I knew nothing about this story previously, but I found an interesting short article in a book. Very little information is available due to the age of the crime, but what I have involves affairs, fortune tellers and murder most foul…
Contains affiliate links.
Willem de Swart and his wife owned a lodging house at 8 Whitfield Street near Tottenham Court Road in London. He wasn’t too impressed when, in January 1899, his wife rented out the first-floor rooms to a couple calling themselves Fritz and Augusta Briesenick. Fritz was tall and good-looking, appearing much younger than his 25 years and with a penchant for expensive cigars (despite telling the Stewarts that he was an unemployed baker). Augusta was 36, with heavy makeup, which made her appear older and costly clothing. Despite having reservations about the couple, Willem was rather shallow and soon changed his mind when Augusta pulled out a pure full of gold sovereigns to pay the rent in advance.
Over the next few weeks, the couple appeared to be the perfect tenants: quiet, clean and always paying the rent on time, although it was Augusta who ensured this. Fritz never seemed to have any money of his own and always relied on his partner to finance him. Augusta never spoke openly about her work and was always pretty vague. Willem accidentally discovered it when he saw an advert in one of the German newspapers published in London; Augusta was a fortune teller. Willem didn’t consider this to be a ‘proper’ profession. He confronted Fritz about it, who openly bragged that his wife was indeed a fortune teller with many wealthy clients, including a German movie star. Willem still wasn’t overly enamoured with housing a fortune teller (it was considered illegal then), but the regular rent money persuaded him otherwise.
In late February/early March of 1899, Augusta appeared to want a career change and advertised in the local newspaper, looking for a housekeeping position. I’ve struggled to find an explanation as to why Fritz still wasn’t working at this point. Reports say that, although he wasn’t working and spent his time smoking cigars, he looked increasingly stressed out.
On the 2nd of March, Willem returned from his local after participating in a couple of ‘shandies’. He got to his house and saw Fritz standing by the window smoking one of his cigars and gave him a shout, ‘Hullo! Good evening, countryman!! A nice night, eh?’. Fritz was strangely reserved in his reply, merely saying, ‘Yes, but I am going off to sleep. Goodnight’. Willem never saw Fritz again.
The following day, Willem and his wife received a postcard from Fritz and Augusta explaining they had to leave but only temporarily and would be returning soon. They thought nothing much of this until a strange smell started coming from one of the rented rooms. It became too unpleasant to cope with, and Willem decided to enter; inside was the deteriorating corpse of a half-naked woman with her face covered with a pillow.
The police were alerted immediately, and when they arrived, Willem was, more than understandably, in a state of shock and hysterically shouting, ‘Mein Gott!’ (‘My god’). Two doctors were the next to arrive at the horrific scene. They looked at the body and saw that the victim’s face was black, which they believed to be from being beaten savagely before she was suffocated. The woman was barely recognisable, but Willem and another lodger all identified her as Augusta (although Willem’s wife did cast her doubts). When the case went to the coroner’s inquest, Fritz was heavily suspected of murdering his wife. However, during the second inquest, servant Minnie Gransow testified that the body was (plot twist!) not Augusta at all. Augusta had been a short, slight woman with hair dyed multiple colours. This body was tall and stocky with natural hair, and officials soon realised the body had been misidentified (I’m not entirely sure how they managed to fuck up the identification so much when there were significant differences between the two!). The room where the body was found was inspected once more, and all the evidence now pointed to the body being that of Marie Sophie Richards, who had been reported missing and was eventually identified by her sister. Doctors deduced that Sophie had become pregnant, and Fritz must have offered to perform an abortion; her intestines had traces of a chemical used to encourage abortion. Although it would appear that the abortion had been botched, they still believed that suffocation was the cause of death. Had she been killed to keep her quiet? Was it an accident or entirely deliberate?
London detectives were searching for Fritz and the now-not-dead Augusta and discovered they had travelled to Berlin via rail; Berlin police were alerted, and detectives arrested Fritz and Augusta as soon as they stepped off the train. They were taken to the police station, and Fritz soon began talking. He confessed his real name was Fritz Metz, and he had been an apprentice to Adolf Briesenick, a well-known and very wealthy baker and confectioner in Berlin. Augusta had been married to Adolf but started an affair with young Fritz. The pair stole Adolf’s money and did a runner to London, where they hoped to start afresh. While in London, Augusta was performing abortions, faking fortune readings and even stealing from an actress who had employed her as a masseuse.
The pair were tried in November 1899; Fritz was acquitted. Augusta would have faced a strict punishment but had become ‘insane and unable to plead’.
And that is the relatively unknown story of Fritz & Augusta. There are so many different conclusions you could come to with this story. Was the older Augusta a manipulative femme fatale who seduced her husband’s younger assistant into helping her with her life of crime? I found it interesting that Augusta only became ‘insane’ (which could have been anything in those days – women only had to smile wrong, and they were branded crazy) after Fritz blamed her for everything. Was she trying to get out of prison, or was she genuinely shocked and upset that Fritz had betrayed her and became depressed? I will let you decide, but know this: Augusta was forced to spend the rest of her life in an asylum. Fritz swaggered out of court with a smirk and was never seen or heard of again. As always, let me know what you think in the comments, thanks for reading, take care of yourselves, and I will see you next time.
Hi! I spend a lot of time writing for the website, and I basically exist on caffeine and anxiety - if anybody would like to encourage this habit, please feel free to buy me a coffee!
You may also like:
Comments