The West Ham Disappearances
One private detective saw the disappearance of two girls from east London as an opportunity to promote his business...
Mary Seward was 14 years old, and lived in a six-roomed house at 98 West Road in West Ham with her father Lewis, a labourer, mother Elizabeth, and sister Emily, 15. She had originally been the youngest of four children, but her brother John had died aged eight, and her eldest sister, Sarah Jane, had married in 1875. Sarah Jane and her husband Thomas Collier had only moved down the road - literally, to 50 West Road - and so Mary spent a lot of time between two houses, enjoying spending time with her little nephew, Thomas. This was a respectable working-class family, and all of them looked after Mary, who had been in poor health since birth, and so, at 14, looked much younger than her age. She was just 4 feet 6 inches tall, thin and pale, with dark brown hair and dark eyes.
Mary attended a local private school, where she was thought well of; her family regarded her as affectionate and considerate. She helped look after Elizabeth Seward, who was an invalid, and also undertook errands for her.
Image purportedly of Mary Seward (found on FamilySearch; source unknown)
On Wednesday 13 April 1881, Mary had a half day holiday from school, and was sitting downstairs 'dressing' a large doll - she had taken scraps of coloured silk and satin, and was sewing them into an outfit for her plaything. At around 6pm, Elizabeth Seward asked her to go to her sister's house to fetch some linen, and then retrieve her nephew, Thomas, aged three, from a shop at the top of the road. He had been sent to spend a little bit of money for himself, despite his young age, and had taken too long.
Sarah Jane Collier's house was on the same side of West Road as Mary's. It was such a short walk that she didn't stop to put a jacket on, or her good boots, and dashed out wearing her old indoor boots instead. She reached the Collier house and took the linens, returning home with them before leaving again to go to the shop. She never got there. In fact, Mary Seward was never seen again.
Her parents were quiet people, and didn't know many people in West Ham - they were both from Huntingdonshire, where their older children had been born. However, when they called the police, the neighbourhood came together to try and help. They were searching the local area, together with police, dragging ponds, searching empty houses and basements, and doing everything they could to try and find Mary. But nothing was ever heard of her. Eventually, as happens in these cases, people returned to their ordinary lives, and the newspapers stopped writing about the case of the missing girl.
That is until 27 January 1882, nearly a year later, when another girl disappeared from the area under very similar circumstances. Eliza Carter, aged 12, lived at 39 Church Street, again in West Ham. Her father Joseph was a railway labourer who would later become a clerk at the docks; he lived in West Ham with his wife Maria, and the couple had five children - Elizabeth, George, Mary Ann, Edward William and Eliza. Elizabeth, the eldest, married John Slaughter and moved to Mary Seward's street - 25 West Road. She was there when Mary went missing, and was obviously aware of that awful case.
Eliza Carter attended the West Ham Board School, and had been due to receive a prize there the following week. But on the evening of the 27th, a Friday evening, she had had a sleepover at Elizabeth Slaughter's house, with the agreement of her parents. Saturday was a day off school, and so she slept in until 10am, when she left for home. Elizabeth gave her a parcel of linens to take to a laundress at 70 West Road to mangle; Eliza duly dropped off the parcel, and then started to make her way back home. There were two routes back to Church Street - her favoured one was to go to the end of the street and cross a piece of common that was surrounded by 'built and partly built houses' - it was, in other words, something of a building site. From Elizabeth Slaughter's back window, she could see her sister pass; on this occasion, she had her toddler at the window to wave at its aunt. On this morning, though, Eliza never made it as far as her sister's house, but Elizabeth just assumed she had missed her.
After a couple of hours, it was realised that she was neither at Elizabeth's nor back at her family home. The police were duly called. The next morning, the stiff tweed jacket that Eliza had been wearing was found just inside the fence of West Ham Park - close to the corner of West Road. It had been there all night, damp from the night's dew, but, more ominously, every single one of the large black buttons it had been closed with had been cut off.
West Ham Park, where Eliza’s jacket was found (photo by Hansbrage1)
That was the last sighting of anything to do with Eliza Carter. Like Mary Seward a year earlier, she simply went missing, and was never seen again. The newspapers made much of this twin disappearance from West Ham, but their publicity did not help shake an abductor down. Nor did the self-serving adverts of one private detective.
I've written about Charles Nicholls here before. He had been in partnership with Charles Field for a spell, and continued to operate as 'Field and Nicholls' after his former partner's death. In April 1882, three months after Eliza's disappearance, Nicholls placed pairs of newspaper advertisements, asking for information about the two events.
"Mysteriously disappeared (£50 reward), Mary Seward, from her house, 28 West Road, West Ham, on April 12 last. Has not since been heard of. Age now 15, height 4ft 6in; thin and pale, dark brown hair, teeth irregular and discoloured, eyes dark, thin eyebrows; has a semi-circular scar, half an inch long, between the right cheekbone and ear. Information to Field and Nicholls, 1 Great College Street, Houses of Parliament."
"Mysteriously disappeared (£75 reward) from her home, 39 Church Street, West Ham, on January 28 last, Eliza Carter, age 12 1/2 years. Complexion very fair, hair brown (Plaited), with knob behind, blue eyes; small gold earrings with drops. She is very pale and thin. Her costume has been found in West Ham Park, with buttons cut off. Information to Field and Nicholls, 1 Great College Street, Houses of Parliament."
Was Nicholls genuinely trying to help? His adverts, on the face of it, seem to suggest that he had been charged with finding out more information - perhaps from the girls' parents - and these were commissions. They also implied that Nicholls was offering the rewards. Yet there had been other mentions of rewards for information, and it seems that Nicholls was actually taking advantage of that, using money offered by friends and relatives and making it seem as though he was offering it. Although the families of the missing girls may have done everything they could think of to find out information, would Mary Seward's family have waited a year, until Eliza went missing, to suddenly approach Charles Nicholls for help? And would both parents have approached the same man in unison? Nicholls was not from West Ham, and did not know the area well; he was based at Great College Street in Westminster, a world away from these two grieving, working class families. I strongly suspect he was using the cases as a means of gaining publicity for himself - and of course, if his adverts had resulted in any news, that would have meant even more publicity and success for him.
Great College Street - Charles Nicholls’ office was here (photo by pam fray)
However, Charles Nicholls' efforts were fruitless. In January 1883, friends of both the Sewards and Carters were asked to come and look at a girl's body that had been found in a box at a city warehouse, but neither could recognise the corpse - which was decomposed from having been in the box at least a month, and hard to identify as anything except an 'extremely thin and emaciated' female. Although the disappearances resulted in continued press speculation for at least another year, it does not appear that the girls were ever found. Mary Seward's father, and Eliza Carter's mother, both died prematurely, never knowing what had happened to their daughters.