The gruesome story of the dismembered Hannah Brown

The story of Hannah Brown is one of the most gruesome murder stories London has ever seen. In 1837, the citizens of the capital were shaken by a crime so gruesome that it both fascinated and disgusted them. The case began in the cold weeks of January. On January 9, 1837, at around 8:30 in the morning, lock keeper Matthias Ralph of Johnson’s Lock on Regent’s Canal was unable to close the lock gates due to a blocking object, so he fetched a long pole with a hook to remove the obstacle. When he freed the object, he couldn’t believe his eyes. It was a human head. It was a shocking discovery that raised many questions. The crew who looked after Ben Jonson Locks were used to strange things, but a human corpse? That was a whole different ball game. A closer look revealed that the head belonged to a middle-aged woman, freshly fished out of the water. On December 28, 1836, a construction worker named Bond had discovered a blood-soaked sack near Edgware Road. The sight of frozen blood seeping through the material made his blood run cold. The police were called and discovered the torso of a woman around 50 years old inside the sack. The district medical examiner, Dr. Girdwood, wondered whether the severed head belonged to the torso that had been found, so he contacted his colleagues in Paddington and indeed, it matched the torso. The head showed signs of a severe blow, which was presumably the cause of death. The brutally dismembered body parts fueled rumors, and the press filled the pages with speculation. The mysterious murder remained the talk of the town until the puzzle was finally completed when laborer James Page discovered human legs in Camberwell. After months of speculation, investigators finally had a complete body, but still no suspect, and the identity of the corpse was still completely unclear. On March 20, 1837, a man named Mr. Gay visited the church council of Paddington to inquire about his sister, who had been missing since Christmas. She was Hannah Brown, a middle-aged woman who worked as a laundress for private clients and was engaged to a 51-year-old man named James Greenacre, a carpenter from Lambeth, whom she was to marry at St. Giles Church at 10 a.m. on Christmas Day. But since then, there had been no trace of her. This discovery set everything in motion. Hannah Brown was last seen alive by her neighbor Elizabeth Corney on December 24, 1836, when she got into a hansom cab with a man. This man later turned out to be her fiancé James Greenacre, with whom Hannah wanted to emigrate to America. That was why she had sold her personal belongings. The search for Greenacre, who had been married three times and whose three wives had all passed away, proved difficult until he was finally found on March 24 on Kennington Road, where he lived with his mistress Sarah Gale. The first impression was alarming. There were packed suitcases everywhere, and Greenacre had tickets for a passage to America with him. The police quickly found Hannah’s personal belongings among his possessions. It turned out that Greenacre had killed Hannah, whom he initially thought was wealthy, when he realized that she did not have nearly as much money as he had hoped. The crime was interpreted as an escape from the impending marriage, and the two arrested men had to answer for their actions in court just a few weeks later, on May 2, 1837. James initially denied the murder. Then he insisted that his partner Sarah had known nothing about Hannah. He portrayed her death as a tragic accident. When he discovered that Hannah was anything but wealthy, an argument ensued during which he accidentally struck Hannah on the head with a piece of wood, and she fell to the ground dead. Fearing that no one would believe him, he dismembered Hannah’s body and disposed of it in the city. The trial at the Old Bailey was remarkably short. The verdicts were handed down within two days. James Greenacre was sentenced to death, while Gale was deported to Australia, from where she never returned. The case of Hannah Brown and James Greenacre is often regarded as one of London’s first major murder investigations and has been recounted in many books, such as Kate Summerscale’s “The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher.” Greenacre’s death brought an end to this gruesome episode, which reignited public interest in murder cases in Victorian England. Thus, the Hannah Brown case remains not only a part of London’s criminal history, but also a creepy part of urban legend that continues to capture people’s imaginations to this day.