The Italian Boy
eBook - ePub

The Italian Boy

A Tale of Murder and Body-snatching in 1830s London

  1. 401 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Italian Boy

A Tale of Murder and Body-snatching in 1830s London

Book details
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

A thrilling history of England's great metropolis at a point of great change, told through the story of a young vagrant murdered by "resurrection men" Before his murder in 1831, the "Italian boy" was one of thousands of orphans on the streets of London, moving among the livestock, hawkers, and con men, begging for pennies. When his body was sold to a London medical college, the suppliers were arrested for murder. Their high-profile trial would unveil London's furtive trade in human corpses carried out by body-snatchers--or "resurrection men"--who killed to satisfy the first rule of the cadaver market: the fresher the body, the higher the price. Historian Sarah Wise reconstructs not only the boy's murder but the chaos and squalor of London that swallowed the fourteen-year-old vagrant long before his corpse appeared on the slab. In 1831, the city's poor were desperate and the wealthy were petrified, the population swelling so fast that old class borders could not possibly hold. All the while, early humanitarians were pushing legislation to protect the disenfranchised, the courts were establishing norms of punishment and execution, and doctors were pioneering the science of human anatomy. Vivid and intricate, The Italian Boy restores to history the lives of the very poorest Londoners and offers an unparalleled account of the sights, sounds, and smells of a city at the brink of a major transformation.

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Information

Publisher
Metropolitan Books
Year
2014
ISBN
9781466867802
Topic
History
Subtopic
Modern British History
Index
History

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Notice
  4. Contents
  5. Dedication
  6. Epigraph
  7. Preface
  8. Notes for Non-Londoners
  9. Currency Conversion
  10. 1. Suspiciously Fresh
  11. 2. Persons Unknown
  12. 3. The Thickest Part
  13. 4. Houseless Wretches
  14. 5. Systematic Slaughter
  15. 6. Houseless Wretches Again
  16. 7. Neighbors
  17. 8. Meat—An Interlude
  18. 9. Whatever Has Happened to Fanny?
  19. 10. A Horrid System
  20. 11. At the Bailey
  21. 12. A Newgate Stink
  22. 13. I, John Bishop …
  23. 14. Day of Dissolution
  24. 15. The Use of the Dead to the Living
  25. 16. How Many?
  26. Epilogue
  27. Notes
  28. Bibliography
  29. Illustration Credits
  30. Acknowledgments
  31. Index
  32. About the Author
  33. Copyright