Please allow me to introduce myself....

[elmore 77]

A man of wealth and taste?

https://www.thomasbondfrcs.com

[dantheman]

A man of wealth and taste?
www.thomasbondfrcs.com

Good taste in music as well.

[John Wheat]

A man of wealth and taste?
www.thomasbondfrcs.com

Hi elmore. Welcome to the boards.

[Pcdunn]

Welcome, Elmore.

Be prepared to shed blood, sweat, and tears over some of the material on these forums.

[Mayerling]

Welcome to the Boards,

I noticed in the biographical information on Dr. Bond his curious act in the Seven Weeks War of 1866 of taking that message across the Austrian and Italian lines. Most of us think of that brief war as between Austria and Prussia and ending with the crushing defeat of Austria at Sadowa. However Bismarck allied with Italy, which was fighting to get Venezia from Austria. However the main action in the war between Italy and Austria was the naval battle of Lissa, which was the one bright spot of the war on the Austrian side - a trouncing of the Italian Navy (and the ramming and sinking of their flagship) by Admiral von Tegenhoff. So if Dr. Bond was risking his life to take that message through Austrian lines to Italy, he is actually going into enemy territory. Was it a message from the Austrian command to the Italian command, or was he actually just performing a foolish but brave act of a personal communication from some patient to family or friend in Italy?

By the way, because the Prussians won the war, Italy finally got Venezia.

Jeff

[elmore 77]

Thanks for the comments everybody,I've had time issues since posting so I'm playing catch up.Nice bit of history Mayerling,it was an odd little war,seven weeks doesn't seem long enough to get properly warmed up.What I can't get my head around is why Bond is delivering messages.Surely there would have been trained men to do the job.
If I could just give a little background.I think it was last year Wynne Weston-Davies was posting here as Prosector about Jack's surgical skill and I was very impressed,so I bought his book.I remember him saying somewhere that he didn't think Bond had anything to do with the murders and,perhaps rather perversely I began pondering about the possibility that he was, in fact, the culprit.The more I looked,the more convinced I became that not only was he a good suspect for the WCM,but also the Torso murders.My website is five pages long,so can be read in 20 minutes and basically highlights a series of 'coincidences'and information that has been overlooked by most.

[Mayerling]

Thanks for the comments everybody,I've had time issues since posting so I'm playing catch up.Nice bit of history Mayerling,it was an odd little war,seven weeks doesn't seem long enough to get properly warmed up.What I can't get my head around is why Bond is delivering messages.Surely there would have been trained men to do the job.
If I could just give a little background.I think it was last year Wynne Weston-Davies was posting here as Prosector about Jack's surgical skill and I was very impressed,so I bought his book.I remember him saying somewhere that he didn't think Bond had anything to do with the murders and,perhaps rather perversely I began pondering about the possibility that he was, in fact, the culprit.The more I looked,the more convinced I became that not only was he a good suspect for the WCM,but also the Torso murders.My website is five pages long,so can be read in 20 minutes and basically highlights a series of 'coincidences'and information that has been overlooked by most.

I read page four of your blog, and noticed the reference to Dr. Bond writing an article on the murder (in 1874, but not discovered until 1875) of Harriet Lane by Henry Wainwright, with the assistance of his brother Thomas. It was Henry who was trying to transport the cut up portions of Harriet's body across London by cab, and who was caught by the activities of a former worker of his who chased the cab, and brought a constable over to examine the "packages" Henry was transporting. Henry was eventually found guilty of the murder of Harriet Lane, and Thomas found guilty of being his assistant before the murder in preparing Harriet's "disappearance" from her family's attention. Thomas served a fourteen year sentence as a result. There is a volume of the case in the old "Notable British Trial" series ("Trial of the Wainwrights"). I wrote an article about twelve or so years back, "What Wainwright Wrought" for "The Ripperologist", pointing out that the 1875 case was called "The Whitechapel Murder", and did involve body mutilation (although not for the hell of it, like the Ripper's, but for the sake of ease of burying the portions or transporting them).

The interesting thing I noted was that you mention Bond as an expert at the Andrew McCrae murder trial of 1893. There is an account of that trial by Guy B. H. Logan, in his book, "Dramas of the Dock", in "Chapter IV: "The Northampton Tragedy". The thing that Logan points out is that McCrae's murder of Annie Pritchard, in 1892, bares a remarkable similarity to that of Wainwright's murder of Miss Lane, in that both killers were ridding themselves of a cast-off mistress, and trying to disguise the sudden disappearance of the victim from her home town haunts was due to moving far away, and arranging to make it look that way. In neither case did the trick work.

Jeff

[Pierre]

I read page four of your blog, and noticed the reference to Dr. Bond writing an article on the murder (in 1874, but not discovered until 1875) of Harriet Lane by Henry Wainwright, with the assistance of his brother Thomas. It was Henry who was trying to transport the cut up portions of Harriet's body across London by cab, and who was caught by the activities of a former worker of his who chased the cab, and brought a constable over to examine the "packages" Henry was transporting. Henry was eventually found guilty of the murder of Harriet Lane, and Thomas found guilty of being his assistant before the murder in preparing Harriet's "disappearance" from her family's attention. Thomas served a fourteen year sentence as a result. There is a volume of the case in the old "Notable British Trial" series ("Trial of the Wainwrights"). I wrote an article about twelve or so years back, "What Wainwright Wrought" for "The Ripperologist", pointing out that the 1875 case was called "The Whitechapel Murder", and did involve body mutilation (although not for the hell of it, like the Ripper's, but for the sake of ease of burying the portions or transporting them).

The interesting thing I noted was that you mention Bond as an expert at the Andrew McCrae murder trial of 1893. There is an account of that trial by Guy B. H. Logan, in his book, "Dramas of the Dock", in "Chapter IV: "The Northampton Tragedy". The thing that Logan points out is that McCrae's murder of Annie Pritchard, in 1892, bares a remarkable similarity to that of Wainwright's murder of Miss Lane, in that both killers were ridding themselves of a cast-off mistress, and trying to disguise the sudden disappearance of the victim from her home town haunts was due to moving far away, and arranging to make it look that way. In neither case did the trick work.

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

What would it have taken, do you think, for Henry to succeed with his transport of the pieces?

Regards, Pierre

[Mayerling]

Hi Jeff,

What would it have taken, do you think, for Henry to succeed with his transport of the pieces?

Regards, Pierre

Hi Pierre,

You should try to find the old "Ripperologist" article I wrote, which discussed certain factors of the case. There had been one case, involving a handyman named Walter Miller who murdered two people in 1870 - it was called the "Chelsea Murders" because it occurred there - where the crime was potentially perfect (as was Wainwright's) but for transporting corpses. It is a major problem in many cases.

Miller tried to simply tie up the corpse in a sack and put it into a crate, and have the crate taken by some unassuming moving van (wagon) driver to a rearranged dumping sight with a grave. What he failed to grasp is that there are body liquids in decomposing bodies that can leak, and some of the liquids leaked out of the crate, causing the van operator to get very suspicious - and to get a constable involved.

Wainwright's case was different. He and his brothers had been sons of a successful man, so each had money to start with, and Henry Wainwright had a business with a warehouse. When he killed Harriet Lane, he cut up her body and buried it (mistakenly in quicklime, which he thought would destroy the traces of the body - instead it preserved them) under the warehouse floor. Unfortunately the odor of the decomposing body attracted the dog of the night watchman, but Wainwright noticed this and the dog soon "disappeared".

Wainwright apparently took heavily to drink in the wake of Harriet's demise, and his business (which had been doing badly anyway) went under. Suddenly he was aware he had to vacate that warehouse, and he did not know if the body parts would not be discovered. His always willing to help brother Thomas was working at another warehouse, and arranged for Henry to have access to it. So Henry dug up the portions of Harriet's body, and wrapped them in "American Cloth" - which by itself had a strong, unpleasant odor. One wonders if Henry chose this cloth to mask the odor of the decomposing body parts.

Anyway, he was doing his moving on a Saturday, and while he was outside the warehouse he was leaving one of his employees, one Alfred Stokes, came along and got into a conversation with him. Henry decided to leave the parcels he was transporting with Stokes, while he got a hansom cab for the transportation. [One could say it was a major slip-up here, Wainwright should have brought his own wagon or method of transport.] Stokes was left looking at these odd wrapped packages, with the unpleasant odors, and wondered what they were. Later he would say he heard some distant sounding voice urging him to have a look. However he made his mind up, Alfted Stokes just barely opened one of the wrapped packages and almost collapsed - there was a human hand inside it! He managed to put himself together and rewrapped the package. Wainwright (in the meantime returned with a cab. He was smoking a cigar, which he obviously had just lit while waiting to hail the cab - Richard Altick, in his book "Victorian Studies in Scarlet" (New York: Norton, 1970), suggests he should have given a cigar to Stokes and lit it before he went for the cab, as the cigar might have pre-occupied Stokes' attention from looking into the packages. Stokes did not say anything while Wainwright put the packages into the hansom cab, and then told Stokes he'd take care of him (i.e., pay him) later.

This was not the end of the business with the hansom cab. While Wainwright was about to leave another person showed up - a young actress Wainwright knew from the local theaters. He offered her a lift and the two took off in the hansom cab (the actress did not realize what was being transported). Stokes, having fully come to his senses, started chasing the cab. Due to traffic that day on the streets of Whitechapel, the cab did not outpace him as much as it might have. Instead he was able to keep chasing it for nearly two or so miles. He tried (at one point) to get two bobbies to help him stop the cab, but they thought he was a practical joker or a nut and just laughed at him.

He followed the cab across Waterloo Bridge (it too being the sight of an infamous, if unsolved, earlier murder and mutilation case in 1857) and to the opposite side of the Thames. Finally he reached it when Wainwright was parked outside the second warehouse (the one brother Thomas made available to him). Here Stokes a more intelligent bobbie, who confronted Wainwright. Wainwright again showed a failure to properly prepare - he could have had one or two wrapped parcels made up that had tools or some other item in them that would have assuaged the bobbie's curiosity. Instead Wainwright tried to brazen the matter out, insisting he had a right to be there, and the bobbie did not. The constable was not satisfied by this pompous evasion and insisted on looking inside the parcels. Panicking, Wainwright now compounded his mistakes by offering 50 or 100 pounds to the constable if he wouldn't look into the packages. Now dead set on it, the constable opened one, and Harriet's head fell out (in front of the Constable, the unpaid cabby, Stokes, and the horrified actress). It finished Wainwright. Rewrapping the contents of the package, it was placed in the cab, Wainwright ordered inside, while Stokes road with the Bobbie, and the officer hung unto the back. It then went to the nearest police station. The actress, unfortunately, had to ride inside with Wainwright and the corpse, because at this point she too was considered "a person of interest", but she soon cleared herself.

It's an interesting example of the necessity of planning transportation when needed. But keep in mind, regarding the five or so murders in Whitechapel in 1888 to whenever, that the bodies were left at the scenes of the murders, although portions of them were sometimes taken away (not the whole cut up body, like Harriet's). If you are considering the "Torso" Murders in the Thames and such, transport would be more important there, though once the bodies or parts were in the River the killer could presumably just forget about his general worries (it being the 1880s, and fingerprints, DNA, and other traceable vestiges not being known to the police yet). However, even here chance could play a role with an overly confident killer. In 1896 they hanged the "Baby Farmer" murderess Mrs. Dyer for killing infants. She was caught because the bag she place of the bodies in had her name and address on it!

An interesting example of how to properly allay police curiosity when dealing with human body parts that are cut up is in an 1869 French murder - that of Pierre Voirbo of his victim Bodanasse. Voirbo's murder is a textbook example of a truly almost perfect crime, and it was his misfortune (or the public's fortune) that he was confronted by on of the brightest French police inspectors of the 19th Century, Mace. Voirbo, at one point, had been dumping small bits of his victim in the Seine and other available watery places, including various wells. Two gendarmes saw him doing this at night, taking portions of human flesh and tossing it into the Seine. They inquired what he was up to. Unconcerned, but with stronger abilities than Henry Wainwright, Voirbo said he was planning to come back to this portion of the Seine in a day or so, and was spreading some meat there to attract fish. It was a perfectly realistic comment, and the gendarmes let him alone as a result. Voirbo's capture by Mace would take far longer to make, although the inspector later heard about the incident.

I hope this is of some help to you.

Jeff

[jerryd]

Hi Pierre,

You should try to find the old "Ripperologist" article I wrote, which discussed certain factors of the case. There had been one case, involving a handyman named Walter Miller who murdered two people in 1870 - it was called the "Chelsea Murders" because it occurred there - where the crime was potentially perfect (as was Wainwright's) but for transporting corpses. It is a major problem in many cases.

Miller tried to simply tie up the corpse in a sack and put it into a crate, and have the crate taken by some unassuming moving van (wagon) driver to a rearranged dumping sight with a grave. What he failed to grasp is that there are body liquids in decomposing bodies that can leak, and some of the liquids leaked out of the crate, causing the van operator to get very suspicious - and to get a constable involved.

Wainwright's case was different. He and his brothers had been sons of a successful man, so each had money to start with, and Henry Wainwright had a business with a warehouse. When he killed Harriet Lane, he cut up her body and buried it (mistakenly in quicklime, which he thought would destroy the traces of the body - instead it preserved them) under the warehouse floor. Unfortunately the odor of the decomposing body attracted the dog of the night watchman, but Wainwright noticed this and the dog soon "disappeared".

Wainwright apparently took heavily to drink in the wake of Harriet's demise, and his business (which had been doing badly anyway) went under. Suddenly he was aware he had to vacate that warehouse, and he did not know if the body parts would not be discovered. His always willing to help brother Thomas was working at another warehouse, and arranged for Henry to have access to it. So Henry dug up the portions of Harriet's body, and wrapped them in "American Cloth" - which by itself had a strong, unpleasant odor. One wonders if Henry chose this cloth to mask the odor of the decomposing body parts.

Anyway, he was doing his moving on a Saturday, and while he was outside the warehouse he was leaving one of his employees, one Alfred Stokes, came along and got into a conversation with him. Henry decided to leave the parcels he was transporting with Stokes, while he got a hansom cab for the transportation. [One could say it was a major slip-up here, Wainwright should have brought his own wagon or method of transport.] Stokes was left looking at these odd wrapped packages, with the unpleasant odors, and wondered what they were. Later he would say he heard some distant sounding voice urging him to have a look. However he made his mind up, Alfted Stokes just barely opened one of the wrapped packages and almost collapsed - there was a human hand inside it! He managed to put himself together and rewrapped the package. Wainwright (in the meantime returned with a cab. He was smoking a cigar, which he obviously had just lit while waiting to hail the cab - Richard Altick, in his book "Victorian Studies in Scarlet" (New York: Norton, 1970), suggests he should have given a cigar to Stokes and lit it before he went for the cab, as the cigar might have pre-occupied Stokes' attention from looking into the packages. Stokes did not say anything while Wainwright put the packages into the hansom cab, and then told Stokes he'd take care of him (i.e., pay him) later.

This was not the end of the business with the hansom cab. While Wainwright was about to leave another person showed up - a young actress Wainwright knew from the local theaters. He offered her a lift and the two took off in the hansom cab (the actress did not realize what was being transported). Stokes, having fully come to his senses, started chasing the cab. Due to traffic that day on the streets of Whitechapel, the cab did not outpace him as much as it might have. Instead he was able to keep chasing it for nearly two or so miles. He tried (at one point) to get two bobbies to help him stop the cab, but they thought he was a practical joker or a nut and just laughed at him.

He followed the cab across Waterloo Bridge (it too being the sight of an infamous, if unsolved, earlier murder and mutilation case in 1857) and to the opposite side of the Thames. Finally he reached it when Wainwright was parked outside the second warehouse (the one brother Thomas made available to him). Here Stokes a more intelligent bobbie, who confronted Wainwright. Wainwright again showed a failure to properly prepare - he could have had one or two wrapped parcels made up that had tools or some other item in them that would have assuaged the bobbie's curiosity. Instead Wainwright tried to brazen the matter out, insisting he had a right to be there, and the bobbie did not. The constable was not satisfied by this pompous evasion and insisted on looking inside the parcels. Panicking, Wainwright now compounded his mistakes by offering 50 or 100 pounds to the constable if he wouldn't look into the packages. Now dead set on it, the constable opened one, and Harriet's head fell out (in front of the Constable, the unpaid cabby, Stokes, and the horrified actress). It finished Wainwright. Rewrapping the contents of the package, it was placed in the cab, Wainwright ordered inside, while Stokes road with the Bobbie, and the officer hung unto the back. It then went to the nearest police station. The actress, unfortunately, had to ride inside with Wainwright and the corpse, because at this point she too was considered "a person of interest", but she soon cleared herself.

It's an interesting example of the necessity of planning transportation when needed. But keep in mind, regarding the five or so murders in Whitechapel in 1888 to whenever, that the bodies were left at the scenes of the murders, although portions of them were sometimes taken away (not the whole cut up body, like Harriet's). If you are considering the "Torso" Murders in the Thames and such, transport would be more important there, though once the bodies or parts were in the River the killer could presumably just forget about his general worries (it being the 1880s, and fingerprints, DNA, and other traceable vestiges not being known to the police yet). However, even here chance could play a role with an overly confident killer. In 1896 they hanged the "Baby Farmer" murderess Mrs. Dyer for killing infants. She was caught because the bag she place of the bodies in had her name and address on it!

An interesting example of how to properly allay police curiosity when dealing with human body parts that are cut up is in an 1869 French murder - that of Pierre Voirbo of his victim Bodanasse. Voirbo's murder is a textbook example of a truly almost perfect crime, and it was his misfortune (or the public's fortune) that he was confronted by on of the brightest French police inspectors of the 19th Century, Mace. Voirbo, at one point, had been dumping small bits of his victim in the Seine and other available watery places, including various wells. Two gendarmes saw him doing this at night, taking portions of human flesh and tossing it into the Seine. They inquired what he was up to. Unconcerned, but with stronger abilities than Henry Wainwright, Voirbo said he was planning to come back to this portion of the Seine in a day or so, and was spreading some meat there to attract fish. It was a perfectly realistic comment, and the gendarmes let him alone as a result. Voirbo's capture by Mace would take far longer to make, although the inspector later heard about the incident.

I hope this is of some help to you.

Jeff

Nice summary of the Wainwright case, Jeff. Dr. Bond was involved in the Wainwright case as well. Just not as a participant of the murder and dismemberment.

Welcome, Elmore!!

[elmore 77]

Thanks Jeff,that's a lot more detail than I've seen in the press reports.On one of the threads here there is a report which tells of Bond saturating the decomposing uterus of the victim in an attempt to return it to it's former glory so as to ascertain whether the victim had borne children or not.Once again there is disagreement with other doctors,which is a regular occurence over Bond's career as an expert witness.

[elmore 77]

As a surgeon at the Lock Hospital, Bond would probably have spent years carrying out 'humiliating examinations' on the unfortunates.(what's the worst job you've ever had?)He suffered from insomnia and it appears he had pain in his nethers from birth.This may have caused him to become a morphine addict.
He hunted with hounds and was in the habit of absenting himself from the family home overnight.Tabram through Eddowes plus the Whitehall victim fall within the 1888 staghunting season.There is some similarity in the WCM with gralloching.I believe he wrote'Dear Boss',but there is more on my site...

[elmore 77]

Looking a bit more closely at this war malarky,it turns out Bond left for the war on the day peace broke out between Prussia and Austria.The 3rd Italian War of Independence was a seperate thing being fought a long way south,so a large pinch of salt might be required here.

[Mayerling]

If I am not mistaken, the third war is Garibaldi's decision (due to the hesitation of the government of King Victor Emmanuel I to confront the Pope) to get the Papal States into Italy. He does this, but it leaves a bad scar between the Roman Catholic leadership and the secular government from 1870 to 1929, when Mussolini and the then sitting Pope (Pius the X or XI) sign a concordat that allows the legal arguments against Garibaldi's seizure of Papal territory to be ended, while in return the Italian Government formally recognizes the Vatican City as a separate country.

The background for all of this has nothing to really deal with the Seven Weeks War, and Italy's fighting (on the side of Prussia) for the return of Venezia.

Jeff

[elmore 77]

Thanks Jeff,it seems that Bond's story is either him bigging himself up or the result of Chinese whispers.I did see something about a Prussian delivering a message to Garibaldi on the day Bond set out,perhaps Bond met somebody who claimed to be him,or who had taken a message to Gary Baldy(Melchester Rovers Inside Half)