Part 46

Ordinary physiognomists, who (without having seen the prisoners) had read the accounts of their examinations at the police-office--of their habits and mode of living, and the horrible atrocities with which there is now no doubt they were familiar--would have been greatly disappointed in the appearance of all of them as they stood at the bar. There was nothing in the aspect or manner of any of them which betokened a predisposition to anything like the outrage on humanity of which they stood convicted. There was something of heaviness in the aspect of Bishop, but altogether his countenance was mild. Williams had that kind of expression with which men associate the idea of sharpness and cunning, and something of mischief, but nothing of the villain. May, who was the best-looking of the three, had a countenance which most persons would consider open and manly. There was an air of firmness and determination about him; but neither in him nor his companions was there the slightest physiognomical trait of a murderer, according to the common notions on the subject.

When the three prisoners were placed at the bar, the names of the jury were called over, and on being asked whether they had agreed to their verdict, they answered that they had.

The question was then put to them as to each of the prisoners, and they returned as their verdict, that John Bishop, Thomas Williams, and James May were severally "Guilty of murder."

The verdict was received in court with becoming silence; but in a moment it was conveyed to the immense multitude assembled outside, who evinced their satisfaction at the result, by loud and long-continued cheering and clapping of hands. To such an extent was this expression of the popular feeling carried, that the windows of the court were obliged to be closed, in order that the voice of the Recorder might be heard in passing sentence.

The prisoners were severally called upon to say why sentence of death and execution should not be pronounced upon them; but none of them availed themselves of this opportunity of addressing the Court.

The Recorder then proceeded to pass the awful sentence of death upon them, but was for some moments again interrupted by the renewed shouts of the populace from without. Silence having been restored, the learned judge proceeded:--

"Prisoners at the bar, you have been tried by a most attentive and extremely humane jury; and I may say of them, as I have been frequently called upon to say before of juries in that box, that nothing but the most painful feelings of duty, imposed on them under a solemn obligation to their Maker and the public, could have induced them to pronounce a verdict against fellow-creatures, which sentenced them to die. That they have formed a just conclusion--[Here Williams exclaimed, "It is false evidence!"]--every man of common understanding must allow. I shall not detain you long by the few observations which I have to make, considering that your hours are numbered, and that there will be but a very short time between the present moment and that when you will have to appear in the presence of your Creator, to answer for the crime which has this day been proved against you. You have each of you been committed to jail for nearly a month; and I hope that you have employed that time in looking back upon the course of your guilty lives--for most guilty they have been--violating the laws of your country, and harrowing up the feelings of every relation that may have lost one that was dear to him. I hope from the time you have been in the jail, conscience-stricken as you must have been, you have turned your thoughts to the only source that remained for you--that of diligently seeking that mercy which you may even yet hope for by sincere repentance, and ardent and constant prayers to the Almighty. But if you have lost those precious moments, let me at all events exhort you not to lose another instant of that short period which the laws of society still leave you. The inhumanity and cruelty with which you have committed this crime, have spread a degree of horror through the metropolis, and indeed, I may say, through the whole country. But deeply as you have injured society, and perilously violated the laws, those laws, which are always administered with charity, have provided that in your awful situation you shall have the most zealous assistance of a pious and excellent clergyman of the Church of England, or of any other church to which you may belong; and I hope you will not neglect the solemn warnings and kind admonitions which you will receive from that quarter. I will not trespass on you by making any further observations, but now confine myself to the last painful duty which the law requires of the Court, viz., to pass the awful and dreadful sentence of the law; and that is, that you, John Bishop, you Thomas Williams, and you James May, be taken from this bar to the place from whence you came, and from thence, on Monday morning next, you be taken to the place of execution, and there each of you be hanged by the neck till each of you be dead, after which your bodies are to be given to the surgeons for dissection; and may the Lord God Almighty, the father of all mercies, have mercy on your miserable souls."

The prisoners scarcely gave any intimation, by their outward appearance, of the awful situation in which they were placed. They were immediately removed from the bar; but before they quitted the court, May exclaimed, "I am a murdered man;" and Williams leaned over the front of the bar, and muttering and pointing at some of the witnesses, declared that they were all murdered men, and that the witnesses would suffer for the false evidence they had given.

During the period which intervened between the conviction of the prisoners and the execution of Bishop and Williams (who only underwent the extreme penalty of the law), the most earnest exhortations were employed to induce a full confession of their guilt. The Rev. Mr. Cotton, the ordinary, remained in constant attendance on the prisoners, and by his exertions evidently produced considerable impression on their minds. On the nights of Friday and Saturday, two men sat up with each of the convicts, and the little sleep which they were able to procure was frequently disturbed.

On Sunday the usual sermon was preached in the jail chapel, and after that the prisoners Bishop and Williams, being placed in the same cell, were visited by the ordinary and under sheriffs, to whom they made the following confessions.

We give these statements as they were delivered by the prisoners, but serious doubts, even amounting to positive belief, are entertained that they were not full declarations of the crimes of which the wretched malefactors had been guilty.

"Newgate, December 4, 1831.

"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 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 in the Old Bailey. I went directly with Williams to the boy, and we then walked all three to the Nova Scotia-gardens, taking a pint of stout at a public-house near Holywell-lane, Shoreditch, on our way, of which we gave the boy a part; we only staid just to drink it, and walked on to my house, where we arrived at 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 remained 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 in Smithfield, and the laudanum also in small quantities at different shops. There was no water or other liquid put into 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 in 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 pull 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, his feet being 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 legs in the water, and the water bubbled a minute. We waited till these symptoms were passed, and then went indoors, and afterwards I think we went out and walked down Shoreditch to occupy the time; and in 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 in 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 it was, and then went again and had some more coffee at the same place in the Old-Street-road, where we staid 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 went both of us to the Fortune-of-War in Smithfield. We had something to eat and drink there; and after we had been there about half-an-hour, May came in. I knew May, but had not seen him for a fortnight before. He had some rum with me at the bar, Williams remaining in the tap-room. May and I went to the door. I had a smock frock on, and May asked where I had bought it? I told him, in Field-lane. He said he wanted to buy one, and asked me to go with him; I went with him to Field-lane, where he bought a frock at the corner shop. We then went into a clothes' shop in West-street to buy a pair of breeches, but May could not agree about the price; he was rather in liquor, and sent out for some rum, which we and the woman in the shop drank together. May said he would treat her, because he had given her a good deal of trouble for nothing. We then returned to the Fortune-of-War, and joined Williams, and had something more to drink; we waited there a short time, and then Williams and I went to the West-end of the town, leaving May at the Fortune-of-War. Williams and I went to Mr. Tuson's, in Windmill-street, where I saw Mr. Tuson, and offered to sell him a subject, meaning the boy we had left at home. He said he had waited so long for a subject which I had before undertaken to procure him, that he had been obliged to buy one the day before. We went from thence to Mr. Carpue's in Dean-street, and offered it to him in the lecture-room with other gentlemen. They asked me if it was fresh; I told them, 'Yes,' and they told me to wait. I asked them ten guineas; and after waiting a little, a gentleman there said they would give eight guineas, which I agreed to take, and engaged to carry it there the next morning at ten o'clock. I and Williams then returned to the Fortune-of-War; we found May in the tap-room; this was about a quarter before four o'clock in the afternoon; we had something to drink again, and I called May out to the outside of the house, and asked what was the best price given for 'things?' He said he had sold two the day before for ten guineas each, I think. I told him I had a subject; he asked what sort of one; I said, a boy about fourteen years old, and that I had been offered eight guineas for it. He said, if it was his, he would not take it; he could take it where he sold his for more. I told him all he could get above nine guineas he might have for himself, and we agreed to go presently and get a coach. I and May then went to the bar and had something more to drink, and then, leaving Williams at the Fortune-of-War, we went and tried to hire a cab in the Old Bailey. The cabman was at tea at the watering-house, and we went in and spoke to him about a fare, and had tea also there ourselves. Whilst we were at tea, the cabman went away, and we found him gone from the stand when we came out. We then went to Bridge-street, Blackfriars, and asked a coachman whether he would take such a fare as we wanted; he refused, and we then went to Farringdon-street, where we engaged a yellow chariot. I and May got in, drove to the Fortune-of-War, and (Williams having joined us at the George, in the Old Bailey) we then drank something again; and then, at 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 box and showed the body to May. 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 a 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. We all then drove off to Guy's Hospital, where we saw Mr. Davis, and offered to sell the body to him. He refused, saying that he bought two the day before of May. I asked him to let us leave it there until the next morning; he consented, and we put it into a little room, the door of which Mr. Davis locked. Williams was during this left in the chariot. I told Mr. Davis not to let the subject go to anybody unless I was there, for it belonged to me; and May also told him not to let it go unless he was present, or else he should be money out of pocket. I understood this to mean the money paid by May for our tea at the Old Bailey (about 4_s._), and the coach-fair, which we had agreed with the coachman should be 10_s._ May had no other interest in, or right to the money to be obtained for the body, except for such payments, and for what he could get above nine guineas, as I had promised him. May paid the coachman 10_s._ on our leaving the hospital; but, before we discharged the coach, May and I ran to Mr. Appleton, at Mr. Grainger's school, leaving Williams with the coach. We offered the subject to Mr. Appleton, but he declined to buy it; and then May and I joined Williams, discharged the coach, and went to a public-house close by to have something to drink. After this we got into a coach in the Borough, and drove again to the Fortune-of-War, where we had something more to drink: this was about eight o'clock in the evening. We all three staid there about an hour, and then went out, got a coach in Smithfield, and went towards Old-street-road--stopped in Golden-lane with the coach, and drank something, and then on to Old-street. At the corner of Union-street--the Star corner--May got out of the coach and said he was going home, and I and Williams drove to the corner of Old-street and Kingsland-road, where we got out and paid the coach-fare out of the money lent us by May, he having advanced each of us 3_s._ We then walked home, and went to bed that night as usual. We had agreed with May, on his leaving us, to meet him at Guy's Hospital at nine o'clock the next morning (Saturday). I and Williams went at eight o'clock on Saturday morning to the Fortune-of-War, where we met Shields, the porter, and engaged with him to go with us over the water to carry a subject. I wished him to go to Bartholomew's Hospital for a hamper I had seen there; but he refused, and I fetched it myself. We had a pint of beer, and I, and Williams, and Shields, went to Guy's Hospital, Shields carrying the hamper. We met May there. Williams and Shields went to a public-house, whilst I and May went to Mr. Appleton and offered him the subject again. He again refused to buy it, saying he did not want it. May and I then joined Shields and Williams, and had some drink, and then left them again; crossed the water in a boat to the King's College, where we inquired of Mr. Hill, the porter, whether he wanted a subject? He said he was not particularly in want, but would speak to Mr. Partridge, the demonstrator. Mr. Partridge came, and asked what the subject was? May said, 'A male subject.' Mr. Partridge asked the price. May said twelve guineas. Mr. Partridge said he could not give so much, and went away. Mr. Hill asked us to stay a few minutes while he went after Mr. Partridge, to speak to him again. Hill returned, and said Mr. Partridge would give nine guineas. May said, 'he would be d--d if it should go in under ten guineas.' He was in liquor, and, on his moving a little way off, I took the opportunity of saying to Hill that it should come in at nine guineas. I told May directly after, that I had sold it for nine guineas, and that I would out of it pay him what I had of him, and give him something besides. We then got into a cabriolet, and went back to Williams and Shields at the public-house, where all four of us had some beefsteaks and beer; and afterwards we went to Guy's Hospital, packed the body in the hamper, and put it on Shields' head, telling him to take it to the King's College, where we went, Williams and Shields walking, and I and May riding part of the way in a cab. On reaching the King's College, we carried the body into the theatre, and then into a little room, where we took the body out. Mr. Hill looked at it, and asked what it died of? May answered he did not know, and it did not concern him. Mr. Hill asked us how a cut which was on the forehead came? I answered, that it was done by May throwing the body out of the sack on the stones, which was the truth. Hill told us to remain in the other room, and he would bring us the money. We went into the other room, and waited for some time, when Mr. Partridge came to us and showed me a 50_l._ note, and said he must go and get it changed, as he had not sufficient money without, and he pulled out his purse and counted three or four sovereigns. I said he might let us have that, and give us the remainder on Monday; but he said, 'No--he would rather pay it altogether,' and went away. We waited some time, when the police-officers came and took us into custody.

(_Signed_) "JOHN BISHOP.

"_Witness_, ROBERT ELLIS, Under-Sheriff."