They All Love Jack

by Bruce Robinson

  Invoking a phantom of twenty years before (1868), ‘the baby mutilator’ is here conjoined with Packer, and a specimen of ‘absurd information’ is now made whole. It’s so crude a monkey could see through it. So stupid it could only have come from the police.

  In the first place, the Scotland Yard sketch had nothing whatever to do with the sketch published in the Telegraph. It was the Telegraph sketch, approved by Packer, that panicked them. Secondly, the two witnesses ‘who assert they saw the man, and actually conversed with him’ are nothing less than scandalous bullshit; but the spinners haven’t finished with it. ‘Packer keeps a fruit shop next door to the yard adjoining The Working Man’s Educational Club,’ continues the Guardian,

  and indignantly protests that two grape stalks were found near the body of Elizabeth Stride by a woman living up the yard. He seems positive that the grapes were sold by him to the man who murdered Stride. Traces of the sketch made of the supposed murderer have been sent to all those who are likely to identify him, amongst them being Packer, who contemptuously states that it bears no resemblance whatever to the man he said he endeavoured to describe. If a man was found who answered to the description of the sketch in every detail, he could not possibly swear he had seen such a man. The man he saw was about thirty years of age, whereas the portrait was that of a mere boy without any expression whatever, and from what he could judge, practically useless for identification.21

  Clearly, we’re looking here at two different sketches: 1) The sketch approved by Packer which was printed in the Daily Telegraph; 2) A sketch of an expressionless boy, published Christ knows where, but apparently created by the Scotland Yard authorities. This is remarkably reminiscent of the scam at the morgue, where the now evaporated Batchelor and Le Grande attempted to spike Packer by presenting Eddowes as Stride. He didn’t buy that, and he doesn’t buy this. Packer endorsed the sketch in the Telegraph, but contemptuously rejected that of Scotland Yard’s ‘mere boy’.

  Only those seeking to deceive could have instigated such duplicitous garbage, and only those seeking to deceive could invest it with credibility. Ripperologist Mr Paul Begg seizes upon it without inhibition, enhancing it with a bit of judicious pruning. Neglecting to include the bogus sketch of the boy, he creates an outrageous sentence that suggests Packer is rejecting the sketches he approved in the Telegraph.

  ‘On October 6th,’ he writes, ‘the Daily Telegraph published a sketch of the man seen by Packer, but, despite the assurances of the newspaper that it had been “unhesitatingly selected” by Packer, Packer himself is elsewhere reported to have stated with some contempt that it “bore no resemblance whatever to the man”.’22

  Correct. It didn’t, because it was a ‘boy’. What glass eyes are in business here? They are those shared by Evans, Rumbelow, Sugden et al. Anyone with even nursery skills can see that Packer was not referring to the sketches in the Telegraph, but contemptuously rejecting police sketches of a child.

  On 10 October the Evening News was congratulating itself: ‘On Thursday last the Evening News was the first and only paper to give to the world important evidence of Matthew Packer which has supplied the police with valuable material to work with.’

  They were working on it all right, but not in the way the News might have imagined. The intention was not to investigate Packer’s evidence, but to destroy his credibility. Of all newspapers, you would have thought the News might have got a handle on where this was heading. On the same day, on the same page, it ran a piece on the Met which was somewhat less than complimentary.

  According to their own account – but very reluctantly supplied – the police are scouring the highways and byways of the metropolis for the Whitechapel murderer. At the risk of casting one more stone at these wonderful myrmidons of Sir Charles Warren, one might ask with Cowper,

  How much a dunce that’s sent to roam

  Excels a dunce that stays at home.

  ‘The police are like Polly Eccles’s neighbours,’ sneered the Evening News, ‘who, according to that damsel, could not think because they had not been brought up to it.’

  I’m not familiar with Polly Eccles’s neighbours, but I know what ‘myrmidon’ means in this context. It means a hired ruffian, a base servant, and in pejorative terms, a policeman. It sounds to me as if the Evening News had rumbled Batchelor and Le Grande. Despite Bro Swanson’s insistence that they were ‘conjoined with the press’ (most obviously with this newspaper), they were now and forever more noticeable by their absence. Far from claiming credit for any detectives it had hired, the Evening News, in concert with every other newspaper in London, ignored them, and never again would their forensic exploits disturb the inkwells of Fleet Street.23

  Meanwhile, Warren was looking at another letter from the Home Office. On 13 October the Permanent Under Secretary of State, Sir Godfrey Lushington, wrote pressing for a reply to the unanswered letter of 5 October. Home Secretary Matthews wanted a ‘report’, and something urgent needed cooking up. Who could be better suited to the task than Warren’s ‘eyes and ears’, Chief Inspector Bro Donald Swanson. On 19 October Swanson released his ‘overview’. It’s a classic piece of chicanery, bloated with dishonesty.

  Swanson says that Packer made ‘different statements’, and it is a point that would subsequently be hammered to death by Ripperologists. One of their sort, a Mr Dave Yost, refers to ‘an interesting aspect of the many Packer statements’, when in reality the most interesting aspect is that Packer made no official statement at all.

  We have six ‘statements’ to consider.

  1) Sergeant White’s ‘statement’, recorded in his ‘special book’. This document has never been seen. It exists solely on Sergeant White’s word, claimed to represent an interview with Packer on 30 September, but emerging only as a retrospective written up on the afternoon of 4 October. Since the 4th was a bad badge day for White, on which he relinquished his authority to a career criminal, we are entitled to consider any action he took (including keeping this ‘statement’ secret from Moore) as a bit on the iffy side. Why would White have taken so comprehensive a ‘statement’ from a man who’d seen nothing? Packer so saw nothing, he gives the times when he didn’t see it. Scotland Yard never used this elusive ‘statement’ to prove Packer a liar, and it almost certainly didn’t exist. Unsigned.

  2) Sergeant White’s second Packer ‘statement’ of 4 October. This was not taken at Packer’s shop, or in the street where White’s authority was usurped by Le Grande. It was written at an unknown place, and never seen by Packer. Its timings were subsequently altered by Alexander Carmichael Bruce. Unsigned.

  3) A.C.B.’s ‘statement’ itself. Not a statement at all, but a page or two of barely legible notes that may or may not have been written up in Packer’s presence. Unsigned.

  4) Batchelor and Le Grande’s ‘statement’ published in the Evening News on 4 October. Attributed to Packer, it is almost word-for-word identical with the ‘statement’ penned by A.C.B. Both claim the suspect as five feet seven inches, with a ‘rough voice and a quick way of talking’. Unsigned.

  5) Packer’s interview with the ‘Special Commissioner’ of the Evening News. This is as near to a ‘statement’ as we get, and the only description that can reliably be attributed to Packer. Conflicting with the two previous ‘statements’, Mr Packer does not describe the suspect’s voice as ‘rough’, but ‘educated’. Neither does he stipulate any precise height: ‘The man was about 30 to 35 years of age, medium height, and with a rather dark complexion.’ Packer sold his fruit ‘through the lower part of the window case’, which as I’ve previously suggested, would render almost everybody medium height. ‘It was a dark night,’ wrote the News, ‘and the only light was afforded by an oil-lamp which Packer had burning outside his window.’ Considering the circumstances, coupled with the fact that he could have no idea he was talking to a murderer, it is remarkable how comprehensive the fruit-seller’s recollections were. Unsigned.

  6) Packer’s ‘statement’ published
in the Telegraph of 6 October, together with the sketches of the suspect which he approved. Artwork apart, the text is a direct lift from the Evening News, claimed as such by that newspaper. It is a reiteration of the ‘statement’ given by Batchelor/Le Grande (rough voice, five feet seven, etc.). Its source makes it equally suspect. Unsigned.

  Thus, no statement from Packer exists. There are plagiarised accounts from outside sources, but nothing given under oath, and nothing that could survive one. It wasn’t Packer giving different statements, it was others giving different ‘statements’ for him. Under the Common Law of England, the evidence of a witness is not admissible unless he has been sworn to tell the truth. Under the Evidence Act of 1843, ‘No person should be excluded from giving evidence [and] it is also an offence to attempt in any way to keep witnesses away.’

  Packer showed no disinclination to give evidence. It was Scotland Yard that was keeping him out, and Scotland Yard that was breaking the law. Forefather of Ripperology, Inspector Donald ‘Shifty-Nib’ Swanson, was busily at it. It was Swanson’s job to get rid of Packer, and it was he who kicked off the tradition of deceit: ‘It was not until after publication in the newspapers of a description of a man seen by PC Smith,’ lied Swanson, ‘that Mr Packer gave the foregoing particulars.’24

  Nice try, Shifty. The only problem is that Packer said it first. His interview in the Evening News was given on 3 October, and published on the 4th. PC Smith said nothing until 5 October, and it was published in newspapers on the 6th.

  How could Packer base his interview on what Smith hadn’t yet said? Short of being a soothsayer, he could have no way of coordinating with anything PC Smith might say two days later.

  Mr Sugden has spotted Swanson’s cunning, and goes about puffing the usual smokescreen. ‘Inevitably,’ he writes, ‘one suspects that this rejuvenation of Packer’s man had something to do with the release of PC Smith’s description, for the Constable’s account was circulated in the press from October 1st.’25

  NO IT WAS NOT.

  An unsourced description was published in The Times – the very same one previously used by Mr Sugden when trying to explain away Bro Crawford’s ‘secret’, now reconstituted by Mr Sugden to try to explain away Matthew Packer.

  First time around this twaddle was proffered vis à vis Eddowes/Lawende in Mitre Square, a City beat, and absolutely nothing whatever to do with Stride/PC Smith in Berner Street, a Met beat, in Bro Warren’s Metropolitan Police district. Was PC Smith in Mitre Square that night? No, he was not. So where does PC Smith give a description of a man in Berner Street that Packer was able to copy?

  For elucidation, we return to Mr Sugden. Page 225 of his book refers us to note 8. Note 8 is at the rear of the tome, on page 502. ‘For release of Smith’s account to the press,’ it says, ‘see ch. 10. n. 26.’ Whereupon, having seen it and being none the wiser, we are escorted to page 212, where note 26 is discovered. This note orbits us yet again to the back of the book, where page 501 rewards us with the following:

  For early release of PC Smith’s account of going to press, see reports of Chief Inspector Swanson, 19th October 1888, HO/144/221/A49301C/8a, DN, DT and Star, 1st October 1888.

  In other words, the source corroborating Swanson is Swanson. Why not simply say so? Why take us around the houses to arrive back at the 19 October Swanson fiction, which is where we started? Why should Mr Sugden seek to deceive his readers? Halfway through this silly hike (on page 212) we read: ‘Only a version of PC Smith’s description was then in circulation.’ It’s become a ‘version’. And it is this (Mitre Square) ‘version’ that Shifty, and now Mr Sugden, would have us believe is the source of Packer’s specific descriptions of suspect, time and place, which he gave to the Evening News fully two days before PC Smith got anywhere near a newspaper. All the endnotes in the British Library will not disguise the fact that Packer articulated his ‘version’ before PC Smith gave his concoction two days later in Bro Baxter’s court.

  Swanson proffers straws which Sugden drowns with. Packer says it was raining; PC Smith was told to say it wasn’t. And of course Ripperology agrees. Mr Paul Begg has this:

  Packer had told Sergeant White that he had not done any business because of the heavy rain and that he had closed his shop early, but the rain began about 9 p.m. and had stopped about 11 p.m. If Packer shut up shop because of the rain, then he must have closed before 11 p.m., and in fact Packer said that the man and woman had stood in the rain for over half an hour, putting the sale of the grapes at least as early as 10.30 p.m. The rain is important in another respect, because Dr Blackwell said Stride’s clothes were not wet from the rain, so, if Packer sold grapes to anyone who stood in the rain, it was not Elizabeth Stride.26

  Mr Begg is so agog to prove Packer a liar that he buggers himself with his own contradictions. Literally three pages earlier (page 143) in his same book he quotes two men, J. Best and John Gardner, who were ‘entering the Brick Layers Arms in Settles St’. ‘At eleven p.m. as they went into the pub,’ he writes, ‘a woman who they felt certain was Stride was leaving with a man. It was raining very fast and they did not appear willing to go out.’27 (Begg’s words, my emphasis.)

  So at 11 p.m. it was pissing down in Settles Street, while a hundred yards away in Berner Street it was dry as a bone?

  ‘The rain stopped at about 11 p.m.’ is Mr Begg’s requirement, and you can believe it if you will. Although the Telegraph reported Stride’s dress as ‘saturated’, Dr Blackwell couldn’t see the rain, for the same reason he couldn’t see the grapes.

  Official weather reports for that night, located at the London Meteorological Library, blow Blackwell (and Begg) away in favour of Packer: ‘Sudden heavy rain at 9.05 p.m. lasting till after midnight.’ ‘It was a wet night,’ wrote Walter Dew. ‘The rain beat mercilessly on the windows.’ A mile away in Mitre Square, it was still raining hard enough at 1.30 a.m. to detain Lawende and pals at the Imperial Club.

  Apparently, together with Best, Gardner, Dew, Harris, Levy and Lawende, Packer was also hallucinating the same wet night. It was probably a species of the same disturbing mass hallucination that persuaded a variety of witnesses to think they’d seen grapes.

  In King Lear, Shakespeare writes: ‘Get thee glass eyes, and like a scurvy politician, seem to see the things thou dost not.’ In Ripperology, the instruction is reversed: ‘Get thee glass eyes, and seem not to see what’s staring you in the face.’

  What is it with this weird little confederacy, peopled by ‘students’ of dubious provenance, quoting each other, organically defensive, bereft of the vaguest cognitive insight, who, like the Victorian police and Freemasonry, are all about preservation of the so-called ‘mystery of Jack the Ripper’? What could possibly link them all?

  Extant correspondence between Scotland Yard and the Home Office makes it clear that the latter weren’t easily buying into Swanson’s yarns. Indeed, his final paragraph on Packer was to ensnare the Met in no end of lies. ‘Packer, who is an elderly man,’ wrote Swanson, ‘has unfortunately made different statements so that apart from the fact of the hour at which he saw the woman (and she was seen afterwards by the PC and Schwartz as stated) any statement he made would be rendered almost valueless as evidence.’

  ‘Schwartz’? Who the hell is ‘Schwartz’? It’s a name nobody had remotely bothered with before 19 October – not the police, not in Baxter’s court, nowhere. So who is Swanson talking about?

  ‘Schwartz’ is from the same casting couch as the Insane Medical Student and the American Womb-Collector, and is an example of the bone-marrow rottenness then permeating Scotland Yard. What ‘Schwartz’ turns out to be is an outlandish solution to an intractable problem. Despite Mr Sugden’s fun with his notes, Swanson was aware that he couldn’t easily get around the reality of Packer’s interview.

  On 4 October the press had been expecting, if not demanding, Packer’s appearance in the coroner’s court. On 13 October the East London Advertiser reprinted the sketches approved by Packer, reiterating the o
bvious. In terms of witnesses, Packer was the only show in town. Any day now, the coroner would be obliged to reconvene. Time wasn’t on Swanson’s side. He needed somebody between Packer and Stride, to deflect attention away from the fruit-seller and become a new focus for the Home Office. He needed what you might call a ‘wedge’, and sniffing around the press, he found what he was looking for in the Star of 1 October.

  On the preceding evening, 30 September, a well-dressed foreigner with the ‘appearance of being in the theatrical line’ had walked into Leman Street police station. He spoke no English, but brought a friend to interpret. On the day in question, the man and his wife had been in process of moving from Berner Street to new lodgings a couple of streets away. A name and address were evidently given, ‘but the police have not disclosed them’. This didn’t deter the Star, whose reporter found him in Backchurch Lane.28

  According to the unnamed Hungarian, at about a quarter to one in the morning of 30 September he had been on his way home to his new lodgings via Berner Street. Turning into it from Commercial Road, ‘he noticed some distance in front of him a man walking as if partially intoxicated. He walked on behind him, and, presently, he noticed a woman standing in the entrance to an alleyway where the body was afterwards found. The half-tipsy man halted and spoke to her. The Hungarian saw him put his hand on her shoulder and push her back into the passage, but feeling rather timid of getting mixed up in quarrels, he crossed to the other side of the street.’ He hadn’t gone a few yards before he heard the sounds of a quarrel, and looking back,