by Sarah Wise
Toward the end of Bishop’s statement, lawyer language is clearly detectable; Williams’s brief statement bore the mark of a legal hand to a far greater extent: “I am a bricklayer by trade, and latterly worked at the glass-blowing business. I never was engaged in any instance as a procurer of dead bodies or Subjects. Into the present melancholy business I was invited by Bishop. I know nothing whatever about the manner in which he became possessed of the dead body. Bishop asked me to join him on the Friday. I made no inquiry about the nature of the business. I shall, therefore, leave my case entirely to the intelligence and discrimination of the jury and the learned and merciful judge, but I trust I may be allowed once more to state that I am entirely innocent of any offence against the laws of my country.”
May’s statement said that he had had a “moderate” education and
first became engaged in the traffic of anatomical Subjects six years since, and from that period up to the time of my apprehension have continued so, with occasionally looking after horses. I accidentally met Bishop at the Fortune of War, a house that persons of our calling generally frequent and are known there as such. Bishop wanted to speak to me, called me outside the door, and asked me where the best price could be procured for Things. I told him where I had sold two for ten guineas each, at Mr Davis’s, and I had no doubt I could get rid of that Thing for him at the same price. He said if I did, I should keep all I got above nine guineas to myself. There was no questions asked as to the manner in which the body had been procured, and I knew nothing about it. As to what has been said in the public papers, or the prejudice that exists against me, and the other prisoners, it is of no moment. I here declare that during all the years that I have been in this business, I never came into possession of a living person, nor used any means for converting them into Subjects for the purposes of dissection. I admit that I have traded largely in dead bodies but I solemnly declare that I never took undue advantage of any person alive, whether man, woman, or child, however poor or unprotected. I have not been accustomed to make application for bodies at the different workhouses and I now solemnly declare that I know nothing at all of the circumstances connected with the procuring of the body, which is suspected to be that of the one named in the indictment, nor did I ever hear, nor understand, how Bishop became possessed thereof. I shall, therefore, leave my fate entirely to the intelligence and discernment of the jury and the learned judge.
May’s cavalry had arrived: Rosina Carpenter was the woman with whom May said he had spent the night of Thursday, 3 November—the suspected, though not named, murder night, if George Beaman’s time-of-death estimate and William Woodcock’s disturbed sleep were accepted. Rosina said: “I have known May fourteen or fifteen years but have not seen him for four or five years till within the last four months. On Thursday 3rd November he came to my house in Nag’s Head Court, Golden Lane, between four and five o’clock in the evening. I am sure it was Thursday. He stopped with me till between eleven and twelve o’clock the next morning, which was Friday. I am sure he never left me.” But as a single woman seeing a married man on a casual, adulterous basis, Rosina’s word was not considered enough. “Nobody is present in court who saw him at my residence, although there were several persons at my house drinking with us at the time May was there. I cannot particularly name the persons who drank with us. He had passed several nights with me before this. I didn’t know he was married.”
Next, Mary Ann Hall said: “I am single and live at Number 4 Dorset Street, New Kent Road. On Sunday morning, 30th October, May left me and said he was going into the country. I saw no more of him till the Wednesday night following, when I met him at the corner of William Street and we went home and May went to bed. I sat up till three o’clock in the morning to air his jacket, which was very wet indeed, and also his under jacket. He got up on Thursday morning, put on a clean shirt, clean waistcoat and breeches and went away. I saw no more of him till Friday night when I met him by the Alfred’s Head, facing Elephant and Castle, at half-past eleven o’clock. He went home with me, got up about eight o’clock and went out. I asked if he could give me a little money. He said he should be back by the time I wanted any. My landlady kept a jackdaw. She is Mrs Carroll—she is not here. I and May live upstairs. We do not live together exactly, but I think he is more with me than with anybody else. He did not come home at all on Thursday night—he left me at half-past seven o’clock on Thursday morning, and I saw no more of him till half-past eleven on Friday.”11
Charlotte Berry, who had the room along the landing at 4 Dorset Street, and Jane Lewis, another lodger, told the jackdaw story, helping to explain the bloodied breeches, though the prosecution had given up on that item long before. Charlotte and Jane both admitted that they were “in the habit of seeing gentlemen,” while Mary Ann Hall, when asked by Adolphus how she made a living, had offered the fact that she had been in custody twice at Bow Street on charges of prostitution and for the past two years had made her living walking the streets. Prostitutes defending a body snatcher: it was not likely to look good to the jury.
It was Bishop’s turn: he had lined up Sarah Trueby, Mary Dodswell, and anatomist Edward Tuson. They were to prove catastrophic choices. Tuson got out of the witness box very quickly, saying of the prisoners, “I know them by seeing them. I believe I have seen Bishop once or twice, but I do not know what I am to prove.” He was asked no questions, and the Times report chivalrously omitted even to mention that he had appeared.
Sarah Trueby was recalled, and Bishop, abandoning Curwood and Barry and interviewing his witnesses himself, asked his landlady to recall the time she had seen white mice at No. 3, in an effort to undermine six-year-old Edward Ward’s testimony. Trueby said: “I never saw any white mice in the possession of you or your family.”
“Do you not recollect any mice running out of my garden and into yours?”
“No, Mr Bishop. Never.”
“Not about six months ago? Don’t you recollect your cat having killed some in my garden?”
“Never.”
Mary Dodswell was supposed to explain away the furry cap. It’s possible that as a secondhand clothes dealer, Dodswell received and sold the garments that clothed the bodies stolen or obtained fraudulently from workhouses by snatchers; perhaps Bishop had threatened to expose her trade, and perhaps Superintendent Thomas had then told her not to worry about any threats from Bishop. “I am the wife of George Henry Dodswell, we live at 56 Hoxton Old Town and sell second-hand clothes—my husband is employed as a pastry cook. I know Bishop’s wife perfectly well. I sold her a cap about two years ago—it was a cloth cap with a leather peak at the front. I am perfectly sure it was cloth—the front was attached to the cap when I sold it. It had a black front but I am not sure how it was lined.”
“My wife bought two caps of you.”
“She only bought one. I am quite confident.”
“Mrs Dodswell, recollect, you sold two caps to my wife—one for each of my boys. My wife gave you three pence for the peak, which you sold separately.”
“I never sold but one cap to her. I never sold a peak.”
She told the court, “I never saw Bishop or any of the family but his wife,” though she added, “His daughter [Rhoda] lived servant with me twelve months ago.”
It was half past five in the afternoon, and Lord Chief Justice Tindal began his summing up. He reminded the jury to base their decision only on what they had heard that day, to disregard anything they might have read or heard about the prisoners. They had first to consider whether the child had died of natural causes or not and, if not, whether each of the three prisoners was involved in the murder and to what degree they were implicated. With regard to the first point, his lordship said that he felt the jury would have little trouble “after the explicit evidence of the medical gentlemen who had been that day examined and whose conduct it was but justice to say was an honourable rebuke to any calumnious imputations on the medical profession to which the present case may have given birth.�
�� (The duke of Sussex here whispered into his lordship’s ear.) He said that in order to convict the men of murder, the jury must be satisfied that all three were present aiding, assisting, and abetting the actual commission of the crime. If a man was not actually on the spot of the killing but nearby, ready to lend his assistance, or was watching a door to prevent the detection of the parties within the house, the law considered him as much a principal offender as if his hand actually committed the deed.
Justice Tindal reminded the jury that witnesses had placed the Italian boy close to Bishop’s home at noon on Thursday, 3 November, the day on which the murder was most likely to have taken place. It was late that night that a scuffle was heard, and Williams’s voice was discerned. But it was by no means certain that May was present at that time, and it was for the jury to decide whether he was a principal or an accessory. If they had any reasonable doubts, they must acquit May. There was no convincing evidence that May had access to, or was connected with, the other two prisoners previous to the death of the deceased. But he asked the jury to bear in mind the “loose and obscure” conversation overheard in the Fortune of War by Thomas Wigley, which could be taken to indicate that Bishop and May were a well-established team, with Williams the novice to be welcomed into the trade; and then there was Bishop’s comment to May—“It was the blood that sold us”—overheard by PC Kirkman. And May had claimed the body as his property, both at Guy’s Hospital and to Mills the dentist. Would they then feel justified in considering May a principal? The jury might perhaps decide that only Bishop and Williams had committed the deed—or perhaps Bishop alone. Or they might decide that all three were equally guilty or that all three were guilty but not to an equal degree. Simply standing by and offering no help to the boy made a prisoner guilty of murder. The jury must accept the fact that there were no eyewitness accounts of the killing, that they would be relying on circumstantial evidence. He then went over the day’s evidence with what the Times called “the most painstaking minuteness.” Alas, no full transcript of the summing up has come down, so we cannot know how Tindal chose to interpret the witnesses’ statements. But his speech must have been painstaking indeed, because it did not end until eight o’clock, at which time the jury went out and the prisoners were removed from the dock.
Half an hour later, the jury came back. The talk around the courtroom had been that Bishop and Williams were likely to be convicted but that May was probably in the clear. The reporter whose account appears in the Times (and was syndicated in various other newspapers and broadsheets) takes up the tale:
The most deathlike silence now prevailed throughout the court, interrupted only by a slight buzz on the reintroduction of the prisoners. Every eye was now fixed upon them; but though their appearance and manner had undergone a considerable change from what they exhibited on being first placed at the bar and during the greater part of the trial, they did not seem conscious of the additional interest which their presence at this moment excited. They scarcely raised their eyes as they entered, beyond a glance or two at the jury box.
Bishop advanced to the bar with a heavy step, and with rather a slight bend of the body, his arms hung closely down, and it seemed a kind of relief to him, when he took his place, to rest his hand on the board before him. His appearance was that of a man labouring for some time under the most intense mental agony, which had brought on a kind of lethargic stupor. His eye was sunk and glassy; his nose drawn and pinched; the jaw fallen, and, of course, the mouth open; but occasionally the mouth closed, the lips became compressed, and the shoulders and chest raised, as if he was struggling to repress some violent emotion. After a few efforts of this kind, he became apparently calm, and frequently glanced his eye towards the bench and jury box; but this was done without once raising his head. His face had that pallid, blueish appearance which so often accompanies and betokens great mental suffering.
Williams came forward with a short, quick step, and his whole manner was, we should say, the reverse of that of his companion in guilt. His face had undergone very little change, but in his eye and manner there was a feverish anxiety we did not observe during the trial. When he came and laid his hand on the bar, the rapid movement of his fingers on the board shewed the perturbed state of his feelings. Once or twice he gave a glance round the bench and bar, but after that, he seldom took his eye from the jury box.
May came forward with a more firm step than either of his fellow prisoners, but his look was that of a man who thought that all chance of life was lost. He seemed desponding, but there appeared that in his despondency which gave an air of—we could not call it daring, or even confidence—we should rather say, a physical power of endurance, which imparted to his whole manner a more firm bearing than that of the other prisoners. He was very pale, but his eye had not relaxed from that firmness which was observable in his glance throughout the whole of the trial.
Ordinary physiognomists, who, without having seen the prisoners, had read the accounts of their examinations at the police office, of their habits and mode of living, and of the horrible atrocities with which there is now no doubt they are familiar, would have been greatly disappointed in the appearance of all of them as they stood at the bar yesterday.… There was something of heaviness in the aspect of Bishop, but altogether his countenance was mild. Williams had that kind of aspect with which men associate the idea of sharpness and cunning, and something of mischief, but nothing of the villain. May, who was the best looking of the three, had a countenance which most persons would consider open and manly. There was an air of firmness and determination about him, but neither in him nor his companions was there the slightest physiognomical trait of a murderer, according to the common notions on the subject. They were all those kinds of common vulgar men in appearance of which one sees hundreds every day, without being struck with any indication in them of good or evil disposition.*
There was silence. The duke of Sussex raised his telescope to observe the accused. The jury was asked if they had reached their verdict on each man, and the foreman said yes. John Bishop, guilty of murder. Thomas Williams, alias Head, guilty of murder. James May, guilty of murder. In court, more silence; but as soon as the vast crowd outside heard the verdicts, a tremendous roar of cheering and applause began, so loud that court officials had to shut every window so that the sentence could be heard. The judge first praised the jury and recalled that he had often had occasion to note of Old Bailey juries that nothing but the most satisfactory evidence and a conviction of the solemn obligation they owed to their Maker and to their country could induce them to pronounce a verdict that was to condemn their fellow man to a disgraceful death. He heartily agreed with their verdict, which was supported by the most conclusive evidence. “By false evidence, my Lord,” said John Bishop. The judge now turned to the dock and said he would not take up any more moments than were necessary of the short time they had left before appearing before their Creator. He hoped that in the month since their arrest they had taken time to reflect on “the horrible agony which they had inflicted on the feelings of so many of their fellow men.” He expected they would spend every instant remaining to them in fervent prayers to the Almighty for pardon through the merits of their Redeemer. They would find plenty of help in this regard at Newgate, he said. He concluded by saying that each of them would be hanged on Monday morning and their bodies handed over to the anatomists for dissection.
TWELVE
A Newgate Stink
They said nothing, initially; they just stood there, as though they expected something more to happen. After a few moments a court official indicated that it was time for them to leave the dock, and James May, in a firm voice, told the bench, “I am a murdered man, gentlemen—and that man knows it,” and he pointed to Bishop. Bishop made no reply, still appearing to be deeply self-absorbed, but Williams responded, “We are all murdered men.” He had turned a ghastly pale color on hearing the verdict, but soon a scornful smile appeared on his face. He leaned over the edge of the dock and
shook his fist at Andrew Colla, saying, “I hope you and that other Italian will be somewhere else as well as us on Monday morning,” and shouted to the Italian witnesses that within three months they would pay for the lies they had told about him. Then he looked up to the public gallery and, spotting somebody among the huddle, raised his hand and called out, “Goodbye, goodbye.”
They left the dock and were escorted back down the winding stone tunnels that led between the Sessions House and the prison, and up and across the Press Yard to Newgate’s condemned cells. Walking with them was the Reverend Dr. Theodore Williams, vicar of Hendon, magistrate, and prison visitor, who had called on Bishop every day while he was on remand; Bishop had been the recipient—willing or unwilling, it is not known—of the vicar’s visits during previous incarcerations. Now as they walked, Bishop told Dr. Williams that he wanted to confess to him at once; but the vicar said no, wait awhile, and urged him to speak when he was feeling calmer; the reverend would be happy to hear Bishop’s tale first thing the next morning.
