BLOODY JACK Chapter Twenty - Five

 

I consider it one of the most gruesome crime scene photographs ever made, and it was the first. Taken inside Mary Kelly's sad little room at 13 Miller's Court on the cold Friday morning of  9 November, 1888,  it is grainy, blurry and more than a century after it was taken, it still chills the soul.  It is the only photo of a “Jack the Ripper” victim “in situ”.

It is invaluable, because a mere description of the horror which had escaped this killer's mind may disturb you intellectually, but only when you look closely at this photo do you comprehend the emotional violence unleashed. And it would never have been made if Sir Charles Warren's Metropolitan Police had been the well oiled machine he kept telling the public they were. 

Inspectors Beck and Dew had arrived in Miller's Court (above) a little after 11:00 a.m.  By 11:30 police surgeon Dr. George Bagster Phillips had arrived, along with most of the Whitechapel brass, and even a few officers from the City of London police. But still no one had entered the room. There were standing orders from now ex-Commissioner Sir Charles Warren not to disturb the crime scene at the next Ripper murder until the bloodhounds – Burgho and Barnaby – had arrived to collect the killer's scent. And just peaking in the window, nobody had any doubt that this was another Ripper murder.

However, the accountants at Scotland Yard and the accountants at the Home Office could not agree on who was going to pay for the dogs, and eventually their owner, Mr Edwin Brough, grew so disgusted that Burgho was now in Brighton, competing in a dog show, and Barnaby had been returned to his home kennel, where he was, in all probability at that moment licking his own private parts and dreaming of chasing down Irish politicians seeking self rule.

Evidently, Sir Charles had been doing the human equivalent of the same thing - too busy defending himself in magazines and threatening to resign to have taken the time to tell the Constables and Detectives of Whitechapel Division that the dogs were not coming. So the officers were left holding back the growing crowds outside of the crime scene in Miller's Court for 2 hours (above), waiting for the dogs which were not coming, while inside number 13, Mary Jane Kelly's corpse was starting to decay.

It was not until 1:30 that afternoon that Whitechapel Division Superintendent Thomas Anderson got fed up with waiting and asked Jack McCarthy for permission to knock the door down. The exasperated McCarthy said yes, do it, for God's sake. But Anderson still dare not disobey Warren, so he quietly asked the London Police, if they wouldn't mind. And they did not. So it was a City of London Police Constable who went at the flimsy door with a sledge hammer, or an ax. 

The blaze was still going in the fireplace.  Mary Jane Kelly's clothing was neatly folded on the room's only chair. Her boots had been placed to dry in front of the fire place. The rest of the room looked like an abattoir.

The London Police justified breaking down the door because they wanted to photograph the scene. Sir Charles Warren had stopped them from photographing the “The Jewes are not the ones...” message just above the bloody apron found on Goulston Street. But Warren was not here. He was finally gone. 

The London Police took two images of the scene, a close up of the lumps of breast and organs left on the table (above)....

...And the second image of the victim's corpse sprawled on the bed (above). Several Whitechapel Detectives ordered their own copies of the photos, and those -   in private hands -  eventually ended up the Scotland Yard files. But it was only because Sir Charles Warren's resignation had been accepted that morning,  that the photographs were even taken.

On Tuesday, 13 November, 1888 the young and ambitious Robert Gent-Davis, representing the Kennington section of London,  rose in the House of Commons (above) to ask a public question of his party's leader, Home Secretary Henry Matthews. 

Supported by his recently acquired South London Standard newspaper, the 27 year old Conservative had burst upon the political scene in 1885  like a Guy Fawkes sky rocket   Liberals had immediately challenged Robert's election under the new campaign finance law. 

Gent-Davis had won the case, but the testimony hinted his wealth was all bluff and bluster. This was confirmed in February of 1888 when a court ordered Robert to pay a client 1,500 pounds owed him from an escrow estate Robert had managed. When Robert failed to produce the funds, the judge ordered him jailed for contempt of court. Robert then claimed immunity because of his position in Parliament, but that bluff was sure to fail, and without support from the Conservative Party leadership he was going to jail. So Robert decided to save himself by running yet another bluff.

Robert asked if Mr. Munro (above) had resigned as Assistant Commissioner of Police back in August because the Criminal Intelligence Division had been taken away from him  Of course, Munro had resigned because his boss, Commissioner Sir Charles Warren, had wanted him to give up his command of the super-secret and illegal black ops Section “D”  of the C.I.D. - the Irish Section. And when Matthews brushed the question aside, Robert raised his bet. He now asked that all correspondence between Munro and the government “be laid upon the table”, meaning the opposition Liberal Party could read it. That would blow the whole game up.

Of course Robert Gent-Davis didn't know what the whole game was. He was a “back bencher” and the leadership would never have entrusted him with knowledge of the illegal smear campaigns against Irish politicians, or illegal secret payments to London newspapers and Liberal politicians. Because that was all illegal. So Home Secretary Henry Matthews (above)  looked dismissive, promising to release the papers - eventually.  Gent-Davis smirked his reply, “Then I am afraid, Sir, we must get them to-night”.  He then sat to cheers from back benches of the Liberal party. 

But he did sit. Because he was bluffing. He had no proof. The brains behind the Conservative Party had judged Gent-Davis as a bluffer.  And Matthews never did lay the papers on the table. And on 27 November, 1888, Robert Gent-Davis went to jail for contempt of court, and was forced to resign his seat. Once again the Conservatives had weathered a storm that threatened to sink their boat, not because of their own strength, but because of their opponents' weaknesses.

It seemed to have very little to do with Jack the Ripper. But the politics is what had made a sad homicidal madman into a legend.

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BLOODY JACK Chapter Twenty - Two

 

I have to say that Sir Charles Warren, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, was not lacking suggestions as to how to catch the Ripper. Queen Victoria – yes, THE Queen Victoria (above) - suggested the Ripper might work on one of the cattle boats which docked in London every Thursday and Friday. It was investigated.

It was suggested that East End boxers might be dressed as women and sent out as decoys. No boxers volunteered. Mister Fred Wellsely wrote the Times, suggesting the police should be mounted on bicycles, to cover more ground. That suggestion was never acted upon, either.

Congregationalist Doctor William Tyler, reverend of the King Edward Street Mission, assured a meeting of the Young Men's Christian Association that the murders were, “largely brought about by the wholesale importation of the scum of other countries.” Closing the borders was considered by the government an over reaction. Besides the killer was already in London. It was often suggested that a reward should be offered. The government always said no. 

Mister Percy Lindly, wrote the London Times on Sunday, 1 October that, “...as a breeder of bloodhounds...I have little doubt that had a hound been put on the scene...it might have done what the police have failed to do.” The police were receiving 1,200 letters a day offering suggestions, and 800 of those mentioned bloodhounds

And it wasn't that Sir Charles had no ideas of his own. He did a house-to-house search of Gouldston Street - over 2,000 people were questioned, 300 were “investigated” and 80 were detained. As far as the public knew the effort produced nothing.  Elsewhere in Whitechapel, 76 butchers and animal slaughterers were asked about their employees, going back 6 months. Nothing, again. Doctors were investigated. Again, nothing.

But always fueling the public's frustration was Sir Charles’s huge ego. On 12 October The Paul Mall Gazette, declared that washing the message off the wall above the bloody apron provided “...the last conclusive demonstration...of the utter unfitness of Sir Charles Warren....” And when the Home Secretary reaffirmed his confidence in Warren, the Gazette pounced. “Mr Matthews is satisfied with Sir Charles Warren," said the newspaper, "But he is alone in his satisfaction.”

And when the Whitechapel District Board of Works passed a resolution urging “Sir Charles Warren...to regulate and strengthen the police force...", Sir Charles took the opportunity to respond in a lengthy written lecture about the difficulties of police work, before adding, “I have also to point out that the purlieus about Whitechapel are most imperfectly lighted...” It other words, the murders were in part the board's fault. 

The London Daily News responded to “the oracle of Scotland Yard”, by asking that if the problem was lack of lighting, “why he waits until he is challenged...then only delivers this important suggestion by way of a crushing retort?”

It was arrogant public relations disasters such as these which drove Home Secretary Henry Matthews to push Warren to at least try one of the public's suggestions. So after the “double event” Warren contacted North Yorkshire dog breeder Mr. Edwin Brough, in Scarborough. Doubtful as well about how the dogs would do on the crowded streets of London, Mr. Brough still sent two of his best bloodhounds – Barnaby and Burgho – for a series of tests in Regent's Park, “as much to please the public as for any other reason”. 

After endless calls for Warren to “do something”, as early as Monday, 8 October, the Daily Telegraph threw cold water on the new project, pointing to the many ways criminals might avoid the dogs, by using “...'buses, and trams, and there are the railways to be reckoned with.”

Days were spent with the dogs chasing human prey around Regent's Park. Once Sir Charles himself was even run to ground. On 20 October the Boston Police News  in the United States reprinted a story describing “Sir Charles Warren, in his tight military dress...puffing and blowing with his excretions”, after running from the dogs. “He was very mad when the evening papers came out with reports of his mornings doings, which doubtless, were also read and noticed by the murderer.”

The truth was the dogs worked better than expected, but still regularly lost the trail when it was crossed by many other human paths. Still, Warren issued orders that after the killer struck again – as everyone was certain he would – the victim's body should be undisturbed until the dogs could collect “the killer's scent.”

But the real problem with the dogs was the marking of territory. Warren did not want to pay for the dogs out of his own budget, and the bookkeepers at Scotland Yard (above) didn't either. They sent the bill to the Home Office. It was the Home Secretaries' idea, wasn't it?  But the Home Office accountants saw no reason they should pay for this harebrained dog of an idea either. 

And while the bureaucrats were passing the bill back and forth, Mr. Brough decided he could wait no longer to be paid. At the end of October Burgho was shipped to participate in a Dog Show in Brighton, while Barnaby returned to his kennel in Scarborough. But nobody told Scotland Yard.

The scorn continued to pile upon Sir Charles. Two wits, Geoffrey Thorn and Edmond Forman, wrote a parody of the popular tune, “Who Killed Cock Robin”. “I said to the Home Secretary, I broke his neck, I killed Cock Warren...Who saw him die? I said the “Pall Mall”, for I'm not his pal. I saw him die, and the “Globe” and the “Star” fell a sighing and sobbing... And the un-muzzled dogs fell a sighing and a sobbing, When they heard of the death of poor Cock Warren...

"Who'll have his place? I said Munro (above), I'll boss that show, I'll have his place, And the bobbies and the tarts fell a sighing and a sobbing...Who'll toll the bell? Mathews" said all, For he's next to fall, He'll toll the bell. And then even he fell sighing and a sobbing, When he thought of the death of poor Cock Warren.”

Other wits rewrote a poem on hunting, to read, "So when Warren (Sir Charles), Makes a miss, he may halt And declare, with some snarls, That 'twas Matthews's fault.  Matthews vowing 'twas not, But 'twas Warren's bad shot.  Then perhaps both come hard, Down on poor Scotland Yard. But whosoever the miss, And whatever is said, One is certain of this -- That a criminal's fled." 

On Saturday, 13 October, Mr Edward Pickersgill, Liberal M.P from Bethel Green, spoke to a crowd gathered to call for more police, “Sir Charles Warren was doubtless a brave soldier," said the M.P., "but he knew nothing whatever about the duties of policemen, and ought never to have been put in the position he now occupied.” After waiting for the cheers to die down, Pickersgill also blamed Warren for “the demoralization and the corruption of the Metropolitan Police force,” This conclusion was met with loud applause.

Desperate to publicly defend himself against such criticism, Sir Charles Warren turned to John Murray III (above).  After a stint in the Royal Marines the Scotsman  had inherited a successful publishing business. And under his hand it achieved a broad range of successes,  ranging from Doctor John Livingston's "Missionary Travels" to Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species".  

But he also published an inoffensive  magazine called the friendly pages of “Murray's Magazine, a Home and Colonial Periodical for the General Reader”.  Murray designed the magazine to provide “useful and entertaining” information", but offering “nothing offensive”. The subscription numbers  barely rose above 5,000 copies each month, which may explain why Murray chose this venue to publish  Sir Charles’s November 1888 article, “Policing the Metropolis”. The work was at once boring, infuriating, self-serving, self-congratuitory, self pitying, pedantic and absurd, and being such, certain to sell a lot of copies.

“London has for many years past,” Sir Charles began, “been subject to the sinister influence of a mob stirred up into spasmodic action by restless demagogues...It is to be deplored that successive Governments have not had the courage to make a stand...and have given way before tumultuous proceedings which have exercised a terrorism over peaceful and law-abiding citizens....

"The whole safety and security of London depends...upon the efficiency of the uniform police constable...the primary object of an efficient police is the prevention of crime , the next that of detection and punishment....criticism leveled at police…is based upon absolutely incorrect premises...If the people of London choose to create panics and false alarms, they must prepare themselves for some extra safeguards than the present number of police..."

The Daily News was not impressed. “Sir Charles Warren's splendid endowment of self satisfaction has never been so conspicuous” they said, “as...his article in the new number of Murray's Magazine... The inferential boasting is particularly striking...everyone and everything is wrong excepting Sir Charles Warren...His "poverty of originality" is shown...hundred letters on the Whitechapel murders have contained no more than four proposals...four more than occurred to the police.”

“The Star” had been gunning for Warren since the suppression of the protest in Trafalgar Square. Now, sensing their prey was wounded, they described Warren's article as “a comic interlude”, deciding “the problem is...reduced to very simple proportions....Are we going to stand for...our reactionary monomaniac in Scotland Yard?” They called his lecture, “Warrenism...The whole gospel of military despotism...of grapeshot and bludgeon...Sir Charles (above) seems to have some dim idea of isolating our criminal characters in a kind of burglars' retreat. Why not send him down to organize and manage it?”

It was the kind of bloviation Charles Warren had made many times before – the self-satisfied arrogance typical of a “Gilded Age” upper crust Victorian ruling class bureaucrat   But of course a Conservative Government was not going to fire Sir Warren because he was a fair representative of their base. They might, however, fire him if he was embarrassing the leadership – which he was. 

On 8 November, Home Secretary Henry Matthews (above) sent Sir Charles a copy of a nine year old Home Office order that department chiefs were not to issue statements without first receiving his approval. Matthews ordered Sir Warren comply with that order in the future.

As expected Warren (above) wasted no time in refusing to take orders. That same day his response arrived in Whitehall. "Sir....had I been told that such a circular was to be in force, I should not have accepted the post of Commissioner of Police. I have to point out that my duties...are governed by statute, and that the Secretary of State...has not the power...of issuing orders for the police force. This circular...would...enable every one anonymously to attack the police force without...permitting the Commissioner to correct false statements, which I have been in the habit of doing...for nearly three years past...I entirely decline to accept these instructions...and I have again to place my resignation in the hands of Her Majesty's Government."

Warren was, of course, technically correct. His position was governed by law. But none of this, including his tome in Murray's Magazine had anything to do with the realities of catching a serial murderer in Whitechapel. But Warren served at the pleasure of the Home Secretary, who had been from his first day on the job very displeased with his argumentative, arrogant jackass of a Police Commissioner. Sir Charles had threatened to resign once too often. This time the Home Secretary had a replacement all lined up. Still, Henry Matthews waited until morning to send his reply to the reply. “In my judgment the claim ...to disregard the instructions of the Secretary of State is altogether inadmissible, and accordingly, I have only to accept your resignation.”

It was done. With that act, one of the primary sparks that ignited the Jack the Ripper publicity machine  was dampened down. It would take a little while for the  loss to be seen and felt because Sir Charles' resignation was accepted on the very morning that yet another victim would be found horribly mutilated in the very heart of Whitechapel.

                                   - 30 - 

BLOODY JACK Chapter Nineteen

 

I think the tipping point came on Monday, 1 October, 1888 when even the staid Times of London bowed to the pressures from their advertisers and customers. On that date the story went the 19^th century equivalent of “viral”  The Times story that day read, “In the early hours of Yesterday morning two more horrible murders were committed in the East of London... No doubt seems to be entertained by the police that these terrible crimes were the work of the same fiendish hands...”

“In the first mentioned case", said The Times,  "the body was found in a gateway, and although the murder...may be regarded as of almost ordinary character – the unfortunate woman only having her throat cut – (there is) little doubt...that the assassin intended to mutilate...The murder in the City...(had) indescribable mutilations...some anatomical skill seems to have been displayed...At Three O'clock yesterday afternoon a meeting of nearly a thousand persons took place in Victoria Park...a resolution was unanimously passed that it was high time (Home Secretary Henry Matthews and Scotland Yard head Charles Warren) should resign...”

The un-staid London Evening News was a little free-er with their facts. “On Sunday morning a woman was found with her throat cut and her body partially mutilated in a court in Berner street...the deed was done in the short period of twenty minutes...in the time which the police surgeon said a medical expert would take to do it...Having been disturbed in his first attempt...the murderer seems to have made his way towards the City, and to have met another "unfortunate”,...He...cut her throat...then proceeded to disembowel her. He must have been extremely quick at his work...the City beats being much shorter than those of the Metropolitan Police.”

The News editorialized, “Successive editions of the Sunday papers were getting a marvelous sale yesterday...The police yesterday afternoon took possession of Mitre-square and kept out the people... There was also a crowd of perhaps a couple of hundred persons outside the gateway in Berner-street during the day, and at ten o'clock last night there were perhaps 150 assembled in the roadway...”

The Evening News noted that on Monday, “A TERRIBLE PANIC has taken possession of the entire district, and its effects are to be seen in the wild, terrified faces of the women, and heard in the muttered imprecations of the men...WHERE WERE THE POLICE?...It seems incredible that, within the short space of twelve minutes, a man and woman should have entered the deserted precincts of Mitre-square, that the man should have murdered his victim, disemboweled her with the same unerring skill...and should have made his escape...He must, when he hurried away...have been reeking with blood”.

The News reporter noted the increased police presence at the murder scenes and suggested it reminded him of “the old adage about locking the stable door after the steed has been stolen.” He described the crowd in Berner Street as being made up of, “nearly all classes. Clubmen from the West-end rubbed shoulders with the grimy denizens of St. George's-in-the-East: daintily dressed ladies...elbowed their way amid knots of their less favored sisters, whose dirty and ragged apparel betokened the misery of their daily surroundings”

The London Evening News offered its readers one tidbit of real information - “The body found in Berner-street has been identified as that of Elizabeth Stride.” But then returned to building  hysteria “....the murder... grows bolder by impunity. One victim for one night was his former rule. He now...cuts off two within an hour...It is impossible to avoid the depressing conviction that the Police are about to fail once more, as they have failed with CHAPMAN, as they have failed with NICHOLLS, as they have failed with TABRAM... The Police have done nothing, they have thought of nothing, and in their detective capacity they have shown themselves distinctly inferior.”

The Irish Times knew just who to blame. “Sir CHARLES WARREN (above, right)...appears at last to understand that it will be fatal to men in his position if those murders are not traced.”  The Home Secretary, Henry Matthews (above, left), was described on the floor of Parliament as “helpless, heedless, useless”, and The Daily Telegraph urged his resignation. Many already suspected the conservative British government of Lord Salisbury was responsible for disinformation and dirty tricks political campaigns against Irish self government movement. They were right, but not knowing details of the Home Office's Irish Section – Section D – they could not know that Charles Warren had no responsibility over these political black ops. So he got the blame for it all.

Under a Monday evening column titled “What We Think”, The Star said the killer had again, “got away clear; and again the police...confess that they have not a clue. They are waiting for a seventh and an eighth murder, just as they waited for a fifth...Meanwhile, Whitechapel is half mad with fear. The people are afraid even to talk with a stranger.... It is the duty of journalists to keep their heads cool, and not inflame men's passions...” The "Star" then proceeded to do just that. “Two theories are suggested to us,” warned The Star a few sentences further down, “that he may wear woman's clothes, or may be a policeman.”

“The police, of course, are helpless,” continued The Star. “We expect nothing of them. The Metropolitan force is rotten to the core, and it is a mildly farcical comment on the hopeless unfitness of Sir CHARLES WARREN (above)...there must be an agitation against Sir CHARLES WARREN, who is now...detaching more men from regular police and detective duty to political work....”  But the Star did get one piece of information right. In that same Monday evening edition they mentioned, “After committing the second murder, the man seems to have gone back towards the scene of the former. An apron, which is thought by the police to belong to the woman found in Mitre-square, as it was the same material as part of her dress, was found in Goldstar Street. It was smeared with blood, and had been evidently carried away by the murderer to wipe his hands with.”

The Star's reporter returned to Berner Street in the afternoon and found that “Blue helmets were as thick as bees in a clover field...Prominent among those on the spot...was Superintendent Foster, of the City Police. He personally...paid a visit to the scene of the Berner street tragedy, to compare the two cases...As he came out of Berner street, a man in a tweed suit was seen walking by his side, and someone in the crowd shouted out: "There they go. The super's got him. I told you he was a toff." This silly remark was enough to turn the tide of attention in the direction of the officer and his companion ..their unsought retinue followed...till they met the tide from the other direction, and then the side streets swallowed up the surplus and the officials escaped.” 

That night another reporter for The Star saw, “little groups of ill-clad women standing under the glare of a street lamp or huddling in a doorway talking..."He'll be coming through the houses and pulling us out of our beds next," says one. "Not he," says another; "he's too clever for that."

On that same Monday, the Central News dropped a bombshell – the killer had written a letter, in red ink (above), and dated the previous Tuesday, 25 September. It read - in part - , "Dear Boss - I keep on hearing the police have caught me...I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me rare fits. I am down on whores, and I shan't quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now? I love my work...I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger-beer bottle...but it went thick like glue, and I can't use it. Red ink is fit enough, ha, ha, ha!...My knife is so nice and sharp, I want to get to work right away, if I get the chance. Good, cock, "Yours truly, JACK THE RIPPER."  There was a post script - “Don't mind me giving the trade name. Wasn't good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands, curse it. They say I'm a doctor. Ha! ha! ha! ha!"

So there it was – that iconic name – Jack the Ripper – its first appearance in print. And, added the Central News Service, that very morning they had received a post card, this written in red chalk, but smeared with blood. “"Double event this time," it read. "Number One squealed a bit...JACK THE RIPPER." Added the News Service, “..it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that the cool, calculating villain who is responsible for the crimes has chosen to ...convey to the Press his grimly diabolical humor.”

Neither missive was actually written by the killer, of course. The letter had been written, mailed and received during the two week lull in the case, before the murders of 30 September. It was an attempt to keep the story going, to generate additional newspaper sales. And the post card was merely another ploy, feeding the horror machine which had become Jack the Ripper. On that same Monday, the News printed a letter from builder and self made man George Akin Lusk (above),  naming himself as Chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, and encouraging Home Secretary Matthews to offer a reward for the capture of the killer. Volunteers from the committee were already patrolling the streets and pubs of Whitechapel, which might explain why the killer had moved outside his usual hunting fields..

But the most important development from the the double event weekend was that at last, Jack the Ripper was a going financial concern. There would be legal, sociological and political effects of  Bloody Jack. But the murderer and his victims had become of secondary importance.

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