As an illustration of the times in which such horrors were possible, the story of the murder of Carlo Ferrari may, at this distance of time from the event, be worth telling. In the autumn of 1831, there lived in one of a row of small houses, known as Nova Scotia Gardens, in the poverty-stricken district of Bethnal Green, a man named John Bishop, with his wife and three children. He had formerly been a carrier at Highgate, but had long been suspected of "body-snatching," as the practice of robbing graves was termed, and had no visible means of honest living. He had the look of a man whose original rustic stolidity had been supercharged with cockney cunning. The house adjoining Bishop's was occupied by a man named Woodcock, who had succeeded in the tenancy a glass-blower named Thomas Williams, described as a little, simple-looking man, of mild and inoffensive demeanour. About two o'clock on the morning of the 4th of November, Woodcock was awakened by a noise, as of a scuffle, in Bishop's house, and afterwards heard two men leave it and return in a few minutes, when he recognised the voices as those of Bishop and Williams. At noon the same day these two men were in a neighbouring public-house, accompanied by two other men, one of whom was known as James May, who had formerly been a butcher, but for the last few years had been suspected of following the same ghastly and revolting occupation as Bishop. In the afternoon three men alighted from a cab at Nova Scotia Gardens, two of them being recognised as Bishop and Williams, and afterwards returned to the vehicle, when the former and the third man were carrying something in a sack, which they placed in the cab. The three men then entered, and it was driven off. About seven o'clock the same evening, Bishop and May presented themselves at Guy's Hospital, carrying something in a sack, and asked the porter if a "subject" was wanted. Receiving a negative reply, they asked him to allow "it" to remain there until the next morning, to which he consented. Half-an-hour later, the two traffickers in human flesh called at Grainger's anatomical theatre, in Webb Street, Southwark, and told the curator they had "a very fresh male subject, about fourteen years of age." The offer being declined, they went away, and later on they were, accompanied by Williams, in a public-house, where May was seen by a waiter to pour water on a handkerchief containing human teeth, and then rub the teeth together, remarking that they were worth two pounds to him.