Unsolved murders in London 1884 - 1904

[Uncle Jack]

Hi there everyone. I have a request for an article I'm writing soon. It is about other unsolved London Victorian murders, around the years 1884 to 1904. Have anyone got any they can tell me about? I know all the known ones, such as the Whitechapel murders and torso victims. I'm more interested in similar style Ripper/knife murders but anything else will be welcome. I'd like to compile a list of unsolved London murders please. Also I'm looking for unsolved knife murders during this same period in Hastings and surrounding areas, if possible. Thanks in advance guys

[sdreid]

I assume that you have Annie Austin (1901) since it gets mentioned in context with JtR sometimes. You also had Amelia Jeffs in Greater London during 1890 but she was strangled, I believe - sorry but that's about all I can think of at the moment.

[GUT]

G'day Adam

You say you know all the known ones, so do you want to know about the ones no one knows about?

[The Good Michael]

There was one little boy murdered and something about the milk delivery man maybe having done it, but it was unsolved...ca 1890.

Mike

[Uncle Jack]

I really thought there would be more knife attacks than this in London....I am most surprised.

[martin wilson]

Hi Uncle Jack.

I am looking at unsolved murders in the decade 1880-1890 at the moment, I hope you don't mind if I extend your parameters a little to include those I find interesting.

MURDER AT WESTMINSTER.

Victim. Emily Novel, 32, 7 Artillery Square Westminster. 29/12.1883. between 12.30 and 1.30 a.m. Indoors at place of residence.
Cause of death. Concussion and strangulation by compression.
Arrests. Frederick Harris, unemployed carman and her live in partner. Thomas Jackson Froggat Chrispin, sailor. (both discharged)
Other. Two witnesess, Martha Duggan and Clara Hubbard saw Emily in the company of a very tall man in one press report and a man in a long dark overcoat cordrouy trousers and a felt hat dented in the centre. Duggan heard an altercation at approx 1.30 and saw the man leave staggering as though drunk.
Silk handkerchief (inquest) Silk muffler/scarf ( press reports) left behind, claret blue (plum coloured) ribbed with black and white stripes.

All the best.

[martin wilson]

14 August 1880.

Eliza Barlow, 17. servant.
Cause of death.Decapitation. found in a box.
Arrests. Anne Maria Martin, 56, of York Road Lambeth, described as eccentric in her habits, found in a state of insanity and confined at Her majesty's Pleasure.

Not unsolved, but interesting.

All the best.

[martin wilson]

MANCHESTER (Harpurhey) MURDER. 1st January 1880.

Victim. Sarah Jane Roberts 19, domestic servant at Westbourne Grove, off Rochdale Road.

Cause of Death. 5 head wounds inflected by blunt instrument.
Arrests. Robert Haild alias Thomas Wait 30, coal dealer 17 John Street Harpurhey, arrested for perjury and suspected of the murder. Discharged.
Confessions. 26/3/1880. Richard Blake, licensed pedlar. Charged at Marylebone Police Court on own confession. Scotland Yard authorities found confession to be untrue.
February 1882. Edward Lynch private 2nd Kings Own Regiment in Calioba, India. Disccharged.
June 1882. William Nightingale Thomas 33, native of Manchester, did not deny charge but said he couldn't remember what he said the night before. further information required.
February 1880 'A Repentant Sinner' Confession letter sent to editor of a newspaper in Ashton Under Lyme.
Other. Letter, signed W.Wilson Oldham road decoyed Richard Greenwood, owner out of the house leaving only his wife who was ill in bed and Sarah Jane in the house.(see Ann Hancock below).

MYSTERIOUS MURDER AT BOW. 12th January 1884.

Victim.Ann Hancock.
Cause of death. Neck wound, as if by knife which was twisted round.
Other. Decoy letter, from the inquest 'Evidently written by a woman and was to the effect that some of the deceased woman's tenants were about leaving without paying their rents'.

All the best.

[miss marple]

I know she is outside the time line but the Great Coram St murder of Harriet Buswell 27 in 1872 has certain similarities with the ripper. Harriet sometime known as Clara Burton, was a part time prostitute and theatre girl. She bought a gentleman friend back to her lodgings on Christmas Eve. She paid the landlady 9 shillings rent out of half a sovereign and received a shilling change. She had been in debt the previously few months, pawning her valuables. She took the gentleman up to her second floor back for the night. They had previously been to dinner and bought some fruit they took up to the room.An apple with a bite out was found in the room but not in Harriets stomach.
Next morning she was found on the bed with her throat cut, she was stabbed below the left ear and a wound on her windpipe large enough to put a man's hand in. The man had left and taken the key to the room.
He was described by various witnesses as a foreigner, possibly German age about 23 with three days growth of stubble,a swarthy, blotchy complexion, dark clothes, billycock hat, dark overcoat and boots.
He had taken her purse. The police were incompetent. He was never traced.

Miss Marple

[Ausgirl]

This is from 1880 - but! so interesting! Body in a barrel in a cellar, unidentified and stabbed in the heart - The Harley Street Mystery:

Professor Pepper, of St. Mary's Hospital, said he had come to the conclusion that the body was that of a woman, and measured 4ft 10ii. The age was certainly over 30--perhaps over 40. The.probable cause of death was a stab just above the heart, and a hidden knife has been discovered with which it is supposed the deed was committed.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/38260893

Reminds me of Deeming.

[Ausgirl]

Body of young girl posted in the mail.. weird one from 1883:

" distinctly recollect the 'day, Monday, December 11, as we were busy preparing for Christmas. It was about the middle or the day when a respectably-dressed man, wearing a high hat, and I should think between 30 and 40 years of age, came into the shop and brought the box, saying be wanted the parcel sent to Abbey Road, St. John's Wood. He did not seem like a working man but more like a tradesman or good business man. I could tell that by his manner. I do not believe be had carried the box far himself, as he appeared to be accompanied by a rougher sort of man, who seemed as though he had been carrying the box for the other.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article75651164

[Ausgirl]

Not a murder - but a truly weird knife attack by two women - or possibly crossdressed men - on Lady Florence Dixie, 1883.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article97519828

[jerryd]

Not a murder - but a truly weird knife attack by two women - or possibly crossdressed men - on Lady Florence Dixie, 1883.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article97519828

Thanks for posting this, Ausgirl,

Wasn't it believed to be an assassination attempt by the Irish Land League? If I remember right, she was pro Irish Home Rule and a woman's rights advocate? Her name came up in the tangled web of Oscar Wilde in some research I did awhile back. Her brother or close relative was involved in the Wilde issue somehow. I'll have to look back at my notes.

[Ausgirl]

Thanks for posting this, Ausgirl,

Wasn't it believed to be an assassination attempt by the Irish Land League? If I remember right, she was pro Irish Home Rule and a woman's rights advocate? Her name came up in the tangled web of Oscar Wilde in some research I did awhile back. Her brother or close relative was involved in the Wilde issue somehow. I'll have to look back at my notes.

Please do, Jerry.. it's all a bit gripping. I have to wonder if the killers in drag were antifeminist statement, an elaborate disguise, or maybe they just enjoyed the frocks.

[Mayerling]

This is from 1880 - but! so interesting! Body in a barrel in a cellar, unidentified and stabbed in the heart - The Harley Street Mystery:

Professor Pepper, of St. Mary's Hospital, said he had come to the conclusion that the body was that of a woman, and measured 4ft 10ii. The age was certainly over 30--perhaps over 40. The.probable cause of death was a stab just above the heart, and a hidden knife has been discovered with which it is supposed the deed was committed.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/38260893

Reminds me of Deeming.

If you can find the biography of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, called "The Scalpel of Scotland Yard" and written by Douglas Browne and E. V. Tullett, on pages 433-434, there is a discussion about a meeting of the Medico-Legal Society in London in the 1930s where a paper was read by a Dr. P. B. Burgin on "the Harley Street" Murder of 1880 (Spilsbury himself, we are reminded, was only three years old at the time of the killing).

"In 1879 the tenants of a house in that respectable thoroughfare - or, at least, their servants - began to be troubled by an unpleasant smell in the cellars. Drains were relaid, but the smell persisted. some of the cellars extended under the street pavement, and in one of these, though not until June 1880, the butler and footman discovered the body of a woman, greatly decomposed, forced head downward into a large barrel. It was estimated that the body had been in the barrel for at least two years, but why the discovery was not made earlier does not appear. The woman's age was put at between forty and forty-five. She had been stabbed in the left breast, apparently after death, for there had been little bleeding, and at some time the body had been buried in or covered with chloride of lime.

The occupants of the house had been in possession for nearly twenty years. They were accustomed to go away in the autumn, taking the domestic staff with them, the house being then left in charge of a caretaker and his wife. This couple denied ever noting a smell in the cellars. in the autumn of 1878 they had seen the barrel, before that year, it appears, it was not there. The cellar in which it stood was used only for rubbish. Vague and contradictory evidence by servants throws light on the domestic economy of large, well-to-do households in the Victorian era. The master and mistress knew and cared little of nothing about what went on in the basement, the staff, in that dark warren, did very much what it liked. It was no one's business to inspect an underground cavern used as a rubbish-dump. the difficulties in the circumstances of tracing the history of the decomposed body which had been concealed no one knew when or how proved insuperable, and the verdict at the inquest was that of murder against some person or persons unknown.

Dr. Burgin having finished his paper, the learned audience may have smiled when Spilsbury opened the discussion by observing that the association of dead bodies with Harley Street naturally suggested criminal abortion. A doctor who engaged in such practices and found himself with a corpse on his hands, would be faced with the problem confronting so many murderers - how to dispose of it. The stab in the breast, if a post-mortem wound, was probably an attempt to divert attention from the real cause of death, should the body be discovered too soon. The use of chloride of lime in mistake for quick-lime showed lack of chemical knowledge. Such an error, indeed, often committed by laymen, and the assumption that absence of bleeding after a deep stab wound would not arouse suspicion, suggests that the murderer in this case fell somewhat below the standard to be expected of a Harley Street Physician, but the unsolved mystery of 1880 leaves much good stuff for the imagination to play with - the dim street of tall houses, the brass plates glimmering in the flicker of gas-lamps, and through the autumn midnight some fashionable doctor conveying the body of his victim (and the barrel?) to its penultimate resting-place in a neighbour's cellar."

Jeff