Part 16

At eight o'clock the procession began to move from the press-room, and the appearance of the executioner and his assistant on the scaffold indicated that the last and awful ceremony was just at hand. A general cry of 'Hats off!' took place, and in an instant the immense multitude were all uncovered. Bishop was first conducted on the scaffold, and his appearance was the signal for the most tremendous groans, yells, and hootings, from all parts of the crowd. The wretched man came forward, apparently unmoved by the dreadful reception he experienced. The executioner proceeded at once to the performance of his duty, and having put the rope round his neck, and affixed it to the chain, placed him under the fatal beam. A terrific cheer from the crowd proclaimed their satisfaction at the completion of the preparations for his exit to the other world; but still, though placed on the brink of eternity, and about being launched into it, amidst the execrations of his fellow-creatures, the miserable criminal betrayed scarcely a symptom of fear. The same listless and sullen manner that had marked his conduct throughout appeared to be preserved by him to the last moment. Not a muscle seemed to be moved, not a limb shook, though he remained, during the awful interval of two minutes that elapsed before Williams was brought forward, exposed to the indignant hootings of the multitude. Williams next ascended the scaffold, on reaching which he bowed to the crowd, who returned his salutation with the most dreadful yells and groans. He appeared to labour under extreme anguish, and his demeanour altogether formed a complete contrast to that of his guilty associate. While the cap was being put over his eyes, and the rope adjusted by the executioner, his whole frame seemed convulsed by one universal tremour. The Rev. Mr. Cotton, having engaged the wretched men in prayer, in which Williams appeared to join fervently, wringing his hands and ejaculating aloud, gave the signal for the falling of the drop, when they were launched into eternity. Bishop appeared to die almost instantaneously, but Williams struggled for several minutes. The moment the drop fell, the crowd, which had been yelling all the time, set up a shout of exultation that was prolonged for some minutes.

Strangers who had been admitted were directed to retire, as the Sheriffs were going in to meet some friends at breakfast. We understand it is an old custom at Newgate, that the Sheriffs should entertain the Under-sheriffs, the Chaplain, and other friends at breakfast in the prison, on the occasion of an execution.

The bodies, having been suspended for the usual time, were cut down at nine o'clock. That operation was performed by the executioner, amidst the shouts and cheers of the crowd, which still continued very great.

Immediately after, a small cart drove up to the platform, and the bodies of the culprits were placed in it, covered with two sacks. The cart then moved on at a slow pace, followed by the Sheriffs and City Marshal, and a large body of constables, along Giltspur-street, to the house of Mr. Stone, No. 33, Hosier-lane, the vast crowd yelling, and making other discordant sounds as they proceeded. On reaching Mr. Stone's house, it was with great difficulty the bodies could be removed from the cart, the crowd appearing anxious to get possession of them. The bodies were placed on a table, and in the presence of the Sheriffs (in conformity with their duty) an incision was made in their chests, after which they withdrew.

The bodies were removed the same night--Bishop to the King's College, and Williams to St. Bartholomew's, to be dissected.

Some of the manufacturers of 'last dying speeches and confessions' had, as usual, provided a plentiful supply of those veracious sheets for the gratification of peripatetic curiosity, and, as usual, some of them were sold even before the execution took place; but, unfortunately, the speculative typo, not being aware that May had received a respite, included him among the dying penitents, and an _elegant_ wood-cut at the head of the paper represented the _three_ culprits dangling from the gallows.

In regard to the breakfast which is given by the sheriffs on the morning of an execution, we will venture to recommend to the Court of Aldermen to take into their consideration the abolition of this most unfeeling and disgraceful custom; for it is such circumstances as these, although apparently trifling in their nature, which throw us so far back in the scale of civilisation, and verify the remark of the French philosopher, who says, that the English are the most voracious people in Europe, whether it be a wedding, a funeral, or an execution, eating and drinking are the leading features of the scene. There is something actually revolting to the feelings in the idea, that whilst a human being is suffering the agonies of death on the scaffold, a number of functionaries should retire into a certain room, in which custom (which would be far more honoured in the breach than the observance) gives its sanction that they should be regaled with a sumptuous repast, and that they should only be obliged to rise from it when the summons arrives that it is time for the body of the unfortunate wretch to be cut down.

Connected with this subject, there is another custom equally repellent and revolting, and that is, that the office of giving the signal of death should devolve on the Rev. Ordinary. Is it in the least consistent with the functions which he has to perform, and with the general duties of the clerical character, that he alone should be selected, amongst the attendant officers, for the performance of so abhorrent an act? It is the duty of the sheriff to see the execution performed,--it is the duty of the clergyman to prepare the unhappy culprit, by his prayers and admonitions, for that awful change which in a few moments awaits him;--but there is something positively unchristian, unsacerdotal, degrading, and reproachful, to a minister of the religion of Christ, that he should be the acting attendant on the scaffold of the murderer, and that on his signal the moment is to be decided when his companion, the executioner, is to withdraw the fatal bolt. Why, after the clergyman has completed his religious duties, should he not retire from the awful scene, and the office of giving the signal devolve upon the Under-sheriff? or why should not the example be followed of the Scotch executions, in which the criminal gives the signal himself, before which, the minister has retired from the scaffold? It may have been conformable to the spirit of the church during the reign of popery, that the priest should assist at the executions, and, in the case of a heretic, be the first to apply the blazing torch to the pile of fagots. But the time, we hope, is not far distant when the custom to which we have alluded, and which is actually at variance with the purity and sanctity of the ecclesiastical character, will not longer be known to exist as a stigma upon the first city of the world.

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?

But admitting the merit of the examples of personal sacrifices, and allowing that they ought to influence the pretended sages who think themselves peculiarly entitled to be called the guardians of the poor, because they pander to their lowest passions, and foster their most unreasonable suspicions; we are still not of an opinion that they supply the strongest argument with the poorer classes, for abandoning their present antipathies to dissection and for giving their voluntary assent to a change in the existing law. That strongest argument is, that they at present afford nearly all the subjects for our anatomical theatres; that they are the chief sufferers by the imperfection of our surgical knowledge, and that they would be the chief gainers by an extension of medical skill.

When a clamour is raised against a proposition for giving up the unclaimed bodies of those who die in hospitals or poorhouses to be dissected, it is, of course, pretended, that at present the poor are exempted from the imaginary calamity. Now what is the real state of the case? Are not the poor as exclusively the subjects of anatomical examination now, as they could be under any change of the law? Whither do the body-snatchers go when they receive an order for the exercise of their repulsive contraband? Do they not bargain with some gravedigger, or the porter of some charitable establishment, for the connivance in seizing bodies which belonged to the poorer classes? The rich are not often disturbed in their tombs by the unhallowed intrusion of the resurrection-man. They are allowed to slumber in their inaccessible vaults, while their poorer neighbours are raised and dissected for the benefit of posterity. If some Bishop or Williams, unable to supply the trade with the fruits of plundered churchyards, think of _making_ subjects, whom do they entice into their den of murder? Not the affluent, the respected, or the known, but the poor unfriended wretches, for whom nobody is supposed to care, and whose loss nobody will deplore,--the very parties, in short, who would, most probably, be borne to their grave, at the public expense, from the wards of a hospital, or the cells of a poor-house. It is not likely, notwithstanding Sir Astley Cooper's remarks, that persons possessed of property more valuable than their bodies, would be killed to obtain their bodies. Neither an alderman, a bishop, nor a member of parliament, could be supposed to labour under any apprehension of being _Burked_; and, therefore, the source of supply, to whatever extent it proceeded, remained exclusively with the poor.

Nor could the poor avoid being almost the only sufferers by the deficiency of surgical skill, which an efficient supply of subjects for dissection would necessarily occasion. The wealthy can always purchase the best portion of knowledge and experience which is in the market. They are not likely to submit their limbs or organs to a bungling operator, or take advice from an unskilful physician; and if scientific medical practitioners cannot be educated at home, they can pay them for the accomplishments and knowledge which they must acquire in foreign countries; but the poor must be contented with ignorance and inexperience, if their prejudices debar the less wealthy portion of the profession from the means of acquiring anatomical science.

We, therefore, are of opinion, that it would be chiefly for the benefit of the lower classes themselves, that those who die in hospitals, in workhouses, in prisons, or in penitentiaries, and whose bodies are not claimed for interment by any relative, should be distributed amongst the anatomical schools, under such sanctions, and with such formalities, as religion and decency require; the supply of subjects from this source would be sufficient, and from none other.

We recommend the following letter of Sir J. Sewell, on this subject, to the attention of our readers in which other classes of supply are enumerated; although, we think, several provisions of his measure are unnecessary, and one or two would be injurious to his object.

The suggestion which he makes of giving up the bodies of suicides for dissection would be a good one, if anything like an adequate supply could be furnished by such a course; but as this would not be the case, a great injury would result from a plan which would aggravate the already existing prejudice arising from the intimate connexion in the public mind between dissection and ignominious punishment. We are further convinced, that the surrender of the body of the suicide to the anatomical schools will never become a part and parcel of the law of the land. It would encroach too much upon the higher stations in life; for where there is one pauper who destroys himself, we could enumerate a dozen in the most elevated ranks of society. If the law declared that the body of the wretched being, who, by the pressure of poverty or misfortune, had sought a remedy for his sorrows by the sacrifice of his own life, should be given up,--the same law ought to be made to apply to a Whitbread, a Romilly, a Castlereagh, and a Calcraft, all being, at the time of their death, legislators of the nation, from the assembly of whom is to emanate the very law which is to consign their bodies, in case of suicide, to the knife of the anatomist.

The following is the letter of Sir J. Sewell:--

'SIR,

'Having dined yesterday with some of my brother magistrates, I learned, upon information, which I have no reason to distrust, that beside the confessions published, another was made on Sunday, the 4th, which comprehended a catalogue of about sixty murders, and would have probably gone on to a much greater extent, but for the interference of the Ordinary.

'When to this is added the large supply which, by the published confessions, Bishop appears to have furnished for dissection, the great number of persons employed in the same way, the probable profligacy of such persons, and, as asserted, a great falling off in the number of burials, notwithstanding the increased population of this metropolis, there is certainly but too much reason to believe that this system of murder amongst the poor which Bishop said he resorted to as both less expensive and less hazardous than collecting from cemeteries, is become extremely common; that it is in a state of progression; and that new and extraordinary modes, however inconvenient to the professors and students of anatomy, must be had recourse to for the prevention of such atrocious crimes.

'The plan which I now submit to your consideration is not offered as a perfect one, or as approaching to perfection; and the greater part of it is the result of reflection upon the subject, since receiving the information above-mentioned; but it may suggest improvements to those who are capable of making them, and though the process proposed will be necessarily attended, in the procurement of subjects, with difficulties and expenses which do not belong to the present course of practice, the aggregate charge will, I hope, very soon be diminished; and that a commerce, which is asserted, by the faculty in general, to be of very great public consequence, may be carried on to the satisfaction of all the parties interested, and without the commission of a crime in any of them.

_Suggestions for a New Act of Parliament as to the Supply of Bodies for Dissection._