The Lady in the Cellar

by Sinclair McKay

  First, Hacker was called upon to look at the clothing that had remained on the corpse; was this his sister’s mode of dress? It was. Inspector Hagen then asked him if there might be any other distinguishing features with which they might be able to identify her.

  There was the matter of her hair; despite her advancing years, the deceased was in the habit of wearing it in striking auburn ringlets. Hacker was adamant about the colour. The hair that remained on the skull was indeed dyed that shade.

  Were there, he was asked, any items of valuable clothing or jewellery that would be particularly distinctive and recognisable? There was a gold watch; one that had come from the family’s old home in Canterbury.

  Edward Hacker was allowed to return home. There was, for a few hours more, some caution on the part of Inspector Hagen and his team; the newspapers were clamouring but the police did not want to make prematurely public the name of the woman. Hagen would also have been acutely conscious that identification of the body was merely one step; discovering how that body had come to have been found in the coal cellar was another.

  None the less, some journalists had got hold of a name; and they were swift to arrive on the doorstep of 4, Euston Square. They wanted to put it directly to Severin Bastendorff that the murdered woman had been one of his lodgers.

  Constables from the local station had just managed to reach Mr Bastendorff in time, however, and the journalists were thwarted, left merely to note that Bastendorff ‘refuses to say’ if the victim had lived under his roof ‘or indeed to answer any inquiries on the subject, stating that he has been counselled by the police to withhold all information’ pending the resumption of the inquest.1

  The strain upon Bastendorff, his wife Mary, his young children and his brothers, was increasing by the hour. The publicity would surely only lead to any further possible tenants shunning the house. There were also crowds gathered at all hours of the day (and into the evening) just outside; gothically fascinated sightseers who wanted to take a long look at this landmark of murder.

  ‘Euston Square continues to be of great interest to the public,’ reported the Morning Post blithely, perhaps only half aware that its own detailed reporting of the grisly horror was half the reason. ‘Two policemen are stationed at the corner of the thoroughfare for the purpose of restraining the exuberance of the sightseers.’2

  The positive identification of a gold watch was the next step towards giving a definitive identity to the murdered woman. It had materialised in a pawn shop in St Pancras. On the back of it was the address of its maker – a Mr Warren, of Canterbury, Kent. Inspector Hagen, in the meantime, had been contacted by his colleagues in that town; there was indeed local talk of an eccentric lady who was known to have moved to London and subsequently vanished.

  To be certain, Hagen took a train from London to Canterbury, bearing the gold watch and some of those ringlets of auburn hair. He presented himself to Superintendent Davies of the Canterbury police and laid the items before him. Davies had had some rueful dealings with the lady in question several years ago.

  And now, as he looked at the items and affirmed that they were absolutely hers, Inspector Hagen knew for certain that the murdered woman was Matilda Hacker, described as an ‘elderly maiden’.3

  She was a renowned eccentric, in her mid-60s, who had been a colourful, aggravating and often madly impetuous figure. She was wealthy too. But in terms of finances, debts and obligations, she was curiously irresponsible and prone to quarrelsome chaos. Although a blithe spirit herself, Matilda Hacker, it seemed, had led a formidable dance of infuriated figures across the years.

  But what sort of dance could have led to this ghastly end?

  8

  The Canterbury Dolls

  The mummy in the cellar had at least her public identity restored. ‘The body is … supposed to be that of an elderly maiden lady, named Hacker, a native of Canterbury, who removed from that city to London, on the death of her sister, between two and three years ago,’ reported the London Evening Standard, ‘… and when last heard of was living in apartments at the (Euston Square) address in question.’1

  Yet the revelation of her identity only added a further dimension of mystery to the case; for now, the authorities knew Matilda Hacker was also a woman of sizeable property and fortune; and how could such a lady have ended up hidden for months under a pile of coal in a London boarding house cellar?

  Matilda Hacker had also, in her latter years, moved about under a variety of pseudonyms. The one name she had never used was her own. She had, for some reason, considered herself a fugitive. ‘Miss Hacker and her sister were persons of very eccentric habits,’ ran one newspaper report of the years before Matilda Hacker came to London. ‘Though both upwards of sixty years of age, they were accustomed to dress in the style of girls of eighteen, and while owning, it is stated, a considerable amount of property in Canterbury, and being of comfortable circumstances, they yet lived in the most penurious circumstances, keeping no servant and resolutely refusing to pay their rates and taxes, or indeed any debts, until summoned.’2

  Matilda Hacker’s father had been a builder in Canterbury, and in the years immediately following the Napoleonic Wars, he had become very prosperous through the building and letting of housing. He had three daughters and one son. By 1879, the son Edward was the only one of them still alive.

  It was through all the housing in Canterbury that the Hacker children derived their incomes; each of them benefited in the father’s will. After the leanness of the war years, a rising population across the country brought, for some, terrific opportunities as landlords, even in a cathedral city that was more sedate than the fast-growing industrial metropolises.

  Edward Hacker, the artist, had embarked upon the journey to London. Matilda and had her sister stayed with their mother until her death.

  The two sisters inherited a large house in Wincheap Street, Canterbury. Their lives were, it seemed, a source of incessant material for local gossip. ‘From their peculiar style of dress,’ reported the local correspondent, ‘they came to be known as “the Wincheap Dolls”.’ As well as the exaggerated youthfulness of their dress, another peculiarity about them was that ‘they were always attired exactly alike; one never wore anything the other did not’.

  On top of this, they were ‘so much alike’ in personal appearance ‘that it was almost impossible to distinguish one from the other’.3

  There must have been a time in their younger days when Matilda and her sisters were being viewed by others in Canterbury as being eminently eligible for marriage; yet each of the daughters somehow either avoided the attention of bright-eyed suitors or even deliberately set out to discourage them. Strikingly, Edward did not marry either. Who was this family, that acquired with such ease, ever increasing amounts of housing (and the constant flow of income from tenants), yet seemed to stand aside from the broader currents of social convention?

  The deaths of their parents brought to the Hacker sisters a sort of freedom quite beyond the imaginations of the vast majority of women; even the vast majority of wealthy women. They were able to live blithely and quite independently on the rental money that continued to flow in. They were quite without any ties or obligations.

  But did this somehow in turn influence their behaviour? Were the eccentricities pathological or in fact a form of defence against a world where women were expected to place all their financial considerations in the hands of their husbands?

  ‘It was the custom of these ladies every summer to go to the seaside, Margate and Dover being their favourite resorts,’ reported the local correspondent. ‘And there they would be accompanied by a groom.’ This seemed to be one of the Hacker sisters’ very few servants or employees. ‘They were also regular visitors to the cricket ground during the Canterbury week,’ continued the correspondent, ‘habituees of which will remember them as one day riding about the ground on anything but over-fed steeds, with their groom behind, and on another day promenading on foot, attired in costumes
of extraordinary pattern and grotesque style. For years, these two maiden ladies passed their days in this manner.’4

  They also received a great deal of jeering attention from local children, if not from local grown-ups; but even if their outlandish behaviour – bordering on a kind of whimsical anarchy – was not rooted in some psychological cause, it still demonstrated the insulating effect of money.

  ‘They looked after their property themselves, and were their own rent gatherers,’ observed the local journalist. ‘They lived entirely to themselves, keeping no company, and in fact, having no personal acquaintances.’ They also acquired a house in elegant Brighton, where they enjoyed promenading in ever more extravagant clothing and jewellery.

  But then, in around 1871, Matilda Hacker suffered the trauma of losing the sister who had most clearly been her soulmate. For a while after this loss, she continued to occupy the Canterbury home: now the sole occupant (for neither sister ever felt inclined to take on a full time servant). Life went on ‘in much the same way … except she became more and more eccentric’, noted the local correspondent. ‘She persistently refused to pay the rates and taxes for her property, and gave the collectors no little trouble. At last she was summoned for nonpayment and after appearing in court and attempting to prove that there was some mistake in the matter, she would pay.’5

  In other words, there was a streak of pure, almost reflexive irresponsibility in Matilda Hacker, which genuinely resembled that of a child. There seemed to be no doubts about her intelligence, and certainly not about her sanity; but this refusal to pay dues was vexing for the authorities.

  By now, Matilda Hacker’s position was singular to say the least; with her one remaining sibling Edward carving himself out a life of an artist in Camden, London, she was left to promenade alone. More than this: she had a portfolio of properties to look after. And it became plain that she was a bad landlady.

  ‘She was called upon,’ ran one report, in common with other owners of cottage property, to have certain sanitary works done in conjunction with her property, but she neglected to carry out the order served upon her and eventually the local authority did the work and in her absence, and charged her with the cost.

  ‘Failing to pay the claim, she was summoned, but did not appear in court, and in her absence, an order was made upon her for payment, a distress to be put in if the amount was not paid within a given time.’6

  It was at this point that Matilda Hacker appeared to buckle under the demands that were being placed upon her. The response that the authorities received sharpened her reputation for dottiness. ‘Instead of attending to the order, she wrote libellous letters to the Mayor, the Town Clerk, and other officials,’ reported the local correspondent, ‘but no notice was taken of them.’

  And when she repaired to the Lansdowne Place property in Brighton, Miss Hacker’s behaviour seemed to be becoming more volatile. ‘Her attire usually consisted of a blue satin dress, looped up so as to show her high-heeled boots and silk stockings, while on her head she wore a brown straw hat with a large white feather,’ noted the Brighton-based journalist. ‘Her hair was worn in an abundance of small ringlets so that her appearance from the side or the back was that of a girl of eighteen. There was, however, a slight stoop in her gait.’7

  And her vulnerabilities were beginning to show ever more clearly. ‘When not crossed, she was lady-like in manner,’ wrote the Brighton correspondent. ‘But when she met any opposition, she gave way to violent abuse.’

  This became increasingly noticeable; and Matilda became a well-known face to the local police in Hove, not least because she was frequently running into their station demanding that they take action against those whom she perceived to have wronged her. ‘Once,’ wrote the correspondent, ‘she was ordered to leave Hove police office in consequence of abusing the officials.’

  There was no suggestion from any report that there was drink involved; and her relationship with the world seemed not so much angry than simply bewildered that such continual demands be placed upon her.

  But the court cases now started mounting up. In 1875, Matilda let the Brighton house, furnished, to one John Sanderson, who was living in Clapham, south London. The property was intended to be his for a month that summer so that he and his family could take the healthful sea airs. For one week, they lived in wonderful comfort. But then the bailiffs arrived and removed all the furniture. Matilda had lost another court case; this seemed the fastest means of recovering money for the complainant.

  The Sandersons were obliged to move out; they could hardly stay in a house with no furniture. And so, with the month’s sojourn ruined, Mr Sanderson decided that he too would seek some form of compensation.

  Again, Matilda proved elusive; and the court in Brighton was forced to find against her in her absence. But she had certainly received the summons for, as the judge of the case pointed out drily in his summing up, the court and other authorities had been in receipt of letters from Miss Hacker touching upon the character of Sanderson her accuser. ‘She described some of the parties concerned as Guy Fawkes,’ reported the Brighton correspondent, ‘and in addition cast other reflections upon them. Subsequent to this,’ added the correspondent, ‘other letters were received anonymously but supposed to be in Miss Hacker’s handwriting in which the conduct of certain gentlemen was commented upon.’8

  Even at a distance, her brother Edward seemed conscious of the effect that her capriciousness was having on the lives of others, and during that period he made occasional attempts to rectify wrongs, visiting the properties in Canterbury to arrange repairs and proper rent collection. In 1875, he ‘was in the habit of seeing his sister every three or four months’; but he seemed not aware of her subsequent plans.

  In the latter stages of 1875, Matilda Hacker was in the process of assuming the identity of quite a different woman.

  She made her way to London; and she devised new ways of making it difficult for her enemies to follow her. Matilda Hacker moved into a boarding house in Russell Square, Bloomsbury. She introduced herself to Mrs Bridges, the landlady of the house, as ‘Miss Bell’.

  In normal circumstances, new tenants to lodging houses might be required to produce some references; but the manners of this Kentish lady, though eccentric, were also clearly engaging, and possibly also amusing, and her manner of speaking conveyed that she was a woman of quality. Single ladies of a certain age were not unusual in such establishments, and ‘Miss Bell’ must also have brought a certain quantity of money with her.

  And the landlady Mrs Bridges was soon beguiled by her guest. ‘Miss Bell’’s ‘disposition was exceedingly pleasant,’ she later told journalists. And there were soon some extraordinary domestic diversions which only increased the landlady’s fascination. ‘Miss Bell’ was by now receiving letters, that had been sent on from other offices, and under different initials. She was also receiving regular cheques: these were the sums collected in rent by a property manager that she had taken on called Mr Cozens. And ‘Miss Bell’ was frequently telling her landlady that where she could, she always preferred to use large sums of cash to buy gold; gold, it seemed, was more satisfactory to her than keeping her money in banks.

  A few weeks into ‘Miss Bell’s’ residency in Russell Square, Mrs Bridges answered the door to a man introducing himself as Superintendent Davies of the City of Canterbury police. The woman calling herself ‘Miss Bell’ was, the landlady learned for the first time, actually called Matilda Hacker.

  Superintendent Davies had apparently cornered his quarry; he, like so many other enforcement officers in Kent and Sussex, had the task of recovering unpaid Canterbury rates from Miss Hacker.

  Matilda’s response to this intrusion was that of ‘violent resistance’ and hot words. By means of securing the payment, Superintendent Davies took from her one of her boxes of belongings, plus a gold watch and a chain. That watch was later to become a vital key to the entire mystery of how she had ended up in that coal cellar.

  Matilda
appeared outraged by what she considered the terrible injustice perpetrated against her. Determined to retrieve her jewellery, she caught the train to Canterbury and made her way to the accounting offices of the city council.

  There, she paid in full the amount of rate money that had originally been demanded of her; and with this, the officials returned her confiscated property to her. This was the spark for another tirade from Miss Hacker, this time directed against Superintendent Davies of the City of Canterbury police. He had, she announced, ‘stolen’ these items from her. Indeed, she went further, marching into the County Court office and demanding to take out ‘a summons against Mr Davies’, claiming thirteen shillings for ‘illegal detention of property and damage to a gold watch and chain’. A few days later, it was reported: ‘the superintendent received a letter from her solicitor, Mr J.T. Moss of Gracechurch Street London, to the effect that she had abandoned the action and therefore he need not trouble himself any more about the matter.’9

  But Matilda Hacker’s materialisation in Canterbury alerted past creditors further afield. By the later stages of 1876, it seemed that it was time for her identity and address to change once more.

  She took rooms in Chelsea, which by 1876 had pretty streets of terraced white stucco houses, and the nearby prospect of one of the cleaner stretches of the London Thames. And again, Matilda Hacker, under a new name, mesmerised her landlady and fellow tenants alike with her extravagant dress style and curious mannerisms.

  There was another move; this time to Dorset Square, a smart tree-filled prospect near Baker Street. Her legal conflicts were now being handled by another solicitor in Lincolns Inn Fields and once more, there was an elaborate system devised by which she could receive post without anyone knowing her address.