This revolting case was reported in the North Wales Chronicle of 20 May 1830, although it was a London court hearing. Resurrection men were the most hated section of the community, and this report helps to explain why.
“A well-known pilferer of graves, named Clarke, was tried upon an indictment, charging him with having stolen the body of a dead child, aged about four years, which had been under the care of a nurse named Mary Hopkins. The facts which came out in evidence are as follows:
“The deceased was the daughter of a woman of the town, residing in Shire Lane [off Fleet Street], and had been kept at the nurse’s lodging, which was in the same neighbourhood. She died on a Friday, and Clarke, whose ears were described as ‘quick to the toll of the passing bell’, paid the nurse a visit the next morning, under pretence of hiring a cellar under the house. He took occasion to notice the poor woman’s [the nurse’s] son; he said it was a pity to see the boy idle, and that he should have immediate employment, and called again with evidences of still stronger interest in favour of the family. ‘By the way,’ said he, ‘I understand you have had a death lately.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said the nurse, ‘a poor little girl is departed.’ ‘Poor little dear,’ cried the snatcher, ‘I should like to look at the little innocent.’
“He was forthwith led into the front parlour, where the body lay in a coffin, and observing that its position was favourable to his intention, he sympathised with the nurse, and said, ‘We must all come to this sooner or later,’ and then he went to get a half-pint of something to comfort them. The nurse disposed of a glass, which presently set her in a profound sleep, and when she awoke the body of the babe was gone. It appeared that the snatcher, after having quitted the house, as if for good, returned, and opening the parlour window, hooked out with a stick the corpse of the child, and went off with it towards a market that is open at all hours, near Bridgewater Square [near the Barbican].
“However, a police officer, who knew his trade, laid hands upon him, telling him that he was wanted. The snatcher then threw down the child and took to his heels, but was apprehended and lodged in the Compter. The nurse proved the identity of the body. Upon her cross-examination by Mr Payne [JP], she stated that the mother had not been to see the deceased for four or five days before the death. The jury returned a verdict of Guilty, but some of them audibly spoke of recommending the prisoner to mercy, but made no appendage to that effect. The Recorder sentenced the prisoner to be imprisoned for the space of six calendar months.”
Six months was the maximum sentence for illegal possession of a corpse – a leniency that infuriated the public, when property crimes were so comparatively harshly punished.
Shire Lane, where the theft of the child’s body took place, was one street west of Bell Yard; the latter is still there (its eastern side intact, at least) but Shire Lane disappeared in the 1860s for the building of the Royal Courts of Justice, which obliterated a huge swathe of run-down Tudor/Stuart housing on the north side of the Strand/Fleet Street.
Bell Yard is course the site of the fictional Mrs Lovett’s Pie Shop – could the Clarke case have contributed something to the grand guignol tale concocted by Thomas Peckett Prest in his String of Pearls (1846-7), which introduced Sweeney Todd? Bodies to be made use of for financial gain?
What’s more, Dickens’s bodysnatcher Jerry Cruncher, in A Tale of Two Cities, had his day job as a messenger for Tellson’s Bank, near to the Temple Bar, at the southern end of Shire Lane. Sitting on his stool at the bank’s entrance way, he would listen out and watch for signs of a funeral; like Clarke, whose ears were “quick to the toll of the passing bell”. Jerry Cruncher’s night-time job of stealing corpses from graveyards is described in the novel as “fishing” – and fishing is the image left by Clarke hooking the child’s body out of the window with a stick and hauling it away.
The following newspaper report reveals the area as awaited its demolition:
“A Desert in the Heart of London”, Sunday Gazette, reprinted in The Times, 12 November, 1866
“The extensive and complicated network of lanes, courts and alleys covering the area bounded east and west by Bell Yard and Clement’s Inn, north by Carey Street, and south by the Strand and Fleet Street, lately containing a population more numerous than that of many parliamentary boroughs, is being fast deserted. A few of the winding thoroughfares are not yet disturbed, but several of old and worse than equivocal notoriety, and in which, a few weeks ago, passage was rendered somewhat difficult by the human swarms whose modes of existence are among the unsolved ‘social mysteries’, are now almost uninhabited, only a house or two remaining, in exceptional cases, where a brief extension of term has been granted.
“Massive padlocks guard every door. The glass on the first and second floors has been smashed in by unforbidden missiles discharged as parting salutes by the more juvenile emigrants, and the grimy, stooping, unwholesome buildings wear an aspect of weird gloom, contrasting strangely with their recent animation, when every doorway and window arrested passing attention with grotesque and sordid samples of human nature.
“The ground taken by the . . . new law courts and offices includes nearly 30 lanes and passages, the names of some of which will be familiar to all who have made acquaintance with the topography of London. Among them is Clement’s Lane [sketched below, bottom pic]. Here still stand some old houses, the very peculiar, perhaps unique, character of whose construction is worthy a visit.. . Then there is Bell Yard, the seat of newsvendors, law booksellers and printers. . . Next comes Upper and Middle Serles Place, with Lower Serles Place, formerly Shire Lane. Ship Yard, mentioned more than once in the chronicles of 17th- and 18th-century roysterings; Crown Court, a dilapidated passage. . . with its noisy and dangerous neighbour, Newcastle Court…”
Historian H Willoughby Lyle wrote in 1950 of the Royal Courts of Justice clearances, and stated that Shire Lane (above right) had been a foot passage only, and in the time of James I had been called Rogues Lane. In 1845 it had had its name changed from Shire Lane to Lower Serles Place. The nearby Ship Yard, home of the Ship Inn, had had a bad reputation and was also home to a pub called The Smashing Lumber – a counterfeiters’ den. Butchers’ Row was also known locally as The Straits of St Clements, and used to be full of slaughterhouses. In 1604-5 the Gunpowder Plot was hatched in the Duck and Drake inn on Butcher’s Row. In Boswell Court (above left), which was reached by stairs, had stood the last of London’s charleys’ (night-watchmen’s) sentry boxes.
Lyle, An Addendum to King’s and Some King’s Men, Lyle’s original book of 1935 about the environs of the first King’s College Hospital.