Mysterious Slayings & Crimes Of The Victorian Era

The Chloroform Murder Case

Adelaide Bartlett was born in France in 1855, and moved to England in 1875. There, she met and married Edwin Bartlett, a rich grocer. Edwin was sickly. Among other things, he had rotten gums, decayed teeth, and breath so horrible that the couple had to sleep separately. In early 1885, Edwin met and befriended the Reverend George Dyson, who became the couple’s spiritual advisor and religious tutor, and was made executor of Edwin’s will. On the reverend’s advice, Edwin modified his will to remove a condition that required Adelaide to stay single in order to inherit, and left everything to her even if she remarried. In the summer of 1885, a maid discovered Adelaide in the act with Reverend Dyson. A few months later, on December 31^st, 1885, Edwin passed away. An autopsy revealed that his stomach was full of liquid chloroform.

When it was discovered that Adelaide had recently asked Dyson to buy her chloroform, both were charged with murder. Charges were dropped against the reverend, however, in a bid to use him as a witness against Adelaide. It seemed a slam dunk case, but enough doubts were raised that Edwin might have committed suicide. After a sensational trial, the jury’s verdict was not guilty. Although delivered with a caveat: “We think grave suspicion is attached to the prisoner“, Adelaide was set free. Contemporary physicians struggled to find an explanation for how chloroform could have gotten into Edwin’s stomach without scarring his throat. It led a famous surgeon to quip: “Now that she has been acquitted for murder and cannot be tried again, she should tell us in the interest of science how she did it!”

The Thames Torso Murders Horrified Victorian

In May 1887, some East London workers found a bundle in the Thames River that contained a female torso. Over the next few weeks, the rest of the body, except for the head and upper chest, was found in bits and pieces. Nobody could figure out the victim’s identity, nor that of her killer. However, investigators concluded that whoever cut up the body probably had medical training. It reminded police of another dismembered torso found in the Thames in 1873. In September, 1888, another dismembered female body was found, some of it in the Thames, and other bits in various London locales. The following June, yet another dismembered female torso was found in the Thames.

The similarities led police to conclude that it was the work of the same serial killer. The Thames Torso Murders, as they came to be called, overlapped with Jack the Ripper’s murder spree, which began in April, 1888. Initially, it was suspected that the Thames torsos were the work of the Ripper. However, the modus operandi differed: the Ripper gruesomely mutilated his victims, while the Thames River killer surgically dismembered his. It was little comfort to Victorian Londoners to know that instead of just one maniacal murderer on the loose, there were actually two. To this day, the Thames River Torso murders, just like those of Jack the Ripper, remain an unsolved mystery.

Victorian Police Faced a Lot of Abuse

London cops – the officers of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) – are generally respected nowadays. That was not always the case. Organized in 1829 and nicknamed “Peelers” and “Bobbies after” their founder, then-Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel, the legitimacy of the first cops and the need for their services was questioned by many. As a result, MPS officers had a correspondingly fraught relationship with the Victorian public they were sworn to serve. Indeed, throughout much of the nineteenth century, the bobbies were despised by much of the public. They were not only routinely derided and disrespected, but were also frequently actively trolled, baited, and attacked for fun.

There was an active anti-police ideology in the Victorian era, communicated through the radical press, which depicted the new force as an unconstitutional infringement on English liberties. The Bobbies were often referred to as “blue locusts” and “blue idlers”. It reflected a perception that they were parasites who did not perform honest work, and who lived off the taxes of honest men. Police were particularly disliked by the lower classes, who resented the suppression of popular recreations and customs such as public drinking, gambling, prize fights, and street games. Routine police work in poorer neighborhoods, such as patrolling and keeping an eye out for trouble, was often viewed by those who had never experienced the such as intrusive and unprecedented surveillance.

Victorian Londoners Assaulted Police for Fun

Much of the Victorian public loathed the newly created police force. So they made policemen’s lives as miserable as possible. That often involved. Bobbies who tried to arrest miscreants, particularly in working class neighborhoods, were often set upon and attacked by the culprit’s neighbors, friends, and passersby, in order to rescue the detainee. In addition to objections to police interference with street life, there was even greater resentment when the cops got involved in domestic affrays. Cops who approached private residences, regardless of the motive, risked a hostile reception. Even knocking on doors to alert residents to security lapses, such as leaving a door or window open at night, was not met with gratitude. Instead, Victorians often responded with abuse and violence directed at the policemen who had the temerity to disturb their peace.

The Bobbies were especially reluctant to get involved in instances of domestic violence. That often subjected them to the wrath of both parties, who would temporarily forget their own squabble and unite to attack the policemen. Sometimes the violence was not instrumental, such as attempts to free somebody known to the assailants from the police. Instead, it was visited upon the Bobbies for the sheer fun of it. Many liked to lead policemen on merry chases, while others simply attacked them out of the blue. More creative were some gangs of working class youths, who collaborated to ambush police, baiting the cops into chasing them down alleys and footpaths strung with trip wires. The wires’ release sprang cartoonish booby traps that caused bricks to smash into the cops, or tipped buckets of refuse to fall upon their heads.

A Victorian Female Crime Ring

The Forty Elephants were a prominent Victorian female gang that held sway over part of London, and whose roots go back to the 1700s. Their criminal activities were not limited to their own neighborhood. They operated across the British capital, and eventually, their reach extended throughout Britain. They got their moniker because they were based in the Elephant and Castle, an area in London’s Borough of Southwark whose most famous landmark was a pub and coaching inn that bore that name.

They specialized in shoplifting, helped by the voluminous, multilayered, and complicated clothing worn by women well into the twentieth century. Prudish attitudes that afforded women significant privacy also made it easier for female shoplifters to escape notice. They nearly bled posh West End stores white with their shoplifting raids. Eventually, mere rumors of their presence in an upscale neighborhood began to trigger panics among shop owners. They also exacted tribute from smaller gangs that engaged in shoplifting. Those who failed to pay were beaten, and sometimes kidnapped and tortured until they changed their minds. Although store thefts were a key part of their criminal activities, it was not all that they had in their bag of tricks.

The Formidable Forty Elephants

The Forty Elephants stole thousands of pounds worth of goods, which was serious money in the Victorian era. It was enough to financially support gang members and their male spouses and allow them to live in relative comfort. They also forged documents, which helped in another side hustle: they got hired as housemaids with fake reference letters, then robbed their employers’ homes. They were also blackmailers. Members seduced men of respectable backgrounds into brief affairs, then threatened to ruin their reputations unless they were paid. As evidenced by their willingness to kidnap, torture, and dish out beatings to exact tribute, the Forty Elephants were not squeamish when it came to violence. Nor did they shy away from a rumble. They were reportedly able to duke it out with an equal number of men, and their toughness earned the respect of male gangsters.

They lasted past the Victorian era, and into the 1950s. In the interwar years, they associated with the Elephant and Castle Gang, a huge male collection of burglars, receivers, smash-and-grab artists, and assorted criminal roughnecks that operated in south London. Unlike their often messy male allies, however, the Forty Elephants were well-organized, disciplined, and tightly run. While they stole expensive clothes, they never wore them. Instead, they distributed them through a network of fences, and to unscrupulous store owners who altered their labels and got fake receipts – often furnished by the Forty Elephants – to show that they had been legally purchased. That brains-before-brawn attitude helps explain the Forty Elephants’ longevity. They lasted for nearly two centuries, while the Elephant and Castle mob lasted for barely a decade before rivals put it out of business.

Queen Victoria’s Security Sucked

The young Queen Victoria charmed Britain when she ascended the throne. Her two predecessors, her uncles, had been old, ineffectual, and corrupt, while their predecessor, the Mad King George III, had been, well… mad. Victoria arrived as a breath of fresh air: a young, pretty, innocent, and clean new slate. Admirers tossed letters into her carriage, the bolder ones visited the palace with marriage proposals, and the creepier ones stalked her. Britain’s royal household bureaucracy was inept. When Victoria once asked a servant for a fire, she was told his job was to arrange and prepare the wood for a fire. A separate department was responsible for actually lighting it. In another example, cleaning palace windows was divided between two departments, one to clean the outside, another for the inside.

Security was also inept. Buckingham Palace had low walls topped with tree branches, and lax guards. Drunks and the homeless were often found sleeping in the garden, propped up against the inner wall or passed out beneath the trees. Staggering drunks had little trouble getting into the palace grounds to sleep off a bender in the royal garden. Less innocent interlopers, such as stalkers, easily progressed past the garden, and into the royal palace. Such was the case with silversmith Thomas Flower. One of Victoria’s persistent admirers, he was found sleeping in a chair near the queen’s bedroom in the summer of 1838. He entered the palace, then wandered around for hours trying to find the queen. Finally, after he tired of the search, Flower fell asleep. He was arrested and imprisoned, until friends bailed him out for £50.

The Weird Urchin Obsessed With Queen Victoria

Thomas Flower was creepy, but nowhere close to the creepiness of Edward Jones, a teenager dubbed “Boy Jones” by palace staff. Around 5AM on December 14^th, 1838, a palace servant saw a hideous face in a window. It was smudged with soot, and belonged to an ugly youth who impishly grinned at him. Investigation revealed that a palace room had been ransacked, so the alarm was sounded, and the hunt for the intruder was on. A constable spotted a teenager outside the palace, gave chase, tackled, and seized him. The arrestee was an unfortunately featured young man, whose face and clothes were covered in grease and soot. He had on two pairs of pants, and when the outer one was removed, several pairs of ladies’ drawers fell out – Queen Victoria’s panties.

The kid gave his name as Edward Cotton – subsequent investigation revealed his real name to be Edward Jones, a fourteen-year-old urchin. He had gotten into Victoria’s bedroom, and along with her panties, had stolen a letter, her portrait, and assorted linens. That he had gotten that close to the queen was bad enough. Discovering how long he had been in the palace was worse: Edward Jones had lived in the royal residence for a year. In the daytime, he hid behind furniture, or in the chimneys and other spaces in the palace walls. At night, he wandered Buckingham’s halls. When he hungered, he raided the kitchen, and when he got too dirty, he rinsed his shirt in the wash. During meetings between the queen and her ministers, he sometimes hid under the table and eavesdropped.

A Persistent Victorian Stalker

Edward Jones’s court appearance was packed with journalists and curiosity seekers. The kid was a lovable tramp, and the fact that he had lived undetected in Buckingham Palace for so long testified to his intelligence. He was tried for theft and trespass, but after a trial filled with laughter and incredulity, the jury found him not guilty. The police congratulated him and wished him well – and that he would put his undoubted talents to better use. Boy Jones thanked them, and left. Two years later, on December 3^rd, 1840, shortly after Queen Victoria had given birth to her first child, Edward Jones was found beneath a sofa in a room next to Her Majesty’s boudoir. Whatever the public’s perception of Boy Jones as a lovable tramp, Queen Victoria was not amused.

As Her Majesty put it: “Supposing he had come into the Bedroom, how frightened I should have been!” He was rearrested, retried, and got three months’ probation. Soon thereafter, he was arrested again, trying to break into the palace. This time, he got three months hard labor. The authorities were stumped. Jones’ crimes were not felonies, so a lengthy stint behind bars was not an option. After he was arrested for a fourth, and then a fifth time, when caught loitering near Buckingham Palace, they finally shipped him to Brazil. There, he was kept in an offshore prison ship for six years. He returned to Britain, and was deported to Australia, but snuck back to London. Jones finally returned to Australia, where he became Perth’s town crier. He died in 1893, after falling off a bridge while drunk.

Victorian Anti-Vaxxers

There has never been a shortage of a vocal – and often irrational – minority to whip up a panic against inoculation efforts to combat the spread of infectious diseases. With the spread of education and public knowledge of vaccination, such anti-vaccine activists usually lose – but not before they cause significant damage. Sometimes, though, they win. One such anti-vaxxer victory occurred in the Victorian era in Montreal, in 1885. That April, smallpox arrived in the city, and by late summer, it had spread all over. The region experienced an epidemic with shockingly high fatality rates. More than 6000 died, and 13,000 were disfigured, most of them children. The majority would not have gotten sick in the first place, if not for the success of an irrational anti-vaxxer campaign.

By then, nearly a century had passed since Edward Jenner had developed a vaccine, and its effectiveness had been amply proven. Nonetheless, Montreal suffered an epidemic that killed off 40% of those who came down with an easily preventable disease. The reason was a successful anti-vaxxer campaign that stoked a panic about the inoculation. It was most effective in Montreal’s east side, inhabited mostly by poorer and less educated French Canadians. Misguided by unscrupulous and irrational anti-vaxxers, they made up nine tenths of those killed by the contagion. A prominent anti-vaxxer was a Dr. Alexander M. Ross, who edited a publication called The Anti-Vaccinator. In it, he falsely claimed that vaccination was “a fearful engine of destruction and death to children“.

A Victorian Anti-Vaxxer Riot

Dr. Ross peddled conspiracies about the medical establishment’s greed, exaggerated vaccine risks, and cherry picked “evidence”. He also made up sensationalist lies. They included false claims that officials invaded women’s bedrooms to tie them and their children down and forcibly vaccinate them. His efforts triggered a violent anti-vaccine riot. Montreal’s Board of Health estimated that there were 2000 smallpox cases in the city by September 2^nd, 1885. Within a few weeks, the numbers doubled to more than 4000. So the authorities took sterner measures. They included the forcible removal of people from crowded housing – mostly in poor neighborhoods, such as predominately French-Canadian ones in the city’s east side – where isolation was impossible. On September 28^th, vaccination was made mandatory.

That triggered “a howling mob“, primed for weeks and whipped into a frenzy by publications such as The Anti-Vaccinator. They surrounded the Board of Health’s East End Branch Office, and destroyed it. Police tried to intervene, but were routed and chased away by the mob. The anti-vaxxer crowd then rampaged through the city, smashed the windows of pharmacies that sold the smallpox vaccine, and vandalized the homes of health officials. The Central Police Station’s windows were broken, and the chief of police was stabbed and pelted with stones. Rioters fired at the cops, who armed themselves with rifles and bayonets, and fired above the rioters’ heads. Policemen finally clubbed the mob until it dispersed into small groups. They continued the violent assaults and destruction of property around Montreal. Eventually, 1400 soldiers were summoned to patrol the city and prevent a recurrence, and health workers were issued revolvers.

Forgotten Anglo-Zanzibar War

In the Victorian era, the Sultanate of Zanzibar in what is now Tanzania consisted of the islands of Zanzibar off the East African coast, and the mainland across the water from them. In 1890, the British and Germans divided Zanzibar amongst themselves: Germany got the mainland, while the British got the islands. That same year, Zanzibar’s sultan accepted a British protectorate. Its terms included the requirement that his successors had to be preapproved by the British. When the Sultan died in 1893, the British used that provision to install a puppet replacement, Hamad bin Thawani. He ruled for three years, then died suddenly shortly before noon on August 25^th, 1896. It was suspected that his twenty-nine-year-old nephew Khalid bin Bargash had poisoned him.

Khalid immediately moved into the palace in Zanzibar Town, and without British approval as required by the terms of the protectorate treaty, declared himself sultan. The British preferred a more pliant successor, Hamoud bin Muhammad. So they rushed three cruisers, two gunboats, 150 marines and 900 African soldiers to Zanzibar Town. They gave Khalid an ultimatum to vacate the palace by 9 AM, August 27^th, or else. He refused, gathered a force of about 2800 men, and barricaded himself in the palace. When the ultimatum expired, the British ships were ordered to open fire, and they commenced a bombardment at 9:02 AM.

The Victorian Era Witnessed History’s Shortest War

By 9:40 AM, the palace and the royal harem next door were on fire, the sultan’s flag had been cut down, and the gunfire ceased. A journalist reported that the sultan had “fled at the first shot with all the leading Arabs, who left their slaves and followers to carry on the fighting“. Others, however, stated that he stuck around for a bit longer. However long he stayed, the sultan was not in the palace when the British reached it shortly after the bombardment stopped. Khalid, with dozens of his followers, fled to the German consulate, where he sought refuge. By that afternoon, the British had installed their favorite, Hamoud bin Muhammad, as sultan in his place.

The war had lasted roughly thirty eight minutes, during which time the British fired about 500 artillery shells, 4100 machinegun rounds, and 1000 rifle bullets. Zanzibaris losses were around 500 men and women killed or wounded, while British casualties consisted of a single petty officer, who was injured aboard a warship. The British sought Khalid’s extradition, but the Germans granted him asylum and transported him to German East Africa. He fell into British hands during World War I’s East Africa Campaign, and was exiled to the Seychelles and then Saint Helena. He was eventually released, and returned to East Africa, where he died in 1927.

The Victorian Era’s Revolutionary Changes

Just like the rapid pace of change in our world today bewilders many, the Victorian era witnessed massive and revolutionary changes, not just in Britain, but all over the world. Chief among those changes was the introduction of electricity into everyday life. Across the Pond from Britain, railroads knitted America together, the importance of factories, mining, and finance increased by orders of magnitude, immigrants arrived by the tens of millions, and cities and homes began to be lit and powered by electricity.

Electricity had been around for some time. However, it took Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943), a Serb inventor who arrived in America with four cents in his pocket, to make the things that made electricity a part of everyday life. Among other things, he invented fluorescent lights, electric generators, the FM radio, spark plugs, remote controls, robots, and the Tesla Coil that is used to transmit radio and TV broadcasts. Shortly after Tesla arrived in the US, Thomas Edison hired the brilliant but naïve new immigrant to redesign his electrical generators and perfect his light bulb.

A Great Inventor Screwed Over by Another Inventor

Thomas Edison promised Tesla $50,000 if he succeeded in his assigned, but he broke his promise. Tesla did what Edison had asked of him. After he perfected the light bulb and redesigned the generators, Tesla asked for what he had been promised. Edison laughed it off and said: “Tesla, you just don’t understand our American humor. When you become a full-fledged American, you will appreciate an American joke“. Understandably upset, Nikola Tesla took his talents to Edison’s greatest rival, George Westinghouse.

Nowadays, alternating current (AC) lights up our homes and workplaces, and powers up our appliances through wall sockets. By contrast, direct current (DC) is relegated mostly to batteries. In the Victorian era, however, the issue was undecided, and powerful interests fiercely competed to decide whether AC or DC would dominate the world. Alternating current was championed by George Westinghouse, who pushed AC as the best means to bring electricity to the masses. On direct current’s side was Thomas Edison. There was serious money at stake, and Edison had cause to regret screwing his former employee over.

The Victorian Prime Minister Who Died While Getting It on With a Maid

Henry John Templeton (1784 – 1865) Lord Palmerston, formally the 3^rd Viscount Palmerston, dominated the Victorian era’s foreign policy from 1830 to 1865, when Britain stood at the height of her power. He served as Secretary at War from 1809 to 1828, as Foreign Secretary from 1830 to 1841 and again from 1846 to 1851, and twice as Prime Minister, from 1855 to 1858, and again from 1859 to 1865. In his private life, he seems to have been a randy old goat who tried to get it on whenever and wherever he could, with eventually fatal consequences.

Lord Palmerston is the only British Prime Minister to have ever died in office, and oh what a death it was. On October 18^th, 1865, the eighty-year-old Prime Minister, who enjoyed robust health well past his biblical three score and ten, reportedly was getting it on with one of his maids on a billiard table. He seems to have overexerted himself, which led to his demise in the midst of his passionate endeavors, just two days short of his eighty first birthday.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

BBC – Story of Boy Jones Who Stole Queen Victoria’s Underwear

Bondeson, Jan – Queen Victoria’s Stalker: The Strange Story of the Boy Jones (2012)

British Battles – Battle of Kabul and the Retreat to Gandamak

Canadian Encyclopedia – The 1885 Montreal Smallpox Epidemic

Carlson, W. Bernard – Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age (2013)

Cheney, Margaret – Tesla: Man Out of Time (2011)

Conversation, The, October 4^th, 2020 – Covid-19 Anti-Vaxxers Use the Same Arguments From 135 Years Ago

Courier Evening Telegraph, November 15^th, 2021 – Love and Arsenic: The Strange Affair of Madeleine Smith

Culture Trip – The Story Behind London’s Notorious Girl Gang, the Forty Elephants

Daily Best – What the Hell Has Hollywood Got Against Nikola Tesla?

Darlymple, William – Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan (2013)

Deer, Brian – The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Science, Deception, and the War on Vaccines (2020)

Encyclopedia Britannica – Battle of Balaklava

Guardian, The, December 27^th, 2010 – Girl Gang’s Grip on London Underworld Revealed

Herrnon, Ian – Britain’s Forgotten Wars: Colonial Campaigns of the 19^th Century (2003)

Hertfordshire Life – The Dramatic Life and Passing of Prime Minister Lord Palmerston

Historic UK – The Shortest War in History

History Collection – Here’s the List of Queen Victoria’s Burial Requests in Her Final Moments

Listverse – 10 Unsettling Unsolved Victorian Slayings

McDonald, Brian – Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants: The Female Gang that Terrorised London (2015)

Owlcation – Did Adelaide Bartlett Get Away With Murder?

Social History, 392:2, 248-266 – ‘I Am Just the Man For Upsetting You Bloody Bobbies’: Popular Animosity Towards the Police in Late Nineteenth Century Leeds

Undiscovered Scotland – Madeeline Smith

University of Leicester Academic and Staff Blogs – Dismemberment in Victorian London: The Thames Torso Murders

Woodham-Smith, Cecil – The Reason Why: Story of the Fatal Charge of the Light Brigade (1954)