Partridge was instrumental in the apprehension of the gang of murderers and body snatchers called the London Burkers, after the Edinburgh murderers Burke and Hare of three years earlier.
The crime seems to have caught the public interest to an extraordinary degree; a crowd of thirty thousand turned up to watch the hangings,[REF] and a play The Italian Boy (featuring the original story of the Italian beggar and his white mice) was later put on at Shoreditch [REF].