John Bishop: leader of the London Burkers, hanged in 1831

John Bishop was convicted at the Old Bailey in December 1831 of murdering a boy of about 14, and was hanged at Newgate on 5 December that year. He was the best-known member of the so-called London Burkers, a gang of resurrection men who sold bodies to anatomy schools. The name recalled the Edinburgh murders committed by Burke and Hare a few years earlier.

Bishop's trade and the gang around him

Bishop was 33 at the time of his trial. He worked with Thomas Williams, who was a relative by marriage and a neighbour, and with James May, a butcher known by the nicknames Jack Stirabout and Black Eyed Jack. Michael Shields, a Covent Garden porter, is also named as part of the group. Bishop later said that he had supplied somewhere between 500 and 1,000 bodies to anatomists over about 12 years. That is his own claim, made after conviction, and it cannot be checked.

The trade existed because medical schools could not obtain enough bodies lawfully. At the time, the main legal source was the gallows, and far fewer people were being hanged than in the previous century. Surgeons and teachers of anatomy needed far more than that, so they bought from men who dug up recent graves. Families guarded new burials, and the public feared and loathed the trade.

1830: the cottages at Nova Scotia Gardens

In July 1830 Bishop rented a cottage at Nova Scotia Gardens, a low-lying patch of ground in Bethnal Green near Shoreditch church. The land had once been a brickfield. After the clay ran out it was filled with rubbish, and the cottages built there were damp and prone to flooding. Bishop and Williams lived in neighbouring properties, and the site later became the centre of the case.

The sale that led to arrests

On 5 November 1831 Bishop and May took the body of a boy to the anatomy school at King's College in the Strand. They had already tried, without success, to sell it at Guy's Hospital. They asked for 12 guineas and were offered nine.

Staff at the school thought the body looked too fresh to have come from a grave. Richard Partridge, the demonstrator of anatomy, examined it, and the professor, Herbert Mayo, sent for the police. The men were arrested and held on remand by a magistrate. Williams was arrested soon afterwards.

On 8 November a coroner's jury returned a verdict of wilful murder by person or persons unknown. The jurors added that they strongly suspected the men in custody.

The search of the cottages

On 19 November 1831 Joseph Sadler Thomas, a superintendent in the Metropolitan Police's Covent Garden division, searched the cottages. He found clothing in a well and in a privy, which led investigators to suspect that more than one person had died there. The police first believed the dead boy was an Italian from Piedmont, which gave the case the name the Italian Boy murder. Bishop and Williams later said he was a drover from Lincolnshire. His identity was disputed, and for that reason he is not named here.

Trial at the Old Bailey

Bishop, Williams and May were tried at the Old Bailey in the first days of December 1831. The judges were Chief Justice Tindal, Mr Justice Littledale and Baron Vaughan. All three defendants were found guilty. According to contemporary accounts the windows of the court were opened so that people outside could hear the Recorder pass sentence of death.

Around the same time, the authorities opened the Nova Scotia Gardens cottages to the public for a fee of five shillings. Visitors are said to have carried away parts of the buildings as souvenirs.

The confessions

On Sunday 4 December, Bishop and Williams attended the prison chapel. They were then put in one cell, where the ordinary of Newgate and the under-sheriffs of London took down written statements. These accounts were made after conviction, and in them Bishop and Williams were describing their own conduct.

• The boy: Bishop said the boy was picked up at a Smithfield public house on 3 November and taken to the cottages on the promise of a bed. He was given rum mixed with laudanum, then lowered into the well, and the body was later bagged for sale.
• Frances Pigburn: The two men also admitted killing a homeless woman, Frances Pigburn, on 9 October. They said they used the same method, and that the body went to St Thomas's before being sold elsewhere for eight guineas.
• Other victims: Accounts of the confessions refer to at least one further victim, a young lad. The details are not settled.

Execution and what followed

Bishop and Williams were hanged at Newgate on 5 December 1831 before a crowd reported at about 30,000. Both bodies were then dissected. Bishop's went to King's College, the same institution that had raised the alarm. Williams's went to an anatomy theatre in Windmill Street.

May was convicted with the others, but he was not hanged. He was transported for life to Van Diemen's Land.

Why the case mattered

The murders showed that the market for bodies could reward killing as well as grave-robbing. Public alarm over the case, following the Burke and Hare scandal, added to pressure for reform. Parliament passed the Anatomy Act in 1832, which created a lawful route for medical schools to obtain bodies, and the old trade in stolen corpses declined. Bishop's name remains linked to this case and to the change in the law that followed it.