Dr James Fernandez Clarke (1812-1875) was just nineteen when he was present at the post-mortem of the Italian Boy, in November 1831. The experience unnerved him, as he wrote in his autobiography; he also went on to recall the dying out of the resurrection trade with the passing of the Anatomy Act, shortly after the Bishop and Williams case:

“Nothing could have been more unsatisfactory and disgraceful to us as a civilised nation,” wrote Clarke. “The outrages against decency, the misdemeanours, which the law was compelled to wink at, continued long after the necessity for a change had been demonstrated. The low ruffians who acted as ‘resurrectionists’ were, to a certain extent, necessary evils, but they were the lowest of the low, and would stop at nothing to obtain their ends. He who recollects the passing of the Anatomy Act will remember how, for three or four years after, he was frequently in the evening waited upon by an ill-looking rascal, who solicited assistance. ‘I was one of them, sir,’ he would say, ‘whose lost their work by the Anatomy Act.’

“One could scarcely refuse such an appeal, seeing how much we were indebted to the applicant. This kind of application died out in time, and it is now probable that not a single ‘resurrectionist’ is in existence. But it is awful to contemplate the amount of crime of the worst kind which must have been committed. Wretches who held human life as a mere marketable commodity must, to have lived, committed many murders.

“Even now, the Anatomy Act is imperfect. The inspector should have more power conferred upon him, so that the supply of bodies, under proper regulations, should be equal to the demand. No one could have carried out his duties with more energy and prudence than the present inspector; but he is hampered in his efforts, and thwarted in his endeavours to make the supply sufficient. Of late, however, I am glad to say there have been fewer complaints of a deficient supply than in former years.”

Autobiographical Recollections of the Medical Profession by JF Clarke (1874), pp103-4.