They All Love Jack

by Bruce Robinson

  The only thing missing from the Ripper’s ceremony was the skull and crossed bones, which he intended to procure that very morning. He signed himself ‘SUICIDE’ in pencil. The unused pen and ink, like the basin of water, the empty glasses and the crossed knives, were set-dressing. To synchronise with the time written on his card, he reset the Cahills’ clock to nine thirty. It was Thursday, 27 December, and Jack’s promise to ‘Charlie’ was about to be fulfilled.

  Neither the date nor the time were by idle happenstance, but were predetermined constituents of his homicidal muse. 27 December was St John the Evangelist’s Day, of extreme Masonic significance, celebrated as the most important day in the Freemasonic calendar. St John is the patron saint of Freemasonry, and (incorrectly) credited as the author of that most important text amongst Masons, the Book of Revelation.

  It was on St John’s Day, 27 December 1813, that the disparate cadres of Masonry had at last been reconciled into one. Previous to this the ‘Ancients’ and ‘Moderns’ had given each other a rough ride, the former disinclined to be absorbed by the latter. This friction was damaging to both, and was resolved only when His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent was installed as Grand Master of the more progressive faction. ‘It was then well nigh impossible,’ recorded Bro John Lane in 1895, ‘for Masonic rivalry to continue between two bodies about to be presided over by Princes of Royal Blood, so that eventually the unhappy differences were forgotten, and “The United Grand Lodge of England” was formed, to the great joy of both sections of the Fraternity.’50

  This portentous ceremony took place at Freemasons’ Hall, and was indelibly etched into the Masonic DNA. ‘The Masters Wardens, and Past Masters, all dressed in black (regimentals excepted) with their respective Insignia and in white aprons and gloves, took their places by eleven o’clock in the forenoon.’ ‘The famous “Articles of Union” were finally adopted on December 27th 1813,’ writes Bro Lane, ‘having been duly signed by His Royal Highness The Duke of Sussex and His Royal Highness The Duke of Kent, as Grand Masters of the two organisations.’ Warren’s Lodge of Masonic Research, the Quatuor Coronati, celebrated the event thereafter with the issue of an annual card to its members, mailed to arrive on St John’s Day, 27 December.

  On Thursday, 27 December 1888, at some time in the forenoon, an eight-year-old boy named Johnnie Gill disappeared. Even the most rustic intelligence must surely find some resonance here. Six weeks earlier, the murderer had bragged that his next victim would be a seven-year-old boy. ‘I shall give the police enough running around Christmas,’ vowed the Ripper, and he was right. But they weren’t running around in an effort to catch him, but to cover him up. How is it that a provincial newspaper is capable of deducing that the criminal is ‘on tour’, while the highest echelons of the ‘baffled’ police cannot?

  Jack followed their shenanigans in the press with amusement and delight. One repetitive theme that took his fancy was Fleet Street’s misguided obsession with attributing police worthlessness to ‘Red Tape’. Something had to be responsible for reducing Scotland Yard to a confederacy of idiots, and a variety of newspapers put it down to the same thing. If it wasn’t for the ‘Red Tape’, they opined, surely this bastard would be caught.

  Here’s to the Scotland Yard Officials

  Goin’ on in the usual way,

  As their heads are stuffed with sawdust,

  Is all that I can say,

  And what with Red Tape Matthews

  refusin’ a hundred pound

  Of the British public’s money,

  that the murderer may be found …51

  This sneer at Matthews (from the comic Judy) didn’t go unnoticed by the Fiend, and was to become an inspiration. ‘We do not intend to hold our hand,’ barked the Telegraph, ‘until a clean sweep of impotence and red-tape is made at Scotland Yard.’ Such negative sentiment was echoed by the Pall Mall Gazette: ‘Under these circumstances [at Scotland Yard] it is not very surprising that our detectives do not detect. Detection of crime under these conditions resembles a game of blind man’s buff, in which the detective, with his hands tied and his eyes bandaged with red-tape, is turned loose to hunt a murderer through the slums of this great city.’52

  ‘I think that unless those in authority take proper steps as advised and drop the red-tapism,’ pronounced a Pecksniffian know-all by the name of Dr Forbes Winslow, ‘such crimes will continue to be permitted in our metropolis to the terror of London.’53

  ‘Permitted’ is the salient word. The New York Herald headlined its report ‘STEALTH VERSUS RED TAPE’,54 and another American newspaper, the Tribune, serves as good an example as any: ‘In London the police remain bewildered and demoralised, their hands tied by traditional coils of red-tape, and their limited intelligence overtaxed by efforts to grapple with the mysterious madman.’55

  A ‘mystery’ it certainly was, at least to Bro Warren, and subsequently to Ripperology. About one thing only does the latter display any certainty, and that is that the Bradford murder couldn’t have been by Jack, because it’s outside the stringent rules of the ‘canonical’. And irrespective of that, Jack wasn’t even a suspect, because he was already ‘dead by suicide’ and floating up the Thames.

  Just before dawn on a harshly chill morning, exactly two days after Johnnie Gill was reported missing, a butcher’s lad by the name of Joseph Bucke went as usual to the stables at Back Mellor Street, an unpaved lane in Manningham, to attend to his employer’s horse. ‘I took some manure out into the yard in front of the coach-house, where there is a manure pit. I had thrown the manure in, when I saw a heap of something propped up in the corner between the wall and the coach-house door. I could not make out what it was at the time, so I got a light.’

  On closer examination and some probing with his pitchfork, he found it to be the body of a child ‘that had been terribly mutilated, the legs having been cut away from the body, and the body ripped open. The legs were lying on the trunk, and the head resting on the left hand.’56 (My emphasis.) Bucke ran in horror to a nearby bakery, where he got assistance from a young fellow named Teal. He in turn took off into Manningham Lane for a copper. PC Kirk was quickly on scene, followed by Dr Major and Mr Miall, ‘who reside in the vicinity’. Soon after they were joined by Bradford’s Chief Constable, James Withers, and his police surgeon, Dr S. Lodge.

  Before the official imposition of the ‘strictest silence’ in respect of Bucke’s discovery, there’s an opportunity to record one or two first-sight impressions that did not appear in later press versions of the crime scene.

  On that same day, 29 December, under the title ‘A JACK THE RIPPER CASE’, the Leeds Evening Express had this: ‘The Bradford police [found the boy] with his legs, ears, and other members hacked off, the abdomen ripped open, the ears and other members thrust into the belly, the legs placed on top, and the whole tied together.’57 (My emphasis.)

  Excepting Teal and the freaked-out Bucke, these additional details could only have come from the police, who at this early hour were as yet unaware of their significance. That the legs were on top of the body is confirmed by the authoritative voice of the police surgeon, Dr Lodge. In similar innocence of its relevance, he made his first and last indiscretion, stating, ‘The legs had been cut, or more properly termed, hacked, off, and placed on the body, with the thighs protruding at each side of the head.’58 (My emphasis.)

  These initial reports are significant, because later versions were tampered with. Within twenty-four hours (and subsequent to intervention by certain unnamed individuals in the Metropolitan Police) a news embargo was imposed by the city’s Boss Cop, Mr Withers. ‘Following the example of the Chief Constable,’ reported the Bradford Daily Telegraph, ‘the surgeons in the case maintain a strict silence in the matter of their discoveries.’

  In the perfidious traditions of Scotland Yard, an artificial ‘mystery’ was already spawning, and its first task was to move Johnnie’s legs from the top of his body to underneath it. Like Elizabeth Stride’s wandering hands (in the ef
fort to deny the grapes), Johnnie’s limbs were also on the move after death, even the trunk itself involuntarily swivelling to comply with official requirements, being simultaneously both face-up and face-down.

  Among the first uniforms on the scene was PC Haigh, and his evidence at the opening session of the coroner’s court is illustrative of the above phenomenon. Haigh said he saw ‘a bundle from which a human face protruded [and] put his hand on the face and felt it was cold’. Pulling off the top-coat that was covering it, he ‘found the body of a boy in a nude state’. He also found a pair of braces, ‘one of which was wrapped round the neck and thighs’, securing the legs, which were ‘cut off and placed under the chin’.59

  In other words, if Haigh was able to see ‘a face protruding’ and legs ‘placed under the chin’, the body had to be on its back, with the legs on top of it, as both Joseph Bucke and Dr Lodge had described. Bucke did not turn the body over, but said it was ripped open.60 But now, with no pause for breath, Constable Haigh says, ‘The back part of the body was upwards. The face had gone.’61

  Begging your pardon, but where had it ‘gone’?

  How a ‘protruding human face’ can suddenly vanish is not explained. How a head ‘resting on the left hand’, with legs ‘placed under the chin’, can similarly disappear is not explained either. But as will become apparent, this contradictory gobbledygook was a ‘rehearsed mouthful’, and but an early example of the scandalous bullshit yet to come out of the Bradford police.

  It isn’t much of a stretch to understand the copper’s obfuscation, or indeed to extrapolate what the Masonic Joker had done to this poor little boy. The key, of course, is the missing element of the ‘Fifth Libation’ at the Cahills’ home. Meanwhile, ‘The police will not allow the body to be seen by anyone.’

  ‘The extreme reticence of the medical gentlemen,’ carped the Yorkshire Post, ‘lends credence to the suspicion which is now widely entertained, that the whole truth has not been allowed to transpire.’62 And guaranteeing it wouldn’t be, there is this from the Bradford Observer: ‘The inquest has been adjourned to the 11th inst, and so evident is the desire of the police to keep back the information, that it is not certain that the true state of the matter will be allowed to go forth even then.’

  They were right. It wasn’t.

  Having got a murdered child, the police now needed a murderer. Sinister characters of the sort enjoyed by East Enders were naturally out of the question here. The Insane Medical Student, the Nautical Man and ‘the Floating Ripper’ could hardly have travelled to Bradford. Plus, they were all figments of police imagination. But London was pressing for a scapegoat. Someone arrestable was needed, and quick. So let us welcome to the team ‘the Homicidal Milkman’.63

  William Barrit was twenty-three years old, recently married, and employed as a butter-maker and delivery man at Mr Wolfenden’s dairy in Manningham Lane. Backing onto the premises was a maze of dingy alleyways, including Back Belle Vue, where Barrit kept his horse, and Back Mellor Street, where Johnnie was found.

  At an early hour seven days a week it was Barrit’s task to meet the milk train from Kildwick, where Wolfenden loaded the churns directly from his farm. Barrit would then drive back to the dairy, transfer the milk into cans and (at this time of the year) deliver them to his customers before daybreak.

  Everyone thought highly of William Barrit, especially little Johnnie Gill.64 Whenever he was able he was out of the house while the owls were still about, running to meet the milkman and his cart. It was ‘a pastime in which he was accustomed to indulge very frequently’, recorded the Bradford Observer, ‘for he and the milkman appeared to be great friends’. On that last day of his life he had asked his mother to wake him at twenty to seven, and the last time she was ever to see him, she watched as Barrit picked up her son ‘and the cart was lost in darkness’.

  LOST, on Thursday Morning, BOY, JOHN GILL, aged seven [sic]; was last seen sliding in Walmer Villas at 8.30 a.m. Had on navy-blue top-coat (with brass buttons on), midshipman’s cap, plaid knickerbocker suit, laced boots, red and black stockings. Complexion fair. Home, 41, Thorncliffe Road.65

  When Johnnie didn’t come home his parents put the above ad in the newspaper. They searched for him everywhere, as did William Barrit, calling three times at his home the same day in the hope of news. Two days later, Johnnie’s elder sister, thirteen-year-old Ruth, was on her way to work at the mill, and seeing a crowd of people around Back Mellor Street, asked a girl what the matter was. ‘She told me my brother was dead. I think it was my little brother, Sam, who told my mother first of the affair. My parents knew nothing of the matter when I left. They had been very anxious, and had been up all night. I don’t know exactly how my brother first came to know that Johnnie was dead, but presume that he had seen the crowd.’66

  Johnnie’s body had been found about a hundred yards from his home.67 Later that day, 29 December, Chief Constable Withers arrested Barrit and put him up in front of the magistrates, charged ‘on suspicion of having caused the death of John Gill’.

  So preposterous was the accusation that they may as well have arrested his horse. Withers’ sole evidence against the milkman was that he was the last person to be seen with the child. Predicated on such idiocy, PC Hutt, the copper who released Catherine Eddowes from her cell at Bishopsgate, should also have been arraigned for murder, he too being the last person to be seen with her.

  Other than to claim that he’d dropped the boy off between about 8.30 and 9 a.m. outside Walmer Villas on Thorncliffe Road, Barrit made no defence. He said Johnnie was going home for breakfast, and heading that way he had fun sliding on the icy pavement. The magistrates remanded the prisoner into custody.

  Withers then went about concocting a case on behalf of his Metropolitan associates. The rank and file of Bradford’s police showed scant inhibition about plunging with their boss to the required levels of London degeneracy. As though bound by some zombie creed, they were either already irredeemably corrupt, or morons, or both. The cover-up and the frame-up were well under way. The Ripper was back amongst friends.

  The mysterious visitor to the Cahills’ home was resurrected, but his activities there were no longer a ‘joke’, and he was no longer a ‘relative’. It was Barrit who had broken into the house to swill the rum, and never mind that he was a confirmed teetotaller.68 It was he who had hung up the dress, crossed the knives and opened the umbrellas. He who had written the cryptic notes, and by definition, he who had signed himself ‘Jack the Ripper’ and ‘Yours truly, SUICIDE’.

  The make-believe behind the Chief Constable’s forensic snooping was consolidated on the doorstep of Mrs Elizabeth Craggs. She claimed to have seen the milkman with Johnnie at 10.45 on that dire morning, ‘in a great hurry, and smelling of rum’.69

  Withers relished the remarkable olfactory talents of this woman, not only able to smell non-existent alcohol, but also to identify it as rum. Although Craggs was never heard of again, her toxicity lingered. Now that Barrit was safely in a cell, negative reporting against him began to appear. It was insinuated that there was ‘insanity in the family’, and that he was a man of ‘strong animal passions’.70 This twaddle emerged following a search of his house by detectives. In the kitchen they opened a drawer and found a bread knife. It wasn’t an ordinary bread knife, but a ‘very formidable bread knife’, and what’s more it was tellingly ‘devoid of all traces of blood’.71 It wasn’t long before the indefatigable detectives had worked out why. It was because some unknown hand had washed it!

  They seized the weapon and forwarded it to the medical men. There were two wounds in Johnnie’s chest, considered to be the cause of death. The point of the bread knife, like the point of any other knife in England, fitted the wounds a treat. It was a breakthrough. This murderous blade, disguised as an innocent sandwich-maker, had been cleansed of all incriminating stains, and craftily returned to a cutlery drawer where it had been camouflaged amongst a variety of knives and forks.

  It was at this jun
cture that Barrit’s legal representative, an able barrister from nearby Keighley, Mr J. Craven, demanded to see the doctor’s notes. He also demanded that his own physicians, Drs Roberts and Hime, should be allowed to inspect the murdered boy, requests that Withers adamantly refused.72

  Denied access, Craven and his legal partner William J. Waugh were all but reduced to scouring the newspapers for information. This wasn’t as fruitless as it might appear. Now Withers had his man he’d slacked off on the censorship, and the press had become an increasingly useful (if selective) source. Doubtless hoping to get Barrit condemned in the public eye before the courts did it officially, the constabulary were suddenly liberal with previously suppressed details. Among the most startling was this revelation from the Bradford Telegraph: ‘The post-mortem (police say) leaves no room for doubt that the lad had been foully outraged before death, and with the exception of one portion of the body, which had been cut away with the object, it is believed, of removing all evidence of what was done immediately preceding death, they believe that the remainder of the mutilations were perpetrated chiefly with the object of throwing the public off the scent, causing them to lay the blame on the Whitechapel Fiend.’73