BLOODY JACK Chapter Seventeen

I believe the final thread was pulled on 13 March, 1881, causing the mystery of Whitechapel to begin to unravel. On this day, in St. Petersburg, Russia, anarchists, who had been trying to kill Czar Alexander II for a decade, finally succeeded. When a bomb went off under his armored carriage, the uninjured Alexander stepped down to commiserate with his wounded guards. And a suicide bomber blew them both up, Since many of the anarchists were Jews, the new Czar, Alexander III, launched waves of official pogroms across Russia. And the horror quickly spread beyond the borders.

Tens of thousands of Jewish men were beaten. Thousands of Jewish homes and shops and farms were looted and destroyed. Hundreds of synagogues burned. Dozens of Jewish men were murdered. And hundreds of thousands of Jewish women were raped. The 1880 pogroms of Russia and eastern Europe were a mass sexual assault, and this horror, once released by the Christians of Russia and Poland, would not be limited to Jewish victims. Horror never is.

Like the French Protestants, then the English cockney peasants and then the Irish before them, the new refugees washed up in Whitechapel.  As an 1884 report described it, “...night after night, wagon-loads of poor Jews were brought up from the docks...still panic-stricken, from Russia”    In doomsday language that would be familiar to an anti-immigrant politicians today, the report described the influx, “.Now...Hanbury Street, Fashion Street, Pelham Street, Booth Street, Old Montague Street and many others...have fallen before them...” By 1885, Brick Lane south of Hare Street, was 75% Jewish, bringing not only their nightmares, but their politics to London. 

That same year, in a 2 story wooden barn at 40 Berner Street (above, right), up to 150 anarchist and socialist began meeting in the International Worker's Educational Club to argue about how to make a better world. 

They not only argued, but they also raised cash to support striking match girls (above) with food and rent money, and to organize tailors and dock workers to demand a living wage..

They published a Yiddish language newspaper, “The Workers Friend”,  printed in the yard behind the club (above), which they shared with Arthur Dutfield – 42 Bernier Street - who made peddlers' carts. The club hosted lectures, held dances, and, of course, debates. On any Saturday or Sunday night the club was filled with troublemakers, Jewish and otherwise, from Russia, Poland, France, German, Italy, Czechoslovakia, even English liberals – and, of course, assorted police informers. 

“They ascended the narrow stairs to the hall...Plain benches without backs stretched through it crosswise...At the front...a small stage...Breathless, anxious not to lose a single word, they hung on the lips of the speaker. An electric thrill passed through these young people, hardly out of their teens; those women tired and crushed by the burden of their ceaseless toil;  those men who, torn away from their native soil, had found each other here...such devotion, such burning interest, such glowing enthusiasm as shone from those faces...”

On the chilly, rainy and windy Saturday night of 29 September, 1888, the lecture was titled "Why Jews Should be Socialists".  The meeting ended between 11:30 and midnight.  As it did, Mr. William West slipped out the side door (above). The night was so black the near sighted West had to feel his way along the wall to the printing press on the second floor of the old cabinet factory shack at the rear of the yard. After grabbing a few articles to edit, West felt his way back to the side door of the club. 

Saying his goodbyes he then left by the club's front door on Berner Street with two other men and headed south past the Lord Nelson public house  - Number 46 - before turning east on Fairclough Street. It was now about 12:15 a.m., Sunday, 30 September, 1888.

Thirty minutes later, at about 12:45 a.m., club secretary Morris Eagle returned from walking his wife home. Passing the "Lord Nelson" pub at 46 Berner (above, left), on the corner with Fairclough Street, and then Mathew Packer's Fruit Shop at Number 44 Berner, and the rooming house at Number 42,  He found the Working Men's Club's front door at Number 40 Berner (above, to the right of the wagon wheel) was locked. 

With little thought, he turned left and walked through the 9 foot wide gateway into to Dutfiield's Yard, and used the club's side door (above, center). It was now about 10 minutes before 1:00 a.m. Within a minute, Mr. Joseph Lave entered the club by the same route. Neither man saw anything out of the ordinary in the yard.

About the same time, club steward Louis Diemschutz was driving a pony cart (above) past the clock on a tobacco shop along Commercial Road. He had spent the day peddling jewelry at the Westow Hill market, in Sydenham, 20 miles south of London. It had been a long and exhausting day, and it was not over yet. Louis intended on dropping off his unsold stock at the club, where his wife worked as a hostess, while he drove the pony and cart to stables in George's Yard – scene of the Martha Tabram murder two months earlier. Only then could he make his way home to his bed..

As he turned into the narrow Duffy's Yard, the weary pony shied and refused to continue. Louis (above) dismounted, but the yard was so dark he could see nothing more than a bundle of clothing just inside the gate, up against the basement air vent.

Louis struck a match, and in the brief flare of light before the wind blew out the flame, he saw the bundle was a woman. Louis poked at her with his whip,  thinking it might even be his wife, expecting her to be drunk or asleep. 

When the woman did not respond, Louis led his horse around the body into the yard, and then went in the side door of the club. He found his wife safe and sober in the kitchen, and told her “There’s a woman on the ground outside, and she is either dead or she’s drunk. I’m not sure which.”  His wife grabbed a candle and the couple went back outside to examine the woman more closely. In the flickering  light  Mrs. Diemschutz saw clotting blood pooling around her pale face. She said later, "I screamed out of fright, and members of the club...rushed downstairs..."..

In a panic, Louis and Isaac M. Kozebrosky ran south on Berner, looking for a Bobby. Instead, outside the Lord Nelson pub, they encountered Edward Spooner. After telling him what they had discovered, all three men returned to the Worker's Educational Club. Spooner said  "I could see that her throat was fearfully cut. There was a great gash in it over two inches wide."  Meanwhile Secretary Morris Eagle had headed for Commercial Road. Two block's east,  at the corner of Grower's Street,   he found two Bobbys waking their beat.  Within minutes Constables Henry Lamb and Albert Collins arrived at the club.  PC Lamb took charge. He closed the Dutifield Yard gate, as well as the club's side door. He then sent PC Collins down to Commercial Street and one block east to Batty Street. There, at 100 Commercial Road, Constable Collins knocked on the door of the home and office of Doctor William P. Blackwell (above). .

This would be the killer's 4^th victim. And Dr. Blackwell would be the 4th physician to examine a victim. It was seeming familiar by now. But perhaps it had become too familiar.

- 30 -

THE FIRST DAY Chapter Seventeen

I would not blame Major General James Ewell Brown (J.E.B.) Stuart (above) if he fell asleep in the saddle during the 35 mile night march from Hanover to Dover, Pennsylvania. Stuart was only 30 years old and in pretty good physical shape, a man his commander, General Robert E. Lee described as "second to none in valor, in zeal, in unflinching devotion to his country…To military capacity of a high order."  But the last week had been exhausting, even for the younger troopers in his ranks. One North Carolina boy confessed, “I thought I knew some thing of the hardships of a soldier’s life but...I did not.” As a writer noted, “...many of Stuart's troopers were now riding two to a horse because so many horses had broken down during the march...” But there was always worry to keep the normally jaunty Southern Cavalier awake.

Stuart had expected to find General Ewell's Second Corps somewhere around Hanover, Pennsylvania  on Monday, 30 June, 1863. Instead he ran into a big chunk of Yankee cavalry, and had to detour around it. Local newspapers reported General Jubal Early's division was at York, 7 miles east of the column's line of march. But Stuart couldn't find Lee's army anywhere - and hadn't heard from him in eight days, unable to even warn him that the Federal army was north of the Potomac.

The best account of that night march comes from 23 year old staff officer Major Henry Brainerd McClellan, tasked with guarding the 125 captured wagons, who reported, “The mules were starving for food and water, and often became unmanageable. Not infrequently a large part of the (wagon)train would halt in the road because a driver... had fallen asleep and allowed his team to stop. The train guard became careless through excessive fatigue, and it required the utmost exertions of every officer on Stuart’s staff to keep the train in motion.” Another member of Stuart's staff reported the horses in all 3 brigades were “broken down and in no condition to fight.” Stuart needed fresh horses and fresh men. To achieve either of those objectives would take time, which Stuart no longer had.

Just as the first shots were being fired 40 miles to the west on the McPherson farm outside of Gettysburg, Stuart's weary troopers finally struck the York Pike. Stuart immediately dispatched scouts in search of Lee's Army. Around 7:00am, Tuesday, 1 July, 1863, Stuart's 4,500 men rode into the sleepy village of Dover, Pennsylvania – population about 2,000. Stuart gave most of his men 4 hours of rest, and the men dropped prostrate where they were, many sleeping in the streets.

Brigadier General Wade Hampton had stay awake, setting up in Dr. Ahl's 2 story brick office and home on North Main Street, where he administered and signed paroles for the 200 Federal soldiers captured since crossing the Potomac. Weary troopers swept the town, looking for horses, food and whatever else the fatigued rebels had the energy to take. They got very little liquor, as both of the town's hotels, the Dover and the North, had hidden their stocks in the basement of the church on Carlisle Road. And the exhausted rebels could not work up the energy to look there.

Meanwhile Stuart, his brigade commanders and their staffs had breakfast at the Dover Hotel (above), where they discussed what to do next. The scouts could find no Confederate troops anywhere, but it seemed everywhere they encountered blue clad cavalry.  The most reliable news Stuart could obtain was in the Pennsylvania newspapers, which said General Ewell had moved from York to Carlisle. That made sense if Lee was still hoping to capture Harrisburg. And as General Lee himself had said of his cavalry commander, "It was not in Stuart's nature to abandon an attempt until it had been proven to be beyond his powers...." So exhausted and saddle sore himself, Stuart decided the best chance of contacting Lee's army was to move 40 miles to the northwest, to Carlisle. In fact he was moving in an arc around the growing battle of Gettysburg.

The 3 rebel brigades set out again just before 11:00am, on the Carlisle road. The rest in Dover had done little to reinvigorate the command. Horses were shuffling as they walked, and drained troopers were dropping from their saddles. But they kept moving. At one point their route dipped south, passing through the tiny hamlet of Dillsburg, only 23 miles from Gettysburg. In the stillness of 19^th century rural Pennsylvania the troopers should have been able to hear the dull thunder of hundreds of cannons that were already firing on Cemetery ridge. But perhaps their senses were too dulled by exhaustion to notice.

Late in the afternoon of Tuesday, 1 July, 1863, Stuart's cavalry finally approached the town of Carlisle, only to find it filled with blue clad infantry. They were 2 infantry brigades, a battery of artillery and a 120 man company of cavalry, under command of Colonel William Brisbane. These troops had marched into Carlisle just hours ago, following Ewel's infantry and Jenkin's cavalry's withdrawal.

Stuart desperately needed the town. The problem was, his men were in no condition to launch an assault. Virginia Lieutenant George Beale wrote his wife that the troopers were “Weak and helpless... we began to consider how we ourselves might escape... Most of us were kept in our saddles to fight till (midnight) - though neither the prospect of a melee, nor the thunder of artillery, nor the bright red glare of a burning town kept me awake that night.” 

The artillery was Stuart's own. After a bluff failed to make Colonel Brisbane surrender, General Stuart threw almost 200 artillery shells into the dark – killing 1 Federal soldier, wounding 12 but doing very little damage. The town's gasworks and a barracks were set ablaze. But to a 15 year old boy in Carlisle , “The term 'damage' might suggest exaggeration.”  There was a pause in the firing, while Stuart tried another bluff. But Colonel Brisbane had already sent for reinforcements, and he was determined to hold out at least until daylight. So the shelling resumed.

Sometime after 3:00am. - now Wednesday, 2 July - one of Stuart's scouts returned with word from Gettysburg with Lee's orders to concentrate at once. And at last the 3 most important brigades in the entire rebel army set out to rejoin the army.

Stuart would report personally to Lee after midnight, 3 July, 1863. One thing the witnesses all agree is that at their first meeting in over a week, Lee flushed and came very close to striking his cavalry commander. Only after he restrained himself, did General Lee ask, “"General Stuart, where have you been? I have not heard a word from you for days and you are the eyes and ears of my army." When the muddy, exhausted Stuart attempted to defend himself. Lee waived him off. Stuart stammered that he had brought in 125 wagons filled with provisions. Lee responded, “They are an impediment to me now.” And before Stuart could respond to that rebuke, Lee ended the discussion by saying, “We will speak no more of this.” And this being Lee, that ended the matter – for the time being.

Nothing was said publicly about Lee's vague orders of 23 June, or his passive endorsement of Stuart's plan of 24 June to ride through the Federal army rather than to screen it. Instead they made yet another all night 30 mile march. A private in the 4^th Virginia Cavalry noted in his diary, “This makes the fifth night without sleep...Only some 20 men with Company "D" out of 56 who started.” Those men were lost not to combat but to excessive demands placed upon them by their officers. The three brigades did not arrive with the Army of Northern Virginia until well after dawn, on 3 July. Horse artillery gunner Henry Matthews said the all 3 brigades felt a sense of relief “...which words cannot express.” They could not know that by late afternoon Lee and Stuart would be calling on them to meet the Federal cavalry on the open fields outside of Gettysburg, in a clash of sabers that offered the Army of Northern Virginia a lost chance to turn the tide of the war.

But on day 3 of the Battle of Gettysburg, the Federal Cavalry would be outnumbered and out-maneuvered and still fight the exhausted rebel troopers to a stand still.

- 30 -

"EQUO NE CREDITE " ( Never Trust the Horse)

I want to retell a story you've heard since childhood, a romance of brave heroes and young love crushed by cruel fate. It is the legend of the shining city of Troy, Helen and Achilles and the wooden horse. But this time I mean to wring as much of the myth out of the tale as I can. My version begins with the capricious, hot, dry Etesian winds, which for five months every summer for the last five thousand years have periodically roared without warning down the winding narrow straights of the Hellespont – the land gates to the Sea of Helen - for days at a time. Faced with such a fickle and relentless foe, crews of the square rigged ships, sailing from the Aegean Sea to the Bosporus and the Pontos Axinos (the Dark or Black Sea) beyond, risked their lives and their cargoes if caught in the straits by an Etesian wind.

A safe harbor close to the southern entrance of the dangerous straits, where a ship could safely wait for favorable winds, would surely prosper. For some 1,500 years there was just such a wealthy port on a broad bay at the mouth of the Scamander River, within ten miles of the Dardinelles, the   Hellespont. And to modern ears the cities' name sounds almost ethereal, as if whispered by the Etesian winds themselves – Wilusa.

Wilusa began as a fishing village, atop a 100 foot high limestone outcrop that jutted into the bay like a ship's prow. Over a thousand years the village became a royal palace and keep, five city blocks wide, with 25 foot high sloping walls. Eventually, as the town prospered, two ditches were dug, eleven feet wide and six feet deep, running out from the land side of the citadel. The earth from the ditches produced a 12 foot high wall,  encircling a city, eventually, of 6,000 people. A tunnel dug through the bed rock fed Wilusa with fresh water. And outside the walls, dotted with farms, was “The Troad”, the sea of grasses that made Wilusa famous for horse breeding.

The great crises for the city that would come to be called Troy began about the year 1275 B.C.E., when the guarantor of Wilusan royalty, The Hittite King Mursili III, was challenged by the resurgent Egyptians along his southern border in Syria.  Seeking to secure his opposite flank, Mursili III picked a dull but stable, younger son,  Piya Walmu, for the kingship of Wilusa. His name meant "gift from Wilusa". And for the Hittites he was a gift, supplying horses and chariots for the Hittite Army under Mursili's uncle, Prince Hattusili. It was the logical decision, but it short changed the older son, Piya Aaradu.  His name meant "gift of the faithful”. And his gift was a dangerous ego maniacal ambition.

The Battle of Kadesh in 1274 B.C.E. began when Hattusli's chariots caught a third of the Egyptian army by surprise, and came very close to sweeping it off the field and killing the Pharaoh. But Ramses kept his nerve and held his force together until reinforcements arrived. Nearly 4,000 chariots on both sides, the battle tanks of the day, swept back and forth across the Syrian plain, until the Hittites were forced to take refuge behind the walls of Kadesh.  Hattusli was saved only because Ramses' army was too weakened to put the city under siege.  Both sides' propaganda claimed a bloody victory, and both Ramses and Hattusli were labeled as heroes. But afterward both Hittite and Egyptian empires retreated to lick their wounds.

At the first word of Hittite troubles, Piya Aaradu murdered his bother and declared himself the new King of Wilusa. But Mursili knew he would not remain King for long if he was thought to be weak. And he felt his uncle Hattusli, the “hero” of Kadesh, looming behind his throne. So Mursili commanded Manapa-Tarhunda, the governor of the Seha River region , just south of Wilusa, to punish the usurper.  In about 1273 B.C.E., the Seha army marched on Wilusa.  But on the plains of The Troad,  Piya Aaradu ambushed the punitive force, and Manapa-Tarhunda was defeated. Now, suddenly, the Hittite western border was looking vulnerable, as well.

Mursili had no choice. In 1272 B.C.E. he dispatched a larger, fully Hittite force under a general known to history only as Gassus. Using a horsehide covered battering ram suspended from a rolling frame (above), the Hittites quickly breached the city walls of Wilusa.  Gassus allowed his warriors to sack the city, but prevented them from burning the entire place to the ground.  Afterward, Wilusa was no longer trusted enough to have its own king, but a local was named the new governor - Alaksandu. The only mistake Gassus  made, and perhaps the reason we do not know his full name, was that he allowed Piya Aaradu to escape.

The pouting prince sailed 300 miles down the coast of Asia Minor to the port of Millawanda, or Miletus in language of its Archean founders, the kings of Mycenea,  100 miles west across the Aegean Sea, in what is today Greece.   Here, Piya Aaradu was sympathetically greeted by Governor Atpa, who was also his son-in-law, and the brother of Akagamunas, the king of Mycenae. 

With this familiar support, Piya Aaradu led a mercenary raid against Hittite merchants on the island of Lesbos. The joint Achean and Wilusian raid captured 700 skilled artisans, who were then sold into slavery.  It seems likely Piya Aaradu split the profits with Atpa, and that Akagamunas also “got a taste”, to borrow a Mafia term from the 20^th century A.D.  The “had been” and “would be” King of Wilusa, Piya Aaradu was now a pirate, with money to finance future raids, and a safe base to operate from.

Unfortunately for Piya Aaradu, his military alliance with the Mycenae was the final straw for the Hittites. About 1269 B.C.E. Mursili III was sent into exile by, his uncle, Hatusili.   The new king gathered an army and about 1267 B.C.E, marched on Miletus. 

Piya Aaradu tried talking his way out of the mess. He offered to swear allegiance to Hatusili if he was returned to power in Wilusa.  Hattusli responded by marching his army right up to the border with Miletus. Teetering on the brink of all out war between Mycenea and the Hittites, Hattusili demanded Akagamunas hand over Piya Aaradu for punishment.

Akagamunas was not eager to start a war. Pulling Hittite beards was fun, and Piya Aaradu's raids had even shown a small profit. But big wars have a tendency to wipe out small profits very quickly. So, as a show of respect, the Governor of Melitus, Atpa, invited Hatusili to visit Melitus , assuring him he would hand Piya Aaradu over to him. But once Hatusili was inside the city walls, Atpa informed the Hittite King that, oops,  Piya Aaradu had skipped town, some how.

Hattusili was not happy.  But he did not want a war, either. So after stomping around Mellitus for a few days, he headed home. And given the time and distance to think during his journey, and perhaps listen to his advisers, Hattusila decided on a new approach. The following year he offered to give Piya Aaradu everything he wanted, including the crown of Wiliusa. Swear fidelity to Hattusili and all would be forgiven.

Now, no one in their right mind would have believed such an offer. But was Piya Aaradu in his right mind? Or - more importantly - was Akagamunas?  And there were logical reasons for the King of Mycenea to be suspicious of the pirate prince.  It was one thing to finance Piya Aaradu when the Achaens had plausible denial  It would another if Piya Aaradu began to trumpet Mycenaean duplicity from the topless towers of Ilium. No matter how unlikely the offer from Hattusili was, the king of Mycenea could not risk the pirate prince taking the offer. It was a death sentence for Piya Aaradu.

It made little difference if the ego maniac was strangled in his bed, or stabbed by a trusted friend while leading another raid. His dead body may have even been handed over to Hattusili as a sign of good will. But as long as there was the possibility of Piya Aaradu switching sides again, he had to die.

In fact Hattusili followed a similar strategy later when his nephew Mursili escaped his exile and arrived in Egypt. First the Hittite King demanded his return. And then offered to welcome him back into the family. Both Mursili and Piya Aaradu simply, suddenly. disappeared from history. And they were far from the only ones who disappeared.

"Within a period of 40 to 50 years",  beginning abound 1206 B.C.E., according to historian Robert Drews, “...almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean world was destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again”  One of the first to be burned for the last time around 1200 B.C.E., was Wilusa. Almost the last to go was the Hittite capital of Hattusa, which was burned to the ground one night in 1180 B.C.E.  By then, every major city, from Greece to the Egyptian frontier, was violently destroyed, and often left unoccupied for generations.

Maybe the villeins were  invaders, or diseases, or volcanoes or climate change or perhaps even the replacement with bronze by iron tools and weapons. But whoever or whatever the cause, to a child growing up in Greece 3,000 years ago,  the past was a time of greatness and plenty, unlike the hunger and poverty of their today.  And leaders like Piya Aaradu (aka Priam), Akagamunas (or Agamemnon), Alaksandu (Alexander, aka Paris) were so famous for so long, they became myths. And Helen herself, the most beautiful woman in history, the face that launched a thousand ships and toppled the topless towers of Ilium (Troy) was Greece herself, and the new Hellenistic culture she would export to the entire world.

- 30 -