London Burkers

They came to prominence in 1831 for murdering victims to sell to anatomists, by luring and drugging them at their dwelling in the northern end of Bethnal Green, near St Leonard's, Shoreditch in London.

Cottages (probably evolving from sheds serving the gardens) came to be built here but were undesirable as they remained below ground level, and so were prone to flooding.

[2] During the early 19th century, the demand for legally obtained cadavers for the study and teaching of anatomy in British medical schools greatly exceeded the supply.

[4] As medical science began to flourish, demand rose sharply and attracted criminal elements willing to obtain specimens by any means.

John Bishop, together with Thomas Williams, Michael Shields, a Covent Garden porter, and James May, an unemployed butcher, also known as Jack Stirabout and Black Eyed Jack, formed a notorious gang of resurrection men, stealing freshly buried bodies for sale to anatomists.

On 5 November 1831, the suspiciously fresh corpse of a 14-year-old boy was delivered, by Bishop and May, to the King's College School of Anatomy, in the Strand.

John Bishop admitted that the Lincolnshire boy was taken on 3 November, from The Bell in Smithfield, with the excuse of lodging at Nova Scotia Gardens.

[5] A further victim, a boy named Cunningham, was found sleeping in the pig market at Smithfield on Friday, 21 October; again lodging was promised.

The bodies were removed the same night, Bishop to King's College and Williams to the Theatre of Anatomy in Windmill Street, The Haymarket, for dissection.

[9] He received a two-year sentence to Port Arthur for insubordination on board the penal transport vessel and died at the settlement in 1834, buried in an unmarked grave on the Isle of the Dead.

[9] In the same year, Catherine Walsh of Whitechapel, who made her living by selling laces and cotton, was murdered by Elizabeth Ross, who sold the body to surgeons.