The Italian Boy

by Sarah Wise

  Augustine Brun, the Birmingham padrone, was interpreted to the court by Joseph Paragalli. According to the Times, this was not a satisfactory arrangement, and the judge reprimanded Paragalli for appearing to alter the questions and Brun’s answers and for “impertinence and frivolity not at all in character with the solemn investigation which was then pending.” There was laughter when Brun said that he had not seen the boy alive since July 1830 and, presumably in reply to a clumsily worded question, said that he couldn’t have seen the boy alive after he was dead. That aside, it is difficult to make out, in the official transcript of the trial and the various newspaper reports, where Paragalli would have been criticized for levity, and how much of the following testimony represents what Brun really meant to say cannot be known: “I knew an Italian boy named Carlo Ferrier. I brought him over from Italy about two years ago, he was then about fourteen years old. He lived with me for about six weeks. I saw him alive on 28th July 1830. The last place I knew him to lodge at was Mr Elliott’s, No 2 Charles Street, Drury Lane. On 19th November I saw the body of a boy at the burial ground near Covent Garden. I can only say that I suppose it to be the boy of whom I have spoken, by his size and hair, but the face I cannot give an opinion upon, from the state it was in, and the teeth were taken out. The size and the hair were exactly the same as Ferrier’s. I have not seen that boy alive since.”

  Brun said that he could perceive no trace of resemblance to Carlo in the corpse’s face, which, in any case, he had not had the heart to look at for very long.

  Curwood asked him: “Supposing you had heard nothing about Carlo Ferrier, and had looked at that body. Should you at all have known it?”

  “Yes, I should, from the hair and size. If I had known nothing about this occurrence and had seen the body, I should be of the opinion that he was ‘my own.’”

  Curwood wanted Brun to confirm that he was completely sure, and Brun said: “At first sight, if anybody had asked me who the body was, the face was so disfigured, I could not tell.”

  “Have you seen him since July twelve months?”

  “No. He might grow a little in fifteen months, but not much.”

  It is difficult to guess how much a poor boy, aged around fourteen, would have grown in fifteen months; malnourishment meant that in the early part of the nineteenth century, the poorest London fourteen-year-olds were, on average, between four and six inches shorter than the fourteen-year-old sons of the gentry.9 But George Beaman had found this child to be healthy, even slightly “stout.”

  Giving his own testimony, Joseph Paragalli said: “I play an organ and pandean pipes about the streets, with my wife and three children. I knew Carlo Ferrier. I saw him every morning at Mr Elliott’s. I knew he was once in Brun’s service. I have known the boy from 22nd May 1830. I saw him alive in the Quadrant, Regent Street, at half-past two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, four weeks before I saw him at the station house. He was then dead. When I saw him in the Quadrant he had a little cage round his neck, and two white mice in it. He was the same boy as I saw dead at the station house, undoubtedly.”

  Paragalli also revealed that Carlo had been brought to England with his sister, who had died in Scotland. Extraordinarily, he offered the information that Carlo was the only Italian boy who made money exhibiting animals in the streets of London. The boy he had seen in the Quadrant could only have been Carlo.

  He was now handed the brown furry cap, which had been sitting in court all morning alongside the sack, hamper, trunk, set of teeth, and all the articles of clothing exhumed at 3 Nova Scotia Gardens; the garments had been described in great detail in every national newspaper the day after Superintendent Thomas had brought them back in triumph to Bow Street. “I cannot swear to this cap,” said Paragalli. “He always wore a cap. I cannot say whether I ever saw him in one like this. He had one on in the Quadrant, but I cannot say whether it was cloth, leather or skin. I am sure the shade [visor] of this cap is of foreign manufacture.”

  Barry asked: “Is it not eleven weeks since you saw him?”

  “It was four weeks before I saw him a corpse. He lodged close to me. The rest of the Italian boys live by Saffron Hill. I have seen many about town. I do not keep company with my countrymen here.”

  Paragalli’s wife, Mary, said, “I knew a boy who carried two white mice about. I do not know his name. I saw that boy on Tuesday 1st November in Oxford Street, near Hanover Square, exactly at a quarter past twelve o’clock. He had a little cage, like a squirrel’s cage, which turns round, with two little white mice in it. I did not speak to him. I do not recollect how he was dressed. He had a little cap on but it is impossible for me to say what color, or what it was made of. On Sunday morning, 6th November, about nine o’clock, I saw the dead body of the very same boy at the station house, Covent Garden. I had known him all the summer. I know Brun, but did not know him till the boy had left him. I do not know what name the boy went by. I never spoke to him much. I was with my husband when we saw him in the Quadrant. That was the same boy that I saw dead. I have a son eight years old, who knew the boy well. He went with me to the station house and knew him. He is not here.” Hearsay had not been allowed in an English court of law since the seventeenth century; Mary Paragalli should have been allowed to mention her son’s views only if he was there himself to be questioned on them.

  A new Italian witness had come forward. Andrew Colla lived at 4 Saffron Hill and was a peripatetic seller of birdcages, which he constructed in his home. “I knew Carlo Ferrier by seeing him about the street,” he said, without an interpreter. “On Tuesday 1st November, I saw him in Oxford Street and spoke to him. I saw a dead body at the station house in Covent Garden on the following Monday—it was the body of the same person as I had seen in Oxford Street. He had a cage with white mice in it, and a tortoise.” The tortoise had absented itself from the story quite some time ago; now here was Colla resurrecting it. Asked to identify the cap and disinterred outfit as belonging to the victim, Colla continued: “He had a cap on his head, something like the one produced. It was torn on one side. I believe this to be the same cap. He had on a blue coat and grey trousers. I observed a large patch on the left knee and from the patch on the left knee of these trousers I believe them to be the same he had on. They are the same kind. I did not so particularly notice the color or patch as I did the stitches, being so great a distance from each other as these are. I do believe these to be the trousers. I have not seen them since I saw them on the boy in Oxford Street.”

  Colla had taken in a great deal of detail that day in Oxford Street; Superintendent Thomas must have been extremely pleased. As he must have been with little John King. Children of any age could give evidence at the Old Bailey, provided the judge was satisfied that the child knew good from evil and understood the nature of an oath. John King was nine, old enough in their honors’ view to give testimony at a capital trial. “I live with my mother, who is now confined. I remember one day when my mother was washing seeing a foreign boy near Nova Scotia Gardens. I believe it was on the Thursday before Guy Fawkes day, and between one and two o’clock. I was looking down upon him from the loft window and could not see whether he had a cage or a box as my mother would not let me go down to him. I believe it was a cage for I saw some wire on the top of it. He was standing still, with the cage hanging around his neck by a string. He had a brown hairy cap on his head, the peak of it was lined with green. The cap produced looks exactly like it. I do not know how long he remained there. I was looking at him for a few minutes.”

  Barry asked: “Were you in the first or second floor?”

  “In the first, not very high from the ground. I was looking out at the loft door and could see the green of the peak.” The child must have realized the import of the question: how could he have seen the color of the cap’s visor but not the cage?

  Martha King, aged eleven, said: “I remember seeing an Italian boy near the Birdcage public house. I was at the front part of the house. It was on the Wednesday or Thursday bef
ore Guy Fawkes day, and about twelve o’clock. I am sure it was either Wednesday or Thursday. He was standing still opposite the Birdcage with his box slung round his neck and a cap on his head. The cap was just like this. Bishop’s house is about a minute’s walk from our house. I have never seen the boy since.”

  Rebecca Baylis was a new witness; she also lived opposite the Birdcage, at 1 Virginia Row, which approached the pub from the southwest. “On Thursday 3rd November, about a quarter before twelve o’clock, I saw an Italian boy. He was very near my own window, standing sideways. I could see the side of his face and one end of the box, which he had in front of him. I think it was slung round his neck. He had a brown fur or seal-skin cap on, a small one, rather shabby. I could see the peak was lined with green and cut off very sharp. [Here, she looked down at the cap in her hands.] It was this color … but the front appeared to me to come more pointed. It was a cap much like this. I cannot swear whether this is it. He had on a dark blue or a dirty green jacket and grey trousers, apparently a dark mixture, but very shabby. About a quarter of an hour after, I had occasion to go to The Virginia Planter [a pub in Virginia Row] to see if it was time to put on my husband’s potatoes. I went a little way down Nova Scotia Gardens to look for my little boy. I saw the Italian boy standing within two doors of Number 3. There are three houses together and he stood by Number 1. I do not think the jacket produced is the one he had on.… I thought it was darker. These have the appearance of the trousers he had on.” Curwood pressed her about the jacket. “No,” said Baylis, “it appeared darker at the distance I was, which was about six yards. I will not say it is the same.”

  Another new witness, John Randall, laborer, told the court: “On Thursday morning 3rd November, between nine and ten o’clock, I saw an Italian boy standing under the window of the Birdcage public house, near Nova Scotia Gardens. He had a box or cage with two white mice—the cage part of the box went round. I turned round to the boy. I saw he looked very cold and I gave him a halfpenny and told him he had better go on. He had on a blue coarse jacket or coat, apparently very coarse, and a brown cap with a bit of leather in front. I did not notice whether it was fur or not. It was similar to this in color, and the jacket was this color. I did not notice his trousers.”

  Sarah Trueby once again described the topography of Nova Scotia Gardens. Her husband, she said, owned Nos. 1, 2, and 3 and rented them out. The well in the Bishops’ garden was easily accessible: gates in the palings between Nos. 1 and 2 and Nos. 2 and 3 showed that this well was meant to be used by all three sets of residents. Many others could easily reach it too, though.

  Two unconvincing Old Bailey courtroom sketches of Bishop, Williams, and May

  All the Woodcocks, of 2 Nova Scotia Gardens, took the stand—twelve-year-old William to repeat his belief that Williams was living with the Bishops and that he had from time to time seen Rhoda doing her washing at No. 3; his mother, Hannah, to say the same; and William Woodcock senior to repeat his evidence about the noises that had awoken him in the early hours of Friday, 4 November, after what he guessed had been four or four and a half hours of sleep. He claimed that, without any doubt, one of the three voices he had heard during the scuffle belonged to Williams. Woodcock had chatted with him for around two hours on the afternoon of Sunday, 23 October, when Williams came up to the palings while Woodcock was gardening and dissuaded him from digging the soil at the bottom of the garden of No. 2, suggesting instead the area close to the cottage where, Williams said, some lily bulbs could be found.

  Abraham Keymer kept the Feathers public house in Castle Street (the southwestern continuation of Virginia Row). He said that “about a quarter before twelve o’clock on Thursday night, 3rd November, Bishop came to my house with another person, who I think was Williams, but I am not quite certain of him. My house is one or two hundred yards from Bishop’s. I think they had a quartern of rum and half a gallon of beer—they took the beer away with them in a half-gallon can. This is the can.” Superintendent Thomas had seized it at No. 3 and proffered it as evidence. Keymer added that he could not be positive that Williams had come that night “as I had never seen him before.” This statement contradicted eyewitness evidence that Bishop and Williams had made the Feathers their last port of call when they made Fanny Pigburn drunk on the night of 8 October.

  PC Joseph Higgins told of the digging up of Bishop’s garden and detailed the state of the clothing he had found one foot down, below a spot that had been scattered with cinders and ashes “which would prevent my noticing its having been turned up.” He told of the implements found in Bishop’s house and at May’s lodgings. The blood had been fresh on the brad awl and on the breeches found at May’s. The dug-up clothing was passed around the jury. The prosecution asked Higgins whether such clothes would have been “useful” to Bishop’s own children. “The coat would be very useful and has not got a rent in it. It would be very useful for a working boy.” So why would a family bury clothing that still had plenty of life in it? was the unvoiced question. Superintendent Thomas told the court that he had been requested by May to point out that the blood on the breeches had been so fresh that it must have been shed after his arrest; Thomas felt it only right to make that point clear on behalf of the prisoner.

  Edward Ward of Nova Scotia Gardens came into the witness box. He told the court that he knew that it was a very bad thing to tell a lie, that it was a great sin. He said he knew that people who lied went to hell and were burned in brimstone and sulfur. Then he took the oath. He was six and a half years old. “I remember Guy Fawkes day—my mother gave me a half-holiday before Guy Fawkes day. I do not recollect what day of the week it was. I went to Bishop’s house on the day I had the half-holiday. He lives in Nova Scotia Gardens at a corner house. I have seen three of his children—he has one big boy, another about my age, and a little girl. I saw them that day in a room, next to the little room, and the little room is next to the garden. I played with the children there. I had often seen them before.”

  “Did the children show you anything that day?” the prosecution asked their witness.

  “Yes. Two white mice—one little one and one big one. They were in a cage, which moved round and round. I never saw them with white mice before, nor with a cage. I often played with them before. I saw my brother John when I got home and told him what I had seen.” Brother John confirmed that Edward had told him about the mice and the cage, and said that the half holiday from school had been on Friday, 4 November.10

  PC John Kirkman of F Division stepped up and reported that he had been watching over the prisoners in the Covent Garden station house late in the afternoon of Saturday the fifth. Repeating what he had told the coroner’s court, he testified that Bishop stood and read a printed bill on the wall about the King’s College corpse. “It was the blood that sold us,” Bishop had muttered to May, over the head of Williams.

  This was the case for the prosecution. Curwood announced that he felt it was his duty to ask that the murder charge against Thomas Williams be dropped; his client was clearly not a principal in the crime, though Curwood conceded that he may have acted as an accessory after the fact. It was true that very little of what had been presented in court connected Williams even to the bartering of the body; by Bishop’s own admission, his stepson-in-law/half-brother-in-law was very new to the trade; and none of the resurrection community had appeared even to recognize Williams. But Lord Chief Justice Tindal was having none of it. He told Curwood that it would be up to the jury to decide the guilt or innocence of Williams, as charged.

  * * *

  Now the defense did what the defense was restricted to doing: putting forward the written statements of the accused and bringing forth the defense witnesses. An officer of the court read the statements out. Bishop admitted that he had been a body snatcher for twelve years, though, probably on the advice of his attorney, he described his work as “procuring bodies for surgical and anatomical purposes.” Then he stated:

  I declare that I never sold any bo
dy but what had died a natural death. I have had bodies from the various workhouses, together with the clothes which were on the bodies. I occupied the house in Nova Scotia Gardens fifteen months. It consisted of three rooms and a wash-house, a garden, about twenty yards long, by about eight yards broad, three gardens adjoin, and are separated by a dwarf railing. I could have communication to either cottage, or the occupiers of them to mine. The well in my garden was for the joint use of all the tenants. There was also a privy to each house. The fact is, there are twenty cottages and gardens which are only separated by the paling already described, and I could get easy access to any of them. I declare I know nothing at all about the various articles of wearing apparel that have been found in the garden, but as regards the cap that was found in the house and supposed to have belonged to the deceased Italian boy, I can prove that it was bought by my wife of a Mrs Dodswell, of Hoxton Old Town, clothes dealer, for my own son, Frederick. The front I sewed on myself after it was purchased. The front was bought with the cap but not sewed to it. They were sold to my wife along with other articles. Mr Dodswell is a pastry cook, and has nothing to do with the business of the clothes shop—the calling of Mrs Dodswell, therefore, as evidence to prove the truth of my statement, will put it beyond a doubt that the cap never did belong to the deceased boy, and Mrs Dodswell should also prove how long she had the cap in her possession, and how she came by it. As much stress has been laid upon the finding of several articles of wearing apparel, and also the peculiar manner in which they appear to have been taken off the persons of those supposed to have come in an improper way into my hands, I most solemnly declare I know nothing whatever of them. The length of the examinations and the repetition of them have been so diligently promulgated and impressed on the public mind, that it cannot but be supposed that a portion of the circumstances connected with this unfortunate case (if not all) have reached and attracted the attention of the jury. But I entreat them, as they value the solemn obligation of the oath they have this day taken, that they will at once divest themselves of all prejudice and give me the whole benefit of a cool, dispassionate and impartial hearing of the case, and record such a verdict as they, on their conscience, their honour, and their oath, can return. May and Williams know nothing as to how I became possessed of the body.