Victorian Unsolved: The Burton Crescent Mystery
Step back in time to the dangerous streets of 19th-century London, where suspicions fall on a former servant as a woman is brutally murdered in her own home
In a previous article, we delved into the Euston Square Mystery, where Hannah Dobbs was suspected of murdering a lodger at the house where she worked. The story enthralled the Victorian press with sensational claims of multiple killings, love affairs, and vile brutality. However, it wasn’t the only mysterious killing in Bloomsbury during the era.
Just a ten-minute walk away, Burton Crescent was, like much of Bloomsbury, transforming from a professional and middle-class area into one where lodging houses were beginning to become prevalent. By the 1870s, the area was potentially dangerous, with brothels popping up and the kind of characters that Whitechapel was far more famous for started to appear in the locality. This change in the atmosphere brought a new level of crime to the area, with the Euston Square victim Matilda’s Hacker vanishing in 1877 and the first Burton Crescent Mystery in 1878. It would be far from the end, with The Harley Street Mystery in 1880 and the Second Burton Crescent Mystery in 1884. All women, all murdered, and all officially unsolved.
Rachel Samuel lived alone at 4 Burton Crescent. She was a widower, surviving her husband, the Jewish jeweller Lyon Samuel. Lyon Samuel’s wealth had allowed the couple a big house, and Rachel could still maintain the house in her old age. She was 74 and employed a single servant, Fanny White, during the day, with her three adult children living elsewhere in the city. To help with the house’s upkeep and perhaps to keep a presence in the spacious house, Rachel let a back parlour and top-floor back room to John Borchidsky, a theatre musician who had lived there for two years. Another lodger, Cooke, had left some time ago,
Before the current arrangement with Fanny White, Rachel had employed Mary Donovan as a live-in servant, a widow with two children. After three years in service, Mary had left the house to marry again and now lived at Lancaster Street. Despite this, she still called to help wash and visit her mistress. While the household was large, it was not an especially lonely house, with a regular cast of characters that knew each other well.
On December 11, 1878, this domestic regularity would be shattered. The day initially seemed like any other. Around 4 pm, two workmen appeared at the house, John Goodyer and his apprentice Thomas Bear, having been previously engaged by Rachel. Once done, they went upstairs, and Rachel let them out, with nobody else seemingly in the house then. After this, Mary Donovan came for one of her regular visits late in the afternoon, as she had alongside her sister, Kate, the previous day. On that occasion, Mary was said to have been intoxicated.
Meanwhile, early in the evening, two women called looking for work. They were let into the house by Rachel, who saw them into the kitchen. The three talked for around fifteen minutes, and Rachel said she needed some needlework and would call on their services. At this time, the two women, Elizabeth Browne and Louisa Jane Shillito noticed that Mary Donovan was also there in the kitchen.
Later statements would disagree on who let the two women out, with Mary saying she showed them the door, still at the house around 8 pm. The women would say that it was Rachel who let them out. It is here we find a key missing for four hours.
It was midnight when John Borchidsky returned from the theatre. Feeling peckish, he headed downstairs and into the kitchen, searching for Rachel. He found her dead. The large pool of blood surrounding the body made this quite obvious, as did the huge blood splatter on almost every surface. Horrified, Borchidsky ran from the house to raise the alarm, seeking out Judah Samuel, who was Rachel’s son, a doctor, and a police officer. More constables soon arrived on the scene and found a truly horrific scene.