The Italian Boy: A Tale of Murder and Body Snatching in 1830s London

"A work of great skill and sympathy, a meditation on one of the sorrowful mysteries once to be found on the streets of London. For any student of the city and its secret life, it is indispensable reading."
-Peter Ackroyd, The Times (London)

Before his murder in 1831, the "Italian boy" was one of thousands of orphans on the streets of London, begging among the livestock, hawkers, and con men. When his body was sold to a medical college, the suppliers were arrested for murder. Their high-profile trial would unveil a furtive trade in human corpses carried out by "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 his world. In 1831 London, the poor were desperate and the wealthy petrified, the population swelling so fast that class borders could not hold. All the while, early humanitarians were attempting to protect the disenfranchised, the courts were establishing norms of punishment, and doctors were pioneering the science of anatomy.

As vivid and intricate as a novel by Charles Dickens, The Italian Boy restores to history the lives of the very poorest Londoners and offers an unparalleled account of England's great metropolis at the brink of a major transformation.

A historian of Victorian England, Sarah Wise has written for The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent on Sunday, and several magazines. The Italian Boy is her first book. She lives in London.