This Day in History: 1933-11-30

On 30th November 1933, a report was made by Lawrence E Tanner and Professor William Wright on bones, possibly of the murdered (?) ‘Princes in The Tower’, found in the Tower of London in 1674 under a staircase. Richard III, lord of Sandal, has, since their disappearance in late summer 1483, been implicated in their supposed deaths by many historians. The 1933 inconclusive investigation, without the benefit of modern DNA analysis, concluded: ‘..there is a reasonable probability that the traditional story of the murder, as told by (Sir Thomas) More is in its main outlines true….the elder child…probably died a violent death… (his age) somewhere between the ages of twelve and thirteen…there was nothing to suggest how the younger child met his death.’ Whenever, if ever, the bones are authenticated as being those of Edward V and his younger brother, Richard of York, the mystery of their disappearance and deaths still remains.