The Whitehall Mystery
Birth date: Ca. 1863/1864 Attacked: ? Murdered (age): ca. 24/25 Found: September 11/October 2 1888
Complexion: Fair skin Eyes colour: ? Hair colour: Dark Height: ? Ocupation: ?
Clothes at the time of murder: A broché satin dress; a black petticoat, ?
Resting place: ?
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The Whitehall Mystery is an unsolved murder that took place in London in 1888. The dismembered remains of a woman were discovered at three different sites in the centre of the city, including the construction site of Scotland Yard, the police's headquarters. The incident belongs to the so-called Thames Torso Murders.
On 11 September 1888, river worker Frederick Moore discovered a right arm and shoulder on the muddy shore of the River Thames in Pimlico (a small area within Central London in the City of Westminster). ‘The Aberdeen Free Press' broke the story on Wednesday 12th September 1888:-
“.... About twenty minutes to one yesterday afternoon, a man named Frederick Moore, employed at Messrs Ward’s timber yard, Grosvenor Road, had his attention drawn to a curious looking object in the mud on the banks of the River Thames immediately opposite where he was working.
Moore procured a ladder, and descended to the bank below the wharf.
On approaching the object, he was startled to find that it was a human arm. It was partly wedged between some timber in the wood dock belonging to Messrs Chappell.
Moore’s first thought was to secure the ghastly object, so that it might not be carried away by the tide or current, and this objective he assured by tying it to baulk of timber with some string which he had in his pocket.
He then carefully examined the immediate vicinity, but, failing to find any more human remains, he took up the arm and carried it to the embankment, and there he handed it over to the care of Police Constable James, who obtained newspaper from a neighbouring public-house, and, having wrapped the arm, which had already attracted the morbid curiosity of a rapidly gathering crowd, he conveyed it to Gerald Row Police Station.
Inspector Adams, of the B Division, at once took charge of the case, and his first care, after communicating the discovery to Scotland Yard, was to send for Dr Neville, of Pimlico Road and Sloane Street, the nearest medical man, who soon arrived at the police station and made a most careful examination of the remains.
He had no difficulty in deciding that the arm was that of a well-formed, tall, and well-nourished young woman, probably about 25 years of age.
It had been cut off at the shoulder with some sharp instrument, and the question at once naturally suggested itself – Is this the work of a professional anatomist or of a murderer?
Dr Neville did not feel called upon to express a positive opinion either way, but he could not deny that the work had been neatly done.
Some skill, too, had been shown in the manner in which the limb had been removed from the trunk of the body, but the handiwork was scarcely good enough for a person acquainted with the principles of anatomy... It is possible that the arm may have been placed where it was found by some medical student or another practical joker, but this view is not shared by the authorities.
Inquiries are, however, being made at the various hospitals and private medical schools, the result of which can scarcely be made known until today.” Also ‘The Times' newspaper had initially suspected that the arm was placed in the water as a medical students' prank.
The police continued to search the river for the missing trunk of the body over the next few weeks, but to no avail. Then, ‘The Leicester Daily Post', on Saturday, 29the September, 1888, published the following report about another gruesome find:
“Yesterday morning, at about half-past seven o’clock, a horrible discovery was made in Southwark [Central London], which tallies with the late discovery at Pimlico.
It would appear that a lad was walking along the Lambeth-road [Southwark], and passing the Blind School, which has a garden protected by railings, he noticed a curiously-shaped paper parcel, which was lying on the grass just inside the railings.
He managed to obtain possession of the parcel, and, upon opening it, to his horror, he found it to contain the arm of a woman.
It was somewhat decomposed and had lime thrown over it.
The attention of a policeman of the L division was immediately called, and he took the limb to the Lambeth Police station, in the Kennington-lane.
A bricklayer named Jim Moore said to a reporter:- At about a quarter past seven o’clock yesterday morning, I was walking along Lambeth-road when I saw a boy pick up a parcel through the railings which surround the Blind School.
He was opening it, when I went up and saw the arm of a young woman, which had been put in lime.
The licenced shoeblack, who stands at the corner of a public house which faces the Blind School, said:- Seeing some people round a parcel which had been fished out of the garden, I went over. The parcel lay opened, and I saw the arm of a woman which had been cut from the body.
It was decomposed and had been laid in lime. The fingers were clutched.”
On 2 October 1888, during construction of the Metropolitan Police's new headquarters, to be known as Scotland Yard, on the Victoria Embankment near Whitehall in Westminster, a worker found a parcel containing human remains. The female torso was discovered in a three-month-old vault that made up part of the cellar. ‘The Western Daily Press’ reported the story in its edition of Wednesday, 3rd October, 1888:-
“Another ghastly discovery was made in London this afternoon.
About twenty past three o’clock, a carpenter, named Frederick Wildborn, employed by Messrs J. Grover and Sons, builders, of Pimlico, who are the contractors for the new Metropolitan Police headquarters on the Embankment, was working on the foundation when he came across a neatly done up parcel, which was secreted in one of the cellars.
Wildborn was in search of timber when found the parcel, which was tied with paper, and measured about two and a half feet long by about two feet in width.
It was opened, and the body of a woman, very much decomposed, was found carefully wrapped in a piece of cloth, which is supposed to be a black petticoat.
The trunk was minus the head, both arms, and both legs, and presented a ghastly spectacle.
The officials of the works were immediately apprised of the discovery, and the police were fetched.
Dr. [Thomas] Bond, the divisional surgeon for the A Division, and several other medical gentlemen [including his assistant, Dr. Hibberd] were communicated with, and subsequently examined the remains, which were handed over to the care of some police officers, who were told off to see that it was disturbed.
From what can be ascertained, the conclusion has been arrived at by the medical men that these remains are those of the woman whose arms have recently been discovered in different parts of the metropolis... the arm, together with the one found in the grounds of the Blind Asylum, Lambeth Road last week, belong to the trunk discovered today, for it is stated that the limbs appear to have been taken from the body found this afternoon in anything but a skilful manner... The prevailing opinion is that to place the body where it was found, the person conveying it must have scaled the 8-foot hoarding which encloses the works, and, carefully avoiding the watchmen who are on duty by night, have dropped it where it was found.”
The body was placed there at some point after 29 September when Richard Lawrence, a workman, had last been inside the unlocked vault. The body had been wrapped in cloth, possibly a black petticoat, and tied with string. The torso was matched by police surgeon Dr. Thomas Bond to the previously-found arm and shoulder. He explained at the October 9th edition of the 'Daily news': “...the woman was of mature development – undoubtedly over 24 or 25 years of age. It appeared that she was full fleshed, well nourished, with a fair skin and dark hair. The appearances went to prove that deceased had never borne, or at any rate had never suckled, a child. The date of death as far as could be judged, was from six weeks to two months before the examination. The body had not been in the water. I examined an arm that was brought to the mortuary, and I found that it accurately fitted the trunk. The hand was long and appeared to be very well shaped. Apparently it was the hand of a person not used to manual labour. All the cuts on the trunk seemed to have been made after death. There was nothing to indicate the cause of death, though as the inside of the heart was pale and free from clots, it probably arose from haemorrhage or fainting. From a series of measurements we took we came to the conclusion that the woman was about 5ft. 8in.in height [173 cm]".
On 17 October 1888, a reporter, Jasper Waring, used a Spitsbergen dog named Smoker, with the permission of the police and the help of a labourer, to find a left leg cut above the knee that was buried near the construction site. The head and remaining limbs were never found, and the identity of the victim remains unknown.
An inquest was opened by Westminster's coroner, John Troutbeck, on 8 October, at the Sessions-house, Broadway, Westminster. Inspector Marshall represented the police authorities. The uterus had been removed from the body. The right arm had been severed by someone 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. The dress had been manufactured in Bradford, England, from a pattern estimated as three years old. Pieces of newspaper found with the remains were from the Echo of 24 August and an issue of the Chronicle of unknown date. Although the cause of death was unknown, the victim had not suffocated or drowned; besides the uterus being absent, the left lung had severe pleurisy; the heart was healthy and the right lung, liver, stomach, kidneys and spleen were normal.
In the Ripperologist magazine num. 133 (August 2013), in the article "In the Ripper's Shadow: The Whitehall Mystery" by Robert Clack, there's reproduced a report from the Police Gazzette of 19th October 1888 that mentioned that along with the clothing remains besides the Whitehall torso was found a piece of steel. Other newspapers reports describe this piece of steel as a 'dress improver'. Dress improvers were used to create the latest fashionable shapes and form to dresses, the second wave bustle effect had been popular in the middle to late 80s and it seems likely that is the style of dress worn by he Whitehall victim. According to The Police Gazette the steel was inside the skirt and lining that was wrapped around the torso. Most likely the victim's own clothing, used for wrapping, as her own clothing was used to parcel up sections of her body and identified by people who had seen her wearing it in life.
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TO KNOW MORE:
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Casebook website - Casebook Message boards - Casebook press report (October 9 1888) - Casebook press report (October 23 1888) - Casebook inquest - Casebook Forums (inquest) - Casebook Forums (Forensic medicine)
JTR Forums (The WhiteHall Vault) - JTR Forums (Victim’s class) - JTR Forums (Photo of Smoker the Dog) - JTR Forums - JTR Forums (Frederick Wildbore, witness) - JTR Forums (Question, connected with Whitechapel Murders?) - JTR Forums (press report The Standard) - JTR Forums (press report Chicago Daily Tribune) - JTR Forums (press report Sheffield Independent) - JTR Forums (press report The Independent) - JTR Forums (press report Dundee & Angus Courier)
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BEGG, Paul; FIDO, Martin; SKINNER, Keith (2015): The Complete Jack The Ripper A-Z - The Ultimate Guide to The Ripper Mystery.
BELL, Neil R. A. (2014): Capturing Jack The Ripper: In the Boots of a Bobby in Victorian England.
CLACK, Robert (2013): "In the Ripper's Shadow: The Whitehall Mystery" in Ripperologist, num. 113 (August).
CULLEN, Tom (1965): Autumn of terror: Jack the Ripper, his crimes and times.
LAURENCE, Kristen (2012): The Murder Stories.
TROW, Meirion James (2011): The Thames Torso Murders.