JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
And so it came to pass that a metal merchant was found drowned in the Thames, weighed down by his own wares, his jacket and greatcoat and pants--even his hat--filled with lead, his feet encased in lead, as were his hands. The only reason the body was found was because of a severe summer drought which lowered the level of the river enough to reveal all manner of hidden nastiness, including the leaden mineral maven, Mr. Sockety. In and of itself this murder wasn't all that interesting aside from it being bizarre...except over the following months there were a number of deaths of young women who had, as it turned out, a common touchstone--they all were seamtresses, and their specialty was silk thread. Then place here all of the interesting stuff that happens in mysteries >HERE< until we get to the Eureka! moment that Holmes would know about halfway through==>they were looking for the tradesperson, Mr. Plump, who supplied the silk thread to these workers. Silk thread was expensive, so Mr. Plump committed fraud and treated his silk thread with lead, multiplying the expensive thread's value and which also made it lethal to its users. Plump--seeing the damage that had been done and the people who had been killed as a result of his fraud--decides to kill Sockety to cover his tracks. So on.
This all came about as a result of seeing this interesting sidebar story in the 15 July 1877 issue of Scientific American:
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