They All Love Jack

by Bruce Robinson

  If I were the City Police – most particularly over the farce at Goulston Street – I wouldn’t want to tell the Home Office anything either. It’s clear, in respect of wash-it-off-Warren, that the City Police were attempting to protect the integrity of their witness.

  Two days later, Levy and Lawende were in court. But this time there was an adjustment in approach from the ‘active legal luminary’. Crawford knew perfectly well why Warren had washed off that wall. He also knew about the article in the Evening News, and was about to prove it correct.

  It had been pouring with rain on the night of the murders, and Joseph Levy told the court ‘he thought the spot was very badly lighted’, and that his ‘suspicions were not aroused by the two persons’: ‘He noticed a man and a woman standing together at the corner of Church Passage, but he passed on without taking any further notice of them. He did not look at them. From what he saw, the man might have been three inches taller than the woman. He could not give a description of either of them … he did not take much notice.’

  What are we to make of so vacuous a deposition? It was what novelists call a filthy night in a poorly lit alleyway. Levy had a brim-down glimpse of a man and a woman. ‘From what he saw, the man might have been three inches taller’. Eddowes was a diminutive five feet, meaning her paramour ‘might’ have been five feet three inches. However, if he was a taller man, he ‘might’ have been leaning down to whisper sweet nothings in her ear. We cannot know, and certainly not from Levy, because ‘He did not look at them.’

  Peripheral estimates such as his are worthless. An on-site witness, Abraham Heshburg, who actually saw Elizabeth Stride as she lay dead at Dutfield’s Yard, estimated her age as twenty-five to twenty-eight – she was forty-four, and Heshburg was about twenty years out.7 Predicated on the enormous variations of physical description, we can assume that the Ripper was between five and six feet tall, and between thirty and fifty years old – like virtually half the male population of London. It is only when a description is specific that it begins to have some worth, and this perhaps explains why Levy was not under police escort.

  We now come to the man who was.

  JOSEPH LAWENDE 45 Norfolk Road, being sworn saith:– On the night of the 29th I was at the Imperial Club. Mr Joseph Levy and Mr Harry Harris were with me. It was raining. We left there to go out at half past one and we left the house about five minutes later. I walked a little further from the others. Standing in the corner of Church Passage in Duke Street, which leads into Mitre Square, I saw a woman. She was standing with her face towards a man. I only saw her back. She had her hand on his chest. The man was taller than she was. She had a black jacket and a black bonnet. I have seen the articles which it is stated belonged to her at the police station. My belief is they were the same clothes which I had seen upon the Deceased. She appeared to me short. The man had a cloth cap on with a cloth peak. I have given a description of the man to the police.

  But he isn’t giving it here, where only the man’s hat is described. ‘The man was taller than she was … She appeared to me short.’ Did she appear short because the man was much taller than her? It’s a question I would like to have asked, but Coroner Langham asked the question instead: ‘Can you tell us what sort of man it was with whom she was speaking?’

  Lawende had clearly been warned off, and again described the man’s hat: ‘He had on a cloth cap with a peak.’ The jury had already heard that, and just in case anyone was looking for a little more description than a hat, Crawford interceded:

  Unless the Jury wish it I have a special reason [my emphasis] why no further description on this man should be given now.

  The City Police had been protecting Lawende, and now they shut him up. The jury ‘assented to Mr Crawford’s wish’, although I don’t imagine they realised it would be sustained for the next 130 years. Here was a witness who had information about the killer – height, age, whatever – under the ‘exclusive care’ of the City Police, who had imposed ‘a pledge of secrecy’.

  Crawford had just defended the pledge, adding veracity to the Evening News report. Here was a man who, at a minimum, had had a glimpse of Jack the Ripper, yet his description was suppressed, and remains a secret to this day.

  Cue the fairy dust.

  On page 247 of his book, Mr Philip Sugden makes a convoluted and unsuccessful effort to explain away the description Crawford wanted kept secret. He would like us to believe that it is no secret at all, but was brought into the open by the Metropolitan Police on 19 October 1888. He refers us to a description in the Met’s own weekly newspaper, the Police Gazette. The Gazette was founded by Howard Vincent in 1884, and was brought into disrepute by Warren and his boys with the kind of casuistry proffered by Mr Sugden.

  ‘Lawende saw the man too,’ he writes energetically, ‘but the official transcript of his inquest deposition records only that he was taller than the woman and wore a cloth cap with a cloth peak. Press versions of the testimony, however, add the detail that “the man looked rather rough and shabby”, and reveal that the full description was suppressed at the request of Henry Crawford, the City Solicitor, who was attending the hearing on behalf of the [City] Police. Fortunately,’ he enthuses, ‘this deficiency in the record can be addressed from other sources. Lawende’s description of the man was fully published in the Police Gazette of October 19th 1888.’8

  To which I add the word ‘Bollocks.’

  Here is Mr Sugden’s historic breakthrough, as published in the Police Gazette on 19 October 1888: ‘… a MAN, aged 30, height 5ft 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 a knot; appearance of a sailor’. This description of 19 October, grasped by Mr Sugden, was in fact published in The Times on 2 October, more than a week before Lawende gave his evidence, and more than two weeks before its appearance in the Police Gazette. It therefore can have absolutely nothing whatever to do with the description Crawford suppressed at the inquest.

  This is what The Times printed on 2 October: ‘… the man was observed in a court in Duke Street, leading to Mitre Square, about 1.40 a.m. on Sunday. He is described as of shabby appearance. About 30 years of age and 5ft 9in in height, of fair complexion, having a small fair moustache, and wearing a red neckerchief and a cap with a peak.’

  Apart from knocking a useful inch or two off the height and adding a bit of nautical gibberish, the Police Gazette/Times descriptions are as near as makes no difference, red neckerchief and all. Thus Mr Sugden’s supposed revelation is no such thing, and certainly has nothing to do with the description Crawford suppressed.

  I am aware of The Times’s description 130 years after it appeared. Are we to imagine that a man as sharp as Henry Crawford was ignorant of something published in The Times only nine days before? Crawford was a man of rare intellect, and it is simply ridiculous to imagine that he would try to suppress something that had recently been printed in 40,000 copies of the world’s most prestigious newspaper. Crawford would have to be as foolish as Sugden to suggest it. And the Evening News, despite The Times piece a week before, was very well aware on 9 October that the City Police were keeping something secret.

  Unless Mr Sugden thinks a ‘pepper and salt’-coloured jacket glimpsed in darkness and rain is some kind of dramatic breakthrough, the Police Gazette has elucidated absolutely nothing. Sugden describes this grey jacket as ‘a fortunate addition to the deficiency of the record’. I call it worthless twaddle. This belated confection in the Police Gazette doesn’t explain Crawford’s imposition of secrecy, and has no value. It is simply a cooked-up, out-of-date newspaper reprint, another dispatch from the Land of Make Believe. If this description had any validity to the Metropolitan Police on 2 October, why not print it in the Police Gazette on that day? Or the 5th? Or the 9th? Or the 12th? Or the 16th? Why wait for the issue of 19 October?

  The real reason the Met regurgitated this unsourced ‘description’ was to coinc
ide with an internal report Bro Inspector Donald Swanson had prepared on the same date. Destined for the Home Office, this concoction of 19 October makes reference to the man with the red neckerchief, and since they’d never bothered with him before, it would look most untoward it they didn’t fabricate some interest now. Hence, seventeen days after his appearance in The Times ‘the Seafaring Man’ makes his debut in the Police Gazette, only to be dismissed on the very same day by Swanson himself. ‘I understand from the City Police,’ he wrote, ‘that Mr Lewin [sic] one of the men who identified the clothes only of the murdered woman Eddowes, which is a serious drawback to the value of the description of the man’ (which, incidentally, Lawende never publicly made).9

  So despite a front page of the Met’s house journal, even Swanson thinks he’s got nothing on Jack, and only a description of Eddowes’ clothes. Crawford would have had to have been some kind of full-blown half-wit to want to conceal that.

  Bye bye, sailor.

  The problem with Mr Sugden is that he is all wallpaper and no wall. I sincerely have no desire to isolate him for criticism, but at every point of contention he’s there with his paste-pot and paper. It’s so frequent (not only from him, but from Ripperology in general) that it reads like a kind of corporate hypnotism.

  But this description of the man with the ‘reddish’ neckerchief raises some questions. To have been published on 2 October, it must have been known to The Times on the 1st. Where did it get the information? Harris said he saw nothing. Levy said he saw nothing either. He therefore didn’t see a thirty-year-old, five-foot-nine-inch man with a fair moustache and a red neckerchief tied in a knot. Two of these three witnesses are thus dismissed as sources, and what Lawende saw was withheld ever after.

  I think this nautical geezer with the red neckerchief is in the tradition of Metropolitan Police inventions (riots in Goulston Street, etc.), slipped by an unknown source to The Times. By this time the Met were under catastrophic pressure, and Warren was less than forty days from the exit. Swanson’s ‘report’ from Scotland Yard was three parts panic, and the rest distortion to fit the fiction Warren was committed to tell. We will never know from whence the seafarer and his neckerchief came, any more than we can know what description Crawford suppressed.

  But I don’t like half-arsed ‘mysteries’, and though I might never be able to find out what Crawford withheld, I thought there was a better-than-odds-on chance of discovering why he withheld it. I got a red light about Crawford, and I think it was precisely the same red light he had about ‘Juwes’ and Jack.

  If there really was a ‘special reason’ for stifling Lawende’s description, why was it not later revealed? Was it, in the short term, an effort to keep it secret from the Met? After the shenanigans at Goulston Street, it’s possible. Commissioner Smith never forgave Warren, calling his erasure of the writing on the wall ‘an unpardonable error’. Maybe he was determined to keep the slippery bastard out. But I was persuaded that there was a more complex dynamic to be discovered.

  Immediately following Levy/Lawende, PC Long was the next witness to be called – a patsy put up to try to divert attention from the duplicity of the men who didn’t care to show themselves.

  Long was the only representative of the Metropolitan Police to appear before the court. Neither Arnold nor Warren was called – the latter, according to the Pall Mall Gazette, because the court didn’t want to hold him to contempt. But contempt over what? It wasn’t yet widely known that London’s Commissioner of Police had colluded to conceal the identity of London’s most wanted killer. On 11 October the Evening News ran a report commenting on the court proceedings.

  The words ‘The Jews are not the men who will be blamed for nothing,’ were almost certainly written by the murderer, who left at the spot the bloody portion of the woman’s apron as a sort of warranty of authenticity. On Police Constable Long’s report consultation was held and the decision taken to rub out the words [emphasis in the original]. Detective Halse of the City Police protested. A brother officer had gone to make arrangements to have the words photographed, but the zeal of the Metropolitans could not rest. They fear a riot against the Jews and out the words must come. And the only clue [my emphasis] to the murderer was destroyed calmly and deliberately, on the authority of those in high places.

  Attempts to navigate the Juwes/apron débâcle were still high on the agenda of Warren’s hidden anti-detective work. On 3 October he had written to his City counterpart, Commissioner Colonel Sir James Frazer, attempting to solicit his blessing for a grab at the surreal. The ‘riot’ angle clearly lacked traction, so to accompany ‘the Nautical Man’ and ‘the Womb-Collector’ he conjured up the limpest suspect yet, ‘the Goulston Street Hoaxer’.

  In a rambling text, Warren asks Frazer ‘If there is any proof that at the time the corpse was found the bib [sic] was found with the piece wanting that the piece was not lying about the yard [sic] at the time the corpse was found and taken to Goulston St by some of the lookers on as a hoax & that the piece found in Goulston St is without doubt, a portion of that which p’y was worn by the woman.’10

  Never mind conflating Dutfield’s Yard with Mitre Square, implicit in this letter is Warren’s utter worthlessness as a common policeman, much less Commander in Chief of Scotland Yard.

  Even though it was in ignorance of his letter to Frazer, the Evening News agreed. ‘We cannot blame the inferior police,’ it wrote (referencing one such constable, who now stood in front of Crawford), ‘but the public have a right to know who gave the order to efface the murderer’s traces. His proper place is not in the Criminal Enquiry department.’11

  It was within Coroner Langham’s powers to insist that both Warren and Dr Phillips attend his court, but he didn’t insist, and they didn’t attend, although Phillips was actually scheduled to appear, and his name is on the witness list.

  Maybe he had a head cold on the day in question? But that can’t be, because he was concurrently dissembling at the Elizabeth Stride inquest. Had he shown up, Crawford’s line of questioning would of necessity have had to include the discovery of the apron, and a timeline à propos of it. Long handed the apron to Phillips at five or ten minutes past 3 a.m. By 3.30 at the latest it was in the possession of Dr Brown (and Thomas Catling) at the Golden Lane morgue.

  3.30 a.m. is a time to remember.

  Meanwhile, Crawford had nobody to question about the provenance of the portion of Mrs Eddowes’ apron but the hapless Police Constable Alfred Long.

  CRAWFORD: Had you been past that spot previous to your discovering the apron?

  LONG: I passed it about 20 minutes past two o’clock.

  And was it there then? No, it was not. Crawford had simply listened to the evidence from everybody else, but was actually interrogating PC Long.

  CRAWFORD: As to the writing on the wall, have you not put ‘not’ in the wrong place? Were not the words ‘The Jews are not the men that will be blamed for nothing’?

  LONG: I believe the words were as I stated.

  CRAWFORD: How do you spell ‘Jews’?

  LONG: J-E-W-S.

  CRAWFORD: Now, was it not on the wall J-U-W-E-S? Is it not possible you are wrong?

  LONG: It may be as to the spelling.

  CRAWFORD: Why did you not tell us that in the first place? Did you make an entry of the words at the time?

  LONG: Yes, in my pocket book.

  CRAWFORD: As to the place where the word ‘not’ was put? Is it possible you have put the ‘not’ in the wrong place?

  According to The Times, ‘Witness again read the words as before,’ although we are not told what he read them from. Whatever it was, it wasn’t satisfactory to the jury, its foreman making the point.

  FOREMAN: Where is the pocket book in which you made the entry of the writing?

  LONG: At Westminster.

  FOREMAN: Is it possible to get it at once?

  Crawford then asked Langham to direct that the book be fetched, and Long was sent scuttling to Westminster to get it.


  I don’t imagine he’d forgotten his notebook by accident. A copper called to give information at an enquiry into a murder will have his book with him. But Long hadn’t thought to bring it.

  No such deficiency was attendant on City Detective Halse, who was next to face Crawford’s questions. The solicitor covered the same ground as he had with Long, and everything was pretty much in sync until it came to the discovery of the writing on the wall.

  HALSE: At 20 minutes past two o’clock I passed over the spot where the piece of apron was found, but I did not notice anything then. I should not necessarily have seen the piece of apron, because it was in the hall.

  Halse’s deposition is in direct conflict with Warren’s. In order to enhance the apron’s incendiary credentials, Warren moved both it and the writing as near to the street as fiction would allow. In his 6 November concoction he wrote: ‘The writing was on the jamb of the open archway or doorway visible to anybody in the street.’ Except, apparently, at 2.20 a.m., when Long and Halse passed by. They stated respectively that the apron ‘was lying in a passage leading to the staircases’, and ‘the writing was in the passage of the building itself’. It’s noticeable that nowhere in this entire hearing is the name Warren mentioned, and of further note that henceforth Crawford spells the crucial word Jews as ‘Juwes’.

  CRAWFORD: Did anyone suggest that it would be possible to take out the word ‘Juwes’ and leave the rest of the writing there?