Edward Von Strausberg

Professor Edward Von Strausberg (18 September 1839 – 13 December 1914) was a government scientist who resided in Shepherds Bush, London. Born in Holland he moved to London in 1860. He was a chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of the time) who contributed to the fields of electrochemistry & galvanism. As a chemist, Strausberg discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.

In his later years he was in charge of a secret government laboratory situated under Shepherds Bush Green. The nature of the work done there is unclear as all documents were destroyed when the lab was turned into a public convenience in 1908.

It is widely believed that his work during this time mainly involved experiments attempting to bring dead animals and humans back to life.

In 1888 he fell in love with a prostitute Mary Ann Nichols, who was killed by Jack the Ripper. He blamed himself for not protecting her and he became obsessed with galvanism, believing that if the right amount of electricity was charged into the brain, a corpse would come back to life. It is rumoured that from the nearby graveyard at Wormwood Scrubs he would dig up the corpses of murder victims including that of his beloved Mary and the villains that committed these heinous crimes in an attempt to alleviate his guilt and strike revenge on these criminals.

The laboratory was closed in 1908 soon after his death.