UNSOLVED MYSTERY

Evening Star, Issue 21823, 12 September 1934, Page 3

UNSOLVED MYSTERY

TRUNK TRAGEDY PARALLEL LONDON CARPET BAG CASE 9 It is the proud boast of the police who are investigating the Brighton trunk murder mystery in England that so far no trunk murderer lias escaped. Perhaps, therefore,, it is a pity (says the ‘ News Chronicle ’) that the workmen who are at present demolishing Waterloo Bridge cannot also efface the record of the unsolved mystdry of a largo carpet bag—the nineteenth century equivalent of the modern suitcase —containing human remains which was found on the bridge in 1857. A comparison of the two crimes is illuminating both from the point of view of the technique of the murderers and of the methods of crime detection used by the police of seevnty-seven years ago and to-day. Here are the facts of the forgotten murder: At 5.30 a.m. on October 10, 1857, two youths in a rowing boat found the carpet bag on the abutment of the third pier from tho Middlesex end of Waterloo Bridge. The bag was practically full of sawn-up hones of a man between forty and fifty years, which had been pickled in brine, and from which almost all tho flesh had been removed. As in the Brighton murder, both the head and hands were missing. Medical evidence showed that the victim had been stabbed before death. □BAGGED THROUGH TURNSTILE. Henry Etheridge, .the 101 l collector on the” bridge, said he remembered that shortly before midnight a woman wearing a black mantle and speaking with a gruff voice, passed through the toll with the bag. He remembered her particularly because she dragged the bag through the turnstile, causing it to revolve two quarters instead of one, and so causing the loss of a half-penny on the register. After waxing wrathful with the woman the toll collector dragged the bag out of tho turnstile for her. A long length of rope attached to the hag led to.the conclusion that the woman had lowered the bag over the bridge with the intention of letting it into the water without a splash, but that, unknown to her, it bad lodged on one of the buttresses.

Superintendent Donkin,- of Bow street, the Scotland Yard of that day, took charge of the murder hunt with great energy. GARMENTS HUNG ON LINE. , The following day the ‘ Daily News,’ which devoted a solid column and a-half of small 'type to the crime, announced: “ The whole of the machinery of the police force throughout the country has already been put into action. . . . Immediately on the discovery of the hones, information giving a description of the bag and its contents was sent to every division. In less than three hours the printed ‘ Informations ' were in the hands of the whole of the Metropolitan Police.” A detailed description of the carpet hag was issued to the newspapers on the second day of the hunt. Handicapped by not being able to publish half-tone photographs of clothing found in the carpet bag, the nineteenth century police hung the garments up on a line in the yard at Bow street, and invited public identification. _ 1 One morning between 6,000 and 7,000 people were present at the inspection, and the crowds of morbid sightseers became so great that the exhibition had to be closed. As to-day, the police came to the conclusion that the body must have been carted to its disposal in a vehicle,' and a search was made ■ for any cab which had carried a carpet bag. Again tho nineteenth century police published descriptions of missing people. As to-day, too, the names of many people were published as possible victims, only for them to come forward the following day to protest their indignation. MYSTERY NOT SOLVED. Some of tho “ more sensational "’ newspapers suggested that the remains had been placed on the bridge by medical students as a hoax “ to horrify the British' lieges an allegation which was volubly denied by the ‘ Medical Times ’ and ‘ Lancet.’ _ - When nobody came forward to identify the reniains, tho suggestion was made—as it is being made to-day—that the victim was a foreigner. But the interest in trunk murders last century was not as sustained as to-day, for while columns were devoted to the mystery for the first few days, all reference to it had disappeared within a fortnight, and a horrified British public was reading instead the latest “ intelligence ” of the Indian Mutiny.