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The Mysterious Death of James Gray Lowe
It was Friday August 20th 1886, and James Gray Lowe was in London. He was a businessman from Manchester, and according to friends had travelled to the capital to collect a part payment of a debt that was due to him. He received £1200 of £2000 that was owed, paid in cash and went to the station to buy a first class ticket home on the 12.01am London-Edinburgh Express. He paid for the ticket in cash and had change to the sum of around 15 shillings in return. Lowe was known to have debts of his own, but nothing that he was being pressured to pay or had fallen behind…
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Dale Dyke Dam
In the 1850s it was deemed necessary as a result in the increase of mills and industrial works across the edge of Derbyshire into South Yorkshire, to expand the water systems, in an effort to provide not just extra energy and means for these works, but extra water for the domestic use of the workers and residents of the area. As a result plans were drawn up to build a new system of reservoirs to provide this water. South Yorkshire and Derbyshire are home to the Peak district, containing a wealth of barren hills and landscape, including several brooks and rivers, which run down in quite substantial quantities from these…
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The Edinburgh Vaults – Underground Secrets
Edinburgh sits on seven hills, much like Rome. Only two of these high points are visible today- Castle Hill and Calton Hill. Between the hills, the city was built up with various bridges connecting them. One of the most famous was the South Bridge connecting Old High Street and the University district. In the poor neighborhood of Cowgate, narrow streets with a gate at either end called closes were knocked down and their stones reused to create the elaborate system of 19 arches. It spanned a chasm over 1000 feet long, and at its highest point it stood 31 feet above ground. The bridge’s foundations, which penetrated Edinburgh’s bedrock, went…
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Victoria Cross Recipients – Keeping it in the Family Part 2
Part Two – Brothers in arms So we discussed in part one, father and son awards of the Victoria Cross. Now I’m going to turn your attention to brothers who both received the Cross for their acts of valour. To begin with, I would ask that you cast your mind back to Charles Gough, and his son John, who were both awarded the Victoria Cross. Charles received his in part for an action which saved the life of his brother Sir Hugh Gough during the India Mutiny of 1857/8. But the story doesn’t end there. Just a few months after Charles saved Hugh’s life in the action for which he…
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The Black Museum
The Central Prisoners’ Property Store was introduced in 1869 as a method of teaching the Police about the criminal psyche. Using items belonging to criminals, and associated paraphernalia, death masks of executed murderers and so forth, photos of crime scenes, bits of evidence, the police felt it would help them study the thought processes of the criminal mind, and what drove them to kill. By 1874, the collection had become somewhat of an unofficial museum and was housed at Old Scotland Yard, behind the Commissioner’s Office on Whitehall Place. Inspector Neame with the help of Constable Randall, was tasked with the collation and management of the collection and by 1875…
