The Lady and Her Monsters (8 page)

Naples was described as “a civil and well conducted man, slight in person, with a pleasing expression of countenance, and of respectable manners.” He had learned to work briskly in the field and not to argue with Crouch, particularly when either one was intoxicated, which, according to the diary, was often.

There was no pretense that the corpses themselves had led lives, however difficult or distasteful, prior to their deaths. They were, according to Ruth Richardson, who wrote extensively about resurrectionist life, “bought and sold, they were touted, priced, haggled over, negotiated for, discussed in terms of supply and demand, delivered, imported, exported, transported . . . compressed into boxes, packed in sawdust, packed in hay, trussed up in sacks, roped up like hams, sewn in canvas, packed in cases, casks, barrels, crates and hampers, salted, pickled or injected with preservatives. They were carried in carts, in wagons, in burrows, and steamboats; manhandled, damaged in transit, and hidden under loads of vegetables. They were stored in cellars and quays. Human bodies were dismembered and sold in pieces, or measured and sold by the inch.” They were classified according to size, small being “a body under three feet long; those were sold at so much per inch and were further classified as ‘large small,' ‘small' and ‘foetus.' ”

Sometimes the public became aware of a particularly gruesome and horrific case. In 1826, someone was shipping three containers labeled “Bitter Salts” from the port of Liverpool to Leith, on the vessel
Latana.
What happened next was printed on a broadside, which read in part, “The casks remained on the quay all night, and this morning, previous to their being put on board, a horrid stench was experienced by the mates of the
Latana
and other persons . . . this caused some suspicion that the crates did not agree with their super-inscription which was ‘Bitter Salts,' a constable was sent to the quay, and he caused the casks to be opened, where eleven dead bodies were found within, salted and pickled.”

Bodies had become just objects and things. The living had very carefully removed all feelings associated with the dead. Abandoning all scruples, as soon as the dead were dealt with and the business with the living concluded, the men suddenly found themselves with money in their pockets. If they were working within a group, the money itself would not have been very much, and
if
diplomacy prevailed (which it almost never did), the earnings were split equally among all the members. Either way, the earnings were enough to pay for a pint at the local joint, likely the most famous gathering spot of all among resurrection men, the Fortune of War pub, epicenter of the resurrectionist's life.

This place just happened to be located near St. Bartholomew's Hospital and Medical College, and not too far from the Old Bailey courthouse. If one was keen to do so, a line could be drawn between the courthouse, where the criminals were hung; the pub, where the body snatchers hung out; and the hospital, where eventually the corpses were dissected. The men who frequented the pub kept abreast of the latest convicts in the Old Bailey; they knew whose time was coming up. And they were also aware of the doctors working in the hospital across the street and of their particular needs, requirements, and preferences.

The doctors had an uneasy relationship with the resurrection men. They needed their help to procure bodies, but they were appalled by their inhumane actions. Once they agreed to buy a body from a certain gang or resurrection man, they could not back down or change their mind. If the doctor was seen sneaking around searching for a better deal, the resurrection man would seek retaliation, and Ben Crouch and his gang were known to be quite vicious about their tactics. Sometimes they broke into dissecting rooms and destroyed bodies ready to be examined, or, more often, they called the police, ruining the doctors' reputations.

Joshua Brookes was one doctor who refused to follow the rules set up by the resurrection men. To his own detriment, he bought corpses from whoever offered the best deal. Gangs who expected loyalty often called the authorities to Brookes's laboratory, where trouble arose. Once rotting bodies were left outside his house, where two young women walking by early in the day found them and screamed, alerting the neighbors to what had happened.

Strangely enough, few of the doctors bequeathed their bodies to be used for dissections after they died. Several went so far as to purchase coffins that were being sold at enormous prices and were said to prevent the picks and shovels of the resurrectionists from breaking through. One such doctor, on the brink of death, imagined that his assistants would descend on his dead carcass like vultures and wrote a poem begging,

And my 'prentices will surely come

And carve me bone from bone,

And I, who have rifled the dead man's grave,

Shall never rest in my own.

Bury me in lead when I am dead,

My brethren, I entrust.

And see the coffin weigh'd I beg

Lest the plumber should be a chest.

Giovanni Aldini could have gone to the Fortune of War pub, or one like it, and engaged one of the resurrection men. He could have made his specifications known and perhaps one of them, in time, would have come up with the right subject, for a particular sum of money. But Aldini had another plan in mind. He not only wanted to find the perfect man to restore life to, but he also hoped to attract the right people who would back up his concepts, and possibly even pay for his stay in London. That's when he approached the members of the Royal Humane Society.

William Hawes and Thomas Cogan founded the Royal Humane Society in 1774. They were physicians who were concerned when they realized that a great number of people in the city's hospitals were being taken for dead when they were still alive. To make matters worse, some of those still-living patients were being buried alive. This frightened doctors, as they were the ones to declare the actual time of death, and made patients fear going to sleep one moment and waking up the next in a pine box. The society was initially called the Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned, as restoring life to the drowned was their first order of business.

Unlike other doctors, they found it necessary to push the new technique—an unproven one, no less—of resuscitation. They came up with a list of objectives the society would aim for. They agreed that people at large would help them, for why wouldn't people support the art of resuscitation if it benefited them? Among their goals was the one they felt would attract the public the most: they would actually pay those who not only tried to bring someone back to life but actually managed to do so.

Aldini approached the Royal Humane Society with a solution. Unabashedly suave in his demonstrations, he had come to realize, unlike his uncle, that his spectators came to view the experiments as much for the grand shows he provided as for the potential outcome. He also hoped the men of the society would provide him much-needed validation for his contraptions, as well as support, and introductions to the even more refined society of London. While the society members found his manners and his propositions a little unusual and his self-assurance almost bordering on conceit, they nonetheless agreed that his methods were worthy of a try. They also agreed to help with the more tangible issue at hand: finding the right corpse.

W
hen George Foster was arrested, he was “indicted for the willful murder of Jane Foster, his wife, and Louisa Foster, his infant child.” This had occurred on December 5, 1802, in a canal at Westbourne Green, in the city of Westminster. Despite the dire accusations, Foster believed a grave mistake had been made and he would soon be vindicated. Undaunted and ignorant in the ways the laws worked, he believed that the testimonies of his neighbors, coworkers, the people he had lodged with in the past, and the ones he was now living with would set him free.

Jane Hobart, Jane Foster's mother, was the first to take the stand. A bundle of grief, anger, and resentment underneath her raggedy garments, she stared at Foster as she gave detailed accounts of how she had removed her daughter and granddaughter from the poorhouse to care for them. She unleashed her tongue as she began to tell the courts and those in attendance of Foster's desire to place even the smallest of his children, the now-dead infant Louisa, in a workhouse.

The testimonies that followed weren't any more in his favor. The people who testified said they remembered seeing George Foster and his wife and child arguing on the fourth. They had not been on loving terms and melancholy had plagued Jane. Worst of all, it appeared that George Foster had wanted to get out of the marriage.

When Hannah Patience, the keeper of the Mitre Tavern, was sworn in, she spoke of George, Jane, and little Louisa as having been at the tavern for a good while, where she had served them some liquor. Though they had sat drinking for some time, the matter didn't point to the fact that the two might have been drunk and that the liquor might have instigated a domestic dispute while on the road back to their place of sleeping, which in turn might have caused George Foster to commit murder against his wife and daughter.

The official case hinged on the testimony of Sarah Daniels, a girl who had seen the Fosters when she went to buy candles for her employer that afternoon and was the last one to see Jane and Louisa alive. But when Daniels took the stand and was questioned about what she knew and what she had seen, her testimony seemed rehearsed. Though she
had
seen the Fosters walking near the tavern, she had not witnessed the murder.

Next was John Atkins, who had found the corpses. On Monday, December 6, a bitterly cold day, he was walking near the canal when he discovered an infant girl's body under the bow of his boat. He was directed by the authorities to search the nearby waters of the canal even further, and on the third day, he and some other men found the body of a woman entangled in twigs and grass. They dragged it up. Atkins's description of the infant child's being dredged out of a frigid canal in the middle of winter, followed a few days later by her young mother, must have devastated the hearing's attendees, including George Foster.

Foster was arrested soon after the bodies were discovered. He had also signed a statement to which some more of his words were later added. Those read in part: “I left her directly when I came out of the Mitre Tavern, which was about three o'clock . . . in order to go to Barnet, to see two of my children, who are in the work-house there; I went by the bye lanes, and was about an hour and a half walking from the Mitre to Whetstal; when I got there I found it so dark that I would not go on to Barnet, but came home that night; I have not seen my wife or child since; I have not enquired about them, but I meant to have done so tomorrow evening, at Mrs. Hobert's.”

The coroner reported no bruises, blows, cuts, marks, or other injuries of any sort on the bodies. When he was asked what he believed about the crime, if indeed a crime had been committed at all, he shook his head and told the courtroom the deaths had been “accidental.” He had come to the conclusion that the woman had fallen into the river, for “between the rail and the side of the river it is impossible to walk with safety, it is so slippery like soap.”

Perhaps Jane had committed suicide. Mr. Alley, Foster's court-appointed barrister, asked witnesses if she had ever said anything about her desire to die.

Sarah Going shook her head. She had known Jane for some years before, when she had stayed with the Fosters. Sarah Going said no again. She had been so surprised by the Fosters' turn of events, their financial situation and marital troubles, for George Foster had seemed like a very good husband and father.

She must have been the only one to feel that way, for the Second Middlesex Jury before the Lord Chief Baron quickly returned a guilty verdict. George Foster would hang. Worst still, as he had imagined and feared, his body would be handed over to the anatomists.

Giovanni Aldini had finally found his perfect corpse.

I
n 1836, Charles Dickens visited the prison of Newgate. By then it must have occurred to him that an article detailing the prison's interior—the building, the prisoners, their doings, and how they spent their final moments—would entertain his readers. The dismal setting no doubt compelled him to visit, but he was probably also baffled by those who continually chose to attend the executions, because he made it clear from the beginning that he was writing for them. He wondered how it was possible that those moving to and fro about the city and in the vicinity of the prison could go by “without bestowing a hasty glance at its small, gated windows, and a transient thought upon the condition of the unhappy beings immured in its dismal cells.”

Newgate Prison's inner courtyard during the eighteenth century. It is here that most criminals where brought prior to their public executions, including George Foster, who underwent galvanism experiments at the hands of Giovanni Aldini. Charles Dickens, as did many others, passed by the prison on a daily basis, and he was prompted to write his famous essay “A Visit to Newgate.”