BLOODY JACK Chapter Seven

 

I don't believe Scotland Yard (above) got its name because the Thames riverfront was a vacation home for Medieval Scottish royalty. I prefer the story that Cardinal Wolsey stole the strip of land in 1519 from a family named Scott, and used it as a boat landing for his new mansion (above, upper left) - until Henry VIII had the Cardinal beheaded and seized the mansion and the riverfront property for himself.  

By 1880, the collection of office buildings, stables and storage sheds along Whitehall Street (Above, upper red brick building),  now backing along what would be the Thames Victorian Embankment along the river,  was the headquarters of Metropolitan Police. 

The original back of this hodgepodge complex - the city side, through which most people had access during the two decades while the Embankment was being built (above) - was through a central courtyard still called Scotland Yard.

A few hundred yards downstream, before the Westminster Bridge,  was the new Westminster palace,  which housed the houses of Parliament. Just behind was 10 Downing Street, which housed the Prime Minister. And a few hundred yards inland was Buckingham Palace, originally  Cardinal Wolsey's palace but which now housed Queen Victoria. That made Scotland Yard the obvious place to locate the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Force.

It should be clarified that the Metropolitan Police were not the London Police. The old walled City of London remained as much a political and financial entity as it did when Wat Tyler marched his pre-tea party tax rebels across London Bridge in 1341. The London Police were responsible for  protecting the streets around Parliament, 10 Downing Street, the Bank of England and The Queen's palace

The Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard (above) had authority only for the city outside the walls - “Greater London”.  This meant the only way to get from Scotland Yard to Whitechapel was to either cross London Police territory, or take to the river – which was also policed from Scotland Yard (above).

Both officers wore the same uniforms, carried the same tools (whistle, nightstick, hand cuffs, note pad, and lantern) and enforced the same laws. The only physical differences were the badges on their helmets. 

With the same fervent Christian militarism that empowered William Bazalgette to overcome all opposition and build the Thames Embankment to house his new London sewer system,  Sir Charles Warren (above), Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police after February 1886, believed in his own divine mission to make London safe. And Sir Charles was the original advocate of  "community based policing".  He wrote, “...the primary object of an efficient police is the prevention of crime. The next is the detection and punishment of offenders if a crime is committed.” 

Sir Charles saw the Sherlock Holmes type of intellectual plain-clothes detective as supporting the uniformed officers, not leading them. Warren's temper exploded whenever his decisions were questioned,  and he insisted on making all the decisions, from when to promote officers, to where they should live. As a modern writer has pointed out, “Warren believed, probably rightly, that he had been appointed...to reorganized a demoralized police force and had been given a free hand in how he achieved that.”

 

But Warren was not an easy man to work for, as his subordinate, Assistant Commissioner for the Criminal Intelligence Division – meaning the plain clothes detectives - James Munro (above), could testify.  And Warren was an even harder man to have as a subordinate, as Sir Charles' boss,  Home Secretary George Matthews could also testify.  But Secretary Matthews was a far better politician than Sir Charles.

It was Matthews who gave Assistant Commissioner Munro (above) the additional duty of running Section D - 4 CID Inspectors and 79 Officers recruited from Scotland and Ireland, whose public job was to keep track of Irish militants  in London.  

Irish bombs were already going off in England, one of them, in 1884 (above), in the Section D offices in Scotland Yard itself.  In response to such attacks,  the secret assignment of Section D was enlarged to include bribery, misinformation and smear of Irish politicians, using prostitutes, thugs and forged letters to newspapers throughout England and in Ireland itself. 

Housed in a 2 story building in Scotland Yard (above), Section D was strictly “black ops”, shielded from parliamentary budget oversight. That also meant it was shielded from Sir Charles' oversight. Although Commissioner Warren could look down on Munro's office from his own, he had little idea what as going on in that building, or in the private meetings between his subordinate Munro and his boss, Matthews.

Munro (above) shared Sir Charles' self-confident moral vanity - and his mustache. He saw his own recovery from a bout of infantile paralysis – polio – as his own divine endorsement. And he made up for the limp it left him with by carrying a very big walking stick. He was “very unwilling to give up an opinion once he had formed it”. The two mustaches were bound to bang heads.

When Munro wrote a memo bemoaning his heavy workload, and suggesting he needed an assistant, Sir Charles (above) replied that the Assistant 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 anxieties of duties...” outside the Metropolitan Police. In other words, Commissioner Warren told Assistant Commissioner Munro, if you are too busy, give up running the Special Irish section, Section D.

As expected Munro appealed to Home Secretary Matthews (above), who happily agreed to fund an additional Assistant Chief Constable. 

The victorious and confident Munro was quick to suggest just the man for the job – Sir Melville Macnaughten (above). Munro had known him in India, and knew him to be a man of courage and good sense. And loyal to Munro.

Sir Charles (above) did not agree. He reminded Secretary Matthews that during a New Delhi riot, Sir Melville had been so far ahead of events that he was knocked unconscious by a rioter, making him “...the one man in India who has been beaten by the "Hindoos".” There were lots of men more qualified for the position of Assistant Chief Constable, said Warren. And if Mcnaughten were offered the job, Warren said he would resign. 

It was not Warren's first resignation threat, but once again, it worked. Secretary Matthews (above) caved, and would not offer the job to Mcnaughten.

Munro (above, center)  had already assured Sir Melville that he had the job, and was embarrassed and furious when he could not deliver it. And on Friday, 31 August, 1888, he submitted his own resignation to Sir Charles (above, left), who happily accepted it,  replacing him by promoting Robert Anderson to Assistant Commissioner of CID.  Sir Charles Warren had won.  

However, Matthews immediately offered Munro a job as consultant to the Home Office, while retaining Munro as chief of Section D (above, center).  So Munro had been removed, but he had not gone. And Secretary  Matthews would remember he had been manhandled by Warren, again. And the tool the Home Secretary would use to remove his troublesome Commissioner would present itself that very morning.

At about 3:45 that same Friday morning, 31 August, 1888, 39 year old Charles Cross left his apartment at 22 Doveton Street, at the eastern edge of Whitechapel. He was heading for the Pickford & Company stables beneath the London and Northwestern Railroad Broad Street elevated station, where he worked as a driver on a delivery wagon. Pickford was the largest shipping company in England, and kept some 600 horses at the Broad Street stables, from where they were dispatched each day to move cargo from factories and shops in London to and from the NW Railroad and the London Docks..

Charles' walk  (above) usually took him about 20 minutes, but this morning, as he headed west across Cambridge Road to Oxford Street, he was already late. He walked briskly through the cold drizzle. Lightning flashed as he took the shortcut around St. Bartholomew’s Church, and thunder followed him down Trapp Street. He made a left on Sommerford, and a right on Brady, before turning right again and heading down Buck's Row. 

He was about half way down the north, private home side of the dark cobblestone street and about half way to work, when across the street, on the warehouse side, in the shadows thrown by the only gas light on that side of the street, Cross saw a bundled tarp lying in front of the closed stable gate for the Brown and Eagle Wool Warehouse.

Charles wasn't sure why, but he impulsively crossed the road toward it. Perhaps the idea of snatching a new tarp gave him reason. Perhaps he could use it to cover himself from the rain today, or sell it when he got to work. But another flash of lightning revealed the lump in the shadows had a human outline. Charles slowed, but took another two steps for a closer look. 

He stopped when he realized that what he thought was a discarded tarp was actually a woman, lying on her back, her head away from him, her legs open toward him, her dress pushed up above her knees (above)  He could not move for a long moment. Was she drunk? She must be drunk. She was going to drown in this rain, Could a person drown in the rain?

He heard the click of an approaching hob nail boots on the cobblestones.  It was a man, hunched shouldered and collar turned up against the rain. Charles suddenly felt ashamed, as if he had been staring at the woman's private parts. It was absurd, in the dark, that he would do such a thing, he couldn't even see her private parts, he never...Still, he felt he must confront this false image of himself. Charles didn't want this stranger suspecting he had been involved with this woman, lying in the street, dead drunk. He stepped toward the approaching man, and saw he was dressed, as Charles was, in a workman's clothes. Charles called out, “Come and look over here, there's a woman."

The other man stopped, and for a second Charles thought he might turn and run. It was to be expected that he might run. Charles could be a mugger or part of a gang of muggers.  But Charles pointed toward the woman, and the man came on again, but this time angling toward the body. As the man passed him, Charles said, “I think she may be dead.” The man knelt down and touched her face and hands. “Cold” was all he said. Then he put his head on her chest. The man said, “She has a heartbeat. It's faint.” Then he said, “I think she's breathing. But it is little, if she is.” The man stood, and said, “I've got to get to work. I'm late, already.”  But neither man moved.

They stood for a long moment side by side, in silence, looking down at the dying woman,  but not really seeing her. Then the other man suggested, “We should move her out of the way.” The words hung in the damp air for a long moment.  Charles could not make himself move, for some reason. He said, “I don't want to do that.”  He'd meant to say we shouldn't move the woman, but the words had already escaped his lips.  They could not be withdrawn. Again a silence fell upon them. They had to do something. Didn't they? Charles saw the other man glance back up Bucks Row. The street was still empty. It would not be, it couldn't be for much longer.. London Hospital was two blocks away.  The rain was growing lighter. Charles said, “We have to do something.” Then, the other man squatted between the woman's legs, like a midwife, Charles thought, delivering a newborn, and he pulled her dress down over her legs. As he stood again, the other man said, “I have to be at Corbetts Court by four.” Charles understood. The man said, “We can look for a Bobby on the way.” The man took two steps toward toward Brady Street,  then paused, waiting for Charles.

Charles realized he was not looking at the woman's body. What was he doing here? Why did he have to be the one who found her? If he had just gone the other way, down Little North Street, he would not have seen her at all. Many mornings he did just that. But this morning, he had turned down Buck's Row. Charles turned on his heel, and blocked her out of his mind. Both men walked to the west end of Buck's Row together, without saying another word.

Behind them, where the killer had released another of his demons into the world, the woman's soul slipped from her body and floated away in the dark, evaporating in loneliness until it was so thin there was nothing left of her but air. And then not even that.

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BLOODY JACK Chapter Six

 

I am not surprised by the behavior of Mary Ann Connolly , aka Pearly Poll, aka Mogg on that  Wednesday morning, 15 August, 1888.  The 50 year old alcoholic was brought two miles from the environs of Whitechapel to the rear of the Wellington Barracks (above) to look at soldiers. And there she was an unwelcome stranger in a strange land. As the The Daily Telegraph pointed out, “The majority of the inhabitants of....Central London know as much about (Whitechapel)...as they do the Hindu Kush...” And the reverse was equally true.

Poll's carriage had rolled past St. James Park, an unimagined space to those surviving in the cramped brick and filthy cobblestone canyons of the East End. She had passed within yards of Buckingham Palace (above), the stone personification of authority, which had always brought disapproval and punishment to her.

Poll also knew another East End woman had come with the police detectives. They had kept the women separate, as if in her poverty Pearly Poll were not still enough of a women to sense men reacting to another woman's presence. The “manly” Poll felt judged, and the waves of disapproval radiating from the ranks of soldiers forced to line up for her inspection, did not improve her mood. So, in the words of Detective Walter Dew, seemingly at random Poll quickly picked out two soldiers “in a fit of Pique”. Both men proved to have iron clad alibis, and the entire expedition to the center of the British Empire by one of its lowliest members was proven to be a waste of time.

The other East End woman brought out by the detectives was Jane Gillbank, of 23 Catherine Wheel Alley, Aldgate. She was at the Wellington Barracks not merely because the Detective Inspector Reid mistrusted Poll's alcohol fogged mind - but because the other woman had come to the Montague Street Morgue with her young daughter, to identify the victim. After viewing the body of the woman murdered on the George Yard stairwell, Mrs. Gillbank identified her as an old friend, Mrs. Withers, whom Jane had seen drinking with soldiers late on the Bank Holiday evening. But Mrs. Gillbank could not identify any soldiers in the parade, either.

So the Whitechapel police retreated from the skirmish at the Wellington Barracks, having inflicted no casualties on the Royal Guards, but at the cost of half their witnesses. Shortly thereafter Mrs. Withers re-appeared, fully alive and except for additional damage to her liver, perfectly healthy. The Whitechapel police could be forgiven if they were not overjoyed at Mrs. Withers resurrection, because it did little to identify their victim.

While there was still Pearly Poll's contention that the dead woman was named Emma Turner, there was now yet third witness, one who struck Inspector Reid as more believable because she was not a friend of the victim, but an enemy.  Mrs. Ann Morris, of 23 Lisbon Street, Miles End, had come to the Montague Street morgue in response to newspaper articles about the murder, and identified the dead woman as Martha Tabrem.

The widow Morris had once been Martha Tabrem's sister-in-law. But they had fallen out 13 years earlier when Martha blamed Ann for the breakup of her marriage to Henry Tabram.  Martha had then repeatedly harassed the widow, threatening Ann and demanding money from her. Police reports of verbal and physical assaults provided a preamble to Martha Tabrem breaking out all the windows in Ann's rented room. That offense had earned Martha a 7 day sentence at hard labor. Mrs. Morris's story thus offered a possible addition witness who might confirm the identify of the victim – Henry Samuel Tabram.

On Tuesday, 14 August,  the 45 year old Samuel Tabram had come to the Montague Mortuary independently, so it seems Martha's death was not a complete surprise to those who had loved her. Samuel had married Martha White on Christmas day, 1869. They had two sons, born in 1871 and '72, but in 1875 Martha's alcoholic deliriums and her disappearing for days on benders,  had driven Samuel to move out. When she had him arrested for abandonment, a judge ordered Samuel to pay her 12 shillings a week in child support. But after three years, with the money going to gin, Samuel reduced the payments to just 2 shillings. Martha had him arrested again, and the alimony payments were reinstated. But when Samuel found out Martha was living with another man, he cut off her payments entirely.

The new man proved to be 29 year old carpenter Henry Turner, and he now also identified the body as Martha Tabram, aka Martha Turner. Samuel and Martha never divorced. Henry and Martha never married, but had been living together “off and on” since 1876.  Earlier in 1888, Henry had lost his job, and in July the carpenter had also reached the end of his patience with Martha's drinking. He told the coroner, "If I gave her money she generally spent it on drink. In fact it was always drink. When she took to drink, ...  I usually left her to her own resources, and I can't answer to her conduct then."  Henry last saw Martha on 4 August, on Leadenhall Street (above), when she accosted him and demanded money. He gave her a pound and a few pennies, but expected it just to go for more gin. Thus the police at last knew the name of their victim.

Ann Morris' story also confirmed at least part of Pearly Poll's version of the victim's last night on earth. At about 11:00 p.m., on the Bank Holiday, Monday, 6 August, 1888, Mrs. Morris had spotted Martha Tabram on Whitechapel Road, entering the White Swan pub (above, left). She took notice because she still had a restraining order out against Martha Tabram. Their previous encounters convinced her to avoid the woman, and Mrs. Morris had quickly left the neighborhood. By Dr. Killeen's estimate, 4 ½ hours later Martha Tabram was dead, murdered by a person or person's unknown.

Even in 1888 it was standard police thinking that the more violent the attack, the closer the victim and killer must be. In other words, passion diminishes with distance.  So the individual who slashed the throat of Martha Tabram 10 times, stabbed her in the chest 18 times, and left a three inch gash across her lower abdomen, had not merely disliked the woman. This had been no argument over money, or even an insult over the inability to perform sexually. The attacker passionately hated Martha, and had attacked her in frenzy. 

The two men with the most reason to hate Martha, Samuel Tabram and Henry Turner, both had firm alibis for the the night of 6/7 August. And both men had left her.  There was no passion left between them. 

And while it was evident to Inspector Reid that Ann Morris feared Martha enough to strike out in a frenzy, Martha was far larger than Mrs. Morris. And there were witnesses to Ann's activities during the hours when Martha had been murdered. But the violence of the attack, the passion that drove it, so bothered Reid and his superiors, that they could not let the matter rest.

Deputy Coroner George Collier called the jury back at 2:00 pm, 23 August, 1888, in the Working Lads Institute, on Whitechapel Road.  Inspector Reid now had evidence he wanted put on the record. 

Technically still married, Samuel Tabram made the formal identification of the body as that off his ex-wife Martha White Tabram. William Turner testified about the circumstances of his common law marriage to Martha, and their breakup in April. He could swear to her having been alive on Saturday 4 August, when she was then living at 19 George Street, Spitafields. Then Mary Bousfeld, aka Mary Luckherst, testified that Martha had been paying her rent for a bed at 4 Star Place. Martha had been earning money hawking matches on the street until six weeks before her death, when she had left, owing three weeks rent. Then Ann Morris testified to seeing Martha outside the White Swan Pub about 11:00 p.m. on 6 August.

The final witness was Pearly Poll, aka Moog, aka Mary Ann Connolly, who retold her story of meeting up with Martha, pub hopping for two hours, and last seeing Martha headed into George Yard with a soldier just before midnight, 7 August, 1888. “After a brief summing-up by the deputy coroner, the jury duly returned a verdict of "murder by some person or persons unknown." Detective Inspector Edmund Reid ended his report to his boss, Superintendent Thomas Arnold in the usual way. “Careful enquiries are still being made with a view to obtaining information respecting the case.”

It was standard bureaucratic language, which sounded important but actually meant nothing. Inspector Reid was tying up his paper work for the time being, because he was leaving on Monday for two weeks vacation to the coast of Kent. But while he was gone the case would be shaken by  two earthquakes. First the leadership of the the Metropolitan police force would suffer a serious blow, and second, the killer of Martha Tabram would strike again. And the murderer would show that he, at least, had learned from his first victim.

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