It sounds unbelievable, but it is only in the last thirty years that the police generally have taken an interest in their own fascinating past. It was then realized, however, that in many forces much of the early history had already been lost. My own experiences in this field might help to clarify this point.
Some years ago I wrote a social history of police and crime in the City of London from Elizabethan to Victorian times. Although the City police force is the oldest in the country, far older than the Metropolitan (which serves Greater London), it has nothing in the way of early documentation. Had it not been for papers in the possession of the Corporation of the City of London it would have been nearly impossible to write a history of this force. The police themselves were not entirely to blame for this situation. A number of their stations had been badly blitzed in the 1939–45 war (one was completely wiped out). Inevitably, quite a lot of documents were destroyed but tragically, of the papers that remained, nearly all were scrapped. Only a few letters, such as those from the Governor of Newgate Prison written when hangings were still public, were snatched from the shredding machines and retained as curiosities. Much later, I was fortunate enough to salvage case papers relating to the Siege of Sidney Street in 1911 following the murder of three City of London policemen by Latvian anarchists and to use them in a book. The maps were so brittle that the binder who restored them thought that they had been baked!
The point that I am making is that these papers were destroyed, as others have been, through indifference or ignorance – not through a desire to conceal or to protect some great name.
This record of neglect is just as true of other police forces, including Scotland Yard. The late Mr Heron, its first archivist, told me that until 1959, when the Yard’s files came under the control of the National Archives office at Kew (being Home Office papers), it was quite customary when more space was needed for the porters to yank out handfuls of papers from old files to make way for new ones. Some, I imagine, were a bit selective about what they took, and hopefully one day some of these papers will be returned. A Superintendent I once heard lecturing to the Metropolitan Police History Society touched on this same point. He told us that most of the early papers of the Special Branch were thought to have been destroyed in 1884 by a Fenian bomb which was planted against the wall of their office. Yet some papers had recently come to light. The widow of a Special Branch pensioner asked them to buy the contents of a large suitcase which she brought into their office. It was full of Special Branch papers which her husband had kept under the bed.
Therefore, anyone who is hoping for startling revelations from the Jack the Ripper files will be very disappointed with what they find. They are incomplete. When I first examined them in the early 1970s there were three bundles of loose-leaf papers in brown wrap-round files tied up with tapes. After three decades they are even more incomplete because of thefts by so-called researchers. This has led to the documents being individually sealed and bound. Some of the documents are only known now from the photocopies made by genuine researchers.
Two of the original Ripper files contained letters from the general public offering advice on the best way to catch the Whitechapel murderer. They contained nothing of any apparent importance. The third originally consisted of a number of thin brown folders – some of them very thin – which related not only to the five accepted Ripper murders but to others such as Alice McKenzie and Frances Coles which some contemporaries attributed to him. Each of the folders had the victim’s, or alleged victim’s, name across the top. There were very few documents in each file. The Eddowes murder, investigated by the City of London Police, contained only a single newspaper cutting. Some of the other files contained little more. Through the permission of the Commissioner of the City police, I was able to place in the Eddowes and Kelly file copies of the original photographs which were in their possession and to deposit similar sets with the Black Museum and the now defunct Bow Street Historical Museum. One can only assume that the Kelly photograph was removed at a much earlier date, since Sir Melville Macnaghten refers to it in his notes. Stranger still was the fact that this photograph was apparently the work of the City police, in spite of the dressing down they had received from Sir Charles Warren for being in Whitechapel. A story which explains this, although it is at variance with the newspaper accounts and comes from police pensioners I once worked with, is that although the Metropolitan Police did not dare to disobey Warren’s order and break down Kelly’s doorway before the bloodhounds arrived, the City police did so as they ran no such risks. Apparently, as the morning dragged on, and nothing happened in Miller’s Court, somebody quietly asked the City police for their help, which they gave by breaking into Kelly’s room and taking the photograph of her body as their justification for doing so. Whatever the truth of the story, the City police photographs of Eddowes must have been taken by a professional photographer as there was no official City police photographic department until the early 1950s. Curiously enough, they may have had others taken. The photograph of Miller’s Court is now a well-known one, but it was only by chance that I found it and published it in the Police Journal in 1969. Its discovery can be seen as backing up the claim that the City police were involved in the taking of the Kelly photographs. In 1967 their photographic department were clearing out a lot of old negatives, including some glass ones, and I happened to spot them. Two were of immediate interest. One was of some Metropolitan policemen, taken about 1870, and the other – which I instantly recognized – was of Miller’s Court, of which no photograph was known to exist. When I tried to trace their source, I was told that they had come from a large album of photographs which disappeared when the force museum was broken up in 1959 and lost at the same time as the ‘From Hell’ letter, which vanished with it.
In general, the documents are a haphazard collection and their very haphazardness suggests that they have been well picked over in the past hundred years. The only recorded destruction of any part of them is attributed to Sir Melville Macnaghten who is alleged to have burned the most incriminating of the papers to protect the murderer’s family. His daughter denies this story and says that her father probably said that he had done this to stop himself from being pestered by people at his club.
His notes are reproduced below in full for the first time anywhere. There are seven foolscap pages, in his handwriting, with hardly a blot or deletion throughout. Presumably this copy was written from those rough jottings that were in the possession of his grandson. As such, and as it is dated, it must be regarded as the prima facie document. By the same token the typewritten Macnaghten papers, which are now in the possession of the Aberconway family, must be regarded with some doubt – although emanating from the same source – until it is known with any certainty who revised them and why.
Confidential
The case referred to in the sensational story told in ‘The Sun’ in its issue of 13th inst. & following dates, is that of Thomas Cutbush who was arraigned at the London County Sessions in April 1891 on a charge of maliciously wounding Florence Grace Johnson, and attempting to wound Isabella Fraser Anderson in Kennington. He was found to be insane, and sentenced to be detained during Her Majesty’s Pleasure.
This Cutbush, who lived with his mother and aunt at 14 Albert Street, Kennington, escaped from the Lambeth Infirmary, (after he had been detained only a few hours, as a lunatic) at noon on 5th March 1891. He was rearrested on 9th idem. A few weeks before this, several cases of stabbing, or jobbing, from behind had occurred in the vicinity and a man named Colicott was arrested, but subsequently discharged owing to faulty identification. The cuts in the girl’s dresses made by Colicott were quite different to the cut(s) made by Cutbush (when he wounded Miss Johnson) who was no doubt influenced by a wild desire of morbid imitation. Cutbush’s antecedents were enquired into by C.Insp. (now Supt.) Chis (holm) by Inspector Hale, and by P. S. McCarthy CID – (the last named officer had been specially employed in Whitechapel at the time of the murders there,) – an
d it was ascertained that he was born, and had lived, in Kennington all his life. His father died when he was quite young and he was always a ‘spoilt’ child. He had been employed as a clerk and traveller in the Tea trade at the Minories, and subsequently canvassed for a Directory in the East End, during which time he bore a good character. He apparently contracted syphilis about 1888, and – since that time – led an idle and useless life. His brain seems to have become affected, and he believed that people were trying to poison him. He wrote to Lord Grimthorpe and others, – and also to the Treasury, – complaining of Dr Brooks, of Westminster Bridge Road, whom he had threatened to shoot for having supplied him with bad medicines. He is said to have studied medical books by day, and to have rambled about at night, returning frequently with his clothes covered with mud; but little reliance could be placed on the statements made by his mother or his aunt, who both appear to have been of a very excitable disposition. It was found impossible to ascertain his movements on the nights of the Whitechapel murders. The knife found on him was bought in Houndsditch about a week before he was detained in the Infirmary. Cutbush was the nephew of the late Supt. Executive.
Now the Whitechapel murderer had 5 victims – & 5 victims only, – his murders were
(1) 31st August ’88. Mary Ann Nichols – at Buck’s Row – who was found with her throat cut – & with (slight) stomach mutilation.
(2) 8th Sept. ’88. Annie Chapman – Hanbury St; – throat cut – stomach & private parts badly mutilated & some of the entrails placed round the neck.
(3) 30th Sept. ’88. Elizabeth Stride – Berner’s [sic] Street – throat cut, but nothing in shape of mutilation attempted, & on same date
Catharine Eddowes – Mitre Square, throat cut & very bad mutilation, both of face & stomach.
9th November, Mary Jane Kelly – Miller’s Court, throat cut, and the whole of the body mutilated in the most ghastly manner –
The last murder is the only one that took place in a room, and the murderer must have been at least 2 hours engaged. A photo was taken of the woman, as she was found lying on the bed, without seeing which it is impossible to imagine the awful mutilation.
With regard to the double murder which took place on 30th September, there is no doubt but that the man was disturbed by some Jews who drove up to a Club, (close to which the body of Elizabeth Stride was found) and that he then, ‘nondum satiatus’, went in search of a further victim who he found at Mitre Square.
It will be noticed that the fury of the mutilations increased in each case, and, seemingly, the appetite only became sharpened by indulgence. It seems, then, highly improbable that the murderer would have suddenly stopped in November ’88, and been content to recommence operations by merely prodding a girl’s behind some 2 years and 4 months afterwards. A much more rational theory is that the murderer’s brain gave way altogether after his awful glut in Miller’s Court, and that he immediately committed suicide, or, as a possible alternative, was found to be so hopelessly mad by his relations, that he was by them confined in some asylum.
No one ever saw the Whitechapel murderer; many homicidal maniacs were suspected, but no shadow of proof could be thrown on any one. I may mention the cases of 3 men, any one of whom would have been more likely than Cutbush to have committed this series of murders:
(1) A Mr M. J. Druitt, said to be a doctor & of good family – who disappeared at the time of the Miller’s Court murder, & whose body (which was said to have been upwards of a month in the water) was found in the Thames on 31st December – or about 7 weeks after that murder. He was sexually insane and from private information I have little doubt but that his own family believed him to have been the murderer.
(2) Kosminski – a Polish Jew – & resident in Whitechapel. This man became insane owing to many years indulgence in solitary vices. He had a great hatred of women, specially of the prostitute class, & had strong homicidal tendencies: he was removed to a lunatic asylum about March 1889. There were many circumstances connected with this man which made him a strong ‘suspect’.
(3) Michael Ostrog, a Russian doctor, and a convict, who was subsequently detained in a lunatic asylum as a homicidal maniac. This man’s antecedents were of the worst possible type, and his where abouts at the time of the murders could never be ascertained.
And now with regard to a few of the other inaccuracies and misleading statements made by ‘The Sun’. In its issue of 14th February, it is stated that the writer has in his possession a facsimile of the knife with which the murders were committed. This knife (which for some unexplained reason has, for the last 3 years, been kept by Inspector Race, instead of being sent to Prisoner’s Property Store) was traced, and it was found to have been purchased in Houndsditch in February ’91 or 2 years and 3 months after the Whitechapel murders ceased!
The statement, too, that Cutbush ‘spent a portion of the day in making rough drawings of the bodies of women, and of their mutilations’ is based solely on the fact that 2 scribble drawings of women in indecent postures were found torn up in Cutbush’s room. The head and body of one of these had been cut from some fashion plate, and legs were added to shew a woman’s naked thighs and pink stockings.
In the issue of 15th inst. it is said that a light overcoat was among the things found in Cutbush’s house, and that a man in a light overcoat was seen talking to a woman at Backchurch Lane whose body with arms attached was found in Pinchin Street. This is hopelessly incorrect! On 10th Sept. ’89 the naked body, with arms, of a woman was found wrapped in some sacking under a Railway arch in Pinchin Street: the head and legs were never found nor was the woman ever identified. She had been killed at least 24 hours before the remains which had seemingly been brought from a distance, were discovered. The stomach was split up by a cut, and the head and legs had been severed in a manner identical with that of the woman whose remains were discovered in the Thames, in Battersea Park, and on the Chelsea Embankment on 4th June of the same year; and these murders had no connection whatever with the Whitechapel horrors. The Rainham mystery in 1887 and the Whitehall mystery [when portions of a woman’s body were found under what is now New Scotland Yard] in 1888 were of a similar type to the Thames and Pinchin Street crimes.
It is perfectly untrue to say that Cutbush stabbed 6 girls behind. This is confounding his case with that of Colicott. The theory that the Whitechapel murderer was left-handed, or, at any rate, ‘ambi-dexter’, had its origin in the remark made by a doctor who examined the corpse of one of the earliest victims; other doctors did not agree with him.
With regard to the 4 additional murders ascribed by the writer in the Sun to the Whitechapel fiend:
(1) The body of Martha Tabram, a prostitute was found on a common staircase in George Yard buildings on 7th August 1888; the body had been repeatedly pierced, probably with a bayonet. This woman had, with a fellow prostitute, been in company of 2 soldiers in the early part of the evening: these men were arrested, but the second prostitute failed, or refused, to identify, and the soldiers were eventually discharged.
(2) Alice McKenzie was found with her throat cut (or rather stabbed) in Castle Alley on 17th July 1889; no evidence was forthcoming and no arrests were made in connection with this case. The stab in the throat was of the same nature as in the case of the murder of
(3) Frances Coles in Swallow Gardens, on 13th February 1891 – for which Thomas Sadler, a [ship’s] fireman, was arrested, and, after several remands, discharged. It was ascertained at the time that Sadler had sailed for the Baltic on 19th July ’89 and was in Whitechapel on the nights of 17th idem. He was a man of ungovernable temper and entirely addicted to drink, and the company of the lowest prostitutes.
(4) The case of the unidentified woman whose trunk was found in Pinchin Street: on 10th September 1889 – which has already been dealt with.
M. L. Macnaghten
23rd February 1894
As Macnaghten did not join the Yard until 1889 he had no firsthand experience of the case and must, one assumes, have b
een drawing on Abberline’s reports to compile this particular document some six years after the events. Unlike some of the other policemen involved, Abberline never published any account of the murders – or of his subsequent investigations into the Cleveland Street scandal centering on a homosexual brothel in the West End to which the Duke of Clarence was supposed to have gone, and which implicated some of the highest in the land.
Soon after completion of this case Abberline resigned, having completed twenty-nine years service, on 8 February 1892. He was then living in south London at 41 May flower Road, Clapham. He took with him the walking stick (now at Bramshill Police College) presented to him by the seven detectives who had worked with him on the Whitechapel murders. The handle is of a face covered by a cowl. Perhaps it has some special significance, we don’t know. There are rumours that several of these sticks abound and, if so, my own guess would be that someone was capitalizing on a contemporary pamphlet ‘The Curse Upon Mitre Square’ and that the features are those of the mad monk Brother Martin; possibly the detectives were sporting these sticks, much as their successors do today with ties flaunting the logo of a major criminal case.
Abberline then worked as a private enquiry agent and in 1898 took on the European Agency of the Pinkerton Detective Company of America. In 1904 he retired to Bournemouth where he died, aged eighty-six, on 10 December 1929, some forty years after the murders.
Appropriately local newspapers were carrying stories of the Düsseldorf Ripper, whose reign of terror was nearing its peak.
The Complete Jack the Ripper Page 15