotspot for ghostly tales but also a chilling relic of the city’s body-snatching era.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, these subterranean chambers, built under the South Bridge in 1788, became a shadowy stage for one of the most macabre trades in history: body-snatching.
This grim practice, driven by the demands of medical science and fueled by desperation, left an indelible mark on Edinburgh’s history, particularly in the vaults, where illicit activities thrived. Exploring the history of body-snatching reveals a dark chapter of the city’s past, intertwined with the eerie atmosphere of the vaults.
Resurrectionism
Body-snatching, or “resurrectionism,” emerged in Britain during the 18th century as medical schools flourished, particularly in Edinburgh, a leading center for anatomical study.
By the early 1800s, the city’s universities and surgeons required a steady supply of cadavers for dissection to train doctors and advance medical knowledge. However, legal sources were scarce—only executed criminals’ bodies were permitted for dissection under the 1752 Murder Act, and demand far outstripped supply.
This scarcity birthed a lucrative black market, where body-snatchers, known as “resurrection men,” exhumed freshly buried corpses from graveyards and sold them to anatomists for prices ranging from £2 to £10 (roughly £200-£1,000 today). The South Bridge Vaults, with their secluded, damp chambers, were an ideal hideout for storing bodies or conducting clandestine transactions, shielded from prying eyes.
The trade was grim and dangerous. Body-snatchers operated at night, targeting fresh graves to avoid decayed remains, using wooden shovels to minimize noise and working in teams to quickly extract corpses. They stripped bodies of shrouds to avoid theft charges, as stealing a corpse wasn’t technically illegal, but taking grave goods was. Edinburgh’s graveyards, like Greyfriars Kirkyard, became battlegrounds, with families installing iron cages (mort-safes) or hiring watchmen to protect their loved ones’ remains.
The South Bridge Vaults, already home to the city’s poorest and most desperate, provided a perfect cover for this illicit trade. Smugglers, thieves, and body-snatchers mingled in the unlit chambers, where the damp, cavernous spaces could conceal bodies until they were delivered to surgeons’ tables in the nearby medical quarter.
Burke and Hare
The most infamous figures in Edinburgh’s body-snatching history are William Burke and William Hare, whose activities in 1827-1828 escalated the trade into outright murder.
Operating near the South Bridge, the pair began by selling the body of a deceased lodger in Hare’s boarding house to Dr. Robert Knox, a prominent anatomist. Realizing the profit, they turned to luring vulnerable people—often from Edinburgh’s slums—to their deaths, killing at least 16 victims by smothering them to avoid visible wounds.
The South Bridge Vaults, with their proximity to the city’s underbelly, were likely a storage point for some of these bodies before delivery to Knox’s dissection rooms. Their crimes, uncovered in 1828, shocked the city and led to Burke’s execution and Hare’s escape into obscurity. The scandal exposed the ethical failures of the medical establishment, which often turned a blind eye to the bodies’ origins.
The Burke and Hare murders were a turning point, fueling public outrage and hastening legal reform. The Anatomy Act of 1832 ended the body-snatching era by allowing unclaimed bodies from workhouses and hospitals to be used for dissection, reducing the need for illegal exhumations.
Tours
The South Bridge Vaults, abandoned by the mid-19th century, fell into obscurity, their role in the trade forgotten until their rediscovery in the 1980s. Today, guided tours through the vaults, offered by operators like Mercat Tours, recount these gruesome tales, with guides describing how the chambers’ darkness hid body-snatchers’ grim work. Visitors may feel the weight of this history in the vaults’ oppressive atmosphere, where the ghost of a figure like “Mr. Boots” is sometimes linked to the era’s sinister dealings.
Visiting the South Bridge Vaults offers a visceral connection to this macabre history. Tours, lasting about an hour, navigate the damp, uneven chambers, blending stories of body-snatching with the vaults’ broader past. As of 2025, tickets cost around £16-£20, and booking ahead via sites like mercattours.com is advised, especially during peak seasons like Halloween.
The vaults’ role in body-snatching adds a chilling layer to their allure, making them a must-visit for those exploring Edinburgh’s dark side. Pair a tour with a visit to the Surgeons’ Hall Museums, which display artifacts from the era, including Burke’s death mask.
