BLOODY JACK Chapter Two

 

I doubt few Americans today could find a doctor so close or quick at such an hour. It was just after 5 in the chilly damp morning of Tuesday, 7 August, 1888. The constable dispatched to summon the surgeon first ran north on George Yard to Wentworth Street (above). He turned right and headed east for half a block, before crossing Osborn Street. Then he turned left and headed north on Brick Lane for three blocks to the northeast corner of Henage Street. Not 5 minutes after beginning the task he was banging on the front door of 68 Brick Lane until Dr. Timothy Robert Killeen answered. The constable then waited in the hall while the doctor got dressed and grabbed his medical bag.

Dr. Timothy Killeen was living and working surrounded by his patients, who were mostly dying from malnutrition and its companions: typhoid fever, cholera, syphilis, tuberculosis, measles and food poisoning, to name but a few of the most prominent. They shared polluted water sources, unsanitary food, and breathed foul air. The yearly death rate in the London neighborhoods of Whitchapel and Spitafields was 25 for every 1,000 residents. The worst of London's slum dwellers were born, lived and died without ever seeing a doctor.

Timothy had graduated two years earlier from Kings and Queens College of Physicians, at Trinity College in Dublin. And if he were fulfilling a religious or moral obligation, he might have been disappointed. The Tower Hamlets of Whitechapel, Spitafields and Wopping,  had once been occupied almost exclusively by Irish Catholics escaping the Potato famine. They were now filling with Russian and east European Jews, running from the pogroms. 

But whoever his patients were, it is likely he had seen few as badly injured as this unknown woman on the landing between the first and ground floors of the Blackwell Buildings on George Yard (above). Setting his bag down on the steps, he took out a standard thermometer, which he set on the floor beyond the blood pool. Then he checked his watch, and recorded the time in his notebook. It was just 5:30 in the morning.

He found the victim (above) well nourished, and about 33 years old. His estimate showed he was familiar with the rapid aging a life in Whitechapel could produce. By his careful count the dead woman had suffered 38 separate stab wounds to her neck and chest, as well as one slash in her pubic region. But learning how deep these wounds were, and what internal injuries had resulted would have wait for an autopsy. Gently he lifted the fingers of her left hand. They moved easily, as did the elbow and shoulder joint. The absence of rigor mortis indicated she had died less than six hours ago. He recorded the air temperature as 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Then he inserted the thermometer in the dead woman's nostril.

He lifted her skirt and noted the faint mottling on the bottom of her thighs. By the color he estimated she had been lying here, on her back, for less than four hours. He placed his hand on her forehead, as if judging her temperature in life. She was still warm to the touch.  He examined her clothing – cap and jacket, shirtwaist , dress and petticoat, knee high stockings and ankle high boots. The clothing was old and thin, and Dr. Killeen figured his modifying number for this woman's temperature  should be 1 or 1.10.

Meanwhile PC Barrett had awakened the building superintendent, Francis F. Hewitt. A retired painter, he lived in a ground floor apartment immediately adjacent to the stairwell, with his wife. Although Mr. Hewitt claimed to have heard nothing during the night, his wife, Amy, had heard a cry of “Murder” that evening. But, she added, "The district round here is rather rough, and cries of 'Murder' are frequent.” Francis said such shouts were heard almost every night. Asked to look at the body, still on the stairs, the couple were certain she was not one of their tenants.

Once the Hewitts had returned to their apartment, Dr. Killeen checked the thermometer in the victim's nose. It recorded a body temperature of 95.4 degrees Fahrenheit, for a loss of about 3 degrees since death. Following the standard formula given in his text books of a 1.5 degree Fahrenheit drop in body temperature for every hour after death, then multiplied by 1.10 to account for her thin clothing, Dr.Killeen could estimate the time of death to have been 2 ½ to 3 hours earlier than his 5:30 examination, or between 2:30 and 3:00 that morning. And that was the time he recorded in his notebook. Next, he told PC Barrett to send for a police ambulance, to transport the body about a mile up Wentworth street to the Old Montague Street Mortuary, on the grounds of the Whitechapel Union Workhouse.

Being in debt had always been a criminal act in England, but the 1831 Poor Law created public institutions where the injured, the ill or the aged could reimburse the state for their crime of poverty at hard labor for 9 pence a day - the Workhouse. As crusading journalist Margaret Harkness noted, “The Whitechapel Union (above) is...the Poor Law incarnate in stone and brick.”

In exchange for “A little gruel morning and night, meat twice a week”, a cot and a roof, male inmates broke stone for 10 hours a day, six days a week, while the women and children unraveled rope for ships' caulking. They were allowed no privacy and no visitors. 

The amenities – uniforms and meager education classes, were intended to fulfill the state's Christian obligation to the less fortunate. A man sentenced to the Workhouse committed his entire family to the same punishment. 

Once behind the walls of the 5 story tall Whitechapel Union on New Charles Street, families were immediately separated by sex and age. Over time many families melted into the institution. And yet there were many so desperate they begged to be admitted.

On Thomas  Street, to the east of the Workhouse, the ill working poor lined up to be diagnosed  at the Casual Dispensary (above) -  men in mornings, women in the afternoons,  separated to maintain Christian propriety.

But through the Eagle Place  gate,  between those two brick buildings,  in a dirt and dirty courtyard was a bare, windowless dark shed (above), where the inmates paid their final debt to society. They were dissected. It was to this place that the body of the unknown woman, found murdered in a stairwell on George Yard, was taken on the morning of Tuesday, 7 August, 1888.

By 8:00 that morning the body had been removed from George Yard, and the police had returned to their beats and George Yard had returned to something described as normal.  There was nothing left to indicate that a woman had been murdered on the stairwell of the Blackwell Building, except for the blood still puddled on the landing. A few of the moribund came from the surrounding buildings look upon the spot and the blood. About 9:30 that morning, George Crow, resident of apartment number 307, came down the steps on his way to get breakfast.  He was a cab driver, and had been working the night before, He had arrived home just about 3:00 am. He paused upon seeing the blood, and realized it was staining just the spot on the dark stairs, where he had seen a figure sleeping the night before.

Later that morning, at the H division Metropolitan Police station on Leman Street (above), Divisional Inspector Ernest Ellisdon decided to assign the case to 42 year Detective Inspector Edmund Reid. It was an indication of Ellisdon's concern about the bloody murder. 

 Reid (above, front row center)  was a 12 year veteran of the MET, He was, when he joined, the shortest man on the force. But he eventually rose to head the Whitechapel Criminal Investigation Division. A contemporary officer had called Reid, "one of the most remarkable men of the century".  He was an aviator - having set altitude records in a balloon - a published poet, a professional actor, a social activist and an accomplished magician. And he was a damn fine police man.  If any detective of 1888 could solve the murder of this unknown woman, it would be D.I  Edmund Reid.

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BLOODY JACK Chapter One

 

I start this story is at 4:45 on the chilly morning of Tuesday, 7 August 1888. Mr. John Saunders Reeves has just left his third floor apartment in the rear of “The Blackwell Buildings”, on the narrow alley called George Yard (above), running between Wentworth Street and Whitechapel Road. The 23 year old was anxious to reach a dockside pub before the foreman there choose the work crew for the day. But John Reeves will not make it to the pub on time, he will not earn a salary this day, because on the landing, midway between the first and ground floors, he will step into a living hell too vile to remain hidden one moment longer.

In the shadow of the Tower of London,  the “Tower Hamlets” of Spitafields, Whitechapel (above) and along the Thames, Waping, had once been occupied by nouveau riche Huguenot immigrants, who built great fortunes and mansions funded by the silk weaving industry. 

But over two centuries the power elite of West London had swallowed this enterprise whole, leaving behind the hamlet's stinking tanneries, nauseating slaughterhouses, sour smelling breweries, and smoke belching factories. 

The mansions were now subdivided and crowded in by apartment hovels, “rotten from chimney to cellar, leaning together, apparently by the mere coherence of their ingrained corruption.”  Crowded 7 or 8 residents into each 8 foot square room, the 80,000 lowest of the working classes shared, according to the Reverend Andrew Means,  "....flimsy, filthy walls, ceilings and...a broken chair, the tottering relics of an old bedstead...the mere fragment of a table.”  Three years earlier newspaperman George Sims described the existence of these  80,000 humans - “The walls are damp and crumbling, the ceiling is black and peeling off, the wind and rain sweep in through gaps that seem everywhere”  

And Victorian activist Florence Nightingale had seen the same buildings 20 years earlier. “Old papered walls, carpets, furniture and sinks were all sources of dangerous impurity,  as bad as the dung heap in the basement, or the sewer under the house.". This was the Terra Incognita that were the backstreets of Whitechapel and the East End of London.

John Reeves was not surprised to see a body lying on the dark landing. There were 8,500 homeless men, women and children on the streets of Whitechapel every night - 1 in 10 of the citizens - who lacked even the 4 pence for what was in effect a topless coffin (above) in one of the parishes' 200 official  "doss" houses. And if you had only  "tuppance" - two pennies - you could sleep leaning against a rope strung between the walls.  But at least you were inside.

This elevated the value of the 48 apartments (above) of John Reeves's own “Model Apartment House" on George Yard.  This  "Philanthropic Housing ” had been built 13 years earlier to replace slums knocked down by construction of the London and Blackwell Railroad, and were supposed to be an island of Victorian sensibilities. The building manager, Mr Hewitt, turned the gas jets off at 11:00 each night, supposedly to discourage unchristian behavior by the tenants, although John's wife Louisa suspected it was more to save on the gas bill. 

But that just made the dark common areas (above) - stairwells  and hallways - more inviting to the weary and the enterprising. Such discarded souls were common enough in Whitechapel. And then, as he turned the banister corner toward the final flight of steps,  John's foot slipped on what he thought was the sleeper's urine.

John was a common member of the East End's working poor. The founders of the Salvation Army, William and Catherine Booth, studied these unfortunates first hand and found 18% labored making clothing,  7% made cigars,  8% were street hawkers -  selling pins and needles and buttons, even methanol cones to mitigate fevers.  Another 5% worked in small “sweat shops", such as  making matchbooks, which earned 2 1/2 pence for a gross of 144.  And these were the lucky who earned starvation wages. How the remaining 60% survived was beyond the Victorian imagination, but it was abundantly clear most, men women and even children, self medicated their misery with alcohol. 

The Metropolitan Police Service studied the Tower Hamlets in their own way, and estimated that in 1888 over twelve hundred young women worked in Whitechapel's  62 legal brothels, while the parish's older prostitutes, perhaps another 1,000 women,  were reduced to waiting outside pubs or walking the streets, selling their bodies for the price of a glass of gin, a crust of bread or a doss house coffin.  The arrogant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Charles Warren,  warned the morally outraged that the more his police were used in “...routing out the brothels from the back slums and driving them into respectable places...the worse it becomes for law and order and decency...” And in June of 1887, when a 23 year old shop girl named Elizabeth Cass was falsely arrested for the "crime" of walking down Regent Street at 9:00 p.m.,  the Home Secretary, Henry Matthews, was forced to issue a public apology to the girl. After that, the police in Whitechapel even stopped arresting the street walkers.

The abrupt loss of balance evaporated John's worry about missing his work call. And as he instinctively touched the wall to steady himself, he realized there was something not right about the sleeper on the cramped landing (above).  In the pre-dawn twilight, John could just distinguish the outline of a woman, lying on her back.

Her plump moon face (above) shown above her dark clothing.  Like most working class people of his age, John Reeves had seen enough death to recognize it instantly. And his anxious features contorted even more when he realized he had slipped not in urine, but in blood. A great deal of blood. Without coming closer to the body John Reeves hurried down the steps, crossing himself as he ran across the courtyard, in desperate search of help

Thomas Barrett, badge number 226 (H) Whitechapel division, was a 31 year old,  5 year veteran of the Metropolitan Police Force, and one of the 235 “Bobbies” walking a five block beat that Tuesday morning in Whitechapel.  Met officers put in so many miles on patrol that the department replaced their wooden soled boots every three months. 

His only weapon was the 12 ½ inch long wooden night stick, used to subdue suspects - ether pushed against pressure points, or with blows to the arms or legs.  On his head Constable Barrett wore the cork and leather helmet, covered in fine wool, which had been adopted in 1863. And for the last three years he also carried a brass whistle, to summon assistance. His uniform and training were designed to inspire confidence and respect. But all Bobbies also wore a thick band of leather around their necks should a garrote be slipped around their throat. Many beats in Whitechapel were covered by two officers, since the division suffered more assaults against policemen than any other in all of  London. 

PC Barrett was just beginning the last hour of his 8 hour shift when the short, dark bearded man came walking quickly up Whitechapel Road toward him. Seeing the man's disjointed stride, Barrett focused his hand-held whale oil “Bullseye Lantern” on the man,  more to distract him than to illuminate. From 40 feet away Barrett could tell he was a laborer. And although he was sweating, he did not appear to be out of breath. Combined with the rings piercing both his ear lobes, this suggested the man might be an addict. The docks were half a mile to the south, surrounded by pubs and opium dens. 

But after blocking the lantern light with his hand, the man came closer and in a quick high nervous voice, pleaded, “Itsa dreffle, jes dreffle. Yew must coom to ours hoom. I thought she was flessy, oroite flessy, know, but the second I clapt eyes on I could see thassa was a coald gal. Yew must coom”

Barrett recognized the accent as Suffolk, and he understood enough to know the man wanted him to follow. But to where or why, he could not understand. He asked as imperiously as he could, “Where is the trouble, here?” For a second he saw the little man's face flush with embarrassment.  Then the little man said slowly, pronouncing carefully,   “George Yard.”  Then, “Please. Quick”. Then he added, "Murder."

Constable Barrett followed the man he soon knew was named John Reeves past the "White Hart" public house,  and then right, through the arched entrance of George Yard (above). 

A London newspaper would later describe the cobblestone alley (above) as "...a narrow turning out... (which) leads into a number of courts and alleys in which some of the poorest of the poor, together with thieves and roughs and prostitutes, find protection and shelter in the miserable hovels bearing the name of houses.”  

They traveled half way up George Yard (above)  before turning left,  through a nondescript doorway (above, center),  into the courtyard at the rear of the “Blackwell Buildings”(above,  right BG). But the closer they got to the stairwell itself, the slower John Reeves walked  He waited on the ground floor while PC Barrett cautiously climbed the stairs. When his lantern illuminated the dead woman, Barrett understood Reeve's reluctance to see her again.

The middle aged plump woman lay on her back (above). There was a lot of blood puddled around her body, but none on her mouth or nose. Cradling her head was a black bonnet. Her jacket was thrown open, and pulled away from her shoulders. The collar and bodice of her shirtwaist had been so slashed and mangled by the frenzied attack, and so soaked in blood,  that it was impossible for Barrett to tell what color it had been. Her arms were straight at her sides, the hand's clenched. Her ankle length green skirt and brown petty coat were pushed up to her knees. Her stocking clad legs, though straight,  had been pulled apart so that Barrett assumed she had been engaged in sex at the time of her death.  And he noticed , for some reason, that the boots she wore were scuffed and dirty, the heels worn down on the right foot more than the left. And somehow he knew that small sad detail would haunt him. It did not matter, he forced himself to think. As the first officer on the scene, he had to confirm that she was dead, and probably murdered. That was enough to begin to do as he had been trained to do.

Constable Barrett ordered Reeves to stay where he was, and then strode back across the courtyard, stopping in the center of the George Yard alley (above). Putting his brass whistle to his lips, Barrett found his mouth dry as dust. He had to work up a spit before putting the instrument back to his lips. He blew three times, the sharp shrill desperate comforting call echoing off the dark brick walls and cobblestone roadway. And then Thomas blew it three times again. 

When the first constable arrived in response, Barrett sent him to fetch the nearest surgeon, whom he knew was  Dr. Timothy Keleene, of 68 Brick Lane, just three blocks away. When the second officer arrived, Barrett ordered him to let no civilians into or out of the courtyard, and to use his whistle to call for more constables. The detectives of Whitechapel's Criminal Intelligence Division would have to be notified. 

As he walked back to begin what he knew would be a difficult interview with John Reeves, Constable Barrett realized he would miss morning breakfast with his wife Ellen and 3 year old son Albert. Suddenly seeing them safe and healthy was very important to him.

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ET TU Part Eight Final cortinam

 

I find it very telling that as late as 13 March, 44 B.C., just two days before the assassination of Julius Caesar, the driving force behind the plot, Gaius Cassius Longinus,  warned his fellow conspirators that, should Caesar uncover their plans, all of them would have to commit suicide. 

This is the advice of an ideological leader. But behind it is the spirit of a leader haunted by second thoughts. Simply put, Cassius knew there were too many who knew too much. Estimates of members in the plot range up to 40  And to galvanize the plotters and hold them to their purpose and silence, Cassius (above) did not appeal to their patriotism, but to their sense of class. 

A serf suffers humiliation every day. It is the staff of their lives. But an aristocrat, faced with loss of privilege, often prefers death to humiliation. This was the warning Cassius delivered to his nervous conspirators; we succeed or we lose status. It never seems to have occurred to the privileged forty, that victory could also be fatal.

The object of Cassius' hatred, Giaus Julius Caesar, intended on leaving Rome in three short days.  But even Caesar, at 56, must have been daunted at the prospect of campaigning in the Parthian desert, which 12 years before had consumed his old patron Crassus. 

Every year for the last five years opposition by the Senate aristocrats, first in Italy, then Spain, Greece, Egypt, Anatola, North Africa, and Spain again had forced Caesar into a military campaign. 

On this day, the Ides of March, which had been,  until this very year, New Years Day, Caesar intended on staying close to home. The historian Plutarch says he was not feeling well, and everyone agrees his wife was having nightmares  Whichever the excuse he used to dissuade his followers, it seems clear he wanted a little down down time. Someone had to get him out of the house, someone close, someone the untrusting Caesar would trust.

The obvious choice was Marcus Junius Brutus (above), the son of Cesar's long time mistress, and so often forgiven by Caesar that it was rumored he must be Caesar's illegitimate son.  But Brutus had a new wife at home, Porcia Catonis. They had been married just the year before, in 45 B.C. Porcia was the daughter of the aristocratic Senator Cato, who hated Cesar so much that when cornered in North Africa in 46 B.C., he had chosen suicide. It must have been her, aided by Crassus, who had stiffened Brutus back, and drove him to murder.  

But even Brutus was not willing to lure Caesar to his death. So that job fell to his cousin, and one of Caesar's most trusted generals,  Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus (above).

On the morning of 15 March, 44 B.C., Decimus was welcomed into Caesar's home, and extended an invitation to a gladiatorial display in one of the larger halls at Pompey's theater.  It was a subject certain to pique Caesar's interests. Before crossing the Rubicon, Caesar had been checking up on one of his own gladiatorial schools. He agreed to accompany Decimus to the theatre, but he had no intention of attending the Senate, even though they were meeting in the Curia Pompey, part of the same complex.

As the pair entered the complex through a side entrance, crowds pushed toward Caesar, forcing petitions into his hands, comments on government policy and requests for assistance. 

One of the messages handed to Caesar was from his lieutenant, Mark Anthony, warning of rumors concerning the Senate meeting today. Like the others notes handed to Caesar this morning, it would not be opened until it was too late.

Was there a man in the street warning Caesar to “Beware the Ides of March”? Probably, given the depth of religion in Rome, there were people wandering the streets prophesying doom about every dawn, and in particular about the dawn of an abandoned New Years Day.  But Caesar had become Dictator by ignoring such ominous warnings. Today the soothsayer was right. The previous ten thousand mornings, and for the next ten thousand mornings, he would be wrong again.

Once inside the walls of Pompey's Theatre, Caesar and Decimus, made their way along the walks toward the meeting room to inspect the gladiators. But as they passed the Curia they were waylaid by Decimus' older brother, Brutus (above). He urged Caesar to stop in the Curia,  to allow the Senate to wish him gods' speed on his invasion of Parthia. Exasperated, Caesar acquiesced, and the three men crossed the portico and entered the temporary Senate Chambers.

As he sat down, Caesar could not have missed the electric tension in the room. But what did it mean? Many were avoiding eye contact with him.  But even those Senators who were not in on the plot must have recognized that something was different. And when Senator Lucius Tillus Cimber thrust forward a petition asking that Caesar allow his brother to return from exile (above), Caesar pushed it away, into the hands of an aide. Whereupon Tillus grabbed the hem of Caesar's toga, and pulled. Caesar pulled away, demanding, “Be careful, there is no need to use force!” 

As Caesar turned to a guard to seek assistance, Senator and Tribume Publius Servilius Casca Longus, slashed forward, stabbing Caesar in the neck, just missing his throat.

Caesar grabbed Casca's arm and stabbed him with a pen. Startled, Casca screamed, “Help, brother!” As he tried to stand, Caesar was stabbed again. He now realized the aristocrats had surrounded him, and they all had knives. He tried to run, but fell, and was brutally stabbed over and over as he lay on the floor. The autopsy would reveal 23 wounds. So many knives were slashing that Brutus was stabbed by one of his allies.

Rather than being proud of their act, the aristocrats fled the theater as quickly as they could, escaping to their homes beyond the city walls.  And the abandoned body of Julius Caesar lay a crumpled heap on the floor of the Curia Pompey, his robes soaking in his own blood, for three hours. Finally three slaves worked up the courage to gather his corpse, load it on to a litter and carry him home to his wife. Thousands stood in shock to see the body pass on the street, one arm hanging off the litter, uncovered , bouncing to the steps of the nervous slaves.

The site of Caesar's murder did not become a shrine. It became a public toilet. Pompey's theatre remained in use for almost 1,500 years. Eventually the large latrine which had shared a wall with Curia was enlarged, and engulfed the spot on the floor where Caesar had bled out. Finally it was walled off and forgotten. And when the theatre, and the latrine, fell on hard times midway through the fifteen century A.D., the populace turned it into a quarry, scavenging building stones for their homes and shops. Even today, those who come to look upon the space where Giaus Julius Caesar died, will find only an arch, and an ancient concrete wall

Within two years most of the aristocratic assassins were dead. Cassius, Casca, Cimber, Brutus - all died by their own hands. A few of the forty were killed in battle, and a few even fought for their lives in the courts, and won. They were allowed to return to Rome and live in somewhat reduced privilege. 

Caesar's will left his fortune to his nephew Octavian (above), and eventually the boy overturned the rotten remains of the Republic and disposed of the tawdry trappings of its dead democracy, killed by the aristocrats. 

Octavian became Augustus, the first Roman Emperor. Retroactively, he made his uncle divine. The deceased Julius Caesar had become the thing the aristocrats said they feared the most, a god.

But the dream of a representatives government, giving the people a voice in their own governance, had been set back by 2,000 years not by Caesar, but by his murder.

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