Seeking Mr Hare

On the 7th of February 1829 the notorious Irish mass murderer and 'resurrectionist' William Hare (of Burke and Hare infamy) was freed from a Scottish gaol, put on a coach to Carlisle, left on the roadside there and subsequently disappeared from human view as if he had never existed. His fellow conspirator and provider of fresh 'meat' for the Edinburgh surgeons' operating tables had earlier been hanged, but fearing the mob's vengeance, the authorities had freed Hare hoping he would vanish for ever, little knowing that his name along with the nature of his terrible crimes would reverberate and live on even if his subsequent history did not. Seeking Mr Hare takes up the story where our pariah flees his past through the Northern English countryside and finally across to Ireland. Joining forces with Hannah, a young mute farm-girl, on the way, the pair travel from one adventure in survival to the next, all the while pursued by Percy Speed, a retired London enquiry agent hired by his noble employer to track down a life-mask of Hare for his private cabinet of curiosities. However when Lord Beckford loses interest in the quest, Speed doggedly carries on, determined to come face to face with his cunning and elusive quarry, no matter what the quest costs and where it leads him.

The shocking true story of 19th century Scotland’s most famous serial killers is “gruesome and funny and sometimes both together” (The Observer, UK). In a boarding house just off Edinburgh’s West Port, an old army pensioner dies of natural causes. He owes the landlord rent. Instead of burying the body, the landlord, William Hare, and his friend, William Burke, fill the coffin with bark and sell the corpse to Dr. Robert Knox, an ambitious Edinburgh anatomist. It’s a nice profit for not a lot of work. After this encouraging outcome, Burke and Hare decide to suffocate another sickly tenant. So begins the criminal career of the most notorious double act in serial killing. Here is the unvarnished, human story behind the infamous Burke and Hare murders. We delve into their past, their personalities and the circumstances that made them resort to murder as a money-making scheme. It's a tale of desperation and greed, of outsiders, ambition, corruption and betrayal.