Jack the Ripper and the Case for Scotland Yard's Prime Suspect

by Robert House

  On October 9, the Metropolitan Police commenced a massive house-to-house inquiry of a large part of the East End, including “some of the worst slums of Whitechapel and Spitalfields.”13 The search was confined to an area north of Whitechapel Road, roughly centered on Commercial Street. According to Swanson, the search area was “bounded by the City Police boundary on the one hand, Lamb St Commercial St. Great Eastern Railway & Buxton St. then by Albert St Dunk St. Chicksand St and Great Garden St. to Whitechapel Rd and then to the City boundary.”14 The police questioned residents and lodgers at doss houses and again distributed handbills asking for information about “any person to whom suspicion is attached.”

  Meanwhile, anti-Semitic tension continued unabated in the East End. The fact that Stride had been murdered next to the Jewish socialists’ club in Berner Street and Eddowes just behind the Great Synagogue did not lessen the public’s suspicions that the murderer was a Jew. Then on October 2, the Times irresponsibly stirred the pot by printing a dispatch from a Vienna correspondent that drew attention to “a crime of an exactly similar kind” that had occurred near Krakow. The article stated,

  A Galician Jew named Ritter was accused in 1884 of having murdered and mutilated a Christian woman in a village near Cracow. The mutilation was like that perpetrated on the body of the woman Chapman, and at the trial numbers of witnesses deposed that among certain fanatical Jews there existed a superstition to the effect that if a Jew became intimate with a Christian woman he would atone for his offence by slaying and mutilating the object of his passion.15

  The correspondent conceded there was “no doubt that the man was innocent” but added, “the superstitions prevailing among some of the ignorant and degraded of his coreligionists remains on record and was never wholly disproved.” This was, of course, merely a variation of the blood libel myth, the traditional form of Judenhetze that had been leveled against Jews for centuries. The fact that the “Vienna correspondent” admitted that Ritter was innocent in no way mitigated the irresponsible nature of the article, given the explosive tension that existed in the East End at the time.

  On October 3, the Times published two letters expressing anger and frustration over the article. A letter from Hermann Adler expressed the “profoundest concern” and noted “the experience of many centuries as to the falsehood of such and similar charges.”16 A second letter, from Moses Gaster, a lecturer at Oxford and the chief rabbi of the Sephardic communities in England, was even angrier and expressed the author’s “utter amazement and stupefaction” at the Vienna correspondent’s letter. “Has the writer never seen and never heard that all those depositions and quotations were clumsy fabrications?” he asked. “That the absurd fable—the legend of the blood—has been ‘wholly disproved’ by a host of eminent writers? . . . I cannot find expressions strong enough to condemn these atrocious crimes; but it makes man still more despair of the progress of mankind when one sees this revival of absurd legends disposed of long ago.”17 Gaster concluded with a stern warning: “Baseless and without foundation as these legends are, they are dangerous even in normal times; how much more in abnormal? Who can foresee to what terrible consequences such a superstition might lead, when the people frantic with rage and terror, get hold of it and wreak their vengeance on innocent men?”

  At the time when the Vienna correspondent’s letter on the Ritter case was published, the public had not yet learned of the Goulston Street graffito. By October 9, however, word of the graffito had leaked to the press, and the Evening News printed a story boldly titled “Is the Whitechapel Murderer a Jew?” The article noted, “‘Shall the Jews be blamed for nothing,’ was the inscription alleged to have been written on the wall in Goulston street by the perpetrator of the Mitre square murder.”18

  The proxy war continued with an anonymous “important letter” signed only “A Butcher,” speculating that the murders had been committed by a Jewish slaughterman. The writer theorized that “Only a man having a perfect knowledge of how to deliver a cut so effectually and with such certainty as in these cases must know exactly the kind of knife to use, and I know of no more suitable instrument than the knife used by a ‘Jewish cutter’ when slaughtering sheep or oxen.”19 Jewish slaughtermen, he pointed out, cut the throat, causing death “quickly and noiselessly,” after which, a second man called a “searcher” would then cut open the abdomen and reach his hand into the abdominal cavity to examine the internal organs by touch to determine whether the animal was “fit for Jewish consumption.” The publication of this letter obviously did not help matters. The police briefly examined the Jewish slaughterman theory, as much for damage control as anything else. On October 12, the Jewish Chronicle printed an article stating that Dr. Gordon Brown “has examined the knives used by the Jewish slaughterers, all of which have been submitted to him by the City detectives, and he is thoroughly satisfied that none of them could have been used.”20

  There was extensive reporting of day 2 of the Eddowes inquest on October 11. The star witness that day was Joseph Lawende, one of the three men who had witnessed Kate Eddowes talking to a man on Duke Street just a few minutes before she was murdered. His testimony was reported in the Daily Telegraph:

  Joseph Lawende: On the night of Sept. 29, I was at the Imperial Club, Duke-street, together with Mr. Joseph Levy and Mr. Harry Harris. It was raining, and we sat in the club till half-past one o’clock, when we left. I observed a man and woman together at the corner of Church-passage, Duke-street, leading to Mitre-square.

  The Coroner: Were they talking?

  Lawende: The woman was standing with her face towards the man, and I only saw her back. She had one hand on his breast. He was the taller. She had on a black jacket and bonnet. I have seen the articles at the police-station, and believe them to be those the deceased was wearing.

  Coroner: What sort of man was this?

  Lawende: He had on a cloth cap with a peak of the same.

  Mr. Crawford: Unless the jury wish it, I do not think further particulars should be given as to the appearance of this man.

  The Foreman: The jury do not desire it.

  Mr. Crawford (to witness): You have given a description of the man to the police?

  Lawende: Yes.

  Coroner: Would you know him again?

  Lawende: I doubt it. The man and woman were about nine or ten feet away from me.21

  The police obviously considered Lawende an important witness. According to the Evening News, this fact was “borne out by the police having taken exclusive care of Mr. Joseph Levander [sic Lawende], to a certain extent having sequestrated him and having imposed a pledge on him of secrecy.” The police were said to be paying Lawende’s expenses, and “one if not two detectives are taking him about.” It seems that the police requested the same oath of secrecy from Joseph Levy, because the Evening News reported that he “is absolutely obstinate and refuses to give us the slightest information.”22

  Lawende’s description of the suspect was presumably held back at the Eddowes inquest for the same reason that Israel Schwartz did not appear at the Stride inquest—the police did not want his description to be publicized. But again, it somehow got out anyway, and Lawende’s description of the alleged killer was published in the Police Gazette on October 19. The man was described as “age 30, height 5 ft. 7 or 8 in., complexion fair, moustache fair, medium build; dress, pepper-and-salt colour loose jacket, grey cloth cap with peak of same material, reddish neckerchief tied in knot; appearance of a sailor.”23

  It is interesting that this description so closely matches the description of the “broad shouldered” man seen by Schwartz less than an hour earlier on the same night. Schwartz’s man was “about 30; ht, 5 ft 5 in; comp[lexion], fair; hair, dark; small brown moustache, full face, broad shouldered; dress, dark jacket and trousers, black cap with peak, and nothing in his hands.” Both descriptions also generally fit the description of the man seen on Berner Street by P.C. Smith: “about 28, 5′7″ tall, with a cleanshaven and respectable appe
arance. The man was wearing dark clothes and a hard dark felt deerstalker hat.” In other words, Lawende, Schwartz, and P.C. Smith may have all seen the same person.

  The particulars of the Eddowes murder were described in detail in all of the major London papers, and as the Times reported, “The revelations made at the inquest on the Mitre-square victim have caused a profound sensation in the East-end of London.” On October 11, the same day that Lawende testified at the inquest, the Pall Mall Gazette berated Warren for erasing the Goulston Street graffito, while simultaneously gloating over the reason. Even more troubling was the Gazette’s completely false suggestion that “Juwes” was a spelling used in the Yiddish language.

  [Warren] feared that if the words remained on the wall, a crowd might assemble and there might be an attack on the Jews! So, rather than take the trouble of covering them up with a cloth and preventing access to the spot until the inscription was photographed, he rubbed it out, all out, refusing even to be content with erasing the one word “Juwes,” as it appears to have been written in Yiddish, and so perished the only clue which the murderer has left us by which he might be identified.24

  The Evening News likewise reported,

  The language of the Jews in the East-end is a hybrid dialect, known as Yiddish, and their mode of spelling the word “Jews” would be “Juwes.” This the police consider a strong indication that the crime was committed by one of the numerous foreigners by whom the East-end is infested.25

  A Star reporter called on the Jewish Chronicle to find out whether this was true and discovered that it was not. “The Yiddish word for Jew is Yiddin,” the Star reported, adding, “Much indignation is felt amongst the Jews at these repeated and unjustifiable attempts to fasten the responsibility for the dastardly crimes on them.”26 The same day, the Jewish Chronicle again pointed out, “There are not wanting signs of a deliberate attempt to connect the Jews with the Whitechapel murders.”27

  Sir Charles Warren likewise wrote to Rabbi Hermann Adler to ask whether the Yiddish word for Jew was in fact “Juwes.” Adler’s response was a definite no: “I was deeply pained by the statements that appeared in several papers today, the ‘Standard,’ ‘Daily News,’ etc., that in the Yiddish dialect the word Jews is spelled ‘Juewes.’ This is not a fact. The equivalent in the Judao-German (Yiddish) jargon is ‘Yidden.’ I do not know of any dialect or language in which ‘Jews’ is spelled ‘Juewes.’ ” He added that “in the present state of excitement it is dangerous to the safety of the poor Jews in the East to allow such an assertion to remain uncontradicted.”28 Three days later, Commissioner Warren issued a statement that was printed in various papers. “With reference to a statement in various journals that the word ‘Jews’ is spelt ‘Juwes’ in the Yiddish jargon, the Commissioner of Police has ascertained that this is incorrect. It is not known that there is any dialect or language in which the word ‘Jews’ is spelt ‘Juwes.’ ”29

  Yet it was too late to close the barn door. Judenhetze had already achieved its desired results. By the middle of October, the Jewish residents of the East End must have noted a similarity between the anti-Jewish “demonstrations” of Eastern Europe and the situation that now presented itself in their new home. It was in the middle of this tense and combustible situation that the story of the “Batty Street lodger” first began to appear in the press.

  13

  The Batty Street “Lodger”

  The first movie inspired by the Jack the Ripper murders was Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 silent film The Lodger. Based on Marie Belloc Lowndes’s 1913 novel of the same name, the plot concerns a series of murders committed by “the Avenger,” a mad killer who roams London’s foggy streets, targeting young girls with “golden hair.” In the midst of the crimes, a mysterious lodger moves into an apartment upstairs from a family with a young daughter. The man’s strange behavior—he goes out late at night and has a map of the murder sites—soon arouses the suspicion of his landlord. In the end, it is revealed that the lodger’s sister was the Avenger’s first victim; the poor man has been roaming the streets trying to catch the killer, which explains both his obsession with the case and his rather odd behavior. Not surprisingly, Hitchcock hated this ending and thought that the lodger should have been guilty, but the studio demanded a happy ending.

  Lowndes’s novel was possibly inspired by a true event in the Ripper case, which was reported in London newspapers in the middle of October 1888. The story, in brief, was that a lodger staying at a house in the East End dropped off some laundry to his landlady, saying that he was going away for a few days. When the landlady later examined the man’s clothing, she found that one of his shirts was covered in blood. The lodger, predictably, was never seen again. This story—neatly packaged and almost charming in its simplicity—appeared in several papers. As it turned out, however, the initial report of the incident was grossly misreported and apparently based on neighborhood gossip. Yet several follow-up articles corrected many of the errors in early reports, and something closer to the truth slowly emerged from the muck of bad reportage.

  The first version appeared on October 15, when the Echo printed the following:

  EAST END TRAGEDIES.

  A MYSTERIOUS LODGER.

  HIS BLOODSTAINED CLOTHES.

  WHAT HIS LANDLADY SAYS.

  The police are, writes a Correspondent this morning, watching with great anxiety a house in the East end, which, it is believed, was the actual lodging made use of by someone connected with the East end murders. From various statements made by the neighbours, the landlady had a lodger, who, since the Sunday morning of the murder, has been missing. It appears, according to the statements made by the landlady to her neighbours, her lodger returned home early on the Sunday morning, and she was disturbed by his moving about. She rose very early, and noticed her lodger had changed some of his clothes. He told her he was going away for a little time, and he asked her to wash the shirt he had taken off, and get it ready for him by the time he came back. When she took the shirt she was astonished to find the wristbands and part of the sleeves completely saturated with wet blood. Acting on the advice of some of her neighbours, she gave information to the police and showed them the shirt. They then took possession of it, and obtained from her a full description of the lodger. A reporter visited the house early this morning. He had a conversation with the landlady, a German, who appeared very reticent. She, however, stated that a detective and two police officers had been in the house ever since information was given.1

  This article is the version of the Batty Street lodger story that is most often repeated in Ripper books. As such, it is important to note that the article was based primarily on information gathered from the landlady’s neighbors, not from the landlady herself. The landlady was described as “very reticent” in speaking to the reporter and did not say much, apart from corroborating the fact that “a detective and two police officers had been in the house ever since her information was given.” As would soon become apparent, though, the article was wrong in the most important detail—specifically, there was never a missing lodger at all.

  In a continuation of the same article, the Echo gave a somewhat different version of the incident:

  GERMAN ARRESTED AND DISCHARGED

  A strange and suspicious incident in connection with the Whitechapel murders has just been explained by the arrest, late on Saturday, of a German whom the police had every reason to suspect as being connected with the murder of Elizabeth Stride, at Berner street. The affair has until now been kept a profound secret; but the matter was, it is asserted, regarded at first as of such importance that Inspector Reid, Inspector Abberline, and the other officers engaged in the case, believed that a clue of a highly important character had been obtained. It appears that Detective Sergeants W. Thicke and S. White, of the Criminal Investigation Department, made a house-to-house inquiry in the locality of the Berner street murder. They then discovered that on the day after that crime a German left a bloodstained shirt with a laundress at 2
2 Batley (sic) street—a few yards from the seat of the tragedy—and remarking, “I shall call in two or three days,” departed in a hurried manner. His conduct was deemed highly suspicious. Detectives Thicke and White, who probably know more of the East end criminals than any other officers, arrested the man suspected on Saturday night. He was conveyed to Leman street Station, and inquiries were immediately set on foot. These resulted in the man’s release this morning. Our representative made an inquiry respecting the above incident this afternoon, and ascertained that the shirt had a quantity of blood on the front and on both sleeves.2

  This second part of the story contained several elements that seemed to contradict the lodger story. For starters, there was no mention of the “lodger” at all. Instead, the item speaks only of “a German” who “left a bloodstained shirt with a laundress at 22 Batley (sic) street” on the day after the murders. The police discovered the incident as a result of the “house to house inquiry in the locality of the Berner street murder,” and then Detectives Thicke and White arrested “the man suspected” on Saturday night—presumably, the previous Saturday, October 13. The suspect was questioned by police and then released “this morning” (that is, Monday morning, October 15).

  The following day, the Evening News essentially reprinted the Echo’s article, with a few small additions. The German landlady “speaks very bad English,” the report declared, and was “not inclined to give much information.” The article added that the house had “rather a dingy and uninviting appearance” and concluded, “The police have in their possession a series of most important clues, and that his [the killer’s] ultimate capture is only a question of time.”3