Jack the Ripper and the Case for Scotland Yard's Prime Suspect
Page 15
The next day, the Echo printed a much more extensive follow-up to the story:
EAST-END ATROCITIES.
SUSPECTED MURDERER TRACKED.
EXPECTED CONFESSION.
There are indications in official circles that at no period during the search for the miscreant has there been so much chance of an arrest as at the present moment. From more than one source the police authorities have received information tending to show that the criminal is a foreigner, who was known as having lived within a radius of a few hundred yards from the scene of the Berner-street tragedy. The very place where he lodges is asserted to be within official cognisance. If the man be the real culprit, he lived some time ago with a woman, by whom, he has been accused. Her statements are, it is stated, now being inquired into. In the meantime the suspected assassin is “shadowed.” Incriminating evidence of a certain character has already been obtained, and, should implicit credence be placed in the woman already referred to, whose name we will not transpire under any circumstances until after his guilt is prima facie established, a confession of the crimes may be looked for at any moment. The accused is himself aware, it is believed, of the suspicions entertained against him.
In addition, the article noted,
The laundress at 22, Batty-street, where a German left a blood-stained shirt, is Mrs. Kuer, also a German. The man, who was arrested, as already stated, and liberated, explained the blood-stains by the fact that he was with a friend who was cutting his corn, when the knife slipped and inflicted a wound, when the injured man stanched the cut by using the sleeves of his companion’s shirt. There were, however, extensive stains upon the front of it as well, and this the man asserts was done by the blood spurting on to it. Mrs. Kuer denied that she gave information to the police, who were told of the circumstances by a neighbour. Mrs. Kuer says the man had occasionally called with a shirt to be washed. She feels certain she says that the man is entirely innocent of any such offence as was at first suggested by the police. Inspector Reid, Inspector Helson, and other detective officers are pursuing their investigation. A man was arrested and taken to Commercial-street Police-station last night, but was released shortly afterwards.4
The article states that the police arrested “the German” who dropped off and picked up the shirts. According to the man’s story, however, the blood actually came from someone else—a man described as a “friend” who accidentally wounded himself while cutting his corn. Strangely, “the injured man” did not get blood on his own shirt but instead “stanched the cut by using the sleeves of his companion’s shirt.” The “extensive stains” on the front of the shirt were explained by “blood spurting onto it.” This story sounds a bit fishy, because it seems odd that a person would stanch the flow of blood from a cut using the sleeves of someone else’s shirt. Clearly, the police may have suspected that “the German” was lying. And they certainly would have wanted to interview the man who cut himself—but did they?
According to the Echo’s initial report, the man who dropped off the shirts was arrested on Saturday night (October 13) and then released on Monday morning (October 15). Yet this was contradicted by a report in the Daily News that said the man was arrested “last Saturday” (again, October 13), then “taken to the Leman-street Police-station, where he was questioned, and within an hour or two released, his statement being proved correct.” If this version of the story is correct, then who was released on Monday morning? Was a second man also arrested? This would seem to be supported by the Echo’s October 17 report that stated, “A man was arrested and taken to Commercial-street Police-station last night, but was released shortly afterwards.” In other words, it seems that at least two separate people were arrested—one on Saturday and another sometime later, although it is not really clear when.
The Echo’s October 17 report also discussed “a German named Ludwig, residing in the Leman-street district, who has already been in custody on suspicion of being concerned in the murders, and who was released after an exhaustive inquiry.” The article added, “The police are keeping him under surveillance at present.” This was a reference to a German hairdresser named Charles Ludwig, who had been arrested almost a month earlier, on September 18, for threatening to attack a prostitute and another man with a knife. The police were initially very interested in Ludwig as a suspect in the Ripper murders, but Ludwig had nothing to do with the story of the man who dropped off the shirts at Batty Street. Nor was Ludwig the Ripper, because he was in police custody when the Stride and Eddowes murders took place. Ludwig was brought before the Thames Police Court on October 2 and then released.5 Yet sometime around October 16 or 17 (in other words, around the time that the previous article was printed), Ludwig was again seen “flourishing a knife and acting in a suspicious manner,” and it was said that the police were keeping him under surveillance.6 In short, it seems that the papers confused two separate stories, apparently assuming that the bloody shirt story had something to do with Ludwig. This might explain the Echo’s statement that it was a “German” who dropped off the bloody laundry. In fact, it seems possible that the police may have intentionally misled the press about this, essentially using the Ludwig story as a red herring, to draw public attention away from their real quarry.
By this time, the Echo had conceded that its first reports of the story were largely incorrect or, as the paper put it, “not altogether devoid of foundation.” The article also added that the police denied the story’s veracity immediately after publication, “presumably because they were anxious to avoid a premature disclosure of facts of which they had been for some time cognisant.” It went on,
The police have taken exceptional precautions to prevent a disclosure, and while repeated arrests have taken place, with no other result than that of discharging the prisoner for the time being in custody they have devoted special attention to one particular spot, in the hope that a few days will suffice to set at rest the public anxiety as to further deeds of murder in the district.
The article added that the police had the bloody shirt in their possession and that they were “evidently convinced that [the shirt] was left in a house in Batty-street by the assassin after he had finished his work.” In conclusion, the article stated,
The police during Saturday, Sunday, and Monday answered negatively all questions as to whether any person had been arrested, or was then in their charge, there is no doubt that a man was taken into custody on suspicion of the missing lodger from No, 22, Batty-street, and that he was afterwards set at liberty. The German lodging-house keeper could clear up the point as to the existence of any other lodger supposed to be absent from her house under the suspicious circumstances referred to, but she is not accessible, and it easy of understanding that the police should endeavour to prevent her making any statement.7
Clearly, the police wanted to keep Mrs. Kuer from talking to the press, presumably because they were afraid that any additional publicity would further disrupt an ongoing undercover investigation. The overall picture that emerges from these reports is an interesting one. It seems clear that an important investigation was under way, and that the police were endeavoring to keep quiet about it. It also seems obvious that a suspect was under surveillance and that the police were watching “one particular spot” in the East End. The Daily News picked up the story the following day. In this report, the man who dropped off the shirts was referred to as a “foreigner” (but not as a German), and it was said that the incident “occurred more than a fortnight ago.”8 The paper still seemed confused about whether Ludwig had anything to do with the bloody laundry incident, because the article referred again to a foreigner, residing in the Leman Street district, who was seen “flourishing a knife, and acting in a suspicious manner in the neighbourhood.”
Then on October 18, the Evening News printed a letter from Carl Noun, a man who was himself a lodger in the house on Batty Street. His letter would put the “lodger” myth to bed, once and for all:
SIR—Referring to your issue N
o. 2227, I beg of you to publish a contradictory statement respecting the Whitechapel murder; in fact, your reporter has been wrongly informed, or else it his own suggestion.
The police are not in the house, nor has the woman had a lodger who is now missing, but a stranger brought the shirts, and when he fetched them, he was detained by the police, and after inquiries discharged. As regards our house, it is not as your report describes it, for it is a most respectable house and in good general condition; although it is certainly not Windsor Castle. There are only two lodgers, one a drayman, name of Joseph, who works for the Norwegian Lager Beer Company, and the other a baker, name of Carl Noun, who has been at work in Margate, and only returned on the 6th of this month after the season was over. I trust you will publish these statements as I put it to you, in fact it may injure the poor woman in her business.—Respectfully.
C. NOUN (a lodger in the house).9
This letter provides us with the likely explanation for the origin of the lodger myth in the first place. Apparently, Mrs. Kuer showed the bloodstained shirt to a neighbor, probably on September 30 or October 1, and the neighbor assumed (possibly as a result of Mrs. Kuer’s bad English) that the shirt belonged to Kuer’s lodger Carl Noun, who was then out of town doing business in Margate. The police heard about the incident via this gossiping neighbor during a house-to-house search “in the locality of the Berner street murder” in the days immediately after the murders, and the press probably got their original information from the same source. Noun was understandably worried that he might be mistaken for the “missing” lodger and hence for the killer. To clarify matters, the Evening News followed up Noun’s letter with an interview with the landlady, Mrs. Kuer:
A Press representative had an interview, yesterday, with the landlady of the house, 22, Batty-street, Whitechapel, which place was alleged to be the resort of the owner of the blood-stained shirt. The lodging-house is kept by a German woman, the wife of a seaman. She denied that the man for whom the police were searching was one of her lodgers, and asserted that he simply had his washing done at the house. He was a ladies tailor, working for a West-end house, and did not reside in the Leman-street district. She explained the presence of blood on the shirt by saying that it was owing to an accident that occurred to a man (other than the one taken into custody) who was living on the premises, and that the police would have known nothing of it but for her having indiscreetly shown it to a neighbour. The woman denies that the detectives are still in possession of her house.10
Here, Mrs. Kuer reiterates Noun’s assertion that the man who dropped off the shirts was not a lodger but instead was a man who “simply had his washing done at the house.” She then says that the man who dropped off the shirts was a “ladies tailor” and “explained the presence of blood on the shirt by saying that it was owing to an accident that occurred to a man (other than the one taken into custody) who was living on the premises.” This confirmed the earlier report that said the man who dropped off the shirts “explained the blood-stains by the fact that he was with a friend who was cutting his corn, when the knife slipped and inflicted a wound.” It also suggested that the suspect the police were interested in was, in all likelihood, someone “other than the one taken into custody.”
This article deserves close inspection, especially since it came directly from the landlady herself. Mrs. Kuer said that the man who had the accident was “living on the premises,” but what does this mean? Clearly, “the premises” cannot be 22 Batty Street, because both Mrs. Kuer and Noun denied that the suspect was a lodger in the house. The fact that the statement follows a sentence about a ladies’ tailor, whose residence was “not in the Leman-street district,” seems to imply that Kuer means the premises of the ladies’ tailor. Of course, both of Aaron Kozminski’s brothers—Isaac and Woolf Abrahams—were ladies’ tailors. Could “the premises” be a reference to Isaac’s workshop on Greenfield Street? Recall that it was said that the police received information that the criminal was “a foreigner, who was known as having lived within a radius of a few hundred yards from the scene of the Berner-street tragedy,” and that the “very place where he lodges” was “asserted to be within official cognisance.” Obviously, Kozminski was a foreigner, and Isaac’s shop at 74 Greenfield Street was approximately three hundred yards from the site of the Stride murder. The Echo’s October 17 article also stated that the police had received information “from more than one source,” and that the suspect “lived some time ago with a woman, by whom, he has been accused.” We know Kozminski lived with his sister Matilda in 1890, and it is likely that he lived with her at other times in the 1880s.
The ladies’ tailor, according to Mrs. Kuer, worked for a West End house. The question is, did Isaac or Woolf Abrahams work for a West End house? As we have seen, the master tailors of the East End were sweaters or middlemen, who typically did contract labor for wholesale clothing firms in the West End and the area around St. Paul’s Cathedral. Of course, it is not known for certain that Isaac worked for a West End house, but it seems highly probable that he did. And whereas a journeyman tailor would probably have been described as working in a local shop, a master tailor would be described as “working for” a West End manufacturer. This suggests that the ladies’ tailor mentioned in the Kuer interview was a master tailor (that is, a sweater) such as Isaac Abrahams.
Mrs. Kuer finally noted that the man who dropped off the shirts “did not reside in the Leman-street district.” This was almost certainly in reply to a direct question to clarify whether the man was the German hairdresser Charles Ludwig and is further evidence that the Ludwig story and the “lodger” story were confused in early reports. Clearly, Ludwig was not the man who dropped off the shirts, nor was he the suspect in question.
As early as September 19, the Home Office had expressed concern over the enormous amount of press attention given to the Ripper case. A memo by J. S. Sanders, the assistant to Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, the private secretary to the Home Secretary, Henry Matthews, noted that Commissioner Charles Warren remarked on the “great hindrance” caused by the press attention:
These “touts” follow the detectives wherever they go in search of clues, and then having interviewed persons with whom the police have had conversation and from whom inquiries have made, compile the paragraphs which fill the papers. This practice impedes the usefulness of detective investigation and moreover keeps alive the excitement in the district & elsewhere.11
Such was clearly the case on October 20, when the Echo reported, “The police complain that their work is increased, and morbid excitement created, by the statements made as to alleged arrests of an important character.” Needless to say, the Echo was undeterred by this and, in the same article, added more information about the inquiry in question:
There is a clue upon which the authorities have been zealously working for some time. This is in Whitechapel, not far from the scene of the Berner-street tragedy, and the man is, indeed, himself aware that he is being watched; so much so, that, as far as observation has gone at present, he has scarcely ventured out of doors. The police called on Mr. Packer, of 44, Berner-street, yesterday morning; and later on an Echo reporter also saw him as to what had transpired. Mr. Packer was rather reticent; but, when asked his opinion as to where the murderer lodged—for he had seen him several times before the fatal night—remarked, “In the next street.” It is considered he is not far wrong in his conjecture; but the police do not deem it prudent to say what steps are being taken in the matter.12
The police were clearly trying to suppress the story, but press attention was making it difficult for them to conduct surveillance on the suspect, who was “aware that he is being watched” and, as a result, now “scarcely ventured out of doors.”13 In fact, the visit to Matthew Packer may have been an attempt by the police to convince him to stop talking to the press. The Echo reporter spoke to a “reticent” Mr. Packer after the police talked with him. It even seems possible that the police may have contacted newspapers su
ch as the Echo and the Daily News, to ask them to stop reporting on the Batty Street incident. In any case, after October 20, there was no further mention of the suspect until October 29, when the Echo suddenly reported not only that the suspect “has been exonerated,” but also that he was “a resident of Batty Street. . . . Though certain suspicious circumstances needed explanation, his innocence has been established.” The article then continued, somewhat strangely, by specifically declaring that the murderer was not a lunatic. “If he’s insane,” an unnamed medical authority was quoted, “he’s a good deal sharper than those who are not.”14 This report has a somewhat suspicious ring to it. It almost seems as if the police planted the Echo story to divert attention from their real suspect, who quite possibly was insane, and who did not live on Batty Street. In other words, the story may have been intended as bait, to induce their real suspect to venture out of doors, in the hopes that he might be trailed by detectives.
So, was Aaron Kozminski the suspect in the Batty Street inquiry? It seems possible. Kozminski was a foreigner, whose brother Isaac was a ladies’ tailor living “within a radius of a few hundred yards from the scene of the Berner-street tragedy.” Moreover, the suspect was said to have been kept under police surveillance—and as Chief Inspector Donald Swanson would later write, “Kosminski” was identified by a witness, then after his “return to his brother’s house in Whitechapel he was watched by police (City CID) by day & night.”15 Also, as we will later see, Assistant Commissioner Robert Anderson implied that the Ripper was discovered as a result of “a house-to-house search” that investigated every man who could “go and come and get rid of his blood-stains in secret.”16 Was this a reference to the bloodstained shirt? A clue that was discovered as the result of a house-to-house search conducted while Anderson was still on sick leave on the continent?