Book description
Towards the end of 1831, the authorities unearthed a series of crimes
at Number 3, Nova Scotia Gardens in East London that appeared to echo
the notorious Burke and Hare killings in Edinburgh three years
earlier. After a long investigation, three bodysnatchers were put on
trial for supplying the anatomy schools of London with suspiciously
fresh bodies for dissection. They later became known as The London
Burkers, and their story was dubbed 'The Italian Boy' case. The furore
which led directly to the passing of controversial legislation which
marked the beginning of the end of body snatching in Britain.
In The Italian Boy, Sarah Wise not only investigates the case
of the London Burkers but also, by making use of an incredibly rich
archival store, the lives of ordinary lower-class Londoners. Here is a
window on the lives of the poor - a window that is opaque in places,
shattered in others but which provides an unprecedented view of
low-life London in the 1830s.
Sarah took an MA in Victorian Studies at Birkbeck College, University
of London. Her debut,
The Italian Boy: Murder and Grave Robbery in
1830s London
, was shortlisted for the 2005 Samuel Johnson Prize and won the Crime
Writers' Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction, and her next work
The Blackest Streets,
was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize.
Her third book is
Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the
Mad-Doctors in Victorian England.
Sarah was a major contributor to Iain Sinclair's compendium
London,
City of Disappearances.
She has spoken on Radio 4's
Thinking Allowed
,
Woman's Hour
and the
Today
programme, and she regularly lectures to societies and at history
events. She lives in central London.
