The Jack the Ripper Location Photographs: Dutfield's Yard and the Whitby Collection

by Hutchinson, Philip

  At the back of the yard, we see a taller building to the left and a single-storey structure to its right, clearly leading out of shot and indicating that the yard turns to its right beyond the club building, something that is definitely known to have been the case at Dutfield’s Yard. These two buildings are instantly recognisable from any illustration of the yard. This taller building originally housed Walter Hindley & Co, sack manufacturers, and it is presumed that the smaller building (at some stage a forge) housed Arthur Dutfield, the wheelwright who had given the yard its name (the cartwheel on the 1909 image relates to this business). There appears to be a small gap between the tiles on the left of this lower building and the side of the structure. Beyond this, not visible on the image, were stables.

  There is some confusion as to the roles played by these buildings in contemporary descriptions. Although the stables are not in dispute, Jake Luukanen discovered that the Goad’s maps had some discrepancies when it came to naming the industries undertaken. They mark the taller building as a cabinet manufactory (and this would certainly seem to fit with the aprons worn by the men standing in its doorway) and the single-storey building as being the sack business (or, in one version, the forge). Jake has concluded that the sacking company probably moved into the lower building when Dutfield relocated to Upper Smithfield.

  Fairclough Street, with the warehouse roof highlighted, 7 April 1909 (Courtesy Robert Clack)

  Comparison of the warehouse roof from the 1909 and 1900 photographs

  On the 1894 Ordnance Survey map, the staircase is indeed placed on the right of the building, as it is shown in some illustrations but not on the Goad’s map or the 1900 photograph. It is, of course, perfectly possible that the stairs were not firmly fixed and could be moved at will.

  However, the clincher came as the result of some remarkable work by Robert Clack. In the middle distance of the background, some way off, can be seen two matching gables of a building. The gable on the right has a circular window near its apex, and the gables are separated by what appears to be an irrelevant course of bricks or stone between them. When the photograph was taken of Berner Street in 1909, the photographer also took (from the same position) a lesser-known image of Fairclough Street simply by turning the camera to his left.

  The building visible in the background is the Commercial Road Goods Depot and Warehouses belonging to the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway Goods Station. The side facing the photographer was on Gowers Walk. It matches perfectly, in every way, with the building visible in the distance on the 1900 shot. There could now be no doubt whatsoever that the image was indeed of Dutfield’s Yard.

  The Album Contents

  Most of the photographs in the album were well-composed and covered a huge part of Europe. The owner had written some interesting anecdotes relating to the events around the time the pictures were taken. The first image in the album was badly damaged and almost faded beyond recognition. It was titled ‘Dewey Arch, New York’. This was yet further confirmation on dating the album. The Dewey Arch stood at Madison Square as a triumphal arch built for a parade celebrating the return of Admiral George Dewey, following a military victory at the Battle of Manila Bay in 1898. It was designed by the architect Charles R Lamb and quickly constructed in the summer of 1899, the parade being held on 30 September that year (by coincidence, the anniversary of the murder of Elizabeth Stride). After the parade, the arch quickly deteriorated and was thus demolished in 1901.

  The following two images were taken in Stratford-on-Avon. The seven after these were all taken in London, with a further Stratford-on-Avon picture in the middle. The very first of the London images was that of Dutfield’s Yard. This was followed by ones of St James’ Park and Tower Bridge. The next is of the Statue of Peace in Smithfield, which the owner has notated as being the ‘scene of burning of Christian Martyrs’ which, according to the historian Martin Fido, makes it likely the photographer was a Protestant because of the phrasing used. The statue was part of a drinking fountain erected by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain Society in 1870 and still exists to this day.

  Dewey Arch, from the album

  A colour postcard view of Dewey Arch, also from 1900

  Detail of St James’s Park, from the album

  Detail of the Peace Fountain in Smithfield, from the album

  The Tower of London, from the album

  After the photograph of Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, put in the wrong order, is a faded image of the Tower of London with some soldiers being drilled in front of it. The London set finishes with a shot of the Albert Memorial and the Horseguard.

  The photographs then move on to Ireland and in the second image we see the photographer of the other images sitting in a pony-trap with an Irish market-woman and it becomes clear that the owner of the photographs is a woman. She appears in several other photographs, always wearing fairly elaborate headwear with small brims. A few images further on is a picture of the ruins of Ross Castle at Killarney. Underneath this, the photographer has written ‘While taking this photo my party left me behind in Killarney wilderness. Rescued later by Cook jaunting car’. This final sentence provided the key to some fascinating later discoveries.

  After the Irish images, there is one of Monte Carlo, three of France, one of Belgium and an ethnic photo of a Dutch family dressed in bizarre clothing.

  The next page holds a damaged but awe-inspiring photograph of the picturesque glacier Mer de Glace at Chamonix. The photographer writes underneath ‘Here I crossed without a guide’. It is impossible to contemplate that she actually means she crossed the glacier alone and unaided.

  Detail of the photographer with an Irish market-woman, from the album

  Ross Castle, from the album

  Mer de Glace, from the album

  Hotel Deutsches Haus, Bingen, from the album

  Detail of the photographer in an ice cave, Mer de Glace, from the album

  The album then moves on to Germany and under a picture of the Hotel Deutsches Haus in Bingen (looking very similar to one standing today, albeit with many alterations) she recalls ‘Here I slept with a feather bed over me and a bootjack under my bed’.

  After one image of Geneva, the bulk of the photographs are from the main destination of the trip – Italy. Several photographs were taken in Venice, others in Rome, Florence, Pisa, Genoa, Bordighera, Pompeii and Naples. Amongst the Rome images are photos of two named women (possibly travelling companions) and a clear image of the photographer herself – sadly, with her eyes closed. The Europe images conclude with another shot from Holland of a dog pulling a cart and finally of the photographer standing in an ice cave at Mer de Glace.

  The rest of the album consists of the nine later images taken in the US. An old woman (the photographer in her later years?) in a white dress sits, surrounded by flowers, on the veranda of a small wooden outbuilding in the first. The second is of a middle-class clapboard house. There are several rustic photographs of people chopping wood and fishing, as well as photographs taken inside a house of a family round a table, a painting of a distinguished-looking gentleman and another of a well-dressed little girl standing next to an easel which holds a painting of a small child. Another painting is visible in the background.

  Later American photograph, from the album

  Elderly couple with the Stars and Stripes, from the album

  The final shot in the album is of an elderly couple outside a different clapboard house. The old woman may well be the same one in the white dress from the earlier image. They flank a huge Stars and Stripes flag, hung from the roof. Dee Anna Grimsrud of the Wisconsin Historical Society inspected the later photos and had to conclude that they could be of almost anywhere. However, the final image did provide some interesting information. She noticed that the flag not only appeared to be brand new, but that it had 48 stars on it. The probability is that the photograph was taken when Arizona became the 48th State of America on 14 February 1912, a dozen years after the European trip. This could suggest the p
hotographer came from Arizona, but it is nothing more than a possibility.

  Ellen Engseth of the Wisconsin Historical Society provided me with information on the Heinn label at the back of the album. Heinn was a large Milwaukee-based company dealing in stationery and they are credited with creating the loose-leaf system of filing. Between 1896 and 1977, they were extremely prolific throughout the US and not just in Wisconsin. The red stamp of the number ‘642’ probably relates only to the type of album being sold. The company is now owned by Majestic Industries, but numerous e-mails to them over a long period of time elicited no reply.

  The European Vacation

  In the same e-mail where she noted the Arizona connection, Dee Anna Grimsrud asked me if I had contacted Cook’s Tours to see if their business records went back to 1900. I had actually not seriously considered a planned package deal extended break to Europe from so early a date, though I knew that Thomas Cook did run excursions, and had assumed it to have been an independent journey the photographer had arranged herself. The mention of Thomas Cook did bring to mind the comment in the album from Ross Castle, when the photographer mentioned she was collected by a Cook’s jaunting car.

  Unsurprisingly, I had expected a Cook’s jaunting car to have been a charabanc of some description. Martin Fido subsequently pointed out, however, that a jaunting car in Ireland at that time was not a powered vehicle but a tiny pony and trap, on which the passengers would sit along the sides. There was always the possibility, of course, that the jaunting car had just been in the vicinity and came to the photographer’s assistance but seeing the name of Cook now mentioned twice, I thought it worthy of direct investigation.

  I sent an e-mail to the Archive Department at Thomas Cook. Cook, a cabinet maker from Market Harborough, first held an excursion on 5 July 1841 when he organised a trip from Leicester to Loughborough for fellow Temperance Society members to attend a meeting by train. His first commercial venture was to Liverpool in 1845 and in 1855 he began to branch out into Europe, his business being helped by the International Exhibition in Paris. Trips to America followed in 1865. By the time of the 1900 vacation, Thomas Cook was the largest organisation of its kind in the world, with branches in many major countries.

  A Cook’s touring car in Paris, 1900

  An Irish jaunting car at Blarney Castle

  Paul Smith runs the extensive Archive Department and his communication of 14 August 2008 was to prove extremely useful:

  ‘Many Americans visited Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as part of an escorted Cook’s Tour. These tours were especially popular in 1900, as tourists in this year were presented with the unique opportunity of visiting both the Paris Exposition (including the Olympic Games) and the Passion Play at Oberammergau. All European tours in 1900 appear to have included a few days in Paris; many of them also featured a visit to Oberammergau; but only one tour appears to have also incorporated a tour of Ireland (which you mention). This was ‘Tour No. 22’ and the itinerary, as listed in the pages of the American edition of Cook’s Excursionist and Tourist Advertiser (a monthly newspaper issued by Thos Cook & Son), was as follows:

  A Thomas Cook advertising poster from 1900

  New York, Queenstown, Cork, Blarney Castle, Glengariff, Killarney, Dublin (3 days), Belfast, Giant’s Causeway, Larne, Glasgow, The Trossachs, Edinburgh, Melrose, London (7 days), Paris and the Exposition (8 days), Brussels, Antwerp, The Hague, Amsterdam, Cologne, Bonn, The Rhine, Mayence, Heidelberg, Munich, Oberammergau, Lake Constance, Falls of the Rhine, Lucerne, The Rigi, Brunig Pass, Interlaken, Grindelwald, Berne, Lausanne, Fribourg, Geneva, Chamonix, Tete Noir Pass, Martigny, Brigue, Simplon Pass, Stresa, Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome (6 days), Naples, Capri, Sorrento, Pompeii, Vesuvius, Naples, New York.

  The tour lasted 103 days and cost $970.

  The fares included: travel tickets and hotel accommodation at first-class hotels; transportation of 250lbs of baggage on the ocean steamers and 56lbs on the railways; omnibuses between stations, piers and hotels; fees for sightseeing and carriage drives; fees to hotel servants and railway porters; and ‘the services of an experienced Conductor, who will supervise the arrangements throughout’. The fares did not include: steward’s fees on the ocean steamers; wines, liquors or other drink not ordinarily supplied at table d’hôte; expenses of carriages, guides or sightseeing when not ordered by the Conductor.

  The tour was originally advertised as departing New York aboard the Cunard Line Steamship Umbria on Saturday 26 May 1900, but the April, May and June editions of Cook’s Excursionist shows a revised departure date of Saturday 2 June 1900 and a new ship: Cunard’s Lucania.

  Details of the hotels to be used in Paris are listed in the ‘Excursionist’ but I am afraid no information is provided about any other hotels used on this tour. However, a 4-page list of all the hotels used by Thos Cook & Son throughout the world appears in every issue of the Excursionist.

  This was a remarkable breakthrough, as it set in stone the times of the European vacation. We know that the tourist came from America because the first image in the series is of the short-lived Dewey Arch in New York from where, of course, the Lucania would sail.

  The RMS Cunard Lucania

  The RMS Cunard Lucania was a steamer built in Glasgow in 1893 and made her maiden voyage on 2 September that year. She was one of the largest ships of her day, weighing 12,950 tons, 620’ long and capable of holding 2,000 passengers (600 First Class, 400 Second Class and 1000 Third Class). Through the 1890s, she constantly beat speed records on the North American transatlantic route. In 1901, she became the first Cunard ship to be fitted with Marconi wireless.

  First Class accommodation on board the Lucania was the finest money could buy. The public rooms (and state rooms on the upper deck) were heavily panelled in oak, satinwood and mahogany. The floors were thickly carpeted, the furniture heavily upholstered and velvet curtains hung over every porthole and window. The First Class smoking room held the first ever open fire on a passenger ship. The First Class dining saloon was unsurpassed, rising 10’ and possessing a central well that pierced through three decks to a skylight. The ceilings were white and gold, supported by Ionic columns, and the walls were of mahogany, inlaid with ivory.

  By the late 1890s she was superseded by newer liners from Germany and in 1907 she and her sister ship the Campania were replaced by the new Cunard liners the Lusitania and Mauretania. She made her last voyage on 7 July 1909.

  However, whilst laid up at Huskisson Dock in Liverpool on 14 August 1909, she was gutted by fire, partially sank at her berth, and was sold five days later. She was broken up at Swansea, her contents being auctioned off. Indeed, items from the ship still regularly turn up on eBay to this day, mostly in the US. Film exists of passengers boarding the ship at Liverpool, taken by Mitchell and Kenyon in 1901 and held by the British Film Institute in London. The Captain for most of the Atlantic crossings at this time was Horatio McKay.

  Having left the Thomas Cook party at Queenstown, the Lucania continued to Liverpool to begin the return journey to the US with new passengers, departing England on 16 June 1900.

  The $970 cost of the trip would equate today to $25,000 or £15,000. This was not a trip taken by a woman of meagre means.

  Thomas Cook used two main hotels in London for its travellers’ use but it is likely that our tourist was staying at The Langham. In the early years of tourism, richer transients were lodged in private houses but it is unlikely this would have still been occurring by 1900. The Langham was opened in 1865 as Europe’s first ‘Grand Hotel’ and is still a thriving concern situated in Portland Place, Regent Street. Many notable historic figures have been guests there such as Oscar Wilde, Henry Morton Stanley, William Gladstone, Henry Longfellow, Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dvorak, Somerset Maugham, The Prince of Wales (Edward VII) and Napoleon III.

  Given the delay in departure of the Lucania from New York and the time spent in Ireland (at that time still one country) and other parts of Great Br
itain (largely passing undocumented in this album) then it can be safely estimated that our tourist was in London at the very end of June and start of July 1900, but it is extremely unlikely that any precise date will become available.

  What stands out is that the image of Dutfield’s Yard is completely out of keeping with the other photographs taken in the city. All the others were of popular tourist attractions in large open spaces and it is difficult to believe that a trip to a murder location connected to Jack the Ripper would have been on the official itinery. Given the full week in London, it is likely the photographer had some free time and arranged a private cab to take her to see one of the murder locations. At that time it was little more than a decade since the Whitechapel Murders had taken place; recent enough to be titillating, but distant enough to not incur outrage. It must remain a supposition, but there is a possibility that Berner Street was visited just before or after the trip to The Tower of London, a short distance away. It seems unlikely that a whole group of tourists would have disembarked at this point to view the scene, and only one man in the photograph (the one on the far right looking into the camera) appears well-dressed enough to be a tourist. One must also wonder why this location was chosen above the others. Certainly, the places where Martha Tabram and Mary Kelly were killed were deemed unsafe. The site of the Mary Ann Nichols murder was a bit of a distance further to the east and the location of Annie Chapman’s murder was in a private backyard. This really only leaves Mitre Square, where Catherine Eddowes died, and here as viable stops. Perhaps she took a cab and visited all the murder locations but only photographed this one? We will never know.