Authors: Sarah Wise
“I also confess that I and Williams were concerned in the murder of a female, whom I believe to have been since discovered to be Fanny Pigburn, on or about the 9th of October last. I and Williams saw her sitting, about eleven or twelve o’clock at night, on the step of a door in Shoreditch, near the church. She had a child, four or five years old, with her, on her lap. I asked why she was sitting there. She said she had no home to go to, for her landlord had turned her out into the street. I told her that she might go home with us, and she walked with us to my house, in Nova Scotia Gardens, carrying her child with her. When we got there, we found the family abed, and we took the woman in and lighted a fire, by which we all sat down together. I went out for beer, and we all partook of beer and rum (I had brought the rum from Smithfield in my pocket); the woman and her child lay down on some dirty linen on the floor, and I and Williams went to bed; about six o’clock next morning I and Williams told her to go away, and to meet us at the London Apprentice, in Old Street Road, at one o’clock; this was before our families were up; she met us again at one o’clock at the London Apprentice, without her child; we gave her some halfpence and beer, and desired her to meet us again at ten o’clock at night at the same place; after this we bought rum and laudanum at different places, and at ten o’clock we met the woman again at the London Apprentice; she had no child with her; we drank three pints of beer between us there, and stayed there about an hour. We should have stayed there longer, but an old man came in, whom the woman said she knew, and she said she did not like him to see her there with anybody; we therefore all went out; it rained hard, and we took shelter under a door-way in the Hackney Road for about half an hour. We then walked to Nova Scotia Gardens, and Williams and I led her into No 2, an empty house, adjoining my house. We had no light. Williams stepped out into the garden with the rum and laudanum, which I had handed to him; he there mixed them together in a half-pint bottle, and came into the house to me and the woman, and gave her the bottle to drink; she drank the whole at two or three draughts; there was a quartern of rum, and about half a phial of laudanum; she sat down on the step between two rooms in the house, and went off to sleep in about ten minutes. She was falling back; I caught her to save her fall, and she lay back on the floor. Then Williams and I went to a public-house, got something to drink, and in about half an hour came back to the woman; we took her cloak off, tied a cord to her feet, carried her to the well in the garden and thrust her into it headlong; she struggled very little afterwards, and the water bubbled a little at the top; we fastened the cord to the palings to prevent her going down beyond our reach, and left her and took a walk to Shoreditch and back in about half an hour; we left the woman in the well for this length of time that the rum and laudanum might run out of the body at the mouth; on our return we took her out of the well, cut her clothes off, put them down the privy of the empty house, carried the body into the wash-house of my own house, where we doubled it up and put it in to a hair-box, which we corded, and left it there.
“We did not go to bed, but went to Shields’ house in Eagle Street, Red Lion Square, and called him up; this was between four and five o’clock in the morning; we then went with Shields to a public-house near the Sessions House, Clerkenwell, and had some gin, and from thence to my house, where we went in and stayed a little while to wait the change of the police. I told Shields he was to carry that trunk to St Thomas’s Hospital. He asked if there was a woman in the house who could walk alongside of him, so that people might not take any notice. Williams called his wife up, and asked her to walk with Shields, and to carry the hat-box, which he gave her to carry. There was nothing in it, but it was tied up as if there were. We then put the box with the body on Shields’ head, and went to the hospital, Shields and Mrs Williams walking on one side the street, and I and Williams on the other. At St Thomas’s Hospital I saw Mr South’s footman, and sent him upstairs to Mr South to ask if he wanted a subject. The footman brought me word that his master wanted one, but could not give an answer till the next day, as he had not time to look at it. During the interview, Shields, Williams, and his wife were waiting at a public-house. I then went alone to Mr Appleton, at Mr Grainger’s, and agreed to sell it to him for eight guineas, and afterwards I fetched it from St Thomas’s Hospital and took it to Mr Appleton, who paid me five pounds then, and the rest on the following Monday. After receiving the five pounds I went to Shields and Williams and his wife at the public-house where I paid Shields ten shillings for his trouble, and we then all went to the Flower Pot in Bishopsgate, where we had something to drink and went home.
“I never saw the woman’s child after the first time before mentioned. She said she had left the child with the person she had taken some of her things to, before her landlord took her goods. The woman murdered did not tell us her name; she said her age was 35, I think, and that her husband, before he died, was a cabinet-maker. She was thin, rather tall, and very much marked with the small-pox.
“I also confess the murder of a boy who told us his name was Cunningham. It was a fortnight after the murder of the woman. I and Williams found him sleeping about eleven or twelve o’clock at night, on Friday 21st October, as I think, under the pig-boards in the pig-market at Smithfield. Williams woke him, and asked him to come along with him (Williams), and the boy walked with Williams and me to my house in Nova Scotia Gardens. We took him into my house, and gave him some warm beer, sweetened with sugar, with rum and laudanum in it. He drank two or three cups full and then fell asleep in a little chair belonging to one of my children. We laid him on the floor, and went out for a little while and got something to drink, and then returned, carried the boy to the well, and threw him into it, in the same way as we had served the other boy and the woman. He died instantly in the well and we left him there a little while, to give time for the mixtures we had given him to run out of the body. We then took the body from the well, took off the clothes in the garden, and buried them there. The body we carried into the wash-house, and put it into the same box, and left it there until the next evening, when we got a porter to carry it with us to St Bartholomew’s Hospital, where I sold it to Mr Smith for eight guineas. This boy was about ten or eleven years old, said his mother lived in Kent Street, and that he had not been home for a twelve-month and better.
“I solemnly declare that these are all the murders in which I have been concerned, or that I know any thing of; that I and Williams were alone concerned in these, and that no other person whatever knew any thing about either of them; and that I do not know whether there are others who practise the same mode of obtaining bodies for sale. I know nothing of any Italian boy, and was never concerned in, or knew of, the murder of such a boy. There have been no white mice about my house for the last six months. My son, about eight months ago, bought two mice, and I made a cage for them. It was flat, with wires at the top. They lived about two months, and were killed, I think, by a cat in the garden, where they got out of the cage. They were frequently seen running in the garden, and used to hide in a hole under the privy. I and my wife and children saw one of them killed by a cat in the garden whilst we were at tea.
“Until the transactions before set forth I never was concerned in obtaining a subject by destruction of the living. I have followed the course of obtaining a livelihood as a body-snatcher for 12 years, and have obtained and sold, I think, from 500 to 1,000 bodies; but I declare, before God, that they were all obtained after death, and that, with the above exceptions, I am ignorant of any murder for that or any other purpose.”
John Bishop
Witness: Robert Ellis, Under-sheriff
Newgate, December 4th, 1831
* * *
“I, Thomas Head,
alias Williams, now under sentence of death in Newgate, do solemnly confess and declare the foregoing statement and confession of John Bishop, which has been made in my presence, and since read over to me distinctly, is altogether true, so far as the same relates to me. I declare that I was never concerned in or privy to any other transaction of the like nature—that I never knew any thing of the murder of any other person whatever—that I was never a body-snatcher or concerned in the sale of any other body than the three murdered by Bishop and myself—that May was a stranger to me, and I had never seen him more than once or twice before Friday, the 4th of November last—and that May was wholly innocent and ignorant of any of those murders in which I was concerned, and for one of which I am about to suffer death.”
Thomas Head
Witness: R Ellis
Newgate, December 4th, 1831.
“The above confessions taken literally,
from the prisoners, in our presence,”
T Wood, R Ellis, Under-sheriffs
FOURTEEN
Day of Dissolution
John Bishop and Thomas Williams wake before dawn on Monday, 5 December. Williams says, “Now for it,” and seems to become more afraid by the minute. He is attempting to pray when Rev. Whitworth Russell enters his cell; Russell watches as Williams mutters the start of various prayers but proves too agitated to finish any and breaks off, appearing to be in despair.
In his cell, Bishop is listless and appears not to notice anything around him. He has slept soundly but woke in the night with a start on seeing someone in the room with him; when asked by his warder if he wanted anything, he replied no and fell back to sleep. At half past five he stands up, scratches his head, and says, “The time is coming very fast.” He is offered and accepts some toast and coffee. He tells his warder, “I deserve what is to come.”
While they have been sleeping, a crowd of between thirty and forty thousand has amassed in Old Bailey and Giltspur Street. The scaffold has been in place outside Newgate’s Debtors Door since half past midnight, and workmen have completed the final adjustments by torchlight. Large wooden barriers are installed at all entrances to the Old Bailey, to prevent a surge when the men are brought out; no one can recall such a desperate, anxious crowd at an execution, and it is believed the people will want to take their own revenge. Their pain and anger seem personal. By five in the morning, the entire Old Bailey is packed. Sill-side seats are being sold for upward of ten guineas; a guinea buys you a spot farther back from the window. “Will you take a window to see the execution, sir?” is chirruped to every well-dressed man in the vicinity. The publican of the King of Denmark watering house—right opposite Debtors Door—has made a small fortune by cramming spectators in. A nearby shop owner has removed his entire frontage to accommodate as many seats as possible. Many people have climbed up lampposts or found their way onto rooftops; every window is crammed with sightseers. It’s a very foggy day, and the scaffold cannot be seen from Ludgate Hill, just two hundred yards to the south.
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At ground level, people are starting to faint, clothes become torn in the jostling; those who pass out are relayed over the heads of the throng to a less crowded spot. The pickpockets are hard at work, scarcely seeming to care if they are seen. Some eager male spectators are attempting to pass themselves off as constables in order to get right up to the gallows, from which hang three ropes. At around seven o’clock the error is noticed, and the rope that would have dispatched James May is removed. The “last dying speech” man has had a good morning, and many in the crowd have purchased one of a number of hastily cobbled together broadsheets purporting to quote “the dying words of Bishop and Williams,” some featuring woodcuts that show May dangling alongside them. Nevertheless, the crowd doesn’t seem very surprised by the removal of the third rope; some cheering is even heard at the news that May is not to hang.
It’s half past seven and time for the prisoners to be formally handed over to the sheriffs and undersheriffs of the City of London for execution. It’s an ancient tradition. The men are escorted downstairs to the press room, where many reporters and around thirty paying visitors (including the two sons of Earl Grey who so enjoyed the trial and John Philips Bean, assistant master at St. Paul’s School, who felt “a very urgent desire to watch the workings of such atrocious minds towards the last”) are waiting to view Bishop and Williams and the ceremony through which they are about to pass.
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The guests are told that they may speak only in whispers.
Bishop enters the room gazing at the ground, though he appears to be in such a stupor he may not even be seeing it. He gives no indication that he realizes where he is or what is happening to him. But halfway across the room, he looks up, sees all the eyes upon him, and groans and gasps. Then he sinks back into his trancelike state, continues to move slowly, almost mechanically, across the room, and, approaching a prison officer, holds out his arms, wrists together, for them to be bound. When this is done, and his collar unfastened and folded back and his black neckerchief removed, he sits down on a bench and gazes again at the ground. His demeanor impresses the visitors, who see it as a sign of firmness and resolve. An undersheriff sits down next to him and asks him softly if there is any further confession he would like to make. “No, sir,” says Bishop. “I have told all.”
Now Williams enters the room, moving with a nervous, jerky walk—he is shaking so badly that he needs to be supported as he crosses the room. As his arms are pinioned, one officer must hold them steady as another ties the cord. His face is flushed, there are tears in his eyes, and he is muttering, “I deserve all this. I deserve all this and more. I deserve what I’m about to suffer.” He looks younger than ever. He is sat down on the bench alongside Bishop, and the undersheriff asks him if he has anything more to say, and Williams says, “Oh no, sir, I have told all—I hope I am now at peace with God—What I have told is the truth.” He is also heard to say, “Remember me to…,” but the final word is not clearly audible because he is crying.