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The Whitehall Mystery
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On October 2, 1888, during construction of Scotland Yard's new headquarters 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. It was placed there at some point after September 29 when Richard Lawrence, a workman, had last been inside the unlocked vault. 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".
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. The dress had been manufactured in Bradford, England with an estimated pattern date of three years old. Pieces of paper found with the remains were from the "Echo" of August 24 and an unknown date of the "Chronicle". 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; no marks were found that the victim had borne children; the heart was healthy and the right lung, liver, stomach, kidneys and spleen were normal. She had been dead from an estimated time of from six weeks to two months and had fair skin, dark hair and was not someone who was used to manual labour.
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.
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