The Italian Boy

by Sarah Wise

  SIXTEEN

  How Many?

  Orator Hunt had first brought up the rumor. Addressing the House of Commons on Monday, 12 December, he said that according to a statement in the newspapers, the men recently executed for burking, instead of confessing to three or four murders, had confessed to sixty but were stopped in the middle of their confessions by Dr. Cotton, the ordinary of Newgate. Hunt said that “it had greatly agitated the public mind, and was, he believed, at present the source of much excitement.” Did the government know whether the tale of the interrupted confession was true or not?

  George Lamb, the right honorable secretary for the Home Department (and Lord Melbourne’s youngest brother), said he did not know on what authority the statement in the newspapers had been put forth, but he was not aware of any other confession than that officially published.

  Alderman Waithman, member for the City of London, replied to Hunt that he himself had spoken to the sheriffs and undersheriffs at Newgate, and the undersheriffs had declared that Bishop and Williams had told everything they knew in the “official” confession. Waithman claimed to have been astonished to read the allegations that there had been sixty victims.1

  The official confessions—the “I, John Bishop” and “I, Thomas Head” statements—had been taken down by undersheriffs Robert Ellis and Thomas Wood and authenticated and approved for publication by Dr. Cotton. But strange, unsourced additions to the official confessions had been appearing in the national newspapers. The Observer, then as now a Sunday paper, had been among the first to publish an unauthorized alternative account (it was reprinted in full by the Times, with acknowledgment, on Monday, 5 December). Twenty-four hours before the executions took place, the Observer reported: “Yesterday morning, the Rev. Mr Theodore Williams, vicar of Hendon, according to a promise he made to Bishop, visited him in his cell.… After some hesitation, Bishop admitted that he had been concerned in the commission of three murders, viz., that of the Italian boy, the murder of Frances Pigburn, and of a drover—a boy who had come to London with cattle from Lincolnshire, which boy the witnesses on his trial had sworn was the Italian boy, to the best of their belief, though he had disposed of that body before. Bishop entered into a minute description, most horrible in its details, of the mode by which he had perpetrated the inhuman murders. He did not deny that Williams was an actor in the murder of the Italian boy, which had been committed in the cottage in Nova Scotia Gardens. Williams also made a confession which was consistent with the facts stated in that of Bishop; but he declared that he had been involved in the horrid transactions by Bishop’s persuasion, whose daughter he had married only three months ago. He also exonerated May from all participation in the murder.”

  Cunningham of Kent Street does not appear in this report. Instead, there is the admission to killing an Italian boy. Was this admission to a (backdated) murder of an Italian boy a change of heart by Bishop, or sloppy journalism, or wishful thinking by the reporter? And who was the reporter? Who had smuggled out an advance confession—an exclusive—presumably for a good sum of money?

  The Observer continued: “On further interrogation, both Bishop and Williams declared that the corpse offered for sale at the King’s College, and sworn to as the Italian boy, Carlo Ferrari, was not the body of that ill-fated lad, but they again asserted that it was the corpse of a boy who had come from Lincolnshire to Smithfield with a drove of cattle. They, however, did not deny that the Italian boy was murdered by Bishop.” But nor did they state it; which was odd, in light of Bishop’s comment that “he had disposed of that body before.”2

  “A veil of secrecy has been thrown over the circumstances which have transpired in Newgate,” insisted the Observer, “and if there be any inaccuracies, they are [more] attributable to the want of unreserved communication on the part of those who are possessed of the ‘secrets of the prison house,’ than to the want of zeal on our part to gratify the curiosity of our readers.” This seems to be an attack on Cotton and the sheriffs, and it is tempting to suppose that Dr. Theodore Williams had not surrendered his version of the confessions at the sheriff’s office, as he had been requested to do, but had smuggled them out and delivered them to the Observer on Saturday evening. (The Observer offices were at 169 Strand, around fifteen to twenty minutes’ walk from the jail.)

  There are other suspects, though. It is quite possible that reformist prison chaplain Dr. Whitworth Russell, pamphleteering solicitor James Harmer (a personal friend of Cotton’s), or any of the sheriffs, undersheriffs, or warders (Bishop and Williams each had two guards) were rushing out different versions of confessions, or the gist of conversations overheard, in order to raise a guinea or two. In addition to the hunger for newspaper reports about murderers, the “last dying speeches” produced by broadsheet manufacturers could realize a small fortune if prepared in advance to be sold at a “popular” execution. Even Pierce Egan, famous, well established, and celebrated for his Life in London books of the mid-1820s, had got in on the act, quite probably using his friendship with Cotton to publish his slightly more expensive version of events, The Murder of the Italian Boy (“price only 1s and 6d”).3

  The penal-reform-minded author of Old Bailey Experience would, the following year, complain bitterly about rival confessions being sent to newspaper offices by “interlopers” in the jail. He reminded readers of the time a “Dr R” was caught out: he had gone home and penned “the final moments” of a condemned man who was granted a reprieve at the last minute the next morning. (It is possible that “Dr R” was Dr. Whitworth Russell.)4 Old Bailey Experience also claimed that the splits within the Church of England were reflected within the prison and that each “side” enjoyed the complicity of various aldermen in gaining access to noteworthy criminals; rival factions within Anglicanism wanted to be seen to be offering the best form of religious instruction and spiritual comfort to those about to die. Those of an evangelical tendency placed importance on a thrusting, practical, personalized Christianity; the state of mind of the condemned was paramount. Evangelicals were aghast at the seemingly supine approach of some High Church Anglicans, who appeared content to rely on ritual and liturgy, without tailoring pastoral care to the individual receiving it.

  But a vigorous, reformist approach to religion had its pitfalls. Though Hendon’s Rev. Theodore Williams was a High Church Anglican, words that certain of his parishioners used to describe him included “overbearing,” “dictatorial,” “hasty,” and “irritable.” While many considered him a fine preacher (attendance at his sermons was high), the local Methodists dubbed him “the cock-fighting parson” because he refused to support a ban on that sport in his parish, and they accused him of inciting local youths to pelt the Methodist minister in Hendon with eggs and old vegetables.5 In 1823, following a dispute over burial fees, Williams had wrecked the new tomb of one Mrs. Warren with his bare hands, scattering debris across the road outside the church. He had served time in a debtors’ prison and would do so again in his old age. In 1836, he would be involved in an infamous brawl in the vestry of St. Mary’s, Hendon, and, three years after that, would clash with Lancet founder Thomas Wakely, refusing to sanction the disinterment of a body for a coroner’s hearing. (A seventy-nine-year-old pauper, Thomas Austin, had fallen into a copper of boiling water at the Hendon workhouse.)6 Williams’s family had made their money from plantations in the West Indies worked by slaves, and the vicar vociferously opposed the antislavery movement. His own personal expenditure was compared unfavorably by some of his parishioners with his parsimony in administering the New Poor Law in Hendon, from 1834. It would be quite in keeping with what is known of the vicar of Hendon that he should have had some hand in making money from newspapers and, in doing so, stirring up controversy.

  * * *

  The Sunday Times and the Atlas newspapers also ran additional Newgate confessions, and these too were reprinted in full by the Times and the Globe and Traveller on Monday the fifth. Someone had smuggled out the story that on Saturday night, al
one in his cell except for his warder, Thomas Williams had become “anxious and uneasy towards midnight. His agitation increased, and the vigilance of his keeper became more marked. Williams observed it and said, ‘Don’t be frightened, sir, I am not going to do anything wrong, but I wish to ease my mind. Let me see the governor.’ Mr Wontner was then called from his bed and the Reverend Mr Cotton, the Ordinary, was also in attendance in a few minutes. When these gentlemen came into the cell, Williams, looking at them steadfastly for a moment or two, burst into tears and said, ‘Gentlemen, I wish to unburden my mind. I know I am guilty, and ought to suffer the utmost punishment of the law. I am a murderer, I confess it; but the witnesses were all mistaken as to its being the Italian boy.’”

  The report went on: “On Thursday 3rd November, he [Williams] was in the neighbourhood of Smithfield when he saw a boy, whom he had often observed before, assisting in driving cattle to the market. This boy was about fourteen or fifteen years of age, and exactly corresponded with the description given of the Italian boy. He enticed him from the cattle, and took him to the Fortune of War public house, and sent for Bishop, who was waiting at another pub in the neighbourhood for the purpose of receiving communications from Williams. Bishop came, and they took the boy home to Nova Scotia Gardens, giving him some soup and potatoes by the way. When they got him there, they set him to play with Bishop’s children until near dusk, when they gave him some rum and he became stupefied. Bishop and Williams then took him into the garden, and on the way threw him down, and, pushing his head into the water barrel sunk into the ground, held him until he was suffocated. They then conveyed the body back to the house, kept it snug until the next day, when May was applied to, to assist in disposing of it. ‘May had nothing to do with the murder of that boy.’”

  The Observer, however, reported that during the night, Williams had revealed to his warder that it was Bishop who had picked up the drover’s boy in the pigpens, had promised him work, and had taken him to the Fortune of War to meet Williams and to drink some beer; this boy had been the first victim, according to Williams in the Observer, and Cunningham of Kent Street had been the second boy to die. Williams also admitted, here, to attempting to burke two aged workhouse paupers whom he and Bishop had tempted back to Nova Scotia Gardens with promises of drink but who did not succumb fully to the laudanum. Bishop reportedly said to Williams that “it was no go—they were old drinkers and were not to be so easily done.… We shall be grabbed for poisoning them.”

  The Atlas newspaper claimed that on another occasion, Theodore Williams had been told by both Bishop and Williams that they had killed three people—the Lincolnshire drover boy, Fanny Pigburn, and, quite a while before, an Italian boy—and that all the clothes found in the garden and privy had indeed belonged to the three victims. In this version, more violence was used in the killings, with the victims having their mouths held shut as they were marched to the well. The Morning Advertiser stated that both men vehemently denied that any Italian boy had ever been killed.

  In the Sun, an evening newspaper, it was claimed that “Bishop several times endeavoured to inveigle to his residence the sister of the young woman who was some time ago missed from the neighbourhood of Bethnal Green; and whose scalp and hair, it is believed, were those found in the privy, but fortunately the young woman resisted his importunity. He also prevailed on a young woman to leave her place, under a promise to take her into keeping; but she felt compunctious, and declined his overtures just in sufficient time to save her life.”7 Yet the ownership of the scalp and hair had never been established.

  The papers vied with one another to provide motivations for the murderers. The Times of Tuesday, 6 December, stated that Williams had told his warder that he had never, until his marriage, been a resurrection man and had not even known that this was how Bishop made his living. Rhoda had told him on his wedding night and asked him to promise not to join the “snatchers.” But when Williams had had his glassmaking apparatus seized, Bishop had asked his neighbor to become a partner, and Williams had agreed. However (Williams is said to have told the warder), after just three graveyard forays, Williams had found it a difficult and dangerous job, so, thinking of the Edinburgh Horrors, he had proposed murder.

  Williams was highly likely to have been aware of how his neighbor made a living before his wedding night of 26 September; in any case, Customs and Excise had made their raid on 6 August—seven weeks before Rhoda supposedly told Williams of Bishop’s profession. If this account of a conversation between Williams and his warder has been reported accurately, the most probable explanation for its contents is that Williams was attempting to depict Rhoda as a voice of innocence and reason, to try to save her from public hatred. By getting this version of events into the newspapers, Williams could die knowing that he had at least attempted to redeem Rhoda in the eyes of her fellow citizens.

  The Times report continues with Williams telling the warder that the day after the murder of “the woman Pigburn,” he and Bishop had tried to burke a man whom they had lured to Nova Scotia Gardens. The laudanum failed, and the man was not completely unconscious, just dozing, and (in the manner of Lady Macbeth) Bishop froze as he was poised to attack because the sleeping man so resembled his father; the next morning, the man awoke and let himself out of No. 3. On the following Tuesday (presumably 11 October), claimed Williams, the laudanum failed again, and this intended victim also left the cottage none the wiser. These may or may not have been the two old workhouse paupers mentioned by Williams to his warder.

  The Globe and Traveller and the Morning Advertiser added into their reports the story of Cotton’s interruption of the confessions, stating that it had happened just as Bishop was talking about a fourth murder, of a black vagrant, and appeared to be implicating other people in this crime. The Globe and Traveller and the Observer had put a name to the Lincolnshire drover’s boy—White—and reported a claim by Thomas Williams that William Woodcock could not possibly have heard anything in the early hours of Friday, 4 November, since the killers had taken their shoes off; and besides, by that time the drover’s boy was “as dead as a log.” The Globe and Traveller also included the information that Cunningham of Kent Street used to help out around Smithfield and had put up a fight on the night of his killing, surprising Bishop and Williams with his strength. The former had uttered “a horrible oath” as he held the boy’s legs upright in the well while Williams pushed his head below the surface of the water, waiting until he finally stopped struggling.

  The Sun further claimed, “Among the murders which they have confessed to, we understand, is one of a little child, whom they found in a destitute condition in the street and covered with filth and vermin. This poor child they inveigled to Bishop’s house and destroyed in a similar manner to that of the other unfortunate victims.” Was this an inaccurate description of White or Cunningham (hardly “little” children)? Or was this the “large small” bought from Bishop by the anatomical school “near Golden Square” in the first week of November? Or was this the fate of Fanny Pigburn’s child, who had been sitting on her lap when Bishop and Williams found Fanny crying on a doorstep in Church Street, Shoreditch, but who disappears from the story soon afterward?

  Many of the unofficial accounts of confessions contain internal evidence that they are not accurate eyewitness reports; in some instances, words are quite plainly being put into the killers’ mouths. The “I, John Bishop” confession, which runs to twenty-five hundred words, is a lucid, linear tale, told in plain but vivid language. Certain touches give it a compelling, phantasmagoric feel; all too real, mundane phenomena interweave with the nightmarish narrative of relentless, pitiless slaughter. It’s a tale of coffee stalls, child-sized chairs, gin, privies, pouring rain, mean-minded landlords, piles of dirty clothes. There are points at which a bizarre tenderness pokes its way into the act of killing: “I then took him in my arms, and let him slide from them headlong into the well”; “She … went off to sleep in about ten minutes. She was falling back;
I caught her to save her fall”; “We gave him some warm beer, sweetened with sugar.… He … fell asleep in a little chair belonging to one of my children.” The insistent voice of Bishop, the cadence of his unreflective, phlegmatic outlook, is strikingly different from the add-on accounts in the newspapers, where a melodramatic note often appears. So, in the Globe and Traveller we have Bishop saying to Rev. Theodore Williams: “Surely, sir, there is a hope of mercy for a repentant sinner. Was not the thief on the cross pardoned?”8 And we learn that “after having partaken of the Sacrament, Thomas Williams complained of thirst, and said his mouth was so parched that he was quite sure it was a foretaste of hell.” The version of this incident that appears in the Sun is even more florid: “‘I thirst, I thirst—I feel the burning drought of hell in my breast and I know it is ready for me.’”9 The Weekly Dispatch of 11 December reported that on the morning of the execution, when the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was offered to them, Bishop said derisively that he had no understanding of it, but Thomas Williams is reported as clamoring to be taught to understand it and asking Whitworth Russell to explain the meaning of the ritual to him. And Cotton would write in his journal that Thomas Williams cried out to him that he hoped God “would hear his prayers and forgive him, notwithstanding he had been one of the greatest sinners in his time.”10

  There are clearly other hands writing their way into these final scenes. Bishop was an intelligent man; Williams’s attainments are harder to discern. Both were literate, at least. Bishop’s straightforward, fluent account and the fragments of his speech that have survived indicate some level of education. He may well have brought up the subject of the thief on the cross, and Williams may have mentioned the fires of hell; but the phrasing here is altogether too purple. Similarly, the letter addressed to Dr. Whitworth Russell by Thomas Williams on his final night sounds like the gist of an honestly felt response onto which has been grafted a sermon: “If you will be kind enough to let my brother prisoners know the awful death which I shall have suffered when you read this, it will, through your expostulations, prevent them from increasing their crimes when they may be liberated; and tell them bad company and drinking and blasphemy is the foundation of all evil. Give my brotherly love to them, and tell them never to deviate from the paths of religion, and have a firm belief in the blessed Saviour. Give my love to John Edwards, John Justin and John Dingle, and receive the prayers of the unfortunate and guilty Thomas Head.”