Reynolds’s Newspaper – Sunday 01 May 1859 – is convinced it is on to a strange occurrence that has again come to light. Victorian Newspapers thrilled audiences with tales of mystery and darkness. In this particular case the newspaper is urging the police to take seriously a confession and information from a woman who feels she must pass on such detail before she dies. By publishing this article the police would have felt it necessary to further investigate this case such were the powers of the printed media at the height of this era.
The Waterloo Bridge Mystery
The Waterloo Bridge mystery (the finding parts of a dead body cut up a mutilated in a carpet-bag on one of the buttresses of Waterloo Bridge) which are so long ago died a natural death, has been reinstated in Plaistow them into the greatest excitement; but, although the matter is in the hands of the police, it is not regarded with any degree of great interest by that body.
Of two things there is not the slightest doubt – first. That a woman has made a confession, and second. That she points out a person, by whom, she alleges, she was employed.
As nearly as can be gathered, the following are the only reliable circumstances: -for some years past an old Irish woman has sold fruit in an about Plastow and the neighbourhood of Barking road. Latterly she had a fruit stall on the Iron Bridge crossing the Creek, and still more lately, in consequence of a quarrel with that old keeper, she had one at the thought of the Barking road railway station bridge.
This woman was known as “Old Biddy”, and it is by her and through her that the Waterloo Bridge mystery has been revived. A few days since she was taken seriously ill, a person was employed to nurse her at her house, in the Lower Marsh, Plaistow.
On Saturday week she became very much worse, and said she could not rest until she had made a confession. A priest was sent for, and upon his arrival the nurse was desired to quit the room. This she did; but actuated by womanly curiosity applied her ear to the keyhole, and was there court by the holy father. However, she had sufficient to warrant her in applying to the police, and two constables visited “Old Biddy”.
This woman says, but upon the night of the “mysterious occurrence”, she was employed by two men to carry the carpet bag, which she describes minutely, and she herself launched it from Waterloo Bridge, and received for doing so two sovereigns. She even mentions the names of these three men, and says that one is since dead.
As in the present stages of the affair it will be extremely injudicious to give them, these names are withheld, then known to our informant.
The strangest part of the affair is that the woman is a very ignorant and an educated person, and it is deemed extremely singular that she should have hit upon this subject. The general opinion is that the matter should be strictly investigated, and that the person accused should be faced with the accuser.
Ian Waugh
Old British News
