‘You smell the bodies before you see them’: The dark secret of the Thames
It’s difficult to beat the view from Ed Livett’s office. Set on Butler’s Wharf Pier on the south bank of the Thames, it overlooks Tower Bridge and the City of London. Should he venture out, you will find him working as a skipper on either a tug or barge, sometimes travelling east past the Isle of Dogs and Cutty Sark, or sometimes up-river, past the London Eye and tourist boats.
An eighth-generation waterman, nowadays most of his work involves helping TV and film crews film on the river; you can credit his company for scenes in James Bond, and the London 2012 Olympics. Understandably, he says there is nowhere else he’d rather be.
But there is, he adds, a darker side to his day job – coming across dead bodies.
“We’re out on the river all the time, and, sadly, an element of that is finding bodies,” he says. “You smell them before you see them. Often, they are snagged on the piers or jetties, or caught under our boats. They can travel huge distances as the river is so tidal. It’s one of London’s sad secrets, and happens more often than it should do.”
He is right. According to the Port of London Authority, an average of 30 bodies are retrieved from the river each year, 90 per cent of which are a result of suicide, although last year the figure was higher, with 45 bodies found. It’s believed that on average one body a week emerges on the 215-mile watery stretch that is the Thames.
In February, the body of chemical attacker Abdul Shokoor Ezedi, 35, was among them. Three weeks after he had thrown a corrosive substance over a woman (a former girlfriend) and her children, then aged eight and three, his body was found and removed from under Chelsea Bridge.
In Poplar Coroner Court this week, senior coroner Mary Hassell ruled that Ezedi took his own life, having drowned from jumping into the icy cold Thames just hours after the attack.
The fact it took 19 days between Ezedi jumping into the Thames to his body being found is of no surprise to those like Livett, 34, who works on the river running his Marine Logistics company, Livett’s. Nor was it a shock that while police searched for his body, they found four more – one near HMS Belfast, another in Limehouse, a female body on the Isle of Dogs, and another body on the shingle shore at Putney, later identified as first year university student Samaria Ayanle.
“In our world, finding a body is nothing to talk about,” he says. ‘We just call the police. It’s very normal, and actually seems to be getting worse. But it’s always sad and it awakens you to what the river is capable of doing.
“I’ve also seen people jump into the river, and been involved with trying to get them out. Most of the river deaths now are suicide, but I think the olden days it was lots of sinister reasons to end up there. All my family would have found bodies.”
His family, in fact, have been on the river in various trades since the 1800s.
His father, Chris Livett, 62, is the King’s current Bargemaster, tasked with accompanying him and other royalty while on the river. The role is thought to have been around since 1215, with the signing of Magna Carta at Runnymede, but is now largely ceremonial.
A life-long skipper and captain, Chris helped retrieve bodies following the Marchioness disaster in August 1989, when 51 people died after the pleasure boat sank after being hit by a dredger close to Southwark Bridge.
He has also found the corpse of a minke whale, cows that had waded in off Essex marshlands, terrier dogs he believed were used in fighting, as well as children and babies, whose bodies had been disposed of.
“I was weaned on the Thames but it’s a pretty sinister place,” he says. “It’s easy to fall in and get crushed underneath a boat, or hit your head. Then there’s the cold immersion. Often if someone falls in, you see them bob up three times and then they’re gone. The current pulls them under.”
Many bodies that end up in the Thames are found after being washed up on its mudflats or shingle beaches. Successful searches by divers – especially in the busy London area – are very difficult.
Former Metropolitan Police detective Nick Aldworth has described the Thames as a “massively hostile environment that’s constantly moving”.
“You’re talking about a river which is over 200 miles long with a tidal range of 23ft and speeds of up to 10mph,” he says. ‘You can’t see an inch in front of you and the challenge you have is where do you start.’
The weight of clothes can often drag a body down to the bottom of the river, which in places is 20 metres deep, but over time the body will fill up with gases, bloat, and eventually surface. Sometimes, they may get washed out to sea, but most get snagged on old piers, or the pontoon by the London Eye, or even caught in large nets designed to catch rubbish.
It is on the mudflats that Lara Maiklem, 52, author of Mudlarking: Lost and Found on the River Thames, has come across several bodies. Maiklem, who scavenges the banks and shores of the Thames for items of value, says: “If you spend any time on the Thames, you are going to see a dead body. So many people go in and don’t come out. But it’s happened for centuries. It’s a river of lost souls.”
Maiklem explains that before the current Waterloo Bridge was opened in 1945, there was a quiet toll bridge – dubbed the Bridge of Sighs – that people regularly jumped off.
A floating police station with a boat was established at the bridge’s base, which the RNLI bought for the nominal sum of £1 in 2004.
Maiklem herself has found two bodies, one that got left behind on a shore when the tide was retreating and another that was behind a river wall.
But she has also found historical human remains.
“There have been battles on the Thames, and graveyards that have been washed in,” she says. “I found a human skull out on the estuary which probably came from one of the prisoner ships that were moored out there in the 18th century before taking people off to Australia. These remains go back centuries, for as long as we’ve been living beside the river.”
Historic place names along the river – such as Dead Man’s Dock at Deptford and Dead Man’s Steps at Wapping – evoke stories of those who have been murdered or executed.
But while many of the bodies pulled from the Thames never make headlines, some do.
In 2001, a torso of a young African boy, called Adam by police, was discovered near Tower Bridge. He is thought to have been trafficked to the UK from Nigeria and believed to be the victim of a ritual killing. And in 2022, a 5,000-year-old human femur was pulled out – one of the oldest items ever found in the Thames.
Bodies that are found are recovered by the Metropolitan Police’s Marine Policing Unit, and are often taken to a temporary morgue on Wapping Pier at the MPU’s HQ. But many are disfigured, mutilated by boat propellers or river debris, and often need to be confirmed through DNA, dental records or fingerprints.
Poppy Mardall, founder of Poppy’s funeral directors in Tooting, says she has dealt with roughly 10 bodies who have been recovered from the Thames.
“These cases can be very traumatic for family and friends,” she says. “They may have been waiting a long time for the body to be found, and sometimes families have been advised not to see the bodies, although we never say this.
“If it’s a death by suicide, then you have all have all the additional complex pain and confusion on top. It can be heartbreaking.”
Gill Williams, 63, a former police diver and author of Searching High and Below, says she felt a huge “sense of relief” when she found a body. For 23 years, she worked with Thames Valley Police, covering a 100-mile non-tidal stretch of the Thames in Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.
“Often it was a scary job,” she says. “Sometimes there would be no visibility so you would rely on touch to find things. You’d be worried the body would bump into you. Your adrenalin would be pumping and heart pounding. And the bodies could travel huge distances, five miles or so.
“When I did find a body, it was a huge sense of relief. I used to talk to them, to tell them they’d be returned to their loved ones soon.”
She feels her job was incredibly important, as some families would wait for months for news. Now there are very few police dive teams left. “When I began my job in 1986, there were roughly 40 dive teams in the UK, today there are about six.”
“It means you haven’t got the resources to look for them anymore, so families are hiring private companies. It’s dreadful because it means families can’t start the grieving process properly. We would turn out any time of day or night; it didn’t matter.
“Now, sadly, that’s not happening. But it’s just so important. These bodies need retrieving. And families need closure.@
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