It was almost certainly James who introduced his younger and equally zealous Freemasonic brother Michael to the Craft. He was initiated into the Athenaeum Lodge (1491), London, on 3 May 1876, at the age of thirty-five. Michael was a successful singer, songwriter and composer, a rising star heading for the glittering pinnacle of Victorian society. He knew everyone who was worth knowing, sharing especial friendship with Sir Arthur Sullivan and Sir Frederick Leighton, intimates of the Prince of Wales. Both Michael and James were Master Masons (M.M.) as well as initiates of Christian degrees (both eighteenth-degree) as practised under the aegis of the Holy Royal Arch.
But a more comprehensive biography must wait. For the moment, I want only to demonstrate how these brothers – both blood and Craft – were associated by Masonic osmosis with the Victorian Establishment, what Henry Austin called ‘government within government’, and my grandfather called ‘wheels within wheels’.5
I need briefly to return to the squabble of experts over the veracity of the Liverpool Document. The nub of the issue rests on a discovery made in the City of London archives by Mr Donald Rumbelow, a historian of notable expertise in Whitechapel matters to whom the record owes much. In 1987 Mr Rumbelow unearthed an original police list of Catherine Eddowes’ possessions, taken at or about the time her mutilated body was undressed for autopsy.
An officer, probably a policeman, recorded them as another called them out. One of the items he listed was
Tin Matchbox Empty
These three words are absolutely vital to the association of the name Maybrick with Jack the Ripper. ‘Tin Matchbox Empty’ is a perfectly reasonable statement for a copper in a gaslit shed in London in September 1888, but it tends to look a bit iffy on its reappearance in a scrapbook discovered in Liverpool about a hundred years later. The salient question is framed accurately by Mr Martin Fido, who writes: ‘This undoubted fact [the existence of the empty tin matchbox] was not in the public domain until 1987, so the journal [scrapbook] is either genuine or a very modern forgery.’6
It couldn’t be clearer, and I couldn’t agree more. If whoever wrote the scrapbook had means of knowing about the ‘Tin Matchbox Empty’ contemporaneously with the Ripper, then it is genuine, and has an unimpeachable association with the name Maybrick.
On the other hand, if there is no discernible source for this information, we’re left with the animated opinion of veteran Ripperologist Mr Melvin Harris. ‘Fido printed the police-list of Eddowes’ belongings,’ he writes, ‘and this provided the “diary” fakers with some telling references, and [Ripper author] Paul Feldman fell for them.’
And so did a lot of others. There are entrenched arguments on either side, with a lot of exclamation marks in between. On one side are disciples of the Harris school of certainties, and on the other individuals with a more open mind. I let Mr Harris speak for the former, disseminating characteristic misconceptions with his usual small-calibre popgun.
‘Feld’, as he uncharitably calls Feldman, ‘creates a little drama around one item [the empty matchbox]’, and ‘goes on to take up a page brooding over the mystery’. ‘There is no mystery,’ he squawks, ‘since the Diary is a modern forgery.’ The tin matchbox ‘was not in print until 1987, the fakers seizing on the box and other items, simply in order to scribe lines of doggerel’:
One whore no good, decided Sir Jim strike another
I showed no fright, and indeed no light.
Damn it, the tin box was empty.7
I’m sorry Mr Harris is no longer with us, but as my grandmother used to say of such personages, he was all hat and no drawers. Had he got off his one-eyed microscope and been able to widen his field of vision, he might well have been intrigued by a piece in Lloyd’s Weekly, dated 30 September 1888, published literally within hours of the ‘Double Event’.
Lloyd’s was the first newspaper in London to carry an account of the murders. It was a scoop shared in part by the Observer, which also reported the slaying of Mrs Stride and Mrs Eddowes on the very morning following their deaths.
The first thing I wanted to know was, who was the author of the Lloyd’s report?
At an early hour this [Sunday] morning two women were found murdered in the East End of London … many of the horrors of the recent Whitechapel murders are found to be repeated … Information of the crimes was quickly sent to the police stations of the district, and doctors were immediately summoned, the first to arrive being Mr F. Gordon Brown and Mr Sequeria. They made a minute examination of the body [Eddowes], Dr Gordon Brown taking a pencil sketch of the exact position in which it was found. This he most kindly showed to the representative of Lloyd’s when subsequently explaining the frightful injuries inflicted upon the body of the deceased.8
The emphasis is mine, banged in to demonstrate that Dr Gordon Brown was not averse to showing confidential material to certain friends in the press. The Lloyd’s reporter was there with his notebook while the frightful injuries were ‘explained’, and equally present while the police composed their list, ‘Tin Matchbox Empty’ and all. He was the only reporter allowed into the Golden Lane mortuary that night, where he could have taken notes in respect of Dr Brown’s sketch, a copy of the police itinerary, or anything else from the accommodating City Police physician. Indeed, there is first-hand evidence that he did, that Dr Brown shared ‘secrets’ with this journalist – ‘more than could be published’, he wrote. We will come to them by and by.
‘At twenty minutes past five [a.m.],’ records the Lloyd’s reporter, ‘we left the mortuary after the interview most kindly accorded by Dr Gordon Brown.’9 The journalist who conducted this exclusive interview in the presence of Eddowes’ corpse and effects was Bro Thomas Catling, Worshipful Master of the Savage Lodge, habitué of the Savage Club, and intimate of fellow member Bro Michael Maybrick.
The ‘Savage’ was a bohemian hangout for writers, artists, musicians and journalists. According to an official club memoir of the time, ‘There is no place in the world, perhaps, where more amusing copy can be picked up than is to be had for the asking at the Savage Club.’10 Everyone in London was talking about Jack, and it’s no stretch to imagine what an informed ‘Ripper insider’ might be telling his fellow members in the smoking room of the Savage – and Catling was known for his mouth. ‘Mr Catling tells us of his astounding feats in nosing out copy,’ continues the memoir, ‘in obtaining the earliest information in respect of murder … For obvious reasons many of the good things are not for publication.’ This was the currency of smoking-room gossip, ‘to be had for the asking’ at the club.11
Thus, from Catling’s notebook to a dozen eager ears (including those, I hazard, of Michael Maybrick), the unpublishable details of Mitre Square were told. That a Liverpool cotton broker could have known about an empty tin matchbox in London’s East End is, I’m afraid, no great mystery, but is in fact rather mundane. From Bro Catling to Bro Michael, and then passed just as easily to James. He was Michael’s brother, and a frequent visitor to his London residence at Regent’s Park. Had either written the so-called ‘Diary’, the mysterious ‘inside information’ becomes no mystery at all.
Does that not blow a rather sizeable hole in Harris’s misplaced certainty that prior to 1987 there is no possible way that James Maybrick could have known about the matchbox? Either one of the Brothers Maybrick could comfortably have been aware of this information ninety-nine years before Mr Rumbelow rediscovered it. Ergo, the Liverpool ‘scrapbook’ purporting to have been written by Jack the Ripper can easily be associated with the name Maybrick, via Bro Thomas Catling.
Too abstruse for the Harris school? All right, let’s knock Catling out of the equation and go directly to the source. I refer to none other than the man up to his elbows in Catherine Eddowes’ guts, forty-five-year-old surgeon to the City Police and fellow of the ‘Mystic Tie’ since 1868, Bro Dr Frederick Gordon Brown.
Brown, with his gregarious tongue, would have been even more worth listening to than Catling – presupposing you had a particular
interest in the case, and were inclined to ask. Like Catling, Dr Brown was a regular on the Maybrick circuit, sharing more than one enclave of rendezvous. He was a member of both the Savage Club and the Savage Club Lodge (2190), a pal of top London nobs and a familiar figure on the social scene.12
According to the weekly The Freemason, under the heading ‘Grand Lodge Representatives’ we learn that ‘To represent another Grand Body near one’s own is considered a very high honour.’ Bro Dr Gordon Brown and Bro Michael Maybrick did precisely that at a Grand Soirée at the Holborn Restaurant, a favoured haunt of members of Orpheus Lodge. Maybrick was co-founder of Orpheus Lodge and Chapter (1706), which later in this book will get a chapter of its own. On the night in question, Saturday, 26 October 1889, ‘Grand Lodge was represented by Bros Edwin Lott P.G.O., Doctor Gordon Brown G.S. and Michael Maybrick P.M.’
When the speeches started, it is recorded that ‘In responding for the Grand Lodge Officers, Bro Maybrick remarked that the position he held as G.Org. [Grand Organist] reflected honour upon the Lodge, because he believed he owed his office to the fact of his being Past Master of the Lodge.’ Bro Dr Gordon Brown ‘made effective replies for the visitors who were strong in force’. ‘The commendably short speeches,’ continues The Freemason, ‘were interrupted with music. Bro Maybrick sang the solos of the National Anthem.’13
Though the events of the evening took place in 1889, there is abundant evidence that Dr Brown and Michael Maybrick were well known to each other a good time before that. The initials ‘GS’ after Brown’s name stand for Grand Steward. He was first elected in this capacity of service to Grand Lodge in 1887. The following year he took a breather, becoming PGS (Past Grand Steward), and we find him as such together with GO Michael Maybrick at a Grand Lodge celebration in that same year, its ensuing banquet presided over by none other than ‘I thought they were girls’ the Earl of Euston. ‘A beautiful vocal and instrumental concert was given under the direction of Bro Sir Arthur Sullivan,’ one of Maybrick’s close melodious pals.
The Lord Mayor of London, Bro Sir Polydore de Keyser, was a prominent member of the exalted who were present. Among the newly elected Senior Grand Deacons was Bro Edmund Ashworth, a fellow member of James Maybrick’s St George’s Lodge of Harmony at Liverpool. Bro the Earl of Lathom was in the chair, supported by Bro Hugh Sandeman, thirty-third degree, Past Grand District Master of Bengal and member of Michael Maybrick’s St George’s Chapter (42), London.
The ‘Mystic Tie’ could not be more in evidence, and it returns us briefly to the Liverpool of James Maybrick. ‘It is a truism,’ announced The Freemason of 20 October 1888, ‘to say that West Lancashire (wherein is Liverpool) is one of the strongholds of Freemasonry in this country.’ A Past Master and very present member of James Maybrick’s St George’s Lodge of Harmony was Colonel Le Grande Starkie, an enormously wealthy landowner with 12,000 acres of Lancashire to prove it. Another member was Lord Skelmersdale, a.k.a. the above-mentioned Earl of Lathom, who like Starkie had a few fields out of town. Lathom was old money and a lot of it, and, second only to the Prince of Wales himself, the most important Freemason in England. At his seat at Ormskirk in 1888 he threw a week of parties celebrating a visit to the province by the Prime Minister Lord Salisbury and his wife, but under less festive circumstances his duties were usually confined to London.
Earl Lathom was Lord Chamberlain to Her Majesty the Queen, entrusted with the ‘well being of her swans’ and, on a more prosaic level, vetting guest lists for the Palace soirées. To this end he wore an enormous symbolic ceremonial key, a reminder that ‘everyone the Queen receives must wear the white flower of a blameless life’ – which makes one wonder how half her relatives got in. The picture opposite shows him in business at the Palace (he’s the man in tights with the long beard), standing next to Edward’s wife, the Princess of Wales, who was herself standing in for Queen Victoria. The Prince himself is to the right, under the chandelier, and to his right is the bald bulk of Prime Minister Lord Salisbury.
Concurrent with the ceremonial key and the organisation of the Masonic affairs of Lancashire, the Earl, among a select few, was also a member of a London Obligation, once again named in honour of St George. This was St George’s Chapter (42), a confluence of well-heeled members of the Masonic hierarchy wherein we discover fellow member Bro Michael Maybrick. Thus, with membership of (32) in Liverpool and (42) in London, Lord Chamberlain to the Queen Bro the Earl of Lathom forms a distinctive link between the Masonic activities of Bros Michael and James Maybrick.
But you would never know it, unless you were prepared for a very protracted search indeed. As far as the records at Freemasons’ Hall in London are concerned, James Maybrick wasn’t even a Freemason. As will become clear, he has been quite spirited away. This presents a dilemma for the researcher, to which we can add the elusiveness of Chapter (42). Like Lord Euston’s exclusive ‘Encampment of the Cross of Christ’, of which Michael was also a member, (42) is not to be found on Michael Maybrick’s c.v. Indeed, there is a palpable absent-mindedness surrounding it.
Meanwhile, on 23 April 1888, St George’s Chapter (42) presented an MWS Jewel (Most Wise Sovereign of a Rose Croix Chapter) to Bro Michael Maybrick ‘for services rendered during the past year’.14 His award was conferred by a galaxy of eminence, representing some of the most distinguished names in English Masonry. Only one need detain us.
Colonel Thomas Henry Shadwell Clerke, author of the quote at the beginning of Chapter 3, Grand Secretary of English Freemasons and liaison officer between Masonry and the Prince of Wales, was a close personal friend of Michael Maybrick.15 Whenever Edward failed to show, which was just about always, it was Shadwell Clerke who made the apologies. ‘As regards H.R.H.,’ he was oft to say, ‘the brethren must not fancy, because they do not see him at their meetings, that he is neglectful of the Craft.’ He (Clerke) could assure them from personal knowledge that HRH ‘took the greatest interest in all that concerned Masonry’. When their MWGM (Most Worshipful Grand Master) was in London, he (Clerke) ‘was in constant attendance at Marlborough House, for all matters of importance were submitted to H.R.H.’. And further, if they couldn’t have the fat man, ‘The names of Lord Carnarvon and Lathom were well known, for these two Brethren exercised a watchful care over all that affected Freemasonry.’
In the matter of James Maybrick, more watchful eyes could hardly be imagined. But back to Bro Michael, who was no less eminent a Mason than Lathom and Clerke, serving, as they did, as an Officer of the Grand Lodge, a body constituting the zenith of Freemasonic authority in the land.
I put Michael Maybrick into the picture not with the intention of impugning anyone around him, but to demonstrate just how much a part of the picture he was. Maybrick was no less a public celebrity than he was (in occult places) a celebrated Freemason, both facts that put him inside the inner social circles of London’s greatest past-master of decadence, Edward, Prince of Wales.
Nothing encapsulates this more succinctly than his membership of the Savage. Maybrick joined on 5 July 1880, preceding His Royal Highness’s initiation by a couple of years. By the time Maybrick walked through its portals at 6–7 Adelphi Terrace, the club had elevated itself into something of significance, opening its doors to ‘practitioners of every branch of science, including the law, with the result that Music Hall Stars, political cartoonists and actor-managers rubbed shoulders with distinguished lawyers such as Bro Lord Justice Moulton, Bro Sir Richard Webster, Bro Sir Edward Clerke Q.C.’ and many more who have made or will make themselves known to this narrative.
The most illustrious of them all, Edward, Prince of Wales, was invited to become a lifetime honorary member on the occasion of the club’s twenty-fifth anniversary, in April 1882. He was further invited to nominate one or two pals as special guests, and selected a duo who wouldn’t have spoiled Michael Maybrick’s evening, because, at the risk of labouring it, Sir Arthur Sullivan and Sir Frederick Leighton were special friends of his too.
It’s perhaps wort
h pointing out that, just as Michael Maybrick was one of Sullivan’s closest friends, so too was Sir Charles Russell QC MP, making subsequent events at the High Court in Liverpool more than somewhat mind-blowing. (It was Russell who was to ‘defend’ Florence Maybrick against the charge of murdering her husband James.)
But I’ve run out of detour, and return to the Savage and its special gala night. It was what the Victorians liked to describe as ‘a singular occasion’, with actors, musicians, singers and wits all eager to do their dazzling thing. Among them was Wilhelm Ganz, a leading light in Masonic and musical circles, and long a friend of Michael Maybrick. By coincidence, Ganz lived a few doors down from Sir Charles Russell in Harley Street.
‘The entertainment which followed the annual dinner, was similar to that which occurs every Saturday evening,’ wrote the man from the Illustrated London News, ‘and Mr Harry Furniss has happily depicted the best points of it in our engraving.’
Michael Maybrick is represented at the piano (middle row, second from right). His performance that evening was preceded by Mr George Grossmith’s rendition of ‘Itinerant Niggers’, the fun of which must have contrasted agreeably with the pathos of Maybrick’s ‘The Midshipmite’, his hit song from 1879.
Leighton, Sullivan, Russell and Maybrick were fellow Savages and fellow Masons. They were among the men ‘in the know’, as Rudyard Kipling put it, who between politics and Freemasonry and the law knew just about everything there was to know. Like His Royal Highness’s plenipotentiary Bro Sir Francis Knollys, ‘who saw everything, heard everything, and was consulted about everything for forty-two years’, and who, above all, ‘knew how to be silent’, so did this confederacy of savages.16
They All Love Jack Page 20
