- In Georgian Scotland, a simple and unhappily-married man (Andrew Duggan) is employed to deliver "supplies" to anatomy professor Dr. Robert Knox of the Edinburgh Medical College, but, is unaware of the true contents of the boxes furnished by his associates, Messrs. Burke and Hare.—Pythonet
- Edinburgh, Scotland, 1827: John McGregor works all day to support his wife, Aggie, a fat drunk who sleeps incessantly, snores loudly, and has not left their cottage in two years. McGregor does a lot of hauling of coffin-shaped boxes to the medical museum for Mr. Hare, whom he suspects of being a resurrectionist (a man who digs up bodies to supply to medical schools). Hare tells McGregor that the boxes contain tanbark, but McGregor notes that some people who enter Hare's hotel never walk out again. McGregor is an unhappy man and he fantasizes killing his wife via bashing her head with a stone, drowning, or hanging her, but realizes that none of those methods would be successful. One day he picks up another box of tanbark from Burke and Hare to deliver to Dr. Knox's medical museum. Knox says that he needs all of the tanbark to "spread around." McGregor notices a shock of human hair hanging from the box and opens it with his pocket knife. He sees that the box contains the body of Elsie, a match vendor who was alive and well the day before, frolicking in the spring countryside with Tommy Lad. McGregor decides to make Aggie his next cargo, so he buys many bottles of whiskey and serves the alcohol to Aggie. When she becomes inebriated, he leaves her on a bench outside Hare's hotel. After Hare and Burke hear her snoring, she is soon dispatched. The next day, McGregor asks Burke whether he has another load of tanbark and Burke complies, but he asks McGregor to tell Knox that he will visit soon to discuss a new price for tanbark. Burke is surprised when McGregor refuses a double fee for the oversize load, instead asking for the regular rate. When Knox receives the box, he flips the usual coin to McGregor as a tip, and is perplexed when McGregor rejects it. McGregor now finds himself lonely and imagines that Aggie is still lying in her bed. He invites the new match seller, comely Rosie, into his dwelling but becomes enraged when she lies on Aggie's bed, so he scares her away. He returns to the medical museum and asks Knox to let him see the body that he delivered one last time.—Lewis Amack / Hans Delbruck
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