Chapter 8
ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S HOSPITAL MORTUARY, LONDON
THURSDAY APRIL 3rd, 1888 3.40PM
‘WHAT WE HAVE HERE, CHIEF INSPECTOR, IS THE BODY OF A YOUNG FEMALE, aged possibly fourteen or fifteen years of age, it is not possible to be more precise at the moment’.
Doctor Hamilton Dewar, the Chief Pathologist, was a large, heavily bearded Scotsman, a fierce looking Highlander whom Collingwood could readily envisage covered in woad, wielding a massive claymore as he ran across the battlefields of Stirling or Bannockburn with the armies of William Wallace or Robert the Bruce. Dewar had the largest hands that Collingwood had ever seen on a man. They were the size of dinner plates, but despite their size, Dewar was surprising gentle as he examined the body of the nameless girl that Toffer Hoxton had
