Lyrics Burke And Hare - The Scaffold

Burke And Hare

In the Scottish slums of Edinburgh lived a horrid pair
Two Irish immigrants named William Burke and William Hare
They ran a squalid boarding house and an old man died in there
Who owned four pounds rent and William Hare said that’s not fair
So Hare and his friend Burke came up with a morbid plan
To make a profit from medical science’s demands
They filled the old man’s coffin with tree bark then sold the man
To Doctor Knoxs' medical school for dissection
Burke and Hare were a very greedy pair
Selling bodies to climb their financial stairs
Burke and Hare lured victims to their lair
Selling the cadavers for pretty decent fare
Doctor Knoxs' staff said cadaver were in demand
And they would pay good money for some fresh specimens
Still one question then remained how to acquire them
So once again Burke and Hare devised a greedy plan
They cut off the air of sickly bordered types
Killing the old people who couldn’t put up a fight
For money the very greedy pair would snuff out human life
Then take their corpses to Doctor Knoxs' knife
The remaining boarders weren’t sick so they couldn’t take their lives
Then Burke and Hare decided they should go for some different types
They recruited Burke’s mistress and Hare’s common law wife
The women then would lure in street people in the night
The desperate street people went back to Burke’s and Hare’s lair
And became dissection specimens once they were inside there
With a steady supply of liquor the poor victims weren’t prepared
For easy suffocation by the greedy Burke and Hare
Snuffing ou the homeless the quite evil pair were prone
But they had no qualms about killing close to home
Like Burke’s girlfriend’s cousin and a wash woman as they grown
Then took them to Doctor Knox who cut them to the bone
The last victim a woman snuffed out inside their lair
Two lodgers found her body and reported Burke and Hare
Hare blamed Burke, got off without a care
They hung Burke in the airr and Hare got away from there