The Sun.
London, England, 1864-12-03 00:00:00

The Waterloo-bridge Mystery,

Seven years have elapsed since a startling announcement
was made that a horrible murder had been committed in
London, and that an attempt had been made to conceal it
under circumstances of an unusual character. It was said
that some boys who were out in a boat on the Thames had
found on one of the abutments on the western side of Water-
loo-bridge a bag which contained the bones of a human
body, with a suit of clothes, which, when examined, led to
the conclusion that a man, moving in a respectable sphere
of life, had been barbarously murdered, his body roughly
hewn to pieces by unprofessional hands, and the bag con-
taining the bones let down over the parapet of the bridge
with the intention that they should sink in the river and be
no more heard of. The bag, instead of going into the
water, rested upon the abutment, and was so found by the
boys, who handed it over to the police. Various rumours
were in circulation at the time in reference to the persons
who had been seen on the bridge, and who were suspected
of having dropped the bag, but nothing conclusive was
ascertained, and the matter at length subsided, although
the most diligent inquiries had been made by the
police. Last August the subject was revived by a letter
which was published in some of the papers from Mr,
Irwin, of Dublin, who gave the initial letters of the names
of four persons who, as he imagined, were im-
plicated in this matter, three of them being suspected of
making away with the fourth, who had mysteriously disap-
peared under circumstances which he very fully and some-
what plausibly detailed. Application was made to the
authorities at Scotland-yard that the bag in which the bones
had been deposited and the clothing might be sent to Vic.
toria (Aussralia), in order that the wife of the missing man
might see them, with a view if possible to their identifica-
tion as the property of her husband. That request, how"
ever, could not be complied with in the face of stringent
police regulations. It was also considered that the descrip-
tion would be sufficient to serve first purposes, and that, if
the articles were identified, the detective officers might be
instructed to bring over any persons whose evidence they
might suppose would tend to further more detailed inquiries.
To make the matter perfectly clear, it may be mentioned
that Mr Irwin, in his letter, expressed his conviction that
the supposed victim was -a man named R--, who had
gone out from England to Australia some time prior to the
occurrence, and had amassed a large sum of money. He
left his wife and child in Australia, and came back to Eng-
land, bringing with him securities of the value of
£1,400, for which he received the money. At that time
he was living in the house of one W— —, in a street
leading out of the Strand, not far from Waterloo-
bridge. R-- remained there a short time, and all at once
he disappeared, and this was about the date of the finding
of the bag of bones and clothes. Mr Irwin's letter also re-
ferred to parties with the initials S. and N. as having had
something to do with the monetary transactions of R--.
The circumstantial character of Mr Irwin's allegations ne •
cessitited in the minds of the authorities at Scotland-yard
further and minute inquiries in the direction pointed out,
and the matter was entrusted for investigation to one of the
most experienced officers of the detective force. The officer
ascertained in the first place that just antecedent to the time
of the discovery a man named Woolfe lived at 15, Arundel-
street, Strand, which was then a private hotel, and about
that time a person of the name of Ratcliffa came there to
see him. Ratcliffe remained at the hotel as a resident for a
few days, and while there Woolfe took the house No. 10 in
the same street. During this period of their acquaintance-
ship Ratcliffe told Woolfe that he had some Tasmanian de-
benture bonds, upon which he was to receive the interest
in the City, and that he wished to turn the bonds into
money. It appears that Woolfe himself did not want to
buy them, but he introduced Ratcliffe to a man of the name
of Sinnett, who was understood to be a dealer in securities
and bills, but he did not require them ; and he in his
turn introduced Ratcliffe to one Nathan, who purchased
the bonds, paying the amount in Bank of England notes to
to Ratcliffe, who almost immediately afterwards departed,
no one knowing what had become of him. Three months
later, however, as the detective officer has since ascertained,
Ratcliffe opened an account with the Commercial Banking
Company, at Liverpool, and deposited a considerable sum
of money, doubtless the produce of the sale of the bonds,
and after a short interval he withdrew his balance, for the
purpose, as ho stated, of going to America. From that day
to the present nothing further is known of him. The iden-
tity of the man Ratcliffe, who lived with Woolfe in Arundel-
street, and who was imagined by Mr Irwin to be the victim
of the Waterloo-bridge tragedy, with the man Ratcliffe,
who, three months afterwards, was at Liverpool, was proved
by a comparison of the signature of the Tasmanian bonds
with chat on the books of the Commercial Banking Com•
pany. It is hal also been ascertained that Woolfe, having
lett England for Australia, died in that colony about three
years since. The result of this investigation entirely puts
an end to the grave suspicions which Mr Irwin's letter not
unnaturally raised, and leaves still undiscovered the perpe-
trator of a crime which at the time created a profound
sensation on the public mind.