The Chronicles of Newgate, vol. 2/2Griffiths, Arthur
History
The Chronicles of Newgate, vol. 2/2
Griffiths, Arthur
Criminals -- Great Britain; Newgate (Prison : London, England); Prisons -- England; Punishment -- Great Britain
I will close this chapter with a brief account of another murder, the
memory of which is still fresh in the minds of Londoners, although half
a century has passed since it was committed. The horror with which
Greenacre's crime struck the town was unparalleled since the time when
Catherine Hayes slew her husband. There were many features of
resemblance in these crimes. The decapitation and dismemberment, the
bestowal of the remains in various parts of the town, the preservation
of the head in spirits of wine, in the hope that the features might some
day be recognized, were alike in both. The murder in both cases was long
a profound mystery. In this which I am now describing, a bricklayer
found a human trunk near some new buildings in the Edgeware Road, one
morning in the last week of 1836. The inquest on these remains, which
medical examination showed to be those of a female, returned a verdict
of wilful murder against some person unknown. On the 7th July, 1837, the
lockman of "Ben Jonson lock," in Stepney Fields, found a human head
jammed into the lock gates. Closer investigation proved that it belonged
to the trunk already discovered on the 2nd February. A further discovery
was made in an osier bed near Cold Harbour Lane, Camberwell, where a
workman found a bundle containing two human legs, in a drain. These
were the missing members of the same mutilated trunk, and there was now
evidence sufficient to establish conclusively that the woman thus
collected piecemeal had been barbarously done to death. But the affair
still remained a profound mystery. No light was thrown upon it till,
towards the end of March, a Mr. Gay of Goodge Street came to view the
head, and immediately recognized it as that of a widowed sister, Hannah
Brown, who had been missing since the previous Christmas Day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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