
It was around 6:45 am on March 5, 1879, when London coalman Henry Wigley spotted a box in the River Thames.
The tide was ebbing, leaving it half afloat near the shoreline just south of the Barnes Railway Bridge in Richmond.
It was the kind used for hats or bonnets. He kicked it. It was full. Heavy. Inside was something, he later told a court, resembling "cooked meat".
Five days later, roughly seven kilometres away, a servant set to work removing a pile of dung on his employer's property. He steadily dug through, wheeling it away, until he struck something within. A foot, severed at the ankle, seemingly not all that long ago.
Watch: For more stories like this, delve into Mamamia's podcast, True Crime Conversations - which you can watch the trailer for, here. Post continues after video.
The gruesome details of the "Barnes Mystery" or "Richmond Murder", as it was known, played out in the papers and fast became one of the most infamous crimes in Victorian England. Within months, readers had answers to major questions. Were these human remains linked? Who did they belong to? How was the victim killed, and by whom?
But another 131 years later, the case was hauled into the headlines yet again by another chance discovery in the garden of the legendary naturalist, Sir David Attenborough.
The murder of Julia Martha Thomas.
Julia Martha Thomas had a reputation for being a harsh employer. The twice-widowed former teacher had multiple servants tend to her cottage in Richmond, but few who'd lasted any considerable length of time.
In late January 1879, she took on another. Kate Webster, a young Irishwoman and mother of one who'd come recommended by an acquaintance.
"At first I thought her a nice old lady," Kate later reported, "but I found her very trying, and she used to do many things to annoy me during my work. When I had finished my work in my rooms, she used to go over it again after me, and point out places where she said I did not clean, showing evidence of a nasty spirit towards me".
The pair's relationship grew increasingly strained, leading Mrs Thomas to terminate Kate's employment barely a month after it had begun. But Kate convinced the woman to allow her to stay a further three days, until March 2.