Victorian Unsolved

Victorian Unsolved: The Hoxton Horror

Two women were brutally murdered in Hoxton, London, in 1872. Were the killings a robbery gone wrong, or somebody’s terrible vengeance?

Readers of previous articles in the Victorian Unsolved series will have a pretty fair picture of Victorian London in their minds by now. While today’s popular culture gives us an image of Downton Abbey and a world very removed from our own, the truth is rather different. People lived rather as they do now, with the same motivations and drives that permeate our own lives. They worried about their wages, were exploited by their bosses, and enjoyed a drink. Their sex lives were also a world away from being embarrassed by a naked table leg.

The city was changing. Development from Britain’s farming past into its industrial future had created a chaotic scene as the city’s slums filled with factory workers, the centre of the empire showing the vast disparity between rich and poor. This empire of the few is not unusual, and yet perhaps at no time has the gap between the richest and poorest in society been so obvious. Places such as Whitechapel would become notorious for their lawlessness, as desperation and poverty forced the poor into lodging houses and even the workhouse, many…