Victorian Crime and Punishment - Missing Miss Molly

The mystery began on 14th January 1949 and still continues to this day, what really happened to Molly' Mary Burslem was a dancer and entertainer who took the stage name Molly Moselle. She was 33 years old and working as a stage manageress for an Ivor Novello show called The Dancing Years, at the Sunderland Empire Theatre in the winter of 1949 when she disappeared.

She had left her digs telling her landlady she was going to post a letter and she never returned. As the rumours about her and what might have happened started the Sunderland C.I.D spoke to her fellow performers who described Molly as a happy woman with a strong personality, who thought she had lost her memory and was some where safe in England. The police followed other suggestions such as suicide, murder or she had fallen into the river and drowned. They also made investigations in Liverpool where her family lived, London and Sheffield where some of her boyfriends lived and railway stations all over the country. Still they found nothing.

Molly had a long history of troubled relationships with men, but for 16 years she had been devoted to a married man who was unable to get a divorce a comedian called Bunny Doyle. In 1948 Bunny had deserted Molly for the principal boy in one of his pantomimes which left Molly feeling very bitter and hurt. She turned to a rich fat man called Walter Hattersley who owned a top hotel in Sheffield. A few months later Molly was telling her friends that she and Walter were engaged, but she could not wear the £200 ring he had bought her as it was too valuable.

Unfortunately Walter had never mentioned getting engaged, he had already been married before and was old enough to be Molly's father. A few stormy months later Walter found Molly drunk on his bedroom floor and ended the relationship. Molly phoned Walter on 22nd November 1948, he hung up on her and she was seen sobbing: it's all over. As the weeks past her friends knew that she was still upset and on Friday 14th January 1949 she had a lunch time drink with an electrician from the show. Molly told him that she had written to Walter and received a letter from him that morning, trying to hold back tears she would not say what was in the letter.

After lunch Molly went shopping in Sunderland then returned to her digs in Eden Street, near the theatre, she then told her landlady she had forgotten to post a letter. She went out into the cold dark night and never returned. The disappearance of Molly soon hit the headlines, and Sunderland police had a flood of offers to help them find Molly. As they scoured the country looking for her, calls came in from all over saying that people had seen her at various railway stations across the country. Nothing was to come of any of the so called sightings.

On the afternoon of Wednesday 12th October 1960, the police motor launch made a grisly find in the river wear. As two police officers reached over to recover the body an appalling smell hit them, then they realized that only the rotting torso and upper half of the leg remained. Police agreed that the body had been washed into the river by heavy rain and floods was a possibility, the post mortem revealed it had been a woman between 25 and 50 years old and 5ft 3 inches tall and dead for a long time. Aged 33yrs and 5ft 6 inches tall when she disappeared, could these remains have been Molly' A note from the inquest said the body could explain the disappearance of Molly but proof would be impossible, and inquires failed to find any one else it could have been. On Monday 17th October 1960 the unidentified remains were laid to rest. So was that Molly's remains or is she living out her life as a very happy healthy old woman'.

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