July 06, 2022

The Murder of George Little & The Broadstone Mystery

1 hour 19 minutes

Broadstone station in Dublin, Ireland creaked, clanked and clattered with the din of everyday rail traffic. In 19th Century Ireland, it was one of the grandest buildings in the country's capital, and every day hundreds of people worked to ensure that its trains, serving over 500 miles of track from one coast of Ireland to the other, were running as efficiently as they could. It was an imposing machine that stood on the hillside of the city, pulsing away, day after day. In 1856, however, it became famous for more than just its trains and vast profits, when the cashier was found dead, locked in an office full of money. The investigation that followed struggled to solve the mystery for a full year, with a conclusion that pretty much no one who had followed the case, which was more or less the whole of Dublin, would find satisfactory.

SOURCES

Dublin Evening Post (1856) Shocking Occurence - Supposed Suicide. Dublin Evening Post, 15 Nov, 1856, p2. Dublin, Ireland.

London Evening Standard (1856) Murder Of The Cahsier Of The Great Midwestern Railway Company. London Evening Standard, p4. London, UK.

Dublin Evening Mail (1856) Terrible Tragedy At The Midland Railway. Dublin Evening Post, 17 Nov, 1856, p3. Dublin, Ireland.

Dublin Evening Post (1856) This Day. Dublin Evening Post, 20 Nov, 1856, p3. Dublin, Ireland.

London Evening Standard (1856) The Broadstone Tragedy. London Evening Standard, 12 Dec, 1856. p3. London, UK.

Leeds Mercury (1857) The Broadstone Tragedy. Leeds Mercury, 1 Jan, 1857. p4. Leeds, UK.

Saunders’s News Letter (1857) Murder Of The Late Mr Little. Saunders’s News Letter, 24 June, 1857. p1. London, UK.

Manchester Times (1857) The Arrest Of The Suspected Murderer Of Mr Little. Manchester Times, 27 Jun, 1857. p7. Manchester, UK.

Freeman’s Journal (1857) The Murder Of Mr Little. Freeman’s Journal, 29 Jun, 1857. p3. Dublin, Ireland.

Freeman’s Journal (1857) Trial Of Spollen For The Murder Of Mr Little. Freeman’s Journal, 10 Aug, 1857. p4. Dublin, Ireland.

Freeman’s Journal (1857) Trial Of Spollen For The Murder Of Mr Little. Freeman’s Journal, 12 Aug, 1857. p4. Dublin, Ireland.

Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette (1857) Re-Arrest Of Spollen. Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette, 26 Aug, 1857. p4. Scotland.

Premium.weatherweb.net (2022) Weather in History 1850 to 1899 AD. [online] Available at:

KBC, S. (2022) Virtual Reality Tour: Explore this grand former railway station in Dublin... with its own murder mystery. [online] TheJournal.ie. Available at:

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By Ben Cutmore

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