Two dead bodies in his coach

The driver of a hackney-coach was brought before the Lord Mayor at Guildhall by two Custom-House officers, charged with having two dead bodies in his coach. The officers account of the matter was as follows.

The day before about four in the morning, as they were going over London-bridge, they observed a coach driving very precipitately, which gave them a suspicion that some run goods were concealed therein; and on calling to the coachman to stop, he drove the faster; on which one of them presenting a pistol, and threatening to fire at him, two men jumped out and ran away, and the coach stopped; the officers proceeded to examine it for their supposed prize, but, to their great astonishment, they found the body of an elderly man and that of a woman, quite naked, with each a rope tied round its neck, put into two separate sacks; there were three bruises about the body of the man, and neither of them had been dead a long time.

The coachman said, he took up his fair, in Shoreditch, was ordered to drive to St. George's hospital, and he knew nothing more of the matter. However, on his taking the bodies, by the lord-mayor's order, to the officers of Shoreditch parish, they were found to be those of two paupers who had lately died in their workhouse, and which were supposed to have been stolen out of the burying-ground, for the use of the surgeons; a thing not very surprising, considering the careless manner in which such poor people are generally buried in London.

Four days after the remains of more than one hundred dead bodies were discovered in a shed in Tottenham Court Road, supposed to have been deposited, there by traders to the surgeons; of whom there is one, it is said, in the Borough, who makes open profession of dealing in dead bodies, and is well known by the name of the Resurrectionist.