8
Walter Sickert
Ian Porter
Walter Sickert’s candidacy, as a Ripper suspect, arises from works by Jean Overton Fuller and Patricia Cornwell. Given that Cornwell’s book, Portrait of a Killer, makes Sickert a high profile suspect, I will concentrate on this thesis. It has been widely dismissed due to its highly subjective, speculative nature, with poor research techniques used and clear mistakes made; roundly criticised not just within Ripperologist circles but by historians and art experts.1 But the arguments against Cornwell are well documented and it would seem futile to go back over old ground. The Sickert argument centres round abstractions from pathology, art, psychology and graphology. The murders, and the time and place in which they occurred, seem secondary. I will take Sickert out of the realms of art and science, and attempt to place him within the reality of the mean streets of Whitechapel, in 1888. I will consider Cornwell’s contention that Sickert used a network of secret studios, mastery of disguise and great knowledge of the local streets to avoid detection.
There appears to be a distinct geographical pattern to the murders. Buck’s Row, Hanbury Street, Henriques Street and Miller’s Court are equidistant from central Spitalfields. Profiling tells us that such a pattern killer often murders his first victim close to home, because he lacks confidence to kill further afield. So, whether or not one believes the George Yard murder was a Ripper killing, it does not, overly, alter the pattern. The Mitre Square murder appears to have been unplanned, the killer happening upon his victim by chance, as he made his way home from Dutfield’s Yard. For those who believe Dutfield’s Yard was not a Ripper killing, I still maintain Mitre Square was unplanned; soliciting the city being rigorously policed. Prostitutes, looking to attract city clientele, tended to advertise their wares outside St Botolph’s Church, across the street from the city, in the jurisdiction of the Met Police. The killer would not have wasted his time looking for a victim within the City, and could not have believed his luck when he happened upon Catharine Eddowes.
The pattern indicates that the killer lived, or had a bolt-hole, in Spitalfields. So where does Walter Sickert fit into this pattern? Cornwell uses evidence from Sickert’s friend, Marjorie Lilly, to state that Sickert had multiple studios in ‘unknown’ locations. This is confirmed by other friends, William Rothenstein and Ambrose McEvoy. Cornwell argues that Sickert’s secret studios would have been well located as bases, from which to commit the murders, but there is no evidence to suggest Sickert had studios in the East End in 1888.
If Sickert enjoyed a network of secret East-End hideaways, he would have had numerous landlords. Such men built mini empires in single streets. Jack McCarthy, for example, Mary Kelly’s and at one time Liz Stride’s landlord, owned several properties in Dorset Street. Areas close to the murders tended to be divided along national or ethnic lines; some were almost exclusively English, while others were either Irish or Jewish. Landlords preferred not to rent to the ‘wrong sort’. If Sickert had a network of studios close to all the murder sites, he would have had to rent from various landlords, who rented to differing categories of people. He may have looked out of place, needing to persuade them against their normal judgement to rent him a room. But perhaps Sickert used disguise to present himself as a suitable tenant, blending in to each environment.
Let us look at these surroundings and the art of disguise to blend in. The Charles Booth survey, 1889, reported there were 456,000 people living in Tower Hamlets. This is larger than the area in which the murders occurred, but Spitalfields and its environs were the most overcrowded part of Tower Hamlets2, making up a good proportion of that near-half-million population. But this is the official figure. In reality, when a Booth survey worker knocked on the door of a tenement, or common lodging house, it’s unlikely this representative of officialdom would have been given accurate information by a landlord’s bully, who had nothing to gain from being honest. He would have distrusted what the information might be used for, and have a natural aversion to ‘busy-bodies’ poking their nose into his business. There must have been inestimable numbers living within a square mile of the murders. And this was a twenty-four-hour society; chandler’s shops, forerunners of corner shops, were open twenty-two hours a day (except Sundays), closing between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. The homeless who couldn’t afford a place in a common lodging house (4d for a bed, 3d to share a bed and a penny to ‘sleep on the string’ – leaning against a thick rope) were not allowed to sleep in shop doorways; the police moved them on. They had to walk the streets all night, sleeping in places like the graveyard of Christ Church, Spitalfields (nicknamed ‘Itchy Park’) during the day. And people worked long hours; some went out to work early, others came home late. The bodies of victims Tabram, Nichols and Chapman were discovered by people in the early hours on their way to work; while the mutilation of Stride was interrupted by a man finishing his day’s work. Amongst the throng, there were an estimated 1,200 prostitutes in the Whitechapel area at the start of the murders. There were sixty-two brothels, but the majority of such women were streetwalkers, looking to service the rough trade with a ‘fourpenny kneetrembler’ or a ‘tuppenny upright’. The streets were full of unwashed humanity at all hours. Jack the Ripper was not the unseen man portrayed in books and films. He must have been seen by hundreds; seen but not noticed, unremembered, a man amongst many, who just merged in.
Could Sickert have been such a man? The ‘shabby genteel’ appearance of the killer is oft quoted. This could point to a gent like Sickert, attempting to dress down to blend in. But ‘shabby genteel’ was simply an expression – the equivalent nowadays being that the man’s clothes ‘had seen better days’. More importantly Sickert looked nothing like the man, or men, seen by eye witnesses with Annie Chapman, ‘Long Liz’ Stride3 and Catharine Eddowes. But Cornwell counters that his normal appearance is irrelevant, because Sickert was a master of disguise, even suggesting he could have disguised his height. This all springs from the fact that Sickert was known to change his appearance by use of beards and moustaches; he also used different hairstyles and even shaved his head.4 The one occasion in which this behaviour was caught, for all to see, was when Sickert wore an obviously false moustache in a portrait by Wilson Steer. The moustache wouldn’t fool anyone. However, it is quite a leap to suggest that a flamboyant theatricality with his appearance makes Sickert a master of disguise, good enough to fool the world’s greatest manhunt. This would seem the realm of Moriarty. Sickert didn’t just have to fool victims, policemen on their beat and eye-witnesses; he also had to fool everyone he passed on the street. Every man was a potential suspect, and those who did not look or behave quite right would be the first to receive a backward glance. It would have taken more than ex-actor Sickert’s knowledge of costume and make-up to transform him into the barely noticed man seen with the victims.
But there was a great deal of anti-Semitism in Whitechapel, in 1888, and there was a certain assumption by the local populace, fuelled by the hype of the newspapers, that the killer was Jewish. ‘No Englishman could have committed such a crime’, was one headline. The modern researcher has to be mindful of the prejudices of the people who have left supposed evidence. Could the eye witnesses have been looking for a Jew and therefore saw one? Was the dark hair reported actually the fairer hair of Sickert, disguised by nothing but prejudice and the black of night? Perhaps a disguise wasn’t necessary when eye-witnesses often gave the police, and newspapers, inaccurate information.
There is, however, more to blending in unnoticed than mere physical appearance. To digress for a moment, at the start of Second World War, MI6 wanted to recruit British women who spoke perfect French to be spies in France. Few of those considered were used. The most subtle of English behaviour would give them away. Likewise, simply donning the clothes of a local man and using a disguise, does not transform a theatrical, young middle-class artist into a man who could roam the mean streets of Whitechapel unnoticed and unmolested. The area had numerous street gangs roa
ming around. One such gang had viciously murdered a prostitute, just before the Jack the Ripper Murders started, and like all bullies they would have quickly spotted people who are a bit different. There’s every chance that Sickert, attempting to pass through the Flower & Dean Street rookery – the most fearsome slum in London, full of bad men – would have been on the receiving end of violence, before he had a chance to perpetrate his own crimes. There were also vigilante groups on the march. If challenged by police or vigilantes, would Sickert, complete with disguise accoutrement and perhaps a false accent (he was good at voices)5 have passed scrutiny?
Images from the Illustrated Police News.
We should consider how well Sickert would have known the streets by analysing the night of the ‘double event’, which shows the killer to have particularly good local knowledge. He managed to escape while pony and cart driver Louis Diemshulz went to get a candle. The obvious thing to do was to turn left out of Dutfield’s Yard and head for home. The killer could be back in his Spitalfields bolt-hole in a few minutes. But he would have had to cross the well-lit Commercial Road and Whitechapel High Street to do so, and he knew his victim’s body would be found within moments, followed by a policeman’s whistle blasting into the night air. There would be every chance a man, making his way over those roads, would be seen and challenged by a Met policeman heading towards the whistle. But the killer appears to have had the presence of mind to turn right instead, and made for Backchurch Lane, disappearing into a dark, unlit netherworld of warehouses, railway cuttings and alleys; leaving the Met Police behind and quickly moving into the safer jurisdiction of the City Police, who would, as yet, be unaware a crime had been committed. Minutes later (the bodies of Stride and Eddowes were found just forty-three minutes apart) the killer pops up in Mitre Square, exactly where the route of someone wanting to make their way back to Spitalfields would take them – if they knew the streets like the back of their hand. Cornwell states, ‘Sickert spent a fair amount of time in the East End and probably knew that run-down part of London better than the police did.’6 Quite a claim. It is extremely unlikely that a non-local would have known the streets better than Sergeant William Thick et al. What is certain, is that the killer knew the streets well enough to make an astute getaway, despite the shock of near-capture and his desire to mutilate being tantalisingly unfulfilled, leaving his mind in what must have been even more turmoil than usual.
Cornwell doesn’t consider the Backchurch Lane route. She believes the man seen by eye witness Mrs Mortimer, ‘walking quickly toward Commercial Road’7 after the murder, complete with shiny black Gladstone bag, was Sickert. Cornwell gets it wrong, Mrs Mortimer actually having seen a man make his way along Berner Street, from Commercial Road, prior to the murder.8 According to Cornwell, Sickert made his escape by heading along Commercial Road (which becomes the equally well-lit Aldgate High Street), for fifteen minutes before arriving in Mitre Square. This is not the behaviour of a man who knew the streets better than the police. Having followed his near-nemesis, Diemshulz, and passing the club (in itself foolhardy), we are led to believe that, rather than scoot across Commercial Road, before disappearing quickly into the darkness of a street leading towards a Spitalfields studio, Sickert would have spent fifteen minutes walking along the best-lit road in the neighbourhood; knowing a policeman’s whistle could be blown any moment. All this, whilst carrying what would have looked like a doctor’s (and therefore suspicious) bag that, essentially, begged the next passing policeman to challenge him. But perhaps the one factor, on which all students of the Ripper crimes agree, is that the killer was lucky. He did arrive at Mitre Square, safe and sound.
Approximately ten minutes after he was seen speaking to Catharine Eddowes, by eye-witnesses, her body is found, throat cut and disembowelled; part of her womb and a kidney (which is particularly difficult to locate in the human body) were removed and taken away as trophies. What must have been about half way through those ten minutes, a policeman passed by Mitre Square, had a cursory glance into the square, saw nothing untoward and carried on his way. Policemen were required, by their conditions of work, to walk at a steady regulated pace, and their heavy boots, on cobbled streets, would have sent echoes around the tall buildings surrounding the dark, eerie square. The killer would have heard the policeman coming. For the second time in less than an hour, the killer stepped away from his victim, moved into the darkness and waited. By the time the body was found, the killer had gone. So the terrible mutilations must have been performed in well under ten minutes.
Did Sickert have anatomical knowledge? Did he use strangulation, purely because it was the quietest way to render his victims unconscious before slitting their throats? Or, did he knowingly kill them by strangulation, not just because it was quiet but because he knew stopping the heart would stop blood spurt? Cornwell suggests that a study of medical books would have been sufficient for Sickert to have gained whatever knowledge he needed. But the speed in which the killer mutilated, with the added hindrance of the darkness, suggests he may have had knife skills. The murders took place close to Aldgate’s slaughterhouses, major employers in the area, and the knife used was something like a clasp-knife; the sort of jack-knife that a butcher in a slaughterhouse would possess. It folded back on itself and could be slipped into a coat pocket. No need for a shiny black Gladstone bag. Even the multi-talented Sickert did not have knife skills, and they were not something he could pick up from a tome on butchery. But there remains debate over whether, or not, the killer needed such knowledge and skills. Could Sickert have hacked away in crazed frenzy and come across the kidney by chance?
Given that Sickert allegedly made his getaway from Dutfield’s Yard along Commercial Road, eventually heading into Mitre Square, he must have had one of his secret studios in the Houndsditch area of the city. But Cornwell states he also wrote the anti-Semitic Goulston Street graffiti. This means that, having got back safely inside his City studio, he then went back out on to the streets to do some ‘whitewalling’ as it was called in those days; chalking on the wall. Beneath his message about ‘Juwes’, he dropped a piece of Catharine’s apron to tell the police it was the work of the killer. Sickert would have crossed Middlesex Street, which was the boundary of the City and Met Police forces. Perhaps he calculated the Met Police would be too busy investigating the murder at Dutfield’s Yard for him to worry about them. But, before he got back into the Met, he would have crossed streets swarming with City Police responding to the news of another Ripper killing, this time in their jurisdiction. They were stopping every man they saw as a prospective suspect or witness.
Whether, or not, the killer left the graffiti is a moot point. It is the apron that is crucial. It effectively told the police that the killer made his way back towards the Flower & Dean Street area. It would seem one of two courses of events took place. One, it was a simple mistake by the killer. There was a standpipe close to where the apron was dropped. The killer could have washed his hands and wiped them on the apron, tossing it aside without thinking it would be a clue; the action of a man not thinking clearly, after killing two women within an hour and almost being caught both times. Two, the killer deliberately left a false clue to suggest the police should look for their man in the Flower & Dean Street area (Goulston Street was en-route between Mitre Square and Flower & Dean), after which, he doubled back down Wentworth Street. Either option suggests the killer was based in the Middlesex and Wentworth or Flower & Dean Street areas. It is difficult to believe the killer had a studio in Houndsditch. Sickert could have had another of his secret studios in say Flower & Dean Street, but if so, he would not have headed down Commercial Road in the first place.
The killer had started the evening by changing his modus operandi, going out to kill at midnight, on a Saturday night. The other murders, though at or close to the weekend, were not on a Saturday night, and were in the early hours. The killer clearly had a desire to kill that couldn’t wait till the following evening. To go out at midnight on the bu
siest night of the week, when all the pubs were still in full swing, the chandler’s shops were busy and there were still people going about their work, would seem foolhardy. But, if the killer was based in the market area of Spitalfields, killing at 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning would mean returning home when Middlesex, Goulston and Wentworth Streets Zwere full of costermongers putting out their wares for Petticoat Lane market. The killer may have decided that killing earlier that night was the lesser of two evils (no pun intended). Better to be seen by a drunk, staggering out of pub at midnight, than the sharp eye of a costermonger a few hours later. But Sickert, the man with multiple studios, would not need to have worried about such things. He could have just used a studio away from the market. Come to think of it, why kill over in Berner Street if your nearest studio was a fifteen minute walk away in the city? With studios all over the place and so many prostitutes to choose from, why do the risky commute? But perhaps I am guilty of trying to use twenty-first-century logic to understand the movements of a nineteenth-century psychopath.
The killer stopped his carnage for six weeks after the double murder. Cornwell suggests the gap may have arisen from Sickert accompanying his wife to Ireland, throughout October, but there is no evidence he did so. The six-week gap in the killings saw London fogbound; none of the murders took place in the fog. It would seem more likely the killings stopped, because the murderer didn’t like the idea of not having a quick escape route available. No killer is going to gingerly feel his way along the streets, because he can’t see his hand in front of his face, in a ‘pea-souper’ fog. He could literally bump into a policeman.
Jack the Ripper Page 10
