The Battle of Waterloo took place on June 18, 1815. The actual battle lasted about nine hours. There are varying estimates of the combined death toll of all of the soldiers lost that day, but the most often quoted number is 50,000 men.
With so violent a battle and so high a cost, it is little wonder there are stories of those whose spirits never left that blood-soaked field. Interestingly enough, those of Flemish descent whose ancestors fought in the battle or whose ancestors lived in the area during the battle, are said to have an innate and often undesired ability to see the specters who return to the battlefield to relive the fight or who come in search of someone or something they left behind in death.
Local guides who give tours of the battlefield during the day often refuse to step foot there after dark. Locals who live in the area of the Hougomont farm, the museum, and the battlefield usually give the area a wide berth at night.
Some of the more well-known legends and sightings include:
A French soldier seen wandering the battlefield in the moonlight searching for his fallen comrades. More than one visitor has reported seeing him, especially near the Hougoumont Farm.
Another famous ghost is The Lady in White, thought to be the spirit of a woman who tended the wounded and dying soldiers. She is often seen near the Mont-Saint-Jean Farm which was used as a hospital during and after the battle. She is sometimes seen on the battlefield still in search of wounded soldiers to tend.
Locals often claim to hear the sounds of drums, battle cries, horses and cannon fire at midnight as if the battle never ended.
For an interesting account of a skeptic perhaps converted by his own experience check out this intriguing blog post.
One of the items on my bucket list is to climb to the top of the Lion’s Mound at midnight and allow the profundity of that place to fill me.
By Jean-Pol GRANDMONT – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11569789
I for one do not find it hard to believe a place where so much sudden and violent death took place still retains the spiritual energy so much agony and sorrow produced. As the Duke of Wellington said:
“Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained”
To immerse yourself in the non-military, military, and very human side of the Battle of Waterloo through first-hand accounts I humbly suggest our own Kristine Hughes’s book Waterloo Witnesses. The accounts she has collected, discusses, and weaves together to create a picture of the lives, loves, hopes, fears, triumphs, and tragedies of the people who actually lived this momentous point in history will allow you to see the hearts, minds, and souls that will remind us of the price of war and of the spirits of those to whom we owe so very much. Perhaps some of the very people whose personal accounts she has recorded still walk the battlefield in search of what they lost and what they gave to free the world of tyranny.
Perhaps, though, the very best words ever written about that momentous campaign are the first-person accounts recorded as events unfolded. It is these vivid accounts that Kristine Hughes has collected together in order to convey the hopes, fears and aspirations of their authors. They inject the story of the battle with a level of humanity that reclaims it from the realm of legend and restores it to the people who witnessed it.
The Prospect of Whitby is one of London’s oldest pubs and it is believed to be the oldest riverside pub on the Thames. There has been a pub on this site since 1520 which means it existed during the reign of Henry VIII. In fact, the original flagstone floor is still visible in the pub today. Four hundred year old craftsmanship endures.
The four hundred year old flagstone floor and pewter bar make the Prospect of Whitby one of the most authentic historic pubs in London.
The first pub on the site was called the Pelican. Because of its proximity to the river it quickly became a den of cutthroats, pirates, thieves, highwaymen, and many other unsavory denizens of the area. Larger ships had to berth in the middle of the river and goods were ferried to shore in smaller boats by men called lightermen. This made it easy for criminals to steal from the ships, and The Pelican often served as a base for these felons to disperse their stolen goods. In spite of the name on the sign, because of the constant nefarious activity the tavern eventually became known as the Devil’s Tavern. Of course, with this sort of clientele the local prostitutes congregated here as well.
Naturally with the large criminal contingent in attendance, the tavern also claims its proximity to the execution dock used to hang those condemned to death by the Admiralty Courts. To this day there is a scaffold and hanging noose outside the tavern. Wapping Old Stairs next to the tavern was where some of those sentenced to death – usually pirates – were chained to posts to await the incoming tide and death by drowning.
Like the Town of Ramsgate pub, the Prospect of Whitby was a favorite of the Hanging Judge George Jeffries (1645-1689) (see the Town of Ramsgate post. https://numberonelondon.net/2021/05/historic-pub-crawl-town-of-ramsgate/) Once he began to frequent the establishment, the criminal element moved their activity elsewhere, or at least conducted their activities out of his sight. He had a special window built in the tavern that overlooked the execution dock so he could watch those whom he had condemned die. To this day people have reported seeing a man’s face gazing out the window where Jeffries used to sit. In an interesting side note, Jeffries supposedly had the bodies of those hanged dumped into the Thames. The body snatchers hid out in boats along the river’s edge to fish out the bodies and sell them to local medical schools.
The most famous criminal hanged at the execution dock at the Prospect of Whitby was Captain William Kidd. Ironic, as the Scottish sea captain was originally appointed by the Crown to hunt down pirates. He discovered piracy was much more profitable than hunting down pirates. He did quite well for a while. Unfortunately, in 1698 he captured The Quedagh, which was sailing under a French pass. The captain, however, was an Englishman and the rich cargo Kidd took was property of the East India Company. Kidd was eventually captured and brought back to London where he was sentenced to death for piracy and for the murder of one of his own crewmen (in 1697) who had dared to cross him.
It took three tries to execute Captain Kidd. The first two ropes broke. The third one held and once he was dead his body was dipped in tar and hung by chains on the banks of the Thames as a warning to other pirates.
After a fire in the early nineteenth century the tavern was rebuilt and renamed. As the owners had tried everything to disassociate their tavern from its dangerous reputation, for a while they had removed all signage. Those who wished to direct someone to the tavern would say “You want the tavern across from the Prospect of Whitby. The Prospect of Whitby was a collier that berthed next to the tavern. The ship hauled coal from Newcastle on Tyne to London. Eventually the directions were shortened to the Prospect of Whitby and the owners of the newly rebuilt establishment decided to adopt the name permanently. Much more amiable a name than The Devil’s Tavern. Even with the new name a few of the tavern’s more lucrative activities continued. The cock fighting pit and the bare knuckle boxing arena were in use well into the nineteenth century.
Of course the pub claims its more upstanding celebrity visitors as well. The diarist Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) was said to have had supper at the tavern quite frequently. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was known to visit as well. The artists J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and James Abbott MacNeill Whistler (1834-1903) both visited and made sketches of views from the pub.
Is the pub haunted, you ask?
According to customers from the eighteenth century forward, the Prospect of Whitby is the grand central station of riverside hauntings. To name just a few:
Supposedly one is often accosted walking to the pub at night by the waterlogged ghosts of the men hanged or drowned at the execution dock in search of their bodies taken by the body snatchers. Other similar ghosts are said to be in search of Judge George Jeffries to exact revenge.
The ghost of a young woman dressed in a doublet, breeches, and smoking a pipe is often seen sitting in the dark corners of the pub watching guests drink. Supposedly, she was a moll cutpurse – a woman who would sidle up to unsuspecting (translation:drunk and in search of feminine company) men and cut their purses from their belts. She is believed to have been caught by one of her marks before she could get away and the gentleman beat her to death in the back of the tavern. One wonders if she is visiting the pub these days in search of her next mark.
Oh, and remember that fire in the early nineteenth century? The cobblestone streets around the tavern all but guarantee it is shrouded in fog at night. The cobblestones retain heat and the cold night air pulls that heat out as fog. The fog was even thicker in the nineteenth century when horse and foot traffic kept the roads heated at all times. As a result it was not unusual to see shapes, but nothing clearly, if one happened to stroll by the tavern after closing time. However, people began to say they saw lights in the Prospect of Whitby long after the owners had closed up and gone to bed. Not just lights, but lights enough to see clear through the pub to the river. And in those lights they saw a figure moving about the tavern. A figure very like that of Captain William Kidd. Eventually the owners decided they did not want people coming to the pub after closing in an attempt to see the mysterious figure. So one night they decided to leave the lights on in the tavern. Big mistake. That very night a fire broke out in the back of the tavern and burned nearly to the execution dock. If not for the newly inaugurated fire brigade the fire might have spread throughout the dockside buildings. Needless to say once the tavern was restored the lights were left out after closing. Just in case. A vengeful Captain Kidd is not to be trifled with.
These days there is no need to imagine what the pub might have looked like when pirates, cutthroats, and thieves occupied the tables there. From the rickety stairs to the stone-flagged floors to the crooked doors and heavy rum flagons the Prospect of Whitby looks very much as it did then. For a trip back in time to the swashbuckling days of yore, this pub is definitely worth a visit. Just pay attention to sudden chills and the hairs on the back of your neck!
Anyone who knows the Brits knows at least these two things.
1. No one does ceremony as well or for as many events as them.
2. No one assigns specific places to specific events as well as they do.
What else might account for the existence of specific routes known as corpse roads recorded from as early as the medieval era? In fact, some research indicates they might well have been assigned and traveled from a time as far past as the Neolithic period. But more about that later.
These paths were known by a variety of names and whilst many are lost and long forgotten, some are still apparent and even marked by signs. Their names included:
Corpse road Burial road
Coffin road Lyke road or way
Bier road Funeral way
Lych road or way Church way
NOTE: Lych is the Old English word for corpse.
Now that we have the “what” out of the way, let us discuss the “why.”
Up until the late 16th to early 17th centuries the larger mother churches in England reserved the right to conduct burials for themselves. And for a very good reason. Burials brought in money to the church’s coffers. As a result, many people who died in rural villages or any distance from a mother church had to be conveyed to these churches for a proper burial. Most of these people were poor. Many did not own a horse or a cart, and if they did, these equipages could not be spared for the long trip to one of these churches. They had work to do at home.
Therefore, more often than not, the dead person had to be carried by men from home or from their home village great distances on foot to be afforded the aforementioned proper burial. Generally the party consisted of eight men who worked in teams of four in a procession that might consist of simply those eight men or might include those members of the family and even friends who could afford to take the time to attend. However, most of the time, the body was conveyed separately over the corpse road whilst the mourners traveled a more direct route.
It is important to remember that quite a few people during these eras could not afford a coffin. Many villages and most mother churches had a coffin that was used to convey a body from home to the church. It would then be left at the church for the next person to use. This multi-use casket could be made of wood or could be made of wicker, a large human-sized wicker basket with two handles on each side. In these cases, bodies were buried in shrouds.
A few logistics when it comes to corpse roads…
Corpse roads could be as short as five or six miles and as long as ten to sixteen miles. The corpse road from Keld to Grinton in Yorkshire, known as the Swaledale Corpse Way is every bit of sixteen miles.
Swaledale Corpse Way – North Yorkshire
Corpse roads were not a strictly British tradition. There were and are corpse roads all over Europe. Most of these, however, are lost to history. As late as the 19th century Ordinance Survey maps in Britain still documented 42 of these funerary ways.
Corpse road in Huntingstile, Grasmere, Cumbria
The directions and locations of corpse roads were determined by a few factors. Some of these factors were practical. Some, frankly, were deeply seated in tradition and superstition.
Practicalities
1. The corpse roads tended to go immediately away from the village. No one wanted a corpse carried by their front door.
2. There was a bit of folklore about corpse roads that declared any road by which a corpse traveled became a public right of way. There is no legal evidence to support this, but even 19th century landowners still posted signs that forbade any funeral processions from crossing their property. This meant large swaths of land were removed from the possible route of a corpse road.
3. There were two schools of thought on the actual path of a corpse road. Some parts of Britain held the belief that spirits of the dead could only travel in a straight line. Therefore routes were planned in a straight line from a particular village to the mother church in order to ensure the spirit traveled with the corpse all the way to the burial ground. They didn’t want him hanging about in fields or worse in taverns along the way because he got lost and couldn’t find his way to his own funeral.
There was also a theory that a coffin sterilized the land along the way it was carried because the dead were forced to walk that path until their soul was purged. Those who believed this made certain the corpse road was a straight route which meant the way passed over whatever terrain was in the way in order to achieve that straight line.
The other school of thought was that since spirits could only travel in a straight line, the corpse road needs must be a meandering path to ensure the spirit did not find its way back home. This accounts for some of the wandering, twisting turning aspects of some corpse roads. As much as one might love the dearly departed, one certainly did not want him showing up at the supper table two weeks after the funeral.
The tradition of the straight line is rooted in those ancient burial routes mentioned at the beginning of this post. Neolithic earthen avenues called cursuses linked burial mounds. In fact, these routes ran for miles, and as seen especially from the air are straight, or straight in segments, connecting funerary sites. There is even one just outside Stonehenge.
Neolithic cursus to Stonehenge
4. In aid of keeping that straight line route, corpse roads passed over every sort of terrain imaginable with little to no thought as to the effort it might take to haul a corpse over said terrain. A section of the Pennine Way follows the historic corpse road from Garrigill to Kirkland over Alston Moor and over Cross Fell, a height of 893 meters. In the 16th century, one funeral party, overcome by a snowstorm, reputedly abandoned the coffin on the fell for a fortnight.
Cross Fell Corpse Road
5. All corpse roads were set to cross water at some point in the journey. Whether it be a stream, a brook, or a river the path had to take the party carrying the corpse over water. Why? Because spirits supposedly could not cross over water. Once the body crossed water there was no way a spirit could find his or her way back home.
6. Routes often were extended in order to avoid passing over farmers’ fields. This was due to the belief that should a corpse pass across a farmer’s field that field would be soured and never again produce good crops. Anyone traveling in the UK today will often see an unploughed strip of land along the edge of fields wide enough for two men to walk abreast. These strips were left deliberately so that the corpse road could travel along the fields without crossing and souring the land.
Superstitions
As one can perhaps imagine, there are a great many superstitions associated with corpse roads. Some had explanations. Some defied explanation, but they were held steadfastly by those who were raised to believe them. Which accounts for some of the odd quirks associated with traveling and reaching one’s final destination on a corpse road.
1. Throughout the route, the corpse is carried feet first to the graveyard. In other words the body must be carried with the feet pointed away from the departed’s home. Why? To prevent him from finding his or her way home.
2. The coffin was never to be placed on the ground for the coffin-bearers to rest. Why? Apparently there was a chance if the coffin touched the earth the spirit of the departed might wander off. Therefore, flat stones, known as coffin rests or corpse crosses, were established along the corpse road so the bearers might place the coffin there and rest before continuing on their way. This was often where the team of bearers would switch out so as not to tire themselves along the way.
These coffin stones were usually found in lonely places away from any houses or villages. Many had their own legends attached to them. The one found on the corpse road between Keld and Muker in Yorkshire lies on Kisdon Fell just over Ivelet Bridge. It is said to be haunted by the ghost of a headless black dog. No explanation. Just a headless black dog hanging about the coffin rest.
Coffin Rest GrasmereLamplugh Coffin Rest
As you can see, the coffin rest came in a variety of styles, but they all served the same purposes – to give the bearers a rest and to keep the departed from wandering off on the way to his or her funeral.
3. The corpse candle is another tradition associated with the corpse road, especially in Wales, the land of my ancestors. This was a mysterious light that supposedly was seen traveling a corpse road the night before a death. The light would be seen traveling from the churchyard to the front door of the person destined to die and then back to the churchyard. This was the spirit of the soon to be departed tracing the route they were about to take.
The light would travel close to the ground and disappear into the ground where the burial was to take place. Some said the lights were the spirits of the dead trying to lead travelers astray. Other legends declared them to be the spirits of unbaptized or stillborn babies caught between heaven and hell.
4. Crossroads were considered the most dangerous part of a corpse road. According to superstition, crossroads were where the veil between this world and the next and this world and the underworld was at its thinnest. It was believed the devil could appear at a crossroads. Crosses were placed at these intersections (hence the name) to protect travelers from the devil and any wayward spirits who were lost on their way to the graveyard. Other talismans called witch balls were also hung at crossroads. A witch ball consisted of a bottle or enclosed glass vessel which contained threads and charms. The threads were there specifically to ensnare passing spirits thus trapping any evil or negative energy and keeping the way safe for the living.
The final stop
Once the bearers reached the mother church there was one last tradition that marked the end of the corpse road. The bearers would take their burden to a specific door or gate at the church and wait for the clergy to come and assume responsibility for the body. Members of the clergy and their staff would be in charge of making final preparations to the body for burial. Here was also where the community coffin would be left for the next person in need of it.
These doors were often called leper doors and the gate was called the lych gate. (Remember, lych was the Old English word for corpse.) Again these gates might be very simple or quite elaborate. My first encounter with a lych gate was in the village of Kelsale in Suffolk where I lived for three years as a child.
Lychgate Church of St. Peter and St. Mary Kelsale, Suffolk, England
For more about lych gates check out our earlier post on the subject.
As stated at the beginning of this post, many of these corpse roads are still known and visible today. In fact, hikers include these pathways on their lists of places to hike throughout the UK. There are, in fact, road signs that will direct hikers to these roads when possible. Some of the most popular are:
Ambleside to Grasmere, Cumbria
Black Mountain, Carmarthenshire
Lych Way, Devon
Coffin Route, Outer Hebrides
Buttermere Corpse Road, Cumbria
Kintail, Highland
Garrigill to Cross Fell, Cumbria
Swaledale Corpse Way, North Yorkshire
The obligatory ghost story
Of course there are ghost stories aplenty associated with nearly every corpse road in England. Along the Elksdale Corpse Road there is the story of the family who made the mistake of carrying their departed son on horseback to the mother church. Crossing Burnmoor the mist was thick and eerie. Something spooked the horse which took off with the coffin and body strapped on his back. The party searched and searched but found neither the horse nor the son.
The news of what had happened to her son’s corpse so devastated his mother that she collapsed and died. Low and behold, the funeral party had not learned their lesson. The horse on which they conveyed her body took fright and bolted as well. In their search for her they found the son’s horse, alive, body and coffin still strapped to his back. However, no matter how far and wide they looked they never found the mother or her horse.
To this day there are reports of a ghostly horse with a coffin strapped to its back appearing out of nowhere to frighten the wits out of anyone foolish enough to follow the Elksdale Corpse Road.
Some advice? Don’t hike the corpse roads at night. Even the locals won’t do that. Just in case.
Yorkshire Moors
“Now it is that time of night, that the graves all gaping wide, every one lets forth his sprite, in the church-way paths to glide.”
This post is a continuation of the previous post on body disposal in Regency England, For perspective one might want to read through Part One of this series again.
Burial Disposal
Murderers likely buried their victims during the Regency for some of the same reasons murderers bury their victims today. Some did so out of a need to always know where the body was. Some did so out of expediency. It might have been the quickest method to hand at the time. Some did so in order to prevent a body from ever being found. During the Regency there were advantages to burial, especially for those who lived in rural areas. Most people were buried in cemeteries during the Regency. However, it was not uncommon for bodies to be buried on family farms or estates. Poor families buried their dead where they could. A body discovered and dug up in a wooded area, a field or other lonely place might simply be reburied unless the person discovering it thought the body was there as a result of murder.
The degree to which burial destroyed evidence varied. England’s colder weather tended to preserve bodies in the ground save for in the summer months. A laborer, or one who did a great deal of manual labor, was more likely to choose burial as digging was an activity with which they were familiar and at which they were good. Bodies were buried in a variety of spots in the cities. A cemetery that contained open mass graves was the perfect place to dispose of a murder victim so long as those who worked in association with these graves didn’t check too carefully. As horrible as it may sound bodies were found buried beneath the floors of houses and businesses. They were buried in cellars as well. One must remember, especially in cities where people lived in close proximity the smell of a decaying body simply added to the regular stench.
Some things to remember about burying a murder victim during the Regency:
(1) There were no cadaver dogs during the Regency. However, one would be foolish to assume dogs could not find a body. As early as the 16th century dogs were used to track fugitives, enemies, and even runaway wives.
(2) Lime was used in cemeteries in mass graves to speed the decomposition process and to hide the odor. Some murderers in Regency England used lime for pretty much the same reason. However, there were no guarantees and lime took time to get the job done.
(3) Burial did destroy some evidence, but not all. And there were men who could examine the soil from a burial site and match it to the clothes and shoes worn by the murderer.
(4) Burial at a crossroads was less likely to attract attention to the grave. Suicides were not allowed to be buried in cemeteries until the Burial of Suicides Act of 1823.
(5) There were other chemicals available to murderers to aid in the destruction of a body. These were usually used by more educated murderers with the knowledge and the access, although people in trades where lye and other such chemicals were used also had access and understanding. Most of the time these chemicals were used in conjunction with burial as few people had somewhere to store a body long enough for it to be destroyed by chemicals.
A few case studies of burial of a body during the Regency era
1827 — In 1827 in Polstead, Suffolk Maria Martin was supposed to meet William Corder at a local landmark, the Red Barn, so the two might run off to Ipswich be married. Her family became concerned even after they received letters from her saying all was well. A year later, Maria’s stepmother finally persuaded local authorities that the dreams she’d been having of Maria’s murder had to be true. She’d dreamed off and on all year that Corder had murdered Maria and buried her in the Red Barn. Authorities dug up the floor of the barn and found Maria’s body, identified by some of the clothes she’d last been seen wearing. She’d been shot and buried so deeply no on suspected until her stepmother’s persistence paid off. Corder was tracked down in London, where he had actually married, and returned to Bury St. Edmunds for trial. Unfortunately, he’d kept the red neckerchief Maria was wearing when she went off to meet him. He’d removed it from her dead body before he’d buried her. He was tried and hanged in Bury St. Edmunds in 1828. If one goes to all the trouble of burying a victim one might want to bury all of the victim’s clothing with them.
1849 — This particular burial was part of a case sensationalized by the press and the murder ballad writers as The Bermondsey Horror. On 17 August, 1849 two men investigating a missing person, one Patrick O’Connor, went into the home of the missing man’s friends, Frederick and Maria Manning, where O’Connor was supposed to have had dinner on the last night he was seen alive. The couple were not at home, but in inspecting the premises, the investigators noticed a damp spot in the kitchen floor where it appeared flagstones and mortar had recently been replaced. They pulled up the flagstones, dug up the dirt beneath them, and came upon a man’s toe. Once they uncovered the entire body they discovered a middle-aged man, naked, face down, with his legs drawn up behind him and tied with a piece of clothesline. There was also a bloody dress in the grave. Lime had been tossed in over the body, and the face was partially decomposed, but they were able to identify the man by his false teeth. These investigators had learned a bit about investigating a murder as they left the body there and secured the scene. They searched the house and removed items that belonged to the victim. The next day the body was removed from the grave, washed, and the post-mortem was performed on the kitchen table. The victim had been shot and beaten about the head. The Mannings were tracked down, tried, and hanged together. (We will be looking at this case again in other lessons.) Burial of one’s victim in one’s own home can work, but not if one’s home was the last place the victim is rumored to have visited. And leaving one’s own clothing and the victim’s identifiable false teeth in the grave is likely not a good idea either.
So you’ve committed a murder in Regency England. Now what? You could just leave the body there and run. But if you really want a chance at escaping the hangman’s noose you might want to dispose of the body. Let’s look at some possibilities.
STEP ONE: BODY DISPOSAL
Louisa Cornell
Body disposal during the Regency era was just as varied and contained just as many problems for both the murderer and the person dedicated to solving the murder as it does today. The advantage for the person set to solve the murder during the Regency was the lack of a constant stream of television shows instructing a murderer on how to dispose of a body. The majority of murder victims during the Regency were found where the murder actually occurred with no attempt made to hide or otherwise manipulate the body to get rid of evidence. That does not mean, however, that some murderers during this era did not come up with some rather unique ways to dispose of a body.
Some things to know about Regency Era crime investigation
(1) Once a murder victim was discovered, no matter where the body might be, there was a good chance the body would be moved, covered, or otherwise tampered with before law enforcement and / or the coroner arrived. Wounds might be bound. Clothing might even be removed.
(2) Should the body be found at a place of business, there was little to no chance the business would close until the body was removed. Business was business and the added cache of a murder victim lying about brought in more customers. Regency era people were above all realists.
(3) Depending on where the body was found and how long it took for the coroner to arrive with instructions, the location might become a tourist attraction with some enterprising soul selling tickets to view the body. As a result, items could be stolen or sold from the body before anyone had the chance to collect them as evidence. And the crime scene would be destroyed as well. Yes, especially in large cities like London or Edinburgh this could happen in a matter of minutes.
(4) Should a body be found other than in the victim’s home there is the possibility the body might be carried home by friends and family. Often this meant the body was stripped, bathed, bound and redressed before the coroner and law enforcement arrived. This did not happen often, but it did happen. This was more likely to happen in rural locations.
(5) Often a body that was hidden in some way made things easier for the coroner and law enforcement. A body that was hidden was last touched by the murderer, not a cast of thousands.
(6) However hidden bodies presented an investigator with its own problems. There were no tests to ascertain time of death. Wounds were often obliterated by the process of disposal and decomposition. Identification was more difficult, but not impossible, although there were no such things as dental records per se.
Water Disposal
Water disposal of murder victims was quite common during the Regency era. In the modern age water disposal is used to destroy evidence and in the hope the body might never resurface. In the Regency era, the idea of water destroying evidence didn’t really come into play in the average murder. However, it would be foolish to assume there were not murderers smart enough to know that water might help.
The Thames was notorious for the number of bodies that showed up floating in its waters. Riverside and dockside murder victims were often discovered in the Thames. Unwanted babies often ended in the Thames as well. Most of these murder victims came under the jurisdiction of the Thames River Police (established 1798.) Their normal duties involved stopping thievery from ships and in the transfer of goods from ships to the docks. They covered a large area, and if a body was found in the river and it was closer to their offices and jurisdiction they would investigate. More about them when we discuss who investigates a murder.
Bodies were also disposed of in rivers outside of London, as well as lakes and ponds as well. If a body was found in a body of water, the investigator would be safe to assume the murder had taken place either in the body of water or nearby. Transporting a body a long distance away in order to dispose of it was not an easy thing to do. Whether by horse or some sort of carriage or cart, the idea of spending time with the body of someone one had killed held little appeal for a variety of reasons—superstitions, in most communities a stranger would be noticed, worse in most communities everyone knew everyone, unless a person knew to weigh a body down there was no guarantee the body would sink before the murderer risked being caught nearby.
Bodies might also be disposed of in a well or cistern. Of course, if the well or cistern were one in use by a family, a community, or a business a body would foul the water and might be discovered all the more quickly. Good for the investigator. Bad for the murderer. No fun for the people who used the well for water either.
Some things unique to water disposal during the Regency Era
(1) A murder victim pulled from a body of water might be considered a victim of accidental drowning. Even with obvious wounds, depending on the body of water, the coroner and coroner’s jury might decide a murder is simply a drowning.
(2) This would be more likely in a rural setting than in a larger city. By the Regency era most of the physicians who practiced in the cities and / or kept up with the latest medical treatises knew how to ascertain if a victim was dead before they went into the water. Even in a rural setting where there was a competent physician families might object to the test to discover if their loved one had drowned as it involved dissecting the body at least enough to remove the lungs and float them in water. If they floated the person was dead when they went into the water and likely ended up in the water after they were murdered. If they sank, they were full of water which indicated a person was alive when they went into the water. Then the coroner and coroner’s jury had only to decide if the drowning was an accident or murder.
(3) Water disposal could erase a great deal of evidence from a body. However, the method of putting the body into the water might provide evidence of its own. People seldom considered that weighing a body down with items from their home, their farm, or a location associated with them might lead the authorities back to them.
(4) Any detritus associated with a specific body of water found on a suspect’s person or in a suspect’s home might lead the authorities back to them.
(5) Very few anatomists were able to distinguish between possible murder wounds and wounds brought about by the predation of aquatic animals.
(6) Unless a body was found in clothes or wore items of jewelry that could be identified by friends and / or family some murder victims found in water might never be positively identified.
(7) The longer a body stayed in the water the more difficult it was to determine time of death, cause of death, and identity. During the Regency era this level of decomposition was of a much shorter time than today.
An interesting method of discovering a body in the water.
An ancient method for finding a body in the water, which was still in use well into the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the use of quicksilver or mercury as we know it today. The quicksilver was inserted into a loaf of bread and floated as nearly as possible to where the body was supposed to have gone into the water. According to the superstition, the body would rise to meet the quicksilver. There is no scientific evidence to back this theory up. However, there are written records of the method being used.
The Gentleman’s Magazine, for April of 1767 contains a story about a search for the body of a child undertaken at Newbury in Berkshire where the one-year-old had fallen into the river Kennet and was drowned. The account states how the body was discovered by a very singular experiment—a two-penny loaf, with a quantity of quicksilver was put into the river and was set floating from the place where the child, it was supposed, had fallen. The loaf steered its course down the river before a great number of spectators. The loaf suddenly tacked about, and swam across the river, and gradually sank near the child, whereupon both the child and loaf were immediately brought up, with chained hooks ready for that purpose.
THE FOODS OF LONDON CHRISTMAS MARKETS 1845-From The Book of Christmas: Descriptive Customs, Ceremonies, Traditions by Thomas Kibble Hervey (1845) Everywhere, throughout the British Isles, Christmas-eve is… Read More
The most famous criminal hanged at the execution dock at the Prospect of Whitby was Captain William Kidd. Ironic, as the Scottish sea captain was originally appointed by the Crown to hunt down pirates. He discovered piracy was much more profitable than hunting down pirates. He did quite well for a while. Unfortunately, in 1698 he captured The Quedagh, which was sailing under a French pass. The captain, however, was an Englishman and the rich cargo Kidd took was property of the East India Company. Kidd was eventually captured and brought back to London where he was sentenced to death for piracy and for the murder of one of his own crewmen (in 1697) who had dared to cross him.
