William Burke and William Hare, immigrants from Ulster, attempt to sell cheese mould as a patent medicine. When their fraud is discovered, they flee to an inn owned by Hare's wife, Lucky. One of her lodgers has died, and she wants Burke and Hare to remove the body. On the way, they stop for a drink and Hare hears from Fergus, a local henchman of villain Danny McTavish, that Dr Knox pays for cadavers, especially now demand has gone up. Burke and Hare decide to sell the corpse to Knox. They are forced to break the corpse's spine to fit it into a barrel in order to smuggle it through the city. Burke and Hare present the now-mangled corpse to Knox. After some negotiation, Knox agrees to pay them a good sum of money for each corpse they bring him for dissection. In addition to using cadavers in lectures, Knox is attempting to create a pictorial reference of the human body by using an early form of photography. Using this, he hopes to win royal patronage from the king when he comes to Holyrood Palace.