Elsie Adeline Luke

I imagine you've arrived here via the same route that compelled me to put together this website.

My sister and I were walking around Bathampton churchyard when we stumbled upon a bright stark gravestone with the ghastly but intriguing wording:

Here lie the remains of ELSIE ADELINE LUKE aged 26
Who was cruelly murdered on Hampton Down
August 1891

- with the additional mystery carved below: "This replacement stone was funded by the estate of Lucy Barlow."

It's a rather unusual thing to come across. We couldn't help but be intrigued. Who was Elsie and why was she murdered? It's the 21st century so I turned to Google. But it didn't provide many answers. So I started searching digital archives of newspapers. It felt a bit obsessive. I wondered why I was doing it, because I didn't seem to be finding out that much about Elsie Luke at all. The newspaper reports (then as now) chase sensational details and are mostly reports of the inquiry. In fact, this murder and the resulting legal proceedings were reported nationally - it was known as "The Bathampton Mystery".

So here is what I've discovered. Perhaps it'll satisfy some morbid curiosity. But it's also made me start wondering about all sorts of related subjects... Victorian policing, jobs, housing, courtrooms, relationships - things that can help with reading between the lines with the only information I've found.

This is very much a work in progress at the moment - it's a lot more work than I envisaged :)

The short summary is this, however: that Elsie was murdered on Bathampton Down in 1891, and her body concealed in a cave. Some schoolboys discovered it in 1893. The police tried to pin the murder on her ex-boyfriend, but they didn't have any particularly convincing evidence. Other leads don't seem to have been followed up very well - for example, someone half-dressed that was seen on the Down around the right time. Elsie had secrets about her past and was known to bend the truth, which sometimes confuses the story. No-one seemed to come forward to suggest who she might have been with on the Down that day. Her ex-boyfriend, Arthur Coombs, was acquitted. And that seems to have been the end of it. One wonders if the police felt they'd already spent enough money looking into the murder of a young domestic servant.

from the Western Mail, 4th Oct 1893

I'd be very happy to hear from anyone with more information... so much must be floating about in local lore and family tales. It's not like you can ever trust the newspapers!