The Mysteries of Modern London

by George R. Sims

The happy young mother who stands at the door of the other house has no knowledge of the tragedy that once darkened her dwelling-place. In the room where the murder was committed her children romp and play.

Here is one of the most aristocratic thoroughfares in London. From the windows of the beautiful houses you can look upon the green glories of Hyde Park and watch the gay scenes of the Ladies' Mile.

Some of the houses are huge mansions, others are bijou residences. The house to which I would direct your attention once came into the latter category, but it has been rebuilt and enlarged, and the old premises have been absorbed in the new. The house was taken for the season some years ago by a young professional lady and her mother. The young lady paid a visit to some friends from Saturday to Monday. On Monday afternoon she returned, and, knocking, was unable to gain admittance. She had taken her maid with her. Her mother had been left for the Sunday with one servant only in the house—the cook, a foreigner.

When eventually admission was obtained, the young lady, in a state of alarm, searched the house for her mother. She found her lying dead in one of the lower rooms. She had been strangled and dragged with a rope round her neck into the pantry. Money and jewels had been taken, and the foreign cook had disappeared.

The murderess was arrested some time afterwards in Paris, was brought to London, tried, found guilty, condemned, and respited.

As we stand and gaze at the house which bears the old number to-day, we see no sign of its tragic history. There is nothing to suggest that one woman who lived in it was murdered and another tried for her life. At the door an electric brougham stands waiting. An elegantly-dressed young lady comes out and enters it. A footman follows her carrying a dainty lap-dog. The little creature is adorned with a light blue bow. The footman places it in the brougham beside its young mistress.

The dainty lap-dog and the elegant young lady are among the occupants of the premises on which not many years ago a woman lay strangled, and from which a murderess fled.

A house in a big square of boarding-houses and hotels. A house now let out for offices and business purposes, but with a portion of it inhabited, and servants on the premises. Scores of people pass it daily and see nothing in it to arrest their attention. The servants and employées of the house go about undisturbed by any thought of the tragedy once enacted within its walls. One of the servants goes every day to the coal-cellar and fills the scuttles from the black mass that lies around.

But in that coal-cellar there lay concealed for months the body of an old lady who suddenly disappeared, who one day wrote to her friends, and from that day forth was never seen again until she was found a strangled corpse with coals and rubbish piled upon her in the corner of the cellar. There were arrests for that murder, but no one was found guilty of it. The crime still remains one of the mysteries of London.

Many years before she came to her end I knew the victim personally. For some months I saw her almost daily. I ceased to visit the health resort where she was one of the best-known habituées, and in time forgot her.