{"product_id":"2026100012588-secondhand-the-italian-boy-a-tale-of-murder-and-body-snatching-in-1830s-london","title":"The Italian Boy: A Tale Of Murder And Body Snatching In 1830S London","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Very good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: Worn\/faded, no tears\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the shadowy, fog-choked streets of 1830s London, a young Italian street boy vanished — and the chilling truth of what happened to him would expose the darkest corners of a city simultaneously fascinated and horrified by death. The Italian Boy chronicles the infamous case of the London Burkers, a gang of body snatchers who murdered vulnerable victims to sell their corpses to anatomy schools, unravelling a true crime story that gripped Victorian society and forced a reckoning with the brutal realities of the medical trade. Sarah Wise reconstructs the case with meticulous historical precision, drawing on court records, newspaper accounts, and contemporary sources to paint a vivid portrait of poverty, criminality, and institutional complicity in a city on the edge of reform.\n\nWise's narrative is as much a social history as it is a crime story, illuminating the desperate underclass of Regency London and the morally ambiguous world of surgeons and anatomists who demanded a steady supply of fresh cadavers regardless of their origins. Her prose is authoritative yet compulsively readable, weaving together biography, legal history, and urban geography into a seamless whole. For anyone drawn to the darker undercurrents of nineteenth-century Britain, this account raises a question that lingers long after the final page: in a city that profited from the poor in life, who truly bore responsibility for their deaths?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50948312531163,"sku":"2026100012588-SECONDHAND","price":20.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/ac8cdb1f-eac6-4065-b7b6-36772f40d659.png?v=1793104479","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026100012588-secondhand-the-italian-boy-a-tale-of-murder-and-body-snatching-in-1830s-london","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}