In September 1907, Emily Dimmock was found murdered in her rented rooms in Camden Town, her throat cut while she slept. Known to some as “Phyllis,” she lived a double life in Edwardian London, moving between respectability and survival.

This episode explores Emily’s final days, the trial that followed, andwhy the Camden Town Murder remains unsolved more than a century later.

Source Materials

Napley, Sir David. The Camden Town Murder. In Great Murder Trials of the Twentieth Century. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson / Orion.

Barber, John. The Camden Town Murder.

Barber, John. “The Camden Town Murder.” Ripperologist, no. 44 (December 2002). Reprinted at Casebook.org.

Grant, Thomas. Court Number One: The Old Bailey, the Trials and Scandals. London: John Murray, 2019.

Oates, Jonathan. Unsolved Murders in Victorian and Edwardian London. Barnsley: Wharncliffe, 2007.

Melville, Elizabeth. “The Camden Town Murder.” Medium.com.

Tilstra, Elizabeth. “A Killer in London: The Camden Town Murder.” The Line-Up.

Contemporary newspaper coverage including The News of the World, Illustrated Police News, and The Penny Illustrated Paper (1907).

In 1799, Elma Sands vanished from a New York boardinghouse. Her body was later found in a well, and the trial that followed — defended by Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr — left more questions than answers. This episode examines the Manhattan Well murder and the limits of justice in early America.

Source Materials

Coleman, William. The Trial of Levi Weeks; or, The Manhattan Well Mystery. New York: Printed for the author, 1800.

Kleiger, Estelle Fox. The Trial of Levi Weeks: Sex, Seduction, and Murder in the Early Republic. Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1989.

American State Trials: Being a Collection of the Most Interesting Criminal Trials Which Have Ever Occurred in the United States. Vol. 1. New York: Printed andpublished by G. & C. & H. Carvill, 1849.

Murder by Gaslight: A Victorian Anthology of True Crime

The Paris Review —“The Well on Spring Street,” Angela Serratore

“Death in the Manhattan Well.” Crime Magazine. https://www.crimemagazine.com

New York Gazette and General Advertiser. New York, various issues, 1799–1800.

The New-York Daily Advertiser. New York, various issues, 1799–1800.

Three deaths. No obvious violence. No immediate suspicion.
An 1886 poisoning case that unfolded quietly inside the home — until it didn’t.

Source Materials:

Berry,James. My Experiences as an Executioner.Berry, James. The Hangman’s Thoughts Above the Gallows.Shannon, Issy. Infamous Lancashire Women.Stratmann, Linda. The Secret Poisoner: A Century of MurderWatson, Katherine. Poisoned Lives: English Poisoners and Their Victims.Contemporary newspaper reports relating to the Britland case (1886).