The Italian Boy (55 page)

11
. Advertisement for phrenological casts in
The Phrenological Record
by A. L. Vago (1883).

12
. According to H. Lonsdale’s
Sketch of the Life and Writings of Robert Knox
(1870), quoted in Ruth Richardson’s
Death, Dissection and the Destitute
, p. 96.

13
. Knight,
London
, vol. 1, p. 424; [Harmer?],
Old Bailey Experience
, p. 40.

14
.
Globe and Traveller
, 5 December 1831.

15
.
New Monthly Magazine
, June 1833.

16
.
Figaro in London
ran from November 1831 until December 1834, and its first editor was Henry Mayhew, future compiler of the influential volumes
London Labour and the London Poor
. George Rowland Minshull found himself one of its targets when it reported his bad-tempered decision to jail a vagrant mother who refused to name her child’s father, even though he had deserted her;
Figaro in London
stated that Minshull himself was probably the father. But the newspaper subsequently decided that it liked the magistrate when he released a boy who had been arrested for selling
Figaro
in Leicester Square—Minshull was seen chuckling in court over the newspaper’s cartoons.

17
.
Hansard Parliamentary Debates
, 27 February 1832, p. 836.

18
. Pelham, Perceval, and Hunt were speaking on 17 January 1832 (
Hansard
, pp. 578–83).

19
. Guthrie,
Letter to the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Home Department Containing Remarks on the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Anatomy
(1829).

20
.
Hansard
, 6 February 1832, pp. 1276–78.

21
. As Ruth Richardson points out in her meticulous account of the passage of the Anatomy Act: “At several crucial moments in the parliamentary progress of the [second Anatomy] Bill, when the opposition had argued persuasively, or when general discussion threatened to delay its passage, the Bill’s supporters did not scruple to remind all present of the late ‘enormities.’ The reminder served as a way of curtailing debate by the introduction of a note of urgency, and decoyed parliamentary attention from important issues arising from the Bill” (
Death, Dissection and the Destitute
, p. 198).

Chapter Sixteen: How Many?

1
.
Hansard
, 12 December 1831, pp. 154–55.

2
. The earliest reports to escape Newgate also stated that Bishop and Williams vigorously denied that pitch plasters were used in killing their victims—surely one of the least important aspects of the case, but one that was given prominence in the Sunday papers. Perhaps it was in response to the rash of alleged burking attacks across London, which, victims claimed, had involved pitch plasters being sealed across the mouth and nose for suffocation.

3
. J. C. Reid’s book
Bucks and Bruisers
(1971) and Serjeant Ballantine’s
Some Experiences of a Barrister’s Life
(1882) are the sources for the interesting connection between Cotton and Egan. Cotton was, according to Ballantine, fond of a joke, “well-fed,” rubicund, and a keen book and curiosity collector. He is said to have invited Egan to a number of banquets at Newgate/Old Bailey.

4
. If, as I suspect,
Old Bailey Experience
was written by James Harmer, then it would make sense for Cotton (Harmer’s friend) to be so warmly defended and for an evangelical “interloper” such as Dr. Whitworth Russell to be criticized.

5
. Sources for Theodore Williams’s misdemeanors:
Report of the Evidence, with Bill of Costs, in a Suit Promoted in the Consistory Court by the Reverend Theodore Williams, Vicar of Hendon, against James Hall, a Resident of That Parish, for Brawling at a Vestry Meeting, Held for the Purpose of Making a Church Rate
(1838), a pamphlet in the British Library;
The Victoria History of the Counties of England: A History of the County of Middlesex
, vol. 5 (1976); and
The History and Topography of the Parish of Hendon, Middlesex
by Edward T. Evans (1890). Evans points out that Williams had a library of thousands of volumes at his vicarage in Parson Street and an unusual collection of potted conifers in the garden there. Williams died in 1875, aged ninety-one, and is buried in the graveyard of his church, St. Mary’s, on Greyhound Hill, Hendon.

6
.
Times
, 2 October 1839.

7
.
Sun
, 5 December 1831 reprinted in
Times
, 6 December 1831.

8
.
Globe and Traveller
, 5 December 1831. The authorship of this report becomes clear when we read Theodore Williams’s reply to Bishop’s inquiry about the thief on the cross: “Yes, but he had no knowledge of our blessed Redeemer till that moment, but you have from your earliest days been taught to know Christ and have rejected his precepts. Besides, yours cannot be called a true repentance, it is incomplete. Yours is more the fear of human punishment, in consequence of your offence having been discovered, than the repentance of a true Christian. The first step towards a true repentance is a full and open confession of your crimes. Still, I exhort you to pray with all the sincerity and fervour you are capable of. And as the mercy of God is unbounded, your prayers may obtain favour in his sight.” In this way, not only would Theodore Williams save a soul, he would get the full confession to publish, too.

9
.
Sun
, 12 December 1831.

10
. Extracts from Cotton’s journal relating to the events of 3–5 December 1831 copied into
Report Delivered to the Court of Aldermen by the City Gaols Committee
, p. 163.

11
.
Times
, 24 December 1831.

12
.
Report Delivered to the Court of Aldermen
, p. 163.

13
.
Hansard
, 28 June 1832, p. 1086.

14
.
Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register
, 28 January 1832, pp. 258–59.

15
. Letter dated 5 December 1831, in the Westminster Archives at the Westminster Reference Library, St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, Parish Records Letter Book, H864.

16
.
Globe and Traveller
, 3 December 1831.

17
. Ibid.
,
15 December 1831.

18
. Westminster Archives, St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, Parish Records, Annual Accounts, 1829–54, H872.

19
.
Morning Advertiser
, 22 December 1831.

20
. Public Record Office, Home Office Domestic Letter Book, vol. 67, letter from the Home Office to Joseph Paragalli, 10 January 1832, HO 43/41.

21
. Westminster Archives, Parish Records Letter Book, H865. In addition, “The sum of £2 was contributed by a lady, per Mr Minshull, towards these expenses whilst the proceedings were pending.… As the contribution was anonymous, no opportunity has been offered of thanking the donor” (H872).

Epilogue

1
. Public Record Office, Hulk Returns, HO 8/31.

2
. Appendix A of the
Fourth Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners for England and Wales
(1838), p. 106; evidence of Dr. Arnott.

3
. Hackney Archives at the Hackney Local Studies Library, Admission and Discharge Registers of Shoreditch Workhouse, 1832–36, XP507; this is one of the few east London workhouses from which registers of inmates exist for the 1820s and early 1830s.

4
.
Report of the Select Committee on Allegations Relative to the Conduct of Certain Magistrates in the Holborn Division of Middlesex in Granting Licences for Victual Houses,
1833, p. 15.

5
.
The Catalogue of Dr Kahn’s Celebrated Anatomical Museum
is in the British Library. Kahn, a German showman, moved his museum several times in the middle of the century, and its venues included Regent Street, Oxford Street, and Coventry Street.

6
. George Godwin,
Town Swamps and Social Bridges
(1859), p. 23; Hector Gavin,
Sanitary Ramblings, Being Sketches and Illustrations of Bethnal Green
(1848), pp. 9–10.

7
.
Hackney Express and Shoreditch Observer
, 1 and 8 January 1898.

8
.
Baroness Burdett-Coutts: A Sketch of Her Public Life and Work
by HRH Princess Mary Adelaide, duchess of Teck (1893).

9
. “The Baroness Burdett-Coutts” by Mary Spencer-Warren, part of the
Illustrated Interviews
series in
Strand Magazine
7 (1894): 248.

10
.
Authentic Memoirs of the Lives of Mr and Mrs Coutts, Communicated by a Person of the First Respectability
(1819).

11
. The complete twelve-volume bound set of
The Mysteries of London
is extremely rare. However, in 1996 an abridged, annotated copy, with an introduction containing biographical material on Reynolds and reproducing some of the original wood engravings, was published by Trefor Thomas (in the Keele University Press imprint).

12
. Evidence given in the
Second Report from the Select Committee on Metropolis Improvements
, 1837–38, p. 82.

Bibliography

Papers and Publications

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