BLOODY JACK Chapter Five

I almost feel sorry for Detective Inspector Edmund Reid – “almost” because he should have known better than rely on 'Pearly Poll''s  flimsy grasp on reality.  When the alcoholic prostitute, aka "Mary Ann Connolly" failed to show up for the 10 August parade of suspects at the Tower of London, the 42 year old detective should have written her off as a witness. In his defense he was desperate to close the case before any other women were murdered. And he was getting little support from the upper management of the Metropolitan Police Service, because, in the words of the old soldier's chant, “They were busy playing leap frog,.” where “One staff officer jumped right over another staff officer's back.”

Conservative Home Secretary Robert Peel formed the Metropolitan Police in 1822 – the officers were first called Peelers, and then Bobbies, in his honor. Over the next sixty years the bobbies became a whipping boy for using too little or too much force. Budgets became political bargaining chips, and by 1886 moral within the service was on its knees. Enter the mercurial and charismatic Sir Charles Warren (above), a hot tempered, myopic martinet and firm believer in himself.

The 46 year old Sir Charles had been born to privilege and educated to rule. He had spent half of the previous 20 years in the Royal Engineers in first Palestine and then Africa, where he was Knighted for bravery. During one of his brief returns to Britain in 1885, he had run for Parliament on the Liberal ticket. He lost, but in February of 1886 the liberal Gladstone government offered him the job of running the MET police. A week into the job Warren realized a liberal in the military was not a liberal in the private sector, and he tried to resign. The Liberals were too busy to accept, and in August, when they were replaced by the Conservatives government of Lord Salisbury, Warren felt much more at home. 

And on Bloody Sunday – 13 November, 1886 –that  Sir Charles Warren showed just how conservative he really was. 

That day between 10 and 20,000 peaceful protesters in Trafalgar Square were attacked by 5,000 of Warren's constables, backed up by the Coldstream guards. 

One reporter described the attacks as being of “...a violence and brutality which were shocking to behold.” By nightfall 2 protesters were dead (officially), a hundred people were in the hospital and 77 constables were injured. 

The Times praised Warren as “...a man of science and a man of action…”. Overnight, Warren became a right wing political hero who could do no wrong and who could not be denied anything he wanted. Less conservative papers noted that he was “blunt, tactless and contradictory”, and had adopted policing policies that were “rigid, impractical and unimaginative”. 

 Members of the police service were split between the minority who hated Warren for making their jobs harder, and the majority who admired him for being tough on trouble makers. And then there were those who just wanted his job.

As part of his house cleaning after Bloody Sunday, Warren appointed lawyer James Monroe (above) to be Assistant Commissioner of the Criminal Intelligence Department. The 50 year old Monroe had served in India, as Inspector General of Bengal, where he had commanded a 20,000 man police force. 

Home Secretary Henry Matthews (above), who had already grown weary of Warren's temper tantrums and his repeated threats to resign, approved Monroe's appointment, but also gave Monroe responsibility over the secret Section D, intelligence division. It ran informants across the city, and conducted misinformation campaigns against Irish nationalists in Ireland and London. Warren was excluded from all of this  information, and their private meetings created opportunities for Matthews and Monroe to plot against Sir Charles.

Secretary Matthews would later admit that Assistant Commissioner Monroe was “consulted by the Home Office..".  In other words, he admitted Monroe had been badmouthing Warren to their political masters. 

In November of 1887, Monroe floated the idea of creating a new position to assist him, Assistant Chief Constable, and hiring Melville McNagthen for the job.  Warren suggested Monroe would not need an assistant if he simply gave up running Section D.  After that, Warren and Monroe stopped speaking to each other, and the Home Secretary urged other members of the Metropolitan Police Force to start sharing gossip about Sir Warren. During the investigation into the murder of Emma/Martha Turner, Inspector Detective Reid could no longer trust his superiors, who no longer trusted their subordinates.

Closer to home, Reid had the full support of the 53 year old Whitechapel Police Superintendent, and Reid's immediate superior, Thomas Arnold (above).  Superintendent Arnold had no personal political ambitions, but saw himself as a facilitator for his men. 

And when Pearly Poll missed her 10 August appointment, Arnold approved sending 36 year old Detective Sergeant Eli Caunter after the missing woman. Caunter's nickname was "Tommy Roundhead", because of his "excessive round head".  But he was also one of the most experienced detectives in H Division,  and had a reputation for finding people in the confusing maze of Jewish poverty that was Whitechapel. He began that afternoon by going to the address Poll had given Inspector Reid - 35 Dorset Street.

Dorset Street (above) ran between Crispin and Commercial Streets and was often described as "the worst street in London", because of the poverty and crime rampant over it's 130 yards of vice and vermin. And it was sandwiched between two large pubs. 

At the corner of Dorset and Commercial Street was the Britannia (above), and at 5 Crispin street, at the corner of Crispin and Dorset, was the Horn of Plenty. Between them, along the south side at number 32 Dorset , was a smaller pub, The Blue Coat Boy. 

And here was the secret of Whitechapel laid bare - three busy pubs within 150 yards of each other. In 1888 there were 48 pubs on a half mile stretch of Whitechapel Road alone. The most profitable businesses in Whitechapel were prostitution and selling gin or beer for “three ha'pence”. Volume kept prices so low it was said any customer could get roaring drunk for a shilling.

It was not the opiate of religion that kept 4 in 10 residents of Whitechapel living in crushing poverty, it was alcohol. It made safe the poison that was the only available water supply. Gin dulled the misery of their lives, and beer filled their bellies. The government even strove to keep beer cheap because it was "nutritious".  And it also swallowed what little money, hope and cleverness most of the residents of Whitechapel possessed, keeping labor cheap.

Polly had given her address as number 35  which was on the north side of Dorset Street. Between number 35 and 37 Dorset was Paternoster Row (above, in red) , another dark forbidding alley running to Bushfield Street, and ending next to the Oxford Arms, yet another pub. Between numbers 26 and 27 Dorset there was another such alley, this one called Miller's Court (above, in green) . And at 13 Miller's Court a woman named Mary Jane Kelly had a true rarity in Whitechapel -  a room of her own. Pearly Poll and Mary Kelly knew each other, although they do not seem to have been close friends..

Sergeant Caunter found that 35 Dorset Street, was a private doss house – a doss being a cheap straw bed. Such places were also known as a  “common lodging house”.  Speaking with the owner William Crossingham,  Caunter learned that Polly had left her  meeting with Inspector Reid very worried. Her paranoia running on full steam, she had quickly packed what little she owned and left, telling residents that she was going to drown herself.  But Caunter doubted that story. Why bother to pack for your own drowning?

And he found Polly the next day, Saturday, 11 August, 1888,  having moved in  with her cousin, Mrs. Shean, at 4 Fuller's Court, off  Drury Lane (above). When informed of Polly's presence, Inspector Reid decided not to wait until Monday. He and Sergants Caunter and Leach arrived the next morning, Sunday, 12 August, to escort Polly to the Tower of London for a parade of the soldiers. 

After she had viewed the men, Reid asked Polly, “Can you see here either of the men you saw with the woman now dead?” A newspaper described her response. “Pearly Poll”...placed her arms akimbo, glanced at the men with the air of an inspecting officer and shook her head. This indication of a negative was not sufficient. “Can you identity anyone?” she was asked again. “Pearly Poll” exclaimed, with a good deal of feminine emphasis, “He ain’t here.”’ And only now did Poll add the crucial detail that the men she and Martha had been drinking with had a white band around their hats. This meant the men were in an entirely different regiment. Detective Reid would have to do it all over again.

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BLOODY JACK Chapter Four

 

I suspect that even in Whitechapel, Mary Ann Connolly stood out. She was about 50 years old and stood 6 feet tall, Her face was "reddened and sodded by drink". She went by the street monikers of "Moggg" and  “Pearly Poll”. And on the morning of Thursday, 9 August, 1888, the broad shouldered woman marched into the White Chapel Commerce Street station house, and in a deep raspy voice announced  she knew the name of the woman who had been murdered in George Yard on Tuesday morning. Detective Edmund Reid quickly went down stairs to interview the woman.

According to Pearly Poll, she was currently living at Crossingham's Lodging House, aka The Round House, a private “dosshouse” at 35 Dorset Street. She had known Emma Turner for four or five months, and the two had become “drinking partners”. The evening of the Bank Holiday, Monday, 6 August, they made the rounds of several pubs, until about 10:00 p.m. when they met two soldiers, a Guardsman and a corporal,  in the Two Brewers pub on Brick Lane (above). 

Pub hopping for the next ninety minutes, their last stop was The White Hart pub (above), next to the entrance of George Yard (above, right) on Whitechapel High Street. Just before midnight, the four split up. The last Poll had seen of Emma Turner, she was disappearing into the shadows of George Yard alley with her guardsman.

Poll had taken her corporal up the block to Angel Alley (above, right), an even narrower, darker 3 food wide passage between Whitechapel and Wentworth streets, next to The Angel pub. 

There Poll performed her service up against the wall (above, to the left of the shop window), called  a "tup penny upright",  or a "thru penny knee trembler". 

Thirty minutes later, having earned enough for her bed in the doss house, Poll left the corporal standing at the corner of Wentworth and George Yard (above, bottom center), waiting for his friend to reappear.

Detective Reid thought the story had problems. Poll's claim that she left a corporal at the corner of Wentworth and George Yard at 12:15 am, was similar to Constable Barrett's story of speaking to a soldier at the same spot about 2:00 am. Could Pearly Poll have been mistaken by 2 hours? Looking into the woman's gin soaked eyes Reid thought that was more than possible. He did not share his concerns, nor did he tell Poll that he now had two names for the woman found murdered in George Yard 

Instead he paid Poll a few shillings, and promised her more if she returned tomorrow for a trip to the Tower of London, to review the soldiers stationed there. And then he hurried her out the door. He had an appointment that afternoon at The Working Lads' Institute.

According to lawyer, merchant and devout Methodist, Henry Hill, in 1875 one of his employees spied a messenger, sent to pick up some new quill pens, returning to the company offices. The boy had the quills jutting out of the top of his hat, thus freeing his arms to hold open a “penny dreadful” adventure story, which he was devotedly reading as other pedestrians swerved to avoid colliding with him. The employee thought him such a laughable creature, he told their boss. But Mr. Hill was not amused. He summoned the messenger to his office and found, “The boy went to neither night school nor Sunday school, and read no other literature than the sensational stories...”  This boy,  lamented Mr Hill, “...is as much a heathen as any inhabitant of India or China.” And he decided to fix that.

Two years later the socially minded Mr. Hill, founded The Working Lads Institute, a subsidized private club where working class young men could relax, socialize and “network” in an atmosphere of sobriety and thriftiness. 

And in 1885 the Working Lads' Institute built new quarters at 285 Whitechapel Road (above), next door to the Whitechapel Underground Station (above, half visible to the left) and just across the street from the London Hospital. 

The Institute boasted a dormitory, a library, a gymnasium and a “Swimming Bath.” (above) It also offered educational classes for those seeking to better their lot in life. To defray costs, the institute rented its classrooms for various functions, including corner's inquests, like the one held to investigate the murder of the unidentified woman murdered in George Yard.

Coroners (above, center bg) usually lacked medical training, and the inquests they held, were not trials. The coroner could issue subpoenas and question witnesses (above, left)  in front of a jury (above, right), drawn from the rolls of “freeholders”, who owned enough property to have the right to vote. The jury would then pass judgement whether the death was accidental, careless or criminal. But they could not charge anyone with a crime. 

Still, in the words of a modern author, such inquests added two valuable extralegal elements to the judicial process. “First it invited armature and expert perspectives at the same time,...Second...it had narrative...” In other words, without the restrictions of chain of custody, or against hearsay testimony, and because they were often well attended by the press, an inquest provided an often salacious story of why and how an individual died, usually within 48 hours of the event. The police and prosecutors could then follow up the corner's evidence, if they deemed it advisable.

Deputy Coroner George Collier (above) called this jury to order at 2:00 p.m., on Thursday 9 August, 1888, just 56 hours after the woman found in George Yard had been declared dead. In attendance, beside the jury – the foreman was a Mr. Greary – was Collier's assistant Mr. Banks. There was also Detective Inspector Edmund Reid, dressed in his usual impeccable manner, with Metropolitan Police Sargent Green beside him, taking notes. Before the jury was called to order it was Reid who informed Collier that they now had two identities for the dead woman, Emma Turner and/or Martha Turner. Collier decided not to release either name until one could be confirmed. Then he began to call witnesses.

Elizabeth Mahoney testified that she and her husband John had returned home to George Yard at 1:40 a.m., and she had almost immediately gone back out and returned “no more than five minutes later”. She had seen no one in the stairwell on either trip. Cabbie Alfred Crow testified he had seen someone lying on the stairs at about 3:30 a.m.  And John Reeves testified to finding the body just before 5:00 am. Constable Barrett testified he had examined the body and sent for Dr. Timothy Kileen.

Doctor Killeen had declared the victim dead at 5:30 a.m. He estimated the woman's age as about 36 years old and 5 feet, 3 inches tall.. He now said there were 36 stab wounds to the body, many of which could not have been self inflicted - 7 to the lungs, 1 to the heart, 5 to the liver, 2 to the spleen and six to the stomach. 

He now said that most of the wounds were inflicted by a knife, but one wound, which penetrated the breastbone, might have made by a bayonet. He felt certain all had been inflicted while the victim was pre-mortem - while she was still alive. And he gave the time of death as about 2:30 a.m., Tuesday, 7 August, 1888. He found blood between the scalp and skull, and added that the woman's brain appeared pale but healthy. There was food in the digestive tract. When pressed by Mr. Collier he admitted some of the wounds might have been inflicted by a left handed man.

Coroner Collier called this “one of the most terrible cases that one can imagine. The man must have been a perfect savage to have attacked a woman in this way.” He then ordered the inquest be continued in  2 weeks time, so the woman's identity could be confirmed. This was important because most murder victims knew their killers. But it was just another indication of how little the authorities were ready for the hell which had descend upon Whitechapel, London.  

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BLOODY JACK Chapter Three

 

I have to keep reminding myself, how small the place was. It was less than a mile via Whitechapel Road between Aldegate (above, middle left) and the London Hospital (above, upper right). And from a midway mark on that road, less then a ten minute walk in any direction encompassed all of Whitechapel, Spitafields and Waping, the three poorest parishes in London. And  the hunting field of a serial killer.

Contained within that tiny circle were some 800,000 hungry, exhausted, sickly, desperate people, living short, brutal, filthy lives. Capitalism offered them few opportunities, and the ones it did demanded first that they take advantage of each other. Religion offered only the peace of resignation. Justice was a tool the powerful used to remain powerful .

Life, liberty and happiness were available only if you could afford them. And the wealth of those that could rested largely on the backs of the people of the East End. The Victorian age was defined by its hypocrisy, the sins of its age no less gilded in London, than in Mark Twain's America.

Thus it was a short sad walk pushing the police ambulance from George Yard, a few blocks north from where Wentworth street became Montague Street, to the mortuary (above, green box, lower left) a half block from the Whitechapel Union Workhouse. 

About 7:00  that morning the cart was admitted through the Eagle Place gate (above) and then had to wait while the gate keepers sent for Robert Mann, the 53 year old workhouse inmate who was authorized to open the mortuary for incoming bodies.

In his life Robert Mann had been a dock worker, but either through injury or illness,  Robert's mind was left easily confused.  He was no longer able to hold a job.  He had lived in the Workhouse for almost a decade now. He helped in the kitchen, and in the men's ward of the hospital, mopping up, removing waste and bodies. That Tuesday afternoon, Robert opened the mortuary a second time to admit two nurses. They stripped and washed the body of the unknown murder victim, and were the first to clearly see the brutality done to her. 

When they were finished the nurses stood by while a photo was taken of the victim's pale blood drained face. Then they left the body under a sheet on the dissecting table in the post mortem room and Robert Mann locked the door behind them.

During late Tuesday afternoon, 7 August, 1888, Detective Inspector Edmund Reid had gone back to the Blackwell Building on George Yard (above), and started knocking on doors. First he re -interviewed the Hewitts, the building superintendent and his wife, who lived on the ground floor. They confirmed what they had told Constable Barrett. The dead woman had never been a resident, and had never before been seen about the building. 

Inspector Reid then spoke to the woman in Apartment 37, Louisa Reeves, the wife of John Saunders Reeves, who had found the dead woman at 4:45 or 4:50 that morning. Lousia Reeves told Detective Reid there had been several fights on Wentworth street that Monday night, as was to be expected, what with it having been a “Bank Holiday”. It was the last Monday holiday of the summer. The couple had heard the first shouting about 11:30, and then again half past midnight, and then a third fight broke out about 1:00 am. The couple had watched from their balcony overlooking Wentworth Street, while the police broke up all three brawls. one after another.

The resident of Apartment 35, Mr. Alfred George Crow, made his living as a licensed driver of a hackney cab. The Bank Holiday had been a busy work day for the 25 year old, and he did not get home until 3:00 am on the morning of Tuesday, 7 August. He had seen a “person” on the stairs, whom he assumed was sleeping. Since this was not unusual,  he took little note of it, going straight to bed. He did not realized a murder had occurred until 9 that morning, when he had gotten up, and gone out to buy either food or gin.

At 7:30 that night, Inspector Reid caught Mrs. Elizabeth Mahoney returning from her job at the Stratford matchbook factory, just behind the Workhouse. The 25 year old soft spoken woman and her husband John lived in Apartment 47, directly above Alfred Crow. She said they had spent the day celebrating with her sister, and had not returned home until about 1:40 that Tuesday morning. Elizabeth had paused in their apartment just long enough to take off her hat and cloak, before going downstairs again to buy some dinner (or gin) at a chandler's shop one block north on Thrawl Street (above). Elizabeth said the errand had taken no more than five minutes, before she came home again, climbing the same staircase just before two in the morning. She saw no one on the stairs, she said, living or dead, and did not learn of the murder until ten that morning.

Inspector Reid took note that no one heard any screams or shouting after one that morning, despite the Hewitts apartment being at the foot of the stairwell. And given Mr. Crow's and Mrs. Mahoney's testimony, the murder must have occurred between 2:00 am and 3:00 am. Because of the lack of calls for help, it seemed likely that the victim had known her killer. But until he knew the name of the first, he had little chance of finding the identity of the second.

Reid wrote up a description of the victim, and had it dispatched to the newspapers, who would publish it the next morning. The female victim was about 37 years old, 5 feet 3 inches tall, with dark hair and a dark complexion, wearing an old dark-green skirt, a brown petticoat, a long black jacket, brown stockings, a black bonnet, and side-sprung boots.  It was a proven, plodding police approach. But Inspector Reid was about to be offered a short cut that would throw his case completely off track.

The red herring appeared in the form of Police Constable Thomas Barrett, who showed up at the Leman Street station, early early for his  Tuesday evening tour.  Speaking to Inspector Reid, Barrett said he was bothered by an incident which occurred while he was walking his beat at 2:00 am on that Tuesday morning. Almost three hours before being informed of the body on the stairs, Barrett potted a soldier loitering on Wentworth street (above), near the northern entrance to George Yard.  Barrett thought he might be a guard to insure no interference with a robbery going on in the alley. When Barrett asked what he was doing there, the soldier confessed to “waiting for chum who had gone up the alley with a girl.” Because he believed the soldier, and because of the directive regarding street walkers, Barrett merely told the soldier to move along, and then continued his patrol. 

 Barrett described the soldier as a Private between 22 and 26 years of age, about 5 feet 9 inches tall, with fair complexion, dark hair and a small brown mustache turned up at the ends. He was also wearing a good conduct badge. It had happened three hours before the body was discovered, but Barrett was sure he could recognize the soldier again. Might it not have something to do with the murder? Desperate for a lead, Reid thought it might.

On Wednesday, 8 August, Reid escorted Constable Barrett to the Tower of London, where members of the Guards were paraded for his inspection. Looking for the soldier he had encountered outside of George Yard Tuesday morning, Barrett picked out one man, and then another. Under questioning, both men proved to have separate but equally iron clad alibis  Reid was frustrated, but not surprised. The lead had led nowhere. 

That same morning, Wednesday, 8 August, 1888,  Dr. Timothy Robert Killeen walked the five blocks from his surgery to the Old Montague Street Mortuary to autopsy the body of the woman from George Yard. He was supposed to be assisted by a nurse from the Workhouse hospital ward, but none showed up. So the doctor relied on mortuary worker Robert Mann and his assistant James Hatfield, a 68 year old resident of the Workhouse. 

As usual for the Montague Street mortuary dissecting room (above) , conditions were horrible. The lighting was bad, the room un-vented,  and there was no ready source of water. Luckily it had been a cool summer, because every surgeon in Whitechapel dreaded doing an autopsy there in August.

Dr, Killeen now counted 22 stab wounds (above). The left lung had been penetrated in five places, the right lung in two places. The victim's fatty heart had also been pierced. The liver had been penetrated five times, the spleen twice, the stomach six times. 

All but one of the wounds had been inflicted by a pen knife, held, deduced Dr. Killeen , by a right handed person. But for some reason, on the death certificate (above), Dr. Killeen omitted any details of the savage wounds to the victim's throat, or the slice made just above her pubic bone.

Perhaps the savagery of the assault on the woman was affecting him. Perhaps it was the stench and dirty conditions in the mortuary. Perhaps after three years laboring in the cesspit that was Whitechapel he was finally feeling overwhelmed. If it was the latter, Dr. Timothy Killeen would be far from the first or the last doctor to be "burned out" in Whitechapel. Within the year, Dr, Killeen would return to his family home north of Limerick, Ireland. He never wrote about his time in Whitechapel, nor his brush with the murderer who would become known as Jack the Ripper.

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