Jack The Ripper - The Definitive History Part 3

The Fenian-obsessed Sir William Vernon Harcourt,39 Home Secretary from April 1880 to June 1885, was hugely influential in determining police policy over the first half of the 1880s and after. A bit of a 'stage-door-Johnny' in his youth, and at one point close to the great French actress and courtesan Rachel, with whom he exchanged mementoes, he was twice married but seems to have preferred the company of men and has been described as 'the ultimate male chauvinist'.40 He was an imposing man who stood 6 feet 312 inches tall and possessed 'a high facility of comprehension and expression, without much subtlety or originality'.41 He sometimes exhibited a strange eccentricity, as when Lady Beaconsfield was on her deathbed and he sent her a consignment of full-strength Trinity Audit Ale. He was renowned for his luncheon and dinner parties and as an 'enthusiastic partaker of the copious food and drink he provided',42 which in time added to his imposing presence. But he is chiefly noted for his exceedingly fiery temper: 'Harcourt was notorious for the hottest temper in politics. But he was generous, warm-hearted and quick to forgive and even apologise';43 he was 'one of the late-Victorian Liberal party's two rogue elephants' and people were forever upset by the 'strong personal antagonism and irritations his abrasive manner provoked'.44 His temperamental outbursts and intemperate criticism of his colleagues his official biographer pointed out that 'he could not be content with beating a man but wanted to roll him in the dust as well'45 made him enemies. Occasional discomfitures were greeted with greater glee than they might otherwise have done, as when at a speech in Burton-on-Trent he announced that he felt ready for 'a bit of ducking' and was reported in The Times with an 'f' subst.i.tuted for the 'd'. Copies of the newspaper apparently exchanged hands for the equivalent of 50 and cost him the premiers.h.i.+p. A potential successor to Gladstone, at the most crucial moment in his career he lacked support and 'had no Cabinet allies'.46 Gladstone was succeeded by Lord Rosebery.

Harcourt over-reacted to the Fenian threat, deferring most of the day-to-day business of Home Secretary across to Dilke at the Local Government Board, saying that he had little time for anything but police business. He had an instinctive dislike of the Irish and discovered a liking for cloak and dagger secret policing. Dilke remarked that 'Harcourt fancied himself as a Fouche (Napoleon's chief of police) . . .'. In Ireland the Queen's representative as head of the British administration was the Lord Lieutenant and on 11 December 1868, when Gladstone formed his first administration, John Poyntz Spencer, the fifth Earl Spencer,47 was appointed to that position 'the latest of a succession of n.o.blemen, usually of impressive lineage and inoffensive character, sent out to ape the functions of monarchy at Dublin Castle'.48 Earl Spencer held office during Gladstone's administrations and was reappointed on 3 May 1882, being sworn in at Dublin Castle on 6 May, with Lord Frederick Cavendish sworn in as Chief Secretary. That evening Spencer rode to the Viceregal Lodge in the Phoenix Park, and Cavendish and Under Secretary Thomas Burke followed on foot. In the Park Cavendish and Burke were set upon and knifed to death by a gang calling themselves the 'Invincibles'. For a while the police seemed to be at a loss and Earl Spencer sought a.s.sistance from London, being sent a Colonel Brackenbury. Edward Jenkinson was appointed a.s.sistant Under Secretary with a special responsibility for crime and police. Eventually the murderers were caught and executed, but Spencer and Sir George Trevelyan (Cavendish's replacement) were in 'daily even hourly danger of their lives'.49 Spencer was hated, described as of 'cruel, narrow, and dogged nature', and dubbed the 'Red Earl'. By 1885, however, he was a supporter of home rule, partly simply out of support for Gladstone, and he took an active part in the framing of the first home rule bill. When this was rejected on the second reading, Gladstone immediately dissolved parliament but was heavily defeated at the polls. One effect of Gladstone's action was to push W.T. Stead into his 'Maiden Tribute To Modern Babylon' articles (see Chapter Seven).

When the Fenian problem developed in England, Home Secretary Harcourt borrowed Edward Jenkinson from Spencer and brought him to London, promising him authority over all Britain's mainland anti-Fenian agencies. It was a rash promise and one that Harcourt could not keep, so Jenkinson found himself obliged to hand his information over to the Metropolitan Police for them to do with as they saw fit. This understandably enraged Jenkinson, who patiently collected information from agents whose lives were in some cases at risk and then had to hand it over to men who treated it cavalierly, endangered his agents and, to cap it off, didn't act on the information correctly. Jenkinson accordingly lost all respect for the Yard, whose officers he considered to be grossly inefficient often unable to trace suspects he was able to find without difficulty and riddled with corruption: 'There is hardly a man among them who does not take money', he wrote to Earl Spencer in Ireland. Jenkinson's way of working around the problem was to refuse to share his information. However, according to Monro's memoirs, Jenkinson, . . . not only collected intelligence regarding London, but he acted upon it, without any reference to the London police, by means of a number of Irish police who he had, without any authority whatever, stationed in London . . .50 James Monro had been chief of police in Bengal, which made him experienced in political policing meaning the policing of political crime such as secret societies, terrorist organisations and so forth.51 The Indian police were armed 'and deliberately distanced from their communities, amongst whom they had a reputation for corruption and oppression'.52 Jenkinson regarded Monro as 'a very good man in his way', but perhaps unsurprisingly, given his low opinion of almost everyone with 'little energy or originality'.

It has to be said that Jenkinson's opinion that everyone at Scotland Yard was hopelessly inept was harsh, as he sometimes mistook Scotland Yard policy for inept.i.tude. This was something Monro seems to have understood, despite his years in India, but that Jenkinson, well versed in political policing, did not. For example, Jenkinson thought the Yard inept because they did not cultivate informants yet it was Scotland Yard policy to accept information provided by somebody who chose to inform them, but to frown upon actively cultivating informants. Jenkinson also thought it was inept.i.tude when criminals were warned off committing a crime instead of being arrested in the process of committing it. But preventive policing was policy and not a policy necessarily always endorsed by Monro. Unfortunately, though understandably, Jenkinson thought it prudent to withhold information for as long as it was possible to do so, but Monro seriously objected to this (yet curiously seemed to show no understanding on Warren's position when he complained about Monro doing the same thing). By mid May 1885 the hostility between the two men was palpable and lit the fuse to Harcourt's powder-keg temper. He laid into Jenkinson, telling him that his protection of his information was 'all jealousy, nothing but jealousy'. The next day Harcourt apologised for his outburst, but he had made up his mind to side with Monro; Jenkinson was told that he had no legal authority and everything he did had to be done through and by the police. A month later Harcourt brought Jenkinson and Monro together in his office and effectively ordered Jenkinson to make his information known to Monro, but the animosity continued, reaching a point where Monro could stand it no longer and tendered his resignation. But, as Monro wrote, In the Autumn of '86 I was sent for by Mr. Matthews, the new Secretary of State, and had an interview with him which lasted for more than three hours. I laid the whole of the circ.u.mstances before him and told him very plainly that I could not consent any longer to work with Mr. Jenkinson. He had constantly interfered with police action and to me personally on more than one occasion he had lied in such a disgraceful manner that I declined to have any dealings with him.

Briefly the end was, after a short time, that Mr. Jenkinson was dismissed.

According to Monro, after replacements had been considered and rejected, at the urgent request of the Government. I consented to act as Chief of the Secret Department as regards intelligence, and at the same time retain my office as a.s.st. Commissioner.53 The so-called Secret Department, known as 'Section D', was the forerunner of the modern Special Branch (which is commonly but erroneously believed to have evolved from the Irish Branch, 'Section B'). It was financed out of Imperial Funds, not Metropolitan Police Funds, and its brief was to keep covert surveillance on all subversives (groups such as anarchists, Fenians and a.s.sorted revolutionaries). Although the detectives working for the Secret Department were not to be outwardly distinguished from other detectives, they and the department were not under the authority of the Commissioner but were directly responsible to Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary. The policemen employed in the Secret Department were Chief Inspector Littlechild and Inspectors Pope, Melville and Burke.

Anything Monro did that was connected with the work of 'Section D' was reported directly to the Home Secretary, not to Sir Charles Warren, which meant that Warren had a subordinate officer engaged in police work over whom and partly over which he had no authority or influence and about which he was not even consulted. It is easy to understand how galling this must have been for Warren, plagued as he already was by the Home Secretary's interference. A firmer hand than Matthews' might have resolved the differences between the two men, and Monro, if he had any comprehension of Warren's position, could have behaved with greater tact and sensitivity.

But Monro was extraordinarily insensitive and in November 1887 he complained to Warren that he was overworked and requested the creation of a new post of a.s.sistant Chief Constable to relieve the strain on his senior officers and himself. The complaint was probably justified, one senior officer, Frederick 'Dolly' Williamson, having become ill through overwork, but Warren instead suggested that Monro shed some of his responsibilities, clearly meaning the Secret Department work. He wrote that the only reason Monro was able to undertake his Secret Department work was 'due to the efficiency of the Criminal Investigation Department' and argued, that the a.s.sistant Commissioner should be allowed to devote his time and energy to his legitimate work, and that he should not be burdened with the care and anxiety of duties which previously occupied the whole of the attention of an officer of undoubted experience and ability at a very high salary.54 Monro rather lamely replied that the secret agent work never detracted from his CID work because, 'If there is pressure the special work suffers first'. If that was intended to calm Warren, then it may not have calmed the government so much.55 Matthews vacillated. Monro recommended that Sir Melville Macnaghten be appointed a.s.sistant Chief Constable, saying, 'I saw his way of managing men when I was an official in India and was struck by it, for he had a most turbulent set of natives to deal with, and he dealt with them firmly and justly'.56 The Home Office agreed to the appointment. But Warren was less than impressed, pointing out that Macnaghten had provoked some apparently mild-mannered natives into attacking him. Macnaghten was, said Warren, 'the one man in India who has been beaten by Hindoos', and he argued that there were in any case men better qualified for the job.57 This time the Home Secretary sided with Warren, and Macnaghten was turned down. This created an awkward situation for Monro because he had already told Macnaghten that the job was in the bag.58 Behind all this 'bickering' was a very serious philosophical issue that has reached down the decades to the police force today, namely the questions of visible policing and the relative importance of crime prevention and crime detection in simple terms whether the uniformed or detective police were the most important. Warren believed that policing should be visible and open to inspection, that the police should adhere to accepted standards of moral behaviour and that the princ.i.p.al responsibility of the police was to be an active and visible deterrent to crime. Monro, perhaps less rightly but more realistically, believed that criminals acted secretly, would not be caught by men visible and open to inspection and that certain crimes would only be solved through intelligence gathering before the crime and detective work after the crime. In simple terms Monro believed that you could not catch sewer rats by staying out of the sewer. On the surface this difference of concept took shape in an argument about whether or not the plain-clothed CID and crime detection was secondary to the uniformed police and crime prevention. Warren did not conceal his opinion: The whole safety and security of London depends, in great measure, upon the efficiency of the uniform police constable acting with the support of the citizen . . . And it cannot be too strongly impressed upon the mind, at a time when the detective efficiency of the police is being called into question, that it has always been held as a police maxim that 'the primary object of an efficient police is the prevention of crime. The next that of detection and punishment of offenders if crime is committed . . .59 Relations between the two men continued to deteriorate and eventually Monro bitterly declared that Warren had imposed such restrictions on the functioning of the CID that, 'I must in justice to myself disclaim all responsibility meanwhile for any unfavourable results, to which the system now initiated will lead'.60 Nothing changed and eventually Monro felt that he could take no more. In his unpublished memoirs Monro wrote, Commissioner, Sir C. Warren made life so intolerable for me that I resigned. What the Home Secretary thought of the merits of the matter at issue between us may be gathered from the fact that he retained me as Chief of the Secret Department . . .61 For five East End prost.i.tutes these shenanigans in the corridors of Scotland Yard and the Home Office, had they known about them, would no doubt have seemed as far removed from their own lives as it was possible to get. Yet, as Bernard Porter observed in his book The Origins of the Vigilant State, this clash 'was really a h.o.a.ry old dilemma of the British police since its earliest days: how to reconcile purity with results. Warren and Monro represented Scylla and Cherybdis between which the Metropolitan force had tried to steer for years. In the 1880s it steered on to both of them; with the result that several poor women in Whitechapel got drowned'.62 Monro had resigned as head of the CID, but Matthews didn't dispense with his services. Instead he s.h.i.+fted him across to an office at the Home Office, where he continued his duties as head of the Secret Department and, it seems, acted as Matthews' consultant on CID matters. He was replaced as a.s.sistant Commissioner CID by Robert Anderson, who later wrote, I may here say at once that, though I was warned by many, including officers who had served under him in South Africa, that 'I could never get on with Warren', my relations with Sir Charles were always easy and pleasant . . . I always found him perfectly frank and open, and he treated me as a colleague, leaving me quite unfettered in the control of my department; and when his imperious temper could no longer brook the nagging Home Ofice ways of that period, and he decided to resign his office, I felt sincere regret at his going'.63 Sir Charles Warren had by 1888 won the support of the uniformed police, but according to Anderson the officers of the CID were demoralised, the more so because of Monro's resignation and initial uncertainty about his replacement, but some stability was restored when it was announced that Robert Anderson was to succeed him. Just how much stability was restored is questionable, as we only have Anderson's side of things and it is unlikely that much stability was immediately restored because Anderson had barely dusted his office chair with the seat of his trousers before he took sick leave in Switzerland, apparently suffering from exhaustion and a throat infection. He was therefore on leave when all but one of the Ripper crimes took place. He is nevertheless an immensely important figure in the Ripper story because he is the only Senior officer at Scotland Yard to have categorically stated that the police knew the ident.i.ty of the Ripper. And as a.s.sistant Commissioner he was in a position to know!

Born in Dublin, Ireland, the son of Crown Solicitor Matthew Anderson, he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, took his BA in 1862 and in 1863 was called to the Bar at King's Inn, Dublin. In 1866 his elder brother Samuel, Solicitor General in the vice-regal administration, secured him work at Dublin Castle providing the Secretary General Lord Mayo64 with a precis of known Fenian activity. His services were again requested by the Attorney General following 'the Fenian Rising' of March 1867, and for a third time in the autumn of 1867. In December of that year an explosion in Clerkenwell, London, determined Anderson's future career. A prominent Irish-American Fenian named Richard O'Sullivan Burke had been sent to Clerkenwell prison. On 11 December Scotland Yard received a letter from Superintendent Daniel Ryan of the Dublin Metropolitan Police: I have to report that I have information from a reliable source to the effect that the rescue of Richard Burke from prison in London is contemplated. The plan is to blow up the exercise wall by means of gunpowder the hour between 3 and 4 pm and the signal for all right, a white ball thrown up outside when he is at exercise.

On 12 December a policeman in Corporation Row, which was bounded by the prison wall, saw some men bring up a barrel and insert and light a fuse, but the fuse was damp and the men took the barrel away. The next day they returned and again watched by the police lit the fuse. The terrible explosion destroyed about 60 yards of prison wall as well as several houses opposite, and windows over a wide area were shattered. Six people were killed outright, another six subsequently died from injuries sustained, and 120 people, mainly women and children, were injured. A week later several of the conspirators were identified, but only Michael Barrett, who was identified as the man who lit the fuse, was convicted. On 26 May 1868, he was executed outside Newgate prison, the last person to be publicly executed in England. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Richard Mayne, tendered his resignation, but the Prime Minister refused to accept it and the Home Secretary told the House of Commons on 9 March 1868 that the authorities had been misled by the wording of Superintendent Ryan's warning: 'they thought it (the prison wall) would probably be blown up from underneath, and had no conception that it would be blown down . . .'.

The Government was panicked by the explosion or perhaps they were unnerved by the breathtaking incompetence displayed by the authorities and with pretty much a knee-jerk reaction the Cabinet set about finding ways of improving intelligence. It initially decided against setting up a specialist Fenian department at Scotland Yard, preferring instead to create a temporary anti-Fenian Secret Service Department attached to the Home Office. Colonel the Hon. William Fielding was appointed as its head and, on the recommendation of Lord Mayo, Robert Anderson was appointed to a.s.sist him. Anderson took up his new duties in London on 19 December 1867. After three months the department was closed, Fielding went off to perform other duties and Anderson was retained with the t.i.tle Home Office Advisor on Political Crime.

Following the Invincibles' brutal murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke the British government was very shaken. This was a personal loss for Prime Minister Gladstone, Cavendish being his nephew by marriage and thought of almost as a son. It perhaps also halted in its tracks the possibility of a united Ireland, for it was rumoured that Charles Stewart Parnell knew of the a.s.sa.s.sination plot. Parnell in fact denounced the outrage with conviction and a parliamentary commission appointed to investigate the charges exonerated him, but he lost considerable trust. Another consequence of the murders was that the failings of the Irish police were exposed and it was decided to send someone over from England to undertake a thorough reorganisation. The man chosen for the job was a very reluctant Colonel Henry Brackenbury, who received substantial funding to organise an intelligence network aimed at destroying Fenianism in Ireland, America and mainland Britain. According to Anderson, 'he appealed to me to represent his department in London. I twice refused in the most definite way to accept his overtures; but at last, under pressure from Sir William Harcourt, I had to comply'.65 The reluctant Brackenbury was to all intents and purposes fired a short time after his appointment, following a huge row when it was discovered that he was seeking active service in Egypt instead of applying himself to the hunt for Fenians. He was succeeded by his second-in-command, a one-time Indian civil servant named Edward Jenkinson,66 who proved enormously successful and soon had tabs on pretty much everything that the Fenians were doing in Ireland. The weak link was Britain, where Fenianism seemed to flourish despite the efforts of 16 RIC men stationed in London, Liverpool, Birmingham and Glasgow, and the informants run by Anderson, whose main agent was a man named Thomas Billis Beach, who had infiltrated the Fenians in America under the name Henri Le Caron and for over 20 years fed Anderson quality information. Home Secretary Harcourt asked Earl Spencer, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, for the loan of Jenkinson to oversee Fenian intelligence gathering on mainland Britain. Meanwhile, he arranged for the formation of an Irish Bureau at Scotland Yard under the command of Chief Superintendent Williamson.

Jenkinson had a poor opinion of the set up in England. He suggested that instead of re-vamping the existing set up the Home Office should create a replica of his own office in Ireland. In other words a Home Office department should be formed with a head to whom all other services, including Williamson's Irish Branch, was answerable and who in turn would be given extensive freedom of action according to his own discretion and would be answerable directly to the Home Secretary. Jenkinson suggested that Major Nicholas Gosselin, a resident magistrate in Ireland, be its head, and he was duly appointed and given the task of overseeing Fenian intelligence gathering in the North of England and Glasgow. Gosselin may have been considerably over-confident because he soon began to run into problems as his sources of information dried up. Harcourt, clearly desperate, requested the return of Jenkinson, who duly left Dublin on 7 March 1884 for a troubled three year stint in London, during which time he complained bitterly that Scotland Yard was unable to keep a secret, was hopelessly inefficient and 'worse than useless' in intelligence work.

Anderson had effectively been replaced by Gosselin, but was given such a dressing down by Harcourt at the beginning of 1884 that a lesser or wealthier man would have resigned. Instead he was relieved 'entirely for the present of all my responsibilities & duties relative to Fenianism in London' apart, presumably, from his function as Le Caron's postman. He was appointed to the Royal Commission on Loss of Life at Sea.

In May 1883 Anderson was deprived of his right to receive intelligence from Williamson and the RIC, but was kept on at the Home Office on the condition that he expand his network of informers in the North of England and in America. In September, Jenkinson reported that Anderson had still not 'found a single agent'.67 His main value was the line of intelligence he had with Le Caron, who would report to no one else. But by November Jenkinson's information started drying up and despite Gosselin's claim in January 1884 that he knew 'every Fenian leader of importance from the Tweed to Birmingham and could put my hand on them tomorrow',68 his sources began to dry too.

In the meantime trouble with Jenkinson had been brewing, largely because 'Liberalism in Britain may have been stretched and strained by some of the things that hit it in the 1880s, but it remained pure enough for political policing and espionage on the Irish pattern still to appear incongruous',69 but also because the politicians, as ever the ones to put a problem out of mind when it ceased to be of immediate concern, were becoming slightly complacent in the absence of terrorist activity. Jenkinson resigned in January 1887 and was replaced by James Monro and his department replaced by 'Section D', the Secret Department. Monro had, despite objections raised by the Under Secretary, G.o.dfrey Lus.h.i.+ngton,70 recalled Robert Anderson from the cold and appointed him his a.s.sistant at a salary of 400 per annum.

Anderson would in turn succeed Monro as head of the CID. Jenkinson, now long-gone from the Home Office, perhaps predictably deplored the appointment: 'what an infamously bad appointment it is! Anderson is not the 19th part of a man, and if it were known what kind of man he is, there would be a howl all over London'.71 Jenkinson's views were coloured, of course, by the fact that Anderson was staunchly anti-Home Rule, whereas Jenkinson, like Earl Spencer, was pro-Home Rule, and Anderson played by the rules (to the extent that he was a survivor, whilst Warren, Jenkinson, Monro and even Matthews all fell on the b.l.o.o.d.y battlefield of office politics). Anderson, in fact, is a difficult man to a.s.sess. Deeply religious, a milleniarist a believer in 'the second coming of Christ, with attendant Last Judgement etc.'72 and the author of 16 religious books, some of which remain in print and enjoy considerable respect, 'Anderson was no doubt an irritating and opinionated man, inclined as pious people are to maintain that an action was morally justified because his principles debarred him from committing an immoral one'.73 He was 'very unwilling to give up an opinion once he had formed it. He was self-satisfied, and at times, in his theological and penological ideas, original to the point of eccentricity. At the same time he had a peculiarly scrupulous regard for the truth and would never have lied directly, though when he thought antisocial criminals were involved he was prepared to mislead with half-truths or mental reservation (as he did before the Parnell Commission)'.74 But Anderson was also 'a man who set great store by moral probity'.75 Anderson has been accused of being garrulous he reportedly 'could not keep quiet about his secret work'76 and he came in for some particularly offensive criticism following revelations in the serialisation of his autobiography in 1910.77 As J.A. Cole has observed, often Anderson 'was publicly attacked by men who were actually aiming at a larger target' and this must have rankled; Sir William Harcourt had openly criticised him, 'then written him a placatory letter'. Criticism of Anderson as with criticism of anyone else involved must be a.s.sessed as part of a wider historical and political context: Harcourt, Jenkinson, Warren, Anderson, Monro and Matthews were all severely criticised, disliked, had career problems and had genuine enemies. Most of these people were dealing with political crime. There were serious and almost irreconcilable differences of opinion and policy, serious and sometimes debilitating office politics and strong personalities clas.h.i.+ng with one another. There also seems to have been an awful lot of 's.h.i.+fting of responsibility' going on, as well as back watching. However, Anderson, like Monro, did not believe that secrecy should be maintained after the need for secrecy had pa.s.sed; indeed they both believed that it was to the public benefit to know about things once the danger had pa.s.sed. Anderson also had a singular sense of history and justified some of his disclosures by saying that they were historical events about which future generations deserved to know. To suggest that Anderson was garrulous is therefore imprecise and gives the wrong impression; when he recognised the need for secrecy, he was silent. Harcourt once said of him that his 'idea of secrecy is not to tell the Secretary of State'78 and Henri Le Caron, the spy who would only work for Anderson, declared that for 21 years Anderson 'never wavered or grew lax in his care . . . ever watchful' and he expressed the opinion that had his safety been entrusted to others then he would have been dead'.79 Perhaps the final word is best left to Anderson's friend Major Arthur Griffiths: he is the most discreet, the most silent and reserved of all public functionaries. Some one once said he was a mystery even to himself. This to him inestimable quality of reticence is not unaided by a slight but perhaps convenient deafness, which Mr Anderson cultivates and parades on occasions. If he is asked an embarra.s.sing question, he quickly puts up his hand and says the enquiry has been addressed to his deaf ear . . . he has achieved greater success than any detective of his time . . .80 This was the man who stepped into James Monro's shoes as a.s.sistant Commissioner CID. Unfortunately, as Anderson says, he was unable to take immediate command: . . . I was at that time physically unfit to enter on the duties of my new post. For some time past I had not had an adequate holiday, and the strain of long and anxious work was telling on me . . . Dr. Gilbart Smith, of Harley Street, insisted that I must have two months' complete rest, and he added that he would probably give me a certificate for a further two months' 'sick leave'. This, of course, was out of the question. But I told Mr. Matthews, greatly to his distress, that I could not take up my new duties until I had had a month's holiday in Switzerland. And so, after one week at Scotland Yard, I crossed the Channel.

But this was not all. The second of the crimes known as the Whitechapel murders was committed the night before I took office, and the third occurred the night of the day on which I left London.81

Notes.

1. 'Blind Man's Buff' from Punch, 22 September 1888.

2. Porter, Bernard (1987) The Origins of the Vigilant State: The London Metropolitan Police Special Branch before the First World War. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, p.81. Jenkinson may not have been too far from the truth: Supt. John Sh.o.r.e, one of the most senior policemen at Scotland Yard, was 'a notorious womaniser and frequenter of London's brothels', described by the American detective William Pinkerton as 'in the habit of what we would call in this country "chasing chippies"; that is running after girls of a low order', and he was particularly fond of a brothel run by an American madam known as one-legged Nellie Coffey in the Borough. Coffey was also an informer who used to meet Sh.o.r.e in private rooms above a pub called the Rising Sun at the head of Fleet Street. (Macintyre, Ben (1997) The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, the Real Moriarty. London: HarperCollins, p.129.) 3. The police never publicly identified the Ripper. Almost as soon as he was free of some of the restrictions imposed by his office, Sir Robert Anderson implied that the ident.i.ty of the Ripper was known. In The Nineteenth Century, February 1901, Anderson wrote that women in London outside the 'limited district of the East End' were as safe during the weeks of the murders as they were before they began 'or after he had been safely caged in an asylum'. Anderson, as we shall see in a later chapter, repeated this claim several times in the years following 1901.

4. On his retirement he became a private inquiry agent and is noted as having been hired by the prosecution to gather more evidence against Oscar Wilde.

5. Littlechild, John G. (1894) The Reminiscences of Chief-Inspector Littlechild. London: The Leadenhall Press, p.45.

6. The Fenian movement was an Irish revolutionary organisation born out of the famine of the 1840s which focused Irish discontent with English rule and led to a quickly quelled uprising in 1848. John O'Mahony was among the revolutionists and he afterwards emigrated to the United States where he organised a movement which he called the Fenian Brotherhood after a band of warriors led by the legendary Gaelic hero Finn Mac Cool. In Ireland the movement was led by James Stephens (18251901) who had formed a Dublin-based secret society known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood and began publis.h.i.+ng Irish People, the party organ, which was suppressed by the government. Stephens was arrested but managed to escape to America, where arms and considerable money had been acc.u.mulated by the organisation. The Fenian movement diminished following World War I and its influence was absorbed by Sinn Fein and other organisations.

7. Inspector John Meiklejohn was the most corrupt of the quartet; Clarke was blackmailed; Druscovitch was encouraged to borrow from Kerr to pay a debt of his brother's for which he had become responsible and could not otherwise pay; and Palmer was duped into joining his colleagues. Clarke was acquitted and promptly resigned from the Force, but the others went to prison for two years. Druscovitch died prematurely, Palmer became a publican and the corrupted Meiklejohn became a private detective. A book about the case, sometimes known as 'The Madame de Goncourt case' was written: Dilnot, George (1928) The Trial of the Detectives. London: Geoffrey Bless.

8. Sir Charles Warren, the Commissioner, resigned as a consequence of a dispute with the Home Secretary about the publication of a magazine article, but there had been long-standing differences of opinion that had hardened during the Ripper investigation and Warren's resignation was accepted when previously it had been rejected. Home Secretary Matthews' willingness to accept the resignation was therefore arguably influenced by disagreements during the Ripper inquiry.

9. Hugh Culling Eardley Childers, 182796.

10. Jenkins, Roy (1995) Gladstone. London: Macmillan. New York: Random House, 1997, p.544.

11. Warren himself published an anonymous defence of his actions. 'Defender' (1902) Sir Charles Warren and Spion Kop A Vindication. London: Smith Elder and Co.

12. David, Saul (1997) Military Blunders. London: Constable Robinson, p.35.

13. 'The chief fault lay in the disinclination of the officer in supreme command to a.s.sert his authority and see that what he thought best was done.' Quoted in Symons, J. (1963) Buller's Campaign. London: Cresset Press, p.568.

14. That Warren was an autocrat who wanted everything done his own way, rather than a leader brought in to enforce discipline who then had his hands tied by a vacillating Home Secretary, is an image that has succeeded in obscuring the truth. Belton Cobb, a commentator who should have known better, called Warren 'an autocratic, elderly soldier who wanted to run everything his own way the military way'. (Cobb, Belton (1956) Critical Years At The Yard. London: Faber and Faber, p.226.) 15. Others also drew comparisons between Warren and General Gordon. Roy Jenkins refers in his excellent biography of Winston Churchill to Lord Salisbury's observation that Mahdi 'pretends to be half mad and is very sane in reality'. Mr. Jenkins wryly observes that 'the same remark, either way round for that matter, might have been applied' to Gordon.

16. Williams, Watkin Wynn (1941) The Life of General Sir Charles Warren: By His Grandson. Oxford: Blackwell, pp.1967.

17. The Times, 20 March 1886.

18. Foster, R.F. (1981) Lord Randolph Churchill, A Political Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press, p.150, citing a letter from Salisbury to Lady John Manners.

19. Fairclough, Melvyn (2002) The Ripper and the Royals. London: Duckworth.

20. Jenkins, Roy (2002) Churchill. London: Macmillan.

21. Leslie, Shane (1921) 'Henry Matthews Lord Llandaff' The Dublin Review, vol. 168, January, p.6.

22. Coleridge to Matthews, 13 July 1892, quoted in Leslie, Shane, op. cit.

23. William, R.H. (1988) The Salisbury-Balfour Correspondence 18691892. Hitchin: Hertfords.h.i.+re Record Soc.

24. James, Robert Rhodes (1959) Lord Randolph Churchill. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, p.245. In fairness, it should be pointed out that Matthews never asked for the office of Home Secretary and 'He was so flabbergasted by the offer of a Secretarys.h.i.+p of State that he left Arlington House under the impression that he had declined, but, finding himself gazetted Home Secretary the next day accepted his fate'. (Leslie, Shane, op. cit.) 25. Ensor, Sir Robert (1936) England 18701914. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

26. A 'diary' purporting to have been written by James Maybrick claims that he was inflamed by his wife's infidelity and driven to commit the Jack the Ripper crimes. Despite two best-selling books arguing in favour of the 'diary's' genuineness, it is widely regarded to be a forgery, although who forged it is the subject of considerable and often over-heated debate. James Maybrick's wife, Florence, was accused of his murder and convicted, largely on the evidence of a mentally unstable judge, and the conviction was pa.s.sed to Matthews, who was called upon to exercise mercy and who commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment. This caused considerable uproar, particularly from W.T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, who had supported Mrs. Maybrick's innocence.

27. Two boys convicted of murdering their father because of his illtreatment of their mother; Matthews allowed the elder to be executed.

28. Matthews privately objected to the death penalty and suffered agonies when called upon to review cases such as that of Mrs. Maybrick, accused of poisoning her husband and convicted largely on the summing up by an unstable judge. He would quote St. Augustine: 'I hasten not his death but leave the criminal time for repentance'.

29. The full import of this may be judged when one realises that Matthews had been 'a great favourite of the Queen'. (Leslie, Shane, op. cit.) 30. Roberts, Andrew (1999) Salisbury: Victorian t.i.tan. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pp.5067.

31. Leslie, Shane, op. cit.

32. There is an unpublished biography of Henry Matthews by W.S. Lilly.

33. Ransford, Oliver (1969) The Battle of Spion Kop. London: John Murray, p.33.

34. Williams, Watkin Wynn, op. cit., p.220. 'Bradford' was Sir Edward Bradford, Commissioner 18901903.

35. Anderson, Sir Robert (1910) The Lighter Side of My Official Life. London: Hodder and Stoughton, p.126.

36. Leslie, Shane, op. cit. places much emphasis on how Matthews 'kept officials at a distance through his secretaries'. George Dilnot refers to 'the friction that notoriously existed between Sir G.o.dfrey Lus.h.i.+ngton and the high officials of the police.' (Dilnot, George (1930) The Story of Scotland Yard. London: Geoffrey Bless, p.97.) 37. The Penny Ill.u.s.trated Paper, 8 December 1888 and Ill.u.s.trated Times, 8 December 1888.

38. James Monro's memoirs, unpublished and discovered by Keith Skinner, copy in the author's collection.

39. At Cambridge he was one of the radical chic known as the Apostles, or the Society (of twelve), who featured in a Ripper theory advanced by Howells, Martin and Skinner, Keith (1987) The Ripper Legacy. London: Sidgwick and Jackson.

40. Jenkins, Roy (1998) The Chancellors. London: Macmillan, p.47.

41. Ibid., p.40.

42. Ibid., p.46.

43. Ibid., p.46.

44. Porter, Bernard, op. cit., p.36.

45. Jenkins, Roy (1998) The Chancellors. London: Macmillan, p.49.

46. Ibid., p.61.

47. When the fifth Earl Spencer died he was succeeded to the t.i.tle by his half brother, Charles Robert Spencer, who was the great-grandfather of Lady Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales.

48. Corfe, Tom (1968) The Phoenix Park Murders: Conflict, Compromise and Tragedy in Ireland, 18791882. London: Hodder and Stoughton, p.21.

49. Lady Frederick Cavendish in The Times, 18 August 1910.

50. James Monro's memoirs, unpublished and discovered by Keith Skinner, copy in the author's collection.

51. As Sir William Harcourt wrote to Queen Victoria on 25 June 1884, the police in India 'had to deal largely with secret societies'. (Harcourt papers, box 692, folio 69.) 52. Porter, Bernard, op. cit., p.17.

53. James Monro's memoirs, unpublished and discovered by Keith Skinner, copy in the author's collection.

54. Porter, Bernard, op. cit., p.87 55. Porter, Bernard, op. cit., p.87.

56. Monro to Warren, 19 March 1888. HO144/190/A46472B, sub. 6.

57. See HO144/190/A46472B, subs. 7 and 9 and MEPO 1/48 and 1/55 pp.21112.

58. HO144/190/A46472B sub. 9 and MEPO4/487.

59. Warren, Charles (1888) 'The Police of the Metropolis', Murray's Magazine, vol. 4, November.

60. Monro to Home under-secretary, 11 June 1888: HO144/ 190/A46472B, sub. 9.

61. James Monro's memoirs, unpublished and discovered by Keith Skinner, copy in the author's collection.

62. Porter, Bernard, op. cit., p.84.

63. Anderson, Sir Robert, op. cit., p.129.

64. Richard Southwell Bourke, sixth Earl of Mayo 182272, was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland in Lord Derby's short-lived administration of 185859 and again during the administration of 186669, when he was appointed viceroy and governor-general of India. He was murdered, whilst visiting the penal settlement of Port Blair on 8 February 1872, by a Pathan from Afghanistan named Shere Ali, a former Punjab Mounted Policeman who had murdered an old enemy during a blood feud and been sentenced to death, the sentence being commuted to a prison sentence. 'In this case, however, the penal system had misjudged its criminal. Shere Ali apparently felt that killing a feuding enemy was no crime at all, and in his dying confession he a.s.serted that he had resented his transportation sufficiently to want to kill "some European of high rank".' (Sen, Satadru (2000) Disciplining Punishment: Colonialism and Convict Society in the Andaman Islands. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.68.) 65. Anderson, Sir Robert, op. cit., p.108.

66. Jenkinson was described as a 'mutiny magistrate trained in the despotic school of Indian officialdom, furnished with all the powers of "spymaster general" in Ireland', by Irish MP Frank Hugh O'Donnell. (Hansard, 2 August 1882.) 67. Jenkinson to Harcourt, 4 September 1883, Harcourt's papers, box 103, f.117.

68. Gosselin to Harcourt, 7 January 1884, Harcourt's papers, box 105, f.10910.

69. Porter, Bernard, op. cit. In the summer of 1884 Harcourt had written to the Queen: 'there is such a violent prejudice against this espionage which can alone remark these secret plots that the task of detection is very difficult'.

70. Troup memorandum, 8 April 1910: HO144/926/A49962, sub. 7. This may explain the blame Anderson laid at Lus.h.i.+ngton's door over the problems Warren had with Matthews, a.s.suming Anderson ever knew of Lus.h.i.+ngton's objections.

71. Jenkinson to Spencer, 24 September 1888.

72. Fido, Martin (2001) 'Anderson's Quirkiness', Ripperologist, no. 34, April, pp.278.

73. Cole, J.A. (1984) Prince of Spies: Henri Le Caron. London: Faber and Faber, p.207.

74. Begg, Paul, Fido, Martin and Skinner, Keith (1996) The Jack the Ripper A to Z. London: Headline, pp.212.

75. Porter, Bernard, op. cit., p.70.

76. Cole, J.A., op. cit., p.207.

77. Winston Churchill described Anderson's memoirs as 'the garrulous and inaccurate indiscretion of advancing years', but Anderson rightly called his treatment 'sneers and insults' and declined to notice them. Anderson had revealed in his memoirs that the organiser of a Fenian plot to a.s.sa.s.sinate Queen Victoria at the time of her Jubilee in 1887 was a British informer, and he had also revealed that he had auth.o.r.ed some anti-Parnell articles published in The Times called 'Behind the Scenes in America'. Irish Nationalist MPs were outraged by the latter and there were questions in the House of Commons. The government, however, didn't want the Irish MPs inquiring too deeply into the Jubilee Plot because, according to Christy Campbell, the plot had been engineered by the British government to discredit Parnell. The Home Secretary in 1910, Winston Churchill, at the direction of his civil servants, was happy, therefore, to hang Anderson out to dry. (Campbell, Christy (2002) Fenian Fire: The British Government Plot to a.s.sa.s.sinate Queen Victoria. London: HarperCollins.) 78. Harcourt quoted in Short, K.R.M. (1979) The Dyamite War. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan Ltd.

79. Le Caron, Major Henri (1895) Twenty-Five Years in The Secret Service: The Recollections of a Spy. London: William Heinemann, p.271.

80. Griffiths, Major Arthur (1895) 'The Detective in Real Life', The Windsor Magazine, vol. 1, Jan.Jun., pp.5067. Sir John Moylan said that 'the period 1890 to 1900 proved to be one during which there was an almost continuous decrease in crime . . . the CID built up in the nineties a world-wide reputation for efficiency in crime detection . . .". (Moylan, Sir John (1929) Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police. London: Putnam, p.52.) Not a bad epitaph to a career.

81. Anderson, Sir Robert, op. cit., pp.1345. Anderson was referring to the murder of Martha Tabram and Mary Ann Nichols.

Chapter Six.

Mary Ann Nichols.

As Robert Anderson slept soundly in his bed in the early hours of Friday 31 August 1888, exhausted in body and mind and looking forward to a recuperative break in the fresh air of Switzerland, a prost.i.tute named Mary Ann Nichols was warming herself in the humble communal kitchen of a lodging house at 18 Thrawl Street. The deputy lodging house keeper asked her for the fourpence (4d) she needed for a bed and she replied that she had no money. She was asked to leave and did so with slightly tipsy good humour. 'I'll soon get my doss money. See what a jolly bonnet I've got now', she said indicating a worse for wear black bonnet that was obviously a recent acquisition with which she was pleased. The time was 1.20am.