by Rule, Fiona
The Bessarabians also ran prostitution rings and operated illegal gambling establishments. Within a short space of time, their criminal activities had won them quite substantial rewards and more than a modicum of local influence. However, their nemesis was about to materialise in the form of another Eastern European gang called the Odessians.
Over in Brick Lane, there was a restaurant called the Odessa, which was owned by a Jew named Weinstein. One day, the Bessarabians turned up at the restaurant demanding protection money. Weinstein, who was a big man with gangland connections of his own, refused to give in to their demands and attacked the gang with an iron bar, putting several Bessarabians in hospital. Word got around the Brick Lane area about Weinstein’s heroism and a group of Russian youths formed the Odessian gang in a bid to put a stop to the Bessarabians’ rackets. Before long, the Odessians were inundated with requests from shop and pub owners who were being intimidated. One such man was the owner of the York Minster Music Hall, just off the Commercial Road. The owner told the Odessians that the Bessarabians planned to sabotage that night’s performance because he hadn’t paid their protection money.
That evening, the Odessians lay in wait for their rivals, who showed up during a Russian dancing act. A vicious fight broke out, the police were called and several members of each gang were arrested. Once in custody, some gang members decided to talk, which resulted in the gang leaders becoming so sought-after by the police that they had to go into hiding. With no leaders available, their ‘businesses’ disintegrated. However, some of the original gang members managed to escape on ships bound for America, where legend has it, they became instrumental in shaping the now notorious Chicago underworld of the 1930s.
Gang warfare did little to improve the atmosphere of Spitalfields and, as the end of the 19th century approached, Dorset Street and its surrounds reached their lowest point. This once proud, prosperous street had been reduced to a den of iniquity, where prostitutes openly plied their trade, thieves fenced their pickings and violence was an everyday occurrence. The arrival of the Eastern European Jews had made an already bad situation worse as non-Jews created their own ghetto in the mean street and courts that had escaped population by the immigrants. The redevelopment of the once dreadful Flower and Dean Street pushed even more of the dregs of society into this little street. Locals humorously referred to the road as Dossett Street due to the fact that it was comprised almost entirely of doss houses. Soon this small, seemingly insignificant thoroughfare began to attract the attention of the press once again.
Local clergyman and social reformer Canon Barnett, referred to Dorset Street in a letter to The Times in 1898. He described the residents as men and women who seemed to ‘herd as beasts’ and declared the road to be the ‘centre of evil.’ During the same year, a researcher ventured into Dorset Street on behalf of the social investigator Charles Booth. Accompanied by a policeman, he made his way around the doss houses, courts and alleyways and later described what he found:
‘The lowest of all prostitutes are found in Spitalfields, on the benches round the church, or sleeping in the common lodging houses of Dorset Street. Women have often found their way there by degrees from the streets of the West End. He (the policeman accompanying him) spoke of Dorset Street as in his opinion the worst street in respect of poverty, misery, vice – of the whole of London.’
Chapter 22
The Murder of Mary Ann Austin
It appears that by the turn of the century, the police had all but given up attempting to maintain any sort of public order in Dorset Street and had pretty much left the road to police itself. An explanation for their defeatist attitude can be found in the events surrounding the death of a young woman named Mary Ann Austin, an inmate of William Crossingham’s lodging house at number 35, in May 1901.
At about 10.30pm on Saturday 25 May, Mary Ann Austin arrived at Crossingham’s lodging house with a man purporting to be her husband. Despite the fact that the lodging house was supposed to be reserved for women only, the deputy let the couple a bed after the man produced 1/6d (an exceptionally large amount of money to pay for such accommodation.) The couple were shown to bed number 15 on the third floor of the lodging house and promptly retired for the night. At approximately 8.30am the next morning, a female lodger came rushing into the deputy’s office claiming that Mary Ann had been viciously attacked. The deputy’s wife (one Maria Moore) went immediately to the third floor to find Mary Ann groaning in agony from several stab wounds. Her erstwhile male companion was nowhere to be seen. Mrs Moore sent for a doctor immediately but instead of also calling the police, she summoned William Crossingham’s brother-in-law, Daniel Sullivan, who ran another of Crossingham’s lodging houses just round the corner in Whites Row. On arriving at the scene, Sullivan decided against summoning the police and set about destroying any useful evidence before the doctor arrived.
First, he dressed the dying Mary Ann in another lodger’s clothes and arranged for her own clothing to be burnt. He then moved her downstairs to a bed on the first floor, presumably so the murder site could be cleaned up. By time that the doctor arrived, any incriminating evidence had been successfully removed but poor Mary Ann was in a very bad way. The doctor immediately arranged for her to be taken to hospital but it was too late to save her. Mary Ann Austin died of her injuries on Sunday 26 May.
The subsequent inquest into the murder of Mary Ann Austin proved to be frustrating and baffling for both the police and the coroner. The man that took the bed with Austin on the Saturday night was found and identified himself as her husband, William, a stoker by profession of no fixed abode. However it seems more likely that he was simply a casual acquaintance of Mary Ann, who had promised her a bed for the night in return for sexual favours. William was promptly arrested for her murder; a crime he vehemently denied committing. Whether William Austin really did kill Mary Ann is a moot point. However, the subsequent fiasco at the inquest clearly shows the complete lack of respect the inhabitants of Dorset Street had for the authorities.
At the start of the murder inquiry, all witnesses lied about the circumstances surrounding Mary Ann’s death including the fact that the body was moved and evidence destroyed. They only changed their story in court when alternative accounts of what happened proved they were lying. Daniel Sullivan’s account of events was so inconsistent that the coroner was moved to conclude that he had ‘run as close to the wind as you possibly could’. Despite the best efforts of the police to find reliable witnesses, the coroner was forced to conclude that there was no reliable evidence to convict William Austin of the murder and the prisoner was released.
The fatal stabbing of Mary Ann Austin joined the long and ever-growing list of unsolved crimes perpetrated in Dorset Street at the turn of the century. However, the inquest fiasco shows conclusively that by this time, Dorset Street was run exclusively by its inhabitants. The lodging house keepers and their employees took on total responsibility for dealing with any crimes committed within the walls of their establishments and any outside interference was to be avoided at all costs.
Despite the residents’ dislike of outside interference, Mary Ann Austin’s murder prompted yet more unwelcome attention for Dorset Street from press and well-meaning members of the public alike. Two months after the murder and subsequent cover-up, Dorset Street received its most damning indictment to date when one Fred. A. McKenzie wrote about the street in the Daily Mail under the heading ‘The Worst Street In London’. Mr McKenzie trod the same path as many ‘social investigators’ before him, taking an uneducated and frankly snobbish stance against the street’s beleaguered residents, laying much of the blame at the feet of the dreaded lodging house keepers and resorting to sensationalism in order to drive his point home. Nonetheless, his article does paint a clear picture of the depths to which Dorset Street had sunk by the turn of the century and illustrates that the social deprivation that had first come to the public’s attention during the Ripper murders had most definitely not been addressed. Under
the heading ‘Blue Blood’, Mr McKenzie wrote:
‘The lodging houses of Dorset Street and of the district around are the head centres of the shifting criminal population of London. Of course, the aristocrats of crime – the forger, the counterfeiter, and the like do not come here. In Dorset Street we find more largely the common thief, the pickpocket, the area meak, the man who robs with violence, and the unconvicted murderer. The police have a theory, it seems, that it is better to let these people congregate together in one mass where they can be easily found than to scatter them abroad. And Dorset Street certainly serves the purpose of a police trap. If this were all, something might be said in favour of allowing such a place to continue. But it is not all... Here comes the real and greatest harm that Dorset Street does. Respectable people, whose main offence is their poverty, are thrown in close and constant contact with the agents of crime. They become familiarised with law breaking. They see the best points of the criminals around them. If they are in want, as they usually are, it is often enough a thief who shares his spoils with them to give them bread. And there are those who are always ready to instruct newcomers in the simple ways of making a dishonest living. Boy thieves are trained as regularly and systematically around Dorset Street to-day as they were in the days of Oliver Twist.’
While there was undoubtedly some truth in what Fred McKenzie wrote, his overdramatic prose, combined with ludicrous exaggeration (according to him, Dorset Street ‘boasts of an attempt at murder on an average once a month, of a murder in every house, and in one house at least, a murder in every room’) really got the goat of both the lodging house keepers and their tenants. In response, Dorset Street resident Edwin Locock convened a protest meeting. The initial date for the meeting was set for Wednesday 17 July (the day after the article had appeared) but the room was not large enough to accommodate the sizeable crowd that attended and so it was adjourned until the following Monday. In the meantime, bills were posted throughout Spitalfields stating that the new meeting would be held at the Duke of Wellington pub in Shepherd Street. The sole speaker at this protest would be none other than Jack McCarthy, described by the local press as ‘a gentleman who holds a considerable amount of property in the neighbourhood’.
On the evening of the meeting, a sizeable crowd arrived at the pub including numerous Dorset Street residents, a handful of representatives from local charities and, quite bravely, the writer of the article that had so inflamed the inhabitants – Mr McKenzie. Jack McCarthy’s response to the article was both eloquent and lengthy. According to press reports, he spoke for two hours, taking McKenzie’s article apart in a manner fit for a courtroom rather than the back room of an East End pub. Suffice to say, McCarthy refuted every indictment made by McKenzie but the picture of Dorset Street painted throughout his long diatribe is probably as inaccurate as the one imagined after reading Fred McKenzie’s article.
Even knowing that he was largely preaching to the converted, Jack McCarthy’s speech leaves the impartial observer with the impression that Dorset Street was inhabited almost solely by cheeky cockney types who would not look out of place in a production of Oliver!, presided over by altruistic landlords only too willing to sacrifice their rental income in order to provide shelter for the needy. One suspects that the truth lay somewhere between these two gentlemen’s colourful descriptions.
Despite the best efforts of Jack McCarthy, speeches in local pubs (however impassioned) were no match for the massive publicity machine that was the national press. Dorset Street retained its dubious reputation as ‘The Worst Street In London’ and the authorities continued to leave the inhabitants to their own devices. However, the notoriety that Dorset Street and its surrounds suffered did add certain kudos to the already shady reputations of the men that ran the streets. In their little patch of London, the Spitalfields landlords enjoyed a huge amount of power and this power afforded them status. Men such as Jack McCarthy, Jimmy Smith and Frederick Gehringer were very well known around the area and due to the amount of control they wielded, they were generally respected by their dependents.
By the turn of the century, the landlords had reached the peak of their success. Unbeknown to them, the property empires they had worked so hard to build up were about to go into a slow but unstoppable decline. However, the first few years of the 20th century were probably the most financially stable that any of the landlords had previously experienced. All owned a sizeable chunk of property by this stage, there was no shortage of tenants and the authorities continued to ignore the squalid conditions that prevailed. Consequently, the landlords earned a lot of money and they quickly developed a taste for showing it off in most eccentric ways. Jimmy Smith had long since established himself as the ‘Governor of Brick Lane’, particularly in the eyes those who participated in his illegal gambling activities. However, one night Jimmy had too much to drink and fell into a fire, severely burning himself.
The burns were so deep that they destroyed a great deal of muscle on one side of Jimmy’s body, leaving him partially paralysed and no doubt in a lot of pain. However, once recovered, Jimmy did not let his disability stop him from going about his daily business. He employed a minder to lead him along as he patrolled his ‘manor’ and was one of the first people in the East End to own a motor car, in which he was ferried around by a chauffeur in a chocolate-coloured uniform.
Jack McCarthy also enjoyed spending his money on the latest fashions and was described by contemporaries as looking most ‘gentlemanly’ despite his rough background in the slums of Southwark. He was well regarded by the workers at nearby Spitalfields market who referred to him as a ‘real pal’. The local costermongers also enjoyed a particularly close business relationship with McCarthy, who allowed them to store their barrows in a shed next to 26 Dorset Street thus preventing them from being stolen overnight. In contrast, Arthur Harding, a local lad who wasn’t beholden to McCarthy for anything (and was probably envious of his status) dismissed him as a ‘hard man’ and a ‘bully’.
Frederick Gehringer was also well-known to the costermongers as he ran a barrow-hire business from one of his properties in Little Pearl Street. This sideline was to grow into a full-time business in later years as Gehringer progressed from barrows to horses and carts and finally motorised lorries. The Gehringer family was in the haulage business until well into the 20th century. Like Jimmy Smith, Frederick Gehringer enjoyed being flash with his new-found wealth and rumour has it that he enjoyed parading around his properties on a sedan chair.
The landlords’ families also benefited from their increasing wealth and began to live a distinctly middle-class existence. Men who had been raised in slums found they could give their own children a vastly superior start in life. In a bid to keep them away from the daily horrors of Dorset Street, Jack McCarthy sent two of his younger daughters (Annie and Ellen) to boarding school in Battle, Sussex. This small school was run by Mrs Fanny Lambourn, the wife of the preceptor tutor at Battle Town Grammar School. Here the girls were taught the ‘three R’s’, learned how to sew and cook and also acquired a command of the French language; a skill that was not in much demand around Dorset Street since the Huguenots had departed.
However, as the new century unfurled, subtle changes in how and where Londoners lived and worked were underway. These changes would have a profound effect on Dorset Street, its surrounds and the way McCarthy and his fellow landlords made their money.
By 1900, better transport links in and out of the capital meant that it was no longer necessary for men and women to live within walking distance of their work. Spitalfields had for decades been a popular residential area not just for the destitute, but also for low paid workers whose employment was found in the City or along the banks of the Thames. As transport links improved, developers began to build new estates of affordable housing in parts of Middlesex, Kent and Surrey that until recently had been impossible to commute from. Suddenly it became possible for workers to move out to the new suburbs such as Charlton, Norwood, Wembley, Finch
ley, Ilford and still retain their jobs in central London. This sea change in the way people lived and worked would eventually have a devastating effect on the fortunes of the Spitalfields landlords.
While the very poor remained in the area, those who had once relied on their furnished rooms and two-up, two-down cottages were lured away to the suburbs, never to return. This economic change was coupled with the fact that many of the houses the landlords let out were literally falling to pieces. The once middle-class properties had been in a pretty bad state when the landlords had acquired them twenty years previously. Since then, they had been ill-used by the tenants and neglected by their owners – remember that McCarthy didn’t even bother to paint over the bloodstained wall in Mary Kelly’s room, let alone embark on any serious renovation work.
In addition to the population changes and the dilapidated state of many properties in Spitalfields, traffic around Spitalfields Market was still causing increasing problems. On market days, there were so many carts, vans and barrows around that the streets became impassable. Market customers complained that they couldn’t get close enough to the market to pick up their goods, non-market related shops moaned that their customers couldn’t get through the mêlée (thus losing custom) and thefts from unattended vehicles were commonplace.
By the 1890s, the newly-formed London County Council could clearly see that widening the streets around the market would solve two problems in one fell swoop. Firstly, wider streets would ease traffic congestion considerably, and, secondly, it would give them the opportunity to get rid of the dreadful courts and alleys that surrounded the market for good. The only problem was that the market did not belong to the council.
Undeterred, the LCC began introducing bills in Parliament that they hoped would give them the power to purchase the freehold on Spitalfields Market. In 1902, their wish was granted and the freehold was bought from the trustees of the Goldsmid family (the current owners). The leaseholder, Robert Horner (who had run the market since the 1870s), proved a more difficult nut to crack. After much negotiating, Horner reluctantly agreed to relinquish control of the market for £600,000 – a massive sum in those days. However, his agreement contained many caveats and for the next ten years, the situation at Spitalfields Market remained the same as the LCC and Robert Horner battled it out.