The Italian Boy

by Sarah Wise

  A young woman named Elizabeth Warner jumped into the New River near City Road on the morning of Wednesday, 7 October 1829. Two men passing by dived in and rescued her, and when, later, she was able to speak, she explained that she had come to London from Chigwell in Essex to find a job and had not eaten for three days or slept in a bed for a fortnight. She said that she had been denied parish relief because she did not belong to any London parish, that the Dicity would not relieve her because she had not resorted to begging; that the Blackfriars Road Magdalen Hospital for repentant prostitutes would not take her in because she had never sold her body. Warner was brought to the hospital ward of the Islington workhouse to recover, with the aim of her being “removed” to Chigwell at Islington’s expense.21

  Diving into a river to save a stranger was a brave act and, like the harrying of constables arresting beggars, flew in the face of the increasingly gloomy pronouncements about city life and the urban dweller’s excessive subjectivity and self-absorption. To John Wade, there was something sinister in the idea that “in the midst of a million people the Londoner can create for himself a social solitude.” For Thomas De Quincey, “No loneliness can be like that which weighs upon the heart in the centre of faces never-ending,… eyes innumerable,… and hurrying figures of men and women weaving to and fro”; and as James Grant, the editor of the Morning Advertiser, saw it, “Everyone runs, as though their house were on fire, even when they have no purpose. Nobody wants to know each other’s business.”22 But the poor did not appear either to dash about or to drift along withdrawn and uncommunicative—their intervention to help one another was noted with incredulity by some observers. One fact that disgusted many was that it was often those in poverty themselves who gave to beggars. J. T. Smith described a number of poor people pursuing a staggering drunk along High Holborn in order to hand coins to him because he had a piece of paper that read “Out of Employment” stuck to his hat; Smith found this deplorable and believed the message on the hat to be untrue.23

  Such generosity may be evidence that the disparate groups that made up lower-class London felt something that could perhaps be described as emergent solidarity. “Hit him hard, he has no friends” was a saying among the London poor in the 1820s, a sardonic comment on the perceived lack of social justice for the powerless and impoverished.24 While London was one of the most heavily unionized areas of the country, with most trades having at least some sort of representative body, most Londoners were never members of unions—whether trades bodies or organizations pressing for political reform. But class consciousness was on the rise even outside politicized groups. Friendly societies and cooperatives were developing in the capital as early as 1820, and, in more settled areas, fragments of community appeared to be forming. If society had been torn apart by economic change, it was also in the process of putting itself back together again. Even Viscount Melbourne declared himself “well aware of the obstinate fidelity with which the lower classes cling to one another.”25

  And the events of November 1831 were encouraging diverse types of Londoner to look at one another anew, to take note of the fates of those around them. Where once missing children had been consigned to privately printed handbills and the columns of the Police Gazette, not even making its front page but placed amid notices of absconding prisoners, deserting soldiers, absent fathers, and strayed livestock, the letters pages of national newspapers now throbbed with the concern of their gentleman readers. Thus in the Times of 29 November:

  Sir, I have forwarded to you two cases of the loss of children, which I trust you will give publicity to, as the parents are too poor to pay for printing; and as it may be the means of discovery, at least in the recent case. In the month of March last, Mrs Hughes, a widow, of No 5, Paradise Place, Frog Lane, Islington, went out one morning to wash, leaving, as was her custom, her little boy at home; and on her return in the evening he was missing, and she has never heard of him since. He was seven years old; had on a blue jacket, black trousers, blue waistcoat, old brown pinafore, cloth cap and hob-nailed boots.

  The other case was a boy about nine years of age, the son of a poor woman at Poplar. On the 15th of October last, he was at play with his little brother in the street, and told him that a man had promised him such lots of sugar—a great many basins full—and that he would bring him some when he came back. He then left his brother and has never returned. He had on a corduroy dress that had been washed, a good linen shirt, and half-boots.

  I should be glad to render any assistance in discovering what has become of these poor children, and will satisfy any inquiries as far as lies in my power.

  I am, yours, obediently, W.H.

  And from the Weekly Dispatch: “Among the supposed victims to the ‘interests of science’ who have disappeared lately is a youth named Smith, about seventeen years of age, the son of respectable but unfortunate people in Grove Place, Camden Town. He was about 5ft 3 in, of florid complexion, with full, dark eyes, and rather stout. He left his father’s house on business last Tuesday evening, dressed in a blue coat and dark trousers, and has not been seen or heard of since.”26

  After the arrest of Bishop, Williams, May, and Shields, the Morning Advertiser gave regular bulletins of missing children: Caroline Brand, eight, of Wolverley Street, Hackney Road, sent out by her parents to sell bundles of firewood one evening and not seen again, just as her thirteen-year-old brother had disappeared, five months before; and Henry Borroff, a five-year-old, of Barton Court, Hoxton Old Town—gone.

  SEVEN

  Neighbors

  William Woodcock was awoken in his bed at 2 Nova Scotia Gardens at around one or two in the morning of Friday, 4 November, by a loud noise from next door. As was his habit, he had gone to bed at half past nine in the evening. He slept downstairs at the front of the house in a room that was next to the Bishops’ parlor. The sounds he heard were a “scuffling, or struggling,” as he described it, like the sound of men’s feet. The noises stopped suddenly, and he heard two sets of footsteps running from Bishop’s house and the slamming of the gate. Then Woodcock heard the slow, heavy tread of one person in the parlor. “Everything was quite still at the time and I could have heard a mouse stir. Had I known that any thing wrong was going on, I would have put my ear closer to the wall and might have heard every thing that passed.” After around a minute, the other two pairs of footsteps returned, and there was the sound of voices, though words were impossible to make out. Then all was quiet, and Woodcock fell back to sleep.

  This was Woodcock’s evidence to George Rowland Minshull on Friday, 25 November, the final day of the magistrates’ hearings. Outside, in Bow Street, several hundred people had gathered and remained put all day, in spite of the heavy rain that fell for hours. Fifty persons “of rank” had written to Minshull to request a seat alongside the magistrate.

  Minshull was keen to establish how many men Woodcock had heard during the disturbance.

  “I can speak to the voices of two of the men, but I cannot speak as to the third,” said Woodcock. Minshull pressed him on whether he could recognize the voices. Would he be able to confirm that they belonged to Bishop, Williams, and May?

  Woodcock replied that he had never heard the voice of Bishop—his neighbor of three weeks—or of May, though he believed that one of the voices had been Williams’s.

  Williams called out from the dock that what Woodcock had heard was a row between him and John Bishop. Bishop, said Williams, had smashed some of Williams’s belongings and was about to start on Rhoda’s. Williams claimed that he had grabbed his wife’s looking glass, bonnet, and shawl and left the house at about two in the morning to fetch an officer of the New Police. The constable, however, had refused to come beyond the garden gate and had walked away.

  “I distinctly contradict that,” said Woodcock; that particular row, he said, had happened on the Sunday before.

  No, Williams retorted; the argument had happened on the Thursday … or perhaps the Friday.… “The women can say which night it was
.”

  At this point, Bishop, who was sitting alongside him, whispered something urgently in Williams’s ear, and Williams fell silent.

  The magistrates were attempting to place May in the Bishop family home. Woodcock’s testimony that there had been three sets of feet and that there may have been three voices was an effort to make the cottage-sharing duo of Bishop and Williams a well-established trio, with May.

  “To the best of your belief, were there three men?” Minshull asked Woodcock.

  “There must have been three,” said Woodcock.

  Woodcock had moved into No. 2 with his wife and son on Monday, 17 October. Despite living next door to Bishop and Williams for three weeks, Woodcock claimed to have seen only Williams, Sarah, and Rhoda at No. 3; the first time he had laid eyes on Bishop had been at the Bow Street magistrates office. Woodcock’s unfamiliarity with the man next door may well be explained by the very different rhythms they followed: Woodcock left at six in the morning to go to his job in a local brass foundry; Bishop, by necessity, worked at night. Alternatively, Woodcock may have heard local talk that made him wish to shun the Bishop ménage altogether. On Sunday, 6 November, Rhoda had asked Woodcock if she could borrow a shilling; his response is not in the records.

  Other neighbors had equally fragmentary information to offer. Robert Mortimer, an elderly tailor who lived in Nova Scotia Gardens, testified that, to the best of his belief, Williams lived at No. 3 with the Bishops. Toward the end of September, Mortimer had made Williams’s wedding coat for him. He had gone to No. 3 on a number of occasions to collect the money Williams owed him for his work, without success. That’s all he knew.

  Sarah Trueby told the magistrates that she had let No. 3 to Sarah Bishop in July 1830, and No. 2 to Thomas Williams in July 1831, and he had lived there for about two months. Trueby said she had often seen Williams in Bishop’s house since he had left No. 2. Of Rhoda, all she could say was, “I have seen her without any bonnet on.”

  George Gissing, son of the Birdcage’s publican, knew both Bishop and Williams and recognized them on the night of the fourth, but said he had never seen Rhoda.

  Ann Cannell, the local girl who had also seen the men that night, said she had not recognized Bishop or Williams.

  “There is no such thing as neighbors,” wrote James Grant about London in the Morning Advertiser. “You may live for half a century in one house without knowing the name of the person who lives next door.” And John Wade concurred: “There is no such thing as a vicinage, no curiosity about neighbours. It is from this circumstance London affords so many facilities for the concealment of criminality.”1

  Minshull had asked Superintendent Thomas whether it was true, as he had heard, that Bishop’s house lay “in a very lonely situation,” the sort of place where evil deeds could be committed unseen. Thomas had had to reply that in fact the Gardens was “a colony of cottages,” divided from one another by low palings and that one had only to step over these to have access to at least thirty other dwellings. Also, Nos. 2 and 3 were at the very entrance to the Gardens, just off Crabtree Row and within sight of the Birdcage pub.

  How unnoticed could someone live in London? How little did one know about one’s neighbors? These questions intrigued those investigating Nova Scotia Gardens.

  * * *

  Superintendent Thomas had written up a statement for Margaret King of Crabtree Row to sign, confirming what she had already told the magistrates about seeing the Italian boy in Nova Scotia Gardens. The arrival of King’s baby was imminent, and it was unlikely that she would be able to attend an Old Bailey trial should the case make it into the final session of 1831. But when she stood before Minshull again on 25 November, King said she was unable to swear to the detail of the clothing the Italian boy had been wearing when she saw him on Thursday, 3 November. She had been aware only of a “Quaker-fashion” dark blue coat or jacket, with a straight collar; it had seemed unremarkable. “The boy’s dress appeared to be shabby, such as other boys wear who go about the streets,” she said. It was odd in itself that she could tell the cut of the coat, when she had said that the boy had been standing with his back to her. She had made no mention of his wearing anything on his head. All the clothing that had been dug up at No. 3 was now placed in front of her, and Minshull asked King whether the poorer quality “charity-school” coat was the one she had seen on the boy. “The coat is, to all appearances, exactly like the one which the boy had on,” she said, “but there is no mark about it to enable me to swear positively that it is the same coat.”

  “You are not being called upon to swear positively to it, but only to the best of your knowledge and belief,” Minshull told her.

  She replied, “All I can say is, the coat is exactly like, as far as regards colour, size, and shape, and it has every appearance of the coat which the boy had on when I saw him on Thursday. And so is the cap.”

  King’s nine-year-old son, John, was more forthcoming. He told the court that he had seen the Italian boy too, from the Kings’ first-floor window, and when he asked his mother if he could go and see what the boy had in his cage or box, his mother told him no. Minshull asked the boy to describe all he could about the Italian boy, and John recalled that the boy had been standing with his back to Nova Scotia Gardens and facing Birdcage Walk, the northern continuation of Crabtree Row; he had his right foot turned out, his arms rested on his cage, and he was wearing a brown furry cap with a visor lined in green fabric. Thomas then brought the cap he had found in Bishop’s home over to John King, who said, “It looks exactly like the cap the Italian boy had on.” (John Bishop had smiled oddly in court as Thomas revealed that the cap had been found in his parlor.) The King family had seen all the items of clothing before, since Thomas had taken them straight to their home after exhuming them. Despite this, much play was made in court of the fact that John had been kept out of the courtroom as his mother gave her evidence on the clothing.

  Minshull asked John King if he had ever seen the boy before, and the child said: “I think I have seen him about before. He used to carry a doll with two heads in a glass case. I saw him about a month ago. He looked like the same boy. I have not seen him since the Thursday I saw him in the Gardens. He was then standing still, to see if anybody would come out and see what he had to show. I did not see him go away.” When asked how far the boy had been standing from Bishop’s house, John replied, “It would not take me more than half a minute to get there.”

  Inside the Bow Street police office/magistrates court

  His eleven-year-old sister, Martha, said she was not sure if it was a Wednesday or a Thursday on which she saw the Italian boy at Nova Scotia Gardens. She did not remember any of his clothing except for the brown cap and the string around his neck from which his box or cage was hung. She could not see the color of the cap’s visor lining since the boy had his back to her. But when Thomas handed her the cap, she said it was like the one she had seen.

  It must be supposed, since there is no evidence to the contrary, that Margaret, John, and Martha King were describing the same incident, that they were all looking at the boy from either the first floor (John) or the ground floor (Margaret and Martha) of their house, which stood on the south side of Crabtree Row facing Nova Scotia Gardens. Both Mrs. King and her daughter saw the boy with his back turned, but John claimed to have seen the boy full on, from above—even noting the color of the visor. And now all three were placing themselves within their home, though in her earlier evidence, Margaret King had stated that she and the children had been out walking when they had seen the Italian boy.

  * * *

  Superintendent Thomas would not relinquish his grip on the two elder Bishop children. He believed they would eventually reveal damning facts about the household since, Thomas stated, and reporters duly reported, Williams had been living with them in the cottage for eighteen months. But here, the superintendent had become confused: Williams had moved into No. 2 in July 1831, not July 1830, and had lived with the Bishops for jus
t a few weeks. It was the Bishops who had moved into No. 3 in July 1830.

  The Bishop children had been brought from the Bethnal Green workhouse to be lodged at the Covent Garden watch house in the hope that closer acquaintance with the police would encourage them to speak more openly. It had already been established that Bishop’s youngest son had told another little boy who lived nearby that he had “some nice little white mice at home” but that his father had used the cage as firewood.

  * * *

  A change had come over the prisoners during the week of hearings, and, as they stood at the bar on this, their final day at Bow Street, gone were the sneering and jeering, the sarcastic comments about foolish questions and flimsy, ill-remembered evidence. On the preceding Monday, Williams had even loudly sung several songs in the prison van, handcuffed and leg-ironed as he was; he had complained to Bishop that he should not look so “down upon his luck.” Now, though, Williams was extremely pale and fidgeted constantly, his mouth and nose twitching in an odd manner. Bishop looked crestfallen, his eyes were sunken, and he seemed as though he were in a trance; his weight had dropped dramatically. When Minshull told him that he could ask any questions he liked of the witnesses, Bishop bowed to the magistrate and said quietly, “Thank you, sir, we are aware of that.” The Sunday Times even attempted a pun at Bishop’s expense, saying that the body snatcher was now looking “cut up.” The Reverend Dr. Theodore Williams, vicar of Hendon, magistrate, and prison visitor, had seen Bishop in jail and asked the resurrectionist if there was anything he wished to discuss with him; Bishop had burst into tears and said no, not yet. Michael Shields looked skeletal and appeared to be in a stupor, standing rigidly at the bar and barely moving for the entire three-and-a-half-hour hearing.