Welcome!

Thank you for reading my Substack.

I’m Adam Wood, crime and policing historian. I’ll be posting my musings here on crime and detection of the past, especially the Victorian era.

To kick things off, here’s my photograph of the original Whitechapel murders files held at the National Archives. Due to demand the originals are rarely allowed to be accessed, with the files now on microfiche. I was allowed to view these while filming an episode of the American series Unsolved Mysteries.

This image shows the mortuary photograph of Frances Coles, murdered on 13 February 1891. She is the final of the eleven victims included in the Met Police file.

Bodies were photographed not for ‘illustrative’ purposes, but in order to identify the victim. This image of Frances (and those of the other victims) is mounted on a card which bears the printed legend ‘Photographs of the Unknown Dead’ on the reverse, along with the contact details of the photograph who would be called out by the Police when a body was found.

Prints were quickly produced, and officers would go from door to door in the vicinity of the crime to ascertain whether the victim might be known. Many of the Whitechapel victims - and many, many more besides - were identified in this way.