The Whitehall Mystery
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On October 2, 1888, during construction of the Great Scotland Yard headquarters on Whitehall in Westminster, a body was discovered.
The female torso was discovered in a three-month old vault that made up part of the cellar. It was placed there at some point after September 29 when Richard Lawrence, a workman, had last been inside the unlocked vault[1]. The body had been wrapped in cloth and tied with string.
The torso was ruled to belong to the same victim as a right arm that had previously been discovered in the muddy shore of the River Thames on September 11. The arm had initially been labelled as a medical students' "prank".[2]
Newspapers suggested a tie to Jack the Ripper's killings of prostitutes that were occurring simultaneously, but the Metropolitan Police said there was no connection. A connection was instead suggested to an earlier killing on Pinchin Street, and a series of "torso murders" in the area.
An inquest was opened by Westminster's coroner, John Troutbeck on October 8. It determined that the woman had been "of large stature and well-nourished", and suggested that she had been approximately 24 years old. The uterus had been removed from the body. The right arm had been severed by somebody with knowledge of human anatomy, had been tourniqueted to stem blood flow, and was removed post-mortem. It was also revealed that the victim had been wearing a broché satin dress at the time of death.
Later, a reporter and his dog found a leg that was buried near the construction site, with the help of a labourer. The head and remaining limbs were never found, and the identity of the victim remains unknown.
It has become a point of trivia and irony that Scotland Yard, one of the world's best-known police agencies, is built overtop the crime scene of an unsolved murder.
[edit] References
- ^ The Murder at Westminster, October 23, 1888, The Times
- ^ http://www.geocities.com/laxaria/ripguide1.html
[edit] External links
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