In order to detain the men until the arrival of the police, the demonstrator showed them a £50 note, observing that he must get it changed for gold before he could pay them. Several constables were soon on the spot, and the four men were arrested, and taken to the station-house in Vine Street, Covent Garden. On being charged on suspicion with having unlawful possession of a corpse, May said he had nothing to do with it, and had merely accompanied Bishop. A similar statement was made by Williams, and Bishop said he was only removing the corpse from St. Thomas’s Hospital to King’s College. Shields, who was known as a porter, said he was employed to carry the hamper, which he did in the exercise of his vocation. They were all then removed to the cells.
The evidence given at the coroner’s inquest by Partridge and two other surgeons left no doubt that the unfortunate lad, respecting whose identity there was no evidence, had been killed by a violent blow on the back of the neck, which had affected the spinal cord. The four accused men were present in custody during the inquiry, and Bishop, after reading a bill relating to the murder, which was displayed on the wall of the room, was heard by a constable to say, in a subdued tone, to May, “It was the blood that sold us.” Volunteering to give evidence, he said he got the corpse from a grave, but declined to name the place whence he had got it, alleging that the information would get into trouble two watchmen, who had large families. May also made a voluntary statement, to the effect that he got two “subjects” from the country, which he took first to Grainger’s theatre of anatomy, and afterwards to Guy’s Hospital, subsequently meeting Bishop, who promised him all he could get for a “subject” above nine guineas if he would sell it for him. The inquest was adjourned, and the police proceeded with their investigation.
The houses of Bishop and May had been promptly visited and searched by the police, who found at the former’s a sack, a large hamper, and a brad-awl, the last showing recent bloodstains. At May’s house in Dorset Street, New Kent Road, they found a pair of breeches, stained with blood at the back. On a second visit to Bishop’s house the garden was dug over, and a jacket, trousers, and a shirt found in one spot, and in another a coat, trousers, a vest with blood on the collar and one shoulder, and a shirt with the front torn. When the brad-awl was produced at Bow Street police-court, May said, “That is the instrument I punched the teeth out with.” Shields was eventually discharged from custody, but the other three prisoners were committed for trial on the capital charge.
The identity of the victim remained a mystery until the 19th of November, a fortnight after the murder, when the corpse was recognised by a foreigner named Brun as that of a boy named Carlo Ferrari, whom he had brought from Italy two years before, but had not seen since July, 1830. The boy picked up the means of living by exhibiting a tortoise and a pair of white mice in the streets. He had been seen by several persons in or near Nova Scotia Gardens on the 3rd of November, but he had not been seen since, nor had he returned on that day to his miserable lodgings in Charles Street, Drury Lane. The clothes found in Bishop’s garden corresponded with the description given of those worn by him when he was last seen, and a little boy who played with Bishop’s children stated that they had, on the following day, shown him two white mice in a cage similar to the one carried by Ferrari.
The incidents of the crime, as revealed from day to day, and the mystery in which the identity of the victim was for some time veiled, created so much excitement in the public mind, that when the prisoners were placed in the dock at the Old Bailey, early in December, the court was crowded, and a guinea each was paid for seats in the gallery, the occupants of which, all fashionably dressed, as might be expected of those who could afford to pay that price for the gratification of their love of the sensational, had taken their seats the day before. Though the evidence was but a recapitulation of the story told before in the police-court and the inquest-room, it was listened to with the utmost avidity. The witnesses for the defence were few, and their evidence valueless, except in the case of May, for whom an alibi was established in respect of the time between the afternoon of the day preceding the murder and noon on the following day. The prisoners were sentenced to death, but in May’s case the sentence was commuted into transportation for life. A sea-faring relative of mine, who was second officer of the vessel in which May was sent out to Sydney, described him as an athletic, wiry-looking man, with features expressive of sternness, and a determined will, quite a different-looking man, therefore, to his two companions in crime, who were duly hanged at Newgate.
The crime of these men, and the deeds of Burke and Hare, created such a scare, and exposed so vividly the temptation to murder afforded by the prices paid by surgeons for “subjects,” that the attention of parliament was directed to the matter, and a Select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire and report as to the facilities which might be given for obtaining bodies for anatomical purposes in a legitimate manner.
Sir Astley Cooper, who was one of the eminent surgeons who gave evidence before this committee, was asked whether the state of the law prevented teachers of anatomy from obtaining the body of any person, which, in consequence of some peculiarity of structure, they might be desirous of procuring. He replied:—“The law does not prevent our obtaining the body of an individual if we think proper; for there is no person, let his situation in life be what it may, whom, if I were disposed to dissect, I could not obtain.... The law only enhances the price, and does not prevent the exhumation. Nobody is secured by the law; it only adds to the price of the subject.” The result of this inquiry was the passing of the Anatomy Act, by which the bodies of persons dying in hospitals and workhouses, if unclaimed by the relatives, may be placed at the disposal of the schools of anatomy.