Schwartz’s time, then, was not necessarily correct. Furthermore, altercations such as that he described seem to have been commonplace in the area. Baxter asked PC Lamb, whose beat in Commercial Road took him past the end of Berner Street, whether he had seen anything suspicious that night. The constable’s reply is revealing: ‘I did not at any time. There were squabbles and rows in the streets, but nothing more.’29 Berner Street itself was the subject of conflicting testimony. PC Smith said that very few prostitutes were to be seen there. William West, Morris Eagle and Louis Diemschutz, stalwarts of the International Working Men’s Club and hence doubtless anxious to dissociate it from all scandalous imputation, denied that the club yard was regularly used by prostitutes. Nevertheless, West did concede at the inquest that he had once seen a couple chatting by the yard gates and that he had sometimes noticed low men and women standing about and talking to each other in Fairclough Street close by. Some Berner Street residents, moreover, certainly did regard the club and its yard as a troublespot. ‘I do not think the yard bears a very good character at night,’ said Barnett Kentorrich of No. 38, ‘but I do not interfere with any of the people about here. I know that the gate is not kept fastened.’ The reaction of several residents to the alarm occasioned by the finding of the body is instructive. Charles Letchford of No. 30 told the press that he had taken no notice because ‘disturbances are very frequent at the club and I thought it was only another row’ and Mrs Mortimer of No. 36 similarly attributed the commotion to ‘another row at the Socialists’ Club close by.’30
If Schwartz was out just fifteen minutes in his reckoning, if the incident he saw took place, not at 12.45 but, say, at 12.30, then the significance of his statement is greatly reduced. We do not know that he was mistaken but it will always be on the cards that he was witness to nothing more than a street brawl.
Despite these reservations we have in Schwartz a witness – and a witness the police believed – who claimed to have seen a woman attacked at the time and place of a known murder. Not only that, but we have a witness who identified the dead woman as the victim of the attack he saw. His is crucial evidence and we cannot ignore it.
We may be wrong in thinking of Jack the Ripper as just one man. For Schwartz compels us to take very seriously the possibility that he was really two. The Hungarian certainly saw two men at the scene of the crime that night. Were they, in fact, confederates? Schwartz’s impression at the time was that they were. In his statement to the police he said that the first man, the one attacking the woman, ‘called out apparently to the man on the opposite side of the road “Lipski”.’ Schwartz then walked away but, ‘finding that he was followed by the second man’, started to run. He ran as far as the railway arch ‘but the man did not follow so far.’ Quite clearly Schwartz was under the impression that the murderer had alerted his accomplice to Schwartz’s presence and that the accomplice, the second man, was seeing him off.
But a badly frightened man is not a good observer. Later, safe in the police station and under Abberline’s patient cross-examination, Schwartz could not be absolutely certain that the two men had been acting together.
‘Schwartz cannot say,’ runs Swanson’s digest of the original report, ‘whether the two men were together or known to each other.’ Schwartz’s first impression may have been mistaken. Perhaps, like Schwartz, the second man was simply an innocent passer-by. And perhaps, like Schwartz, he took fright at what he was seeing and fled in the same direction. We do not know. However, to judge by the interview Schwartz later gave to the Star, the Hungarian remained true to his first instinct. The newspaper evidently dressed the story up to make it a more exciting read but the connection between the two men was reaffirmed. In this version the second man, perceiving Schwartz, called out a warning to the murderer and then rushed forward, knife in hand, ‘as if to attack the intruder [i.e. Schwartz]’. Schwartz, once again, precipitately fled.
Schwartz’s story is also quite strong evidence that the murderer was not a Jew. Since the Home Office made precisely the opposite deduction from it, though, this statement calls for explanation.
Schwartz thought at the time that when Stride’s attacker shouted ‘Lipski’ he was addressing his accomplice across the road. Lipski was a familiar Jewish name throughout the East End because of the trial and execution of Israel Lipski, a Polish Jew, for the murder of Miriam Angel in 1887. The Home Office favoured the view, therefore, that the murderer probably had an accomplice named Lipski and that both were Jews.
On 24 October, in response to a call for ‘a report of all the measures which have been taken for the detection of the perpetrator of the Whitechapel Murders and of the results’, Warren forwarded to the Home Office copies of Chief Inspector Swanson’s summary reports on the murders. In the margin of the Stride report, against the passage relating to Schwartz, Godfrey Lushington, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office, wrote: ‘The use of “Lipski” increases my belief that the murderer was a Jew.’ And on 27 October Matthews himself minuted the papers: ‘The statement of Schwartz that a man, who was in the company of Elizabeth Stride 15 minutes before she was found dead, & who threw her down, addressed a companion (?) as “Lipski” seems to furnish a clue which ought to be followed up. The number of “Lipskis” in Whitechapel must be limited. If one of them were identified by Schwartz it might lead to something of importance.’31
Abberline’s own interpretation of Schwartz’s observations, however, was very different. We owe its committal to paper to the Home Secretary’s continued interest in the affair. Matthews’ queries on Swanson’s reports were transmitted to Warren on 29 October. ‘It does not appear,’ one of them ran, ‘whether the man [murderer] used the word “Lipski” as a mere ejaculation, meaning in mockery “I am going to ‘Lipski’ the woman”, or whether he was calling to a man across the road by his proper name. In the latter case . . . the murderer must have an acquaintance in Whitechapel named Lipski. Mr Matthews . . . will be glad if he can be furnished with a report as to any investigations made to trace the man “Lipski”.’32
Abberline was consulted by his superiors for material with which to furnish a reply to this missive and his report, dated 1 November 1888, has survived. It reads in part:
I beg to report that since a Jew named Lipski was hanged for the murder of a Jewess in 1887 the name has very frequently been used by persons as a mere ejaculation by way of endeavouring to insult the Jew to whom it has been addressed, and as Schwartz has a strong Jewish appearance I am of opinion it was addressed to him as he stopped to look at the man he saw apparently Musing the deceased woman.
I questioned Israel Schwartz very closely at the time he made the statement as to whom the man addressed when he called Lipski, but he was unable to say.
There was only one other person to be seen in the street, and that was a man on the opposite side of the road in the act of lighting his pipe.
Schwartz being a foreigner and unable to speak English became alarmed and ran away. The man whom he saw lighting his pipe also ran in the same direction as himself, but whether this man was running after him or not he could not tell. He might have been alarmed the same as himself and ran away.
. . . Inquiries have also been made in the neighbourhood but no person named Lipski could be found.33
This report, marrying personal knowledge of the witness with an intimate understanding of conditions in Whitechapel, is such a document as only Abberline could have written, and as one of very few that enable us to see inside the head of this fine detective is quite fascinating. The inspector knew that the name Lipski had become an insult, spat in the faces of Jews in the East End, and he noted Schwartz’s ‘strong Jewish appearance’. His deduction, therefore, was that when Stride’s attacker shouted ‘Lipski!’ he was not addressing an accomplice by name, as Lushington and Matthews both assumed, but directing an anti-semitic taunt at Schwartz himself. The import of Abberline’s interpretation is clear – the murderer was probably an East Ender and almost certainly not a
Jew.34
There is, though, a third possible interpretation of Schwartz’s evidence. It is an attractive one because it preserves Schwartz’s original feeling that ‘Lipski’ was shouted to an accomplice while, at the same time, suggesting a solution to other unexplained riddles of the ‘double event’. Referring to accomplices by false names in front of witnesses was just as obvious a ploy to Victorian villains as it is to their counterparts today. So if the murderer did call an accomplice ‘Lipski’ it was perhaps because he intended Schwartz to think that this was the man’s real name and that both he and the murderer were Jews. We may be dealing, then, with a deliberate subterfuge designed to incriminate the Jews, crude certainly, but good enough to hoodwink the Home Office and perhaps only one of several such ploys practised by the murderer that night. A plan to fix the blame on the Jews would explain, for example, why the murderer killed Elizabeth in Dutfield’s Yard, by the door of the International Working Men’s Educational Club, a club largely patronized by Jewish immigrants, and why, in order to accomplish that object, he might have been prepared to loiter about the street with his chosen victim for more than an hour, observing the movements of PC Smith and awaiting his chance. No other murder in the series took place to the south of the Aldgate-Whitechapel Road thoroughfare.
Such a design could explain, too, that cryptic message left in chalk in a doorway in Goulston Street, just above a piece of the Mitre Square victim’s bloodstained apron: ‘The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.’
11
False Leads
NO ACCOUNT OF the Stride killing would be complete without reference to Matthew Packer and Mrs Mortimer. Both witnesses were, and indeed still are, commonly believed to have seen the murderer. And both, in their different ways, contributed immeasurably to the mythology surrounding Jack the Ripper.
Matthew Packer was a greengrocer and fruiterer, trading from a barrow and from his small shop at 44 Berner Street, two doors south of the International Working Men’s Educational Club. Police records describe him only as an elderly man. The reporter who interviewed him for the Evening News said that he was quiet and intelligent, that he and his wife were ‘both a little past the prime of life and . . . known as respectable hard-working people.’
The first detective to encounter Packer was Sergeant Stephen White of H Division, one of two officers detailed by Abberline on Sunday, 30 September, the day of the murder, to make house-to-house inquiries in Berner Street. We know that he was supplied with a special notebook in which to record his findings. This, alas, has disappeared. So our only record of White’s first interview with Packer is contained in a report written by the sergeant on 4 October:
About 9 a.m. [30 September] I called at 44 Berner Street, and saw Matthew Packer, fruiterer in a small way of business. I asked him what time he closed his shop on the previous night. He replied ‘Half past twelve, in consequence of the rain it was no good for me to keep open’. I asked him if he saw anything of a man or woman going into Dutfield’s Yard, or saw anyone standing about the street about the time he was closing his shop. He replied ‘No I saw no one standing about neither did I see anyone go up the yard. I never saw anything suspicious or heard the slightest noise. And knew nothing about the murder until I heard of it this morning.’
I also saw Mrs. Packer, Sarah Harrison and Harry Douglas residing in the same house but none of them could give the slightest information respecting the matter.1
If the police imagined that they had done with Packer they were very much mistaken. For by 2 October, just two days later, the greengrocer was telling a quite different story to Messrs Grand and Batchelor of 283 Strand, two private detectives in the employ of the Mile End Vigilance Committee. He now insisted that at about 11.45 on the night of the murder he had sold half a pound of black grapes to a man and a woman standing outside his shop in Berner Street and that this couple had afterwards loitered about the street for more than half an hour. ‘The man,’ said Packer, ‘was middle-aged, perhaps 35 years; about five feet seven inches in height; was stout, square-built; wore a wideawake hat and dark clothes; had the appearance of a clerk; had a rough voice and a quick, sharp way of talking.’2
Further inquiries by Grand and Batchelor apparently tended to substantiate this story. Two sisters, Mrs Rosenfield and Miss Eva Harstein of 14 Berner Street, told them that early on the Sunday morning they had noticed a grape-stalk, stained with blood, in Dutfield’s Yard, close to where the body had been found. Reasoning that the police could have washed the stalk down the drain when they cleaned up the yard, Grand and Batchelor then visited Dutfield’s Yard to search the sink. There, amidst a heap of heterogeneous filth, they are said to have discovered a grape-stalk.
The Evening News got wind of this development. And on the evening of 3 October one of its reporters called at 44 Berner Street to hear the full story from the lips of the man ‘who spoke to the murderer’. Packer’s tale, as set forth in this interview, is worth recounting at length.
For most of Saturday, 29 September, Packer was out with his barrow. But he didn’t do much business and, ‘as the night came on wet’, decided to go home and take his wife’s place serving in the shop. At some time between 11.30 and midnight a man and a woman walked up Berner Street from the direction of Ellen Street and stopped outside his window to look at the fruit.
The man looked about 30–35 years of age, was of medium height and had rather a dark complexion. He wore a black coat and a black, soft, felt hat. ‘He looked to me,’ explained Packer, ‘like a clerk or something of that sort. I am certain he wasn’t what I should call a working man or anything like us folks that live around here.’ His companion was middle-aged. She wore dark clothes and was carrying a white flower in her hand.
After the couple had stood there for about a minute the man stepped forward and said: ‘I say, old man, how do you sell your grapes?’
‘Sixpence a pound the black ’uns, sir,’ replied Packer, ‘and four pence a pound the white ’uns.’
The man turned to the woman. ‘Which will you have, my dear, black or white? You shall have whichever you like best.’ The woman chose the black. ‘Give us half a pound of the black ones, then,’ ordered the man. Packer thought that he sounded educated. He had ‘a loud, sharp sort of voice, and a quick commanding way with him.’
There was no need for the couple to come into the shop. It had a half window in front and most of Packer’s dealings were carried on through the lower part of the window case in which his fruit was exposed for sale. He put the grapes into a paper bag and handed them out to the man.
For a minute or two the man and woman stood near the entrance of Dutfield’s Yard. Then they crossed the road and, for more than half an hour, stood across the way from the shop. ‘Why,’ Packer exclaimed to his wife, ‘them people must be a couple o’ fools to stand out there in the rain eating the grapes they bought here, when they might just as well have had shelter!’ They were still there when the Packers went to bed. Packer couldn’t remember exactly when that was but thought that it ‘must have been past midnight a little bit, for the public houses were shut up.’3
The Evening News concluded its article with a sally at the police. ‘Well, Mr Packer,’ the reporter is made to observe, ‘I suppose the police came at once to ask you and your wife what you knew about the affair, as soon as ever the body was discovered?’
‘The police?’ echoed Packer. ‘No. THEY HAVEN’T ASKED ME A WORD ABOUT IT YET!!!’ He then went on to explain that although a plain-clothes officer had come to the shop a day after the murder in order to look over the backyard no policeman had yet questioned him about what he might know of the tragedy.
When the Evening News story was published on 4 October the police were understandably bewildered. Inspector Moore immediately sent Sergeant White to talk to Packer again and to take him to the mortuary to see if he could recognize Elizabeth Stride. White’s efforts, however, were consistently thwarted by the private detectives. First he went to Packer�
�s shop but Mrs Packer told him that two detectives had already collected her husband and taken him to the mortuary. On his way there the sergeant met Packer, with one of his escorts, coming back.
‘Where have you been?’ asked White.
‘This detective asked me to go to see if I could identify the woman,’ said Packer.
‘Have you done so?’
‘Yes’ replied Packer. ‘I believe she bought some grapes at my shop about 12 o’clock on Saturday.’
Complete History of Jack the Ripper Page 30
