The Italian Boy

by Sarah Wise

  * * *

  Earlier that day, worried parents of missing sons had been admitted to the watch house to view the body, having read a description of the boy circulated in police handbills and notices posted on walls, doors, and windows throughout the parish. Among the visitors had been several Italians. Signor Francis Bernasconi of Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, “plasterer to His Majesty,” had wondered whether the deceased was a boy from Genoa who had made his living as an “image boy”—hawking wax or plaster busts of the great and the good, past and present, about the streets of London. Bernasconi was a plaster figurine maker, or figurinaio, and he employed a number of Italian child immigrants to advertise and sell his wares in this way. Another figurinaio said that the dead boy had sometimes helped paint the plaster figures and that his “master” had left England at the end of September. The minister at the Italian Chapel in Oxenden Street, off the Haymarket, claimed that the boy had been a member of his congregation but was unable to name him. Two more Italians identified the dead boy as an Italian beggar who walked the streets carrying a tortoise that he exhibited in the hope of receiving a few pennies, while Joseph and Mary Paragalli of Parker Street, Covent Garden, said the boy was an Italian who wandered the West End exhibiting white mice in a cage suspended around his neck. (Joseph was a street musician, playing barrel organ and panpipes.) The Paragallis had known the child for about a year, they said, but neither of them suggested a name for him. Mary Paragalli claimed she had last seen him alive shortly after noon on Tuesday, 1 November, in Oxford Street, near Hanover Square.

  Charles Starbuck, a stockbroker, came forward to tell the Bow Street police officers that he believed the boy was an Italian beggar who was often to be seen near the Bank of England exhibiting white mice in a cage; Starbuck had viewed the body and was in “no doubt” about its being the same child. He had seen the boy looking tired and ill, sitting with his head sunk almost to his lap, on the evening of Thursday, 3 November, between half past six and eight o’clock. Starbuck was walking with his brother near the Bank and said, “I think he is unwell,” but his brother replied, “I think he’s a humbug. I’ve often seen him in that position.” A crowd gathered round, concerned at the boy’s condition, and one youth told the boy he ought to move on as police officers were heading that way. The Starbucks walked on. But on Wednesday the ninth, three days after viewing the body, Charles Starbuck wrote to the coroner to say that he had subsequently seen this boy near the Bank, and retracted his identification.

  The newspapers seized on the possible Italian connection remarkably swiftly. As the coroner’s hearing began on 8 November, the Times referred to the proceedings as “The Inquest on the Italian Boy,” when no such identity had been confirmed. In fact, the Times reporter seems to have been quite carried away with emotion by the death of “the poor little fellow who used to go about the streets hugging a live tortoise, and soliciting, with a smiling countenance, in broken English and Italian, a few coppers for the use of himself and his dumb friend.” The report continued: “We saw the body last night, and were struck with its fine healthy appearance.… The countenance of the boy does not exhibit the least contortion, but, on the contrary, wears the repose of sleep, and the same open and good-humoured expression which marked the features in life is still discernible.”1 This was a fantastical statement, since only someone able to give a positive identification could possibly know how the child had looked when alive. The following day, the Times thundered, in an extraordinary editorial: “If it shall be proved that he was murdered, for the purpose of deriving a horrible livelihood from the disposal of his body—if wretches have picked up from our streets an unprotected foreign child, and prepared him for the dissecting knife by assassination—if they have prowled about in order to obtain Subjects for a dissecting-room—then we may be assured that this is not a solitary crime of its kind.”

  An Italian boy, or image boy, from J. T. Smith’s Etchings of Remarkable Beggars, 1815

  In such a way, rumor was being reported as fact—a matter that was not lost on the coroner’s jury. “We are proceeding in the dark,” complained a member of the jury. The hearing was under way at the Unicorn, a public house in Covent Garden that backed onto St. Paul’s watch house. It appeared to the jury that no one in authority was able to rebut or confirm the various speculations about the identity of the dead boy. How, the jury asked, can we be expected to arrive at a verdict when we don’t even know who has died? And to make matters worse, as soon as any goings-on at hospitals were mentioned or any surgeon looked likely to be named, the coroner and the parish clerk of St. Paul’s would go into a huddle to discuss whether the inquest should continue or be adjourned.

  The jury’s exasperation compelled vestry clerk James Corder, who was overseeing the proceedings, to state that he understood “from inquiries he had made” that the dead boy was called Giacomo Montero, a beggar who had been brought to London a year earlier by an Italian named Pietro Massa, who lived in Liquorpond Street, in the area of Holborn known colloquially as Little Italy.2 But here Joseph Paragalli spoke up to say that he himself had made his own inquiries at the Home Office’s “Alien Office,” near Whitehall, and that the description held there of Montero did not fit the dead boy in the least. Perhaps then, said Corder, the boy had been Giovanni Balavezzolo, another Italian vagrant boy who was said to be missing from his usual haunts. To solve the problem, Corder suggested the jury simply return a verdict of willful murder against some person or persons unknown. The jury remained unconvinced.

  The Watch House, Covent Garden, circa 1830; St. Paul’s Church is to the right in the picture, the Unicorn tavern to the left, and an Italian boy can be seen just to the right of the arch.

  It was only at this awkward point for Corder that the prisoners were summoned from their underground cells in the St. Paul’s, Covent Garden watch house (the building was at that time being used as a temporary jail/police office; it was originally built as a place of surveillance, from which the graveyard could be guarded against snatchers and other trespassers) to give their account of how they had come into possession of the boy’s body. They entered the crowded room at the Unicorn to be viewed by a fascinated public; the memory of the crimes committed by William Burke and William Hare in Edinburgh just three years earlier was fresh. Had similar events been occurring in the English capital? And what would these monsters look like? The answer: very ordinary indeed, your common or garden Londoner. John Bishop was thirty-three, stocky, slightly sullen-looking, but with a mild enough expression; he had a long, slender, pointed nose, high cheekbones, large, slightly protruding gray-green eyes, and thick, dark hair that continued down into bushy muttonchop sideburns that covered a good deal of his cheeks. James May, thirty, was tall and handsome, with a mop of unruly fair hair and dark, glittering eyes; he looked pleasant enough. Like Bishop, he was still wearing his smock frock—the typical garment of a rural laborer—in which he had been arrested, which perhaps made him seem even more guileless; his left hand was bandaged. Thomas Williams, in his late twenties, was shorter than the other two, with deep-set hazel eyes and narrow lips that gave him a slightly cunning appearance, but mischievous rather than malevolent; his hair was mousy, his face pale, and he could have passed for someone much younger. Michael Shields just looked like a frightened old man.

  The accounts of Bishop, May, and Williams of the events of Friday, 4 November, and Saturday, 5 November, given at the coroner’s inquest and at hearings yet to come, differed remarkably little from those offered by the various eyewitnesses also called to testify. There were a few discrepancies, but these would appear small and insignificant. The following train of events, at least, was not in dispute.

  * * *

  John Bishop and Thomas Williams awoke in No. 3 Nova Scotia Gardens, the cottage they shared in Bethnal Green, at about ten o’clock on Friday morning, breakfasted with their wives and the Bishops’ three children, and set off for the Fortune of War pub in Giltspur Street, Smithfield—opposite St. Bart
holomew’s Hospital, and a regular meeting place for London’s resurrection men. Here, they began their day’s drinking and met up with James May. May had known Bishop for four or five years and was introduced to Williams, whom May knew only by sight, having seen him in the various pubs around the Old Bailey and Smithfield. The three men drank rum together and ate some lunch. May admired a smock frock that Bishop was wearing and asked him where he could buy a similar one. Bishop took May a few streets away, to Field Lane, one of the districts given over to London’s secondhand clothes trade. Field Lane was also known colloquially as Food and Raiment Alley, Thieving Lane, and Sheeps’ Head Alley, and Charles Dickens was to add to its notoriety six years later by siting one of Fagin’s dens there, in Oliver Twist. A steep, narrow passage, Field Lane comprised Jacobean, Stuart, and early Georgian tenements that were largely forbidding, rotting hovels; those on its east side backed on the Fleet River—often called the Fleet Ditch, since it was by 1831 almost motionless with solidifying filth, though when it flooded, its level could rise by six or seven feet, deluging the surrounding area with its detritus. By weird contrast, the windows in Field Lane were a dazzling display of brightly colored silk handkerchiefs (“wipes”); if the commentators of the day are to be believed, the vast majority of these were stolen by gangs of young—often extremely young—“snotter-haulers,” who would soon be incarnated in the popular imagination as the Artful Dodger (though Dickens used the more polite slang term, “fogle-hunters”). Here, in Field Lane, James May bought a smock frock from a clothes dealer, then decided he wanted a pair of trousers, too, and turned the corner into West Street, where he attempted to bargain with the female owner of another castoffs shop.3 Already pretty drunk, May was unable to agree on a price with the woman but, feeling guilty at having wasted her time, insisted on buying her some rum, which the three enjoyed together in the shop. May and Bishop then went back to the Fortune of War to have more drink with Williams, before Bishop and Williams set off for the West End, to try to sell the corpse of an adolescent boy lying trussed up in a trunk in the washhouse of 3 Nova Scotia Gardens.

  Their first call was made at Edward Tuson’s private medical school in Little Windmill Street, off Tottenham Court Road, where Tuson said he had waited so long for Bishop to come up with a “Thing” that he had bought one from another resurrection gang the day before. So they walked a few streets south to Joseph Carpue’s school on Dean Street in Soho. Carpue spoke to the pair in his lecture theater with several students present who wanted to know how fresh the Thing was. Carpue offered to pay eight guineas and Bishop agreed to this price, promising to deliver the boy the next morning at ten o’clock.

  John Bishop, James May, and Thomas Williams as they appeared to two court sketch artists. While Bishop’s appearance changes comparatively little from sketch to sketch, depictions of May and Williams vary dramatically and in fact the sketch above has mislabeled May and Williams in its caption.

  Field Lane, one of the districts of London where secondhand clothing was bought and sold

  Bishop and Williams got back to the Fortune of War at a quarter to four and shared some more drink there with May. Bishop now began to wonder whether he could get more than the eight guineas Carpue had offered—the boy was extremely fresh, after all. Bishop called May out onto the street to ask him—away from the ears of other resurrectionists—what sort of money he was achieving for Things. May told Bishop that he had sold two corpses at Guy’s Hospital for ten guineas each just the day before and that he would never accept as little as eight guineas for a young, healthy male. Bishop told May that if he were able to help sell the body for a higher price, May could keep anything they earned over nine guineas. They went back into the Fortune of War for a round to seal the bargain and then, leaving Williams drinking, set off to procure a coach and driver in order to collect the body.

  This was not easy. At around a quarter past five, as dusk was falling, they approached hackney-coach-driver Henry Mann in New Bridge Street, but Mann refused to take them because, as he later said, “I knew what May was”; he hadn’t spotted Bishop, who was standing behind his cab in the increasing gloom.

  They next tried James Seagrave, who, having given his horse a nose bag of corn, was taking tea in the King of Denmark, just south of the Fortune of War. Bishop and May asked Thomas Tavernor, who helped out at the nearby cabstand, to call Seagrave out to the street. Seagrave came out, and May, leaning against the wheel of a nearby cart, asked if he would be willing to do a job for them. Seagrave, suspicious, replied that there were a great many jobs, long ones and short ones—what kind did they mean? May said it was to be “a long job” carrying “a stiff ’un,” for which trip they would “stand” one guinea. The driver was intrigued and allowed May to buy him tea in the King of Denmark to discuss the journey but also to find out more about the resurrection world. Seagrave had no intention of letting them hire him, intending to “do them,” as he later told the coroner’s court.

  The King of Denmark combined the operations of inn, teahouse for cab and coach drivers, and booking office for errand carts. (It was also the best spot in London for watching public hangings, since it stood immediately opposite Newgate’s Debtors Door, where the scaffold was erected on execution days.) Inside, closely observed by a barman, May, Bishop, and Seagrave sat down to talk. During their discussion, May poured gin into Bishop’s tea from a pint bottle and Bishop protested, laughing, “Do you mean to hocus or burke me?” Seagrave did not know what this meant.4 A man sitting close by nudged Seagrave and muttered to him that Bishop and May were well-known snatchers. His curiosity about them satisfied, Seagrave went out into the street while Bishop and May’s attention was distracted and drove off. “It won’t do,” he muttered to Tavernor on his way out. “They want me to carry a stiff ’un.” As he pulled away, he looked back and spotted Bishop and May walking up and down the Old Bailey cab rank, trying to hire a driver. No one would take them.

  The King of Denmark pub in the Old Bailey, opposite Newgate’s Debtors Door

  They had better luck in nearby Farringdon Street, where they found someone willing to drive them to Bethnal Green and then south of the river to the Borough for ten shillings—more than double the going rate for such a journey. But there was yet more drinking to fit in first, and Bishop and May took the driver to the George pub in the Old Bailey (where Williams had arranged to meet them) and then on to the Fortune of War for another round, before the trip to Nova Scotia Gardens.

  They arrived at the Gardens at around half past six, observed by several neighbors: the doors of their hired vehicle were bright yellow, and it was a “chariot”—a grander version of the hackney coach. Bishop and May jumped out and went up the path that led to No. 3, leaving Williams chatting with the driver; the chariot door was left wide open. They were watched by George Gissing, the twelve-year-old son of the owner of the Birdcage pub, which stood opposite the Gardens (and still does). Gissing, from the doorway of the Birdcage, had a good view of the men. He recognized both Bishop and Williams, though not May; he saw that Bishop and May were in smock frocks and that May was smoking a pipe. Another youth, Thomas Trader, observed the three men too, recognizing Bishop and Williams, as did a local girl, Ann Cannell. Cannell’s mother passed by and started to watch as well, saying to Trader, “This looks strange. See where they are going so quick.” But Trader replied, “I’m sure I won’t go after them. If I did, they wouldn’t mind giving me a topper” (boxing slang for a violent punch).5 But the boy did try to note the license number of the chariot, though it was obscured by the open door and he gave up when he saw the driver staring at him. After ten minutes or so, Williams went down the path to the cottage and shortly afterward returned with Bishop and May. May was carrying a sack and Bishop was helping to hold it up. They placed it in the chariot, all three men got in, and they drove off.

  At seven o’clock, the chariot arrived at the main gate at Guy’s Hospital, where Bishop and May were allowed in by the porter of the main gate, John Chap
man, Williams staying outside in the chariot. Chapman noticed that the sack—carried by Bishop—appeared to contain something heavy. He showed Bishop and May through to James Davis, the porter of the medical school’s dissecting room. Davis noted that a human foot was protruding from the sack and concluded from its size that the corpse of a woman or boy was inside; but Davis was in no need of a Subject since he had bought two corpses from May just the day before. Bishop asked if he could leave the Thing there until the next morning and Davis agreed, locking it in a small chamber off the dissecting room. Bishop took Davis’s assistant, James Weeks, aside to tell him not to allow the body to be removed unless he, Bishop, was present; overhearing him, May took James Davis aside to say that, although the Thing belonged to Bishop, it should not be handed over to him without May’s being present, otherwise May would end up out of pocket. May had bought all the drinks that day, including James Seagrave’s in the King of Denmark, and he had also agreed to pay the cab fares.