Complete History of Jack the Ripper

by Philip Sudgen

  It was an anger fuelled by apprehension for the womenfolk were alert to the danger that the killer would strike again. ‘Thank God I needn’t be out after dark!’ exclaimed one. ‘No more needn’t I,’ chimed in another, ‘but my two girls have got to come home latish and I’m all of a fidget till they comes.’ A little woman with a rosy cherub face summed up the general view: ‘Life ain’t no great thing with many on us,’ she said, ‘but we don’t all want to be murdered, and if things go on like this it won’t be safe for nobody to put their ’eads out o’ doors.’

  Pity, anger, fear – but, above all, fascination. The murder held the collection of gossips and loafers in Buck’s Row as if by a spell. Some dropped away but their places were taken by fresh sightseers and every time new arrivals joined the crowd the supposed bloodstains were pointed out to them and the whole affair was avidly discussed again. And if the talk temporarily faltered the crowd ‘stood and silently stared at the pavement and the brickwork of the adjacent house and minutely examined the scratches and other marks in the wall, as if these things helped them to realise the horror of it all.’

  Polly Nichols was buried in the City of London Cemetery, Ilford, on the afternoon of Thursday, 6 September.7 The collection of the body proved complicated because although the time at which the cortege was to start had been kept a profound secret the date of the funeral had not and a large crowd had assembled about Old Montague Street. In order to get the body out of the mortuary, therefore, the undertaker resorted to stratagem. A two-horse, closed hearse was observed jogging eastwards along Hanbury Street. The crowd made way for it to turn into Old Montague Street but instead it passed on into Whitechapel Road and, doubling back, entered the mortuary by the back gate in Chapman’s Court. The ruse worked. There was not a soul about when the undertaker’s assistants placed the coffin into the hearse.

  The coffin was of polished elm and bore a plate inscribed with the words: ‘Mary Ann Nichols, aged 42; died August 31, 1888.’ It was driven to Hanbury Street, probably to No. 87, the house of Mrs Henry Smith, the undertaker, and there awaited the mourners. They were late in arriving, however, and by the time the cortege was ready to start news that the body was in the hearse had been passed around the district and the vehicle was surrounded by curious onlookers. With a police guard to keep the crowd at a distance the little procession – the hearse and two mourning coaches – at length set off for Ilford. It turned into Baker’s Row, passed the corner of Buck’s Row and entered Whitechapel Road, where police, stationed at intervals of several yards, ensured its passage. The mourners included Edward Walker, Polly’s father, William Nichols, her husband, and Edward John Nichols, her son, but the entire community appeared united in grief. Everywhere the greatest sympathy was expressed for the relatives and all the houses in the neighbourhood had their blinds drawn. ‘The expenses of the funeral,’ noted The Times, ‘were borne by the relatives of the deceased, her father, husband, and son.’

  When Polly was murdered Parliament had been in summer recess for eighteen days and would remain so until 6 November. Her death, nevertheless, sent the first ripples of alarm washing into the Home Office. For on 31 August, the day of the murder, L. & P. Walter & Son of Church Street, Spitalfields, manufacturers of clothing for export, sent a newspaper clipping and the following letter to Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary:

  We beg to enclose you [a] report of this fearful murder & to say that such is the state of affairs in this district that we are put to the necessity of [having] a nightwatchman to protect our premises. The only way in our humble opinion to tackle this matter is to offer at once a reward.

  At this time neither Matthews nor his advisers can possibly have anticipated the furore the murders would ultimately visit upon them and they considered a brief reply, barren of explanation, sufficient to exculpate them from further concern in the matter. Signed by Edward Leigh-Pemberton, Legal Assistant Under-Secretary at the Home Office, and dated 4 September, it curtly informed Walter & Son that ‘the practice of offering rewards for the discovery of criminals has for some time been discontinued; and that so far as the circumstances of the present case have at present been investigated, they do not in his [i.e. Matthews’] opinion disclose any special ground for departure from the usual custom.’8

  The direct responsibility for laying the killer by the heels fell to the Metropolitan Police. They were ill-prepared to meet the challenge. Nevertheless, in the context of the murder investigation, the extent and nature of their difficulties have been almost universally misconstrued. Assuredly the regime of General Sir Charles Warren, Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police from 1886 to 1888, was a troubled one. For while at loggerheads with his immediate superior, Henry Matthews, he made a determined effort to tighten up the structure and discipline of the force and was confronted by the need to police increasingly formidable demonstrations by socialists and the unemployed. The details of these much published differences do not concern us.9 Their impact upon the detective problem in Whitechapel does and that, contrary to popular belief, seems to have been negligible.

  Take ‘Bloody Sunday’. On Sunday, 13 November 1887, the police, assisted by detachments of Life and Grenadier Guards, successfully held Trafalgar Square against converging processions of socialists, radicals and Irish Home Rulers intent upon holding a rally there in defiance of a ban by the Commissioner. As regular as clockwork we are told that Warren’s stern policing of meetings of socialists and the unemployed, culminating in this fierce battle, embittered relations between the police and working-class people, and are led to infer that this somehow impeded their investigation of the murders. In some districts, it is true, ‘Bloody Sunday’ lingered as a bitter memory for more than twenty years. And Warren himself received hate mail. ‘Beware of your life you dog’ began one such communication. ‘Dont venture out too fur [sic]. Look out. This is yours – ’ and a drawing of a coffin followed.10 But not one jot does any of this seem to have affected police operations in the East End. There, as we shall see, large numbers of people had reasons of their own for avoiding the police but neither that nor Warren’s attempts to preserve public order at the expense of free speech prevented them from co-operating with them to ensnare Jack the Ripper. The murderer’s victims were drawn from the weakest and most vulnerable members of the community, ‘the poorest of the poor’, as the Observer reminds us, and impelled by a sense of common outrage as well as rapidly increasing reward money, East Enders not only organised themselves into a proliferation of local vigilance committees to assist the police but flocked to them in such numbers with information that Abberline, co-ordinating the inquiry at ground-level, almost broke down under the strain of processing it. Even in October 1888, when Warren sanctioned a massive house-to-house search north of Whitechapel High Street/Whitechapel Road, and when he feared that the socialists might orchestrate determined opposition to such an arbitrary measure, the community willingly accorded the police access to their homes. Both Warren, in a press notice of 17 October, and Robert Anderson, then head of CID, in a confidential minute six days later, happily acknowledged the fact, and for once the press agreed: ‘the greatest good feeling prevails towards the police, and noticeably in the most squalid dwellings the police had no difficulty in getting information.’11

  The skirmishing between Matthews and Warren was much more than a clash of uncongenial personalities because the two held widely divergent views on the extent of the Home Secretary’s authority over the force and on matters of general policy. Again, however, although they ultimately produced Warren’s resignation in November 1888, their squabbles did not exert a significant effect upon the conduct and prospects of the murder hunt. The records of the Whitechapel investigation do attest to the state of tension and distrust that existed between the two men. But Matthews supported a succession of initiatives proposed or endorsed by Warren – the experiment with bloodhounds, the house-to-house search and, belatedly, the offer of a pardon to any accomplice of the murderer who would betray him –
and vetoed only one, the offer of a government reward. The reward question was a complicated one. However, there were good reasons for the rejection of such a proposal and the nature of the crimes, together with the failure of substantial City and private rewards, suggests that a government offer would not have been successful.

  Exactly what the impact of Warren’s reforms within the force itself was is more difficult to judge. At the time the central complaint of the radical and opposition press was that under Warren the police were being transformed from a civil into a military force primarily intended, not for the prevention and detection of crime, but for the policing of political rallies and demonstrations of the poor and unemployed. The results, according to the exponents of this view, had been far reaching and pernicious – increasingly centralized control of the police, an emphasis upon drill and discipline, the discouragement of individual initiative throughout the force, the diversion of manpower and resources from the pursuit of criminals to political work and the consequent neglect of the CID.12 But the fact that such politically inspired vituperation was widely credited in 1888 does not oblige us to believe it now. Warren’s regime at Scotland Yard is badly in need of reappraisal and until some diligent research student undertakes the task we have few firm facts to go on. The little we do know, however, suggests that the embattled Commissioner may have been grossly maligned.

  Certainly Warren’s appointment was followed by those of five other army officers, three as chief and two as assistant chief constables, and certainly, to improve discipline, he greatly increased the number of inspectors and sergeants. It is also true that Sir Charles quarrelled with some of his colleagues, including Sir Richard Pennefather, the Receiver for the Metropolitan Police District, and James Monro, the Assistant Commissioner in charge of CID. The Warren – Monro feud is especially significant here in that it is held to have left the detective branch leaderless and demoralized at the very time that it was confronted by the Whitechapel murders.

  There were several sources of conflict between the two men.13 One lay in Monro’s dual role as Assistant Commissioner (CID) and Secret Agent. In the latter capacity he was the head of a small cadre of four CID inspectors designated Section D. Engaged entirely in political intelligence work, they were funded not from Metropolitan Police but Imperial funds, and Monro, as their chief, reported not to Warren but direct to the Home Office. Now Warren held the view that the position of Chief Commissioner was analogous to that of the general in the field, subject to higher authority for general purposes but in complete control of the internal administration and discipline of his force. Naturally, then, he resented the independence of Section D and considered its existence subversive of good discipline. Monro, on the other hand, strove to retain his independence as Secret Agent and even to extend it to his functions as Assistant Commissioner in charge of CID, and became increasingly exasperated by Warren’s attempts to restrict his freedom of action. There were other difficulties. Since the CID was undermanned and overworked, Monro proposed the creation of a new post of Assistant Chief Constable (CID) and nominated his friend Melville Macnaghten for the job. Warren suggested that Monro shed his secret service duties instead. In March 1888 the Home Office agreed to the appointment but when Warren objected that Macnaghten was unsuitable for the post quickly rescinded it. Eventually, in August, Monro resigned in protest against the ‘change of policy and system’ which the Chief Commissioner was seeking to impose.

  Notwithstanding all this, the view that Warren was a military despot, alienating his men, is greatly overdone. It assumes that the alleged proofs of Warren’s militarization of the police were all accurate which they were not. He did not, for example, greatly increase the number of army reserve men in the force since the Chief Commissioner had for several years been restricted to the employment of only 500 such at any one time. And it ignores Warren’s not inconsiderable leadership qualities, demonstrated over many years of active service abroad. An early riser, he had an immense capacity for work; a strong disciplinarian, his strictness was tempered by humour and by a solicitous care for the welfare of his men; and a courageous soldier, he had displayed a disposition to lead by example, to share the dangers and privations of his command. Such qualities do not foment disaffection, at least among the rank and file.

  Writing in 1910, Robert Anderson, Monro’s successor, conceded that at first there was a ‘dangerous want of sympathy’ between Warren and his men. But when Sir Charles stoutly defended the force from Home Office imputations after ‘Bloody Sunday’ the constables forgot their grievances so that, by the time Anderson joined the service, the Chief Commissioner’s ‘popularity with the uniformed force was established’. The deputation of police superintendents that called at Warren’s home to pay him tribute after his resignation in November 1888 suggests that this was indeed the case. Superintendent Draper, their spokesman, admitted that Warren had been a stickler for discipline but ‘repudiated the idea that such discipline was in any degree distasteful to the force so long as the regulations were administered with the fairness and equity which had characterized Sir Charles Warren’s tenure of office.’14

  In the CID, admittedly, things may have been a little different. Monro’s resignation took effect on 31 August, the day that Polly Nichols died in Buck’s Row. His successor, Dr (later Sir) Robert Anderson, possessed a keen analytical mind and twenty years’ experience in intelligence work for the Home Office. But he came to the Yard suffering from fatigue and was in such poor health that Dr Gilbart Smith of Harley Street immediately prescribed him two months’ leave for overwork. ‘This, of course, was out of the question,’ Anderson related in his memoirs. ‘But I told Mr Matthews, greatly to his distress, that I could not take up my new duties until I had had a month’s holiday in Switzerland. And so, after one week at Scotland Yard, I crossed the Channel.’15

  Yet even these upheavals do not seem to have seriously prejudiced the murder inquiries. It should not be supposed, for example, that the departure of Anderson left the Ripper hunters leaderless. In the East End Inspector Abberline co-ordinated their activities, while at the Yard central continuity of supervision was provided for on 15 September by the appointment of Chief Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson to oversee the investigation. Swanson, a shrewd Scot with twenty years’ service in the Metropolitan Police, was freed from all other duties. He was given an office to himself. And he was to see ‘every paper, every document, every report [and] every telegram’ relating to the inquiry. ‘I look upon him,’ wrote Warren, ‘as the eyes and ears of the Commissioner in this particular case.’16

  When Anderson succeeded Monro he found some CID officers smarting over the treatment accorded their late chief. But the rift between Warren and the detective branch was but temporary. Anderson soon established a harmonious working relationship with the Chief Commissioner. ‘My relations with Sir Charles were always easy and pleasant,’ he wrote later. ‘I always found him perfectly frank and open, and he treated me as a colleague, leaving me quite unfettered in the control of my department.’ In the East End detectives showed no lack of commitment to the murder hunt. To judge from their reminiscences Abberline and Dew nearly exhausted themselves in the effort. And after the double murder of 30 September even the radical Star, ever eager to disparage Warren and his force, felt obliged to acknowledge their diligence: ‘The failure of the police to discover the Whitechapel murderer is certainly not due to inactivity. No one who has had occasion to visit the police offices whence the investigations are being conducted can escape the impression that everybody is on the move, and it is probably a fact that very few of the chief officials and detectives have had their regular rest since last Sunday morning. One hears no complaint against the demand for extra duty, except in instances where the pressure is unevenly applied, for the police are individually more interested in the capture of the murderer than anyone else.’17

  The general troubles of the Metropolitan Police, then, scarcely touched the Ripper investigation, and those writers
who have sought in them some explanation of the killer’s escape have largely misdirected their efforts. More, by dwelling upon them they have diverted attention away from the real causes of the police failure, which lay specifically in the nature of the detective problem in Whitechapel. The murders posed a most formidable challenge to the fledgling CID. Their difficulties stemmed from the character of Whitechapel and Spitalfields, the area of the atrocities, from the primitive state of Victorian methods of criminal detection and, most of all, from the nature of the crimes themselves. Together these factors operated to stack the odds in favour of the murderer from the first.

  Throughout the century Whitechapel and Spitalfields had been reputedly criminous as well as poor. For the criminal a residence on the border between the City and Metropolitan Police jurisdictions was highly advantageous and the Whitechapel-Spitalfields district lay just outside the City’s north-eastern boundary, on and beyond the arc from Bishopsgate round to Aldgate. The market in Petticoat Lane, moreover, afforded ample facilities for the disposal of stolen goods. ‘If the King’s crown were to come within half a mile of Petticoat Lane,’ boasted one thief in 1835, ‘money would be found in an hour for its purchase.’18

  The main refuge of the poor, criminal and non-criminal alike, lay in a maze of dirty streets, courts and alleys between Petticoat Lane and Brick Lane. But by 1888 the area was being transformed by the demolition contractor and by Jewish immigration into the East End.