Camden, the London Borough that stretches south from Highgate, Hampstead and Kilburn through Camden Town, Bloomsbury and Holborn has witnessed many bloody deeds, including headless Jacobites, resurrection men and horrible murders. Here Marianne Colloms and Dick Weindling have selected some of the most gruesome...
In a particularly dreadful case, Phoebe Hogg and her baby were murdered by her husband’s jealous mistress Mary Pearcey. She slit Phoebe’s throat before abandoning the body on a pile of rubble near Swiss Cottage and smothered poor little Tiggie, who was just eighteen months old. Pheobe and Tiggie were buried in the same coffin, the baby cradled in her mother’s arms. Mary Pearcy was hanged on 23 December 1890 and her brutal act earned her a place in Madame Tussaud’s ‘Chamber of Horrors’, standing by Tiggie’s bloodstained pram.
When the ice gave way on Regent’s Park Lake on a cold winter’s afternoon in January 1857, forty men and boys died, making this the worst ice accident in the UK’s history. They were plunged into the freezing water where their thick clothing and heavy skates dragged them down, succumbing to hypothermia before brave rescuers could reach them.
How many students at the London School of Economics in Holborn know that their building is on the site of the Enon Chapel? Here an unscrupulous clergyman crammed 12,000 bodies into its small vault. By 1845 the disused Chapel had become a dancing saloon, the new owners advertising ‘Dancing on the Dead’ to take full advantage of its macabre past.
One of the most famous murders ever recorded happened in 1910 when a body was found buried in the cellar of 39 Hilldrop Crescent, CamdenTown. Dr Crippen was hanged for the murder of his wife Cora, but protested his innocence to the end. He and his lover Ethel le Neve were caught in Quebec, through the use of the new transatlantic telegraph. In a recent twist to the story, researchers claimed DNA from the remains didn’t match that of Cora’s relatives and the body could even be male, not female. So, did they hang an innocent man?
These and many other gruesome stories are coved in Bloody British History: Camden, available from The History Press