Jack The Ripper - The Definitive History Part 8

PC William Smith 12.30am Aged 28, 5ft 7in, clean shaven, dark clothes, hard dark felt deerstalker hat.

James Brown 12.45am 5ft 7in, stout, long black diagonal coat which reached almost to his heels.

Israel Schwartz 12.45am First man: aged 30, 5ft 5in, small brown moustache, brown hair, fair complexion, dark jacket and trousers, black cap with peak.

Second man: aged 35, 5ft 11in, light brown hair, dark overcoat, old black hard felt hat with a wide brim.

Notes.

1. Leufstadius, Birgitta (1994) Jack the Rippers Tredje Offer. Partille: Warne Forlag. My appreciation to Birgitta Leufstadius and translator Edwin R. Nye. This biography of Elizabeth Stride deserves publication in English.

2. According to inquest testimony given by Charles Preston, who lodged at the same lodging house, and Michael Kidney, with whom she lived for several years. The Times, 4 October 1888.

3. The Bywell Castle sank without trace in the Mediterranean five years later.

4. The Times, 4 September 1878.

5. For a full account of the disaster see Thurston, Gavin (1965) The Great Thames Disaster. London: George Allen and Unwin.

6. Manchester Guardian, The Evening News, 8 October 1888.

7. Elizabeth Tanner, in her inquest testimony, said Elizabeth Stride had lodged there on and off for six years. Daily Telegraph, 4 October 1888.

8. The Times, 4 October 1888.

9. The Times, 4 October 1888.

10. Dr. Thomas Barnardo, who drew attention to the 'myriads of young people' forced to live in the common lodging houses 'abodes of poverty and of crime', wrote to The Times on 6 October (published in The Times, 9 October under the heading 'The Children of the Common Lodging Houses') recalled: 'Only four days before the recent murders I visited No. 32, Flower and Dean-street, the house in which the unhappy woman Stride occasionally lodged. I had been examining many of the common lodging-houses in Bethnal-green that night, endeavouring to elicit from the inmates their opinions upon a certain aspect of the subject. In the kitchen of No. 32 there were many persons, some of them being girls and women of the same unhappy cla.s.s as that to which poor Elizabeth Stride belonged. The company soon recognised me, and the conversation turned upon the previous murders. The female inmates of the kitchen seemed thoroughly frightened at the dangers to which they were presumably exposed . . . One poor creature, who had evidently been drinking, exclaimed somewhat bitterly to the following effect: "We're all up to no good, and no one cares what becomes of us. Perhaps some of us will be killed next!" And then she added, "If anybody had helped the likes of us long ago we would never have come to this!" . . . I have since visited the mortuary in which were lying the remains of the poor woman Stride, and I at once recognised her as one of those who stood around me in the kitchen of the common lodging-house on the occasion of my visit last Wednesday week'. If the woman who spoke thus was Elizabeth Stride, then she had gone to 32 Flower and Dean Street on 26 September, but the deputy there said specifically that Stride had stayed there 'only on Thursday and Friday nights' (Daily Telegraph, 4 October 1888).

11. Manchester Guardian, 2 October 1888.

12. Named Henriques Street after Sir Basil Lucas Quixano Henriques (18901961), who for a time lived in Toynbee Hall and in 1914 opened the Oxford and St. George's Club, which in 1930 moved from its original location in Cannon Street Road to the Bernhard Baron Settlement in Berner Street. He wrote his autobiography The Indiscretions of a Warden (London: Methuen, 1937) and is the subject of a biography: Lowe, L.L. (1976) Basil Henriques. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

13. Eyges, Thomas B. (1944) Beyond The Horizon. Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts: Group Free Society. An unusual autobiography written in a singularly modest and pleasing style. Well worth reading.

14. Arbeter Fraint, no. 1, 15 July 1885, editorial.

15. Fishman, William J. (1975) East End Jewish Radicals 18751914. London: Duckworth, p.154. Professor Fishman's singular book is a highly recommended account of this fascinating and little appreciated subject.

16. Sir Samuel Montagu, later Baron Swaythling, was a radical Liberal MP and determinedly orthodox, who was widely known for his charity: he gave 26 acres of land in Tottenham to the London County Council to build homes to ease overcrowding in Whitechapel; was co-founder of the Jewish Board of Guardians; founder in 1876 of the Jewish Working Men's Club 'for Anglicising the Jews of the East End . . .'; was an authority on immigration and a member of the Commons Select Committee on Alien Immigration in 1888. And as if that wasn't enough he was a skilled fly-fisherman.

17. Eyges, Thomas B., op. cit., p.81. Eyges described Philip Krantz, whose real name was Jacob Rombro, as 'a highly educated man, a linguist and a fine journalist'. He was born in Podolia in 1858 and left Russia during the pogroms of 1881, coming to London by way of Paris. He emigrated to the United States in 1889, where he edited Arbeter Zeitung in New York. For a fuller account of Rombro/Krantz see Zinna, Eduardo (2002) 'A Pa.s.sion for Justice and the Berner Street Club', Ripperologist, 39.

18. It wasn't wooden.

19. It was in fact three storeys.

20. Eyges, Thomas B., op. cit., pp.7983.

21. Mackay, John Henry (1891) The Anarchists: A Picture of Civilisation at the Close of the 19th Century. Boston: Benj. R. Tucker. New York: Autonomedia, 1999, p.113.

22. Manchester Guardian, 1 October 1888; The Times, 2 October 1888.

23. Daily Telegraph, 1 October 1888.

24. Manchester Guardian, 1 October 1888.

25. The Evening News, 1 October 1888.

26. The Evening News, 1 October 1888.

27. It seems that the Vigilance Committee and several newspapers had hired two private detectives, a man calling himself Le Grand and a J.H. Batchelor, who had offices at 283 Strand. They interviewed two ladies, a Mrs. Rosenfield and her sister Miss Eva Harstein of 14 Berner Street, who claimed that they had seen a blood-caked grape stalk and some white flower petals in the pa.s.sage before the police had washed it down. The detectives had probed the drain in the yard and among the gunge had found a grape stalk. Le Grand and Batchelor then questioned Packer, who told them his story about selling grapes to a man and a woman and who, on being taken to the mortuary, identified the woman as Elizabeth Stride. Packer proceeded to recite the story, but gave different details, particularly regarding the time he sold the grapes.

The facts, however, are that Sergeant Stephen White interviewed Packer about 9.00am on the morning of the murder, 30 September, and Packer told him that he wasn't doing any business because of the rain and had shut up shop early, about 11.30pm. 'I saw no one standing about, neither did I see anyone go up the yard. I never saw anything suspicious or heard the slightest noise. And I knew nothing about the murder until I heard of it this morning'. The sudden heavy rain had come on about 9.05pm and continued until after midnight, but we know that it rained very little on Whitechapel after 11.00pm, Stride, if it was Stride, having sheltered from the end of it when leaving the Bricklayer's Arms. None of those leaving the Berner Street club from 11.30pm onwards mentioned that it was raining and significantly, Packer never mentioned seeing any of them leave and Dr. Blackwell noted that Stride's clothes were not wet from the rain. From all of which it seems evident that Packer shut up shop because of the rain, which would in fact be before 11.00pm. In addition, Stride's clothes were not wet. They would have been if she'd bought grapes from Packer whilst it was raining.

As for Stride having been holding grapes or grape stalks when she was found, although the man who would find the body, Louis Deimschutz, told a journalist (see Daily Telegraph and The Evening News, 1 October 1888) that Stride's tightly clenched hands held sweets in one and grapes in the other, two men who were among the first on the scene, Abraham Heahbury and Edward Spooner respectively, said, 'In her hand there was a little piece of paper containing five or six cachous' and Stride had only a 'piece of paper doubled up in her right hand'. And at the inquest Dr. Phillips said that 'neither on the hands nor about the body did I find any grapes, or connection with them. I am convinced the deceased had not swallowed either the skin or seed of grape within many hours of death'. However, he did say that on the larger of two handkerchiefs found on the body he found stains that he believed to be of fruit.

Perhaps the clearest indication that the whole story is a fabrication is that Le Grand was a crook. In 1877 he had been convicted for a series of thefts (he was an inveterate shoplifter) and was sentenced to a remarkably stiff eight years in prison. By 1888 he had reinvented himself as Le Grand and set up business in the Strand, but by June 1889 was again in trouble with the law, this time for sending threatening letters demanding money from a Harley Street surgeon named A. Malcolm Morris. He received a sentence of two years with hard labour. In 1891 he was again charged, this time under the name of Charles Grant, of sending letters to various wealthy women threatening to kill them if they did not pay him substantial sums of money. Le Grand appears in reality to have been a Dane named Christian Briscony, possibly the son of a Danish diplomat or someone connected with the Danish diplomatic service, and who variously called himself Nelson, Le Grand, Grant, 'French Colonel' and Captain Anderson. He was, it would seem, suffering from a mental illness since he did not need money when he made the threats.

An excellent a.n.a.lysis of the Packer story by Dave Yost is to be found in Chisholm, Alex, DiGrazia, Christopher-Michael and Yost, Dave (2002) The News From Whitechapel: The Whitechapel Murders in the Daily Telegraph. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company. For an account of Le Grand, see Nixon, Gerry (1998) 'Le Grand of the Strand', Ripperologist, 18, August, who provides full sourcing.

28. The Times, 6 October 1888.

29. The Times, 6 October 1888; HO 144/A49301C 8a.

30. The Evening News, 1 October 1888.

31. The Evening News, 1 October 1888; Report by Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, 19 October 1888, HO/144/221/A49301C 8a. Mrs. Mortimer's story has been the subject of some confusion because it was reported that she had been at her door for half an hour, this error resulting from her claim that she had gone to her door shortly after hearing the measured tread of a policeman pa.s.sing by. As the only policeman known to have pa.s.sed up Berner Street was PC William Smith at or shortly after 12.30am, it was a.s.sumed that Mrs. Mortimer must have gone to the door at that time. But had she done so then she would have seen other people in the street: the couple seen by PC Smith, Charles Letchford, who pa.s.sed through the street at 12.30am, Morris Eagle returning to the club at 12.35am, Joseph Lave on his stroll at or about 12.40am and the a.s.sault on a woman outside the club at 12.45am. That she saw none of these people and none of these people said they saw her suggests that her original timings were correct and that either PC Smith walked up the street later than he thought or that the footfalls heard by Mrs. Mortimer were not those of a policeman. Goldstein's statement puts Mrs. Mortimer in the street for ten minutes immediately prior to 1.00am and corroboration might be provided by Charles Letchford if Mrs. Mortimer was his sister (although her maiden name, Skipp, suggests that she wasn't; if she wasn't then we would have two women at their front doors for ten minutes prior to 1.00am).

32. Ill.u.s.trated Police News, 6 October 1888.

33. The Times, 2 October 1888.

34. Should read Ellen Street.

35. Report by Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, 19 October 1888; HO 144/221/A49301C 8a.

36. Report by Inspector Abberline, 1 November 1888; MEPO 3/140 fol. 2046.

37. This was the Nelson at 26 Berner Street at the junction between Berner Street and Fairclough Street, owned by Louis Hagens, who is listed in the Trade Directory as a 'beer retailer', meaning that he was not licensed to sell spirits. In one version of the story the man had been standing in the pub doorway; in The Star he had come out of the pub.

38. The Times, 6 October 1888.

Chapter Eleven.

Catharine Eddowes.

He was aged about 30, 5ft 7in or 5ft 8in, tall with a fair complexion and a fair moustache. He was wearing a pepper-and-salt loose jacket, red neckerchief and grey cloth cap with a peak. He had the appearance of a sailor.1 This was how Joseph Lawende described a man he saw talking with Catharine Eddowes shortly before her horribly mutilated body was found in a corner of Mitre Square and it bears such a striking similarity to the description of the man seen by Israel Schwartz a.s.saulting Elizabeth Stride that it is difficult not to believe the men are not one and the same. Schwartz described the man he saw as aged 30, 5ft 5in, small brown moustache, brown hair, a fair complexion and wearing a dark jacket and trousers and a black cap with a peak.

Catharine Eddowes was born on 14 April 1842 at Graisley Green, Wolverhampton, the daughter of a tinplate worker named George Eddowes and his wife Catharine (nee Evans), and she went to London the following year with her parents, brothers and sisters. In 1855 her mother died. Her father died just before Christmas two years later. Catharine, the younger of what had grown to be a family of 11 was admitted as an orphan to Bermondsey Workhouse. In due course she returned to Wolverhampton, where her Aunt Elizabeth had secured her a job, but soon had to leave the job, apparently for stealing. Thereafter she split her time between a job in Birmingham and living with a relative in Wolverhampton. At some point she took up with a man named Thomas Conway and lived with him as his common law wife. Two children were born, then they moved to London and a third child was born. But Catharine's heavy drinking had become alcoholism, which no doubt fed what was described as her fiery temperament, and the relations.h.i.+p began to deteriorate. From the black eyes and bruises Catharine sometimes bore it was obviously violent. Her daughter, Annie, said that 'before they actually left each other she was never with him for twelve months at a time, but would go away for two or three months . . .'.2 Annie also said that she had fallen out with her mother because of the latter's drinking. By 1880 the relations.h.i.+p had collapsed completely and the couple parted company in 1881.

It seems that by 1881 Catharine Eddowes was living at c.o.o.ney's Lodging House at 55 Flower and Dean Street, almost immediately forming a relations.h.i.+p with a man she met there. He was named John Kelly and for about 12 years had enjoyed fairly regular employment by a fruit salesman named Lander at the market. Kelly seems to have been a thoroughly decent sort, 'quiet and inoffensive . . . [with] sharp and intelligent eyes', but he was suffering with a kidney complaint and had a bad cough.

Catharine, variously described as an intelligent and scholarly woman, 'was not often in drink and was a very jolly woman, often singing'. She was not known to be in the habit of walking the streets or known to have been intimate with anybody but John Kelly.3 Kelly said that he did not know that Eddowes engaged in prost.i.tution, and whilst admitting that she sometimes drank to excess, he said she was not in the habit of doing so. This said, Catharine had been charged at the Thames Magistrates' Court with being drunk, disorderly and using bad language (she was discharged without a fine) and several of her children refused to have anything to do with her because she persistently demanded money from them. Her daughter Annie had moved several times, never leaving a forwarding address, in the apparent hope of escaping Catharine.

Every year Eddowes and Kelly joined the traditional East End pilgrimage to Kent to pick hops. In the 1880s something in the region of 66,000 acres was given over to growing hops and the picking season when the hop farmers hired casual labour was an opportunity for thousands of city-dwellers to enjoy a paid 'holiday' in the countryside. It was estimated that between 50,000 and 60,000 people went to pick hops in a good season.4 In 1888 Kelly and Eddowes went to Hunton 'We didn't get on any too well and started to hoof it home. We came along in company with another man and woman who had worked in the same fields, but who parted with us to go to Chatham when we turned off towards London. The woman said to Kate, "I have got a p.a.w.n ticket for a flannel s.h.i.+rt. I wish you'd take it since you're going up to town. It is only for 2d, and it may fit your old man". So Kate took it and we trudged along . . .'. They stopped off in Maidstone. Kelly bought a pair of boots from Arthur Pash in the bustling High Street and Eddowes bought a jacket from a nearby shop.5 She would be wearing it when she encountered Jack the Ripper. These purchases exhausted their funds 'We did not have money enough to keep us going till we got to town, but we did get there, and came straight to this house. Luck was dead against us . . . we were both done up for cash. . . '.6 They reached London on the afternoon of Thursday 27 September 1888, and slept that night in the casual ward. The next day John Kelly got some work and earned 6d. He gave Eddowes 4d and told her to get a bed at their lodging house at 55 Flower and Dean Street, but Eddowes insisted that he take the money and she would get a bed in the casual ward in Shoe Lane. They parted company between 3.00pm and 4.00pm and Eddowes went to the casual ward. The Superintendent there later told a remarkable story to the East London Observer, saying that Eddowes was well known there but had not stayed there for some time. Eddowes had said that she'd been hopping in the country, but said, 'I have come back to earn the reward offered for the apprehension of the Whitechapel murderer. I think I know him'. The Superintendent cautioned Eddowes to take care that he did not murder her. 'Oh, no fear of that', replied Eddowes.7 Eddowes left the casual ward very early the following morning, apparently having been turned out following some unspecified trouble there. By 8.00am she was back at 55 Flower and Dean Street. Without money they decided to p.a.w.n Kelly's new boots and Eddowes did so for 2s 6d with a broker named Smith in Church Street in the name of 'Jane Kelly', giving her address as Dorset Street. With this money Kelly and Eddowes bought some food, tea and sugar. Between 10.00am and 11.00am they were seen eating breakfast in the lodging house kitchen by Wilkinson, the deputy lodging housekeeper. They then went drinking, Kelly barefoot. By the end of lunchtime they were broke again and Eddowes decided to see if she could scrounge some money from her daughter in Bermondsey. At 2.00pm she and Kelly parted company in Houndsditch, Eddowes promising to be back home no later than 4.00pm. 'I never knew if she went to her daughter's at all', said Kelly, 'I only wish to G.o.d she had, for we had lived together for a long while, and never had a quarrel'.8 The daughter in Bermondsey was Annie. Annie told the inquest that she had last seen her mother two years and one month ago (during her last confinement), but added that she had moved a couple of times and purposefully left no forwarding address, and had done so because her mother was a persistent scrounger. If Eddowes was indeed a persistent scrounger then presumably she would have tried to contact her daughter sometime in the past two years and discovered that she no longer lived in Bermondsey. So was Eddowes really planning to visit Annie that afternoon? And if not, where did she intend going? And where, indeed, did she go? Did she have reasons of her own for being away from Kelly for a few hours? Did she really have an idea about the ident.i.ty of Jack the Ripper?

We don't know what Catharine Eddowes did after she left Kelly at 2.00pm, other than that she drank a lot of alcohol. We don't know who she drank it with, where she drank it or where she got the money to buy it, but we do know that at 8.30pm she was found incapably drunk by a City of London policeman, PC Louis Robinson, on his beat in Aldgate High Street. With the a.s.sistance of a fellow constable, PC Simmons, he managed to get Eddowes to the Bishopsgate Police Station, where nothing sensible could be got from her and she was placed in a cell by the Station Sergeant, James Byfield, to sleep it off. It possibly says something for Eddowes' const.i.tution as far as alcohol was concerned that at 12.55am she was deemed sober enough to be brought from the cells and released, having first given her name as 'Mary Ann Kelly' and given her address as 6 Fas.h.i.+on Street.

As with Mary Ann Nichols' 'jolly bonnet' and Elizabeth Stride's borrowed clothes brush, Catharine Eddowes has a moment of pathos which came as she left the police station, precisely at 1.00am, just when Stride's body was being discovered in Berner Street. Heading towards the swing door opening onto the pa.s.sage leading to the street, Eddowes remarked, 'I shall get a d.a.m.ned fine hiding when I get home'.

'And serve you right. You had no right to get drunk', said PC George Hutt, opening the swing door. 'This way, missus', he said, and as Eddowes headed towards the street door, 'Please pull it to'.

'All right', replied Eddowes, 'Good night, old c.o.c.k'. Eddowes pulled the door almost closed.

Curiously she was seen to turn left, apparently heading for Houndsditch, the opposite direction to Flower and Dean Street. Her body would be found in Mitre Square, no more than a ten minute walk away, at 1.45am. Where did she spend those 45 minutes? PC Edward Watkins pa.s.sed through Mitre Square on his beat at 1.30am and was absolutely positive Eddowes' body was not there at that time. At 1.35am Joseph Lawende, Joseph Hyam Levy and Harry Harris left the Imperial Club at 1617 Duke Street and, pa.s.sing the entrance to Mitre Square, felt certain they had seen a women they identified as Eddowes standing there with a man. Coincidentally Joseph Levy had earlier remarked that Mitre Square should be watched, and with this in mind Joseph Lawende, a little ahead of the others, glanced at the couple as he pa.s.sed by. The man and woman were about 9 or 10 feet away, the woman standing with her face towards the man, so that Lawende only saw her back. She had one hand on the man's breast. The man was taller than the woman, 'looked rather rough and shabby' and was wearing a cloth cap with a peak of the same material. The woman was wearing a black jacket and bonnet. He heard no conversation and although he took note of the couple, nothing about them aroused his interest enough to cause him to break his stride or look back.9 At the inquest Lawende was prevented from giving a full description of the man he'd seen, but the police had already issued a brief description: He was described as of shabby appearance, about 30 years of age and 5ft 9ins. in height, of fair complexion, having a small fair moustache and a cap with a peak.10 Detective Chief Inspector Donald Swanson added a note to the description held on Home Office files: 'For the purpose of comparison, this description is nearer to that given by Schwartz than to that given by the PC' [i.e. PC Smith in Berner Street].11 Lawende did not see the woman's face and could identify her as Catharine Eddowes only by her clothing, so the possibility remains that the woman was not Catharine Eddowes and although he was able to give a fairly good description of the man, Lawende repeatedly stated that he would not be able to identify him again.

Joseph Hyam Levy and Harry Harris paid no attention to the couple, Levy thinking only that a couple standing at that time in the morning in a dark pa.s.sage were not up to much good and remarking to Harry Harris, 'I don't like going home by myself when I see these sorts of characters about. I'm off'. He was unable to describe either of them.

There is a suspicion that Levy was being evasive. Questioned about what it was that prompted this remark, he wasn't able to say. Joseph Lawende had said he paid attention to the man and the woman because Joseph Hyam Levy had remarked that the pa.s.sage and square should be watched. Yet Levy, who had made this remark, apparently hurried past without taking note of either the woman or the man. He also seemed sufficiently alarmed by the couple to comment on them unfavourably to Harry Harris, yet they were doing nothing to attract attention or cause concern. Perhaps Levy simply found their presence there disturbing or he was offended by what he supposed them to be up to. Nevertheless, there is a distinct feeling that something was going on behind the scenes. Even the newspapers picked up on it, The Evening News commenting about Lawende and Levy: They [the police] have no doubt themselves that this was the murdered woman and her murderer. And on the first blush of it the fact is borne out by the police having taken exclusive care of Mr. Joseph Levander [sic], to a certain extent having sequestrated him and having imposed a pledge on him of secrecy. They are paying all his expenses, and one if not two detectives are taking him about. One of the two detectives is Foster. Mr. Henry Harris [sic], of the two gentlemen our representative interviewed, is the more communicative. He is of the opinion that neither Mr. Levander nor Mr. Levy saw anything more than he did, and that was only the back of the man. Mr. Joseph Levy is absolutely obstinate and refuses to give the slightest information. He leaves one to infer that he knows something, but he is afraid to be called on the inquest. Hence he a.s.sumes a knowing air.12 In the immediate aftermath of the inquiry the police were very uncooperative, to the point at which several newspapers commented on it. The Evening News remarked, 'The police are extraordinarily reticent with reference to the Mitre Square tragedy'; the Yorks.h.i.+re Post reported, 'The police apparently have strict orders to close all channels of information to members of the press'; and even the distant New York Times complained that the police 'devote their entire energies to preventing the press from getting at the facts. They deny to reporters a sight of the scene or bodies, and give them no information whatever'.13 Then all of a sudden the silence was lifted. The Manchester Guardian reported, 'the barrier of reticence which has been set up on all occasions when the representatives of the newspaper press have been brought into contact with the police authorities for the purpose of obtaining information for the use of the public has been suddenly withdrawn, and instead of the customary stereotyped negatives and disclaimers of the officials, there has ensued a marked disposition to afford all necessary facilities for the publication of details and an increased courtesy towards the members of the press concerned'.14 At 1.40am PC James Harvey went down Duke Street, turned into Church Pa.s.sage and went as far as the entrance to Mitre Square. He told the inquest, 'I saw no one. I heard no cry or noise'. Whoever the couple may have been that Lawende, Levy and Harris had seen, they had moved on soon afterwards. Had they gone off together? Was it Eddowes and her murderer and were they shrouded by the night in Mitre Square as PC Harvey stood at the entrance?

At 1.45am PC Watkins entered Mitre Square, where he discovered the body of Catharine Eddowes in a dark corner. Without touching the body he ran across to some warehouses and roused George Morris, a former policeman who was now night watchman there.

'For G.o.d's sake mate, come out and a.s.sist me', shouted Watkins.

Morris grabbed a lamp and went outside. 'What's the matter?', he asked.

'Another woman has been cut to pieces.'

Morris went over to the body, shone his lamp on it and ran off for a.s.sistance, b.u.mping into PC Harvey in Aldgate. Harvey summoned PC Holland who was across the street and they returned to Mitre Square. PC Holland then dashed off to nearby Jewry Street to fetch Dr. George William Sequeira who arrived at 1.55am. About that time Inspector Edward Collard at Bishopsgate Police Station received news of the murder and headed for Mitre Square, first sending a constable to fetch the Police Surgeon, Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown. Collard arrived at the square at 2.03am, Dr. Brown arrived a few minutes later. Various bigwigs descended on the area thereafter, among them Superintendent McWilliam, Superintendent Foster and Major Henry Smith, who wrote in his autobiography: The night of Sat.u.r.day September 29, found me tossing about in my bed at Cloak Lane Station, close to the river and adjoining Southwark Bridge . . . Suddenly the bell at my head rang violently. 'What is it?' I asked, putting my ear to the tube. 'Another murder sir, this time in the City.' Jumping up, I was dressed and in the street in a couple of minutes.15 Catharine Eddowes' throat had been cut through to the bone, death being immediate and caused by a haemorrhage following severance of the left common carotid artery. Post-mortem mutilation was extraordinary. Her face was terribly mutilated, her eyes, nose, lips and cheek ferociously attacked, the lobe and the auricle of the right ear cut obliquely through a piece of ear dropped from her clothing when she was undressed at the mortuary and the tip of the nose cut off. There were two curious inverted 'v' cuts under each eye. The intestines had been pulled from the body and placed over the right shoulder, about two feet cut away completely and placed between the body and the left arm, apparently by design. The left kidney and some of the womb were missing. Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown commented, 'I should say that someone who knew the position of the kidney must have done it'. He went on to say that the killer must have possessed 'a good deal of knowledge as to the position of the organs in the abdominal cavity and the way of removing them'. He acknowledged that the required knowledge would have been possessed by a person accustomed to cutting up animals. This agreed pretty much with the professional opinion of Dr. George Bagster Phillips, who according to a police report said that there was 'no evidence of anatomical knowledge in the sense it so far evidenced the hand of a qualified surgeon . . . the murder could have been committed by a person who had been a hunter, a butcher, a slaughterman, as well as a student in surgery or a properly qualified surgeon'. Drs. Saunders and Sequeira said they didn't think the injuries indicated that the killer possessed great anatomical skill.

A distinction is made between anatomical knowledge and surgical skill. The murderer apparently had a good working knowledge of the former but exhibited little or no evidence of the latter, although it is uncertain how much allowance was made for the speed and conditions under which the killer was working.

Meanwhile another important incident in the Ripper story had unfolded in nearby Goulston Street. At 2.20am PC Alfred Long, one of the many policeman drafted into the East End to help the police, had walked along Goulston Street and noticed nothing to excite his attention. At 2.55am his beat brought him back into Goulston Street and this time he noticed a piece of ap.r.o.n on a common stairway leading to 118119 Wentworth Model Dwellings. On the wall above where the ap.r.o.n lay there was a message written in white chalk. The ap.r.o.n looked to be stained with blood and it would later be positively shown to be a piece of the ap.r.o.n worn by Catharine Eddowes. The murderer had evidently torn or cut away the piece and taken it with him when he left Mitre Square and had used it to wipe his hands or his knife, discarding it in Goulston Street as he (apparently) headed back into the East End.

The white chalked message was on the black brickwork of the stairway. What it actually said is disputed16 but the generally accepted reading is, 'The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing'. The meaning is uncertain, but seems to mean that the Jews were not the people who would tolerate being blamed for something they didn't do. If written by the murderer he may have intended it to indicate that he was responding to some real or imagined offence to his race or religion i.e. that the murders were being committed in response to false accusations.

Superintendent Thomas Arnold of the Metropolitan Police explained in a report: Knowing in consequence of suspicion having fallen upon a Jew named John Pizer alias 'Leather Ap.r.o.n', having committed a murder in Hanbury Street a short time previously, a strong feeling existed against the Jews generally, and as the building upon which the writing was found was situated in the midst of a locality inhabited princ.i.p.ally by that sect, I was apprehensive that if the writing were left it would be the means of causing a riot and therefore considered it desirable that it should be removed having in view the fact that it was in such a position that it would have been rubbed by the shoulders of persons pa.s.sing in & out of the Building. Had only a portion of the writing been removed the context would have remained. An Inspector was present by my instructions with a sponge for the purpose of removing the writing when the Commissioner arrived on the scene.17 Commissioner Sir Charles Warren duly arrived at the scene and ordered the removal of the writing. City Police representatives protested, but Warren insisted and subsequently explained, A discussion took place whether the writing could be left covered up or otherwise or whether any portion of it could be left for an hour until it could be photographed, but after taking into consideration the excited state of the population in London generally at the time the strong feeling which had been excited against the Jews, and the fact that in a short time there would be a large concourse of the people in the streets and having before me the Report that if it was left there the house was likely to be wrecked (in which from my own observation I entirely concurred) I considered it desirable to obliterate the writing at once, having taken a copy of which I enclose a duplicate.18 It was never established that this piece of graffito was the work of the murderer. It was probably just one of the many pieces of graffiti that we're told adorned the streets.

It was soon after the Hanbury Street murder that strange messages began to be chalked up on the walls in the vicinity of the crime. On a wall in a pa.s.sage running off Hanbury Street this terrible prophecy was read with awe by thousands of people: THIS IS THE FOURTH. I WILL MURDER 16 MORE AND THEN GIVE MYSELF UP.

The public, ready by this time to believe anything, a.s.sumed that the man who inspired their dread could have written this message and others similar.

They may have been, but I very much doubt it. Far more likely that the writing was the work of mischievous minded people who obtained some grim pleasure in adding to the fears of an already demented people.

Unfortunately, the 'Ripper' messages were read by children as well as adults. Many of them became so nervous that they were afraid to go to school. Jack the Ripper became the children's bogey man.19 Compton Mackenzie recalled that as a child he had been terrified by stories of the Ripper: It was Jack the Ripper who first made the prospect of going to bed almost unendurable . . . It would have been bad enough if I had only heard the talk about him . . . Talk about Jack the Ripper was small talk compared with the hoa.r.s.e voices of men selling editions of the Star or Echo as half a dozen of them, with posters flapping in front of them like ap.r.o.ns, would come shouting along the street the news of another murder in Whitechapel. 'Murder! Murder! Another horrible murder in Whitechapel. Another woman cut up to pieces in Whitechapel!'

Whitechapel became a word of dread, and I can recall the horror of reading 'Whitechapel' at the bottom of the list of fares at the far end inside an omnibus. Suppose the omnibus should refuse to stop at Kensington High Street and go on with its pa.s.sengers to Whitechapel?20 But as far as chalked messages on walls were concerned, Walter Dew went on to make the very reasonable observation, Why should he fool around chalking things on walls when his life was imperilled by every minute he loitered?21 On the other hand, it is remarkable that two of the murders that night should have been committed close to clubs largely frequented by Jews, that both victims are said to have done occasional cleaning work for Jews, that in the one case there was a cry of 'Lipski!' and in the other that a piece of the victim's ap.r.o.n should have been dropped below a piece of graffito concerning the Jews.22

Notes.

1. Report by Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, 19 October 1888. HO 144/221/A49301C/8b.

2. Annie Philips, quoted in the Wolverhampton Chronicle, 10 October 1888.

3. Frederick William Wilkinson, the deputy of c.o.o.ney's lodging house. The Times, 5 October 1888. Coroner's Inquests (L) 1888, no. 135, Corporation of London Records Office.

4. See Ford, Colin and Harrison, Brian (1983) A Hundred Years Ago: Britain in the 1880s in Words and Photographs. Harmondsworth, Middles.e.x: Penguin Books, quoting Mitchel, B.R. and Deane, Phyllis (1962) Abstract of British Historical Statistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.78; Whitehead, George (1890) Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, 3rd series, I, pp.323, 366; and Collins, E.T.J. (1976) 'Migrant Labour in British Agriculture in the Nineteenth Century', Economic History Review, February, pp.415. On hop picking, two easily available and informed guides are Filmer, Richard (1998) Hops and Hop Picking. Princes Risborough, Buckinghams.h.i.+re: s.h.i.+re Publications; and O'Neill, Gilda (1990) Pull No More Bines. London: The Women's Press.

5. Daily Telegraph, 4 October 1888.

6. The Star, quoted by various newspapers, including the Yorks.h.i.+re Post, 4 October 1888.

7. East London Observer, 13 October 1888.

8. The Star, quoted by various newspapers, including the Yorks.h.i.+re Post, 4 October 1888.

9. Coroner's Inquests (L) 1888, no. 135, Corporation of London Records Office. Daily News, 12 October 1888.

10. The Times, 2 October 1888.

11. Report by Chief Inspector Donald Swanson dated 19 October 1888. HO 144/221/A49301C/8a.

12. The Evening News, 9 October 1888.

13. The Evening News, Yorks.h.i.+re Post, New York Times, 1 October 1888.

14. Manchester Guardian, 2 October 1888.