“The witnesses are in a class as low as they can possibly be, and they lie without any apparent motive,” wrote Police Inspector Thomas Divall while investigating the murder of Annie Austin.

Annie, 28, who had syphilis, had gone to a dosshouse in Dorset Street, Spitalfields, with a man who stabbed her in the anus and the vagina while she slept. She was taken to the London Hospital, where she died from her wounds four days later, on MAY 26th, 1901. She told the police that she did not know the man’s name.

“I fear that nothing can be done to elucidate this mystery, as a result of the scandalous conduct of nearly the whole of the witnesses in this case,” commented Inspector Divall wearily as he closed the case and filed it under “Unsolved.”