Kidnapping in the age of the hansom
September 3, 2023 2:18 PM Subscribe
Help me plot this hypothetical: You are a man of guile, means and influence in Victorian England and you know what orders to give to get the following done. You want to have a patient kidnapped from a hospital and secretly installed with people you trust. The distance is, oh, maybe a day's trip by mail coach. Since the patient is of interest to powerful people, who keep an eye on him, you absolutely do not want this traced back to you.
How would you go about this heist? Who would you hire and who would you bribe? How and with what would he be transported without it being obvious to passersby? Would a sick person who's recovering and intermittently conscious survive a bumpy trip?
Feel free to fill in the blanks and give as much detail as you want and can. This is pretty much for fun.
How would you go about this heist? Who would you hire and who would you bribe? How and with what would he be transported without it being obvious to passersby? Would a sick person who's recovering and intermittently conscious survive a bumpy trip?
Feel free to fill in the blanks and give as much detail as you want and can. This is pretty much for fun.
Do you have henchmen who are loyal or is this all going to be for-hire?
posted by Scattercat at 3:07 PM on September 3, 2023
posted by Scattercat at 3:07 PM on September 3, 2023
I'd seduce a nurse or Ward Sister. Find a spinster or widow who's been in the job long enough to know her way around and has some authority. I'd use my means and guile to prey upon her loneliness, meanwhile telling her sob stories about how much I care for the welfare of this patient, my long-lost niece/nephew [or something]. This engages the nurse's care/protection reflex, both for my vulnerability and the Patient's situation.
I keep telling the nurse about my country estate and how much I'd like to take her there, and how nice the garden is, and coincidentally how good the country air would be for the Patient's health. Did I mention I was thinking of founding a sanatorium myself, for the welfare of my fellow man? Perhaps you, Nurse, could advise me on how to arrange the very best of care for a delicate patient...
After that, if she doesn't come up with the abduction scheme herself and plead with me to carry it out, my name's not Winslow Corkindale Esq.
The nurse arranges affairs inside the hospital, expertly bundling the Patient out by the staff entrance, where my carriage is waiting.
That would be our main expenditure: an unmarked carriage with a team of four unremarkable-looking but sound and speedy horses and an expert driver. (Given my situation, presumably I already have such a driver in my employ). The carriage itself to be of modern manufacture, with elliptical springs for those rutted country roads.
A day by mail-coach is easily half that for a good private carriage, assuming the horses, axels and wheels remain sound. There's a risk of being slowed down in London traffic, but my driver has known these streets since he was a lad, and he navigates them with ease. By the time the hue and cry is raised, we're headed for the open road at the gallop. (A gallop can't be sustained for long, but I've arranged for a team of fresh horses at a convenient coaching inn.)
The nurse has advised me on what supplies to have in the carriage: bedding and blankets; clean water, beef tea and warm gruel. She will, of course, be coming along on the journey. I can't leave her behind; she knows about our plot, whether I wooed her under my real name or not. Besides, the Patient will benefit from her care.
Oh, what happens to the nurse, you say? Well, maybe I will found that sanatorium and place her in charge; it would be the perfect cover, as well as a laudable charitable enterprise. Or who knows, perhaps her steady hands and competence have won me over; I may keep her as a mistress for a bit while we keep the Patient safely concealed. Or if she becomes a bore, I can always have her discreetly done away with once we're in the country.
Keep this under your hat, won't you. Or... well, I'm sure I needn't mention the alternative.
posted by Pallas Athena at 3:45 PM on September 3, 2023 [14 favorites]
I keep telling the nurse about my country estate and how much I'd like to take her there, and how nice the garden is, and coincidentally how good the country air would be for the Patient's health. Did I mention I was thinking of founding a sanatorium myself, for the welfare of my fellow man? Perhaps you, Nurse, could advise me on how to arrange the very best of care for a delicate patient...
After that, if she doesn't come up with the abduction scheme herself and plead with me to carry it out, my name's not Winslow Corkindale Esq.
The nurse arranges affairs inside the hospital, expertly bundling the Patient out by the staff entrance, where my carriage is waiting.
That would be our main expenditure: an unmarked carriage with a team of four unremarkable-looking but sound and speedy horses and an expert driver. (Given my situation, presumably I already have such a driver in my employ). The carriage itself to be of modern manufacture, with elliptical springs for those rutted country roads.
A day by mail-coach is easily half that for a good private carriage, assuming the horses, axels and wheels remain sound. There's a risk of being slowed down in London traffic, but my driver has known these streets since he was a lad, and he navigates them with ease. By the time the hue and cry is raised, we're headed for the open road at the gallop. (A gallop can't be sustained for long, but I've arranged for a team of fresh horses at a convenient coaching inn.)
The nurse has advised me on what supplies to have in the carriage: bedding and blankets; clean water, beef tea and warm gruel. She will, of course, be coming along on the journey. I can't leave her behind; she knows about our plot, whether I wooed her under my real name or not. Besides, the Patient will benefit from her care.
Oh, what happens to the nurse, you say? Well, maybe I will found that sanatorium and place her in charge; it would be the perfect cover, as well as a laudable charitable enterprise. Or who knows, perhaps her steady hands and competence have won me over; I may keep her as a mistress for a bit while we keep the Patient safely concealed. Or if she becomes a bore, I can always have her discreetly done away with once we're in the country.
Keep this under your hat, won't you. Or... well, I'm sure I needn't mention the alternative.
posted by Pallas Athena at 3:45 PM on September 3, 2023 [14 favorites]
The first thing you need are Henchmen. Happily you are a man of means, and in those days servants tended to be really loyal, as it was really hard to get a new job without "a character" eg. a reference from you, and often there was tradition binding your servants to you, as when his father had served your father, and his grandfather had served your grandfather. But let's also have some reason why the henchmen in question feel extra personal loyalty to you - perhaps they committed some crime or the other - poaching, or one of your horses dropped dead under their care and they might have been held to be at fault - so if you were to prosecute them they would be in trouble, but you were magnanimous. And perhaps their sister had a consumptive habit and you took her from a tenement in London and set her up in a cottage in the country with lots of fresh air and the milk and butter the family couldn't afford to feed her, and her health hinges on continuing the better living conditions.
The next thing you need are letters. Let's say Sir Arthur Talbot is the physician to those of the highest rank in the land, he treated poor little Prince Leopold, and naturally everybody knows this, especially people in the medical profession. So what you need are letters from Doctor Sir Arthur Talbot, one to arrive three hours before the second one.
The first one says, "upon instruction from *those powerful people you mentioned, I will be sending a coach to receive *intended kidnap victim so as to take him to *Dr. Sir Arthur Talbot's favourite private hospital." It's not a public hospital of course, it's an exclusive nursing home. First you tell them to expect the kidnapping team, and then you send the second letter to be delivered in person by the kidnapping team, in a coach which has been marked with the appropriate insignia of the Talbot family, probably not a crest since he got his knighthood for service to the crown, but his monogram, T for the Talbot family. If you can copy the real monogram so much the better. The monogram would be painted on the doors.
The coach has been set up for a journey, and is exceptionally well sprung as well as being drawn by a team of very boring, very commonplace looking brown horse. As well as the coachman and outriders, there are a couple of nurses and an orderly, and all the appropriate supplies. Basically pull up in an ambulance, carrying the right paperwork.
Now likely the head doctor at the hospital you are kidnapping the poor patient from will have just sent a letter to Sir Arthur Talbot, by courier, asking him for more info, but its the Victorian era, so by the time the hospital notifies him at his home that Sir Arthur Talbot's message had arrived, and he's read it, hand written a letter asking what the heck is this sudden change about, and obtained the courier to deliver it, a couple of hours have passed, so that message still has a few hours to go before Sir Arthur Talbot gets it and says, "Great Scott! Something nefarious is afoot!"
And while the second letter thanks the first hospital profusely for their assistance (I remain, Sir, in debt for your kind cooperation in this matter. Sir Arthur middle-name-squiggle Talbot) the servants carrying the letter can't explain why they were ordered to pick up the patient, because they are only servants. But they are obviously well trained and capable since they are driving the equivalent of a limousine-cum-ambulance. And the nurses (probably male) in their aprons and caps will ask all the necessary questions regarding the care and comfort of the patient during his journey, does he need to be lifted and supported when he coughs, how soon does he need the cold foot baths - you know the kind of questions they need to ask.
All going well he will be transferred to a stretcher, carried gently out to the waiting vehicle and installed on the cot inside it, with his attendants tucking him in kindly, and off they go...
... to where a second vehicle, also incredibly well sprung and set up inside for a patient to travel lying down, which is parked behind the house of some local, maybe two hours drive away. This vehicle, however does not look like an ambulance or a gentleman's carriage, but merely the kind of vehicle you can rent from a livery stable when you need one and don't own one of your own, and it is equipped with a different coachman. In fact a couple of very ordinary looking people, like two women and a five year old boy, will also get picked up at a third location a quarter mile away.
Changing horse or vehicles will not surprise anyone. You have to change horses a lot, and sometimes it is much more practical for you to change vehicles and send the horses to a stable where they can rest before returning with their vehicle. That's the concept of traveling by post. So the local person who lets the second coach and its driver and horses wait out of sight behind his house for the first vehicle is not going to think in terms of anything nefarious. He's going to think in terms of people who take proper care of their horses.
The limousine-cum-ambulance coach is to drive slowly away with its outriders still at a speed suitable to one with a very ill patient inside, and the livery vehicle will drive slowly and carefully away, with the little boy riding on top with the different coachman and the two women looking out the windows, traveling at a speed suitable for a vehicle carrying passengers that get sick from the jolting on bad roads.
The original kidnapping vehicle likely must be hidden very soon in some nearby barn or coach house, and the original outriders, coach horses and coachman abandon it. You mustn't let your henchmen get stopped and questioned. Even though the vehicle has been traveling slowly, chances are they have a good enough head start that they can get five hours away before they have to leave the vehicle. They might even have a full day before horses are being ridden hard in pursuit, having to repeatedly stop and ask if anyone has seen them.
With luck you can even arrange to have the coach stolen, as if it turns up in the hands of thieves who have scratched the monogram off the doors all the better. One of the outriders can drop a word about having to leave the vehicle and hoping it won't get stolen, at the nearest un-savoury inn of bad-repute before continuing on.
Things to keep in mind include that you can't travel at night, so you have to do the kidnapping as early as possible in the morning. The first message can arrive before dawn brought by a rider who took the risk of riding hard in the dark. But the vehicle containing the patient and his attendants will have to travel slowly and carefully and have enough light to go down unpaved country roads. Of course you can time the kidnapping for a full moon, but if the weather turns out overcast, you'll have to go with the back up plan of the kidnapping at six AM.
You want to take your patient as little a distance as possible, and get him into a safe bed in a house with all the facilities to take care of him as soon as you can. So it would be sensible to have the getaway limousine-cum-ambulance overshoot the actual location you are bringing him to, and have the getaway rented livery coach leave in the same direction the first vehicle was headed to give the impression that they were headed for John o'Groats so they should look for him there. The rented livery coach will turn back at the crossroads.
All sorts of additional details like a third vehicle are possible if you want to create some red herrings.
Forgery back in those days was dead easy. Write to Dr. Sir Arthur Talbot to get a reply from him back on his letterhead paper, and you can easily have an accurate looking facsimile produced. This will cover you if the head doctor at the hospital where the patient is has received letters from him before and might wonder at a sudden change in notepaper or an unlikely looking signature.
As much as possible get your Henchmen to think they are not assisting in a kidnapping, but rather taking security measures to protect the patient from just such a threat. He is going into hiding, not being kidnapped. Their instructions DO come from the real Sir Arthur T, whom you are assisting to hide and protect the patient. And once the kidnapping has occurred pack them off to a well paid comfortable job at your hunting lodge in North Britain, where they won't get to hear any news, or pay for them to immigrate. Warn them that once the patient is successfully hidden the news could be spread that he has been done away with, or died. Such rumours will be deliberately spread for the protection of the patient, you'll explain. That way if they read an item in the paper when they are in Sydney about a kidnapping a year ago they won't be tempted to write to anyone telling them that's not what happened.
posted by Jane the Brown at 3:51 PM on September 3, 2023 [13 favorites]
The next thing you need are letters. Let's say Sir Arthur Talbot is the physician to those of the highest rank in the land, he treated poor little Prince Leopold, and naturally everybody knows this, especially people in the medical profession. So what you need are letters from Doctor Sir Arthur Talbot, one to arrive three hours before the second one.
The first one says, "upon instruction from *those powerful people you mentioned, I will be sending a coach to receive *intended kidnap victim so as to take him to *Dr. Sir Arthur Talbot's favourite private hospital." It's not a public hospital of course, it's an exclusive nursing home. First you tell them to expect the kidnapping team, and then you send the second letter to be delivered in person by the kidnapping team, in a coach which has been marked with the appropriate insignia of the Talbot family, probably not a crest since he got his knighthood for service to the crown, but his monogram, T for the Talbot family. If you can copy the real monogram so much the better. The monogram would be painted on the doors.
The coach has been set up for a journey, and is exceptionally well sprung as well as being drawn by a team of very boring, very commonplace looking brown horse. As well as the coachman and outriders, there are a couple of nurses and an orderly, and all the appropriate supplies. Basically pull up in an ambulance, carrying the right paperwork.
Now likely the head doctor at the hospital you are kidnapping the poor patient from will have just sent a letter to Sir Arthur Talbot, by courier, asking him for more info, but its the Victorian era, so by the time the hospital notifies him at his home that Sir Arthur Talbot's message had arrived, and he's read it, hand written a letter asking what the heck is this sudden change about, and obtained the courier to deliver it, a couple of hours have passed, so that message still has a few hours to go before Sir Arthur Talbot gets it and says, "Great Scott! Something nefarious is afoot!"
And while the second letter thanks the first hospital profusely for their assistance (I remain, Sir, in debt for your kind cooperation in this matter. Sir Arthur middle-name-squiggle Talbot) the servants carrying the letter can't explain why they were ordered to pick up the patient, because they are only servants. But they are obviously well trained and capable since they are driving the equivalent of a limousine-cum-ambulance. And the nurses (probably male) in their aprons and caps will ask all the necessary questions regarding the care and comfort of the patient during his journey, does he need to be lifted and supported when he coughs, how soon does he need the cold foot baths - you know the kind of questions they need to ask.
All going well he will be transferred to a stretcher, carried gently out to the waiting vehicle and installed on the cot inside it, with his attendants tucking him in kindly, and off they go...
... to where a second vehicle, also incredibly well sprung and set up inside for a patient to travel lying down, which is parked behind the house of some local, maybe two hours drive away. This vehicle, however does not look like an ambulance or a gentleman's carriage, but merely the kind of vehicle you can rent from a livery stable when you need one and don't own one of your own, and it is equipped with a different coachman. In fact a couple of very ordinary looking people, like two women and a five year old boy, will also get picked up at a third location a quarter mile away.
Changing horse or vehicles will not surprise anyone. You have to change horses a lot, and sometimes it is much more practical for you to change vehicles and send the horses to a stable where they can rest before returning with their vehicle. That's the concept of traveling by post. So the local person who lets the second coach and its driver and horses wait out of sight behind his house for the first vehicle is not going to think in terms of anything nefarious. He's going to think in terms of people who take proper care of their horses.
The limousine-cum-ambulance coach is to drive slowly away with its outriders still at a speed suitable to one with a very ill patient inside, and the livery vehicle will drive slowly and carefully away, with the little boy riding on top with the different coachman and the two women looking out the windows, traveling at a speed suitable for a vehicle carrying passengers that get sick from the jolting on bad roads.
The original kidnapping vehicle likely must be hidden very soon in some nearby barn or coach house, and the original outriders, coach horses and coachman abandon it. You mustn't let your henchmen get stopped and questioned. Even though the vehicle has been traveling slowly, chances are they have a good enough head start that they can get five hours away before they have to leave the vehicle. They might even have a full day before horses are being ridden hard in pursuit, having to repeatedly stop and ask if anyone has seen them.
With luck you can even arrange to have the coach stolen, as if it turns up in the hands of thieves who have scratched the monogram off the doors all the better. One of the outriders can drop a word about having to leave the vehicle and hoping it won't get stolen, at the nearest un-savoury inn of bad-repute before continuing on.
Things to keep in mind include that you can't travel at night, so you have to do the kidnapping as early as possible in the morning. The first message can arrive before dawn brought by a rider who took the risk of riding hard in the dark. But the vehicle containing the patient and his attendants will have to travel slowly and carefully and have enough light to go down unpaved country roads. Of course you can time the kidnapping for a full moon, but if the weather turns out overcast, you'll have to go with the back up plan of the kidnapping at six AM.
You want to take your patient as little a distance as possible, and get him into a safe bed in a house with all the facilities to take care of him as soon as you can. So it would be sensible to have the getaway limousine-cum-ambulance overshoot the actual location you are bringing him to, and have the getaway rented livery coach leave in the same direction the first vehicle was headed to give the impression that they were headed for John o'Groats so they should look for him there. The rented livery coach will turn back at the crossroads.
All sorts of additional details like a third vehicle are possible if you want to create some red herrings.
Forgery back in those days was dead easy. Write to Dr. Sir Arthur Talbot to get a reply from him back on his letterhead paper, and you can easily have an accurate looking facsimile produced. This will cover you if the head doctor at the hospital where the patient is has received letters from him before and might wonder at a sudden change in notepaper or an unlikely looking signature.
As much as possible get your Henchmen to think they are not assisting in a kidnapping, but rather taking security measures to protect the patient from just such a threat. He is going into hiding, not being kidnapped. Their instructions DO come from the real Sir Arthur T, whom you are assisting to hide and protect the patient. And once the kidnapping has occurred pack them off to a well paid comfortable job at your hunting lodge in North Britain, where they won't get to hear any news, or pay for them to immigrate. Warn them that once the patient is successfully hidden the news could be spread that he has been done away with, or died. Such rumours will be deliberately spread for the protection of the patient, you'll explain. That way if they read an item in the paper when they are in Sydney about a kidnapping a year ago they won't be tempted to write to anyone telling them that's not what happened.
posted by Jane the Brown at 3:51 PM on September 3, 2023 [13 favorites]
This is very nearly a plot in the book The Cabinet of Dr Leng. Set in Victorian era New York City, a woman of guile and means rescues her young brother from jail.
posted by phunniemee at 4:28 PM on September 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by phunniemee at 4:28 PM on September 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
I delegate this to my capable man of affairs, already in my employ. If said man is unavailable (out of the country, or dead, do to some previous scheme of mine), I call in a marker at my club to press someone else's man of affairs (say, wasn't Cholmondeley's fellow once a Bow Street runner?) into temporary service.
posted by Iris Gambol at 5:56 PM on September 3, 2023
posted by Iris Gambol at 5:56 PM on September 3, 2023
"Victorian England" is a bit vague. Before or after railways, telegrams and/or motor cars:? Having a fast, reasonably reliable vehicle would make all the difference to your plans. Come to think of it, the introduction of corridor trains would also affect your plans. Before they were intrioduced passengers were completely isolated in their compartment between stations, (and there was at least one famous murder that took advantage of the fact).
I think your best bet would be to pose (convincingly) as a doctor, armed with some convincing-looking paperwork and a couple of your best goons disguised as nurses, Bundle up the patient and whisk them away in a fast vehicle to a steam-yacht waiting at the coast. \it would also make a difference if your patient was injured or sick and held in a regular hospital or confined in some sort of metnal asylum, which i assume would be harder to get them out of,.
posted by Fuchsoid at 6:02 PM on September 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think your best bet would be to pose (convincingly) as a doctor, armed with some convincing-looking paperwork and a couple of your best goons disguised as nurses, Bundle up the patient and whisk them away in a fast vehicle to a steam-yacht waiting at the coast. \it would also make a difference if your patient was injured or sick and held in a regular hospital or confined in some sort of metnal asylum, which i assume would be harder to get them out of,.
posted by Fuchsoid at 6:02 PM on September 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
Personally, I would organize a transfer to a sanitarium, then on the way, substitute a different wagon, and divert the real one. You can definitely go multi-layered. Go in disguised as a doctor with staff, organize a transfer, send multiple decoys in different directions, and depending on if the subject can move, arrange a surreptitious transfer to yet a different means of transportation (carriage to boat, for example), then another set of switch-a-roo, to make sure you lose the tail, if any.
Send three carriages up front, a "patient" gets into each one with guard, and goes off in different directions, while you and the real patient slip out the back, in disguise, via a different mode of transportation.
posted by kschang at 6:41 PM on September 3, 2023
Send three carriages up front, a "patient" gets into each one with guard, and goes off in different directions, while you and the real patient slip out the back, in disguise, via a different mode of transportation.
posted by kschang at 6:41 PM on September 3, 2023
What you need here, my friend, is chloroform. Chloroform and some henchmen (or minions if need by). A muscular type holds a cloth soaked in the stuff in front of the subject's face and (regardless of how poorly this scheme would work in real life) the poor person is unconscious in the space of a couple breaths.
Now, to smuggle him out in a coffin. I imagine coffins go in and out of that hospital all the time, and you can provide some song and dance about its being someone whose relatives requested burial in their own family plot many miles distant.
posted by wjm at 11:35 PM on September 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
Now, to smuggle him out in a coffin. I imagine coffins go in and out of that hospital all the time, and you can provide some song and dance about its being someone whose relatives requested burial in their own family plot many miles distant.
posted by wjm at 11:35 PM on September 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Haha! I am loving these answers, thank you!
posted by Omnomnom at 12:11 AM on September 4, 2023
posted by Omnomnom at 12:11 AM on September 4, 2023
Similar action in The Woman In White by Willed Collins.
posted by SemiSalt at 4:38 AM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by SemiSalt at 4:38 AM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
An unmarked private coach with the blinds drawn would be the obvious vehicle. If your end destination is within about 50 miles of your starting place it would negate the need for stopping at an inn overnight.
I also question the hospital feature. You'd only be in a hospital if you were both sick and poor.
posted by plonkee at 5:48 AM on September 4, 2023
I also question the hospital feature. You'd only be in a hospital if you were both sick and poor.
posted by plonkee at 5:48 AM on September 4, 2023
plonkee: I also question the hospital feature. You'd only be in a hospital if you were both sick and poor.
If you do a search on "Victorian hospitals," you'll find endless results declaring that they were little more than "gateways to death," places of horror and despair from which a patient would need a veritable miracle to escape, let alone recover. Other articles declare that hospital care (and health care in general) was available only to the wealthy. Yet many Victorian-era articles tell a different story. Many resources were indeed available for those without funds, and patients write of the dedicated care they received from hospital staff. A "visit" to a hospital was often a lengthy affair; one writer describes a ten-week stay. Perhaps it's well to remember that from the Victorian perspective, a Victorian hospital was surely an improvement on what went before -- even if by today's standards they might seem a bit less salubrious.
There were also Specialist and Cottage Hospitals. One of these could easily be treating this patient given that it's much easier to keep an eye on someone in a hospital with two dozen beds than in one with two hundred or more. They'd also be in more rural locations with less pollution. And while on the one hand you'd have less patients 'obscuring' the absence of one, you also would have less staff to get on board, bribe or distract.
For the abduction I'm thinking of a rather lugubrious scenario, which assumes a Cottage Hospital with the patient in a private room (he shouldn't be able to freely talk to others because of the dirt he has on the Powerful People). There's no direct 24/7 surveillance by Team PP; the location is such that any unusual activity is recorded in extreme detail by the village's Team Gossip, with at least one of them running a guesthouse boarding two members of Team PP in slow rotation, or heavies subordinate to Team PP. There's also as common with these Cottage Hospitals no in-house doctor, just competent nursing staff. One or two doctors come around once or twice a week.
You order one of your henchmen to find a lookalike to the actual patient and drug him. Someone who's not easily missed, so likely someone poor and homeless, but with a wash, a shave and a haircut it'll be good enough. Your henchman would also be told to find two, maybe three heavies to do the actual kidnapping. They will be bringing fresh linen to the hospital, with the drugged lookalike hidden in it. Night shift nurse has been gently taken out by some VERY calming tea. Team Linen swaps patient, KILLS the substitute and does a bit of maiming to hide any obvious difference in features; they abscond with the dirty linen and the real patient. This takes place during the night/early morning. Nurse comes in to the patient's room around 8 a.m. with breakfast, sees a lot of blood and a dead patient and reacts appropriately. Team Linen is by now three hours away already. Room gets sealed, local constable alerted, as well as the doctor(s). Team Gossip gets into overdrive, but Team Linen was just the ordinary, every once-a-week linen service and wasn't really on Team Gossip's watch list. Local constable and doctor(s) are unable to ascertain that this is not the patient that was supposed in this room, seal it up again, then wait until Scotland Yard arrives. At no point until SY is done with their preliminary investigation has any one from Team PP been allowed into the room by the local plod and detect the swap (if they could). That's easily two days of headstart, and there's of course the "Oh well, he's dead and with him, the info" possible reaction of Team PP.
Patient gets delivered to New Care, Team Linen gets paid handsomely and disbands, never to be seen again.
posted by Stoneshop at 8:32 AM on September 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
If you do a search on "Victorian hospitals," you'll find endless results declaring that they were little more than "gateways to death," places of horror and despair from which a patient would need a veritable miracle to escape, let alone recover. Other articles declare that hospital care (and health care in general) was available only to the wealthy. Yet many Victorian-era articles tell a different story. Many resources were indeed available for those without funds, and patients write of the dedicated care they received from hospital staff. A "visit" to a hospital was often a lengthy affair; one writer describes a ten-week stay. Perhaps it's well to remember that from the Victorian perspective, a Victorian hospital was surely an improvement on what went before -- even if by today's standards they might seem a bit less salubrious.
There were also Specialist and Cottage Hospitals. One of these could easily be treating this patient given that it's much easier to keep an eye on someone in a hospital with two dozen beds than in one with two hundred or more. They'd also be in more rural locations with less pollution. And while on the one hand you'd have less patients 'obscuring' the absence of one, you also would have less staff to get on board, bribe or distract.
For the abduction I'm thinking of a rather lugubrious scenario, which assumes a Cottage Hospital with the patient in a private room (he shouldn't be able to freely talk to others because of the dirt he has on the Powerful People). There's no direct 24/7 surveillance by Team PP; the location is such that any unusual activity is recorded in extreme detail by the village's Team Gossip, with at least one of them running a guesthouse boarding two members of Team PP in slow rotation, or heavies subordinate to Team PP. There's also as common with these Cottage Hospitals no in-house doctor, just competent nursing staff. One or two doctors come around once or twice a week.
You order one of your henchmen to find a lookalike to the actual patient and drug him. Someone who's not easily missed, so likely someone poor and homeless, but with a wash, a shave and a haircut it'll be good enough. Your henchman would also be told to find two, maybe three heavies to do the actual kidnapping. They will be bringing fresh linen to the hospital, with the drugged lookalike hidden in it. Night shift nurse has been gently taken out by some VERY calming tea. Team Linen swaps patient, KILLS the substitute and does a bit of maiming to hide any obvious difference in features; they abscond with the dirty linen and the real patient. This takes place during the night/early morning. Nurse comes in to the patient's room around 8 a.m. with breakfast, sees a lot of blood and a dead patient and reacts appropriately. Team Linen is by now three hours away already. Room gets sealed, local constable alerted, as well as the doctor(s). Team Gossip gets into overdrive, but Team Linen was just the ordinary, every once-a-week linen service and wasn't really on Team Gossip's watch list. Local constable and doctor(s) are unable to ascertain that this is not the patient that was supposed in this room, seal it up again, then wait until Scotland Yard arrives. At no point until SY is done with their preliminary investigation has any one from Team PP been allowed into the room by the local plod and detect the swap (if they could). That's easily two days of headstart, and there's of course the "Oh well, he's dead and with him, the info" possible reaction of Team PP.
Patient gets delivered to New Care, Team Linen gets paid handsomely and disbands, never to be seen again.
posted by Stoneshop at 8:32 AM on September 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
Pallas Athena: I'd seduce a nurse or Ward Sister.
Ehm. That wouldn't quite mesh with "on no account should this be connectable to you" even when using a pseudonym. You'd be seen at the hospital, multiple times, and often when Nurse Spinster has just come off duty. Also, even though recovery from illness or accident could take a long time, wooing Nurse Spinster might not be a quickie either.
posted by Stoneshop at 10:52 AM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
Ehm. That wouldn't quite mesh with "on no account should this be connectable to you" even when using a pseudonym. You'd be seen at the hospital, multiple times, and often when Nurse Spinster has just come off duty. Also, even though recovery from illness or accident could take a long time, wooing Nurse Spinster might not be a quickie either.
posted by Stoneshop at 10:52 AM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
Now, to smuggle him out in a coffin. I imagine coffins go in and out of that hospital all the time, and you can provide some song and dance about its being someone whose relatives requested burial in their own family plot many miles distant.
As well as being pleasingly gothic, if your initial setting is London post-1854 this raises the possibility of escape via the Necropolis Railway.
Or you could have your man-of-means speak with someone at Surgeons' Hall who procures bodies for dissection; they surely know a few mortuary workers at the hospital who'll look the other way. Once the "body" is safely at Surgeons' Hall, our living Patient can be bandaged up so their face is hidden and taken charge of by me, their loving family member who will oversee their convalescence.
posted by Pallas Athena at 12:08 PM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
As well as being pleasingly gothic, if your initial setting is London post-1854 this raises the possibility of escape via the Necropolis Railway.
Or you could have your man-of-means speak with someone at Surgeons' Hall who procures bodies for dissection; they surely know a few mortuary workers at the hospital who'll look the other way. Once the "body" is safely at Surgeons' Hall, our living Patient can be bandaged up so their face is hidden and taken charge of by me, their loving family member who will oversee their convalescence.
posted by Pallas Athena at 12:08 PM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
Stoneshop: Nurse Spinster is no fool. She understands that her reputation depends on not being seen keeping company with gentlemen-- and her employment depends on her reputation. She also understands the need for a man of my standing to be discreet in these matters.
We dine at my townhouse, or in a private room at my local hostelry. And if we step out, we do so to places her colleagues are unlikely to be. I take her to my boxes at the opera and the Theatre Royal; but often a fine dinner, some flowers and a listening ear for her troubles are enough to make the evening all she could wish for. (I trust the rest is understood.)
posted by Pallas Athena at 12:22 PM on September 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
We dine at my townhouse, or in a private room at my local hostelry. And if we step out, we do so to places her colleagues are unlikely to be. I take her to my boxes at the opera and the Theatre Royal; but often a fine dinner, some flowers and a listening ear for her troubles are enough to make the evening all she could wish for. (I trust the rest is understood.)
posted by Pallas Athena at 12:22 PM on September 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: This is all amazing and very educational. Thank you!
posted by Omnomnom at 12:22 PM on September 4, 2023
posted by Omnomnom at 12:22 PM on September 4, 2023
Pallas Athena: as you can see I'm not too well versed in wooing Victorian Nurses Spinster; I'm more like getting the bits around the hospital itself done as quickly as possible, and keeping the bloodhounds off the track by throwing them a bone or, in this case, an entire bloody corpse. Cloaking a kidnapping in a Mysterious Murder Case; it's likely to stall everything until Scotland Yard has at least figured the What and the How. Especially since the hospital and Team PP will want to have that done discreetly (Team Gossip will be torn between, well, being Team Gossip and protecting the reputation of the hospital and the village), and Team PP not opening up on the Why as that may cause probing of cupboards containing skeletons.
posted by Stoneshop at 1:10 PM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Stoneshop at 1:10 PM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
Mod note: [btw, this post has been added to the sidebar]
posted by taz (staff) at 2:09 AM on September 5, 2023
posted by taz (staff) at 2:09 AM on September 5, 2023
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I'd also start with thinking about the idea of 'hospital.' For most of the Victorian era (this was changing in the very late 19th century), neither antiseptic practices nor anesthesia were widely used, and hospitals were generally pretty hellish and extremely dangerous places that mostly served the poor. People who could afford it would have medical treatment, even surgery, done at home.
posted by kickingtheground at 2:51 PM on September 3, 2023 [5 favorites]