London’s dark and foggy streets have long been the backdrop for tales of Victorian crime, but a new BBC series is casting fresh light on a chilling set of murders that have remained in the shadows for over a century. Historian Lucy Worsley, ever the engaging detective of the past, returns with a three-part series, Victorian Murder Club, which premiered on January 5, 2026, on BBC Two. This time, she’s not chasing Jack the Ripper, but rather investigating the Thames Torso Murders—a grisly sequence of killings that unfolded from 1887 to 1889, eerily concurrent with the infamous Ripper’s own reign of terror.
The Thames Torso Murders are a series of four canonical killings, each marked by the discovery of dismembered female remains scattered along the River Thames and its tributaries. The crimes were so methodically executed that police at the time suspected the perpetrator possessed significant anatomical knowledge—perhaps a butcher or someone with medical training. Yet, despite intense investigation, the killer was never brought to justice, and the case faded into near obscurity, overshadowed by the media frenzy surrounding the Ripper.
Worsley’s new docuseries, as reported by Londonist and Metro, aims to restore the voices of the forgotten victims and re-examine the evidence with the help of historians, criminologists, and forensic experts. The series promises not only to revisit the original investigation, but to dig deeper—literally and figuratively—into the lives and tragic ends of the women whose stories were lost to time. In the words of a BBC preview, Worsley and her team “re-examine the evidence, profile suspects, and restore the voices of the women whose lives were lost, uncovering a bold, dark, and dangerous story of Victorian London that has never been told before.”
What sets this series apart is its insistence on looking past the sensationalism that has long defined Victorian crime lore. Worsley, 52, is candid about her initial skepticism regarding the police’s conclusion that the Torso Murderer and Jack the Ripper were not the same person. “I took some persuading,” she told Metro. “The police at the time didn’t think that they were the same person, but it just boggled belief that there would be two operating at once.” Her doubts were eventually dispelled, she says, by a grim realization: “When you’ve got people living in conditions of deprivation, overcrowding, a transient population, you do get more serial killing because it’s easier for people to disappear, which is sad and chilling but also logical.”
Of the four canonical victims, only one was ever identified: Elizabeth Jackson, a young pregnant prostitute in her early twenties, who had been living in a workhouse. The others remain nameless, their identities lost along with the evidence swept away by the tidal Thames. The first known killing came to light on May 11, 1887, when Edward Hughes, a lighterman, discovered a woman’s lower torso floating at Rainham. Over the next two years, more remains surfaced: in September 1888, on a building site destined to become Scotland Yard; in June 1889, in Battersea and west London; and finally, in September 1889, in Pinchin Street, Whitechapel. Some historians even link a fifth possible murder in Vauxhall in 1902.
Worsley’s investigation is as much about the victims as it is about the perpetrator. She is moved not by the gore itself, but by the human cost: “Where I do get distressed is not so much the knives and the blood and the cuts and the gore. It’s thinking about the living women and the reaction of their relatives when it was discovered what had happened to them. I’m totally moved by that.” The series doesn’t shy away from the misogyny of the period, either. Victorian newspapers often dehumanized the victims, illustrating their body parts with a lurid, even lewd, fascination that was both factually incorrect and deeply disrespectful.
But the real breakthrough in the case comes thanks to modern technology and the dogged research of historian Sarah Bax Horton. Working with Worsley, Bax Horton used online newspaper databases—tools unavailable to 19th-century detectives—to search for reports of violence against women near the Thames during the relevant years. “Out popped our suspect,” Worsley recalls with delight. The suspect, they believe, is not Jack the Ripper, but a violent bargeman named James Crick.
According to Daily Mail, Crick’s name surfaced repeatedly in newspaper reports. He was a man with both the opportunity and the chilling intent: a bargeman with unrestricted access to the river and a history of violence. In 1889, Crick offered a woman named Sarah Warburton a lift across the Thames. Once on the water, he threatened her, saying, “If you make a noise I will settle you as I have done other women that have been found in the Thames.” Warburton fought back, striking Crick with a piece of iron and raising the alarm. She was rescued by a passing police boat, and Crick was arrested. He was convicted on Warburton’s testimony and that of Inspector Charles Ford, receiving a 15-year sentence—of which he served eight and a half. Notably, the torso murders ceased during his imprisonment.
Disturbingly, Crick might have been stopped even earlier. Another woman, Jessie Miller, accused him of attacking her in early 1889, but her case was dismissed and she was left to a tragic fate. Worsley is frank about the implications: “It’s Inspector Charles Ford’s backing up of Sarah Warburton in court which really puts the murderer away. Jessie wasn’t believed. It’s really frustrating that they didn’t manage to get Crick sooner.”
Forensic pathologist Dr. Marie Cassidy, who appears in the series, is convinced that London was stalked by two serial killers at the same time. While other suspects, like George Chapman (Seweryn Klosowski), were considered, there was little evidence connecting them to the dismemberment murders. The precision and control shown by the Torso Murderer stood in stark contrast to the chaotic brutality of Jack the Ripper.
Worsley’s journey took her to pauper graveyards, where she paid her respects to the victims—an act she described as “honoring people who have got missed out of the traditional way that history’s been written.” The series, she hopes, will finally bring recognition to the women whose lives were so violently ended and whose stories were nearly erased from history.
So, after nearly 140 years, do we finally know the identity of the Thames Torso Murderer? Worsley is careful: “It’s not going to stand up in a court of law, I accept that.” But she adds, “I think there’s a very compelling case that we’ve got the guy.” If true, the most notorious serial killer people have never heard of was hiding in plain sight—a grim reminder that the river, like history itself, can keep its secrets for a very long time.
