The Scaffold - Burke and Hare lyrics

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 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 [Chorus] 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 k**ing 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 [Chorus] 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 [Chorus] Snuffing ou the homeless the quite evil pair were prone But they had no qualms about k**ing 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 air and Hare got away from there