by Trow, M. J.
Since 24 September, a number of letters and postcards had been steadily arriving at the Central News Agency, individual newspaper officers or police stations. The most famous of those, on the 27th, purported to come from ‘Jack the Ripper’ and the most brilliant pen-name in modern history caught on. One that was received by the Central News Agency at their New Bridge Street premises on 5 October was forwarded to Chief Constable Adolphus Williamson at the Yard. It was not written by the Whitechapel murderer, but it did throw a lurid spotlight on the torso murders.
Dear Friend,
In the name of God hear me I swear I did not kill the female whose body was found at Whitehall. If she was an honest woman I will hunt down and destroy her murderer. If she was a whore God will bless the hand that slew her, for the women of Moab and Midian shall die and their blood shall mingle with the dust.
The rest of the letter descends into bloodthirsty ramblings that would not be out of place in a Tod Slaughter screenplay from the 1930s. Ironically, it was forwarded to the police by Thomas Bulling who many experts believe today was the sender of the original ‘Dear Boss’ letter and creator of the infamous sobriquet to boost newspaper sales. The mindset of the ‘Jack’ who wrote the 5 October letter will be discussed later, because it tells us a good deal about the torso murders.
From various reports, it is clear that torso mania was spreading almost as widely as the work of ‘Saucy Jacky’ but of course it was in the interests of the press to maintain the fiction that all these victims, the dismembered and the left-in-the-street, were the work of the same man. On 24 August, a right foot and part of a left leg had been found near Guildford Station in Surrey, lying on railway tracks and probably tossed from a train. On 5 October, a grim-faced Inspector Marshall from A Division brought the remains back to London to be examined by Bond and Hebbert. They examined them at Millbank the next day and were in no doubt all that the boiled specimens had no connection with the Whitehall case. They were the bones of a bear!
The thick black lines represent the cuts made to dissect the body. The shaded areas are the parts that were never found.
The inquest on the Whitehall torso was held on Monday 8 October, the start of a month of unusually bad fogs that shrouded the river and crept all the way down to the Sessions House in Broad-Sanctuary Street in Westminster. The jury had already been to view the remains in Millbank mortuary and settled down to listen to a string of witnesses who trooped before the coroner John Troutbeck. Frederick Windborn explained his finding of the parcel with the aid of a building plan drawn up by the police which was probably a blueprint of Norman Shaw’s. George Bodden followed with the information that he had carried the parcel to a better-lit part of the foundations at the request of William Brown, the foreman. Slightly against the run of events, Troutbeck then called Frederick Moore who had found the arm off Chelsea embankment at Pimlico, then Brown himself. Brown believed that only someone who knew the site personally or had it minutely described to him could find the vault where the parcel had been left. The hoarding around the site was 8 or 9ft high and, as there was no sign of damage to this, it had to be conjectured that someone capable of climbing this while carrying a dead weight like a human trunk would have to be exceptionally strong. There were signs everywhere to the effect that there was no public access to the site, but there was no nightwatchman to enforce this. One of the three gates was left unlocked, but it could only be opened by a complicated string mechanism, which was understood by only a few.
After lunch, Dr Bond was called. He gave his address as the Sanctuary, Westminster Abbey, and discussed his findings both at the site and in the mortuary. Although Hebbert’s subsequent report does not mention it, Bond stated at the inquest that the adhesions to one lung indicated severe pleurisy at some stage. He could categorically say that neither suffocation nor drowning was the cause of death. Pressed by Troutbeck on this point, Bond ventured that the cause might be haemorrhage, presumably to the missing head. He thought this because the heart was pale and free from clots.
Dr Hebbert followed with details of the right arm and the coroner asked him if the separation of the arm might have been carried out by a surgeon for anatomical purposes. Hebbert doubted that, but offered the information that the newspaper sections wrapped around the trunk carried animal blood stains, which were not those of a bird or reptile. Hebbert was guessing here. Birds and reptiles have nuclei in their red blood cells which explains his findings, but no one could tell animal from human blood before the researches of Dr Paul Hulenhuth in 1901. Perhaps this is another example of the medical profession trying to put a butcher in the frame!
Inspector Marshall was quizzed by Troutbeck as to how he thought the killer had got into the site with his macabre package. He said the complex latch could be managed by anyone with a bit of persistence and that it was possible to climb the hoarding on the Cannon Row side. In the event of no further evidence, the coroner adjourned the inquest for two weeks.
It is difficult to understand quite how a London journalist, Jasper Waring, was able to persuade the police to let him onto the New Scotland Yard site, but in their presence, on Wednesday 17 October, he turned up, complete with a Russian Terrier dog. The animal immediately began digging excitedly and pulled out from the earth a left leg with foot attached. The inevitable Thomas Bond was sent for and had the limb removed to Millbank mortuary. After dark on the same day, the police returned with the dog. The Times reported: ‘The scene is described as a very weird one, for the only illumination of the dismal place was by candles and the dog did not seem in the best form, this possibly arising from the strange surroundings.’8 Nevertheless, the animal found the missing left arm buried below where it had found the leg and foot.
These new finds were at once alarming and embarrassing. The police, after all, had already searched the entire premises and allegedly used bloodhounds. Effectively, it was a member of the public who did their job for them and, as a journalist, one who could do them a great deal of harm in the negative publicity stakes. The alarming aspect was the fact that the limbs had been buried and had almost certainly been there for longer than the torso. In other words, the killer had visited the site at least twice and had had the leisure to bury part of his victim. He had also not buried the trunk. Why? Was he disturbed by the arrival of a work-team? Or was this some kind of statement, the significance of which was as yet not understood? As in so many aspects of the Thames torso murders far more questions were raised than answers.
Then as now in the case of missing persons, the police had any number of leads to follow. London was the biggest city in the world in 1888 and unknown numbers trickled into its streets every week, looking for the gold pavements and the bright lights. None of the once-promising leads threw up anything. The Whitehall torso remained for ever ‘the woman in the vault’.
The inquest resumed on 22 October and coroner Troutbeck’s first witness was once again William Brown, the foreman. He had been in the vault where the body was found on Friday 28 September, measuring up for surveyors and had a light with him. He conceded that the parcel might have been there as he did not delve into the recess as Windborn had to get his tools. Since some suspicion had now attached to the work crew because of the relative difficulty in accessing the site, George Evans, the clerk of works, was called next. He had been on the site on Saturday 29th and had seen no one carrying a parcel of any description.
Labourer Richard Lawrence of Stendale Road, Battersea, was less than helpful when he admitted to leaving his tools in the same recess as Windborn on Saturday 29 September. He retrieved them again on Monday 2 October (the day the body was found) and saw nothing. Since he had no light with him, this was hardly surprising. Lawrence’s testimony is typical of the non-evidence that clutters all police enquiries. Clearly the parcel and body parts were in place that Monday, but many of us, Richard Lawrence included, make woeful witnesses and we often miss what is literally under our noses.
Jasper Waring explained to the inquest the findin
g of the leg through the good nose of his dog. It was in the same recess as the trunk, but on the opposite side and about a foot below ground level. It appeared to have been there undisturbed for some time. His colleague, Mr Angle, who had been with him, believed the depth to have been no more than four or five inches and the ground hard and trodden down.
As usual, Dr Bond’s evidence was perhaps the most useful. The appearance of the earth led him to believe that the leg had been there for some weeks. He also poured scorn on the various witnesses who were implying that the torso had not been there before the weekend of 29/30 September. In his opinion, it had been there much longer and decomposition had occurred at the spot. Two weeks of course had passed between the first and second inquests and it is unlikely that the ‘crime scene’ had been taped off as is de rigueur in modern murder investigations, so the area was by now hopelessly compromised. The earth, which might have yielded the boot-prints of the killer, had been trampled on by Windborn, Hodge, Brown, Lawrence, Waring, Angle, unknown policemen and a dog!
Bond’s purely medical testimony on the leg was written up later by Dr Hebbert for his paper. Again, dismemberment had been done cleanly and efficiently at the knee joint and the limbs were carefully measured. There was a small amount of bruising, the size of a shilling, on the inside and outside of the leg. The date of death was estimated at between six to eight weeks, which would take us back to a murder committed in late August or early September.
The trunk, the arm and the leg clearly belonged to the same person, but three different methods of dispersal had been used. The trunk, in its dark vault and badly tied parcel, had been exposed to air. The arm, lying on the Thames mud, had been immersed in water. The leg, between 4 and 12ins under Scotland Yard’s lowest foundations, had been buried. This was a riddle, certainly, for forensic experts, but what does it tell us about the killer?
Such were the limits of the law in 1888 (and I suspect today) that Troutbeck could only advise the jury that their choice was either ‘wilful murder’ or ‘found dead’; the victim remained anonymous. Despite the best efforts of Dr Bond, he could find no actual cause of death. Even so, someone had cut up a woman’s body and had gone to considerable lengths to scatter the various parts. It defies belief then that the jury opted for ‘found dead’.
Chapter 6
The Frankenstein Connection:
Horsleydown, June 1889
Even by the time the Port of London Authority took its photographs of the Thames Docklands in the 1930s, St George’s Stairs had all but disappeared. They ran down to the river in Bermondsey between Butler’s Wharf warehouse and the much larger Cole’s Wharf, both of them built in the mid-nineteenth century. Ironically, the Old Stairs still stood in the 1930s, running through Courage’s Granary to the river mud. It was at one or other of these stairs that John Ryan, a riverside labourer, was standing on the morning of 4 June 1889 when he saw some boys throwing stones at something in the water. One of them hooked the floating object, which appeared to be an apron, onto the mud of the shore and found part of a woman’s body.
The nearest policeman was on a galley patrol boat within yards of the stairs and Ryan shouted to him. Constable 63 Freshwater of Thames Division stated at the later inquest that he was handed a parcel containing what he believed to be human remains and took it to the station at Wapping. In what was now a well-established routine, Freshwater contacted the Assistant Divisional Surgeon, Dr McCoy, who carried out preliminary investigations.
Half a mile away, 15-year-old Isaac Brett, a woodcutter of 7 Laurence Street, Chelsea, was walking on the Battersea foreshore under Albert Bridge and decided to take a dip on what must have been a warm summer’s day. He had not been in the water long when he saw a parcel tied with a bootlace floating nearby. Pulling it ashore he was advised by a passing stranger to take it to the police. There had been no known torso activity since the Whitehall Mystery inquest had closed eight months earlier and now two parts of the same body had turned up on the same day.
When Brett took his parcel to the nearest police station, Sergeant William Briggs of V Division examined it. It contained a thigh, but, for the first time, this was wrapped in clothing which could aid identification. Part of a ladies’ Ulster (overcoat) was there and the right leg of a pair of drawers (underwear). These had a name – L E Fisher – written in black ink on the waistband. This was the only name ever linked in black and white to the torso killings and it seemed full of possibilities. If this was the leg as well as the knickers of L E Fisher, what were those possibilities? A name on underwear implies laundry usage or some kind of communal living such as a college or school, probably of the boarding variety. L E Fisher would surely be found quickly or, even if this was her leg, links could be made to find her killer.
Dr Felix Kempster who had worked on the Rainham case two years earlier was called in as was the by now inevitable Thomas Bond. The thigh was officially the responsibility of Inspector John Ryan (no relation to the Thameside labourer) of Thames Division and Inspector Tunbridge of Scotland Yard.
For the rest of that day and the next, officers of the Thames and other divisions searched the shorelines in Horsleydown and Battersea and began to drag the river near Vauxhall Bridge. There was no underwater unit in the Met until 1962, largely because diving was extremely hazardous and the river so murky and polluted that little would be found anyway. In a typical year since its formation as part of Thames Division, the unit has undertaken some 200 searches, recovering approximately 20 bodies, 12 firearms, ten knives or swords, 15 cars and a dozen motorbikes! In any case, the torso killer was not weighing his body parts down; he was placing them in packages he knew would float. This was an important clue, whether the police at the time recognized it or not. Dismemberment was not to conceal and ‘lose’ body parts – it was to taunt and terrify.
Dr Kempster’s findings on the thigh were that it had not been in the water long and that death had occurred only twenty-four hours earlier, which gave a murder date, if murder it was, of 3 June. There were four bruises on the thigh, almost certainly caused by a firm finger grip and these were caused while the victim was still alive. The Times of 5 June reported that the Horsleydown and Battersea finds came from the same body and an inquest was held the following day.
The coroner here was the redoubtable Wynne E Baxter of Middlesex’s South-East Division who had already grabbed considerable headline space in the Ripper case, presiding over the inquests of Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman and Liz Stride. He was also in the chair in the inquest on non-Ripper victim Rose Mylett, a prostitute who almost certainly met her death at the hands of a one-off client in Clark’s Yard, Poplar, on 20 December 1888. Baxter was not impressed by the Met and was contemptuous of Dr Bond’s assertion that Rose was a murder victim, ranting that she died by accident due to the tightness of her bodice and her state of drunkenness. Since his background was legal rather than medical, he was sticking his neck out to challenge a man of Bond’s probity. A very arrogant and political animal, Baxter was accused of electoral impropriety in 1887 and used ‘Inquest, London’ as his telegraphic address. He was famous for his lengthy inquests, leaving no stone unturned, but he was proved wrong on more occasions than was seemly in such an important office.
The inquest into the Horsleydown remains was notoriously short, however, to give police time to investigate. The evidence as it stood could not decisively establish whether a murder had actually been committed. It was the next day when more evidence came to light, not quite in the river but in the general vicinity, not only of the thigh found by Isaac Brett, but the body found along Battersea Reach sixteen years earlier.
Dickens wrote:
Battersea Park, one of the youngest of the London parks … is certainly one of the prettiest. No park … in London can compare with the sub-tropical garden. It is emphatically one of the sights which no visitor should fail to see, especially in the latter part of the summer.1
One of the sights they would not have liked to see was the one that
greeted gardener Joseph Davis on the afternoon of 6 June. He was working in the shrubbery near the wrought iron fence that divided the park from the river, about 200 yards from the nearest gates at Albert Bridge when he came across a bundle. On opening it, Davis dropped the thing in shock as he recognized parts of a human body. The package had been tied with white Venetian blind cord. The gardener dashed to find a patrolling park policeman, Constable 502 Ainger of V Division, and the pair agreed that this was the upper part of a woman. As with the thigh, it was wrapped in clothing, a burgundy coloured skirt.
In Battersea Mortuary, the Divisional Police Surgeon examined the find the same day. He wrote later:
The chest cavity was empty, but many internal organs, including the spleen, both kidneys and a portion of the stomach intestines were present. The lower six dorsal vertebrae were in their place, but the lower five ribs were missing. A portion of the midriff above the breasts and the integumentary covering to the chest bone were cut down the centre as though by a saw. The ribs were also sawn through. Decomposition had set in, but had proceeded no further than was consistent with the assumption that the remains formed part of a living body not more than four or at most five days previously.
If the doctor was correct about that, then the murder may have occurred as early as 2 June.
6 June was a red-letter day for the torso killer. Shortly before Joseph Davis made his grisly find in the rhododendron bushes, barge-builder Charles Martowe, of Wye Street, Battersea, was working at Copington’s Wharf when he spotted what looked like part of a body bobbing in the water. The find was reported to the police and Inspector William Law of Thames Division took possession of it at Waterloo Pier. This station was of course little more than a stone’s throw from Temple Pier where part of the Rainham body had been found two years earlier. Law surmised that if this segment had been dumped in the river on the flood tide it would have had time to reach the spot where it was found, assuming it was placed there at Battersea. Yet more body parts were located by engineer David Keen near Palace Wharf. By the next day The Times reported that all the sections belonged to the same body, but there was more to come.