Murder Most English

On October 4, 1949, Stanley Setty was stabbed to death in a North London suburb, and his head and legs were hacked from his torso. These were then wrapped in a parcel, flown out to sea the next day in a light aircraft, and thrown into the waters below. The following day, his torso met a similar fate, but, unlike the previous body parts, it did not disappear forever, instead returning on the tide to some marshy land on the Essex coast, where Sidney Tiffin, a farmer out shooting ducks, found it. Tiffin fetched the local constable, who said, on seeing the remains, “There’s something wrong here.” Tiffin replied, “Yes, I think there’s something wrong here.” “It’s my opinion this is a murdered body,” continued the constable. “Yes, I do think it is a murdered body,” said Tiffin.

Read the rest of Theodore Dalrymple's article in City Journal.