We were induced to witness the execution of Bishop and Williams, under ordinary circumstances so distressing to contemplate, not solely in our editorial capacity, but from an intense curiosity to see in what manner individuals, burdened with guilt of such peculiar atrocity, would conduct themselves on the eve of appearing in the presence of their Maker; and we felt convinced that none of those human sympathies incident to beholding the dying agonies of a fellow-creature would be excited by viewing the last struggles of those whose lives had been blackened past redemption by the commission of such barbarous and mercenary butchery.
Nor were we mistaken in this estimate of our feelings; for, so far from entertaining any sensation of pity for the criminals, we could scarcely resist the impulse to join in the exulting shout with which they might literally be said to be cheered into eternity. As we returned, however, from the place of execution, reflection succeeded to the previous excitement which we had experienced. We began to analyse the crime of the two malefactors whose exit we had just witnessed; and a careful examination of its characteristic features led us voluntarily to come to the painful conclusion that there might be found individuals, even in the higher spheres of life, who really appear almost, to use the language of Iago, to 'stand accountant for as great a sin.'
The man who commits one act of wilful murder, deservedly suffers the extreme penalty of the law, and no greater punishment is awarded to him who commits a hundred. Yet we well know that the abhorrence of society would be much the greater towards him who had perpetrated the offence the more frequently. And why so? Because, as all crimes, even the vilest, differ in degree, we feel that the man who has but once imbrued his hands in the blood of a fellow-creature, may have been prompted by a sudden impulse of rage or revenge, and may afterwards be touched with the deepest compunction for his crime; but repeated deeds of death prove that the perpetrator of them is actuated by selfish motives, and is wholly inaccessible to remorse.
It is the circumstance of Bishop and Williams having murdered their victims for the sake of lucre, that imparts a feature of peculiar horror to their crime. But it should be remembered, in a moral point of view the turpitude of the deed would not have been diminished had it been committed with a view to the ensuring any other selfish advantage or enjoyment, instead of procuring money, which, after all, they valued only as the means of obtaining selfish gratification. When Sir Robert Walpole said, that every man had his price, he, of course, did not mean that every man could be purchased by a greater or smaller portion of the current coin of the realm; but he well knew that a riband or a harlot might buy many a man to whom disposition or circumstances would render money a matter of indifference. When the Hebrew monarch, in order to carry on without fear of interruption his adulterous intrigue, directed the treacherous murder of one of his bravest and most loyal subjects and defenders, he attained to a sublimity of wickedness to which no mere Burkite can hope to aspire.
If this idea be correct, then, we are justified in assuming, that the taking away the life of any fellow-creature or fellow-creatures, solely for the purpose of obtaining any selfish object, is equally guilty, whether that object be avarice, lust, or ambition; and not only he who actually commits the deed, but he who orders it—instigates it—exults in its completion—or even desires its perpetration, are all, in different degrees, criminal. We know of the existence of an attorney-general, and therefore policy and prudence both forbid us to enter into any personal application of this part of our subject. Certain circumstances are, however, too fresh in the recollection of the public to doubt for a moment as to the parties to whom we allude.
On the afternoon of the day of execution, we saw the body of Bishop at the Royal College, where it was publicly exhibited, and to which hundreds of persons thronged, as if they were hastening to a theatrical exhibition. A longitudinal incision had been made from the thorax downwards, and transversely on the pectoral muscles. A more healthy or muscular subject has not been seen in any of the schools of anatomy for a long period. The ligaments of the atlas indentatus were not broken, and he died of apoplexy, and not from the fracture of the vertebræ of the neck. The body presented a remarkably fine appearance across the chest. The deltoides were splendidly developed, and symmetrically beautiful. The biceps were also fully developed, and the pectorales, major and minor, were particularly displayed. The left side of the face, near the whisker, was cut deeply by the rope. The neck was short, and the eyes glassy, as when he was living. His height was about five feet seven inches; his limbs remarkably well formed, and the body unusually hairy and muscular. There were the marks of two scars on his face, near the chin; and both his legs had been broken some time or other.
A meeting of the professors and lecturers in anatomy took place on the same night, on the subject of the atrocities lately discovered as having been resorted to for the supply of anatomical subjects. It was proposed and adopted by the meeting, after some discussion, that the professors and lecturers of the metropolis should discontinue their classes for the present, until some measure should be devised by Parliament for a supply of subjects under the sanction of law, and without the risk of giving encouragement to mercenary murderers. This resolution was accompanied with the condition that all the other anatomical schools throughout the kingdom should be shut up at the same time.
Mr. Baron Vaughan, one of the judges who tried Bishop and Williams, was present at the dissection of the body of the former murderer at the King's College. He was accompanied by Dr. F. Hawkins, one of the professors to the College. Previous to the body being opened, the professor of medical jurisprudence delivered a lecture on the appearances, external and internal, of death, by strangulation, drowning, and other violent means, to exhibit which the cavities of the head, chest, and abdomen of the murderer, were then carefully examined by the professor of anatomy. The brain presented an unhealthy appearance, a circumstance attributed to the great mental anxiety which Bishop underwent during his repeated examinations, and at the trial. It is intended to preserve the skeleton of Bishop in the King's College.
The disclosure by Bishop and his companions of the manner in which the anatomical schools were supplied, not even stopping short of murder, excited a ferment throughout the country, in which the surgical profession came in for the greater share of the odium. It, however, as is the case with all temporary evils, became the source of general good to the country, inasmuch as it led to the development of many plans for the better providing of subjects for the anatomical schools, amongst which, that of the voluntary grant, by particular individuals of their bodies after death, was not the least remarkable. We are, however, too well acquainted with the prejudices of the age, to expect that a system of that sort can ever become general; it may exist amongst a few noble, generous spirits, who can rise above those narrow-minded prejudices, while, at the same time, they more than share in the humanity of the times in which they live. Nothing can appear to us more laudable than this sacrifice of present personal repugnances for the future benefit of those in whose happiness we cannot participate, and to whose approbation we must necessarily be insensible.
After all we are aware that this must be only a scanty resource for the supply of subjects to our anatomical schools, and we hail the proposal not as the means of rendering a legislative measure unnecessary, but as a partial victory over those prejudices which made legislation itself dangerous or inefficient. When the subject has hitherto at different times been brought before the public, it has with mischievous industry been represented as a question not between the anatomical exhibition of the dead and the benefit of the living, but between the dissection of the poor and the exemption of the rich,—between the honoured interment of the latter, and the disgraceful mangling of the remains of the former. This clamour, after being echoed from one end of the country to the other two years ago, penetrated within the walls of Parliament and affected the majority of the House of Peers. It was then a common exclamation,—if anatomy be necessary to medical science, and if medical science be so useful to mankind, why do not the upper classes of society, why do not the wealthy and the enlightened consent to give their bodies for dissection as well as the poor, and why are the sacrifices for medical knowledge to be confined to those who have enjoyed the least of its benefits?