The Great British Torso Mystery

The discovery, on February 3, 1938, of a human torso in the River Severn near Haw Bridge, Tewkesbury, electrified the country.

Sidney Church, of Apperley, and Hubert Dudfield and John Bevan, both from Tirley, were the three fishermen who made the grisly find in their salmon nets.

The torso was immediately connected with mysterious bloodstains and tiny fragments of flesh which had been found on the railings and pavement of the Haw Bridge a month previously, and which had been pronounced to be animal in origin.

The day the torso was dredged out of the river, local detectives decided to call in Scotland Yard, plus the famous Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the top forensic scientist, to lead the investigation.

The case attracted national attention and people gathered in their thousands to watch the river being dredged for further remains in subsequent days.

A few days after the grizzly find, police were informed that a Captain William Butt had gone missing from his home at Old Bath Road, Cheltenham.

Intriguingly, the son of the nurse who cared for Captain Butt's sick wife had been found dead, an apparent suicide, at Tower Lodge, Cheltenham, a couple of weeks beforehand . . .

So began an investigation that fascinated the public and provided acres of coverage for the press of the day.

Malvern writer Richard Whittington-Egan, author of numerous volumes of notorious and baffling crimes, has now produced the first book on this most puzzling of inquiries, which was variously dubbed as "The Case of the Sawn-up Man" or "The Case of the Thousand Clues".

The reader is led into the lower reaches of the Regency spa town and introduced to the shady characters therein, including Captain Butt, with his "decidedly chequered career", his "far from mentally well" wife, Nurse Sullivan, herself a "highly dubious quantity", and her son Brian, a "handsomely remunerated dancing partner".

Mr Whittington-Egan examines the lives of these people and describes the investigation, the newspaper stories, the theories and innuendoes.

Police were beset by anonymous contacts offering tips and clues, and the book includes chapters on the hoaxers who latched on to the case, and even the clairvoyants and psychics whose visions were reported to the investigating detectives.

The case was never solved, the torso from the river was never identified, and Mr Whittington-Egan takes a fresh look at the miasma of rumours, including homosexuality, blackmail and illegal abortion, that surrounded the whole affair.

The Great British Torso Mystery is published by Bluecoat Press at £7.99