Complete History Of Jack The Ripper Part 4

The truth was that the handkerchief belonged to Annie and was tied about her neck before the killer placed his knife to her throat. Timothy Donovan recalled for the inquest that Annie had been wearing a white cotton handkerchief with a broad red border about her neck when she left his lodging house that night. It was folded 'three-corner ways' and was tied in front of the neck with a single knot.10 Reporters converged on 29 Hanbury Street like angry hornets on the morning of the murder. One of the earliest on the scene was Oswald Allen of the Fall Mall Gazette and his report, which appeared on the streets later in the day, carried the a.s.sertion that Annie's rings had been wrenched from her finger and placed at her feet. On the following Monday the Daily Telegraph printed another fable: 'There were also found two farthings polished brightly, and, according to some, these coins had been pa.s.sed off as half-sovereigns upon the deceased by her murderer.' The farthings quickly pa.s.sed into legend. Even two policeman later gave them credence. In 1889 Inspector Reid told a different murder inquiry that two farthings had been found on or about the body of Annie Chapman and in 1910 Major Henry Smith alleged in his memoirs that two polished farthings had been discovered in her pocket. Neither man, however, had personally investigated the Hanbury Street case. Reid had been on leave at the time and Smith, as Chief Superintendent of the City of London force, had no responsibility for the policing of Spitalfields.11 In succeeding years the rings and farthings became an obligatory part of the collection of items found at the feet of Annie's corpse. In 1928 Leonard Matters started the ball rolling: 'Another interesting fact in this case was that two bra.s.s rings which the woman wore were taken from her fingers, and the trumpery contents of her dress pocket two or three coppers and odds and ends were carefully laid out at her feet.' It will be noted that Matters did not mention the farthings and did not state that the rings were found at Annie's feet. But ten years later William Stewart went further. On one page he printed Allen's report, on another he a.s.serted that two farthings had been amongst the items arrayed at the feet of the corpse. In 1959 Donald McCormick put Matters and Stewart together: 'Two bra.s.s rings, a few pennies and two farthings were neatly laid out in a row at the woman's feet.'12 As set down by McCormick the story was reaffirmed in a whole bevy of major Ripper books: Cullen (1965), Odell (1966), Farson (1973), Rumbelow (1975 and revised edition 1987), Knight (1976) and Odell & Wilson (1987). Occasionally a renegade Ripperologist ventured a dissenting voice Richard Whittington-Egan in 1975, Melvin Harris in 1987, Paul Begg in 1988 but by this time the legend had almost a.s.sumed the status of an imperishable truth. In full or in part it appears in two of the most recent Ripper books: Paul Harrison, a serving police sergeant himself, has two bra.s.s rings and two new farthings at the feet of the corpse; Messrs Begg, Fido & Skinner, in their Jack the Ripper A to Z, content themselves with two farthings 'which may have been brightly polished.'13 In Stephen Knight's overheated imagination the rings and farthings were additional proof of his theory of a Masonic Ripper. According to this writer the clues pointing to such a conclusion were abundant in the Chapman murder. Annie had been divested of all metals such as rings and coins. So is a Mason before he is initiated to any degree. And bra.s.s is the sacred metal of the Masons because the Grand Master Hiram Abiff of Masonic legend was a worker in bra.s.s. He it was who supervised the moulding of the two hollow bra.s.s pillars commanding the entrance to Solomon's temple. When Annie's killer placed her bra.s.s rings at her feet, contends Knight, he did so because, side by side, they simulated the appearance of the two hollow bra.s.s pillars in cross-section! Then there were the mutilations. In Masonic myth Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum, the three murderers of Hiram Abiff, were themselves killed 'by the breast being torn open and the heart and vitals taken out and thrown over the left shoulder.' This, said Knight, explained why Annie's intestines had been placed on her shoulder.14 The truth was very different. Neither rings nor farthings were found at Annie's feet and hers was certainly not a ritualized Masonic killing.

We have only four authentic eyewitness accounts of the appearance of the body in the backyard. The first, written on the same day, was contained in a confidential report of Inspector Chandler to his superiors. Then, four days later, James Kent, one of the men called in by John Davis, gave his highly coloured version to the coroner. Finally, Inspector Chandler and Dr Phillips both made depositions at the inquest on 13 September. Not one of these accounts mentions any rings or farthings placed by Annie's feet. The inquest depositions of Chandler and Phillips are very detailed and would unquestionably have recorded the presence of these articles had they been there but both men speak only of a piece of coa.r.s.e muslin, a small-tooth comb and a pocket comb in a paper case. In addition to this evidence we have Abberline's report of 19 September in which he explicitly states that the rings had been missing when the body was found and that inquiries had been made at p.a.w.nbrokers and dealers throughout the district in the hope that the murderer had tried to p.a.w.n or sell them believing them to be gold.15 The sum of the genuine evidence, then, is quite clear. The rings were not recovered and the only items discovered by the feet of the body were a muslin handkerchief and two combs.

Pressmen were not admitted to premises in which a murder had just been committed. And, except in the context of coroner's inquiries, they were not made privy to the details of police investigations. It cannot be emphasized too strongly, therefore, that however valuable the newspapers might be as sources of contemporary comment and for information on the public aspects of the subject like inquest hearings or street scenes they are not credible sources for the details of the crimes themselves and should not be used as such.

Knight's theory that several of the Ripper victims were mutilated in accordance with Masonic ritual received worldwide publicity. He and those who have followed him insist that the killer of Annie Chapman and Kate Eddowes, a later victim, consciously replicated the form of execution willed upon himself by Jubelo, in Masonic tradition one of the murderers of Hiram Abiff, the Masonic Grand Master and builder of Solomon's temple: 'O that my left breast had been torn open and my heart and vitals taken from thence and thrown over my left shoulder.'16 This is not true. In the cases of both Chapman and Eddowes the intestines, not the heart and chest contents, were lifted out, and they were placed over the right, not the left, shoulder. One suspects that, in reality, this act had no especial significance. For if the killer was kneeling by the victim's right side and holding the knife in his right hand he would have lifted her entrails out in his left, and her right shoulder, immediately before him, would have been as convenient a place as any to deposit them so that he might proceed with the other abdominal mutilations.

The Masonic theory fares no better when applied to Mary Kelly, generally regarded as the Ripper's last and certainly his most extensively mutilated victim. Kelly's heart was, indeed, cut out but it was either taken away or, since the murderer maintained a fierce fire, burned by him. The other viscera and detached flesh were left in various places under her head, by her right foot, between her feet, by her right or left side, and heaped on a bedside table, in short almost everywhere except over her left shoulder. Only by a shameless selection of evidence can the Masonic theory be invested with apparent credibility. Thus, for example, Melvyn Fairclough, attempting to resuscitate Knight's hypothesis as recently as 1991, points to the fact that Kelly's right thigh was denuded of skin and flesh. This, he a.s.sures us, is a Masonic allegory, 'a reminder of the initiation of a Master Mason when the candidate, in reference to his two previous initiations, says: "And my right leg bare". As he utters these words he has to roll up his trouser leg. With Kelly they rolled away the flesh.' Unfortunately, he neglects to explain, or even to mention, that Kelly's left thigh too was stripped of skin, fascia and muscles as far as the knee.

Knight's theory, in sum, was a colossus built on sand.

The speculations of Ripperologists have often taken us very far from the truth. Unfortunately, without ready access to the primary evidence it is very difficult for the reader with a genuine interest in the crimes to get back to the facts. The reported appearance of Annie's killer is a case in point.

My readers will already know that the only person who caught a glimpse of the murderer was Mrs Long, the market woman who saw him talking to Annie outside No. 29 at 5.30. Yet previous writers have claimed not one, but three, sightings of the killer. They can be summarized as follows: 2.00 a.m.

A man seen entering the pa.s.sage of No. 29.

5.00 a.m.

A man and a woman seen talking outside No. 29 by Mrs Darrell.

5.30 a.m.

A man and a woman seen talking outside No. 29 by Mrs Long.

The only genuine sighting in this list is the last. So whence the others?

The myth of Mrs Darrell was created by two factual errors. One was made by author Donald McCormick.17 He discovered a reference to Mrs Darrell in the contemporary press, probably in the Times of 13 September 1888, but incorrectly copied the time of the sighting as 5.00 instead of 5.30. I have checked five news reports of Mrs Darrell's sighting.18 All of them give the time 5.30. Now this, of course, was the time of Mrs Long's sighting and I am sure that with my discerning readers the penny will already have begun to drop. Mrs Darrell was Mrs Long.

The original source of the confusion must have been a mistake by one of the press agencies which botched the name of the witness but in every other respect reported her experience accurately. The details credited to Mrs Long in police records, and given by her to the coroner, are identical to those attributed in the press to Mrs Darrell. Even the words overheard by the witness the man's laconic 'Will you?' and the woman's answer 'Yes' are the same in both. There is no doubt, then, that the many writers who have recorded Mrs Darrell's sighting have duplicated that of Mrs Long, another cautionary tale in the use of newspaper evidence.

The man in the pa.s.sage is an even more mysterious character than Mrs Darrell. He first made his appearance in print two days after the murder in the Daily Telegraph: At eight o'clock last night the Scotland-yard authorities had come to a definite conclusion as to the description of the murderer of two, at least, of the hapless women found dead at the East-end, and the following is the official telegram despatched to every station throughout the metropolis and suburbs: 'Commercial-street, 8.20 p.m. Description of a man wanted, who entered a pa.s.sage of the house at which the murder was committed with a prost.i.tute, at two a.m. the 8th. Aged thirty-seven, height 5 ft. 7 in., rather dark, beard and moustache; dress, short dark jacket, dark vest and trousers, black scarf and black felt hat; spoke with a foreign accent.'

A day later The Times proffered a slightly different version: The following official notice has been circulated throughout the metropolitan police district and all police-stations throughout the country: 'Description of a man who entered a pa.s.sage of the house at which the murder was committed of a prost.i.tute at 2 a.m. on the 8th. Age 37; height, 5 ft. 7 in.; rather dark beard and moustache. Dress shirt, dark jacket, dark vest and trousers, black scarf, and black felt hat. Spoke with a foreign accent.'19 This description of a suspect seen entering the pa.s.sage of No. 29 at 2.00 a.m. cannot be reconciled with the evidence of Mrs Long, which places the murderer and his victim outside the house at 5.30, and Leonard Matters, the first important author on the murders, was frankly baffled by it. His successors have fared no better. 'I am inclined to believe that this description was entirely made up out of some policeman's head,' wrote a mystified Tom Cullen, 'for there is no record of any man's having been seen entering the pa.s.sage of No. 29 Hanbury Street at 2.00 a.m. on the morning of the murder. Certainly no witness ever testified to this effect.'20 Most writers on the case have quoted the description without understanding to whom it referred. A few have opted to avoid any reference to it at all. No one has satisfactorily explained it.

At the time the News speculated that the prost.i.tute referred to in the police telegram was not Annie Chapman but one Emily Walter or Walton: 'That description applies, as well as can be gathered, to the man who gave the woman Emily Walton two bra.s.s medals, or bright farthings, as half-sovereigns when in a yard of one of the houses in Hanbury Street at 2 a.m. on Sat.u.r.day morning, and who then began to ill-use the woman. The police attach importance to finding the man . . .'21 Emily's adventure is known to us only from newspaper reports. She told the police that early on the morning of the murder she had been accosted by a man in Spitalfields. Although he had presented her with two half-sovereigns, as she had supposed at the time, his manner had been violent and threatening. Eventually her screams had scared him off. Later Emily discovered that the 'half-sovereigns' were but bra.s.s medals. She evidently gave a description of the man to the police and conceivably this was the one circulated in the telegram. The earliest report of the Emily Walter affair, however, tends to cast doubt upon this explanation for it gives the time of her encounter as 2.30 not 2.00, and does not positively identify the house in which it allegedly took place as No. 29: 'It is said that this woman [Walter] did accompany the man, who seemed as if he would kill her, to a house in Hanbury Street, possibly No. 29, at 2.30 a.m.'22 One also wonders whether the whole story of Emily Walter was a newspaper fiction. She was not called as a witness before the inquest and there is no official record of her in the police or Home Office files.

It will be noted that there are significant differences between the two published texts of the police telegram. The Times version suggests a much more likely solution to the mystery. It begins: 'Description of a man who entered a pa.s.sage of the house at which the murder was committed of a prost.i.tute at 2 a.m. on the 8th.'

Now, since Annie was killed at about 5.30 most students of the case have taken the time of two o'clock to relate to the man's entry into the pa.s.sage. But two was an important time in the Chapman case. Abberline and Swanson both record it as the time at which Annie was turned out of the lodging house. Mrs Long did not volunteer her evidence until three days after the date of the telegram so when the police drafted it two o'clock was the last time at which Annie had been seen alive. It was for precisely this reason that detectives, visiting common lodging houses on the day of the murder, made inquiries about men who had entered after two. The first sentence of the telegram should therefore probably be amended thus: 'Description of a man who entered a pa.s.sage of the house at which the murder was committed of a prost.i.tute after 2 a.m. on the 8th.'

The whole sense of the sentence is now altered. The time and date are correct for the murder itself and no time or date is specified for the man's entry into the pa.s.sage. The telegram simply records the description of a man seen (date and time not given) in the pa.s.sage of the same house in which a prost.i.tute was murdered after two on the morning of 8 September.

Having clarified the text of the telegram, we are in a position to solve the mystery. We know from police records that on the day of the murder they interviewed every occupant of No. 29. On that occasion Mrs Richardson surely told them about the trespa.s.ser Mr Thompson and herself had encountered on the premises about four weeks back. She referred to him again at the inquest: CORONER: 'Did you ever see anyone in the pa.s.sage?'

MRS RICHARDSON: 'Yes, about a month ago I heard a man on the stairs. I called Thompson, and the man said he was waiting for [the] market.'

CORONER: 'At what time was this?'

MRS RICHARDSON: 'Between half-past three and four o'clock.'23 The police would not have regarded this man as a serious suspect but they would have been anxious to trace him in order to eliminate him from their inquiries. And this was apparently the purpose of the telegram. The identification of the man in the pa.s.sage with Mrs Richardson's trespa.s.ser would seem to be clinched by a statement which she gave to the Daily Telegraph as early as 8 or 9 September: 'The only possible clue that I can think of,' she said, 'is that Mr Thompson's wife met a man about a month ago lying on the stairs, about four o'clock in the morning. He spoke with a foreign accent. When asked what he was doing there he replied he was waiting to do a "doss" before the market opened. He slept on the stairs that night, and I believe on other nights also.'24 The police telegram, then, did not describe a man seen with Annie Chapman but one found skulking about No. 29 a month before the murder. As such it cannot seriously be advanced as a clue to Annie's killer. The detectives knew this perfectly well. Which is why Chief Inspector Swanson, reviewing the Chapman investigation on 19 October, recorded only one description of a suspect in connection with the murder that of Mrs Long.25 Our demolition of these time-honoured shibboleths must not delude us into thinking that we have seen the last of them. They will continue to be trotted out by the idle and incompetent and facts, in any case, have never stood in the way of a sensational theory. The arrangement of Annie's pathetic belongings around the feet of her corpse struck William Stewart as a typically feminine gesture. And anxious to promote his own indictment of a demented midwife, he was not the man to question the truth of that neat array. Similarly, for Stephen Knight the rings and coins had to exist, if only to legitimize his fantasy of a Masonic murderer. 'Human kind,' sighed T. S. Eliot, 'cannot bear very much reality.' The century-old obsession with the Whitechapel murders might truly be cited as a vindication of his view. Jack the Ripper has been, and looks destined to remain, whatever writers, songsters and film-makers wish him to be.

None of which alters the fact that in the patient study and careful evaluation of our primary sources, the truth or what survives of it is there for those who seek it.

7.

The Panic and the Police.

ON SAt.u.r.dAY, 8 SEPTEMBER, tidings of the fourth murder crackled out from Hanbury Street like a bushfire. They produced a run on the evening papers the like of which no newsagent for several miles around could remember. For when stocks sold out crowds waited outside the shops for fresh supplies to be brought in and customers successful in obtaining copies themselves became the centres of clamorous groups eager to hear the latest.

The press, by giving currency to inaccuracy and rumour, and by resort to the most sensational language imaginable, did much to promote alarm. On the day of the murder the Star prefixed a four-column notice of the tragedy with this bloodcurdling pa.s.sage: 'London lies today under the spell of a great terror. A nameless reprobate half beast, half man is at large, who is daily gratifying his murderous instincts on the most miserable and defenceless cla.s.ses of the community. There can be no shadow of a doubt now that our original theory was correct, and that the Whitechapel murderer, who has now four . . . victims to his knife, is one man, and that man a murderous maniac. There is another Williams in our midst. Hideous malice deadly cunning, insatiable thirst for blood all these are the marks of the mad homicide. The ghoul-like creature who stalks through the streets of London, stalking down his victim like a p.a.w.nee Indian, is simply drunk with blood, and he will have more.' The quality papers were not exempt from such journalism. On Monday morning the Telegraph set the hearts of its dignified middle-cla.s.s readers pounding with talk of a baleful prowler of the East End alleys, of 'beings who look like men, but are rather demons, vampires . . .'1 Whitechapel had stood firm in the face of three savage murders. But this fourth, coming so soon after the last, plunged the community into panic and hysteria. On Sat.u.r.day evening thousands of people were out on the streets of the East End. 'Rumours of other murders were set afloat,' noted the Observer, 'and gained no small amount of credence, until East London became panic-stricken for there is no other term to describe the aimless, frightened way in which the people paraded the crowded thoroughfares.'2 The first three days after the murder witnessed extraordinary scenes in the vicinity of the crimes. Crowds gathered in Buck's Row and Hanbury Street, outside both entrances to the mortuary, and about the police stations in Commercial Street, Leman Street and Bethnal Green. On Monday a News reporter encountered an immense throng of loafers in Hanbury Street. The upper storey windows on both sides of the street framed the faces of yet more spectators. 'Not a man could I see in any of those windows,' he wrote, 'only women, grown-up girls, and children. They had the air of people who thought their quarter of the world invested with a new importance.'3 Anger and indignation were the ruling pa.s.sions of these crowds. With blind fury they turned upon anyone they fancied to blame for the tragedy. The newspapers record some half dozen such incidents for the weekend of the murder but details are garbled and untrustworthy. We will instance just one which seems to be related to a memory of Walter Dew.

In his memoirs, published in 1938, Dew devoted no less than six pages to the arrest of 'Squibby'. It was his most vivid memory of the Chapman murder. Squibby was a young villain. Covered from head to foot in tattoos, short but immensely strong, he engaged in regular battles with the police. 'Whenever this "charming" young fellow was arrested,' wrote Dew, 'it took six or eight policemen to get him to the station, and by the time he was brought in he was usually devoid of every st.i.tch of clothing, and the policemen pretty well hors de combat.'4 In short, Squibby was the complete Pocket Hercules.

Now, at the time of the Hanbury Street murder Squibby was wanted by the police. Some time previously he had been amusing himself by throwing bricks at a policeman and one badly aimed missile had struck and injured a child. Squibby had gone into hiding but the murder coaxed him out. Mingling with the crowds of sightseers, he made his way, on the morning of the murder, towards Hanbury Street. That morning Dew was one of many detectives taking statements in the neighbourhood. It was while standing talking to a fellow detective in Commercial Street that he espied Squibby. And at the same time Squibby saw and recognized the detectives.

In an instant he was off. Diving between the legs of a horse and crossing the road, Squibby raced like a hare up Commercial Street towards Aldgate. During the Whitechapel investigation detectives were permitted to carry truncheons and Dew and his colleague were thus armed. Immediately they gave chase to the fugitive, drawing their truncheons as they did so. The sight of a man fleeing from the neighbourhood of the murder with policemen at his heels whipped the crowds into a paroxysm of excitement. 'Jack the Ripper! Jack the Ripper! Lynch him!' they roared. Soon a frantic mob had joined in the pursuit. 'Behind us as I ran,' recalled Dew, 'I could hear the tramp of hundreds of feet.'

The detectives eventually cornered their quarry in a house in Flower and Dean Street. But although they antic.i.p.ated a ferocious resistance they found Squibby a changed man. 'Instead of finding, as we expected, an animal of a man, foaming at the mouth and ready to fight to the last breath, his face was of a ghastly hue and he trembled violently.' He was, of course, petrified of the mob. And he had reason to be for the house was now in a state of siege. The rabble were calling out for his blood. Inside the detectives and their prisoner listened to their cries: 'Lynch him! Fetch him out! It's Jack the Ripper!'

Dew promised Squibby protection and their chances improved with the arrival of large reinforcements of uniformed police. Even then, however, the little man's ordeal was not over. When he was brought out of the house the crowd seemed to go mad and, making a concerted rush, nearly broke through the police cordon. When he was placed in a four-wheeled cab the mob set about the vehicle and its escort. More than once it was nearly overturned and eventually it had to be abandoned. And when he was lodged in Commercial Street Police Station the building was invested and repeatedly a.s.saulted. From upper windows police inspectors tried to explain that their prisoner had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder and ultimately, although not until many hours later, the crowd began to quieten down and disperse.

After that desperate day Squibby's att.i.tude to the police changed. Wrote Dew: 'Whenever he met me he never failed to thank me for "saving his life" and, as far as I know, he never again gave trouble to police officers whose duty it was to arrest him.'

In one respect at least Dew's fifty-year-old memory was confused. No one would have referred to the murderer as 'Jack the Ripper' as early as 8 September because at that time the dreaded nickname had not yet been invented. Undoubtedly too, the inspector used his imagination to pad out his recollections. But he explicitly stated that this incident took place on the morning of the Chapman murder and a study of contemporary newspapers certainly suggests that there is nothing inherently implausible about it. In fact it is typical of several incidents ascribed by the press to the first three days after the murder. One report, indeed, seems to refer to the same event.

On the evening of the 8th the Star reported that earlier in the day the police had arrested a man in Spitalfields. The arrest had precipitated a rumor that the murderer had been caught. 'In an instant the news spread like wildfire,' ran the report. 'From every street, from every court, from the market stands, from the public-houses, rushed forth men and women, all trying to get at the unfortunate captive, declaring he was "one of the gang", and they meant to lynch him. Thousands gathered, and the police and a private detective [plain-clothes detective] had all their work to prevent the man being torn to pieces.' The police succeeded in getting him inside the station and closing the doors against the mob. And the inspector in charge explained to a Star reporter that the man had been wanted for some time for an a.s.sault upon the police. 'The crowd sighed at hearing the news,' concluded the Star, 'but were not persuaded that the person in question had not something to do with the murder.'5 One aspect of the East End disturbances was particularly sinister. The indignation of the community quickly developed anti-semitic overtones and on the day of the murder the crowds a.s.sembling in the streets began to threaten and abuse Jews. At that time there was no evidence of any kind to connect a Jew with the murders. How, then, might we explain the actions of the mobs?

The answer lies partly, of course, in the baseless press campaign against Leather Ap.r.o.n. Then, too, the crimes were unprecedented in English experience and in the minds of many bore a distinctly Continental stamp. 'It was repeatedly a.s.serted,' said the Observer, reporting the attacks on Jews, 'that no Englishman could have perpetrated such a horrible crime as that of Hanbury Street, and that it must have been done by a Jew.'6 Such notions were perhaps fortified by hazy folk memories of the medieval 'ritual murder' or 'blood libel' accusation against Jews, a superst.i.tion which held that the Jewish festival of Pa.s.sover required a human sacrifice and that Jews abducted and ritually slaughtered unoffending Christians. Finally, the indictment of the Jews for the murders was acceptable to a swelling anti-alien if not anti-semitic sentiment in the East End. For it is important to understand that the crimes were enacted against a backdrop of mounting social tension in Whitechapel prompted by the rapid influx of dest.i.tute Jews after 1881. By the middle of the decade the sympathy that had first greeted these incoming victims of pogroms had started to crumble in favour of a climate of fear and suspicion sustained by job compet.i.tion at a time of depression.

The outburst of Judaeophobia called forth by the death of Dark Annie immediately conjured up the spectre of serious anti-Jewish riots. 'It is so easy to inflame the popular mind when it is startled by hideous crime,' cried the Jewish Chronicle. 'There may soon be murders from panic to add to murders from l.u.s.t of blood . . . A touch would fire the whole district in the mood in which it is now,' warned the News. It is difficult now to judge how realistic such fears were. But if Whitechapel was half the powder keg the News represented it to be it is scarcely surprising that Anglo-Jewry acted with haste to stamp out the match. One of its number dashed off a letter to the Star. No Jew, he insisted, could have committed the murders because Jews have a horror of blood traceable to the Bible: '"The blood is the life" is so perfectly and persistently before the Jews that they soak their butcher-meat in water before they will prepare it for cooking, and Jews have been seen to shrink from tasting the red juice that runs from a succulent beef-steak in process of cutting it.' Sat.u.r.day, 15 September, was observed in the synagogues as the Day of Atonement. Adverting to the murders in his sermon at Bayswater, Dr Hermann Adler, the Acting Chief Rabbi, spoke to the same purpose. Although urging a need to humanize, civilize and Anglicize the impoverished Jewish refugees, he a.s.serted that no Hebrew, native or alien, could be guilty of such atrocious and inhuman crimes.7 It was partly a desire to exonerate the Jewish community from complicity in the murders, furthermore, that inspired prominent Jewish citizens to spearhead private efforts to bring the killer to justice. Samuel Montagu, the Jewish MP for the Whitechapel Division of Tower Hamlets, was the first to offer a reward for his capture and the Mile End Vigilance Committee, which quickly seconded his initiative, consisted largely of Jewish tradesmen.

Upon receiving news of the Hanbury Street tragedy, Montagu returned to the capital from Brighton. On 10 September he called on Acting Superintendent West of H Division and, offering a reward of 100 for the discovery and conviction of the criminal, authorized the police to print and distribute the posters at his expense. The police seem to have been disposed to help. At least A. C. Bruce, a.s.sistant Commissioner, forwarded Montagu's proposal to the Home Office the same day and, in soliciting instructions, pointed out that Montagu was 'anxious that no time should be lost.' However, Edward Leigh-Pemberton's reply, dated 13 September, effectively terminated any police involvement in the matter. The practice of offering government rewards, it ran, had been discontinued some years ago because they had been found to produce more harm than good and, in the case of the Whitechapel murders, there was a special risk that a reward 'might hinder rather than promote the ends of justice.' Montagu was less than impressed. As he explained in a letter to Warren, the Home Secretary's view of rewards was 'not in accord with the general feeling on the subject.' In any case he was not apprised of the Home Office opposition to rewards until after his offer had been noticed by the press and by that time he felt honour-bound to abide by it.8 The Mile End Vigilance Committee, in which Jews were also prominent, was not the first nor the last organization of its kind to be inspired by the Whitechapel murders. The St Jude's committee, with its levies from Toynbee Hall, had already been operative for a month and others were to spring up in the aftermath of the double murder of 30 September. But it was the Mile End committee which dominated the contemporary news columns and, as we shall see, when its president received a human kidney through the post, apparently from the murderer himself, it ensured for itself a kind of immortality by commanding s.p.a.ce in every book that would ever be written about Jack the Ripper.

The committee, sixteen strong, was appointed at a meeting of local tradesmen in Whitechapel on 10 September. Its president was George Akin Lusk of 13 Alderney Road, Mile End Road, a builder and contractor, a member of the Metropolitan Board of Works and a vestryman of the parish of Mile End Old Town. The other leading committee members were the vice-president, John Cohen of 345 Commercial Road; the treasurer, Joseph Aarons of the Crown Tavern, 74 Mile End Road; and the honorary secretary, Mr B. Harris of 83 White Horse Lane.

These public-spirited citizens were grossly traduced in a recent television 'mini-series', which depicted them ceaselessly roaming the Whitechapel streets like vigilantes from the American frontier west, shouting, flourishing firebrands and hunting victims to string up in wild necktie parties. In reality the Mile End Vigilance Committee was nothing of the sort. Its purpose, as Aarons pointed out at a meeting of 15 September, was to strengthen the hands of the police by action on the part of the citizens. 'He wished it to be distinctly understood,' he said, 'that the Committee was in no way antagonistic to the police authorities, who were doing their best, as he believed they always did, to bring the culprits to justice.'9 The methods employed by the committee to 'strengthen the hands of the police' were entirely pacific. At first they directed their efforts towards raising a reward fund. Later they organized patrols that, in the manner of present day neighbourhood watch schemes, reported to the police any suspicious circ.u.mstances observed.

On the morning of 11 September a notice, published by the committee in the form of handbills and posters, was being placarded in shop windows throughout Whitechapel, Mile End and Houndsditch. It began: IMPORTANT NOTICE. To the Tradesmen, Ratepayers, and Inhabitants Generally, of Whitechapel and District. Finding that in spite of Murders being committed in our midst, and that the Murderer or Murderers are still at large, we the undersigned have formed ourselves into a Committee, and intend offering a substantial REWARD to anyone, Citizen, or otherwise, who shall give such information that will bring the Murderer or Murderers to Justice. A Committee of Gentlemen has already been formed to carry out the above object, and will meet every evening at nine o'clock, at Mr J. Aarons', the 'Crown', 74 Mile End Road, corner of Jubilee Street, and will be pleased to receive the a.s.sistance of the residents of the District . . .10 At first the committee seem to have been optimistic about building up a substantial reward fund. 'The movement has been warmly taken up by the inhabitants,' noted The Times on 11 September, 'and it is thought certain that a large sum will be subscribed within the next few days.' But by the end of the week it was becoming evident that raising the necessary cash would be no easy matter. On 15 September Mr M. Rogers told the committee that on many occasions, when he had approached people from whom he had expected donations of 5 or 10 without demur, he had found them unwilling to contribute because they considered it the duty of the Home Secretary to offer a reward. By 22 September the committee were beginning to complain that 'the people generally do not respond quickly to their appeal for funds.' And at the end of the month the fund still stood at no more than 60 or 70 and the committee were obliged to offer a preliminary reward of 50 only.11 It was in these circ.u.mstances that Mr Harris, the secretary, on 16 September solicited the help of the Home Secretary. He requested Matthews to augment their reward fund or state his reasons for declining to do so but Leigh-Pemberton, replying for the Home Office the next day, merely repeated that the practice of offering rewards had been discontinued because they tended to produce more harm than good. Disappointed, the committee wrote again on 24 September, inviting the Home Secretary to attend a meeting of their committee to explain his refusal of a reward. They had to wait several days for a reply that informed them only that Matthews was 'unable' to attend.12 On 27 September the committee switched to a new tack. Unable to elicit a satisfactory response out of Matthews, Mr Lusk addressed a pet.i.tion to the Queen. He reminded Her Majesty that of the four murders that had been recently committed in the East End the last two at least had been the work of the same hand and that the 'ordinary means of detection had failed.' He felt that the killer would probably strike again and that the offer of a reward 'was absolutely necessary for securing Your Majesty's subjects from death at the hands of the above one undetected a.s.sa.s.sin.' Lusk took pains to point out that the Home Secretary's refusal to sanction a reward had already incurred hostile criticism from his vigilance committee, criticism that had been 're-echoed throughout Your Majesty's Dominions not only by Your Majesty's subjects at large but, with one or two exceptions, the entire press of Great Britain', and he therefore begged the Queen to direct that a government reward 'sufficient in amount to meet the peculiar exigencies of the case' be offered immediately. These efforts were to no avail. Lusk's answer, dated 6 October, came from the Home Office. The Home Secretary, explained Leigh-Pemberton, had laid the pet.i.tion before the Queen and had also given directions that no effort or expense be spared to catch the murderer. But he had not felt able to advise the Queen that justice would be promoted by a departure from his previous decision.13 Notwithstanding the efforts of these worthies to apprehend the culprit it became evident on 19 September, when Mrs Long gave her evidence to the inquest, that the killer might indeed have been a foreigner. Here, despite all the disclaimers, was the first positive evidence that the murderer was a Jew and the prospect of anti-Jewish riots moved that much closer. By this time, fortunately, the excitement generated by the Chapman murder had subsided. But Sir Charles Warren recognized the danger and was deeply troubled by it.

A regular stream of stories and rumours, mostly unfounded, kept excitement at fever pitch the first few days after the murder. On the day of the crime there were tales of another body having been found at the back of the London Hospital and a woman told of a message chalked on the door of 29 Hanbury Street: 'This is the fourth. I will murder sixteen more and then give myself up.' To one story the police attached some significance. It was recounted by Mrs Fiddymont, wife of the proprietor of the Prince Albert at the corner of Brushfield and Steward Streets, and by two of her customers.

At seven on the morning of the murder Mrs Fiddymont was serving behind the bar and talking to a customer, Mrs Mary Chappell of 28 Steward Street. Suddenly a rough-looking man came into the middle compartment and asked for half a pint of ale. As she drew the ale Mrs Fiddymont studied the man in the mirror at the back of the bar and there was evidently something so frightening about him that she asked Mrs Chappell to stay. If the description given by the two women to the press was accurate there was no wonder.

His shirt was torn badly on the right shoulder. There was a narrow streak of blood under his right ear, parallel with the edge of his shirt. There were three or four small spots of blood on the back of his right hand and dried blood between his fingers. Above all, there was his look 'so startling and terrifying.' The stranger wore a stiff brown hat drawn down over his eyes and when he saw Mrs Chappell watching him from the first compartment he turned his back to her and got the part.i.tion between them. Then he swallowed his ale at a gulp and left.

Joseph Taylor, a builder of 22 Steward Street, followed him as far as Half Moon Street, Bishopsgate, and described him later for the Star. He was a man of medium height, middle-aged or slightly older, with short sandy hair and a ginger moustache curling a little at the ends. He had faint hollows under his cheekbones. Taylor thought his dress 'shabby-genteel' pepper-and-salt trousers of a villainous fit and a dark coat. His manner was nervous and frightened and he seemed disorientated, crossing Brushfield Street three times between the Prince Albert and Bishopsgate. The man walked rapidly with a peculiar springy stride. It was all Taylor could do to overtake him but when he did manage to come alongside the man glanced across at him. 'I a.s.sure you,' said Taylor, 'that his look was enough to frighten any woman. His eyes were wild-looking and staring. He held his coat together at the chin with both hands, the collar being b.u.t.toned up, and everything about his appearance was exceedingly strange.'14 The Prince Albert was only about four hundred yards from 29 Hanbury Street. Obviously, then, the police were interested in this tale of a man, bewildered and bloodstained, seen there on the morning of the murder. We know that detectives interviewed Mrs Fiddymont and her witnesses on the day of the occurrence. And later, as will be seen, Abberline tried to link the man with at least two suspects William Henry Piggott and Jacob Isenschmid.

When darkness fell the indignation of the East End mobs gave way to terror. For several days after the murder the closing of the shops and the removal of the flaring lamps of the stalls precipitated a general stampede for home. After 12.30 the streets were all but deserted, abandoned to the possession of patrolling policemen. Some prost.i.tutes fled from Whitechapel. Most people stayed indoors after dark and tradesmen did a roaring trade in locks. Within a week, it is said, most of the street doors of lodging houses in and about Hanbury Street had been newly fitted with locks and bona fide lodgers supplied with keys. There were those who could not even feel safe in their own homes. On Sat.u.r.day 8th, when Mrs Mary Burridge, a dealer in floor cloth at 132 Blackfriars Road, was standing at her door reading the Star, she was so upset by the report of the murder that she retired to her kitchen and fell down in a fit. After briefly regaining consciousness two days later she died on Wednesday 12th.

No one could know for certain that only East End prost.i.tutes were at risk and apprehension spread to all cla.s.ses throughout the metropolis. A less tragic expression of it occurred at the White Hart Public House in Southampton Street, Camberwell, on the afternoon of 10 September. A 39-year-old labourer named John Brennan came into the pub. He was a man of 'a very rough and strange appearance' and his coat was torn up the back. Soon he began to talk about the murder in a loud voice. No, the police had not yet caught Leather Ap.r.o.n, he said. More, Leather Ap.r.o.n was a 'pal' of his and he had the very knife with which the deed had been done. In the East End he would probably have been mobbed. In Camberwell his boasts produced the opposite effect. Within no time at all the other customers were in the street, the landlady had locked herself in the bar-parlour and Brennan was in sole possession of the bar. But the arrival of a constable terminated the labourer's shenanigans and the next day he found himself before Camberwell Police Court. There Brennan, 'who treated the whole matter as a good joke', was ordered to enter into bail to keep the peace.15 The effects of the murder scare were still evident in the East End on Monday night. A Central News Agency reporter, who visited Whitechapel that evening, depicted a general air of desolation.16 Even in important throughfares like Commercial Street and Brick Lane the only prominent pedestrians were constables, patrolling silently past the little knots of homeless vagabonds that huddled in doorways. 'Other constables, whose "plain clothes" could not prevent their stalwart, well-drilled figures from betraying their calling,' wrote the journalist, 'paraded in couples, now and again emerging from some dimly lighted lane, and pa.s.sing their uniformed comrades with an air of conscious ignorance.' Smaller thoroughfares like Flower and Dean Street appeared dark and unutterably forlorn, their gloom punctuated only at infrequent intervals by flickering gas jets, and almost everywhere there were caverns of Stygian blackness in narrow entries and areas of unlit waste ground.

But there was a sign that the worst of the panic was over. The Whitechapel Road had recovered its nerve. There groups of men and women chatted, joked and laughed boisterously upon the flagstones until long after one. And there prost.i.tutes, driven by necessity to ply their trade at whatever risk, had reappeared. Young, noisy women, decked out in their finery, strutted or lounged at the brightly-lit crossroads. After one these began to disappear, leaving only the most desperate of their kind the old, half-fed, impoverished drabs, to crawl about from lamp to lamp until the first signs of dawn.

Thereafter East End life began to return to its regular rhythms. Those who had feared to stir abroad after dark or who had not dared to stray from the lighted main throughfares began to move freely again. Those who had fled Whitechapel started to return. Even so, more than a week after the murder, a constable could tell Thames Police Court that the Bow Road was still being troubled by disorderly women whom the murders had driven out of Whitechapel. And, not merely in the East End but all over the metropolis, the calm was fragile. The discovery of a woman, drunk and suffering from a wound in the throat, in a by-way of Shepherd's Bush Road one night brought crowds flocking to the scene in the morning. When Ann Kelly, the 'victim', was treated at the West London Hospital it transpired that her wound was superficial and apparently self-inflicted. An a.s.sault upon another woman, Adelaide Rutter or Rogers, a few days later in Down Street, Piccadilly, triggered off another scare in the West End. 'The wildest rumors were flying about the West End this morning of a murder a.n.a.logous to the Whitechapel tragedies being attempted,' said the Star. And as late as 19 September hostile mobs might still menace any suspicious-looking character. That night a policeman had to rescue a drunken cabinet-maker named Thomas Mills from a crowd in Wellington Row, Sh.o.r.editch. He found them pulling him about and shouting: 'We'll lynch him, he's Leather Ap.r.o.n!'17 There were people, of course, who sought to derive advantage from the tragedies. On the weekend of the murder the occupants of neighbouring houses in Hanbury Street did a brisk trade in charging sightseers a penny each to view the backyard of No. 29 from their own rear windows. The proprietor of a small waxworks in Whitechapel Road was just as quick off the mark. By daubing a few streaks of red paint on three old wax figures and by placarding three lurid pictures outside his premises he induced hundreds of pa.s.sers-by to part with their pennies in order to view the 'George Yard, Buck's Row and 'Anbury Street wictims.' On the afternoon of Monday, 10 September, another opportunist William McEvoy, a ship's fireman was using the scare to cadge drinks at public houses in the area of Cable Street, St George's. His technique was to intimidate landlords by telling them that he had been locked up all day on suspicion of having committed the murder and then to demand liquor. Refusals were met with obscene language. Arrested, he struck a police constable at the station and the next day was sentenced at Thames Police Court to seven days' hard labour.18 In the meantime public journals and their correspondents maintained a spirited discussion about the motive for the murders and the nature of their perpetrator.

Dark Annie's pocket had been rifled and her rings wrenched from her finger. But robbery could not stand as a credible motive for crimes distinguished by 'a rage of cruelty, a fantastic brutality.' If Annie had been attacked by a common thief the abdominal mutilations would have been quite pointless since death had already resulted from the loss of blood at the throat.

So the press floundered about in search of a more adequate explanation. Was the killer a religious maniac bent upon the extirpation of sin by the slaying of wh.o.r.es? Or were his crimes actuated by revenge for some real or fancied injury suffered at their hands? Was he, perhaps, a member of some heathen sect that practised barbaric rites? Did he crave notoriety and seek to horrify the nation by acts of unexampled ferocity? Or was he simply a drunkard? The Reverend Lord Sidney G.o.dolphin Osborne, a kindly if eccentric clergyman with a pa.s.sion for writing letters to The Times, thought that he could detect the hand of a jealous woman in the affair.19 But it was still the lunatic theory that led the field. Its most prestigious advocate was Dr L. Forbes Winslow, specialist in mental disorders, author of the Handbook for Attendants on the Insane, founder of the British Hospital for Mental Disorders and consultant in many of the princ.i.p.al criminal cases of the period. His contention was that homicidal mania was incurable but might be difficult to detect in that it sometimes lay dormant. Hence, when interviewed at Scotland Yard, he advised the detective department to call for returns from the various asylums so that the whereabouts of all such patients discharged by them as 'cured' might be ascertained.20 No serious challenge to the lunatic theory emerged until the end of the month. Then, on the last day of the Chapman inquest, Coroner Baxter introduced the possibility of an economic motive for the crimes.

The Nichols inquest was resumed on 17 September and adjourned to the 22nd, when it was concluded. The jury returned the only verdict possible 'wilful murder against some person or persons unknown'. The Chapman inquest occupied five days in all 10, 12, 13, 19 and 26 September. Again the coroner was Mr Wynne Baxter and the venue the Working Lads' Inst.i.tute, Whitechapel Road. Again, despite much valuable testimony, a verdict of 'wilful murder against some person or persons unknown' was recorded.

The proceedings in the Chapman case were enlivened by the intermittent sparring of Mr Baxter and Dr Phillips.

Phillips appeared before the court on the third day. He testified that death had occured from syncope, or heart failure, caused by the loss of blood from the throat. And that being the case he asked the coroner if he might be excused from giving details of the abdominal injuries. These, he pointed out, had been inflicted after death and were not necessary in order to understand the cause of death. Baxter demurred. 'The object of the inquiry,' he reminded the doctor, 'is not only to ascertain the cause of death, but the means by which it occurred. Any mutilation which took place afterwards may suggest the character of the man who did it.' However, in deference to Phillips' obvious reluctance to proceed, he postponed that part of his evidence until an adjourned sitting.

On 19 September Dr Phillips was recalled to conclude his testimony. Again he lodged a strong protest at having to reveal the details of the abdominal mutilations, alleging that to give publicity to this information would 'thwart the ends of justice'. But Baxter was not to be thwarted. Never before, he observed, had he heard of a request to keep back evidence at an inquest. And he swept aside Phillips' main argument: 'I delayed the evidence in question as long as possible because I understood you to say that there were reasons which you knew, but which I don't know, why that course was desirable in the interests of justice. It is now however nearly a fortnight since the death, and therefore justice has had some little time to avenge itself.' The court was cleared of women and newsboys and the unhappy doctor then proceeded to give evidence that the press considered unfit for publication.21 This dispute between Baxter and Phillips has been many times described but with little understanding of the issues involved.

Phillips was not party to an Establishment hush-up of any royal scandal. He was simply conforming to the code of practice that Howard Vincent had bequeathed to the CID, a code that required the utmost discretion on the part of police officials in all cases in which the ident.i.ty of the culprit had not yet been established. It was a controversial policy then and has been generally abandoned by police authorities since. Yet, as we have seen, it rested upon important considerations.

Baxter had a weighty case too. In the first place he was obliged by law to take the whole of Dr Phillips' evidence for the Statute de Coronatore required coroners to inquire into the nature, character and size of every wound on a dead body and to enter the information on their rolls. The purpose of this requirement was to preserve the evidence of the crime. In the event of a suspect not being brought to trial until long after the date of the offence the only authoritative record of the injuries and marks found upon the body of the victim might be that in the inquest depositions. Similarly, as Baxter intimated at the Chapman inquest, it was important that the testimonies of all witnesses be fully entered in the records of the court so that their evidence might in future be turned up even if they themselves could no longer be traced. There was, finally, the question of publicity. Baxter believed and most police officers today would probably endorse the view that the publication of police knowledge furthered the process of detection by eliciting fresh information from the press and general public. And it was in justification of this belief that, on the last day of the Chapman inquiry, he presented the court with what appeared to be dramatic new evidence bearing upon the case.

Taking his lead from Dr Phillips, who had suggested at the previous sitting that the killer had slain Annie in order to secure a specimen of the uterus, Baxter told the court that the murderer need not necessarily have been a lunatic. For the doctor's testimony had elicited new evidence evidence that pointed to the existence of a market for the organ in question: Within a few hours of the issue of the morning papers containing a report of the medical evidence given at the last sitting of the Court, I received a communication from an officer of one of our great medical schools, that they had information which might or might not have a distinct bearing on our inquiry. I attended at the first opportunity, and was told by the sub-curator of the Pathological Museum that some months ago an American had called on him, and asked him to procure a number of specimens of the organ that was missing in the deceased. He stated his willingness to give 20 for each, and explained that his object was to issue an actual specimen with each copy of a publication on which he was then engaged. Although he was told that his wish was impossible to be complied with, he still urged his request. He desired them preserved, not in spirits of wine, the usual medium, but in glycerine, in order to preserve them in a flaccid condition, and he wished them sent to America direct. It is known that the request was repeated to another inst.i.tution of a similar character. Now, is it not possible that the knowledge of this demand may have incited some abandoned wretch to possess himself of a specimen . . . I need hardly say that I at once communicated my information to the Detective Department at Scotland yard.22 The coroner's solution to the mystery, quickly dubbed the 'Burke and Hare theory' by the newspapers, received a mixed reception. The press, itself bitterly opposed to the CID's secrecy policy, generally welcomed his contribution as a vindication of their own stand. 'The whole civilized world is concerned in bringing the murderer to justice,' declared The Times, 'and it cannot afford to be beaten in the attempt. The police will be expected to follow up with the keenest vigilance the valuable clue elicited through the coroner's inquest, and, since the lines of their investigation are plainly chalked out by information which they themselves failed to collect, it will be a signal disgrace if they do not succeed.'23 The medical fraternity, on the other hand, predictably moved to refute it. James Risdon Bennett thus considered any insinuation of a Burke and Hare a.n.a.logy a 'gross and unjustifiable calumny on the medical profession.' And he claimed that, either in Britain or America, there were ample facilities for procuring uteri in any number for legitimate research without recourse to crime.24 Baxter's integrity is not in doubt but it would be instructive to learn just how much truth there was in the information he was given. The press quickly received a.s.surances from most of the main medical schools that no such application as that mentioned by Baxter had been made to them. There were, however, two important exceptions the schools attached to the University College and Middles.e.x Hospitals. Spokesmen for these inst.i.tutions refused to elucidate the matter. But, if a report in the Telegraph is to be credited, although intimating that some of the details of the story as it had been put out were inaccurate they 'indignantly repudiate the suggestion that it was a hoax or that the matter has no importance' and 'talk somewhat mysteriously about "the interests of justice" being imperilled by disclosure.'25 This certainly suggests that there was some basis for the coroner's theory. Nevertheless, a week later the British Medical Journal, perhaps with the reputation of the profession in mind, did its best to bury the whole story: It is true that enquiries were made at one or two medical schools early last year by a foreign physician, who was spending some time in London, as to the possibility of securing certain parts of the body for the purpose of scientific investigation. No large sum, however, was offered. The person in question was a physician of the highest reputability and exceedingly well accredited to this country by the best authorities in his own, and he left London fully eighteen months ago. There was never any real foundation for the hypothesis, and the information communicated, which was not at all of the nature the public has been led to believe, was due to the erroneous interpretation by a minor official of a question which he had overheard and to which a negative reply was given. This theory may be dismissed, and is, we believe, no longer entertained by its author.26 We do not know whether Baxter adhered to his theory or not but it may be significant that he did not allude to it when conducting his inquest into the death of Elizabeth Stride, the next victim. Abberline remembered it and would revive it, in very curious circ.u.mstances, fifteen years later.

The Hanbury Street tragedy unleashed bitter recriminations against the Metropolitan Police from both press and public. Secondary writers have frequently taken press criticisms at face value. It should be understood, however, that the opposition and radical press quickly seized upon the murders as a weapon with which to embarra.s.s the government by discrediting the Home Secretary and retaliate against the police for their anti-Irish Nationalist activities and stern policing of demonstrations by socialists and the unemployed. Much of their comment, then, was politically inspired and it is consequently hardly surprising that many of the specific accusations levelled against the police are demonstrably untrue. More ominous, perhaps, was the alienation of the Conservative press. The East London Advertiser denounced Warren as a 'martinet of apparently a somewhat inefficient type' who by militarizing the police, had made them neither good detectives nor good local guardians of life and property. The Daily Telegraph acknowledged that under Sir Charles, an 'admirable commandant of gendarmerie', the uniformed branch was excellently organized but lamented that the want of an effective head of CID had reduced the detective service to an 'utterly hopeless and worthless condition.' Even The Times opened its columns to letters critical of the police.27 Such comment, however inaccurate, reflected grave public disquiet over this fourth unsolved murder in months.

Unquestionably the CID's secrecy policy exacerbated the already strained relationship between press and police. Journalists, denied admittance to 29 Hanbury Street by stalwart constables and rebuffed at the police stations, were understandably frustrated. 'If the London police were as capable in other respects as they are in holding their peace,' one Daily News reporter tartly observed, 'no criminal in the realm would pa.s.s undetected.' For their part the police were particularly galled by the practice some newshounds adopted of following detectives about in the hope of discovering their informants. Calling at the Home Office on 18 and 19 September, Warren angrily denounced such antics. Neither Matthews, the Home Secretary, nor Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, his private secretary, were there but an under-official promptly transmitted the Commissioner's complaint to Matthews: Sir Charles came to see me both yesterday & today about the Whitechapel Murders . . . He remarked to me very strongly upon the great hindrance, which is caused to the efforts of the Police, by the activity of Agents of Press a.s.sociations & Newspapers. These 'touts' follow the detectives wherever they go in search of clues, and then having interviewed persons, with whom the police have had conversation and from whom inquiries have [been] made, compile the paragraphs which fill the papers. This practice impedes the usefulness of detective investigation and moreover keeps alive the excitement in the district & elsewhere.28 Few of the columns of newsprint sp.a.w.ned by the Chapman murder displayed any recognition of the intractability of the detective problem confronting the police in Whitechapel. By now Abberline and his colleagues seem to have decided that they were dealing with a bold and cunning loner. He generally struck at night, in out-of-the-way places and so efficiently that his victims were unable to scream or cry out. In no case did he leave at the scene of his crime a weapon or any other object that might be traced back to him. And although he was not a random killer in that he exclusively targeted the prost.i.tutes of Whitechapel and Spitalfields there was nothing to suggest a previous relationship with any of them. There was thus no accomplice that might betray him, no witness or clue that could identify him, no clear motive that might suggest a profitable avenue of investigation. Even today, with all the benefits of modern forensic science, the police find parallel cases very difficult to solve, the killers sometimes either remaining uncaught or being delivered into their hands by chance.

We know that the Hanbury Street tragedy immediately set the police casting about for some means of breaking the deadlock. One method they considered was the use of tracker dogs.

Historically the dogs chiefly employed in police work were bloodhounds. Their remarkable sense of smell enables them not only to follow trails up to two days old for many miles over difficult country but also to distinguish the scent of one individual from those of others, thus selecting the real miscreant from among innocent persons. Although dogs of this type have existed in the mountainous regions of Europe and Asia from time immemorial, the modern breed is thought to have been developed by the crossing of several strains the St Hubert, talbot and old southern hounds. Before the Act of Union (1707) bloodhounds were used in border forays between England and Scotland. Scottish raiders, having attacked and pillaged English border towns, might find themselves pursued and cornered by retaliatory parties equipped with these dogs which were then known as 'slough' dogs. Later they found em