Monthly Archives: January 2014

From the Dundee Courier of Tuesday 25 August 1936:

A dissected corpse has been discovered inside a truck which had been left on the pavement outside Shepheard’s Hotel, Cairo.

The trunk was left by a well-dressed young Egyptian in European clothes who dove to the hotel in a cab.

With the cabman’s help, he lifted the trunk out and placed on the pavement. People standing on the balconies of a large building opposite noticed the incident.

The cabman was then paid, but before he drove away the Egyptian shook out the mat on which the trunk had stood. Those watching thought he was shaking out water. It was later found to be blood.

The young man stood for a few minutes beside the brown battered truck, and then walked away. The trunk remained on the pavement for an hour.

Then Head Constable Wellbeloved, an Englishman in the Cairo City Police, noticed a small crowd outside the hotel. He was shown the trunk. A trickle of blood was emerging from the corner.

He opened the trunk. The first thing he saw was a naked human leg. He shut the trunk and took it to a police station.

Further examination revealed the dissected remains of a naked male body wrapped in sacking. The dissection had apparently been skillfully carried out by someone with a knowledge of anatomy. The head was missing but a gold wedding ring on one of the fingers was inscribed “B. Guriguis, 28/3/34”. A further clue was a wristwatch.

From the Yorkshire Evening Post of Saturday 4 June 1892:

There are strange chambermaids at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo. A lady declares that the one who waited on her room and attended to all the duties of the calling, even to making the beds was a Frenchman, dressed as if for a dinner party, with white waistcoat and dresscoat, and having the air of a refined and educated gentlemen. It was really embarrassing to accept his services in such a capacity. One lady, arriving at the hotel, rang for the chambermaid, and this gentleman presented himself. Supposing him to be the proprietor, at the very least, she said, “I wish to see the chambermaid”. “Madam,” said he, politely, in his very best English, “Madam, she am I!”

It shows just how famous Shepheard’s was at this time that a regional paper in northern England would carry stories about the hotel and could assume that its readers would know the place they were writing about.