Category
Italian Boy
The Anatomy Act was passed in 1832, permitting the use for dissection and teaching material of all corpses of paupers who died in the workhouse or a hospital and whose bodies went unclaimed by any relatives or friends. This system… Continue reading →
The killers in my book, John Bishop and Thomas Williams, preyed upon the destitute, and in at least two cases, upon homeless children, of whom there were an estimated 30,000 in London alone. In June 1848, Anthony Ashley Cooper (pictured… Continue reading →
The case of the London Burkers inspired some fantastically arch and acidic journalism in the posh papers of the day. Here is one of the best examples – an anonymous article entitled “The Philosophy of Burking, by a Modern Pythagorean”… Continue reading →
One of the main pitches used by Italian beggar boy Carlo Ferrari (who gives my book its title) was at the southern end of Regent Street. Seventeen years after the Italian Boy case, architect John Nash’s colonnaded walkways in… Continue reading →
These items were found in the vaults of the Science Museum. The triangular tag appears to state that the two pieces of skin are from the body of Thomas Williams, murderer of the Italian Boy. Surgeons and anatomists often kept… Continue reading →
In 1828 a Select Committee was set up to consider juvenile crime. One of the people who came forward to give his opinion was Reverend Robert Black, Honorary Secretary of the National Schools of the City of London. On 19… Continue reading →
This fantastic original broadsheet was a very welcome present from a reader. Barry Trowbridge, from Kent (who, like me, worked as a newspaper sub-editor), wrote to me asking if I would like to relieve him of this item, which had… Continue reading →
This pastor chap itself.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/lent-5-sermon-the-resurrectionist/ blogged about how The Italian Boy had set him thinking about Lazarus, Lent, death, re-birth, incense, biblical undertakers, Nietzsche, Easter, the Kingdom of God. He also embedded in his blog the Pet Shop Boys track The Resurrectionist,… Continue reading →
. . . The Diary of A Resurrectionist, 1811-1812 is a window on to the world of the Regency – a personal record written BY a bodysnatcher, rather than ABOUT one. The diary was presented to the Royal College of… Continue reading →
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… Continue reading →