Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
they murdered at least 16 people, selling their bodies to Professor Knox. When the law finally caught up with
them, Hare turned King's evidence and testified against Burke.
Burke was hanged outside St Giles Cathedral in January 1829 and, in an ironic twist, his body was given to the
anatomy school for public dissection. His skeleton, and a wallet made from his flayed skin, are still on display in
Surgeons' Hall Museums (
Click here
)
.
It was as a result of the Burke and Hare case that the Anatomy Act of 1832 - regulating the supply of cadavers
for dissection, and still in force today - was passed.
New Town
Edinburgh's New Town lies north of the Old Town, on a ridge running parallel to the Roy-
al Mile and separated from it by the valley of Princes Street Gardens. Its grid of elegant
Georgian terraces is a complete contrast to the chaotic tangle of tenements and wynds that
characterise the Old Town.
Between the end of the 14th century and the start of the 18th, the population of Edin-
burgh - still confined within the walls of the Old Town - increased from 2000 to 50,000.
The tottering tenements were unsafe and occasionally collapsed, fire was an ever-present
danger, and the overcrowding and squalor became unbearable.
When the Act of Union in 1707 brought the prospect of long-term stability, the upper
classes were keen to find healthier, more spacious living quarters, and in 1766 the lord
provost of Edinburgh announced an architectural competition to design an extension to the
city. It was won by an unknown 23-year-old, James Craig, a self-taught architect whose
simple and elegant plan envisaged a main axis along George St, with grand squares at
either end, and with building restricted to one side only of Princes and Queen Sts so that
the houses enjoyed views over the Firth of Forth to the north and to the castle and Old
Town to the south.
During the 18th and 19th centuries the New Town continued to sprout squares, circuses,
parks and terraces, with some of its finest neoclassical architecture designed by Robert
Adam. Today Edinburgh's New Town remains the world's most complete and unspoilt ex-
ample of Georgian architecture and town planning. Along with the Old Town, it was de-
clared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1995.
