Dr. Ignacio Narbondo

Dr. Ignacio Narbondo is a physician who pursues the reanimation of the dead through experiments that require both human corpses and a substance taken from carp. His work is not an isolated scientific pursuit: it depends on grave robbing, murder, the labor of accomplices, and the hidden movement of bodies through London. As those practices draw the attention of Shiloh, Kelso Drake, and Langdon St. Ives’s circle, Narbondo’s laboratory becomes the center of a network that repeatedly escapes control.

Identity and Experimental Practice

Narbondo is identified by his pronounced hump and limp, and works in a laboratory crowded with chemical apparatus, specimen jars, aquaria, and human remains. His methods are practical and improvised. He tests the fish in his tanks by feeding them worms, then removes a pulsing gland from a carp that has been struggling at the water’s surface. He preserves the gland in amber liquid, treating it as an essential experimental ingredient rather than as an incidental curiosity. His calm attention to the procedure contrasts with the unsettled state of the bodies and materials around him.

The carp are not merely laboratory specimens. Narbondo’s experiments depend on their glands, and he continues to seek a fresh supply when an attempted reanimation fails. In Sebastian Owlesby’s account, a corpse taken from a gibbet remains inert despite being prepared with fluids; without a carp and a fresh gland, it will decompose before the experiment can proceed. The need for the gland connects Narbondo’s laboratory work to the theft and transport of fish across the city, making an animal organ a material bottleneck in his attempt to animate the dead.

Owlesby, Murder, and the Origins of the Work

Sebastian Owlesby’s recovered papers reveal how Narbondo influenced an earlier phase of the experiments. Owlesby describes Narbondo as urging him toward increasingly extreme work, while his own account records a decline into madness and his plea that his sister kill him if he should lose control again. The papers also disclose that, in late May 1861, the experiments came to require the brain of a living man. Owlesby and an unnamed accomplice took a sleeping indigent from St. James’ Park and brought the victim’s head back in a sack. The account implicates Narbondo in the experimental program, though it does not name him as the accomplice in that particular act.

A second account connects Narbondo and Owlesby to the killing of a boy in Limehouse. In Owlesby’s recollection, Narbondo insisted on taking part in the attack, despite Owlesby’s preference that he wait nearby. Owlesby describes recognizing the moral consequence of what they were doing only as the boy’s lantern went out; the two then carried out the killing. Narbondo escaped the neighborhood, while Owlesby returned to his rooms. The experiment still failed: the corpse they had hoped to use remained unusable, and Owlesby’s account says Narbondo would go out again in search of the serum. Together, the papers show the growing distance between the researchers’ stated scientific purpose and the violence their work demanded.

Bill Kraken’s recollection supplies a separate, earlier account of carp being stolen from the aquarium. He says that he drove a wagon while Sebastian cut up about half a dozen fish on Baker Street; the fish were then passed to a beggar woman, who sold them at Billingsgate Market. Kraken presents the carp theft as only a minor part of the past wrongdoing and distinguishes Sebastian from the more culpable figure he had seen near Westminster Cemetery at night. His testimony does not by itself establish every detail of Narbondo’s involvement, but it places the theft of carp within the same circle of clandestine activity that the later papers associate with the experiments.

Networks, Bargains, and the Dead

Narbondo’s dealings extend beyond the laboratory. At The Blood Pudding, a witness sees him eating live birds behind a floor-length curtain; Kelso Drake arrives shortly afterward and encounters him emerging from behind it. The room contains other men who appear dead or strangely unresponsive. Theophilus Godall later links the scene to a corpse he had watched Narbondo revive, and speculates that Drake may want a supply of obedient workers for labor disputes—or may hope to acquire the means of extending life that Owlesby had sought. Godall presents these as possible explanations, not settled facts. What is clear is that Narbondo and Drake appear to be bargaining, while the nature and limits of their agreement remain uncertain.

Shiloh also has a stake in Narbondo’s work. He enters the laboratory as Narbondo prepares a gland and dismisses the gutted carp as worthless for food; Shiloh objects that people are hungry, and Narbondo answers by pointing to the quantity of fish that could feed London. Later, Shiloh watches as Narbondo and Willis Pule prepare a fresh corpse and a sluggish carp for another attempt. When a box is moved, the remains on the slab seem to shift, unsettling Shiloh, who realizes that the bones belong to his mother. Narbondo continues with the experiment while Shiloh anxiously asks after her hands. The episode reveals how the laboratory’s procedures intersect with Shiloh’s personal and religious claims, without establishing that Narbondo shares those beliefs.

Pule serves Narbondo as an assistant, but the relationship is marked by commands, reluctance, and threats. At the laboratory, Pule acts only when ordered and otherwise stands idle. Later, after being turned out by Narbondo and Drake, he threatens both men and promises violence against the city. Narbondo leaves Drake’s house, apparently concerned that Pule may cause trouble on Pratlow Street. That concern proves inadequate: Narbondo’s hidden store of bodies is discovered, and the dead emerge together in the ensuing outbreak. Godall identifies the passageway as a place where Narbondo had kept bodies, including a drowned woman, a child killed by a wagon, and a freshly hanged forger. The concealed inventory turns the laboratory’s dependence on stolen corpses into a public crisis.

Collapse and Escape

The outbreak exposes the practical fragility of Narbondo’s enterprise. The bodies he has gathered do not form a controlled workforce: they become a disorderly threat, and the confusion draws pursuers into the struggle over his laboratory and equipment. Narbondo is absent when the dead fill the passage and surrounding rooms, but his stored corpses, experimental materials, and secret routes shape the danger faced by Langdon St. Ives, Captain Powers, and their companions. The aftermath leaves the investigators with evidence of the scale of his operations but no immediate arrest or reckoning.

Narbondo later reappears on the rooftops carrying a satchel in either hand. Hasbro and St. Ives pursue him without knowing what they would do if they caught him, but the doctor’s apparent familiarity with the roofs gives him the advantage. He moves over gables, copper-covered surfaces, and deteriorating chimneys, steadily widening the distance until the pursuers lose sight of him near Old Compton Street. His escape preserves the pattern that has defined his career: others encounter the consequences of his experiments, while he slips away before they can force an account from him.

The last reported sighting places Narbondo in a dogcart full of carp, with Pule lying comatose among the fish. St. Ives doubts that Narbondo has come to Pule’s rescue, and Godall agrees. The image brings the doctor’s two recurrent resources together—the fish required by his experiments and the compromised assistant he has repeatedly used—without resolving their destination or Narbondo’s next plan. His ending is therefore an escape rather than a defeat: the laboratory’s apparent collapse has not removed either the scientist or the material basis of his work.