Harrow

1/ Wealdstone, Harrow, January 1894 (Remains of Three Children in a Box)

While cleaning at Weald Cottages, a woman found a box that contained the remains of three children. The police are making enquiries into the cause of death and who put them there. (Whose kids were they?)

2/ Rayners Lane, Pinner, (Childs Body Found) September 1895

Two brothers were picking blackberries down Rayner’s Lane in Pinner one evening when they stumbled across the dead body of a baby boy wrapped in brown paper who had then been stuffed in some nettles. The police surgeon stated that the baby had been born alive and had died from exposure, after living for 24 hours. The corpse was badly decayed, but it bore no signs of violence upon it.

3/ Harrow (Corpse in Haystack) August 1896

This is in the days when Harrow actually had some fields and greenery around it. At a farm in Harrow while cutting hay from last years rick’s, the hay-cutter struck something hard. He pulled out the object and to his horror, it was a human arm. The body, supposedly of a man in working-class clothes, was probably in there since last year’s hay-making. He was unknown and had more than likely been suffocated or covered over by farm workers by accident. It will remain a mystery.

4/ Grove Hill Car Crash, Harrow, March 1899

5/ Harrow (Gets Step-daughter Pregnant) October 1906

This is a stomach-churning story of a man taking advantage of a young girl. John Jolly aged thirty-nine from Harrow was charged with abducting 15-year-old Mary Alice Johns. He had been living with her mother but had had sex with her before she was thirteen. The result of this was a child born in February 1904 and she had pleaded with him to marry her but he said it was no use until she was sixteen. The mother promised not to tell anyone as he promised to mend his ways and give up drinking. The child was put on the birth register as Johnson. (What happened to the dirty old git?)