“Such are the disclosures which this wretched man has made, under circumstances which can scarcely fail to give them weight with the public. Before a question were put to him concerning the crimes he had been engaged in, he was solemnly reminded of the duty incumbent upon him, situated as he is, to banish from his mind every feeling of animosity towards Hare, on account of the evidence which the latter gave at the trial; he was told that a dying man, covered with guilt, and without hope except in the infinite mercy of Almighty God, through our blessed Redeemer the Lord Jesus Christ, he, who stood so much in need of forgiveness, must prepare himself to seek it by forgiving from his heart all who had done him wrong; and he was emphatically adjured to speak the truth, and nothing but the truth, without any attempt either to palliate his own iniquities, or to implicate Hare more deeply than the facts warranted. Thus admonished, and thus warned, he answered the several interrogations in the terms above stated; declaring at the same time, upon the word of a dying man, that everything he had said was true, and that he had in no respect exaggerated or extenuated anything, either from a desire to inculpate Hare, or to spare anyone else.”

THE CONFESSIONS OF BISHOP AND WILLIAMS, THE LONDON “BURKERS.”

The following are the confessions of Bishop and Williams, the London “Burkers,” an account of whose case is given in chapter XLI. They were emitted in presence of the Under-Sheriff on the 4th of December, 1831, the day before their execution:—

“I, John Bishop, do hereby declare and confess, that the boy supposed to be the Italian boy was a Lincolnshire boy. I and Williams took him to my house about half-past ten o’clock on the Thursday night, the 3rd of November, from the Bell, in Smithfield. He walked home with us. Williams promised to give him some work. Williams went with him from the Bell to the Old Bailey watering-house, whilst I went to the Fortune of War. Williams came from the Old Bailey watering-house to the Fortune of War for me, leaving the boy standing at the corner of the court by the watering-house at the Old Bailey. I went directly with Williams to the boy, and we walked then all three to Nova Scotia Gardens, taking a pint of stout at a public-house near Holloway Lane, Shoreditch, on our way, of which we gave the boy a part. We only stayed just to drink it, and walked on to my house, where we arrived about eleven o’clock. My wife and children and Mrs. Williams were not gone to bed, so we put him in the privy, and told him to wait there for us. Williams went in and told them to go to bed, and I stayed in the garden. Williams came out directly, and we both walked out of the garden a little way, to give time for the family getting to bed: we returned in about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, and listened outside the window to ascertain whether the family were gone to bed. All was quiet, and we then went to the boy in the privy, and took him into the house; we lighted a candle, and gave the boy some bread and cheese, and, after he had eaten, we gave him a cup full of rum, with about half a small phial of laudanum in it. (I had bought the rum the same evening at the Three Tuns, in Smithfield, and the laudanum also in small quantities at different shops). There was no water or other liquid put in the cup with the rum and laudanum. The boy drank the contents of the cup directly in two draughts, and afterwards a little beer. In about ten minutes he fell asleep on the chair on which he sat, and I removed him from the chair to the floor, and laid him on his side. We then went out and left him there. We had a quartern of gin and a pint of beer at the Feathers, near Shoreditch Church, and then went home again, having been away from the boy about twenty minutes. We found him asleep as we had left him. We took him directly, asleep and insensible, into the garden, and tied a cord to his feet to enable us to put him up by, and I then took him in my arms, and let him slide from them headlong into the well in the garden, whilst Williams held the cord to prevent the body going altogether too low in the well. He was nearly wholly in the water in the well, his feet just above the surface. Williams fastened the other end of the cord round the paling, to prevent the body getting beyond our reach. The boy struggled a little with his arms and his legs in the water; the water bubbled for a minute. We waited till these symptoms were past, and then went in, and afterwards I think we went out, and walked down Shoreditch to occupy the time, and in about three-quarters of an hour we returned and took him out of the well, by pulling him by the cord attached to his feet. We undressed him in the paved yard, rolled his clothes up, and buried them where they were found by the witness who produced them. We carried the boy into the wash-house, laid him on the floor, and covered him over with a bag. We left him there, and went and had some coffee in Old Street Road, and then (a little before two on the morning of Friday) went back to my house. We immediately doubled the body up, and put it into a box, which we corded so that nobody might open it to see what was in it; and then went again and had some more coffee in the same place in Old Street Road, where we stayed a little while, and then went home to bed—both in the same house, and to our own beds as usual; we slept till about ten o’clock on Friday morning, when we got up, took breakfast together with the family, and then went both of us to Smithfield, to the Fortune of War—we had something to eat and drink there. In about half-an-hour May came in—I knew May—but had not seen him for about a fortnight before,—he had some rum with me at the bar, Williams remaining in the tap-room. [The condemned man then described the movements of himself and Williams, and May during that day, in course of which they were principally occupied in visiting public houses, though they called upon two lecturers on anatomy and offered them the body, but were refused.] At the Fortune of War we drank something again, and then (about six o’clock) we all three went in the chariot to Nova Scotia Gardens; we went into the wash-house, where I uncorded the trunk, and shewed May the body. He asked, “how are the teeth?” I said I had not looked at them. Williams went and fetched a brad-awl from the house, and May took it and forced the teeth out; it is the constant practice to take the teeth out first, because, if the body be lost, the teeth are saved; after the teeth were taken out, we put the body in a bag, and took it to the chariot; May and I carried the body, and Williams got first into the coach, and then assisted in pulling the body in....” [The rest of this part of the confession is simply a record of “having something to drink,” and visiting lecturers, who refused to purchase the body. It concludes with an account of the apprehension of the men at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, with the body in their possession.]

In an addition to this confession of the murder of the boy, Bishop made this further statement:—

“I declare that this statement is all true, and that it contains all the facts so far as I can recollect. May knew nothing of the murder, and I do not believe he suspected that I had got the body except in the usual way, and after the death of it. I always told him I got it from the ground, and he never knew to the contrary until I confessed to Mr. Williams street. I told her that she might go home with us, and sit by the fire all night. She said she would go 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 took beer and rum (I had brought the rum from Smithfield in my pocket); the woman and her child laid 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 half-pence 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 would 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 any body; we therefore all went out; it rained hard, and we took shelter under a door-way in the Hackney Road for about 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 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 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 laid 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 a 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 end to the pailings 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 into a hair-box, which we corded and left there. We did not go to bed, but went to Shields’ to drink, and then went home. I never saw the woman’s child after the first time before mentioned. She said she had left the child with a 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 thirty-five, I think, and that her husband, before he died, was a cabinetmaker. 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, the 21st of October, as I think, under the pig-boards in the pig market in 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 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 mixture 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 till 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 twelvemonth and better. I solemnly declare that these were all the murders in which I have been concerned, or that I know anything of; that I and Williams were alone concerned in these, and that no other person whatever knew anything 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.... Until the transactions before set forth, I never was concerned in obtaining a subject by the destruction of the living. I have followed the course of obtaining a livelihood as a body-snatcher for twelve years, and have obtained and sold, I think, from 500 to 1000 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.”

Williams, whose proper name was Thomas Head, confirmed the confession given above as altogether true.

SONGS AND BALLADS.

The following songs and ballads were published at the time the news of the West Port tragedies was agitating the people of Scotland. They are rude and unpoetical for the most part, but they are fairly representative of a very extensive class, in which the feelings of the common people are not unfaithfully mirrored.

RHYMES