Cutting from the New York Times of 2 June 1900 (Courtesy Dr Timothy Riordan)
The historian Dr Timothy Riordan found a small article in the New York Times of 2 June 1900, listing some of the more important travellers on board the Lucania. Of the 42 people listed, none of them match names on the ‘Kaiser Wilhelm II’ manifest but just one, obscure enough to warrant further investigation, matched a name on the souvenir Lucania list from Liverpool to New York that departed on 8 September. Recorded as just ‘Miss De Forest’ (no other people of that name listed) in the New York Times, there is a ‘Miss Julia B De Forest’ on the returning September list. Miss De Forest may have nothing to do with the Thomas Cook tour, although it is highly likely that she is the same woman mentioned in both the above sources. This is almost certainly the art historian and author responsible for A Short History of Art (1881) and, given that there are numerous paintings photographed in the closing images of the book, it may well suggest that she is the photographer. However, further research uncovered the difficulty that De Forest died in 1910 and the owner of the album was making notes in it as late as 1917.
This was not the first time that hopes were dashed. The owner’s entry in the album underneath the photograph of Mt Vesuvius mentions that she was writing ‘manuscripts’ on the train. This seemed a curious turn of phrase to use unless the writings were of a professional and artistic nature and could thus indicate that the photographer was also a known author.
There were a great many women authors working in the US in the late 1800s. Just one list alone of prominent writers of the time names 77 of them. From that list, 44 were dead by 1900. Of the remaining 33, 15 were too old by that date. This left 18 and, of them, nearly all were of the wrong ethnicity, were married or looked nothing like the photographer in online images. There was only one match, and that was the author Lizette Woodworth Reese. Reese was born in 1856, which would have made her 44 at the time of the 1900 trip to Europe. She was a poet from Baltimore (Baltimore, you will recall, having been a likely address of Miss Van Neiukirk) and was unmarried. She was also the first President of the Edgar Allen Poe Society (a possible nod to the photographer’s interest in the macabre). A monument in her memory still stands in the grounds of Lake Clifton High School in Baltimore. She died in 1935 and examples of her handwriting do look familiar to the less fluid writing of 1917 by the owner of the album. Most interestingly, a photograph of Reese in old age bore a remarkable similarity in many ways to the St Peter’s photograph of the tourist from 1900. By the time I came to lecture on the photograph at the Ripper Conference held in Knoxville, Tennessee in October 2008, I was fairly sure that Reese was the woman behind the Dutfield’s Yard photograph.
Lizette Woodworth Reese in old age
One further piece of detective work convinced me even more. In one of the later closing images in the album, taken in the US, a little girl stands next to a painting on an easel. In the background is a painting of a grown woman. This picture bore a strong resemblance to the author Anna Katherine Green, born in 1846. Green was largely credited with being the first female crime fiction writer and was sometimes referred to as ‘the female Edgar Allen Poe’. I had no idea if Reese and Green had known each other but it all seemed to strengthen the case.
Then a discovery was made which resulted in all these coincidences counting for nothing. The very day before I was due to give my talk, I found two photographs of Reese dating from the early 1900s, and she looked nothing like the woman in the album in any way. Jon Shorr and Jeff Korman of the University of Baltimore provided further photographic evidence of Reese, again in old age, but this time looking far less like the woman from 1900. Ripper historian Chris George is a past President of the Lizette Woodworth Reese Chapter of the Maryland State Poetry Society and he pointed out that Reese was not a rich woman and it was unlikely that she would have made such a journey. Chris felt it more likely that the traveller could have been Edith Wharton or Emily Spencer Hayden, but both of these names were clearly not the woman in the album. The final nail in the coffin came when Timothy Riordan discovered that Lizette Woodworth Reese was at home in Baltimore at the time the Census was taken locally in mid-June, by which time the Lucania had just arrived in Ireland.
The author lecturing on the Dutfield’s Yard photograph in Knoxville, Tennessee, October 2008
A comparison shot of woman in painting and Anna Katherine Green
Later American photograph of child amid paintings, from the album
Alice Brown
It is by no means definite that the owner of the album was involved in the arts, but given her disposable income, her eye for photographic composition (historian Glenn Andersson states that many artists of the late 1800s were also keen photographers) and her way with words – coupled with her use of the term ‘manuscripts’ and the photographs of paintings later in the album – it seems probable that further research in this field may yet yield results.
One further discovery was made which, although not naming the photographer, may give a reason for her lone journey and the presence of two other spinsters.
Alice Brown was a writer, born in 1856 and dying in 1948. She came from New Hampshire and taught there and in Boston before becoming a prolific writer of novels, plays and short stories. Her main home was in Boston but she spent her summers in Massachusetts and at a farm she owned in New Hampshire.
In 1891, along with a friend, a poet and a teacher, Brown wrote a short book named A Summer in England – a Handbook for the use of American Women about their travels into Europe. The limited print run of 500 copies sold out in a little over a month. Following a reprint in 1892, the women began a magazine named the Pilgrim Scrip. The purpose of this magazine was to impart advice and facts to women travelling into Europe. It included tips on travel and etiquette and lists of lodgings. Matters progressed and an organisation was formed with membership criteria. This was named the Women’s Rest Tour Association, and it was affiliated to the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, founded in Boston in 1877. The central demographic of the association consisted of single, middle-class individuals. When returning to the US, members would meet, share stories, make presentations and pass on information useful to others intending to travel. Subsidies were provided for women unable to fund their sojourns alone. By 1910 the club had 2,700 members, mostly along the east coast. It was nothing more than an additional lead, but there was now a further possibility that our woman, at least middle-class and travelling alone and in the company of two other single women in Italy, was a member of that organisation. If this is the case, she would certainly have been one of the more wealthy members as many women were venturing into Europe at a quarter of the price she had paid. It is sadly almost certainly a coincidence that a picture of Brown in her later years bears a passing similarity to our journeywoman.
One final lead that would have been a superb find but immediately came to nothing was the small possibility the photographer was Kit (Watkins) Coleman, the Canadian journalist who travelled to London in 1891 and wrote detailed reports of how the murder sites appeared in February 1892. She had initially travelled over to report on the gradual disappearance of the London of Charles Dickens but there do not appear to be any photographs from this trip. It was a truly fanciful notion, and the only links between the two visitors was that they were both women from North America who wrote and had visited a site connected to Jack the Ripper.
There are still avenues to explore. The National Archives at Kew hold an extensive (albeit unindexed) library of incoming passenger lists to UK ports between 1878 and 1960. As the ship (the Lucania), port (Queenstown) and approximate date (mid-June 1900) are all known, this may yet provide possible answers. John Langley, the Chairman of the Cunard Steamship Society, mentioned that the Cunard archives are mostly held at the University of Liverpool and these, too, may somewhere hold the name of the photographer.
Currently, however, she mirrors the case to which she will now be forever linked. Both research into the id
entity of the Dutfield’s Yard photographer and Jack the Ripper himself lead down countless avenues that contradict each other, provide new clues, stop dead and leave question marks hanging at every turn.
The People in the Photograph
The final remaining untapped area in researching this photo lies in the tentative identification of the individuals shown standing around the entrance to Dutfield’s Yard. It’s almost impossible that any of them will be truly known but there are some likely candidates and it is through the work of Tom Wescott and Chris Scott that these names have come to light.
Firstly, a list of the people seen in the photograph. There are, surprisingly, 23 people visible (some almost imperceptibly) as well as two cats and two shadows of people on the left who did not make it into the photograph.
Two girls, possibly around 13 years of age, are on the extreme left. The one closest to the camera is eating something. Both wear knee-length pinafore dresses. Beyond them, a woman in a dark dress has her hand on the second girl down and is peeking at the camera. A boy in a cap and calf-length trousers, moving at the time of the photograph follows. A woman looks down the yard and, next to her, a girl or short woman in a lace-trimmed skirt or dress. A man with a cap and thick moustache looks at the ground and in front of him a small child (about 5 but gender indeterminate) also looks away from the camera. A very Jewish-looking woman is next down, clear and smiling in the direction of the photographer. A man in a cap and jacket stands alone, completely shaded. Behind him, a woman in a full-length dark skirt and apron stands just beyond the gap at the back of 42 Berner Street. In the far background, two men are seen on the upper level of the cabinet makers. Both appear to be dressed the same in their shirt sleeves and wearing (leather?) aprons. One stands outside in the sun, the other inside the doorway.
Coming up the centre of the yard, there are two women facing the photographer just this side of the gap behind 42. The one on the left is taller and is wearing a hat. The shorter one on the right (barely visible) appears bare-headed. There are two cats in the doorway of the International Workers’ Educational Club. One is in the yard itself at the bottom of the steps and the other in within the doorway at the top, looking down at the one below. Two children take centre stage. A boy about seven years old (and probably Jewish) stands in calf-length boots, cap and waistcoat with a muffler, his hands in his pockets and defiantly frowning at the photographer with a pout. A little girl about four years of age stands a short way in front of him in a mid-length dress and apron. She appears to have been looking to her right and quickly turned towards the photographer as the photograph was taken.
On the right-hand side of the picture we see possibly the most striking individual in the photograph. A Jewish-looking man in a cap, elbow-length shirt and full apron smiles at the photographer in the mirror image of the woman opposite. He stands with his back to the end of the open gateway, inches from the spot where Elizabeth Stride’s body had fallen. The actual murder spot, down to the steps of the club, is clear. It is likely these people knew exactly why this photograph was being taken but we don’t know whose idea it was. The photographer is only one option. It could also have been a tour leader, cab driver, fellow tourist or even a local who intercepted her and suggested a quick trip to Berner Street.
There is then a gap, and the next individual seen is just outside the gateway; a small woman in a full-length dark skirt, moving at the time of the picture being taken. Next is the short man initially mistaken for a child. He wears too-long baggy trousers, shoes with very thin soles, a round-bottomed jacket and a cap. He looks down the yard and his dark short beard is obvious. The next person can only be seen as a few locks of hair. Two individuals away from the camera is the only person in the image who appears affluent. This man’s shoes shine, he wears a waistcoat and jacket and has a brimmed hat. His shirt has an upturned collar and he is looking at the photographer. It is possible he was another tourist on the same trip. The final person is a female, possibly a young woman, looking past the well-dressed man down into the yard and wearing what appears to be a dark shawl and a calf-length white apron.
Most people in the photograph look curious or bemused, but the Jewish-looking couple standing in front of the opened gates are both smiling at the photographer. The placing of the pair and the children in the middle (certainly the young boy) make it possible that they were the original individuals who were about to be photographed and that other people in the area, fascinated by a rich American tourist with a camera (perhaps akin to a film crew appearing in your street today), all crowded round to see what was happening and the photographer had arranged them in such a way that they could all appear in the photograph. It is a great shame that, given the copious explanatory notes presented later in the album, the photographer only titled this image as ‘Scene of famous Whitechapel Murders London’. Indeed, it is not until she hit mainland Europe that she started giving any account at all.
So, who could these people be? It is fortunate that this photograph was taken less than a year before the 1901 Census in the UK. The Census details for 40 and 40a Berner Street (thus covering Dutfield’s Yard, as the next entry is for 42 Berner Street) are nicely detailed and there are several possible identifications for the people in the middle of the photograph. All of them are Russian Jews.
Chris Scott’s work on the Census reveals eight households, of which one was a family without a male head and another was a couple without children. The named couples are Benjamin and Sarah Goldberg, Morris and Sarey Sherman, Samuel and Annie Simon, J. and M. Goldstein, Morris and Annie Ringold (without children), Nathan and Rebecca Freedman and Marks and Mary Klone.
The text under the Dutfield’s Yard photograph, from the album
From the list, the Shermans, Goldsteins and Freedmans all had a boy that could be the child in the middle of the picture (Raphel Sherman, five in 1900, so unlikely; Jack Goldstein, seven in 1900 and a possibility; and Barnett Freedman, nine in 1900 and also a possibility). The Shermans lived in 40 Berner Street and not Dutfield’s Yard. The Goldsteins would have been fifty-three and forty-nine at the time of the photograph, and in the image the woman appears to be in her thirties and the man perhaps about forty (though it can be very difficult to tell).
Nathan Freedman would have been thirty-four in 1900, and his wife Rebecca twenty-nine. Freedman was a plumber and he had three children; Joseph (fourteen in 1900 and listed in 1901 as a blacksmith), Barnett and Polly who was aged seven at the time – probably a little too old for the little girl in the centre, if she is indeed related to the other people.
The Goldsteins, however, whilst seeming older than the smiling pair by the gates, do have children that would fit this boy and girl. J. Goldstein is just listed as a ‘traveller’ in the 1901 Census and, besides Jack and four older children (three of them adults), there was also a daughter named Fanny who would have been five in 1900.
One further issue is that the boy may not be related to the smiling couple at all, and could be the child of the man in the shadows, who is looking in the boy’s direction. Of all the children listed as living in the yard in 1901, Jack Goldstein or Barnett Freedman are by far the best candidates.
As for the little girl, she (if resident) may be Leah Simon (six in 1900), Fanny Goldstein, or – less likely – Polly Freedman.
Of course, the Jewish-looking woman may be married to the man behind her in the shadows and not connected to the man in the apron in any way. It is only intuition that suggests any person in this photograph is connected to any other. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that the two men at the very back both worked for the cabinet makers and the three women in front of them almost certainly lived in Dutfield’s Yard.
If the smiling couple are married, yet not the parents of the two children, they could be Morris and Sarey Sherman, or Morris and Annie Ringold (Morris a boot-heeler and the couple aged twenty-nine and twenty-eight in 1900). Of these, the Shermans had six children so the Ringolds are more likely.
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bsp; Further clues as to the man’s identity may lie in his apron. Samuel Simon was a thirty-nine-year-old greengrocer in 1900. If the little girl is Leah Simon, then it is very likely that the man in the apron is Samuel. The Simons lived at 40 Berner Street itself, not in Dutfield’s Yard. This would mean, however, that the little boy is not his son. It is perfectly possible that the smiling couple, the two children, and the man in the shadows consist of members of the Simon and Freedman families.
These appear to be the only people that may be tentatively identified. There is no obvious connection between any of the other people in the photograph, some of whom may not have lived at that address anyway. The two girls on the far left do not instantly look Jewish and may have just come out of the Board School directly behind where the photographer was standing (indeed, being close to midday, this could explain the two boys in the photograph as well).
Tom Wescott came up with an alternative theory. He felt the man in the apron by the gate could be Joseph Chaim Cohen-Lask, who rented the premises at the turn of the twentieth century and taught a Jewish ‘Cheder’ at the house. Cohen-Lask was an accomplished writer and his daughter later wrote an account of his life. Her name was Rachel Beth-Zion Lask Abrahams and, until research suggests otherwise, if Tom’s idea is correct then it is even possible that she is the little girl in the middle.
The murder spot after the removal of a modern flowerbed, April 2009 (Courtesy Tony Brewer)
The site of Dutfield’s Yard in the Harry Gosling School, 2009 (Courtesy Robert Clack)
Afterword
The Jack the Ripper Location Photographs: Dutfield's Yard and the Whitby Collection Page 6
