APRIL FOOL'S DAY

 

I don’t approve of practical jokes. I seen nothing humorous in having your shoes set afire while you are wearing them. And dribble glasses are not only not practical they are also not funny - especially on “April Fools Day”, when every glass is a dribble glass and every shoe is a potential combustion chamber.

And it turns out that this celebration of sociopathic behavior was invented by the French, a nation without humorous inclinations since Moliere slipped on a banana peel in 1673. But the story of April Fool’s Day began over a century before that comedic-tragic event, when in 1564 King Charles IX (above)  decided to follow Pope Gregory’s suggestion and begin the calendar on January rather than April. I know why the French originally celebrated New Years Day on April First, but I'm not going to tell you.

Now, in the 16th century, France had only one road. It came out of Paris, turned left, looped all the way around the city and re-entered on the other side of town. This tragic design error,(the world’s first Traffic Circle) made communication with the majority of the nation difficult (and introduced the phrase “Out-of-the-Loop”), and when combined with the French telephone system - which was in no better shape in the 16th century than it is today - meant that a lot of peasants never got the King’s memo concerning the calendar adjustment.

So as they had every year, thousands of these ill-informed peasants journeyed to Paris during the last week of March and on what they thought was New Year’s Eve, gathered in Bastille Square to say bonjour to 1565 and watch the guillotine drop on 1566. In unison they gleefully chanted, “Cing, quartre, trios, deux, un” and…No guillotine. No satisfying plop of a head into the basket. No Campaign corks popping. No le Anderson Cooper.

 Instead of cheers and shouts of glee, mass ennui broke out among the masses. Now anyone who has experienced the Parisian version of “good manners” can imagine what came next; the locals mocked the bewildered peasants and made them feel like complete Americans,…ah, I mean, fools. But the way they did it makes the word “odd” seem inadequate.

For reasons beyond understanding the Parisians snuck up behind their confused country cousins, surreptitiously stuck a paper fish to the bumpkin’s backs and then shouted in a loud voice, “Poisson d’Avril!”, which translates as “April Fish!”, and then collapsed in raucous laughter and shouts of “tres bien.”

Why would they shout “April Fish!”? I have no idea. But, perhaps the first Parisian to label his victim an "April Fool” immediately received a mouth full of fist, while calling the victim an "April Fish” confused him just long enough so that the prankster could escape.

I have long thought that this uncharacteristic outbreak of French “humor” was actually inspired by Charles’ Italian Queen, Catherine de Medici, who was already famous throughout Europe for her gastronomical gags,  such as her duck a la cyanide with a hemlock sauce. Only a Medici could see the humor in humiliating the people who handled your food.

But however it started, the Parisians knew a good time when they saw it and they sent peasants on “fool’s errands”, and tricked peasants with “fool’s tales”, until every April 1st, France reverberated with gales of laughter and shouts of “Poisson d’Avril!” Good times. 

But eventually the Parisian bullies grew bored with taunting the unresponsive peasants and in 1572 they shifted their attentions to the Huguenots. But by then the tradition of humiliating people for your own amusement on the first day of April had become popular. And like Disco music and Special Federal Prosecutors, once invented some institutions have proven impossible to stop.

This holiday for the humor-impaired spread around the globe with the new calendar like a fungus, infecting and evolving a little in each afflicted nation. The Germans added the “Kick Me” sign, and a second day which they call “Taily Day”, to further enjoy the frivolity of bruised buttocks. Ahh, funny  Germans.

In Portugal, today’s innocent victim is hit with flour, sometimes while it is still in the bag - the flour, not the victim. In Scotland the target is humiliatingly referred to as an “April Gawk” (?!), in England as a “Noodle” and in Canada as an “American.” I would have expected mental health professionals to call for a stop to this public insanity but evidently they are too busy setting their patients’ shoes on fire.

Not even a world war could snap the world out of this cruel insanity. In what may have been the first time a practical joke qualified as a war crime, when, on April 1, 1915.  a French pilot buzzed the German trenches and dropped a huge bomb, which bounced.  It was a rubber bomb.

Four years later the citizens of Venice awoke on April 1, to discover their sidewalks littered with cow manure, the "gag" of a visiting Englishman, Horace de Vere Cole, with too much time on his hands and too much money in his pockets. But then what can you expect from a man who would honeymoon on April Fool's day? 

Bad humor moved into the electronic age in 1957 when BBC Television News broadcast a report about the successful and bountiful Swiss harvest of spaghetti.  

On April Fool's Day in 1992, National Public Radio in the United States, broadcast the announcement that Richard Nixon was coming out of retirement to run again for President, under the slogan, "I didn't do anything wrong and I won't do it again."

In 1975  the Australian Broadcasting Company carried a report that the nation was about to switch to "Metric Time".  The next morning would begin at midnight but each minute would be made up of 100 mili-days and each day would consist of 20 deca-days.  It is alleged that the following morning nobody in Australia showed up for work on time, but it is unclear if that was because of the April Fool's joke or merely because, being Australia, they were all still hung over, mate.

Admit it; there is no defense against April Fool tomfoolery, except a preemptive strike. So button up your top button, zip up your pants, tie your shoes and look out for that cat. Load up your water gun, inflate your fart cushion and repeat after me; “Poison d’Avril, sucker!”

- 30 -

BLOODY JACK Chapter Eight

 

I can name the year the dream of a British Empire was set in concrete - 1825. While England was still paying off the debts incurred during the Napoleonic Wars, the British government created the public/private corporations that built and operated the London Docks – in the shadow of the Tower of London.  In Wapping there was St. Katherne's Docks, which specialized in the import and export of 19^th Century luxury items - wine, wool, ivory, rubber, china, sugar, marble, spices, perfume, hops, indigo, coal and tea.

Further east, across Nightingale Lane, there were the London Docks, and on the Isle of Dogs, the Albert, the Victoria and the East India Docks, all covering some 800 acres. 

The initial cost of the smaller St. Katherine's Docks alone was over £1,000,000. But the return was an economic engine that supercharged the industrial revolution, and insured a British empire, and private British fortunes for the next one hundred years.

In 1827- 28, 1,250 houses and tenements covering 24 acres in Wapping were bought and torn down. In their place was built an artificial harbor with 4 miles of quays which could load or unload 26 ships at once, directly into or from 6 story warehouses. 

The unloading time for ship was cut from 3 days to just 12 hours. 

And by the late 1880's the Blackwell railroad sped the dispersal of cargoes to and from every town in England, Wales and Scotland. 

But as is usual in capitalism, profits proved addictive. By 1887, even as the warehouse space leased by private companies bulged with cargoes and their profits soared, the St. Katherine Dock corporation itself was almost bankrupt. Maintenance and staff levels were cut, and salaries for the 1,700 day laborers remained stagnant. What happened next was predictable. 

Shortly before 9:00 p.m. on the chilly rainy Thursday, 30 August, 1888, a fire broke out in the huge South Quay warehouse of the East India docks - 6 floors high, 150 yards long by 75 yards wide - with cotton stored on the upper floors, kegs of gin and brandy below.

The rainstorm did nothing to slow the flames because they were fed from inside the building. Alarms called in 12 steam powered water pumps and over 70 firemen, but they could only contain the flames to that single structure. A verbose reporter described the conflagration as, “lurid flames of gigantic volume, rising high against a canopy of fantastic clouds and throwing the tapering masts into clear relief until they and their rigging looked like fairy cobwebs, illuminated by a strange, unearthly light. The effect was grand...” Not until midnight did the flames begin to die down.

And just as the South Quay fire finally seemed to be dying, another fire broke out at the Ratcliff Dry dock, where the 843 ton, 191 foot long Steam Ship Cornavia was under construction. The ship was saved, but the flames quickly spread to the 2 story Gowland warehouse filled with 800 tons of coal. By 2:00 a.m. this conflagration was being fought by 14 pumps, two firefighting boats and over 100 firemen. In classic British understatement, the “Chemical Trade Journal” predicted, “The loss will be enormous.”

It seems strange that on such a rainy night, two such serious fires should break out in the London docks, one right after the other but so separated in space. Perhaps they were ignited by lightning strikes. or sparked by fires lit to keep workers warm. Or perhaps they were an act of sabotage, by owners seeking insurance settlements to save their fortunes. Or perhaps they were desperate angry acts by workers, paid little better than starvation wages. But whatever the cause, a large crowd had gathered at the gates to the docks to enjoy the free show. And those masses attracted street hawkers selling food and gin and beer, and prostitutes and pickpockets.

Among the crowd enjoying the show was Emily “Nelly” Holland, described as “an elderly woman with a naturally pale face.” She was, in fact, only about 50 years old. After 2:00  that morning of Friday, 31 August, 1888,  40 year old Emily – aka Jane Oram - was returning to the room she shared with four other women in a private doss, the Wilmont Lodging House, at 18 Thrall Street (above) . It was a street so crowded with rundown slum rooming houses it was sometimes called “doss street”. There, said a contemporary writer, “...robberies and scenes of violence are of common occurrence... Thieves, loose women, and bad characters abound... (a place even) a constable will avoid...unless accompanied by a brother officer.” But it was refuge of reasonable safety to Emily Holland - a roof, a shared kitchen and a shared bed.

Leaving the dock fire, Emily came up Whitechapel Road, passing the "White Chapel" of St. Mary's, and crossing Osborn Street (above). There she saw a friend, a woman she had first met in the Lambeth Workhouse. 

Of the perhaps 6,000 prostitutes – young and old, full and part time – in all of London, there were only 150 infirmary beds set aside for women in poverty suffering from venereal diseases. Lambeth was the borough located just across the Thames. And it was in the Lambeth Workhouse where Emily Holland first met the woman she knew as Polly Nichols, and Polly Nichols had been transferred for treatment to Lambert three separate times.

The two alcoholics were friendly, and for three weeks Polly even shared a bed with Emily at the Wilmont Lodging House. Emily liked Polly, and considered her "a very clean woman who always seemed to keep to herself",  the perfect friend for another alcoholic.  But a week ago Polly had abruptly  moved to the White House doss at 56 Flower and Dean Street (above), where men and women were permitted to share beds for the night - meaning a woman without the full 4 pence for a bed could exchange the use of her body for a few moments, for a place to sleep for the entire night. Emily never explained Polly's sudden decent another step down the social ladder. But seeing the diminutive Polly this damp chilly morning, “very much the worse for drink, falling against a wall” Emily clearly felt sympathy.

Polly was leaning against the wall of a grocery store just down from the corner,  on Osborne street,

and she greeted Emily cheerfully. She explained she had just been tossed out of the White House doss because she did not have the half price - 2 pence - required to share a man's bed. Emily urged Polly to come spend the night with her at Thrall Street, but Polly refused, insisting she had already earned her doss three times that evening. But she had either spent it on gin, or the gangs which infested Whitechapel had stolen the money from her.  She would easily earn it again, she insisted. And Emily could have had no doubt that she could. 

Then their conversation came to an abrupt halt while the bell of St. Mary's Matfellon Church (above) on the south side of Whitechapel Road tolled the 2 o'clock half hour.

There was something about Polly Nichols (above) which inspired people to want to to protect her. She was small - just 5 foot tall - and pretty in life, despite a childhood fall had left a scar across her forehead 

That was true even after delivering 5 children, and a decades long addiction to alcohol (above) which reduced her to sleeping on the pavement of Trafalgar Square for months at a time.  Still she retained a cheerful and positive personality, sneering at the obstacles she threw up for herself. But like all alcoholics, Polly seemed to be harboring a secret, that she would share with no one.  In truth there probably was no secret. Alcoholism is an addiction, not a romantic moral failing, not something tragedy inspired. It is a physical condition like diabetes, or asthma. And offering to protect Polly, merely drove her to run away faster.

Once St. Mary's bell stopped, Polly was anxious to be on her way, despite their having talked with Emily for only six or seven minutes. In a line she often used to smooth her exits, she assured Emily that her new bonnet would attract a customer. And as she staggered off up Whitechapel Road, she told Emily, "It won't be long before I'm back."

Polly Nichols was wrong. She would be dead on her back in Buck's Row within an hour, her throat cut twice and then disemboweled and left abandoned like a bit of trash, to be discovered first by two self absorbed lorry drivers, and then by a 33 year old Metropolitan Police Constable from County Cork, Ireland, and assigned to the Bethel Green “J” Division.  But Police Constable 97J, John Neil, would luckily be spared the worst of the horrors of his discovery.

                                - 30 - 

BLOODY JACK Chapter Seven

 

I don't believe Scotland Yard (above) got its name because the Thames riverfront was a vacation home for Medieval Scottish royalty. I prefer the story that Cardinal Wolsey stole the strip of land in 1519 from a family named Scott, and used it as a boat landing for his new mansion (above, upper left) - until Henry VIII had the Cardinal beheaded and seized the mansion and the riverfront property for himself.  

By 1880, the collection of office buildings, stables and storage sheds along Whitehall Street (Above, upper red brick building),  now backing along what would be the Thames Victorian Embankment along the river,  was the headquarters of Metropolitan Police. 

The original backside of this hodgepodge complex - the city side, through which most people had access during the two decades while the Embankment was being built (above) - was through a central courtyard still called Scotland Yard.

A few hundred yards downstream, before the Westminster Bridge,  was the new Westminster palace,  which housed the houses of Parliament. Just behind was 10 Downing Street, which housed the Prime Minister. And a few hundred yards inland was Buckingham Palace, originally  Cardinal Wolsey's palace but which now housed Queen Victoria. That made Scotland Yard the obvious place to locate the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Force.

It should be clarified that the Metropolitan Police were not the London Police. The old walled City of London remained as much a political and financial entity as it did when Wat Tyler marched his pre-tea party tax rebels across London Bridge in 1341. The London Police were responsible for  protecting the streets around Parliament, 10 Downing Street, the Bank of England and The Queen's palace

The Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard (above) had authority only for the city outside the walls - “Greater London”.  This meant the only way to get from Scotland Yard to Whitechapel was to either cross London Police territory, or take to the river – which was also policed from Scotland Yard (above).

Both officers wore the same uniforms, carried the same tools (whistle, nightstick, hand cuffs, note pad, and lantern) and enforced the same laws. The only physical differences were the badges on their helmets. 

With the same fervent Christian militarism that empowered William Bazalgette to overcome all opposition and build the Thames Embankment to house his new London sewer system,  Sir Charles Warren (above), Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police after February 1886, believed in his own divine mission to make London safe. And Sir Charles was the original advocate of  "community based policing".  He wrote, “...the primary object of an efficient police is the prevention of crime. The next is the detection and punishment of offenders if a crime is committed.” 

Sir Charles saw the Sherlock Holmes type of intellectual plain-clothes detective as supporting the uniformed officers, not leading them. Warren's temper exploded whenever his decisions were questioned,  and he insisted on making all the decisions, from when to promote officers, to where they should live. As a modern writer has pointed out, “Warren believed, probably rightly, that he had been appointed...to reorganized a demoralized police force and had been given a free hand in how he achieved that.”

 

But Warren was not an easy man to work for, as his subordinate, Assistant Commissioner for the Criminal Intelligence Division – meaning the plain clothes detectives - James Munro (above), could testify.  And Warren was an even harder man to have as a subordinate, as Sir Charles' boss,  Home Secretary George Matthews could also testify.  But Secretary Matthews was a far better politician than Sir Charles.

It was Matthews who gave Assistant Commissioner Munro (above) the additional duty of running Section D - 4 CID Inspectors and 79 Officers recruited from Scotland and Ireland, whose public job was to keep track of Irish militants  in London.  

Irish bombs were already going off in England, one of them, in 1884 (above), in the Section D offices in Scotland Yard itself.  In response to such attacks,  the secret assignment of Section D was enlarged to include bribery, misinformation and smear of Irish politicians, using prostitutes, thugs and forged letters to newspapers throughout England and in Ireland itself. 

Housed in a 2 story building in Scotland Yard (above), Section D was strictly “black ops”, shielded from parliamentary budget oversight. That also meant it was shielded from Sir Charles' oversight. Although Commissioner Warren could look down on Munro's office from his own, he had little idea what as going on in that building, or in the private meetings between his subordinate Munro and his boss, Matthews.

Munro (above) shared Sir Charles' self-confident moral vanity - and his mustache. He saw his own recovery from a bout of infantile paralysis – polio – as his own divine endorsement. And he made up for the limp it left him with by carrying a very big walking stick. He was “very unwilling to give up an opinion once he had formed it”. The two mustaches were bound to bang heads.

When Munro wrote a memo bemoaning his heavy workload, and suggesting he needed an assistant, Sir Charles (above) replied that the Assistant Commissioner should “...be allowed to devote his time and energy to his legitimate work, and that he should not be burdened with the care and anxieties of duties...” outside the Metropolitan Police. In other words, Commissioner Warren told Assistant Commissioner Munro, if you are too busy, give up running the Special Irish section, Section D.

As expected Munro appealed to Home Secretary Matthews (above), who happily agreed to fund an additional Assistant Chief Constable. 

The victorious and confident Munro was quick to suggest just the man for the job – Sir Melville Macnaughten (above). Munro had known him in India, and knew him to be a man of courage and good sense. And loyal to Munro.

Sir Charles (above) did not agree. He reminded Secretary Matthews that during a New Delhi riot, Sir Melville had been so far ahead of events that he was knocked unconscious by a rioter, making him “...the one man in India who has been beaten by the "Hindoos".” There were lots of men more qualified for the position of Assistant Chief Constable, said Warren. And if Mcnaughten were offered the job, Warren again said he would resign. 

It was not Warren's first resignation threat, but once again, it worked. Secretary Matthews (above) caved, and would not offer the job to Mcnaughten.

Munro (above, center)  had already assured Sir Melville that he had the job, and was embarrassed and furious when he could not deliver it. And on Friday, 31 August, 1888, he submitted his own resignation to Sir Charles (above, left), who happily accepted it,  replacing him by promoting Robert Anderson to Assistant Commissioner of CID.  Sir Charles Warren had won.  

However, Matthews immediately offered Munro a job as consultant to the Home Office, while retaining Munro as chief of Section D (above, center).  So Munro had been removed, but he had not gone. And Secretary  Matthews would remember he had been manhandled by Warren, again. And the tool the Home Secretary would use to remove his troublesome Commissioner would present itself that very morning.

At about 3:45 that same Friday morning, 31 August, 1888, 39 year old Charles Cross left his apartment at 22 Doveton Street, at the eastern edge of Whitechapel. He was heading for the Pickford & Company stables beneath the London and Northwestern Railroad Broad Street elevated station, where he worked as a driver on a delivery wagon. Pickford was the largest shipping company in England, and kept some 600 horses at the Broad Street stables, from where they were dispatched each day to move cargo from factories and shops in London to and from the NW Railroad and the London Docks..

Charles' walk (above) usually took him about 20 minutes, but this morning, as he headed west across Cambridge Road to Oxford Street, he was already late. He walked briskly through the cold drizzle. Lightning flashed as he took the shortcut around St. Bartholomew’s Church, and thunder followed him down Trapp Street. He made a left on Sommerford, and a right on Brady, before turning right again and heading down Buck's Row.

He was about half way down the north, private home side of the dark cobblestone street and about half way to work, when across the street, on the warehouse side, in the shadows thrown by the only gas light on that side of the street, Cross saw a bundled tarp lying in front of the closed stable gate for the Brown and Eagle Wool Warehouse.

Charles wasn't sure why, but he impulsively crossed the road toward it. Perhaps the idea of snatching a new tarp gave him reason. Perhaps he could use it to cover himself from the rain today, or sell it when he got to work. But another flash of lightning revealed the lump in the shadows had a human outline. Charles slowed, but took another two steps for a closer look. 

He stopped when he realized that what he thought was a discarded tarp was actually a woman, lying on her back, her head away from him, her legs open toward him, her dress pushed up above her knees (above)  He could not move for a long moment. Was she drunk? She must be drunk. She was going to drown in this rain, Could a person drown in the rain?

He heard the click of an approaching hob nail boots on the cobblestones.  It was a man, hunched shouldered and collar turned up against the rain. Charles suddenly felt ashamed, as if he had been staring at the woman's private parts. It was absurd, in the dark, that he would do such a thing, he couldn't even see her private parts, he never...Still, he felt he must confront this false image of himself. Charles didn't want this stranger suspecting he had been involved with this woman, lying in the street, dead drunk. He stepped toward the approaching man, and saw he was dressed, as Charles was, in a workman's clothes. Charles called out, “Come and look over here, there's a woman."

The other man stopped, and for a second Charles thought he might turn and run. It was to be expected that he might run. Charles could be a mugger or part of a gang of muggers.  But Charles pointed toward the woman, and the man came on again, but this time angling toward the body. As the man passed him, Charles said, “I think she may be dead.” The man knelt down and touched her face and hands. “Cold” was all he said. Then he put his head on her chest. The man said, “She has a heartbeat. It's faint.” Then he said, “I think she's breathing. But it is little, if she is.” The man stood, and said, “I've got to get to work. I'm late, already.”  But neither man moved.

They stood for a long moment side by side, in silence, looking down at the dying woman,  but not really seeing her. Then the other man suggested, “We should move her out of the way.” The words hung in the damp air for a long moment.  Charles could not make himself move, for some reason. He said, “I don't want to do that.”  

He'd meant to say we shouldn't move the woman, but the words had already escaped his lips.  They could not be withdrawn. Again a silence fell upon them. They had to do something. Didn't they? Charles saw the other man glance back up Bucks Row. 

The street was still empty. It would not be, it couldn't be for much longer.. London Hospital was two blocks away.  The rain was growing lighter. Charles said, “We have to do something.” Then, the other man squatted between the woman's legs, like a midwife, Charles thought, delivering a newborn, and he pulled her dress down over her legs. As he stood again, the other man said, “I have to be at Corbetts Court by four.” Charles understood. The man said, “We can look for a Bobby on the way.” The man took two steps toward toward Brady Street,  then paused, waiting for Charles.

Charles realized he was not looking at the woman's body. What was he doing here? Why did he have to be the one who found her? If he had just gone the other way, down Little North Street, he would not have seen her at all. Many mornings he did just that. But this morning, he had turned down Buck's Row. Charles turned on his heel, and blocked her out of his mind. Both men walked to the west end of Buck's Row together, without saying another word.

Behind them, where the killer had released another of his demons into the world, the woman's soul slipped from her body and floated away in the dark, evaporating in loneliness until it was so thin there was nothing left of her but air. And then not even that.

- 30 -