bishop, v.⁴ — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

bishop v.⁴

[the murderer Bishop, who in Bethnal Green in 1831 drowned a boy in order to sell the body for dissection]

to murder by drowning.

1839		R. Barham ‘Some Account of a New Play’ in Ingoldsby Legends (1840) 308: I Burked the papa, now I’ll Bishop the son!
1864		Athenaeum 559/1: We have ‘to burke,’ and ‘to bishop.’ [F&H].