BRICKS AND BONES...

On the morning of 21st June 1864, three London firms handed to Messrs. Chaplin & Co., carriers, separate boxes of gold for conveyance to Paris.  Each box was solidly constructed of wood and bound with iron straps.  When the boxes reached Dover the safes were unlocked and the cargo weighed - they showed no sign of interference.  However, on arrival in Paris it was discovered that the boxes were only full of lead shot. Gold bars to the value of £250,000 (worth some £50 million in today’s market) were missing, and also 5,000 newly-minted $20-denomination (“Double Eagle”) gold pieces, plus a quantity of donated jewellery raised by the wives of Confederate supporters of the time.

Nothing was ever recovered, but two men, Alfred Parsons and Thomas Hogden, were eventually convicted of the robbery and sentenced to transportation for life. A third, John Abberline, a man suffering from dwarfism, disappeared. Curiously, there was never any evidence in the years that followed to conclude that the missing gold ever reached the black market or, indeed, any market whatsoever.

Its disappearance, and that of John Abberline, remained a mystery for over a hundred years until March 2011 when a property developer in Brighton, East Sussex, discovered the remains of a body, seemingly a child, walled up in a cellar in the centre of the city...