They All Love Jack

by Bruce Robinson

  In 1888 the Worshipful Master of the Savage Lodge was J. Somers Vine MP, installed in February of that year at Freemasons’ Hall by Maybrick’s fraternal pal Bro Colonel Thomas Shadwell Clerke, in the presence of a distinguished assembly that included the Earl of Lathom. Almost exactly a year later the proceedings were replicated for the incoming Worshipful Master, Bro Thomas Catling. On the grand night of installation, Catling put all propriety aside and rose amidst the toasts to propose ‘the election of an honorary member of the Savage Club Lodge, the Right Worshipful H.R.H., Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence’.

  Clarence’s membership was unanimously approved and applauded, but not every member had been able to attend. The future Commander of Her Majesty’s Army, Bro Lord Wolseley, regretted that the pressure of official duties precluded his presence, a sentiment echoed by the Lord Chancellor, Bro Lord Halsbury. Further apologies were received from a Brother who wrote that he ‘had been looking forward with great pleasure to the evening’s entertainment, but was prevented by sudden indisposition’, leaving one wondering just what Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren was busy with.17

  With Thomas Catling and Dr Gordon Brown (and possibly even Sir Charles Warren) as fraternal associates of Michael Maybrick, both (short of murdering her themselves) were as intimate as it got to the slaying of Catherine Eddowes. It becomes incredible to claim their supposed first publication in 1987 as a disqualification for the authenticity of the words ‘Damn it, the tin box was empty’ in the Liverpool Document.

  It was in the course of my research into Michael Maybrick that I discovered that his brother James was a Freemason. This wasn’t without interest, because I was certain Michael had murdered James, and framed James’s wife Florence for the deed. I was also certain that the flagrancy of the Masonic ‘clues’ decorating the crime scenes in Whitechapel was grist to the enterprise, as indeed was his so-called ‘diary’. In other words, they were the work of a crazy Mason, or someone trying to blame one. It wasn’t just Florence who was to be framed. It was also Brother Jim. James was not only married to an American, but had spent years living in the United States. Hence the ‘Americanisms’ in the Ripper correspondence (of which more later). The clues Jack left were the servants of a unique criminal, and presented an intriguing scenario.

  But with James Maybrick in ceremonial apron, the jigsaw began to shape up. The Ripper was flaunting Freemasonry, and James was a murdered Freemason whose Masonry was suppressed by Freemasons. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to find something of interest in that. As has been mentioned, James has been considered by some as a Ripper candidate. Mr Paul Feldman wrote a sizeable book about just such a possibility,18 as did Mrs Shirley Harrison. Between them these two authors share perhaps a decade of research, yet neither of them, and subsequently no one plaguing the internet for twenty years after, has ever discovered James Maybrick’s ‘Masonic secret’.19

  The obvious question is, why not? The equally obvious answer is that certain parties had gone to quite astonishing lengths to cover it up. In fact, as much effort has gone into exorcising James Maybrick’s Masonic career as has been applied to camouflaging the Ripper’s Masonic pantomime in the East End. They are opposite ends of the same stick, each lopped off for precisely the same reason. Jack’s Masonic contribution was expunged by the police as they pretended to investigate his crimes, while James’s Masonic secret was posthumously imposed by Freemasons themselves.

  As far as publicly available records are concerned, James Maybrick was not a Freemason. Freemasons’ Hall in London had never heard of him. ‘Further to your enquiry we have checked our records for the above name without success,’ was their honest response – honest because he’d been cleaned out a very long time ago. Such frustrations were ignored as I looked for another source, my researcher Keith later mining a basement at a Liverpool library where we finally got lucky. I now had an abundance of proof that the poor murdered bastard was a Bro. Intense enquiry at last resulted in a letter from Supreme Council (Royal Arch), together with a document. It purports to suggest that James was indeed a Freemason, but only briefly, between perfection (i.e. induction) on 24 January 1873 and resignation in 1874.

  Although it looks the part – i.e. it is Victorian – it took only seconds to realise that this document was decidedly iffy. It’s titled ‘Return of Members of the *** *** *** Liverpool Chapter *** Liverpool’.

  Liverpool Chapter by the name and number of what? (Apparently by the name and number of ****.) By now I knew rather a lot about my subject, was familiar in fact with most of the long-forgotten names that appeared with James on the Chapter’s members’ list. Like him, many were cotton brokers, and one or two instantly stood out. Horace Seymour Alpass, by way of example, was listed as ‘mort’ (dead) in 1881, when in reality he was very much alive, expiring, according to his death certificate, on 31 August 1884. By contrast, James Gaskell, soundly dead on 26 April 1868, is here listed as paying his Masonic dues in November 1873. James Maybrick’s ‘resignation’ is equally problematic. Reliance on this document would give the impression that he quit Masonry in 1874, when in fact at that date his Masonic career was poised to flourish.

  Meanwhile, a fascinating paradox has presented itself. We now consider two candidates who were Freemasons – a half-witted homosexual son of the heir to the throne of England, and an arsenic-eating middle-aged cotton broker from Liverpool. Bro Clarence and Bro James share Masonry in common, but manifest vastly different provenances. It was a distinguished Freemason, the aforementioned Bro Thomas Stowell, who brought Clarence’s name into the public domain as a bogus Ripper suspect, and it was Freemasonry that since 1889 had kept James Maybrick out of it. Upon Maybrick’s demise the System was panicked into believing it had urgent reason for denying his Masonry, and simultaneously silencing his wife. When the time came, the Establishment closed ranks, abandoning James like a man with plague, denying his Masonry even if it meant hanging an innocent woman. The Crown got up phoney charges against Florence, and in a ‘trial’ as filthy and corrupt as any on God’s earth, consigned her to life imprisonment. This is known as ‘the Maybrick Mystery’, an adjunct of mind-boggling wickedness sharing its taproot with ‘the Mystery of Jack the Ripper’.

  Both ‘mysteries’ were fabricated to protect the ruling elite, and Bro Michael Maybrick was the nucleus of both.

  6

  On the Square

  Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me for making him egregiously an ass.

  Iago

  Complementing ‘Juwes’, there was another funny little Masonic jest for Charlie Warren about a mile away from Goulston Street. When Catherine Eddowes was released from her lock-up at Bishopsgate police station, she asked the duty officer what time it was. Just before one o’clock, he replied – ‘Too late for you to get another drink.’ Somewhat the worse for wear, she vanished out of the police station with the stated intention of going home.

  Eddowes lived at number 6 Fashion Street, an inappropriately named Whitechapel slum directly east of Bishopsgate.1

  By any assessment, the place of her death was not on her way home. Around some corner the most dangerous man in London was looking for just such a sweetheart, and in his company Eddowes walked away from Fashion Street and directly south. At any turn in this gloomy labyrinth he could have chosen to kill her. Instead he escorted her to a location of gaslight and multiple windows in which, if anything, he was actually more exposed.

  In my view, her assassin took her to Mitre Square ‘by design’, as a requisite of his ‘Funny Little Game’. Cutting compasses into her face up some anonymous back alley would not have conjured the symbolism he was after. What Jack wanted to leave as ‘his fearful sign manual’2 was the ubiquitous and most recognisable Masonic icon of them all, ‘compasses on the square’.

  Eddowes was initiated into the ‘Funny Little Game’ with the full Jubelo – her throat cut across, entrails hauled out, and all metal removed. ‘The intestines were drawn out to a large extent and
placed over the right shoulder,’ deposed Dr Gordon Brown at the inquest. ‘A piece of about two feet was quite detached from the body and placed between the body and the left arm.’

  CITY SOLICITOR: By ‘placed’, do you mean put there by design?

  BROWN: Yes.

  Yet we’re enjoined to believe that the symbols carved into Eddowes’ face are a meaningless afterthought. That you can ‘design’ with flopping intestines, but not with the point of a knife. That you can carry a piece of this woman’s apron as a beacon for a message, and then write something above it of no discernible meaning or consequence, and that ‘Juwes’ and a Mason’s Mark are indecipherable abstractions.

  Two slayings that night meant two concurrent but quite separate coroners’ courts. The City was an independent entity, responsible to the Corporation of London, and immune to interference from the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police. The Met couldn’t manipulate and control this court as it was to manipulate and make preposterous the inquest into the death of Elizabeth Stride.

  City Coroner S.F. Langham, a sixty-five-year-old blueblood behind rectitudinous pince-nez, had spent his entire professional life listening to stories of the dead. First appointed Deputy Coroner for Westminster in 1849, he moved to the City, where he was promoted to Boss Coroner in 1884. His official address was ‘Coroner’s Office, City Mortuary, Golden Lane’,3 and it was here on 4 October 1888 that the inquest into the murder of Catherine Eddowes began. Proceedings were watched by Inspector McWilliam and Assistant Commissioner Smith himself.

  The attendance of such eminent spectators is perhaps indicative of the importance the City attached to the case, further underlined by the presence of its thirty-eight-year-old star solicitor. Henry Homewood Crawford was one of the smartest brains on the block. A polyglot, a musician and a talented amateur actor, in the words of a contemporary biography, ‘He may fittingly be described as Attorney General of the City. He is legal advisor to the Right Hon the Lord Mayor, legal advisor to the Aldermen in their capacity as Justices to the City, and also to the Commissioner of Police. He is the City Public Prosecutor, and, apart from the recorder and Common Sergeant, is necessarily the active legal luminary in the Corporation.’4 In short, ‘the active legal luminary’ was no dope. Co-author of A Statement of the Origin, Constitution, Powers and Privileges of the Corporation of London, he knew his City business, and was one day to become its Lord Mayor. Although he began by seeking Langham’s consent to ask the occasional question, Crawford ended up asking almost all of them.

  The proceedings at Golden Lane opened with the usual civilities, and a dispiriting traipse through those who had seen little – and most of them less than that. The coppers (and the nightwatchman) who had discovered Eddowes’ still-warm body came in and read from their notebooks. The jury heard from Inspector Collard and City Architect Frederick Foster, who had made drawings of the crime scene and drawn up a plan. Without depriving the narrative of substance, all can be dispensed with until we get to the deposition of Dr Gordon Brown. Brown’s contribution is replete with medical jargon, and is too long to reproduce in full here. I therefore use the version reported in The Times, supplementing the text from the original where necessary. ‘Frederick Gordon Brown, 17 Finsbury Circus, Surgeon of City of London Police, being sworn saith’:

  I was called shortly after 2 o’clock. I reached [the Square] about 18 minutes past 2 my attention was called to the body of the Deceased … The body was on its back – the head turned to the left shoulder – the arms by the side of the body as if they had fallen there, both palms upwards – the fingers slightly bent, a thimble was lying off the finger on the right side. The clothes were drawn up above the abdomen, the thighs were naked, left leg extended in line with the body. There was great disfigurement of the face. The throat was cut across to the extent of 6 or 7 inches. The abdomen was all exposed. The intestines were drawn out to a large extent and placed over the right shoulder – they were smeared with some feculent matter. A piece of about two feet was quite detached from the body and placed between the body and the left arm, apparently by design.

  Crawford’s question vis à vis ‘design’ has been quoted on a previous page. Dr Brown’s statement continued: ‘… The lobe and auricle of the right ear [my emphasis] were cut obliquely through; there was a quantity of clotted blood on the pavement, on the left side of the neck and upper part of the arm … The body was quite warm (no rigor mortis) and had only been there for a few minutes.’ ‘Before they removed the body’, he ‘suggested that Dr Phillips should be sent for, and that gentleman, who had seen some recent cases, came to the mortuary … Several buttons were found in the clotted blood after the body was removed … There was no blood on the front of the clothes. There were no traces of recent connection [i.e. no sponk]. When the body arrived at Golden Lane the clothes were taken off carefully from the body, a piece of the deceased’s ear dropped from the clothing.’5

  This will prove of significance. Dr Brown had noticed at the crime scene that ‘the lobe and auricle of the right ear were cut obliquely through’ (i.e. the whole ear), but only a part of the ear, the lobe, was discovered on arrival at the mortuary. Where the auricle went, whether it was retrieved or had been taken away by the murderer, is not disclosed.

  Brown then goes on to describe a truly astonishing catalogue of injuries. The assassin had ripped through Eddowes as if he was on his way to somewhere else: ‘The womb was cut through horizontally leaving a stump 3/4 of an inch, the rest of the womb had been taken away with some of the ligaments … the peritoneal lining [the internal surface of the abdomen] was cut through on the left side and the left kidney taken out and removed.’ (My emphasis.)

  Crawford asks if the stolen organs could be used for any professional purpose. Brown’s answer was in the negative: ‘I cannot assign any reason for these parts being taken away.’ Crawford then asks: ‘About how long do you think it would take to inflict all these wounds, and perpetrate such a deed?’ The physician reckoned about five minutes, and confirmed his opinion that it was the work of one man only. He was then asked ‘as a professional man’ to account for the fact of no noise being heard by those in the immediate neighbourhood.

  BROWN: The throat would be so instantaneously severed that I do not suppose there would be any time for the least sound being emitted.

  CRAWFORD: Would you expect to find much blood on the person who inflicted the wounds?

  No. He would not. But he could confirm that bloodspots on Eddowes’ apron (which was produced) were recent.

  Crawford asked: ‘Have you formed any opinion as to the purpose for which the face was mutilated?’ This is an interesting question. Crawford suggests that the face may have been mutilated for a purpose. The doctor had no opinion, thinking it was ‘simply to disfigure the corpse’. He added that a sharp knife was used, ‘not much force required’.

  If anyone on the jury had any questions about those inverted ‘V’ marks on Eddowes’ face, they were out of luck, because Coroner Langham here adjourned, reconvening the court one week hence.

  The next few days gave Crawford time to reflect, perhaps even to dwell on the ‘purpose’ of the curious mutilations, and what they might mean in concert with the ritualistic mutilations of Annie Chapman. Crawford must have been as cynical as everyone else about the fabulous adventures of ‘the American Womb-Collector’, particularly when a doctor had just told him that the burgled organs would be useless for medical purposes.

  So why would the coroner at Annie Chapman’s inquest, Baxter, countenance such hogwash? Was it in any way connected with Warren’s destruction of the writing on the wall? Was there some undisclosed reason for wanting it rubbed out? These were questions to ponder, albeit with answers which Crawford had already determined.

  On Thursday, 11 October, The Times reported on the resumption of the inquest, claiming that a ‘good deal of fresh evidence’ was on the cards. ‘Since the adjournment,’ it continued, ‘Shelton, the Coroner’s Officer, has, with the assistance
of City Police authorities, discovered several new witnesses.’ These included a couple of (briefly suspected) male associates of Eddowes, and even her long-lost daughter. No one paid much attention to this crew, and neither do I. But there were some new witnesses of interest.

  At about 1.30 a.m. on the night of Eddowes’ murder, three gents left their club in Duke Street, and stepped out into the rain. The Imperial Club was an artisans’ night out, exclusively Jewish, catering to the upper echelons of the working class. Two of the men walked slightly in advance of the third. They were Joseph Levy, a butcher, resident just south of Aldgate, and Henry Harris, a furniture dealer of Castle Street, Whitechapel.

  Mr Harris wasn’t called to give evidence at the inquest, because he said he saw nothing, and that his companions saw nothing either, ‘just the back of the man’. But one of them clearly did see something. He was a forty-one-year-old commercial traveller in the cigarette trade, by the name of Joseph Lawende.

  Lawende had already attracted press attention. On 9 October, two days before the resumption of the inquest, the Evening News had published a summary of what the public might expect in respect of this trio’s exit from the Imperial Club: ‘They noticed a couple – a man and woman – standing by the iron post of the small passage that leads to Mitre Square. They have no doubt themselves that this was the murdered woman and her murderer. And on the first blush of it the fact is borne out by the police having taken exclusive care of Mr Joseph Lawende, to a certain extent having sequestrated him and having imposed a pledge on him of secrecy. They are paying all his expenses, and 1 if not 2 detectives are taking him about.’

  It’s assumed by The Jack the Ripper A to Z that the City Police were protecting Lawende from the press. This may be so, but it’s obvious that they were also protecting him from the Met. They didn’t want anyone making – shall we say – unhelpful suggestions about what he may or may not have seen. This is corroborated by a Home Office minute later in the month. With quite startling hypocrisy, it states: ‘The City Police are wholly at fault as regards detection of the murderer. They evidently want to tell us nothing.’6