The Mysteries of Modern London by George R. Sims

Author:George R. Sims [Sims, George R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781516919536
Google: fQMrjgEACAAJ
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2015-08-16T00:29:17+00:00

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The secret of many a mysterious disappearance lies buried in the earth, sometimes in cellars, behind brick walls, beneath the flooring of a kitchen or an outhouse, in the garden, in the farmyard. We even know that people who have disappeared mysteriously out of life may be lying securely packed and stored away in a great furniture repository.

Miss Hacker had lain in the coal-cellar that was her grave for two years before chance brought her body to light. Miss Holland might be lying now in the Moat Farm had not Dougal gone to the Bank of England to cash certain notes, the numbers of which had been forwarded to the bank authorities.

When the house of a fashionable physician in the West End of London was being re-drained some years ago, the body of a beautiful girl was discovered buried under the flooring. There was no clue to her identity, and the coroner's verdict was given on the body of "some person unknown."

But there are other ways of disposing of the bodies of people whose mysterious disappearance is due to an act of violence.

William Smith has disappeared. He leaves home in the ordinary way and never returns. There is nothing to account for his disappearance. He was in no difficulty. He was happy in his domestic circumstances. He has taken no money away with him, apparently. Every search is made for him, but no trace of him, living or dead, can be found.

But he has been murdered and buried—buried in a cemetery with the rites of the church, and there is a tombstone above his grave—only somebody else's name is on it.

This is what happened.

A certain person owed him a sum of money, or he was threatening proceedings against a certain person, or for some reason—as in the famous Northumberland Street tragedy—it was to the interest of a certain person to get him into a house and murder him.

The trap was laid. William Smith met his enemy—the enemy invited him to his house, his chambers, or his flat. A sudden blow felled the victim to the ground and killed him.

How could the body be disposed of? The clerk to a Burial Board who gave evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons explains the whole process.

To show that I am not imagining or exaggerating I will give the exact words from the report "ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 15th August and 1st September, 1893." The evidence is given on page 19 of the Select Committee's Report. "You do not want a certificate to bury a body; you can dispose of a body in the London Cemetery without any certificate at all. If any gentleman here was murdered, to put it plainly, and you had a queer undertaker to dispose of that body, he could dispose of it without any one being any the wiser."

"2343. How could he dispose of it?—I will give you an instance. Say I am an undertaker, and I have got

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