The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse by Piu Marie Eatwell

Author:Piu Marie Eatwell [Eatwell, Piu Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781781856079
Publisher: Head of Zeus

* Over £100,000 in today’s money.

One of the most serious and cruel cases which have been brought before a Court of Justice.

MR JUSTICE GRANTHAM

with reference to the Druce–Portland case, May 1908

On Twelfth Night, 6 January 1908, the Druce–Portland case came up – this time at the Clerkenwell Police Court – for its fourteenth and last court hearing. The witnesses of the exhumation of the grave at Highgate were called immediately.

First in the stand was Mr Leslie Robert Vigers, a member of the Institute of Surveyors. He had made a careful preliminary examination of the site prior to the exhumation, and it was under his supervision that the monument had been removed. He testified that the marble slabs and York stones covering the grave had been lifted on the morning of Monday, 30 December. First to be exposed had been the coffin of Mrs Annie Druce, T. C. Druce’s second wife, resting on a floor consisting of eight York stone slabs about one and a half inches in thickness. When these slabs were raised, a vault consisting of two compartments was revealed. The coffin containing the body of Thomas Charles Druce had been lifted out of the vault. The floor of the grave was made of bricks, pointed up and whitened. In the half of the vault from which T. C. Druce’s coffin had been removed, a sample of bricks was lifted and the soil beneath tested with a crowbar, driven in as far as a man was able in two places, to see if the clay beneath had been disturbed. It was found to be quite solid: so-called ‘virgin clay’. There was no lead to be found anywhere in the vault or near the coffin. In fact it was clear, Vigers said, that the soil of the vault had not been tampered with, and that the grave and coffin appeared to have been undisturbed since 1864.

Next in the witness box came Dr Augustus Pepper, who had attended the exhumation as a medical expert along with Sir Thomas Stevenson. He had arrived at the vault at 10.20 a.m. on the morning of Monday, 30 December, to find it opened and three coffins lined up on the floor of the grave. The coffin bearing the inscription of Thomas Charles Druce was raised under his supervision. The three layers of wood, lead and inner casing of the coffin were then opened up. In the inner shell there was the shape of a human body, covered by a shroud of white cambric.

‘Was there anything over the face?’ demanded Horace Avory. The atmosphere in the police court suddenly crackled with electricity.

‘A linen handkerchief about the size of a pocket handkerchief,’ came the response.

‘Any mark on it?’

‘The initials “TCD”, and the figure “12”.’

‘And on removing the sheet in which the body was wrapped, what did you find the body to be?’

There was pause. ‘A male body, aged… ,’ came the reply.

Dr Pepper went on to estimate that the age of the body was about sixty-five to seventy-five.

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