Portrait of a Killer

by Patricia Cornwell

  A “woman” wrote a letter to the Leman Street Police Station “stating it has been ascertained that a tall, strong woman has for some time” been working in various slaughterhouses “attired as a man.” This story gave rise “to the theory that the East End victims may have been murdered by a woman. It is remarked that in each case there is no evidence of a man being seen in the vicinity at the time of the murder.”

  The slaughterhouse transvestite was never found, and police searching East End slaughterhouses got no verification at all that a potential “Jill the Ripper” had been in their midst. The letter the “woman” wrote the Leman Street Police Station does not appear to have survived. From July 18th (three days after Sickert “resigned” from the New York Herald) through October 30th of 1889, thirty-seven Ripper letters were sent to the Metropolitan Police (based on what is in the Public Record Office and Corporation of London files). Seventeen of these letters were written in September. With the exception of three, all were supposedly written from London, which would have placed the Ripper—or Sickert—in London during the time of the “lodger” and slaughterhouse woman news reports.

  From March through mid-July of 1889, Sickert had written twenty-one articles for the London edition of the New York Herald. He was very likely in London on September 8th, because the Sun had just interviewed him days earlier at 54 Broadhurst Gardens and published the article on the 8th. The focus of the article was an important Impressionistic art exhibition scheduled for December 2nd at the Goupil Gallery on Bond Street, and Sickert’s work was to be included in it. The reporter also quizzed Sickert about why he was no longer the art critic for the New York Herald.

  Sickert’s printed reply was evasive and not the whole truth. He claimed he didn’t have time to write for the Herald anymore. He said that art criticism should be left to people who are not painters. Yet in March 1890, Sickert was at it again, writing articles for the Scots Observer, Art Weekly, and The Whirlwind—at least sixteen articles for that year. Maybe it is just another one of those Sickert coincidences that the very day his “resignation” from the New York Herald was publicized in the Sun, the mysterious soldier appeared at the New York Herald and announced a murder and mutilation he could not have known about unless he was an accomplice or the killer.

  The torso found in September 1889 was never identified. She may not have been a “filthy whore” of doss-houses and the street. She could have been a prostitute of a higher pecking order, such as a music-hall performer. One of these questionable types of women could have disappeared easily enough. They moved about from town to town or country to country. Sickert liked to draw them. He painted music-hall star Queenie Lawrence’s portrait and must have been a bit upset when she refused to accept it as a gift and said she wouldn’t even use it as a screen to keep the wind out. Queenie Lawrence seemed to fade from public view in 1889. I have found no record of what became of her. Sickert’s models and art students sometimes just slipped away to who knows where.

  “. . . [O]ne of my art students, a darling who drew worse than anyone I have ever seen & has vanished into the country. Her name?” Sickert wrote to his wealthy American friends Ethel Sands and Nan Hudson, probably around 1914.

  During Sickert’s most intense killing times, he could have lived on the rails. He could have mailed letters from all over. Lust murderers tend to move about when they are in the throes of their sexually violent addiction. They go from town to town, from city to city, often killing near rest stops and train stations, some of their predatory places predetermined, some of them random. Bodies and body parts can be scattered for hundreds of miles. Remains are discovered in trash cans and the woods. Some victims are concealed so well that they will always be “missing.”

  The murderous highs, the risks, the rushes are intoxicating. But these people do not want to be caught, and neither did Sickert. Getting out of London now and then was smart, especially after the double murder of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddows. But if his motive in mailing so many letters from so many distant places was to drive the police to distraction and create an uproar, Sickert misfired. To paraphrase D. S. MacColl’s words, he “over-calculated himself.” Sickert was so clever that neither the press nor the police believed the letters could be from the murderer. The letters were ignored.

  Some of them mailed from distant places such as Lille or Lisbon could very well be hoaxes. Or perhaps Sickert got someone else to mail the letters for him. He seemed to have a habit of that. In August 1914, while he was in Dieppe, he wrote Ethel Sands, “I am not always able to nip down to the boat & catch some kind stranger to whom to confide my letters.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  IN A HORSE-BIN

  Early on the frosty morning of October 11, 1888, Sir Charles Warren played the role of bad guy with Burgho and Barnaby the bloodhounds.

  The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police darted behind trees and shrubbery in Hyde Park, making his getaway, while the magnificent pair of tracking dogs lost his scent and successfully hunted down several strangers who happened to be out strolling. Four other trials on the misty, cold morning ended just as badly. This did not bode well for Warren.

  If the hounds couldn’t track a man in a relatively deserted park early in the morning, then turning them loose in the crowded, filthy streets and alleyways of the East End probably wasn’t such a good idea. Warren’s decision to volunteer for the tracking demonstration wasn’t such a good idea, either. So much for showing Londoners what a great innovation bloodhounds were and how sure Warren was they would sniff out that East End fiend at last. Warren’s dashing around in the park with his lost hounds was an embarrassment he would never live down.

  “Dear Boss I hear you have bloodhounds for me now,” the Ripper wrote October 12th and drew a knife on the envelope.

  Warren’s bad decision may have been precipitated—or at least could not have been helped—by yet another peculiar letter published in The Times on October 9th, two days before his romp in the park:Sir—Just now, perhaps, my own personal experiences of what bloodhounds can do in the way of tracking criminals may be of interest. Here, then, is an incident to which I was an eye witness.

  In 1861 or 1862 (my memory does not enable me to give a more exact date), I was in Dieppe when a little boy was found doubled up in a horse-bin with his throat cut from ear to ear. A couple of bloodhounds were at once put on to the scent. Away they dashed after, for a moment or two, sniffing the ground, hundreds of people, including the keeper and myself, following in their wake.

  Nor did the highly-trained animals slacken their pace in the least till they had arrived at the other end of town, when they made a dead stop at the door of a low lodging house, and throwing up their noble heads, gave a deep bay. On the place being entered, the culprit—an old woman—was discovered hiding under a bed.

  Let me add that the instinct of a bloodhound when properly trained, for tracking by scent is so marvelous that no one can say positively what difficulties in following a trail it cannot surmount.

  Faithfully yours,

  Williams [sic] Buchanan

  11, Burton St., W.C., October 8.

  As is true with the Elderly Gentleman’s letter to the editor, the tone does not fit the subject. Mr. Buchanan has the light, cheerful voice of a raconteur as he relays the horrific account of a boy having his throat cut “from ear to ear,” his body stuffed into a “horse-bin.”

  A search through newspaper records in Dieppe turned up no mention of a child having his throat cut or being murdered by similar means in the early 1860s. This isn’t necessarily conclusive, because French records from a century ago were poorly kept or lost, or destroyed during two world wars. But if there had been such a murder, the suggestion that Dieppe had at that time trained bloodhounds available “at once” to put on the scent is extremely hard to accept. The huge metropolis of London didn’t have trained bloodhounds available in the 1860s, nor even twenty-eight years later, when Charles Warren had to import the dogs into the city
and board them with a veterinary surgeon.

  In the eighth century, bloodhounds were known as Flemish hounds and were prized for their ability to track bear and other animals and run them out of safe harbor on hunts. It wasn’t until the sixteenth century that it became common to use these deep-throated, long-eared hounds to track human beings. The depiction of them as vicious canines used to hunt down slaves in America’s southern states is a terrible falsehood. It is not the nature of bloodhounds to be aggressive or to have physical contact with their quarry. They don’t have a mean fold in their sad, floppy faces. Slave-hunting hounds were usually foxhounds or a mixture of foxhound and Cuban mastiff trained to drag a person to the ground or attack.

  Training bloodhounds to track criminals is so specialized and painstaking that few are available to assist police detectives. Not many of the hounds would have been around in 1861 or 1862, when Buchanan claims, in what sounds like a Grimm’s fairy tale, that bloodhounds tracked the little boy’s murderer straight to the house where an old woman was hiding under a bed.

  “Williams”—as The Times printed it—Buchanan was not listed in the 1888 post office directory, but the 1889 register of electors for St. Pancras South Parliamentary Borough, District 3 Burton, lists a William Buchanan as a voting resident of a dwelling house at 11 Burton Street. In those days, Burton Street wasn’t considered a dreadful part of the city, but it wasn’t a good one, either. The house let for £38 a year with rooms rented to a number of people of various occupations, including an apprentice, a printer’s warehouseman, a colorman grinder, a cocoa packer, a French polisher, a chair maker, and a laundress.

  William Buchanan wasn’t an uncommon name, and no other records could be located to identify him or his occupation. But his letter to the editor shows a literate, creative mind, and he mentions Dieppe, the seaside resort and artists’ haven where Sickert would have houses and secret rooms for almost half of his life. Sickert wasn’t likely to rent these secret rooms in Dieppe, London, or elsewhere under his own name. In the late 1880s, identification wasn’t required. Cash would do. One might wonder how often Sickert used names other than his own, including those that might belong to real people.

  Perhaps a person named William Buchanan did write the letter to the editor. Perhaps there was a murdered seven-year-old boy whose body was dumped in a horse-bin in Dieppe. I can’t say one way or another. But it is a disturbing coincidence that within ten weeks of Buchanan’s letter, two boys would be murdered, the mutilated remains of one of them left in a stable.

  “I am going to commit 3 more 2 girls and a boy about 7 years old this time I like ripping very much especially women because they don’t make a lot of noise,” the Ripper wrote in a letter he dated November 14, 1888.

  On November 26th, eight-year-old Percy Knight Searle, a “quiet, sharp and inoffensive lad,” was murdered in Havant, near Portsmouth, on England’s south coast. He was out that evening “between 6 and 7” with another boy named Robert Husband, who later said Percy left him and headed down a road alone. Moments later Robert heard him screaming and saw a “tall man” running away. Robert found Percy on the ground against palings and barely alive, his throat cut in four places. He died before Robert’s eyes.

  A pocketknife was found nearby, its long blade open and stained with blood. The residents were certain the murder was the work of Jack the Ripper. The Times mentions a Dr. Bond at Percy’s inquest but does not give a first name. If the doctor was Thomas Bond of Westminster, then Scotland Yard sent him to see if the case might be the work of the Ripper.

  Dr. Bond testified at the inquest that the injuries to Percy Searle’s neck were consistent with “cuts from a bayonet,” and that the boy was killed while standing. A porter at the Havant railway station claimed that a man jumped on the 6:55 train to Brighton without buying a ticket. The porter didn’t realize a murder had just occurred and did not pursue the man. Suspicions focused on the boy Robert Husband when it turned out that the “bloody” pocketknife belonged to his brother. Another medical opinion was offered that the four cuts on Percy’s neck were clumsy and could have been made by a “boy,” and Robert was charged with the crime despite his protests of innocence. Portsmouth is on England’s south coast, directly across the English Channel from Le Havre, France, and about a three-and-a-half-hour train ride from London.

  Nearly a month later, on Thursday, December 20th, another murder occurred, this one in London. Rose Mylett lived in Whitechapel, was about thirty years old, and was described as “pretty” and “well nourished.”

  She was an Unfortunate and had been out late Wednesday night, apparently plying her trade, and the next morning at 4:15 a constable discovered her body in Clarke’s Yard, Poplar Street, in the East End. He believed she had been dead only a few minutes. Her clothing was in place, but her hair was in disarray and hanging down, and someone—apparently her killer—had loosely folded a handkerchief around her neck. A postmortem examination revealed that she had been garrotted with moderately thick packing string.

  There was “nothing in the shape of a clue,” The Times reported on December 27th, and medical and police officials believe the “deed [was] the work of a skillful hand.” A point of medical confusion for the police surgeon was that Rose’s mouth was shut when she was found and her tongue was not protruding. Apparently it was not understood that in most cases of garrotting, the ligature—in this case a cord—is pulled tightly around the neck and compresses the carotid arteries or jugular veins, cutting off the blood supply to the brain. Unconsciousness occurs in seconds, followed by death. Unless the larynx, or airway, is compressed, as in murder by manual strangulation, the tongue will not necessarily protrude.

  Garrotting is a quick and easy way to control a victim because the person loses consciousness rapidly. Strangulation with the hands, in contrast, causes death by asphyxia, and the victim will most likely put up intense resistance for minutes as he or she panics and fights to breathe. Garrotting bears a similarity to cutting a victim’s throat. In both cases, the victim can’t utter a sound and becomes quickly incapacitated.

  One week after Rose Mylett was murdered, a boy disappeared in Bradford, Yorkshire, a theater city on the Irving company’s tour that was four and a half to six hours northwest of London, depending on the number of stops the train made. Thursday morning, December 27, at 6:40, Mrs. Gill saw her seven-year-old son John hop on the neighborhood milk wagon for a quick ride. Later, at 8:30, John was playing with other boys, and by some accounts was talking to a man after that. John never came home. The next day, his frantic family posted a notice:Lost on Thursday morning a boy, John Gill, aged eight. Was last seen sliding near Walmer-Village at 8:30 A.M. Had on navy blue top coat (with brass buttons on), midshipman’s cap, plaid knickerbocker suit, laced boots, red and white stocking; complexion fair. Home 41, Thorncliffe Road.

  The notice listed John as eight because his birthday was a little over a month away. That Friday night at 9:00 P.M., a butcher’s assistant named Joseph Buckle was in the vicinity of stables and a coach house very close to the Gills’ home. He noticed nothing out of the ordinary. The next morning, Saturday, he was up early to yoke up his employer’s horse for a day of work. As was his usual routine, Joseph cleaned out the stable. While he was pitching manure into a pit in the yard, he “saw a heap of something propped up in the corner between the wall and the coach house door.” He fetched a light and saw that the heap was a dead body and that an ear had been cut off. He ran to the bakehouse for help.

  John Gill’s coat was tied around him with his braces. Several men unwrapped him and found what was left of the boy’s body leaning to the right, his severed legs propped on either side of his body and secured with cord. Both ears had been sliced off. A piece of shirting was tied around his neck, and another piece tied around the stumps left of his legs. He had been stabbed multiple times in his chest, his abdomen slashed open, the organs removed and placed on the ground. His heart had been “torn” out of his chest and wedged under his chin.r />
  “I shall do another murder on some young youth such as printing lads who work in the City I did write you once before but I don’t think you had it I shall do them worse than the women I shall take their hearts,” the Ripper had written on November 26th, “and rip them up the same way... I will attack on them when they are going home . . . any Youth I see I will kill but you will never kitch me put that in your pipe and smoke it . . . ”

  John Gill’s boots had been removed and stuffed inside his abdominal cavity, according to one news report. There were other mutilations “too sickening to be described.” One might infer these were to the genitals. One of the wrappings found with the body, The Times reported, “bears the name of W. Mason, Derby Road, Liverpool.” What should have been an incredible lead apparently went nowhere. Liverpool was less than four hours away from London by train, and five weeks earlier the Ripper had written a letter claiming to be in Liverpool, and again on December 19th, or a little more than a week before John Gill’s murder, the Ripper sent a letter to The Times—allegedly from Liverpool.

  “I have come to Liverpool & you will soon hear of me.”

  Police immediately went after William Barrett, the dairyman who had given John a ride in the milk wagon two days earlier, but there was no evidence against him beyond Barrett’s keeping his horse and cart at the stables and coach house where John’s body was found. Barrett had given John a ride many times in the past and was highly thought of by his neighbors. Police found no bloodstains on John Gill’s body or the coat wrapped around it. There was no blood inside the coach house or the stable. The murder had occurred elsewhere. A constable patrolling the area claimed that at 4:30 Saturday morning he had tried the coach house doors to make sure they were secure and had stood on the “very spot” where John Gill’s remains were displayed by the killer not three hours later.