Smith was beginning to think that the killer had either gone abroad or had retired from business when he was woken up with the news of the Mitre Square murder. He had been spending an uncomfortable night in Cloak Lane police station, not far from Southwark Bridge. There was a railway goods depot in front of the station and a furriers behind, which meant that the sickening smell from the skins was always present. Sleep was an impossibility, and it was a relief when the bell by his head rang violently. After being told what had happened he had dressed and was in the street within a couple of minutes and boarded a hansom, which he detested:
This invention of the devil claims to be safe. It is neither safe nor pleasant. In winter you are frozen; in summer you are broiled. When the glass is let down your hat is generally smashed, your fingers caught between the doors, or half your front teeth loosened. Licensed to carry two, it did not take me long to discover that a fifteen stone Superintendent inside with me, and three detectives hanging on behind, added neither to its comfort nor to its safety. Although we rolled like a ‘seventy-four’ in a gale, we got to our destination – Mitre Square – without an upset, where I found a small group of my men standing round the mutilated remains of a woman.
She was lying on her back, with her left leg extended and her right leg bent. Her throat had been cut and she had been horribly mutilated. One large gash across her right cheek had severed the tip of her nose and part of her right ear, which in the mortuary fell from her clothes. She had been ripped open from the rectum to the breastbone and disembowelled. Some of the cuts had been made through the clothing which would have further reduced the risk of bloodstaining to the murderer who, the doctors deduced, had knelt on the right side of the body below its middle. Her chintz skirt with the three flounces had a jagged cut six and a half inches long from the waistband; her coarse brown bodice with the black velvet collar showed a clean cut five inches long made from right to left; a very old green alpaca skirt had a jagged downward cut ten and a half inches long in front of the waistband; a very old blue skirt with red flounces had a jagged cut ten and a half inches long through the waistband; her white calico chemise was torn at the front in the middle and was bloodstained all over. This was the only blood on the front of the clothes. The remaining clothes included a black cloth jacket with imitation fur edging; a grey stiff petticoat; a man’s white vest; no drawers or stays; brown ribbed stockings which had been mended with white thread, and a pair of men’s boots the right one of which had been repaired with red thread. Her black straw bonnet, trimmed with black beads and green and black velvet, was still tied to the back of her head.
In her pockets was probably everything she owned; this included two small blue bed ticking bags, two short black clay pipes, one tin box containing sugar and another with tea, one piece of flannel and six pieces of soap, a small tooth comb, a blunt white bone-handled table knife together with a metal teaspoon, a red cigarette case with white metal fitting, an empty tin match box, a piece of red flannel containing pins and needles, a ball of hemp, a piece of old white apron, a portion of a pair of spectacles, and two handkerchiefs, one with a red border. Dr Frederick Brown and Dr Sequira carried out an initial examination in Mitre Square and a more detailed one that Sunday afternoon in the mortuary. Dr Brown said that the arms were by the side of the body, palms upwards, and that the intestines had been drawn out and placed over the right side – they were smeared over with some peculiar matter and a piece about two feet long was quite detached and had been placed between the body and the left arm apparently by design. The lobe and auricle of the right ear was cut obliquely through. There was a quantity of clotted blood on the pavement by the left side of the neck and the body was quite warm. There was a piece of red gauze silk with various cuts about the neck. They examined the body just after 2 a.m. and death must have been within the half hour. There had been no spurting of blood on the bricks or pavement around the body. There was no trace of any recent sexual connection.
The mortuary examination showed that there was no bruising to the scalp, back of the body or elbows. The doctors believed that the wound to the throat, a cut about six inches long, was the first one inflicted and that she was lying on the ground when this was done. There would have been no noise. The throat had been severed instantly. Death would have been immediate and the mutilations inflicted after death. There would not have been much blood on the murderer who had used a pointed knife with a six-inch blade. After carefully taking out the left kidney he had still had sufficient time to nick the lower eyelids as he disfigured the corpse. A subsequent analysis of the stomach contents showed no signs of poison. At least five minutes had been needed for the disembowelment and mutilations.
One possible explanation for the severing of the tip of the nose, which never seems to have been considered, is that it was the murderer’s way of branding the woman, true or not, as syphilitic. Syphilis was widespread throughout the Victorian era and, in the later stages of the disease, tertiary syphilis ate away the nose bone leaving a hole in the face. So widespread was the number of syphilitics with tertiary symptoms that artificial noses were widely available. In the Great Exhibition of 1851 one manufacturer offered sterling silver artificial noses while another from Whitechapel, where prostitution was widespread, offered a cheaper product. Removing her nose would have been the murderer’s way of saying that she was both syphilitic and a prostitute.
Sir Henry Smith had given orders that every man and woman seen together after midnight was to be stopped and questioned. He was convinced that if his orders were carried out, the murderer would be caught. What galled him now was the knowledge that the woman, Catharine Eddowes, had been in police custody, in a City police station, until a short while before her death.
At 8.30 p.m. on Saturday she had been found lying drunk on a pavement in Aldgate. PC 931 Robinson had picked her up and propped her against some shutters, but she had fallen down again. He had taken her to Bishopsgate police station and she had been put into a cell to sober up. At midnight she was heard singing and at about half past twelve she asked when she was going to be let out, as she was capable of looking after herself. It was normal policy, and a humane one, to let drunks out when they had sobered up rather than take them to court and punish them with a punitive fine that few of them could pay. She was let out, and with a ‘Goodnight old cock’ she walked out of the station towards Houndsditch and Mitre Square, which was less than a quarter of a mile away.
Somewhere on this route she met the Ripper.
When she had been discharged she had given her name as Kate Kelly (Eddowes was her maiden name), of 6 Fashion Street, Spitalfields. In her pocket were two pawn tickets, one of them in the name of Kelly. Her married name was in fact Conway but for the past seven years she had lived with a John Kelly. All three earned their livings as hawkers. Conway had left her about seven or eight years before because of her drinking (he was a teetotaller) and had taken their three children, two boys and a girl, Annie, with him. Annie, now twenty-three and married, gave evidence at the inquest. She said that she hadn’t seen her mother for twenty-five months; she was expecting at the time, and her mother had asked her for money. She was purposely not told where the boys were living to stop her asking them. Her father had lived with her and her husband up until eighteen months ago but she didn’t know where he and the boys – now fifteen and twenty years old – were now. The police had been unable to find them.
Eddowes must have taken up with John Kelly quite soon after her husband left her. According to Kelly they had been thrown together a good bit in the lodging house where they lived, at 55 Flower and Dean Street, which was why they had paired up. She used to get an occasional spot of charring and he picked up all the odd jobs he could get in the markets. She drank, he knew, but she was not troublesome. Most years they went hop-picking for a holiday and to make some money. They had not done too well this particular year and had walked back to town, arriving on Thursday, 27 September. Luck, as usual, was against them. They had no c
ash and the only thing of value that they possessed was a pair of boots, which they pawned in order to get a bite to eat. They had pledged them for one shilling and six pence, and got the same on a man’s flannel shirt. Their first night back in London they spent in the casual ward in Shoe Lane. On Friday Kelly managed to earn sixpence and wanted to spend it on food, but Kate told him to take fourpence and go to the lodging house where he could at least get a decent night’s lodging. She took the remaining twopence and went to the casual ward at Mile End. Kelly had seen her next morning at 8 a.m., and again on the Saturday afternoon when she had told him that she was going to Bermondsey to try to find her daughter Annie, presumably to borrow money from her. Later, he heard that she had been arrested and locked up because she’d had a drop of drink. Kelly didn’t bother to go and ask about her because he was sure that she would turn up on the Sunday morning.
As the body of Eddowes was being undressed in the mortuary, the detectives noticed that part of the bloodstained apron that was around her neck had been cut away. This missing piece was found soon afterwards in Goulston Street, which was about a third of a mile away and some ten minutes’ walk from Mitre Square. The scrap of material, which looked as if a knife had been wiped on it, had been discarded in a passageway to some flats. It was impossible to say if the blood was human. It was picked up by a patrolling policeman, Constable Alfred Long, who immediately searched the adjoining staircase for bloodstains. As he was shining his lamp about he saw that a message (which he was to wrongly transcribe) had been scrawled across the black dado of the wall. The message had been written in chalk – ‘in a good schoolboy hand’, according to one witness – and read:
The Juwes are not
The men that
Will be
Blamed for nothing
He assumed that it must have been recently written because so many people were living in the flats that the words would certainly have been rubbed out soon after being written.
As soon as the constable had reported his discovery at Leman Street police station and handed his find to Dr Phillips, detectives converged on the building. They searched the flats and surrounding neighbourhood but, as usual, they found nothing. One of the City detectives, Daniel Halse, stayed behind, sending a message to the City head of CID, Mr Mac William, that he would wait by the passage until it was light enough for a photograph to be taken of the words. This was because Goulston Street was on Metropolitan Police ground, and Superintendent Arnold, who was in charge of that division, wanted the words rubbed out since he thought that if they were seen they might inflame local prejudices and aggravate the danger of anti-Jewish riots. However, he was not prepared to shoulder the responsibility for the destruction of such a vital piece of evidence. His solution was to send an Inspector to wait at the spot with a dry sponge.
Sir Charles Warren, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, had no doubts as to what must be done when he arrived at Leman Street police station shortly before 5 a.m. He hurried at once to Goulston Street and ordered the words to be rubbed out. Halse tried to persuade him to wait just one hour until it was light enough for a photograph to be taken. Afterwards, in a letter of explanation to the Home Secretary, Warren said that he thought that if they had waited so long the house might have been wrecked. Traders were just beginning to put out their stalls and the streets would soon be crowded.
Warren’s explanation should be dismissed for the nonsense that it is. Safely ensconced back at Scotland Yard he must have realized that by ordering the destruction of the message he had laid himself open not only to even more press criticism but to criticism from within the police force itself. He had done something which, for any other police officer, would have justified instant dismissal: he had destroyed prima facie evidence in a major investigation. He was asked by the Home Office to submit a report justifying his behaviour and could only wriggle clear by saying that if the message had been left another hour the house might have been wrecked by anti-Semitic demonstrations. He was very economical with the truth. The doorway where the message was written is not a house. It is one of several stairways into a large, solidly built five-storey apartment block, as can still be seen today. There is no way that this building could have been wrecked in such a short time and, with all the resources available to him, it should have been ridiculous for Warren to argue that he could not secure the street and leave the message for one more hour. One possible explanation for his action is that he was a high-ranking freemason and it has been suggested that he recognized that the message had masonic connotations.
Warren had rejected a suggestion that the message be temporarily covered up, because he thought there was danger from rioting for as long as it was in place. He also rejected various compromises – from Halse, that perhaps they rub out only the top line, and, from one of his own men (probably Superintendent Arnold), that it might be enough to rub out the word ‘Juwes’ only. According to Major Smith, Acting Commissioner, City Police, the words, once copied down, were rubbed out by Warren personally.
What the exact wording was is still debatable. The controversy began at the inquest. Constable Long (Metropolitan) said that it was ‘The Juwes are The men That Will not be Blamed for nothing’. His accuracy is questionable, as he admitted that he had not noticed the spelling of ‘Juwes’ until it was pointed out to him by an inspector. When Detective Halse (City) was asked for the exact wording he rendered it as ‘The Juwes are not The men That Will be Blamed for nothing’. As Halse was at the scene far longer, arranging for photographs and arguing for the preservation of the message, the balance of probabilities is that this version is the accurate one. But for either Smith or Warren to have admitted that their man was wrong would have meant an unacceptable loss of face – which is probably why there was never any common agreement on the wording. If, however, it is laid out as above, with a capital beginning each new line, then it conforms to Halse’s description of it as about three lines long. (Stephen Knight’s example in his Ripper book follows Long’s wording and takes up six lines. He argues that the copyist tried to imitate the handwriting; but this is nonsense. It is a copy of a copy. The source was Long’s pocket book, which had to be brought back from Westminster (presumably Scotland Yard) when the coroner asked the policeman to produce it as he was giving his evidence from memory.)
Smith had gone to bed by the time Warren called at City Police headquarters to tell them what he had done. It was left to his head of CID, Mr MacWilliam, to tell Warren bluntly that he had made a bad mistake in destroying the writing, as a photograph might have yielded a clue.
Smith had roamed the station houses for most of the night, hoping in vain for an arrest. In Dorset Street his men had been so close on the killer’s trail that he had arrived there in time to see the bloodstained water where the Ripper had washed his hands. Finally, he had gone to bed about an hour before at 6 a.m., ‘after a very harassing night’ and feeling ‘completely defeated’.
In the winter of 1887–8 relations between the Metropolitan Police Commissioner (Sir Charles Warren) and the Home Secretary (Henry Matthews) steadily worsened. Warren was also quarrelling with the head of the CID, James Monro. According to one contemporary, ‘Warren was the finest man we had in Whitehall, but probably the worst appointment, because he must be independent, and the Commissioner of Police is held in very tight bonds by the Home Office. Matthews was an exceedingly able lawyer, but quite incapable of dealing with men.’
Warren’s main quarrel with the Home Office was that it interfered too much in the internal administration of the force, and didn’t give him the free hand to which he claimed the right under the statute appointing him Commissioner. Certainly he was justified in asking for an inquiry into the relations between the police and the Home Office. Faced with, and constantly referred to, memoranda and letters which he claimed that he had never seen, he could only take his stand and insist on the legal rights he was entitled to.
His internal quarrel with Monro, who had been the head of CID since 18
84, was over the claim of his department to be an independent department – a state within a state, in fact, and free of the Commissioner’s control. The Times related that the information which Monro gave to Sir Charles was the scantiest possible. Although he held the rank of Assistant Commissioner, Monro claimed to be independent of the Commissioner and responsible only to the Home Secretary; so much so that he refused to let Warren even see his correspondence. The Home Office played one off against the other, and Matthews annoyed Warren still more by writing to Monro direct. Such a state of affairs could not continue indefinitely and, in August 1888, Warren forced Monro to resign.
The officers of the CID, as Robert Anderson pointed out when he took over from Monro in September 1888, were already demoralized by the way their former chief had been treated. All sorts of rumours were being spread about his possible successor and for some ‘occult reason’ Anderson was sworn to secrecy regarding his appointment. As he had been in the habit of frequently meeting with Monro to discuss other matters on which they were engaged for the Home Office, it was immediately – and wrongly – assumed, when Warren started to make frequent calls on him, that the Commissioner was spying on him because he was Monro’s friend. Indignation was so great among the senior officers that it was only with the greatest difficulty that Anderson stopped his chief subordinate from sending in his resignation.
An already serious situation was complicated still further by the fact that Anderson himself was feeling the strain of long periods of overwork and was physically unfit for his job. His doctor insisted that he should have two months’ complete rest and told him that he would probably give him a certificate for a further two months’ sick leave. Anderson said that was out of the question. He told the Home Secretary that ‘greatly to his distress’, he could not take up his new job until he had had a month’s holiday in Switzerland. And so, after one week as head of CID, he crossed the Channel.
The Complete Jack the Ripper Page 7
