Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh has revealed how Edinburgh's infamous serial killers Burke and Hare inspired his writing, including a screenplay re-imagining their murders in modern-day Edinburgh. Welsh discusses the gruesome pair in a new Sky History documentary, Britain's Murder Map, and draws parallels between the 19th-century killers and today's society.
Welsh, who was addicted to heroin in his early twenties, says the mix of poverty, drug abuse and depravity that fuelled Burke and Hare also informed his novel Trainspotting and its sequel Dead Men's Trousers. 'I kind of used it in Dead Men's Trousers to think to myself, what would the modern Burke and Hare scenario be like?' he explains.
The writer also highlights how Burke and Hare used alcohol to enable their murders, comparing it to heroin use. 'They got drunk to do what they did. The taking of the drug made them behave in a way they probably wouldn't have done otherwise. It's pretty much the same with heroin,' he says.
Welsh first encountered the pair through a pub turned strip joint called Burke & Hare in the 1980s. He notes that like Jack the Ripper in London, their story now attracts tourists to Edinburgh's atmospheric closes and lanes. However, he sees modern parallels beyond tourism: 'We're all farmed by the corporations on the internet for our algorithms. We're all basically kept alive past our sell-by date, so they can extract more value from us.'
The author's screenplay The Meat Trade, co-written with Dean Cavanagh, transplants the Burke and Hare murders to contemporary Edinburgh, reflecting his view that society today is a 'more brutal version of what happens' in the 1800s, with increasing impoverishment across classes.
