UK UK - Margaret Kirby, 7, Liverpool, 6 Jan 1908

The whole of that Old Mersey Times site is very interesting, and I've just spent the afternoon perusing it. Liverpool can be quite a darkly interesting place.

Especially interesting, of course, is this case - hard to beat an unsolved mystery featuring bloodhounds; an apparent cross-dresser; abandoned houses; a recently dumped body; and a kidnapping which evidently saw the victim taken first to a tea room and then to an amusement arcade (and mustn't forget the clues as to the killer's identity, sent in a letter purportedly written by the fiend himself!).

That the dead child's mother had died only a fortnight before her vanishing and with her father, who took to bed immediately after the inquest, dying a short time after the child's body was found (of, of course, a broken heart) - these features add requisite sentimentality. It's all a bit like a stage melodrama, the sum of its parts believable only through its audience's willing suspension of disbelief.

Yet happen it did.
 
The site is worth an afternoon's read, I spent the best part of the day reading it too.

If I get more time in the next week or so I'm going to see if any more crimes were committed after, in the areas the murderer said he went to in his letter.

Another unsolved child murder was Elizabeth Perrs in 1905, some say possibly the same person involved.

Taken from http://www.yoliverpool.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-13668.html

'one evening around Halloween in1905, a 10-year-old girl named Elizabeth Peers was sent on an errand from her home at 64 Wendell Street (off Smithdown Road) to a butcher?s shop on Lodge Lane. She wore a tam-o?-shanter beret, a cape, and a kilt ? and she never returned from the trip. On the next morning her body was found in an alleyway behind Cullen Street ? she?d been raped and strangled. Her killer was never brought to justice and Lizzie Peers was buried in Toxteth Park Cemetery after a funeral service attended by 30,000 people. I believe the man who murdered Lizzie also assaulted and killed 7-year-old Madge Kirby of Kensington a few years later; once again the killer was never caught."
 
I came across the Old Mersey times site when I was using the 1901 UK census to look up my Great Grandfather and his family that were living in Mount Vernon Green, Kensington. He had children the same age as Madge and Elizabeth and was living 500m from where Madge's body was found.
 
I would assume the clues provided by the person who wrote the letters were either a hoax or purposefully misleading? Otherwise it would be baffling the killer was never caught after providing such obvious indications.
 
The last story on the Merseytimes page entitled St Helen's Tragedy 1913 touched me. Goes to prove that murder-suicide cases are nothing new. Even though what he did was a horrendous crime I couldn't help but feel sorry for Kerrigan and the despair that drove him to this action. I imagine he couldn't have survived very long to the terrible wound he inflicted upon himself. I don't think I ever heard of anyone slitting their own throat ear-to-ear before.
 
I would assume the clues provided by the person who wrote the letters were either a hoax or purposefully misleading? Otherwise it would be baffling the killer was never caught after providing such obvious indications.

I have requested the letters from the Merseyside police museum, still waiting for a reply.
 
I would assume the clues provided by the person who wrote the letters were either a hoax or purposefully misleading? Otherwise it would be baffling the killer was never caught after providing such obvious indications.

That's my assumption (based on the abundance of spurious Ripper letters 27 years before).
 
My maternal side of the family live in Liverpool and surrounding areas.
I attended high school there, many moons ago.

I also spent many a day on errands to the butcher in Lodge Lane (more than 5 decades after this murder tho')
 
I'm particularly interested in the 'one fiend many crimes' quote in the original link, apart from Elizabeth Peers one wonders what they could be.
 
I'm being given the run around in my search for more details re the letters sent by the supposed murderer. Now waiting for another department to reply to my request.

However I was looking through some info on another old crime when I found this article. Seems the Police don't like releasing info to amateur sleuths...read here

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article7080639.ece
 
The police replied to my request for information, unfortunately all records have been destroyed.
 
I wonder if the same person is responsible for Elizabeth Peers murder?
 

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