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, had grown 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 crowds outside of the crime scene in Miller's Court for 2 hours, 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, who were on scene, 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 had resigned 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 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 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 - Four

I believe the nightmare was born sometime between 1865 and 1881, in the little village of Kłodawa, in Russian Occupied Poland. This particular village, 100 miles west of Warsaw, was small and unremarkable. But the antisemitism preached and practiced by the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches left the 4,000 gentile citizens fearing, despising, and envious of the less than 1,000 Jews in their midst. The Yiddish speakers were residents but not citizens of Klodawa – their existence perhaps best described as schizophrenic.

Abram Jozef Kosminski was a “ petty bourgeois” Jewish tailor in Klodawa. While he and his wife Golda were financially successful enough to raise 4 children,  every spring saw more beatings, rapes and the burning of Jewish property, and every year the Jews of Klodawa found the laws less protective and more restrictive. 

The Czar, Alexander II,  freed the serfs in Russia, but when the Jews “beyond the Pale” appealed for fairness, the Czar's Premier responded, “The western frontier is open to you.” And in the late 1860's the Kosminski eldest son, Abraham – born about 1847 - took that advice and made the 700 mile journey to London. We do not know why he left by himself, but it seems likely family dynamics and not money was the deciding factor.

Limited by religious travel restrictions within Poland, the eldest Kominski daughter, Matilda, born in 1856, married a cousin on her mother's side, Morris Lubnowski.   The youngest daughter, Betsy, born in 1857, married another cousin - 4 years older than her - a tailor named Woolf Abrahams  This left the youngest child, Aaron Mordke Kosminski, born in 1865, alone in the home. It was in 1873 the 8 year old suffered what Doctor Eric Hickey has called a "destabilizing event(s).  His father, Abram, died. In the child's mind he  abandoned Aaron. And sometime during the next 8 years the nightmare took over his life. We know none of the details. But we do know something about what his childhood, based on the work of John E. Douglas, employed by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation as a “Profiler” .

Special Agent Douglas described the man who murdered at least 5 women in Whitechapel during the “Autumn of Terror” in 1888 as having been "raised by a domineering mother and weak, passive and/or absent father. " Aaron's home was cold, the family bonds violated, under the double pressure of internal personalities and the external hatred. 

Agent Douglas believed the mother "drank heavily and enjoyed the company of many men"  Humiliated by either his mother, sisters, gentile gangs from Klodawa, or all three.,  Aaron was made to feel worthless, continued wetting the bed into his adolescence, developed a deep hatred for sexually active middle aged women, and came to believe that his family -could not or would not defend him, or even themselves.

Neither would the village Aaron was raised in. The community at best passively endorsed antisemitic violence, which seemed designed to produce serial killers on both sides. As Aaron grew the anarchy and violence around him disguised the fires he set,  and hid the small animals he tortured. 

 We also know that Aaron began to have trouble sleeping. His concentration began to waver and he became withdrawn, lethargic and disaffected. None of these latter behaviors was odd for a teenager, except Aaron suffered from one other affect, which he shared with very few others. He began hearing and then seeing people and things which were not real. Aaron experienced the nightmare violence haunting his life through the prism of his developing schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is rare – about 1% of the total population – and the precipitate cause is unknown at present. But we do know that a fetus exposed to a viral infection, fetal malnutrition, childhood abuse or trauma, and repeated exposure to alcohol, and born to older parents.  are at greater risk of developing the condition. But an even greater predictor of adult onset schizophrenia is genetics. Children of schizophrenics have a 10% risk of developing schizophrenia. And children of a schizophrenic mother may combine all her risk factors because of her illness while they were still in her womb. But even then, violent schizophrenics are rare, and serial killer schizophrenics rarer still – about 0.0000001% of the general population.

Then in March of 1881 Czar Alexander II was murdered in St. Petersburg, and like a string of firecrackers, pogroms ignited across The Pale, setting off the greatest Jewish diaspora since the destruction of the Second Temple 

The Russian government endorsed lynchings, rapes and beatings (above). These forced both Kominski daughters and their husbands to leave Poland in late 1881 or early 1882. 

They took 16 year old Aaron with them, leaving Golda behind to fend for herself. Was that a sacrifice or an escape? Whichever, Whitechapel now made its contribution to the making of “Jack the Ripper”.

One contemporary described the first contact between refugees from a small village with the cannibalistic capitalism that was the East End of London, as “indescribable confusion...cries and counter cries, the horse laughter of the dock loungers at the strange garb and broken accents of the poverty stricken foreigners: the rough swearing of the boatmen at passengers unable to pay the fee for landing. 

"In another ten minutes 80 of the 100 newcomers are dispersed in the back of the slums of Whitechapel: In another few days the majority of these are robbed of what little they possess and are...destitute and friendless.”  Yiddish actor, Jacob Adler,  described his first view of the city,   "The further we penetrated into this Whitechapel, the more our hearts sank. Was this London? Never in Russia, never later in the worst slums of New York, were we to see such poverty as in the London of the 1880s." 

Abraham Kominski had prepared the way, as best he could. He was living north of Whitechapel Road, at 76 Goulston Street,  and smoothed the transition of Matilda and Morris Lubnowski to a room at 16 Greenfield Street,  less than half a mile to the south, just north of Commercial Road. Morris found work as a boot riveter. Betsy and Wolf Abrahamson found a room in between,  in a building at 3 Sion Square, 1 block south of Whitechapel Road , just east of St. Mary Matfin Church. Woolf worked as a tailor making women's clothes. 

Back in Poland Aaron had been apprenticed as a woman's hairdresser. But at an age when most London residents had ten years work experience behind them, 16 year old Aaron found no job, because he did not look.

Over the next 6 years Aaron moved between the three addresses – Goulston Street,  Sion Square and Greenfield Street, living with one sibling, then another, and occasionally when he had the money, taking a coffin bed in a doss house.  He picked up the barest sprinkling of English, a mixture of Cockney slang and Yiddish. But he never held down a steady job. 

Some time before 1888, Golda Kominski, Aaron's mother, also emigrated to London. Her arrival may have been the precipitation event that sparked the final act of a Greek Tragedy which had began in Poland but was played out in the black, back alleys of London's history.

What came of that tragedy were five brutal murders, which became more violent and erratic over time. As Special Agent Douglas noted, “In each homicide, the victim was a prostitute with a reputation of drinking quite heavily...(and) were targeted because they were readily accessible. Jack the Ripper did not have to initiate the contact. This was done for him by the prostitute.” The "profiler" suggests the killer did not have the courage to draw the knife until after the victim was incapacitated and silenced. He then used the knife to mutilate, after he had used his hands to kill.

Douglas suggested the killer “...would spend time drinking...in the pub...(which) lowered (his) inhibitions....” This explained why most of the Ripper's murders took place in the early morning hours, after the pubs had closed. Agent Douglas also hypothesized “'He would not be visibly shaken or upset if directly accused of the homicides....'Jack the Ripper believed the homicides were justified and he was only removing perishable items - who were like garbage.” Who were, in other words, like his mother or sisters.

Doctor Scott Bonn of Drew University, writing in the January 2014 edition of “Psychology Today” noted that, “ Disorganized (serial) killers will often “blitz” their victims—that is, use sudden and overwhelming force to capture and kill them. The victim’s body is usually left where the attack took place and the killer makes no attempt to hide it. In all of these regards, Jack the Ripper is a classic example of the disorganized serial killer.” 

What stopped him after the butchery of Mary Kelly was not remorse, or prison, or even a fulfillment of his fantasy, but the mental disorder which was consuming his twisted mind at the age of 23 and left him unable to function anymore.

Was Aaron Kominski a serial killer? According to Paul Begg, author of the 2004 book “Jack the Ripper, The Facts”,  Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Sir Robert Anderson (above) - who ran the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) after Munro resigned in August...

...And Scotsman Chief Inspector Donald S, Swanson - directly in charge of running the investigation in Whitechapel - “...believed (that) he was. They were there and they were in a position to know.” Swanson even noted that Kominski had been watched at his brother's home on Goulston Street - half a block from where the bloody apron was found after the Mitre Square murder. Yet no details of that surveillance have been found in the MET files. Where are the detective's reports and observations? It appears there are none. 

Clearly some of the most important investigative work was being done “off the books”. What Anderson and Swanson knew from the infamous bloodhound incident and a dozen other fiascoes less well publicized, was that the upper management of Matthews and Warren (above)  and Munro and their underlings - was treating the Ripper investigation as a political “football”, kicking it back and forth to score points against each other, not to find the killer. 

But the detectives (above) and constables of Whitechapel, having found the man they believed was responsible for terrorizing their district, were preserving the integrity of their investigation by hiding him from the press and from their own bosses. And, unfortunately,  from history.

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BLOODY JACK Chapter Twenty - Three

I think the people of Whitechapel were some of the hardest working citizens of London. Consider the ambitious John “Jack” McCarthy. He chose to live in Whitechapel, starting by renting a tiny storefront at 26 Dorset Street where he ran a grocery. 

That did well enough that in 1877 he married, and after a few years he bought the 2 story brick building, and the identical structure at Number 24, the other side of the four foot wide arched entrance to Miller's Court. He moved his family – 4 children by 1888 - into the top floor of Number 26, and re-opened his grocery on the ground floor. He kept Number 24, renting 2 rooms on the second floor to tenants, using the ground floor front for storage, and subdivided the ground rear into a 10 foot by 12 foot room, which he gave the address of 13 Miller's Court. “Lucky” 13 provided Jack with 23 pence a week in rent. That was how you made a profit in Whitechapel.

Plowing such profits back into his business, Jack McCarthy bought the doss house at number 30 Dorset street, and his business became known as McCarthy Rents. In March of 1882 he partnered in staging a prize fight at St. Andrew's Hall. But a dispute over profits lead to another fight, this one between the promoters, which lead to an arrest, and a fine for Jack. It is unclear if any money's were made, but Jack did not repeat his venture as a fight promoter. But it did show that Jack McCarthy was always on the look out for a profit.

On Friday, 9 November, 1888, Jack McCarthy was in his store at 24 Dorset Street, going over his books. About 10:30 that morning Jack ordered his employee, Thomas Bowyer, to walk 10 feet back to 13 Miller's Court, and collect the rent - which was 2 weeks in arrears. And he reminded  Bowyer that if there was no answer at the door, to look in the window, to confirm if the couple renting the room, Mary Kelly and Joseph Barnett, were inside, hiding or sleeping off a drunk.

That same morning, in the House of Commons, Home Secretary Henry Matthews rose to announce the resignation of Sir Charles Warren as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. It would be tricky giving this a positive spin, particularly since recently Matthews had voiced unlimited support for Warren.

The liberal press hated Warren as a reactionary martinet who had crushed the “Bloody 13 of November 1887 Trafalgar Square” demonstration. But the Conservative press saw Warren as a hero, and rumors were already circulating that Warren's one time Assistant Commissioner James Munro, had been colluding with the Home Secretary, to undermine his old boss.

Although Henry Matthew's boss, Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil (above), was not permitted to sit in the Commons – as the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, Gascoyne-Ceicil sat in the House of Lords – Matthews knew the Prime Minister was watching him closely. 

So after reading the exchange of letters with Warren from the day before, in which Warren had resigned – again -  Henry Matthews (above) assured the Commons, “...the differences of opinion between Sir Charles Warren and Mr. Monro, had nothing to do with...parting with an officer so distinguished and so zealous in the discharge of his Office...I wish to add...The advice which I have sought from Mr. Monro was confined to the general question of the organization proper for the Department...”

It was doubtful anyone in the Commons believed that lie, but nobody had proof. So only Liberal M.P, Robert Cunninghame-Graham (above) rose to question Matthew's statement. Cunninghame-Graham had spent six weeks in jail for his part in Bloody Sunday, and he asked what Warren's use of the word "again" refereed to. “Do I understand that it is not the first time that his resignation has been placed in the hands of Her Majesty’s Government?”  The Home Secretary dodged the question saying only, “There have been previous differences of opinion which led to Sir Charles Warren tendering his resignation.” But the Home Secretary refused to provide details.

Liberal M.P. Henry Labouchere (above), who had tried as recently as march to eliminate the House of Lords entirely, asked, “What is the precise position which Mr. Monro holds now?” 

Matthews now lied to Labourchere as smoothly and as easily as a politician – which he, of course was.  Matthews said, “Mr. Monro fills no office of any kind, and is in no way connected with the Department.” 

Above all, Matthews avoided any mention of the “Special Irish Branch” of the police, which James Munro (above)  had headed while Assistant Commissioner under Warren, and which he still headed. His use of spies and political sabotage campaigns in Ireland and even in Whitechapel, must not even be hinted at. Nor could there be any whisper of Matthews' instructions to Mr. Munro and his replacement Mr Anderson, to “consult” with Matthews behind Sir Charles' back. So the lie was not revealed.  The scandal, such as it was, would end with Sir Charles' resignation.

Jack McCarthy's employee, Thomas Bowyer, was called “Indian Joe” because he had served in India. He was surviving on a pension now, and reduced to living on Dorset Street.

At about 10:40 that same morning, “Indian Joe” walked out the front door of McCarthy's grocery at 24 Dorset Street (above, left), and turned right into the narrow 4 foot wide 5 foot long alley leading to Miller's Court (above, center archway). 

The Court was a small space, little more than 10 feet wide by 20 feet long, the ground floor whitewashed and the courtyard cobblestoned.   On the left side, as you entered, was Number 1 Miller's Court, with number 2 directly above it, each the standard Whitechaple 8 foot by 8 foot room. Numbers 3 through 8 finished the left side of the court. On the right side were numbers 9 through 13, as well as a water tap, a privy toilet and a dustbin. Opposite Number 13, on the ground floor, stood a single gas lamp

Thomas Bowyer did not know the 25 year old woman who rented Number 13 (above)  as Mary Kelly, which was not surprising. Among her many aliases were Marie Jeanette Kelly, Mary Jeanette, Black Mary, Ginger and Fair Emma. 

Jack McCarthy described her as “noisy” when drunk, but  “otherwise she was a very quiet woman.” A friend described her as “ a good, quiet, pleasant girl, and was well liked by all of us." “She was not a notorious character”, said another friend. Born in Ireland and raised in Wales, Mary Kelly spoke fluent Welsh, no small accomplishment. She was handsome and well spoken, and “much superior to that of most persons in her position in life." But she was, like so many, an alcoholic.

“Indian Joe” said later, “Knocking at the door, I got no answer, and I knocked again and again. Receiving no reply, I passed round the corner by the gutter spout where there is a broken window - it is the smallest window. There was a curtain. I put my hand through the broken pane and lifted the curtain. I saw two pieces of flesh lying on the table...The second time I looked I saw a body on the bed, and blood on the floor.”

Thomas Bowyer ran back into McCarthy's shop, where he told him, “"Governor, I knocked at the door and could not make anyone answer. I looked through the window and saw a lot of blood." Looking into the man's face, McCarthy's reaction was understandable. He said, “You don’t mean that, Harry.” Both men returned to the room, where Jack McCarthy pushed aside the curtain. “The sight that we saw I cannot drive away from my mind. It looked more like the work of a devil than of a man...I hope I may never see such a sight as this again.”

One writer described the discovery this way. “The wall behind the bed was spattered with blood. On the bedside table was a pile of bloody human flesh. And there on the bed, barely recognizable as human, lay the virtually skinned down cadaver of Mary Kelly.” McCarthy told Thomas to go straight to the Commercial Street police station. Pausing only to lock up his store, Jack McCarthy followed him.

At the Commercial Street Station (above), Detective Inspectors Walter Dew and Walter Beck were on duty when Thomas Bowyer ran in. Drew wrote later, “The poor fellow was so frightened that for a time he was unable to utter a single intelligible word. At last he managed to stammer out something about "another one. Jack the Ripper. Awful. Jack McCarthy sent me."” A moment later Jack McCarthy arrived, and all 4 man ran back to Dorset Street.  

Beck looked into the room, and then told his partner, "For God’s sake, Dew, don’t look."  Drew looked anyway. 

Fifty years later he wrote, “...the old nausea, indignation and horror overwhelm me still… No savage could have been more barbaric. No wild animal could have done anything so horrifying...…the poor woman’s eyes. They were wide open, and seemed to be staring straight at me with a look of terror."

The Government may have made peace with the Sir Charles Warren scandal, but Jack the Ripper had made no truce with his own demons. And he was intent up sharing them with the entire world.

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