ABSTRACT
In the December 29, 1824 issue of the Eddowes Salopian Journal the following short report was printed under the caption Irish Export Trade in Dead Bodies.
In our journal of the 8th inst. we recorded the proceedings of two inquests held in this town (Shrewsbury) on the preceding day, on the bodies of a male and a female unknown, which had been packed in separate boxes, and forwarded by coach from Holyhead, directed to ‘Messrs Smith and Co. to be left at Aspin’s Warehouse, Morgan’s Lane, Tooley Street, Southwark, London’ with a packet ticket nailed on each box, stating that they were ‘From Thomas Williams’s Steam Packet Parcel Office, 53, Lower Sackville Street, Dublin’. The paragraph was copied from our Journal into the London Papers and thence into the Dublin Papers, where it attracted (as was very natural) Mr Williams’s particular attention. The Dublin Morning Post says, ‘In consequence of the exertions made by Mr Williams to discover the person who sent them to this house, a Mr George Pearson, surgical student of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, was taken into custody in Stephen Street yesterday. He has been fairly identified as the person who came to Mr Williams, under the name of Smith, respecting the conveyance of the boxes which were afterwards accompanied by a note signed ‘J Smith’. Mr Pearson has admitted that he was the person who sent them. He is fully committed to take his trial for the offence’.
