Mr. Minshull said he had no doubt but such was the fact, and expressed his desire that the public mind should be set at rest with respect to the identity of the body.
Mr. Corder said he would lose no time in drawing up the statement to which he had alluded.
He then retired, accompanied by the witnesses.
In a few days afterwards, Mr. Corder transmitted the following statement to the editor of the Times, but which still leaves the identity of the boy as mystical as before.
'Sir,
'Without travelling through a very long statement which has recently appeared in most of the public journals, purporting to be "the confession of the murderers," and signed "John Bishop," there are two points contained in it which appear to me to require some notice, and upon which the public have some right to be satisfied. The points are, first—"That the boy, supposed to be the Italian boy, was a Lincolnshire boy;" and second—"That the death of the deceased was caused by drowning him in the well, into which Bishop and Williams put him head-foremost, and where he remained about three-quarters of an hour." Upon the first point I beg to trouble you with one or two observations, and in reference to the second, I shall content myself with the written report, which the surgeons, who examined the body, both at and previous to the post mortem examination, have been kind enough, at the request of the prosecutors, to furnish, and which will be open to the opinions of all medical and scientific men, as to the probable cause of the death of the deceased.
'Regarding the identity of the deceased, his person, as Charles Ferrier, is positively sworn to by several witnesses of unimpeachable integrity, some of whom were his fellow-countrymen, and knew him intimately. Two of them had lived for some time in the same street with him, and one of them (Colla) had actually made the cage for him in which he carried about his white mice. All these witnesses saw the body of the deceased within two or three days after his death, and unhesitatingly recognized him as the same. Two of them had seen him alive and well the same week; and one of them accurately described the trousers worn by the deceased, (which precisely correspond with those found in the garden,) before he was allowed to see them. In addition to this, we have it in evidence that an Italian boy with a cage and white mice was seen close to Bishop's house on the day of the murder; wearing a cap similar to the one found on the premises, and which Bishop endeavoured in vain to account for. We then find the white mice and cage at Bishop's house, in the possession of his children, on Friday, the 4th instant, the day after the murder, as proved by a very young witness, but who gave his evidence with all the simplicity characteristic of truth. And, lastly, we find the clothes of the deceased in Bishop's garden, the lower buttons being cut off the jacket, apparently to admit the revolution of his cage; the tapes also stitched to the lower part of the same garment for the passage of the strap or riband by which the cage was confined to his body. And against this body of evidence what is set up? The unsupported assertion of the wretched culprits, who, to the latest hour of existence, evinced no penitent or religious feeling, and who, during their short passage to the scaffold, on the morning of their execution, execrated the jury who so justly condemned them. A Lincolnshire boy! Where are his friends or relations? It is now nearly six weeks since the murder, and no inquiries are made for him. On the contrary, where is Charles Ferrier? Why does he not appear? It is a fact that the body of the deceased was recognized by at least a hundred persons as a poor Italian boy, whom they had seen carrying white mice about the streets of London. But were there any appearances to indicate that the deceased was a Lincolnshire drover boy? None. His hands were smooth and soft, and no horny substance upon them, as though he had been used to manual labour. These facts, and this evidence, together with the verdict of a jury, after a long and patient trial, before a humane and discerning judge, stand at present alone opposed by the statement of the murderers, and between them the public must judge.
'On the second point, as to the mode of death of the deceased, which is described in the confessions as that of drowning, it will be only necessary to read the following report which the surgeons have been requested to prepare on the appearances of the body, both at and previous to the post mortem examination, and it will then be for medical and scientific persons to say whether it is morally possible that the heart should have been perfectly empty and contracted, and that the other appearances described should have manifested themselves, if death had been produced as the murderers allege.
'Post mortem appearances of the body of the Italian body, who was murdered late on the night of the 3d, or early on the morning of the 4th of November, 1831.
'The corpse was first seen by one of the undersigned, about two o'clock, P.M., of Saturday, November 5, and by the other at a late hour the same night.
'External appearances.—The body was four feet six inches in length, of rather stout make, face broad, hair light brown, dry, neither curled nor yet matted, eyes gray, general appearance that of a foreigner, judging more from the cast of features than the complexion, limbs rigid, and the upper extremities somewhat contracted, palms of the hands quite soft, face rather swollen, eyes bloodshot, teeth extracted, gums bloody, a wound three-quarters of an inch in length over the left brow; the neck and throat, together with the extremities, were attentively examined, but did not exhibit the slightest indications of violence.
'The dissection was conducted in the following order:—
'Head.—On turning down the scalp its vessels appeared a little fuller than usual; the wound over the brow extended to the bone, which was not, however, fractured, neither was there any blood effused around the cut; higher up, over the coronal suture, there was a patch of extravasated and coagulated blood between the scalp and bone; the brain and its membranes appeared perfectly healthy, and their vessels were not unnaturally full; the ventricles did not contain more than the usual small quantity of serum. The body was next turned on its face, the brain having been previously removed, and in so doing a quantity of fluid blood gushed out from the spinal canal at the occipital foramen. On cutting through the muscles at the back of the neck coagulated blood, to the amount of five or six ounces, was found extravasated among them; extending from the occiput to the termination of the cervical vertebræ, and upon removing the arches of the vertebræ and that portion of the occipital bone which lies behind the foramen magnum, from one to two ounces of coagulated blood were discovered within the spinal canal (exterior to the theca) pressing upon the upper part of the medulla spinalis; a considerable quantity of fluid blood was likewise contained in the lower part of the canal; there was no blood within the theca, and the cord itself retained its natural appearance and firmness; there was no traceable injury either of the vertebræ or of their ligaments.
'Chest.—The pericardium contained about two drachms of serum. The heart was healthy, rather small, quite contracted, and its four cavities perfectly empty. This contracted and empty state of the heart struck us at the time as a very remarkable circumstance. Each bag of the pleura contained about one ounce of serum. The lungs were healthy and not congested; there was an old and partial adhesion between part of the right lung and the pleura costatis; the pharynx, œsophagus, larynx, trachen, and bronchi, were healthy and unobstructed.
'Abdomen.—The stomach was tolerably full of half-digested food, of which some fragments of potatoes formed the only recognizable part; its contents smelt lightly of rum, its coats were healthy, the small intestines were full of recently digested food; the whole of the alimentary canal, and all the abdominal viscera, were healthy, but the liver contained a little more than the usual quantity of blood.
'The urinary bladder was contracted and quite empty.
'It is for professional and other scientific men to judge, whether the appearances above described are compatible with the supposition of death having been produced by drowning, hanging, strangulation, or any other mode of suffocation.
(Signed) 'Richard Partridge.
'George Beaman.'December 10.
'The foregoing report, it will be observed, is signed by Mr. Partridge, the Demonstrator of Anatomy to the King's College, and Mr. Beaman, a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, who, in addition to an extensive private practice, holds the appointment of Parochial Surgeon of St. Paul, Covent-garden; their report has been submitted to Mr. Tyrell, a Surgeon of St. Thomas's Hospital, and Lecturer on Physiology, Anatomy, and Surgery, to that Institution. His observations on that report are as follows:—
'Sir,
'According to your request, I have attentively perused the statement respecting the examination of the body of the boy, the subject of the late trial. I find that it perfectly agrees with the evidence given by Messrs. Partridge and Beaman on that occasion, of which evidence I, by the desire of the prosecutors, took notes. It is my opinion, that the death of the boy could not have been caused by any mode of suffocation, as drowning, smothering, &c. I have no doubt that injury to the upper part of the spine, which created the effusion of blood into the spinal canal was the immediate cause of death.
'Yours, respectfully,
'Frederick Tyrell.'17, New Bridge-Street,
'Blackfriars, Dec. 10.'I have thus endeavoured, as briefly as possible, to put together a few facts and observations on the two only points in 'the confessions' which appeared to me to call for notice. I consider Williams's confirmation of the truth of Bishop's statement of very little consequence, inasmuch as he was allowed to be present at the making of it, and nothing was easier than for him to say that he fully adhered to the statement made by his partner in crime. If separate 'confessions' had been made, and in the absence of each other, it is possible the wretched culprits might have furnished something more to the world.
'I have to apologize for the length of this communication, which has been hastily written. I hope the importance and anxiety with which the subject is viewed by the public may be pleaded in excuse, and also induce you to give it insertion in your columns. I may add, that I should not have presumed to have addressed you on the subject, had not the circumstance of the management of the prosecution devolving upon me entitled me to be pretty fully acquainted with all the details of the case.
'I am, Sir, your most obedient servant,
'Jas. Corder.'St. Paul, Covent-Garden,
Vestry Clerk's Office, Dec. 14.'
On this statement of Mr. Corder we shall make but a very few comments. One part of it is, however, particularly deserving of remark, in which he states, that above one hundred persons recognized the body of the murdered boy, as being that of a poor Italian boy, whom they had seen carrying white mice about the streets of London. If this were actually the case, let us put this question to Mr. Corder—Why a tithe of the hundred persons was not brought forward on the trial to identify the body? The only persons on the trial, who spoke with the least assurance respecting the body, were the Paragallis; for Brin, or Brun, the man who actually brought the boy over to this country, could not speak to the identity of the body. But if, as Mr. Corder affirms, there were a hundred persons who really did recognize the body as being that of the Italian boy, he was certainly guilty of a dereliction of his duty, in not bringing forward some of them; as it would have been attended with the immediate good effect of tranquillizing the public mind, and dissipating every doubt as to the real individual who had been so inhumanly murdered.
It must also be fresh in the recollection of Mr. Corder, that the identity of the clothes as having been worn by the Italian boy, was not definitively established on the trial; on the contrary, by one witness it was deposed that the clothes found in Bishop's garden did not correspond in colour with those worn by the Italian boy, as seen by the witness on the day on which the murder was supposed to be committed. In other respects, however, the arguments of Mr. Corder may be considered as carrying with them a great degree of corroborative testimony, relative to the murdered boy being the Italian youth; and until some more conclusive evidence presents itself, the matter must be considered as resting on the established certainty of the identity of the body, and, consequently, that the statements of Bishop and Williams were not founded in truth. Their statements, however, excited so extraordinary a sensation in the public mind that, on the 13th of December, Mr. Hunt brought the business before Parliament. The Honourable Member said, that he had a question to ask, calculated greatly to relieve the mind of the country. It was with respect to the persons lately executed for the crime of 'Burking.' According to a statement put forth in the newspaper, they, instead of confessing three or four murders only, on the day previous to their execution, confessed sixty; and were going on until stopped by the Ordinary of the prison. This might be a laughable subject, but it had greatly agitated the public mind; and was, he believed, at present, the source of much excitement. He, therefore, was desirous to know of Government whether the fact of this confession was true or not?
Mr. G. Lamb did not know on what authority the statement in the newspapers was put forth, but he (Mr. Lamb) was not aware of any other confession than that officially published.