There were no policewomen in the Metropolitan Police before World War I. Back in 1888, therefore, it was commonly suggested in the press that detectives might successfully entrap the Ripper if they perambulated the streets dressed as women. At that time police recruits were all five feet seven inches in height or over so this idea would not have been as easy to implement as it sounded. Nevertheless, we know of at least one detective who did don female disguise. He was Detective Sergeant Robinson of G Division and his activities have come down to us because he became embroiled in a melée with a pair of pugnacious cab-washers in Phoenix Place, St Pancras.
Investigating a rumour that the Ripper was in the neighbourhood, Robinson proceeded to Phoenix Place where, between twelve and one on the morning of 9 October, he was with Detective-Sergeant Mather, one Henry Doncaster and several Italians, watching a man who ‘was in company with a woman under circumstances of great suspicion’. Robinson was disguised in female clothing. At this point the watchers themselves came under the notice of William Jarvis and James Phillips, two cab-washers from a nearby cabyard, and they evidently concluded that the strangers were up to no good.
What happened next depends upon which party one believes. According to Robinson, the cab-washers accosted him in an intimidating manner.
‘What are you messing about here for?’ demanded Jarvis.
Robinson took off his woman’s hat. ‘I am a police officer,’ he said.
‘Oh, you are cats and dogs, are you?’ replied Jarvis. And with that he threw a punch at the detective.
Then, when Robinson grasped him by the coat, Jarvis pulled a knife.
Jarvis and Phillips told a different story. By their account, they asked Robinson’s party what they were doing near the cabs and Robinson told them to mind their own business and thrust Jarvis away by putting a fist against his chin.
Whatever the origins of the dispute, a fierce struggle ensued during which Robinson was stabbed over the left eye and on the bridge of the nose, Doncaster was stabbed in the face and had his jaw dislocated, and Jarvis was cracked across the head with Robinson’s truncheon. Jarvis’ cries for assistance – ‘Come on, George, cats and dogs!’ – brought several other men from the cabyard, armed with pitchforks and other implements. But they made no attempt to use their weapons and, after police reinforcements had come up, Jarvis and Phillips were taken into custody.
The combatants made a sorry sight when they came before Clerkenwell Police Court later in the day, the cab-washers accused of cutting and wounding Detective-Sergeant Robinson. Robinson appeared with surgical straps around his left eye, Doncaster and Jarvis with their heads bound in bloodstained bandages. Robinson contended that he had struck at the hand with which Jarvis had been holding his knife but had missed and struck his head. However, pressed by Mr Ricketts, the prisoners’ solicitor, he conceded that after he had been stabbed he didn’t care whether he hit Jarvis on the hand or the head. The prisoners were remanded for a week and then committed for trial and released on bail. At the end of the month they were tried at the Middlesex Sessions of the Peace for assaulting police in the execution of their duty. Phillips was acquitted but Jarvis was convicted and sentenced to six weeks’ imprisonment with hard labour.17
The influx into Whitechapel of plain clothes detectives, with or without women’s clothes, must have presented something of a problem to patrolling constables. The night after the murders PC Ludwig, patrolling between Cannon Street Road and Back Church Lane, encountered a very strange figure indeed, its height and masculine stride ill-befitting its shabby raiment as a woman of the town.
‘Stop!’ cried the constable. ‘You’re a man, aren’t you? I can see that you are.’
The figure confessed that it was.
‘Are you one of us?’ queried Ludwig.
No, the man explained, he was not a detective but a reporter who had disguised himself as a prostitute the better to root out copy on the murders.
Ludwig eyed him dubiously and then conducted him to Leman Street Police Station. There, however, his story was verified and he was allowed to go.18
Although there was always a chance that the murderer might be taken red-handed attempting another crime, the drafting in of extra men was designed primarily as a short-term, preventative measure. Detection of the criminal required more offensive operations and, in the days immediately after the Stride murder, the Metropolitan Police conducted extensive inquiries and searches throughout Whitechapel.
One was the inevitable visitation of common lodging houses and over 2,000 lodgers were interviewed. By this stage, though, it was commonly believed that if the killer had resorted to such an establishment he would not have escaped notice and that it was more likely that he lived with relatives or in private lodgings. So, in order to solicit information from landlords and their tenants, some 80,000 handbills19 were printed and distributed in the area:
POLICE NOTICE
TO THE OCCUPIER.
On the mornings of Friday, 31st August, Saturday 8th, and Sunday, 30th September, 1888, Women were murdered in or near Whitechapel, supposed by some one residing in the immediate neighbourhood. Should you know of any person to whom suspicion is attached, you are earnestly requested to communicate at once with the nearest Police Station.
Metropolitan Police Office, 30th September, 1888.
Critics doubted the efficacy of this bill, pointing out that it contained no promise of a reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer and that, printed in English, it was incomprehensible to large numbers of the immigrant population, a fact not without significance if it was held that the murderer was a foreigner being sheltered by compatriots.
But other searches were in hand too. Seventy-six butchers and slaughterers were visited by police and the characters of their employees inquired into. The Thames Police investigated sailors working aboard vessels in the docks or on the river. Inquiries were mounted into Asiatics living in London and into the reputed presence of Greek gipsies in the capital. The latter were cleared of suspicion when it was learned that they had not been in London at the times of the murders. Similarly, three cowboys attached to the American Exhibition were traced and satisfactorily accounted for their whereabouts at the critical times. If the newspapers are to be credited the net was cast wider still, taking in hospitals, workhouses, prisons and vacant buildings.20
Sir John Whittaker Ellis, a former Lord Mayor of London, wrote to Matthews on 3 October with an idea for a bolder initiative. He suggested that the police draw a half-mile cordon around the centre of Whitechapel and search every house within it. ‘It is a strong thing to do,’ he admitted, ‘but I should think such occasion never before arose.’ A better word than ‘strong’ would have been ‘illegal’ because the police had no authority to forcibly enter and search anyone’s home without a warrant from a magistrate.
Warren baulked at the prospect. He felt that if the search failed to unearth the killer it was sure to be roundly condemned, and worried that such an unlawful step might succeed in uniting the Socialists to resist the operation, endangering the lives of his constables and exposing them, in the event of damage to property or injury to civilians, to dire legal consequences. Writing to Ruggles-Brise, Matthews’ private secretary, on 4 October, Sir Charles declared himself ‘quite prepared to take the responsibility of adopting the most drastic or arbitrary measures that the Secretary of State can name which would further the securing of the murderer, however illegal they may be, provided HM Government will support me.’ But he doubted whether it was worth risking riot and loss of life in order ‘to search for one murderer whose whereabouts is not known.’ The next day Matthews replied with a more practicable alternative. Could not the police, he suggested, take all the houses in a given area ‘which appear suspicious upon the best inquiry your detectives can make’, search those for which the permission of the owners or occupiers could be procured and then apply to a magistrate for search warrants to enter the rest? The flaw in his plan, of course, was t
hat since the police didn’t know where the killer might be hiding they would have found it next to impossible to show plausible grounds for the granting of a warrant to search any particular house. That suggested by Matthews – that it was possible ‘the murderer may be there’ – could have been applied to almost any habitation in the metropolis! The Home Secretary did appreciate the difficulty. ‘If search warrants are refused,’ he wrote, ‘you can only keep the houses under observation.’21
In the end it was decided to confine the search to those premises within a given area for which the consent of the occupier could be obtained and by 13 October the operation was under way. Embracing some of the worst slums of Whitechapel and Spitalfields, the area of the search was bounded by Lamb Street, Commercial Street, the Great Eastern Railway and Buxton Street on the north and Whitechapel Road on the south, by the City boundary on the west and Albert Street, Dunk Street, Chicksand Street and Great Garden Street on the east. There, for the best part of a week, plain clothes officers went from house to house, seeking admission to every room, looking under beds, peering into cupboards, inspecting knives, interviewing landlords and their lodgers. Mrs Andleman of 7 Spelman Street regaled the Star with her story of the search:
I came home from work yesterday, and as soon as I opened the street door, two men came up and said, ‘Do you live in this front room?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We want to have a look at it.’ ‘Who are you, and what do you want?’ ‘We are police officers, and we have come to look for the murderer.’ ‘Do you think I keep the murderer here, or do you suggest that I associate with him?’ I replied. They answered that it was their duty to inspect the rooms. I showed them into my room. They looked under the bed, and asked me to open the cupboards. I opened a small cupboard, where I keep plates and things. It is not more than two feet wide and about one in depth. They made an inspection of that also. ‘Do you think,’ I said, ‘that it is possible for a man, or even a child, to be hidden in that small place?’ They made no answer, and walked out. Then they went next door and inspected those premises.
Mrs Andleman obviously resented the intrusion and, in the East End, it would have been astonishing had there been no animosity shown towards the police. There must have been those who refused them entry. But Warren’s fears of widespread obstruction happily proved unfounded. For such was the desire of the community to rid itself of the murderer that almost everywhere the police found occupiers more than happy to co-operate with them. Our evidence is virtually unanimous on this point. ‘With few exceptions,’ said Warren on the 17th, ‘the inhabitants of all classes and creeds have freely fallen in with the proposal, and have materially assisted the officers engaged in carrying it out.’ Dr Anderson, the new head of CID, in a confidential minute written six days later, agreed: ‘the public generally and especially the inhabitants of the East End have shown a marked desire to assist in every way, even at some sacrifice to themselves, as for example in permitting their houses to be searched.’ And so did the press: ‘The greatest good feeling prevails towards the police, and noticeably in the most squalid dwellings the police had no difficulty in getting information.’
The search was completed on 18 October. It did not unmask the murderer. Nor did its failure to do so demonstrate that he did not live in the area designated for the search. In a permissive undertaking such as this anyone who really had something to hide might easily have denied the police access to their property, and although Chief Inspector Swanson reported that the exceptions were not such as to warrant suspicion the CID had no means of being certain of that. Indeed, the police knew so little about their quarry that they might well have interviewed him without suspecting him in the least. However, if the search did something to appease the public’s clamour for action it fulfilled what was arguably one of its main objectives.22
Unquestionably the most famous and misunderstood initiative of the Metropolitan Police was the experiment with bloodhounds. Misunderstood, because Ripperologists have foisted three tenacious myths upon the public: that the bloodhound trials were Warren’s pet project, that they were discredited when the dogs got lost in a fog on Tooting Common, and that the fiasco made Sir Charles the laughing stock of London. Now the truth was very different. Warren undertook the experiment at the suggestion of the Home Office, and the Home Office simply responded to advice daily urged upon the police by public and press. The Tooting Common episode, so beloved of Ripperologists, was a complete fiction. And far from the trials heaping ridicule upon the Commissioner’s head, they were generally welcomed by public and press and both continued to repose great faith in the hounds long after they had been returned to their owner. Indeed, some went so far as to attribute the Ripper’s inactivity during October to the well-publicized presence of the dogs in London.
The suggestion that bloodhounds might be used to track the killer, first heard after the Hanbury Street murder, was at once raised again in the wake of the double event. On 1 October a Times editorial reminded its readers that in 1876 the murderer William Fish had been detected with the help of a bloodhound. Noticing this editorial, Percy Lindley, a breeder of bloodhounds at York Hill, Loughton, in Essex, wasted no time in writing to The Times to extol the virtues of the breed. ‘As a breeder of bloodhounds, and knowing their power,’ he said, ‘I have little doubt that, had a hound been put upon the scent of the murderer while fresh, it might have done what the police have failed in.’ Lindley suggested that a couple of trained dogs be kept at one of the police stations in Whitechapel, ready for immediate use in the event of another murder, and it was his letter that launched the Metropolitan Police experiment. For when it was printed in The Times on 2 October it was spotted by the Home Office and promptly transmitted by them to Sir Charles Warren.23
Wise after the event, Sir Melville Macnaghten and Ex-Chief Inspector Dew later wrote disparagingly of the experiment, but in 1888 even the experts were divided on the potential value of bloodhounds for police work in the East End. H. M. Mackusick of Merstham in Surrey, boasting the largest kennel of bloodhounds in existence, agreed with Percy Lindley and declared that ‘ten well-trained bloodhounds would be of more use than a hundred constables in ferreting out criminals who have left no trace beyond the fact of their presence behind them.’ Edwin Brough, a breeder from Wyndyate near Scarborough, was less hopeful. Brough admired the bloodhound. It could, he asserted, hunt ‘a lighter scent than any other hound, and when properly trained will stick to the line of the hunted man, although it may have been crossed by others.’ But he doubted whether there were in England dogs sufficiently well trained to work in the crowded streets of Whitechapel. ‘Unless laid on [the scent] at once,’ he warned, ‘the chances are that the hound might hit off the wrong trail.’24
Neither Warren nor Matthews was unaware of the problems. Indeed, in a letter to Percy Lindley, Warren queried how a dog could be expected to track the killer without a vestige of his clothing or trace of his blood, especially ‘on a London pavement where people have been walking all the evening [and] there may be scores of scents almost as keen as those of the murderer.’ But given the contradictory advice on offer their decision to attempt the experiment can only be commended. On 5 October Warren requested authority from the Home Secretary to expend £50 in the present financial year and £100 per annum thereafter in keeping trained bloodhounds in London. This would be irrespective of any ‘expenses which may occur in the special use of bloodhounds at the present moment.’ Matthews trod warily. He decided to sanction one payment of £50 only, to be spent on the use of dogs in the present emergency, but declined to commit himself to a permanent annual charge unless the venture could demonstrate that bloodhounds could be usefully employed in the metropolis without danger to the public.25 Warren had already made inquiries of several dog breeders. As a result, on Saturday, 6 October, Edwin Brough arrived in London with Barnaby and Burgho, two of his finest animals.
At seven on Monday morning the trials began in Regent’s Park. Although the ground was thickly coated in hoar frost
the hounds performed well, successfully tracking a man who had been given a fifteen-minute start for nearly a mile. That night they were tried again, this time in Hyde Park. It was dark and the dogs were worked on a leash but once more they were successful in performing their allotted task. Next morning, 9 October, further trials were held in the presence of Sir Charles Warren. In all, half a dozen runs were made, the Commissioner himself acting the part of the hunted man on two occasions. Again the results were encouraging. In every instance the bloodhounds hunted complete strangers and occasionally the trail was deliberately crossed to deceive them. Whenever this happened the dogs were checked, but only temporarily, for one or other of them, casting around, invariably picked up the trail again. ‘In consequence of the coldness of the scent,’ reported the Central News, ‘the hounds worked very slowly, but they demonstrated the possibility of tracking complete strangers on to whose trail they had been laid. The Chief Commissioner seemed pleased with the result of the trials, though he did not express any definite opinion on the subject to those present.’ Warren’s caution was justified. We are not told the venue of the third trial but it was, like the others, in one of the London parks. Therein lay the problem. For however impressively the dogs might work on grass and across country there could be no certainty that they could repeat their success in Whitechapel.26 Nevertheless, Sir Charles thought they were worth a try and instructions were issued that, in the event of another murder, the body must not be touched until the dogs had been put on the scent.
The Tooting Common episode, which is said to have discredited the whole experiment, is a myth. It sprang from a false news report of 19 October: ‘It is stated that Sir Charles Warren’s bloodhounds were out for practice at Tooting yesterday morning and were lost. Telegrams have been despatched to all the Metropolitan Police stations stating that, if seen anywhere, information is to be immediately sent to Scotland Yard.’ The truth was less dramatic. On 18 October a sheep was killed on the common and local police wired to London for the loan of the dogs. Unfortunately neither animal was available. Burgho had already been returned to Scarborough. And Barnaby was out being practised by Mr Taunton, a friend of Edwin Brough, at Hemel Hempstead. Some comment that the hounds did not arrive in Tooting when sent for must have been made and noised abroad. This, blown up as only a journalist knows how, was the sole basis for the press story.27
Complete History of Jack the Ripper Page 39
