The jury, after hearing evidence, returned a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown.
The matter was then left in the hands of the police.
Among the suspicious circumstances reported was the fact that on the evening of the murder a man went into a draper’s shop at Stratford, and bought a new shirt.
The one that he was wearing, together with his clothes, was smothered with blood. When buying the shirt he, in course of conversation with the shopkeeper, said that he had had a quarrel with his wife, and that in the scuffle she had wounded him.
There was a general impression that this was the man and that he was making his way through Epping Forest towards the sea-coast.
Nothing further was heard of the affair, and this also has remained an unexplained crime.
The whole metropolis was thrown into a state of surprise and excitement on the night of Wednesday, the 11th of April, 1866, by the discovery of a terrible and mysterious murder at Messrs. Bevington and Sods, leather merchants, of Cannon-street, City.
The unfortunate victim was an elderly widow lady named Mrs. Millsum, who, together with a cook named Elizabeth Lewes, were always left by the firm in charge of the premises at night. On the night of the murder, it appears that she was discovered lying just inside the passage leading from the street-door upstairs.
On examining her, she was weltering in her blood. It transpired that while the two servants were upstairs, after the shop had been shut up, and the firm gone to their country residence, the bell of the street-door was rung.
The deceased said to her fellow-servant—