He was lying on his right side, across two gooseberry bushes. His body was drawn up and his left arm was partially raised as if he had tried to defend himself. His head was hanging down and beneath it was a round hole, full of blood.

It was a secluded place. To have reached it would have meant to have left the path and then turning into a path across the gardens which led to a row of walnut trees. The path then turned to the right and was secluded and shady. It was assumed that he had been stunned near to the path and then carried to the spot where he was murdered. There were no signs of broken bushes or any indication of a struggle having occurred. There was no reason why anyone should have gone to that site, as the gathering season was over. It could have lain there for months before being spotted. Once it had been found, however, the alarm was raised.

Mr George Cundell, a surgeon, of Kew, was the doctor who was called. He thought that Earley had been dead for two days. Decomposition had already set in. There was severe bruising on the left forearm and hand and a slight puncture between the thumb and finger. There was a large wound to the left hand side of the face. Death had been caused by having his throat cut. A sharp instrument had been used here, but the other injuries may have been caused by a boot. There were also four scalp wounds, inflicted by the same sharp weapon which was used for the throat cutting. Earley had probably been rendered unconscious, then killed in the secluded spot, as well as being stamped upon. The body was then removed to the mortuary.

Sergeant George Clarke was the first policeman on the site. He went through the deceased’s pockets. In them he found an old pocket knife, five raw potatoes and a clay pipe. In another pocket was an old pipe and two sixpences. On the ground near to the corpse was a hat, which had a cut in it. There was also a handkerchief. Finally, a piece of cord was found on a nearby branch, and this was bloodstained. The cord was of a type used by women in gathering fruit and probably had no connection with the man’s death. Despite a search by two constables, nothing else could be found.

On Thursday 9 August, at the Queen’s Head, Mortlake, the inquest commenced. There were also police, journalists and spectators present, too. Daniel Lee, who had made the grisly discovery, was the first to give evidence. He recounted his activities on that Monday morning. He left home at 6am and, having collected his tools, got to work and carried on until 8am. He then returned home for breakfast. By this time he had been told about Earley’s disappearance, so he decided to look among the gooseberry bushes, because he had been last reported as being seen in that vicinity.

The adjourned inquest took place on Friday 17 August. The police stated that they had been following one lead, but it had led nowhere. However, they now had a more promising lead. They believed that the killer might have been a man employed by Mr Morrison, at the Bee Hive pub, who had disappeared on the day of the murder, though he had not been discharged and was expected to turn up to work on the following Monday. Morrison remembered paying the man 7s 6d on the Saturday evening, before leaving. The man may have had a small handled hoe in his bag, but was not carrying the tools he worked with: a long handled hoe and a spade. He was not named in public, but the following description was issued to every police station in the country:

Age forty-five, height five feet nine inches, square shoulders, proportionate build, dark complexion, dark brown hair (inclined to curl), beard, whiskers and thick moustache (long), dark and peculiar eyes, dressed in dark pilot jacket and vest, dirty fustian trousers (large patch on one knee), black billy cock hat, heavy lace boots. Carried a thin canvas or hempen skeleton bag, containing a coat similar to one worn. Works as an excavator or gardener’s labourer, and is known as ‘Jim’. Information to be sent to Superintendent Williamson, Detective Department, Scotland Yard.

It was thought that the killer was a married man and the description of his wife was thus:

His wife, a short, stout, dark woman, wearing a hat with a thick full supposed to reside in Hammersmith.

This man had been seen by Burgess as he walked home on Saturday night, and whom Burgess vaguely knew by sight greeted him with a ‘good night, mate’. Presumably he attacked Earley shortly afterwards.

The inquest was then wound up with the predictable verdict brought by the jury that this was murder by an unknown assailant. Despite the Home Office offering a reward, no one was ever charged with the offence and the man whose description is noted above was never apprehended.

It is obscure why anyone should want to kill Earley, about whom little is known. There is a man of that name in the 1871 census; he is said to have been a labourer, born in Ireland in 1803, so this matches with what we know of him. Furthermore, in 1871, he was living in Glossop, Derbyshire, was married to one Bridget and they then had five children living with them. If this is our man, then presumably his wife had died between 1871–77 and he had moved south to look for work. He was of small height and was described as being quiet and inoffensive. He spent the summers working as a gardener, lodging with John William’s family at Garden Row, Mortlake, and spending the winters in Richmond Workhouse. His only known kin was Mary Welsh, an elderly and almost blind inmate of the forementioned workhouse, who was his sister. He liked his drink and had been before the Richmond magistrates on a couple of times for drunkenness, but apart from that had no history of trouble with the law. He usually ran up a ‘slate’ of between four and five shillings a week at the Beehive, by consuming about eight pence of tobacco and drink each evening, before paying it back on payday.

He was buried at Mortlake Cemetery on Thursday 9 August, at 6 pm. As with many other murder victims, a large crowd turned out, between 200300 people. Although he was a Catholic, for some reason he was buried in the Protestant part of the cemetery and there was a rumour that there might be a disturbance because of this. Thus police were present, but apart from ‘a slight outbreak from an Irishman present’, there was no trouble. Since the deceased was a pauper, the expense of the funeral fell on the council.

As well as not knowing who killed Earley, it is unknown why he should have been killed. Perhaps the killer had a secret grudge against him; perhaps he was killed for the small amount of money he had on him after being paid his wages; perhaps the killer had what police would have then termed ‘homicidal tendencies’. The police thought that the financial motive was the right one, with Inspector Edward Sayer writing, ‘The motive being the obtaining of his weekly wages and an additional sum he was entitled to for piece work … just before his last being seen alive [he] was heard to boast of the amount of money due to him.’

Strenuous efforts were made to apprehend the killer. There were 2,500 handbills describing the killer distributed to police stations throughout the country. There was also an advert in the Police Gazette, an official police newspaper. On 21 August, a reward of £100 was offered for the killer’s arrest. Many suspects were identified. On 9 August, one John Johnson, aged thirty-three and from Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, was arrested in Worcester for vagrancy. He answered the description in some ways, but not all. He was five feet six inches, with dark brown hair and a thick moustache and blue eyes. He also worked as a gardener’s labourer. Crucially, though, he was not the right height.

On 16 August, there was a report of a man seen in Watford and Luton who looked like the killer. On the following day, in Escrick, in the East Riding, George Appleby, a gardener, was arrested for vagrancy. He was five feet seven inches, with blue eyes and red hair. He had once worked in London and at Kew Gardens. He was discounted when Mr Morrison and his wife went up to see him and did not identify him.

George Wyse was another man suspected, but again was excluded after he had been seen. The Morrisons accompanied Sayer to many places, including Hampshire, Hertfordshire and London to see men who were seen as potential suspects, and all this cost them considerable time and money, as Sayer reported on 17 October. The problem was that it was all too late. Sayer noted that it had been forty-eight hours between the murder and the discovery of the body. Given that the killer was ‘supposed to be a man without any fixed habitation and a perfect stranger to the neighbourhood’, to leave the locality without attracting any suspicion was straightforward.

The police conclusion was a depressing one: ‘I beg further to report that up to the present time no trace has been obtained of the person or persons supposed to have been concerned in the murder of Patrick Earley.’

Nothing else was ever heard of in connection with the case.