The Creepiest, Nastiest Murders in London's History

London, one of the oldest cities in the world, has a storied history of gruesome crimes and murders. From the real Jack the Ripper to the fictional Sweeney Todd, murder and mayhem are an integral part of the history of London. It's been the home to serial killers, poisoners, and those who neglect and torture. It's where creepy historical murders occurred, and where infamous murderers lived. And while Jack the Ripper might be the city's most well-known killer, there are countless other nasty English killers who stalked the streets of London.

There's been so much bloodshed in London, it will make you think twice before you call the Brits overly polite. Lurking behind the sophisticated accent and the good manners, there's something far more sinister happening - or at least there was in the case of the nastiest murders from London's history. 

Did Edith Thompson plot her husband's murder with her lover, or was she a victim of an unjust law? Whatever her true motivations, Thompson was sentenced to death after her husband's murder in 1922. 

Her husband's killer was a man named Frederick Bywaters. He was also her former lover. Years before the murder, Bywaters was a friend of Thompson and her husband Percy. The two began a secret romance, and when Percy discovered their affair, he attacked his wife.

Bywaters was enlisted in the British Navy, and after his altercation with Percy, he was shipped off to sea. While he was gone Thompson and Bywaters wrote love letters back and forth. Then one day as the Thompsons were walking home from the theater, Bywaters attacked Percy and stabbed him to death.

Thompson identified Bywaters as the killer, and as the police investigated him, they found the letters between the two secret lovers. Officers said the letters pointed to a conspiracy between Thompson and Bywaters to kill Percy so that they could be together. They charged her under a law that stated if two people wished to achieve the death of a third person, they both would be equally guilty. 

In her letters to Bywaters, she wrote that she wanted to get away from her husband, and that she tried killing Percy by poisoning him. She asked Bywaters to do something drastic so the couple could be together. Thompson denied she had anything to do with her husband's murder, saying she only wanted Bywaters to confront Percy civilly. Bywaters corroborated these claims.

Both were found guilty and hung. 

Elizabeth Brownrigg was known to be downright cruel to her servants. So cruel, in fact, that she murdered one of them. 

She was known to strip them naked, chain them up, and beat them with switches without giving their wounds any time to heal. Though one servant had run away and complained, nothing was done to stop Brownrigg. When one of her servants, Mary Clifford, died from infections in her wounds, Brownrigg was finally charged. Mary Mitchell, another servant, testified as did others who had seen evidence of the beatings. Crowds watched her be executed while she prayed for salvation. 

Thomas Neill Cream was an international killer, taking lives in Chicago, Canada, and London in the 1880s. Known as the "Lambeth Poisoner," the Scottish-Canadian serial killer claimed multiple victims by poisoning them with strychnine.

Cream was a doctor who studied the effects of chloroform while in medical school in Canada. He began killing in 1879 - his first victim was a patient of his who died behind his office from an overdose of chloroform. He evaded conviction and moved to Chicago, where he began killing again. He was convicted of murder there and served 10 years in prison. Upon his release he moved to London and opened up a medical practice.

In London, he killed four young prostitutes with overdoses. A fifth potential victim, Lou Harvey, threw out the pills Cream gave her and only pretended to take them. After the killings he would write letters accusing other people of committing them, or suggesting he knew who had. He sent them anonymously, but when he met an American police officer visiting London, he gave him a tour around town, telling him about the murders. The police became suspicious of him, and later found out he had a conviction in America for poisoning.

There were rumors that he confessed to being Jack the Ripper, but those were discredited, as he was in prison during some of those killings.

The similarities to Jack the Ripper - mostly in the horrific mutilation of the bodies - gave Gordon Cummins the nickname "Blackout Ripper" during his spree killing in 1942. Over the course of six days he killed four women and attacked two more. 

He slit throats, strangled, and sexually mutilated his victims with can openers, razors, candlesticks, and more. The abuse was so severe and revolting that one of the pathologists examining a victim described Cummins as "a savage sexual maniac."

Luckily for the police, Cummins was interrupted while attacking Greta Hayward by a delivery boy. He left his gas mask behind at the crime scene, and being a Royal Air Force serviceman, the mask's container had his ID number on the side. 

In Victorian England, grave robbing was common practice for many trying to make buck or two. Medical researchers were known to purchase bodies illegally, especially scientists working at universities. This was a specialty of The London Burkers, a gang of body snatchers in the early 19th century. The gang consisted of John Bishop, Thomas Williams, Michael Shields, and James May and, according to Bishop's confession, they stole between 500 and 1,000 bodies to sell to anatomist. But it was the murder of a 14-year-old boy that gained them notoriety. 

In 1830, Bishop and his crew tried to sell a body that was a little too fresh. After they tried to sell the14-year-old's body - later dubbed The Italian Boy - to the Kings College School of Anatomy, faculty at the school realized the boy had been murdered. Later, Bishop confessed to taking the boy, drugging him with rum and laudanum before hanging him by his feet upside down in a well until he died. He also confessed to additional murders. 

Bishop and Williams were hanged for the murder, with a crowd of 30,000 watching. The next day, another crowd gathered to view the remains. 

While murders with a lot of blood and gore get the most attention, this murder-by-starvation is just as gruesome. Harriet Staunton and her 1-year-old child were found dead in 1877 from starvation.

Staunton's husband Louis kept his wife and child locked in a room at the couple's home in Kent, while he carried on an affair with his live-in mistress Alice Rhodes. Rhodes's sister Elizabeth was married to Louis's brother Patrick. The four lived in the home while Harriet was locked away. Every time Harriet tried to get out of the room, she was assaulted. 

The baby took ill and was brought into hospital. He was found to be severely malnourished and died. When Harriet died days later, she was said to look "more like a corpse than a living woman" and weighed only 74 pounds. All four involved were arrested and charged in what the judge called one of the most "black and hideous" crimes on records. 

When an arm showed up in the Thames River in 1888, some wrote it off to a bad prank by medical students. When a matching torso and a left leg were found nearby, it became clear it wasn't a joke. 

Upon closer inspection of the body, it appeared as though the uterus had been removed. I also appeared that whoever dismembered the body used a torniquete, a sign they knew what they were doing. 

The other limbs and the head were never found. In an ironic twist, Scotland Yard, the police headquarters in London, happens to be built on top of the site where the torso was discovered, but it still remains a mystery. Although the body was discovered around the same time as the Jack the Ripper killings, police said there was no connection.

The Barnes Mystery case is one that involves revenge, stolen identity and an alleged pregnancy. 

In 1879, Kate Webster, a maid living in West London, killed her employer Julia Martha Thomas by shoving her down the stairs. She dismembered and boiled the flesh off of Thomas's body before throwing the remains in the Thames River. All but Thomas's head was recovered. Legend has it that Webster gave some of Thomas's cooked body to a group of neighborhood boys to eat. 

Before the body was found in the river, Webster posed as Thomas for two weeks. She fled London, but she was arrested in Ireland and shipped back. After she was convicted of killing Thomas, she claimed she was pregnant to avoid the death penalty. The night before she was killed, she confessed to killing Thomas after the two got into a heated argument.

Just to add another twist, the head of Thomas was found in 2010 on property owned by Sir David Attenborough, the star of Planet Earth. 

The Ratcliffe Highway murders claimed the lives of seven, including that of an entire family in 1811. Timothy Marr, his wife Celia, their three-month old son, and James Gowan - a shop assistant working for the Marrs - were murdered inside the Marr house located off Ratcliffe Highway. Their heads had each been bludgeoned in and the baby's throat was slit. They were discovered by one of their servants. 

The city was terrified that the killer would strike again, and they were right. Less than two weeks later, again on Ratcliffe Highway, John Williamson and his wife Elizabeth, as well as a servant named Bridget Anna Harrington, were all found dead.

A man named John Williams was arrested for the murders and hung himself in his cell. 

When a prostitute named Emily Dimmock was found with her throat slit ear to ear, it caught the public's attention. She was killed in her sleep, post sex, and there was nothing stolen from her home. There was no motive and no suspect, leaving people to wonder about this cold-blooded murder. Artist Robert Wood was eventually arrested for the crime after his handwriting was identified on a postcard in her room. 

Wood's trial became a landmark case for future murder trials in England because it was the first to allow an accused man to give evidence on his own behalf. His lawyer put Wood on the stand, and in a very dramatic fashion, cross-examined the suspected killer. The performance paid off - Wood was acquitted after only a 15 minute deliberation. 

It has been featured in numerous TV programs. Recently, American scholars determined Dimmock could be another victim of Jack the Ripper.