HALSE: I suggested that the top line might be rubbed out, and the Metropolitan Police suggested the word ‘Juwes’.
It would seem that at least someone in the Met wanted to preserve the writing for the photographer – but he wasn’t the same member of the Metropolitan Police who wanted it rubbed out.
CRAWFORD: Read out the exact words you took in your book at the time.
HALSE: ‘The Juwes are not the men that will be blamed for nothing.’
CRAWFORD: Did the writing have the appearance of being recently done?
HALSE: Yes. It was written with white chalk on a black facia.
Not ‘blurred’, not ‘rubbed’, not ‘old’, as Mr Sugden might wish it. But here comes the killer question that Warren, and not a few of his apologists, might wish had never been asked.
FOREMAN: Why was the writing really rubbed out?12
Bang goes the twaddle about ‘riot’ – this member of the jury simply didn’t believe it. Not a ridiculous word of it. Why the writing was really rubbed out was precisely the point Crawford was trying to establish. Keeping his own counsel, the cautious solicitor allowed Detective Halse to answer the foreman’s question.
HALSE: The Metropolitan Police said it might cause a riot and it was on their ground.
It isn’t recorded whether the foreman thought he’d had a satisfactory answer, but to judge from the ensuing furore in the press, it would seem that he had not. Why this writing was really rubbed out has defined the life-blood of Bro Jack and the circus of smokescreens and moving mirrors ever since.
From the moment of its discovery there was an intense effort on the part of the Metropolitan Police to withhold, obfuscate, misrepresent, obscure and destroy any link between the writing on the wall and the butchery in Mitre Square. Nothing could be more important than this nexus, what the Evening News accurately described as ‘a warrant of authenticity’.
Such a warrant should surely have been the starting point of the subsequent investigation. Instead, like Laurel and Hardy in bizarre harmony with Freemasonry, the intention of Ripperology has been not to explore it, but, like Warren, to get rid of it. The initiative of the City Police is marginalised in favour of supporting the lunacy of Warren and his preposterous ‘riot’. The writing must be diminished into some kind of nonsensical ‘graffito’ that supposedly no one can understand. Well, Crawford understood it, and with the return of Constable Long, he was about to have his understanding confirmed.
The immediate question to be answered from Long’s retrieved notebook was the entry he made at the time concerning discovery of the writing on the wall.
CRAWFORD: What is the entry?
LONG: The words are, ‘The Jeuws are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.’
Contradicting Halse, he spells Jews ‘J-E-U-W-S’. Not good enough for Crawford, who referred him to an inspector’s report. Since this report was never written into the record, we don’t know who this inspector was. Was it the inspector PC Long brought hurrying from Commercial Road, or was it another report from another inspector?
CRAWFORD: Both here [in the notebook] and in your Inspector’s report, the word ‘Jews’ is spelled correctly?
LONG: Yes, but the Inspector remarked that the word was spelled ‘J-U-W-E-S’.
CRAWFORD: Why did you write ‘Jews’ then?
LONG: I made the entry before the Inspector made the remark.
CRAWFORD: Why did the Inspector write ‘Jews’?
Long couldn’t say; but Halse could, and Crawford chose the unequivocal spelling out of his more properly available notebook. It all would have been so much easier if the jury could have relied on photographic evidence. Be that as it may, the spelling confirmed in this court was ‘J-U-W-E-S’, and never mind what ‘respectable historians’ later tried to make of it.
Although the jury may not have understood why, it’s incontestable that the particularity of this spelling was of considerable importance to Crawford, albeit without the remotest interest in ill-fitting footwear or the distractions of anti-Semitic rioting.
He wasn’t investigating a potential riot, he was investigating an actual murder, and as was later pointed out, ‘Crawford was trying to prove something, and not that the Ripper was bad at spelling.’13
So what was this urbane and highly competent solicitor up to? What could he see in the spelling of ‘Juwes’ that Bro Charlie Warren apparently could not? And what was the difference for Crawford between ‘The Jews are not the men that will be blamed for nothing’ and ‘The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing’? Crawford was after accuracy because the two sentences mean starkly different things. The first may be interpreted as anti-Semitic, blaming a general race of men called Jews; the second narrows it down to a more specific group, blaming a particular type of man the Ripper elected to spell as ‘Juwes’.
Ripperologist Mr Paul Begg makes a point that misses the point as he makes it: ‘The erasure did not prevent the spelling of the word becoming known,’ he writes. ‘Moreover, even if the writing had been left, who – other than senior Masons – would have known the significance of the word, and would senior Masons have been any less anxious than Warren to keep the Masonic connection unrevealed?’14
No, they would not. Masons keep their mouths shut, so Mr Begg’s point is irrelevant. I’m not sure if he’s here acknowledging that only ‘senior Masons would have known the significance of the word’. If he is, I am in agreement, because the Commissioner of London’s police was a senior Mason.
But the conundrum – public or not – of ‘Juwes’ is not actually the point at issue. Of course its significance was apparent to anyone acquainted with Freemasonic ritual: examples of whom are Bro Jack the Ripper, Bro Sir Charles Warren, and City Solicitor Bro Henry Homewood Crawford.
Crawford knew what ‘Juwes’ meant, because he was a Mason, and what with the rest of it, he put it together just as fast as Warren had before he got out of bed. Crawford had confirmed what he already knew, and was now in the loop himself. A sentinel of the Establishment, and virulently conservative, he had taken the same oath as Warren, and was no less a subject of the Mystic Tie. Having done its business in Bro Baxter’s court, the ‘Mystic Miasma’ now relocates its hypnotic vapours to Langham’s.
Their effects are immediate, and as wondrous as anything achieved by any fairy godmother. Extraordinary as it is to behold, Crawford now begins a process of obfuscation himself, shifting his allegiance away from the jury and towards the Met. His tone respecting PC Long changes from accusatory to conciliatory; from now on Bro Crawford becomes no less defensive of the shenanigans at Goulston Street than Bro Sir Charles Warren himself.
JUROR: It seems strange that a police constable should have found this piece of apron and then for no enquiries to have been made in the building? There is a clue up to that point and then it is altogether lost?
Switching the substance of the question away from the Met, Bro Crawford answers one about the City that was never asked:
CRAWFORD: I have evidence that the City Police did make a careful search in the tenement, but it was not until after the fact had come to their knowledge. But unfortunately it did not come to their knowledge until two hours after. I’m afraid that will not meet the point raised by you [the juror]. There is the delay that took place. The man who found the piece of apron is a member of the Metropolitan Police.
JUROR: It is the man belonging to the Metropolitan Police that I’m complaining of.
Ignoring this criticism of the Met, Crawford again deflects to the City Police, investing them with a totally phoney timeframe: ‘Unfortunately,’ he said, ‘it did not come to their knowledge until two hours later.’
Not to put too fine a point on it, this is a lie. City Inspector McWilliam ordered photographs at 3.45 a.m., and ‘directed the officers to return at once to the model dwellings’. But Crawford would now have the jury believe that two hours had elapsed, meaning the City Police didn’t get to Goulston Street until 5.45 a.m., forty-fi
ve minutes after Warren had pitched up there.
Given what the jury had already heard, Crawford’s explanation is untenable, and as the juror was well aware, a search of the building was technically nothing to do with the City. Goulston Street was in Warren’s manor, and such a search was the responsibility of the Met. That they didn’t search the building was the reason the juror thought the clue ‘altogether lost’.
Indifferent to such trivialities, Crawford put a couple of already answered questions to Long before making the two-hour time leap himself. What time did Long leave Leman Street police station and return to the wall?
LONG: About five o’clock.
CRAWFORD: Had the writing been rubbed out then?
LONG: No, it was rubbed out in my presence at half past five.
CRAWFORD: Did you hear any one object to its being rubbed out?
LONG: No.
And Crawford lets him get away with it. He seems to have entirely forgotten the protest from City Detective Halse, amongst others, and the divisional friction over the preservation of this evidence that extended for half an hour (the half-hour Long says he was there). If Halse was still in court he must have thought Crawford had gone nuts – but then, he was unaware that this most excellent solicitor was subservient to a higher authority than a coroner’s court.
Bro Crawford had all but come to the end of his questions, and Langham was about to pay the traditional valediction to some person or persons unknown.
Coroner Langham’s closing speech is remarkable, paying not the slightest attention to any of the evidence his court had heard. In the spirit of Victorian orthodoxy, his summing-up ignored everything that didn’t suit the predetermined outcome. Observing that ‘the evidence had been of a most exhausting character’, he totally disregarded it. ‘It would be far better now,’ said the rented mouth, ‘to leave the matter in the hands of the police, to follow up with any clues they might obtain.’
Which brings us back to precisely where this charade started: with the Metropolitan Police. One can only blink at the peripheries of Wonderland at what ‘clues’ he had in mind. The verbiage he’d just ejaculated made no mention of a single clue the police already had. To summarise the summing-up: both ‘suspects’ (a couple of irrelevances who had formerly been associated with Eddowes, called Thomas Conway and John Kelly) had been eliminated, one of them proving to have been asleep at the time of the crime. It was also established that a day or two before her murder Eddowes had gone to Bermondsey, in South London, looking for her daughter. ‘Something might turn on the fact that she did not see her,’ announced the mouth, ‘but the daughter had left the address there without mentioning any other address to which she was going’ (Langham neglected to mention that this address was two years old, and that Eddowes hadn’t seen her daughter since 1886).
While the jury absorbed the implications of these forensic exactitudes, Langham came to his point. ‘There could be no doubt,’ he intoned, ‘that a vile murder had been committed.’ And doubtless grateful for the mention of it, the jury was dismissed.
This most eminent pie-baker declined to remind them of any evidence that might apply itself to the identity of the murderer. Where did he go during the missing forty-odd minutes between Mitre Square and Goulston Street? If the purpose of the severed apron was only to wipe his hands, why transport it over so great a distance? Was it really to try to blame the Jews (he could have blamed the Jews just as easily at Mitre Square), or for some other reason? Neither Jews nor riot appear to have had any relevance for Langham, and not an iota of comment is given on either. He declines even to consider the altercation over photographing the writing on the wall – as a matter of fact, he makes no mention of the writing at all. PC Long’s round trip to Westminster passes unremarked, as does the confirmation of the much-contested spelling of ‘Juwes’. The unanswered question over why the writing was ‘really rubbed out’ is of no concern, which probably explains why the piece of apron that came with it had entirely slipped Langham’s mind. Although such evidence could have hanged the Ripper, both it and its relationship with the murderer had vanished into thin air. Langham had quite forgotten it, making no mention of the apron, nor of the events preceding or following its discovery. PC Long’s beeline to Leman Street and his inexplicable languor on arrival there were no concern of this court.
Neither, apparently, were missing body parts. Was not Langham of a mind to remind the jury of them? Repudiating the comic gibberish regarding ‘the Womb-Collector’, Dr Gordon Brown determined that the stolen organs would have no professional utility. So for what reason were they taken? And what should be made of it if any of these organs (a kidney, for example) should be discovered, or in some way reappear?
A multitude of unanswered questions left the jury in a vacuum. What did ‘Juwes’ actually mean, and why was its precise spelling of such importance to Crawford? Why didn’t the Metropolitan Police search the model dwellings at Goulston Street – and where indeed were the Met’s senior detectives? Why were no photographs taken of the writing on the wall, why was it ‘really rubbed out’, and what kind of idiot could have demanded it? And lastly, who or what was Crawford concealing when he suppressed Joseph Lawende’s description of Jack the Ripper?
It remained only for Langham to ‘thank Mr Crawford’ on the jury’s behalf, ‘and the police for the assistance they had rendered the enquiry’.
Gratitude extended well beyond Langham’s little emporium. It was felt in the highest echelons of Scotland Yard, and in the apartment of a gentleman psychopath living in London NW.
The Ripper had made another convert, adjusting Crawford’s integrity to the level required. Just as Coroner Wynne Baxter had been subject to its gravity over Annie Chapman, so now had Crawford with a jury of his own to deceive. We are heading into a phenomenon that will reiterate itself with escalating duplicity in proportion to Establishment panic. At Chapman’s inquest, a Freemason suppressed evidence. At Goulston Street, a Freemason suppressed evidence. At Eddowes’ inquest, a Freemason suppressed evidence, including a description of the murderer himself.
The Victorian authorities knew perfectly well that they were looking for a Freemason (or rather, that they were protecting one). But they didn’t yet know who he was.
We shall never know what Joseph Lawende saw. Notwithstanding that, anyone scratching around Crawford and his ‘secret’ will discover some fascinating ancillary information.
If not quite in the exalted league of Sir Charles Warren, Bro Henry Homewood Crawford was nevertheless well situated in the Masonic hierarchy. Founder of the Guildhall Lodge (3116), Past Master in Grand Master’s Lodge (No 1), and elevated into the Royal Arch in the same Chapter, in the spring of 1889 Crawford was appointed Grand Steward of the United Grand Lodge, and found himself among some distinguished company. It was a big day, followed by a big banquet, ‘most beautifully served’. A report of the proceedings can be found in the Freemason’s Chronicle:15
The festival, which is held, according to ancient custom, on the Wednesday next St. George’s Day, was preceded by a meeting of Grand Lodge, to which rulers of the Craft only were admitted [my emphasis]. The minutes respecting the Prince of Wales as Grand Master at the last Grand Lodge having been confirmed, Sir Albert Woods [Garter] King-at-Arms, proclaimed His Royal Highness, according to ancient form. The mandate of Grand Master was then read, reappointing the Earl of Carnarvon Pro Grand Master, and the Earl of Lathom as Deputy Grand Master. The other officers were invested as follows:
Henry Homewood Crawford was elected as a Grand Steward on the day my candidate was elected as Grand Organist. Once again, I make no sinister imputation towards members of this assembly who hadn’t the remotest idea of the assassin in their midst. But this is a yet further example of how Michael Maybrick was embedded in the Brotherhood he despised and was betraying.
At this august event, the fraternal associate of James and Michael Maybrick, Bro the Earl of Lathom, was reappointed as Deputy Grand Master. One or two of the nam
es represented become faces in the engraving opposite. Celebrating Her Majesty’s fifty years of rule at her Jubilee in 1887, this montage displays the apogee of Masonic authority together with its indivisible association with the Crown. The woman in the picture wasn’t a Freemason, but in regal quid pro quo, Freemasonry couldn’t have existed without her. Her Majesty aside, at least three of these men are close associates, if not intimates, of Michael Maybrick: Woods, Lathom and Colonel Shadwell Clerke.
But let us stay with the list of revered ‘rulers’, not a few of whom were of no little importance in the Victorian hierarchy: Senior Warden Lord George Hamilton (First Lord of the Admiralty in Salisbury’s Cabinet); Junior Warden Sir John Eldon Gorst, MP for Chatham (Under Secretary for India 1886–91, Financial Secretary to the Treasury 1891–92, and ofttimes a resident at Toynbee Hall, the ‘university for the poor’ in London’s East End); Chaplain the Honourable and Reverend Francis Byng (Chaplain to Her Majesty Queen Victoria 1865–89); Senior Deacon Sir Polydore de Keyser (Crawford’s boss and Lord Mayor of London during the Ripper crisis, serving until 9 November 1888); Superintendent of Works Colonel Robert Edis (a leading light in ‘Mark Masonry’, close to Edward, Prince of Wales, as he was to Michael Maybrick, commanding officer of the 20th Middlesex Rifles, ‘the Artists Volunteers’, whose Honorary Colonel was one of Prince Edward’s closest personal friends, Sir Frederick Leighton, an unlikely overlord of a battalion we shall be hearing more of, and to which Captain Michael Maybrick belonged); Director of Ceremonies the ubiquitous Sir Albert Woods ‘Garter’ (and intimate of everyone worth the effort, with especial emphasis on the King to be). It was Woods who presided over Prince Edward’s investiture as Grand Master of English Masons in 1875. Sir Albert and his Prince can be seen in an engraving of more topical interest. Published in tangential coincidence with the beginning of the Ripper terror, it appeared in the Graphic, 4 August 1888.
They All Love Jack Page 23
