True Crime Detective

Victorian Unsolved: The Harley Street Mystery

In 1880, the body of a woman was found stuffed in a barrel in the cellar of a wealthy house on Harley Street. Did the butler really do it?

In many respects, the 19th century is a golden age of crime. It is an era where police methods are only just beginning to develop into what we know them to be today. Photography and fingerprints were nonexistent or in their infancy, and the prospect of DNA was far away. As such, there are a great many crimes that remain unsolved and while the realm of an unsolved crime in the Victorian era is dominated by Jack the Ripper, the darkness exemplified in those killings existed long before Jack’s shadow darkened Whitechapel.

The era was one of fundamental change in British society, with the country transferring from agrarianism to industrialisation, and, as such, the cities began to swell with the poor. Exploited and without the rights we now hold dear, the impoverished of cities such as London were forced to live in absolute squalor. Many turned to drink, others to crime, with prostitution and petty street crime endemic.

It was easy to believe that these faceless masses had been abandoned by British society, their lives worth little…