Murder & Crime in London
Page 6
The Ripper myth continues to occupy our minds because of its huge initial media coverage and the lack of any tangible clues. It is, most probably, the most famous unsolved case in the world because of the papers. Rumour and gossip have created an industry that just won’t go away. More than a hundred books and pamphlets have been written about the subject with a list of suspects that range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Prince Albert Victor, grandson of Queen Victoria and most probably involved in the ‘Cleveland Street Scandal’, was one; Dr William Gull, Physician to the Queen, another. A range of Jewish Eastenders also feature amongst the suspects, showing that prejudice was, and remains, rife. Foreigners also feature largely amongst these, such as Dr Thomas Neill Cream (see chapter ten), Walter Sickert, the artist, and Dr Alexander Pedachenko, a mad Russian secret agent. There will, undoubtedly, be others . . .
‘Who was Jack The Ripper?’
nine
‘THE ABOMINABLE CRIME OF
BUGGERY’
During a routine investigation of petty pilfering amongst the messenger boys at the Central Post Office, St Martin’s Le Grand, PC Luke Hanks questioned 15-year-old Charles Swinscomb on Thursday, 4 July 1889.
Swinscomb had an unusual amount of money on him. He maintained that he had received this for private work. What private work? From Mr Charles Hammond at 19 Cleveland Street, ‘for going to bed with a gentleman’! He had been asked by a clerk, Henry Newlove, if he had wanted to earn some extra money and he had been there twice. Swinscomb had also mentioned that Newlove had persuaded two other boys to do the same: George Alma Wright and Charles Ernest Thickbroom. All three were suspended from work hours later and PC Hanks went to his superiors with the appalling news of the discovery of a male brothel.
Homosexuality was known to exist but was conveniently brushed under the carpet by Victorian Society. Homosexuality among men was a crime punishable by imprisonment. Henry Labouchère successfully amended the homosexuality laws to make any homosexual act between men a crime in 1885. Curiously, however, homosexuality in women was ‘officially’ non-existent.
Police Commissioner James Monro assigned his best detective inspector to the case the following day – DI George Abberline. Abberline, veteran of the Whitechapel murders and possibly the most high-profile detective at Scotland Yard, acted quickly and had a warrant to arrest Henry Newlove and Charles Hammond on the grounds ‘that they did unlawfully, wickedly and corruptly conspire, combine and confederate and agree to incite and procure George Alma Wright and divers other persons to commit the abominable crime of buggery’ on 6 July. By the time they reached the scene of the crime, Charles Hammond had gone. He’d been warned by Newlove and had fled.
Charles Hammond.
The three telegraph boys.
Meanwhile, PC Hanks went to arrest Newlove at his family home in Camden on Sunday 7 July. On their journey to the station, Newlove moaned that he thought it ‘very hard that I should get into trouble while men in high position are allowed to walk about free … Lord Arthur Somerset, the Earl of Euston and Colonel Jervois go regularly there.’ Newlove would repeat this to Abberline the next day. This put a completely new angle on this case.
Hanks re-visited Newlove’s home only to overhear a visitor, ‘Reverend’ George Veck, talk about looking after Henry Newlove and Mr Hammond. The name rang a bell; he recalled an incident in Gravesend when a telegraphist called Veck was sacked for homosexuality. Subsequently Abberline put a watch on 19 Cleveland Street. The officer on watch reported seeing an MP and Lord Arthur Somerset visiting. Swinscomb and Thickbroom both identified Somerset a week later.
Abberline’s suspicions on the seriousness of the case were further confirmed when Veck produced Arthur Newton, a young solicitor known for taking on embarrassing cases. It was only on 8 August that the Director of Public Prosecutions started proceedings against Veck, Lord Arthur Somerset and Hammond. Until then various government departments had refused to take the responsibility and, curiously enough, even the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, was taking an interest, specifically refusing permission for the police to pursue Hammond to France.
The police finally caught up with Veck on 20 August at Waterloo Station, with some very incriminating letters in his pockets. These were from one Algernon Allies, who said that a ‘Mr Brown’ gave him money for services rendered. The dogged PC Hank went to interview Allies, who admitted that ‘Mr Brown’ was Lord Arthur Somerset.
Left to right: Detective Inspector Frederick Abberline, Lord Arthur Somerset, The Earl of Euston.
There was a clear case against Somerset. He was, though, a member of the aristocracy, an officer and a member of the Prince of Wales’s staff. The responsibility for bringing Somerset to justice was shunted from one department to the next, finally resting with the Director of Public Prosecution, who was asked to treat this with discretion, i.e. no proceedings against Somerset and allowing him leave to flee to France. The powerless Abberline and his superiors were to ask themselves what exactly was it that made government departments, let alone the Prime Minister, hinder the wheels of justice.
On 18 September, Veck and Newlove were brought to trial (Hammond conveniently absent) and indicted on thirteen counts of procuring six boys to ‘commit acts of gross indecency with another person’. Lord Salisbury specifically vetoed Hammond’s extradition from America as he did ‘not consider this to be a case in which any official application could justifiably be made’. Another deal was also made with the two defendants. If they pleaded guilty to indecency, then conspiracy and procuring would not be pressed, enabling Veck to only receive nine months’ imprisonment and Newlove four. The Assistant Director of Public Prosecution, Hamilton Cuffe, considered it a ‘travesty of justice’. Things could surely not get worse?
Abberline was contacted by Allies on 25 September. Somerset had returned to England and tried to bribe him to leave the country, saying that ‘the reason to want you to get away is that you should not give your evidence against you know who’. Who was who? Obviously a very important person. They set a trap for that evening, only to catch Newton’s clerk, Taylorson. Newton immediately warned Somerset to leave the country.
Once again the police had been outmanoeuvred. They did advise the Prince of Wales who, disbelieving Somerset’s inclinations, had to be convinced by the Prime Minister. Somerset resigned his commission and on 12 September warrants were issued against him for committing acts of gross indecency, procuring Allies to commit similar crimes with other males, and conspiring with Charles Hammond to procure such acts contrary to the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. Somerset, however, would never return to England.
The foreign Press weren’t hampered with libel laws; Paris papers screamed that dozens of peers were involved and that London was the ‘modern Sodom’. The New York papers went further, implicating Prince Albert Victor, the Prince of Wales’s son, already a popular suspect in the ‘Ripper’ case, in the ‘Cleveland Street Scandal’. Back home the scandal would erupt magnificently with the 16 September headlines of a radical London paper, North London Press, screaming: ‘The West End Scandals’ and contending that two leading aristocrats, Lord Arthur Somerset and Lord Euston, had left the country because of their proclivities. Its editor, Ernest Parke, and W.T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, and Henry Labouchère, all radicals, suspected an official conspiracy.
The riposte was just as fierce. Lord Euston instructed his solicitor to institute proceedings against Parke for libel. Parke retorted with a succinct article setting out his suspicions and confirming that he was the subject of a libel action.
The libel trial was held on 15 January 1890 at the Old Bailey. It was a show trial where the establishment outwitted the rest. Six defence witnesses first gave evidence; five of them were too unsophisticated to be reliable and their evidence was rejected. Euston took the stand last and remained unexamined until all the defence witnesses had given evidence. Only one witness, Jack Saul, a bright and eloquent male prostitute and pimp, gave the exact detai
ls of when he met with Euston and Newlove. He had, some months before, made a statement to the police to that effect, but the police were not allowed to follow it up. If Saul’s assertions were false why wasn’t he prosecuted for perjury? Labouchère was to make this observation in his paper, Truth. Nor were the police allowed to bring two of the messenger boys to identify Euston. The judge directed the jury adroitly – would they believe a man of the street or an educated one? Parke was found guilty of libel without justification.
The Cleveland Street Scandal.
The scandal died with Prince Albert Victor in 1892, but in a letter to Oliver Montagu, a member of the royal entourage, Somerset would say:
I cannot see what good I could do to Prince Eddy [Albert Victor] if I went into court … I might do him harm … I have never mentioned the boy’s name except to … Had they been wise, hearing what I knew and therefore what others knew they ought to have hushed the matter up … Nothing will ever make me divulge anything I know even if I were arrested … But if I went into court and told all I knew no one who called himself a man would ever speak to me again.
ten
HAVE SOME MEDICINE M’DEAR
London was the capital of capitals in the late nineteenth century. The whole world came to the city where sin was a pleasure and ‘sometimes pleasure’s a sin’. Many came to sample the hub of the world’s greatest empire. Some arrived having fled political injustices, others came to start over for completely different reasons. Dr Thomas Neill Cream, who booked into Anderton’s Hotel, 163 Fleet Street on 5 October 1891, was one of the latter.
The eldest of eight siblings, Cream was born in Glasgow in 1850. The family left for Canada four years later, where the father built up a shipbuilding firm. Thomas became a medical student at McGill University, graduating with merit in 1876. His only obvious shortcoming was a painful squint, which he alleviated with a constant supply of morphine.
The newly qualified Cream proved quite adept at backstreet abortions and swindling insurance companies. He also met, impregnated and subsequently carried out a brutal abortion upon Flora Brooks, the daughter of a wealthy hotelier. The ensuing shotgun marriage made Cream bolt for England, where he enrolled as a postgraduate student at St Thomas’s Hospital and rounded off his education with a qualification from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons at Edinburgh. He returned to Canada – when his wife died of consumption – to claim $1,000 under the marriage contract. He only got $200.
He resumed his lucrative career of backstreet abortions, only to suffer a setback when the body of a young woman was found in his practice toilet. It was fairly obvious that he had killed her, but lack of direct evidence got him off. He moved to Chicago, continuing with his unsavoury practice and building up a business selling a ‘medicine’ that cured epilepsy. The pretty young wife of an impressed client was sent to him. She fell under his spell, whilst her husband died of a mysterious ailment. Cream’s predilection for sending fantasy letters would prove to be his undoing in this case, and fatal in the future. In Chicago he sent fantasy letters to the District Attorney, saying that it had been the chemist’s fault for putting too much strychnine in the husband’s medicine. Cream was sent to jail for life.
Cream’s father died in 1887. His family pressed for an early release, and, allowing for good behaviour, he was released on 31 July 1891, collecting a $16,000 inheritance and leaving for Britain.
The tall, balding gentleman with cross-eyes, bushy moustache and silk hat hit the town on Tuesday 6 October. ‘Fred’ picked up a prostitute, Elizabeth Masters, in Ludgate Circus, went home with her to Hercules Road, off Lambeth Road, and then disported himself at Gatti’s Emporium on Westminster Bridge Road.
Dr Neil Cream.
Map of the Waterloo area.
Despite the redevelopment of this part of Lambeth following the creation of yet another railway station, Waterloo, the area was known as one of the seediest and dirtiest parts of London, where light industries servicing the station mixed with the oldest profession in the world. This was one of the largest red light districts, where young women plied their trade from dingy backstreets. It was also where the disturbed Cream took up residence at 103 Lambeth Palace Road on Wednesday 7 October.
On 9 October, the attractive 27-year-old Matilda Clover, mother of a 2-year-old boy, met a man called ‘Fred’ whom she took home to 27 Lambeth Road. ‘Fred’ had made an appointment with Miss Masters, but saw Matilda and made a beeline for her. Masters and a friend saw them and followed.
The following day Dr Cream purchased a quantity of Nux Vomica, containing strychnine, and a box of gelatine capsules from Mr Priest’s chemist shop at 22 Parliament Street.
A 19-year-old prostitute, Ellen Donworth, collapsed in convulsions on Waterloo Road on the evening of 13 October 1891. A patron of the Wellington pub, on the other side of the street, helped her up and took her home to 8 Duke (Duchy) Street, where, in a lull in her dramatic convulsions, she explained to her landlady and Inspector Harvey of the Lambeth division, a previous client, that Fred, ‘a tall gentleman with cross eyes, a silk hat and bushy whiskers’, had given her a drink with white stuff in it. Mr Johnson, of the South London Medical Institute, diagnosed that her convulsions were similar to those caused by an overdose of strychnine. She was rushed to St Thomas’s Hospital, where she died in agony. Her post-mortem revealed a quarter of a grain of strychnine in her stomach.
The Deputy Coroner, Mr George Wyatt, received a strange letter demanding £300,000 in exchange for information on the murder of Miss Donworth. He filed it for future reference and the inquest gave a verdict of ‘death by poisoning with strychnine and morphia by a person unknown’.
One of Matilda Clover’s housemates saw a letter Matilda received asking to meet the writer, Fred, on 20 October. She was to bring the letter with her. Matilda brought the tall, mustachioed, heavily-built man back to her lodgings. He left late. At about three in the morning the house was woken up by screams of agony. Matilda was writhing on her bed. She said that Fred had given her some pills. Her alcoholism made Dr McCarthy’s assistant, Mr Coppin, think that her fits were due to chronic alcoholism. She died in agony and the following day her doctor, Dr Graham, ascribed her death to alcohol poisoning. Matilda was buried in Tooting Cemetery on 27 October.
A flurry of rather extraordinary letters was received by divers individuals. These letters were to cast doubt on the ‘natural’ death of Miss Clover. Countess Russell received a letter accusing her husband of poisoning Clover: a Mr Malone sent a letter to the eminent Dr William Broadbent, threatening to expose him as the murderer of Miss Emma Clover unless he paid £2,500, and finally Messrs W.H. Smith & Sons received a letter accusing Mr F.W.D. Smith of murdering Ellen Donworth.
London was quiet for the next few months – because Cream had fallen in love, proposed and been accepted by a Miss Sabatini of Berkhamsted. He then returned to Canada, where he had printed 500 copies of another totally unbelievable fantasy letter addressed to the guests of the Metropole Hotel. He returned to his London lodgings in early April 1902.
PC George Cumley was walking his beat at 2.15 a.m. on 12 April. As he passed down Stamford Street he noticed that a young woman was seeing a large, bespectacled, mustachioed man in a tall silk hat and cape out of No. 118. The man disappeared towards Waterloo Road. His return beat brought him back to the same address forty-five minutes later. A cab stood outside, as did a PC Eversfield, with a bundle in his arms. It was the girl Cumley had seen earlier, Emma Shrivell, an 18-year-old prostitute. Both Shrivel and her 21-year-old friend, Alice Marsh, had woken the house up with their screams and their landlord had called Eversfield. Alice Marsh died on the way to St Thomas’s Hospital; Shrivell died six hours later. The police began to suspect that a serial murderer was at work. They eventually had Matilda Clover’s body exhumed.
Matilda Clover.
Accusatory letter addressed to the Metropole Hotel.
On 26 April, Dr Joseph Harper of Barnstaple received a letter from a W.H. Murra
y, claiming that his son, a medical student at St Thomas’s and lodger at 103 Lambeth Palace Road, was the murderer of the two girls of Stamford Street. The information could be suppressed with the payment of £1,500. Dr Harper thought the writer a madman and ignored this ludicrous threat. He was, indeed, quite right. At least so thought Miss Sleaper, landlady of both Cream and Harper Junior, when she heard this from Cream’s own lips!
Further letters were sent to the Coroner, Mr Wyatt, and to Mr George Clarke, a detective of Cockspur Street. Meanwhile John Haynes, erstwhile engineer and part-time secret agent, lodger of Mr and Mrs Armstead of 129 Westminster Road, was introduced to a balding, large myopic man, a friend of his landlord, a certain Dr Neill of Canada. As both men had been to America they seemed to have much in common. Eventually Cream began to boast about his familiarity with the murders and even took Haynes on a guided tour of the murder spots! Haynes often crossed Westminster Bridge to see his friend, Police Sergeant McIntyre of Scotland Yard, and talked to him, among other things, about this rather eccentric character, Dr Neill.
This possible lead intrigued McIntyre. He set a watch on the doctor’s perambulations. Quite by chance, Constable Cumley recognised Dr Cream as he started to follow a prostitute down St George’s Road, then into a house on Elliott’s Row. He waited and followed Cream back to his lodgings. After this, Cream became paranoid that he was being tailed and told his friend Haynes, who in turn questioned McIntyre – McIntyre remained non-committal. Cream however pursued it, accosting McIntyre as he was leaving Haynes’s lodgings. Intrigued, McIntyre decided to look into this and discovered PC Cumley’s statement about the man seen leaving 118 Stamford Street. It was just too convenient for comfort.