Worse than Jack!!!!!!!!!

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  • The Station Cat
    Premium Member
    • Mar 2016
    • 641

    #1

    Worse than Jack!!!!!!!!!

    It has come to my attention that there was another set or murders even more heinous, than anything Jack achieved, which also occurred in Victorian London. I have scoured the internet trying to find any information on them, but have been unable to find anything in any great detail or indeed any books on the subject. I am referring to all the children that went missing in West Ham over a nine or ten year period, between 1881 and 1890. I'm not entirely sure how many there were, but the first appears to have been Mary Seward in 1881 and the last Amelia Jeffs in 1891. Can anyone shine any light on this for me?
  • Robert
    Commissioner
    • Feb 2008
    • 5163

    #2

    Comment

    • The Station Cat
      Premium Member
      • Mar 2016
      • 641

      #3

      Thanks Robert, but I stumbled across another webpage that listed them all, but I can't now for the life of me find it again. It started in 1881 and a couple of the victims lived in the same street, it seems!!! I'm just shocked that such a horrendous set of circumstances are so poorly documented?

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      • Robert
        Commissioner
        • Feb 2008
        • 5163

        #4
        SC, there's a discussion here :

        Comment

        • The Station Cat
          Premium Member
          • Mar 2016
          • 641

          #5
          Originally posted by Robert View Post
          Thanks again Robert. Have eventually found the website again that I was looking for

          https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoricCri...ings_18811890/

          This certainly is a really creepy case, which is touched upon in the book Rivals of the Ripper. But I am surprised that other books on the subject haven't been published.

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          • Robert
            Commissioner
            • Feb 2008
            • 5163

            #6
            Some of Jan's book is online here :

            https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...%20ham&f=false

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            • The Station Cat
              Premium Member
              • Mar 2016
              • 641

              #7
              Originally posted by Robert View Post
              Some of Jan's book is online here :

              https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...%20ham&f=false



              Interesting stuff, am curious to know whether there are any books devoted entirely to these murders?

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              • Robert
                Commissioner
                • Feb 2008
                • 5163

                #8
                Not as far as I know, SC.

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                • Harry D
                  *
                  • May 2014
                  • 3360

                  #9
                  I was only thinking of this the other day, as I read it in the 'Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper'.

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                  • The Station Cat
                    Premium Member
                    • Mar 2016
                    • 641

                    #10
                    Originally posted by Robert View Post
                    Not as far as I know, SC.

                    That really does surprise me!!!!!!!!

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                    • Mayerling
                      Superintendent
                      • Feb 2008
                      • 2762

                      #11
                      Elliott O'Donnell, a popular writer on "Ghost" tales and the paranormal in the 1930s to 1950s wrote an account in his book "Strange Disappearances" in one it's chapters. However, although it has been used by other writers (Michael Harrison bascially copied word for word a listing of the incidents in his book "In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes"), it is apparent that O'Donnell, in his zeal to show how strange the case is did not really do the incident (or it's victims full justice). On the old "Casebook" website, I wrote an account of two of the incidents, the disappearance of a boy in 1884 who was found dead at Margate, and the disappearance of Amelia Jeffs in 1890. In both cases fairly straightforward discussions showed that the boy, Wagner, was lured by a dubious character he knew into stealing a large sum of cash from his father, and subsequently dying under mysterious circumstances from a fall off a local site - a cliff - after dark (he was probably pushed by his companion); and the young Ms Jeffs was the victim of a sex crime (strangled after being molested while on a supposed date) by one of three males (a son, his father, or his grandfather) and deposited in the newly built house (in a cupboard) by one or all of them. In both cases evidence could not be brought directly on the chief suspect, so they "got away with it" from a legal point of view - but the public generally remained suspicious of them.

                      I suspect this is the case concerning all of these incidents in the list. I'd use O'Donnell as a reference with great care due his propensity to hide details.

                      Jeff

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                      • Ginger
                        Sergeant
                        • Jan 2012
                        • 780

                        #12
                        The West Ham incidents were even discussed in the House of Commons: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/c...ate-mysterious
                        - Ginger

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