“Burking” was a term invented after the discovery of the crimes committed by William Burke and William Hare between 1827 and 1828 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The two, recent immigrants from northern Ireland, made short-lived but lucrative careers out of providing bodies for the dissection laboratories at the medical school; Burke and Hare killed over 15 men and women to keep up their trade. “Burking” came to be used as the shorthand term for their preferred method of murder: a quiet type of suffocation which left the body unmarked.
Title page of The Trial, Sentence, and Confessions of Bishop, Williams, and May.
The Trial, Sentence, and Confessions of Bishop, Williams, and May provides first-hand documentary evidence of another grave-robbing trial, this one from the city of London in 1831. John Bishop, Thomas Williams, and James May were arrested and tried for the “burking” of Carlo Ferrari, a young Italian boy who had been working as a street-peddlar.
The Trial includes a didactic introduction which decries the horrors of the crime as well as a reconstruction of the trial, the confessions of Bishop and Williams, and an account of the executions of Bishop and Williams. May was tried but respited after the confessions of Bishop and Williams demonstrated that he was innocent of the death of Ferrari. After the description of the hangings of Bishop and Williams, the compilers of The Trial added in “…a few historical facts relative to the previous lives and occupations of all three of the men…” (p. 47).
The Trial is titillating reading, similar to a modern true-crime novel or television show; all it lacks is the team of dedicated detectives and forensic specialists trailing the three criminals back to their lair. It features a wealth of medical and scientific detail, as well as an almost minute-by-minute reconstruction of the crime itself, both in the trial and in the confessions of Bishop and Williams. The detection of the “Burkers” or “resurrection men” depends upon the scientific skill of the detectives and of the medical men to whom Bishop and Williams attempted to sell cadavers. Evidence from the trial, for example, features the testimony given by several surgeons who examined the body and offered minute detail about the condition of Ferrari’s corpse and what they deduced from it.
For contemporary readers, particularly those living in metropolitan areas like London, Edinburgh, or other large cities like Manchester and Leeds, it must have been a pleasantly thrilling read but also a warning that the city was a dangerous place.
For more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!