Ghost of Whitechapel

by Mary Jane Staples

‘Yes, mum. Ain’t it ’eart-breakin’? Maureen that wouldn’t ’arm a fly ’erself. Oh, me name’s Daisy Cummings, by the way, and I brought just a few flowers that you might like to put in a vase in mem’ry of Maureen workin’ ’ere and bein’ looked after very kind by ev’ryone.’ She placed the bunch of violets on the desk.

  ‘Well, thank you, Miss Cummings, I’m sure her workmates will be very touched,’ said the Superintendent.

  ‘Oh, I felt I ’ad to show me grief,’ said Daisy, not a bad young performer when her mind was made up and need was the incentive. Further, her fingers were tightly crossed. Well, she’d been a regular attender at Sunday school when growing up. ‘And me sympathy to them as’ll miss her ’ere now she’s passed on. I just can’t believe anyone could send ’er to ’er death so frightful.’ Daisy made that remark in complete sincerity. She felt for the tragic woman. But, like Bridget said, more or less, life for the living had to go on, and someone was going to have that vacant job.

  ‘You knew Miss Flanagan well and went out with her a lot?’ said the Superintendent, instinctively doing a little work on behalf of that fatherly Chief Inspector.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Daisy. ‘Well, fairly frequent, like.’

  ‘You met young men, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, only in passin’, like,’ said Daisy. Help me, Lord, I ain’t a bad girl really, just terrible poor.

  ‘Did you meet Miss Flanagan’s young man?’

  ‘Well, I might ’ave mum.’ Daisy’s nerves twitched. ‘But only in passin’, you might say.’

  The Superintendent noted what she thought was the girl’s distress. This probably wasn’t the right moment to ask too many questions of her. But Chief Inspector Dobbs might like to talk to her. He obviously had a man acquaintance of Miss Flanagan’s in mind as a possible suspect, and would know exactly how to extract the right kind of information from this nervously sad girl.

  ‘Well, I’m sure Miss Flanagan’s workmates would want to send you a little note to thank you for coming in and leaving these flowers. Could I have your address, Miss Cummings?’

  ‘Oh, that reminds me, mum,’ said Daisy, gulping a little, ‘but could I ’elp you out with your inconvenience?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Well, it’s the inconvenience to your laundry of losin’ Maureen, mum,’ said Daisy valiantly.

  ‘Oh, that’s a very small thing at the moment,’ said the Superintendent.

  ‘Still, while I’m ’ere, I feel I ought to offer me ’elp,’ said Daisy. Silently asking the Lord to forgive her, she went on. ‘Maureen always said that if she left ’er job, she’d ask you to consider me for it if I didn’t ’ave a job meself, but I never thought it would ’appen like this.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said the Superintendent, a firm and competent commander of the laundry staff, but nevertheless not without a heart. At the moment, her heart was in as much distress as she imagined this girl’s was. ‘Yes, I see.’

  ‘Oh, I ’ope you don’t think I come ’ere just for that, mum,’ said Daisy, her tightly crossed fingers beginning to feel they might suffer cramp. ‘But being ’ere, as I am, it occurred to me just a bit ago that I could offer me services. I’ve had experience, I worked for the Whitechapel bagwash for a year, mum, then I got tonsillitis, and they ’ad to give me job to someone else. But they’ll give me a reference, and I’m a strong girl, mum, I’ve chopped wood in our backyard and lifted baskets in the markets to earn a bit of money.’

  The Superintendent made up her mind.

  ‘I’ll give you a trial,’ she said. ‘Report to the forelady of the calender room first thing Monday morning at eight.’

  Daisy wanted to do a bit of a dance. She checked the impulse and made do with uncrossing her fingers instead. Her fingers were grateful for the relief, but she didn’t know how the Lord felt. She drew a breath.

  ‘Oh, thank you, mum, thanks ever so. I’ll be that ’appy takin’ poor Maureen’s place, and doin’ the work as good as she ever did, really I will.’

  ‘A month’s trial,’ said the Superintendent. ‘Let me have your full name, your age and your address.’

  ‘Yes, mum,’ said Daisy, and gave the required details. Her nerves righted themselves, and exultation took over.

  ‘Seven-and-six a week to begin with,’ said the Superintendent.

  Crikey, thought Daisy, we might be able to have meat and two veg nearly every day now, and I might be able to treat meself to a frock down Petticoat Lane.

  ‘Thank you, mum,’ she said.

  ‘Very well, Miss Cummings, we’ll see you on Monday,’ said the Superintendent, and Daisy did a little bob and left, feeling vital enough to run all the way home.

  Chief Inspector Dobbs was required to talk to newspaper reporters that afternoon, to give them the kind of details they were hungering for, while leaving out what he preferred to keep to himself, such as the probability that the murdered woman had practised the ancient art of street-walking. He knew what they would make of that, and the one thing he didn’t want was to find himself at the centre of an investigation into the supposed return of Jack the Ripper and his vicious liking for cutting up prostitutes. He’d be hounded, badgered and near to crucified, just as the investigating officers had been in 1888, unless he laid quick hands on the guilty man. Noting the faces of the reporters, he was quite aware of what they were hungry for. It was as plain on their faces as suet pudding. He gave them an outline of police progress which, although sounding meaty, didn’t fool anyone, least of all himself. However, it managed to keep their pencils and notebooks occupied for a good fifteen minutes. Charlie Dobbs was a dab hand at giving out large helpings of police porridge. He sugared it by asking these Fleet Street scribblers to get their papers to print a description of a man known at the moment only as Godfrey and as a friend of Maureen Flanagan. He was required to come forward to be eliminated from enquiries. Dobbs gave the description. Mrs Pritchard had said the man was about thirty-five. He quoted a little over thirty, thus more definitely dissociating him from the Ripper of twelve years ago. There was no great response from the reporters. Dobbs knew why. They didn’t want a suspect who failed to relate to the Ripper.

  The Westminster Gazette, full up with porridge, cut in.

  ‘Apart from this man Godfrey, a friend of Miss Flanagan’s, what you’re telling us, Inspector—’

  ‘Chief Inspector,’ said Sergeant Ross.

  ‘What you’re telling us, Chief Inspector,’ said the Westminster Gazette, ‘is that you’re struggling.’

  ‘What I mean,’ said Dobbs, lighting his pipe, ‘is that it’s early days yet. Early hours, in fact.’

  ‘Nothing came out of the hospital laundry?’ asked the Daily Mail.

  ‘Well, the usual amount of washing, you might say,’ said Dobbs, ‘and it’s probably all being ironed now.’

  Journalistic titters ran around the room. Dobbs looked blandly gratified at this response. Sergeant Ross passed his hand over his mouth.

  ‘I’m assuming you’ve no real leads, sir?’ said The Times politely.

  ‘That’s a good question,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘Very good. Or is it? Let me see. There’s leads, of course, but I don’t know yet how real they are. They’re all real to some extent. Come to that, gents, so’s a blank wall or a blind alley, if you could see your way through them. If you can’t, and I can’t, I suppose you start again somewhere else. You live and learn about blank walls and blind alleys, and how you can end up at a full stop. That’s real enough, but disappointing. Well, that’s all, gents, for the time being.’

  Sergeant Ross, knowing his guv’nor was handing out more porridge, kept his face straight.

  ‘Will it hurt you, Chief Inspector, to suggest you’ve just given us a large amount of nothing?’ said the Daily Chronicle.

  ‘It’ll pain me considerably,’ said Dobbs, ‘and won’t do my self-respect much good. But thanks for coming, gents, see you again sometime next week.’

  ‘Next week?’ said the Morning Post.
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br />   ‘If you’re not too busy,’ said Dobbs.

  ‘You’re out of order, Chief Inspector,’ said the Daily Mail.

  ‘You’re thinking of coming back tomorrow?’ said Dobbs, looking slightly put out at the prospect.

  ‘That’s the usual way of things,’ said the Westminster Gazette. ‘Hope you’ll have something for us by then. Meanwhile, is there a thought in your mind that—’

  ‘Good afternoon, gents,’ said the Chief Inspector, having seen the danger signals. He rose to his feet.

  ‘A moment, sir,’ said The Times.

  ‘Yes,’ pursued the Westminster Gazette, ‘is there a thought in your mind that this murder heralds the return of Jack the Ripper?’

  ‘Don’t print that,’ growled Dobbs.

  ‘Don’t print what?’ asked the Daily News.

  ‘That question.’

  ‘It’s the answer we’re interested in.’

  ‘Don’t print that, either,’ said Dobbs.

  ‘We haven’t had an answer,’ said the Evening News.

  ‘Now I ask you, is there one?’ said the Chief Inspector, putting his growls away and appealing for a reasonable attitude.

  ‘We’d like your opinion,’ said the Daily Mail.

  ‘It’s a plot to make a monkey of me, and to keep the public in at night,’ said Dobbs. ‘It’s seriously inadvisable as well. So I must inform you that, if any papers intend to mention Jack the Ripper, I’ll have to put my official hat on and apply to the Chief Justice for an injunction to stop all presses rolling on the grounds that they’re making a deliberate attempt to put the fear of God into the people of London.’

  ‘The Commissioner won’t sanction that kind of censorship, Chief Inspector,’ said The Times.

  ‘I consider that a sad remark,’ said Dobbs. ‘Now I put it to you fair and square, lads, is it going to make sense bringing the Ripper in? Ask yourselves, could you accept the responsibility of making seven million Londoners spend all day tomorrow wetting themselves? All week, probably. And that could include your mothers and grandmothers. Think about it. You all love your mothers, don’t you? Leave it. Leave it for a day or two at least. I promise to give you the go-ahead then, if my suspicions coincide with yours and we can all believe the Ripper’s climbed out of his grave.’

  ‘What makes you think he’s dead, Chief Inspector?’ asked the Morning Post.

  ‘Certain facts I’m not permitted to disclose,’ said Dobbs, ‘as well as the fact that an aunt of mine read it in her tea leaves. And that’s definitely all.’

  ‘Definitely all is pretty close to nothing,’ said the Daily News.

  ‘It’s not a good day for me, either,’ said Dobbs, ‘but there’s a silver lining somewhere.’

  * * *

  ‘I’ve never had a look at the Ripper’s file,’ said Sergeant Ross when the press representatives had departed.

  Back in his office, Dobbs said, ‘File? There’s a hundred, my son, and they’re all dead.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘As a hundred dodos.’

  ‘Closed to staff?’ said Ross.

  ‘Buried,’ said Dobbs.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Orders,’ said Dobbs.

  ‘Too many names?’ suggested Ross, who had heard there was an embarrassment of well-known monickers hidden in inaccessible files.

  ‘And too much bloody shame,’ said Dobbs. ‘Have you asked questions about the Ripper’s case since you’ve been at the Yard?’

  ‘Now and again,’ said Ross. ‘What copper wouldn’t be interested?’

  ‘And what answers have you had?’ asked Dobbs.

  ‘All negative, guv. No-one can get at the files without the permission of the Assistant Commissioner.’

  ‘Officially, the Ripper’s dead and so are the files,’ said Dobbs. ‘D’you know Whitechapel and its stewpots?’

  ‘I know it, but have never covered a case there.’

  ‘You don’t know it, then,’ said Dobbs. ‘Robinson!’ he bawled.

  In came Detective-Constable Robinson, double-quick.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Been down in the dungeons lately, Robinson?’ said Dobbs.

  ‘No, can’t say I ’ave, guv,’ said Robinson.

  ‘Well, go down there now and fetch me this file,’ said Dobbs, handing over a slip of paper.

  ‘This one?’ blinked Robinson.

  ‘That’s it, one of the dead ’uns,’ said Dobbs.

  ‘Well, guv, the Chief Superintendent—’

  ‘Fetch it,’ said Dobbs.

  ‘Right, sir,’ said Robinson, deciding that where Chief Inspector Charlie Dobbs was concerned, his wasn’t to reason why. He disappeared. It took him twenty minutes to return. ‘’Ad a bit of a barney down there with Constable Ward, sir, but he’s staying mum for ’alf an hour and here’s the file.’ He placed it on the Chief Inspector’s desk. Dobbs looked up from the letter he was reading, one of those Mrs Flanagan of Cork, Ireland, had written to her daughter Maureen.

  ‘You took your time,’ he said.

  ‘The filing system down there, guv, ain’t what I’d call the best, specially not concernin’ these forbidden files.’

  ‘Feel sort of put-upon, do you, sunshine?’ said Dobbs.

  ‘Not by you, guv,’ said Robinson, and departed with a grin and at a nod from the Chief Inspector, who opened the file, leafed through its browning contents and extracted a clipping from The Times. ‘Read that, Ross,’ he said, handing it over.

  The clipping was of a published letter from an anonymous resident of Whitechapel. Sergeant Ross perused it with interest.

  We are Sur, as it may be, livin in a Wilderness, so far as the rest of London knows anything of us, or as the rich and great people care about. We live in muck and filthe. We aint got no privvies, no dust bins, no drains, no water splies. We all of us suffer, and numbers are ill, and if the colera comes Lord help us.

  ‘Christ,’ said Ross.

  ‘Perfect conditions,’ said Dobbs.

  ‘Pardon, guv?’

  ‘For selling your body, your soul and your sister,’ said Dobbs, ‘and for murder. Now read this.’ He handed over a sheet of notepaper, which contained an excerpt from the writings of a physician by the name of William Acton.

  Subject matter: The cruel, biting poverty that forces women to become prostitutes.

  Unable to obtain by their labour the means of procuring the bare necessities of life, they gain, by surrendering their bodies to evil uses, food to sustain and clothes to cover them. Many thousand young women in the metropolis are unable by drudgery that lasts from early morning till late into the night to earn more than 3s. to 5s. weekly. Many have to eke out their living as best they may on a miserable pittance less than the least of the sums above-mentioned. Urged on by want and toil, encouraged by evil advisors, and exposed to selfish tempters, a large proportion of these girls fall from the path of virtue.

  Sergeant Ross looked at the Chief Inspector.

  ‘When was this written, guv?’

  ‘Years before the Ripper made such women his victims,’ said Dobbs. ‘Finally, my lad, finally, cop this.’ He handed his sergeant another clipping from The Times, dated 27 September 1888, and Ross read it. It concerned Annie Chapman, one of the Ripper’s victims.

  She had evidently lived an immoral life for some time, and her habits and surroundings had become worse since her means had failed. She no longer visited her relations, and her brother had not seen her for five months, when she borrowed a small sum from him. She lived principally in the common lodging houses in the neighbourhood of Spitalfields, where such as she were herded like cattle. She showed signs of great deprivation, as if she had been badly fed.

  The glimpse of life in those dens which the evidence in this case disclosed was sufficient to make the authorities feel there was much in the 19th-century civilisation of which they had small reason to be proud.’

  ‘Can’t say it gets better, guv,’ said Ross, handing back the clipping.

  ‘
There’s none of it that’s a credit to anyone, Ross, nor to Her Majesty herself, poor old lady,’ said Dobbs. ‘You see now, don’t you, why certain persons wanted it all wrapped up and buried.’

  ‘Certain Westminster persons?’ said Ross.

  ‘You’re a bright lad, Ross. At times. You’ve forgotten the Church and our lords and ladies. What you’ve just read would shame a digger of ditches, let alone our archbishops, our gentry, our Houses of Parliament and our Prime Minister. The Ripper files contain facts, sunshine, facts, on the living conditions of the poor sods in the slums, conditions which the high and mighty did nothing about, and which were unknown to most people outside of London. I’ll grant people knew there was pathetic poverty around, but not that men, women and kids in places like Whitechapel were dying in their own filth. You’ll ask, of course, why the Government didn’t do something for them. Are you asking?’

  ‘I’m listening,’ said Ross.

  ‘So you should be. Listen some more. Many MPs don’t bother with people who don’t have a vote. Haven’t you heard the story of the MP who came across a man lying in the gutter, close to mortal starvation? He asked what he could do for him. Help him, said a bystander. So he asked the dying man which party he voted for, and the dying man croaked he hadn’t even registered. The MP said he was busy at the moment, but would try to come back later. Which he didn’t, of course. My lad, there’s a country’s horrible shame written down in black and white in the Ripper’s files.’

  ‘I believe you, guv,’ said Ross.

  ‘Sensible of you,’ said Dobbs. ‘The Ripper, my lad, would never have come out of his hole if conditions in those stewpots of the living dead hadn’t made butchery easy for him. Better for the country if he’d used his knives on the Lords and Commons. Can you Adam-and-Eve it, that on top of all their daily misery, the suffering people of Whitechapel had to put up with the Ripper dissecting their women? And can we put up with the newspapers bringing back the fear of God to them? Not if I can help it.’

  ‘Scotland Yard buried the Ripper along with the files, guv?’ asked Ross.

  ‘What have you heard?’ asked Dobbs.

  ‘That he’s dead,’ said Ross.