A day later, on 2 October, the Whitechapel Board of Works sent a stringent letter to Warren demanding an increase in the number of police in Whitechapel: ‘This Board regards with horror and alarm the several atrocious murders recently perpetrated within the district and its vicinity and calls upon Sir Charles Warren so to regulate and strengthen the police force in the neighbourhood as to guard against any repetition of such atrocities.’23
Caught in the headlights, Warren sought an exit by blaming everyone but himself. He replied the following day, rejecting demands for more coppers while reproaching Jack’s victims for their lack of entrails. ‘I have to point out,’ he wrote, ‘that the carrying out of your proposals cannot possibly do more than guard or take precautions against repetition of such atrocities so long as the victims actually, but unwittingly, connive at their own destruction.’24
In other words, Catherine Eddowes was complicit in the loss of her ear, kidney and womb. She shouldn’t have been walking around flaunting such stuff at a murderer. Fury was the response, and it’s difficult to select from the cacophony of outraged newspapers. ‘Warren must know,’ spat a Socialist rag called Justice, ‘that a vast majority of East End prostitutes are compelled to earn the 3 or 4 pence for their bed before they can obtain a night’s lodging.’
If he knew, he didn’t care any more than did his neighbour at number 64 Eaton Place. Turning the argument on its head, Warren marginalises the Ripper and again focuses on the victims as the problem. ‘I have to request and call upon your Board,’ he lathers, ‘to do all in your power to dissuade the unfortunate women about Whitechapel from going into lonely places in the dark with any persons. The unfortunate victims appear to take the murderer to some retired spot and place themselves in such a position that they can be slaughtered without a sound being heard; the murder therefore takes place without any clue to the criminal being left’ (my emphasis).25
The Boss Cop has just contradicted any notion of assessing clues, and actually dismisses the utility of having a detective force at all. His forensic capability is reduced to overhearing a scream. That’s what he says. If no one shouts, or no one screams, no clue to the criminal is left.
Even by Warren’s standards this must rank as one of the biggest pieces of shit ever to have come out of Scotland Yard. He says he wants a scream, but unless he’s more stupid than despicable he must know he’s never going to get one. All postmortem evidence (for example, that given by Dr Brown) suggests that Jack silenced his victims in an instant, so it can’t be imagined how this clown in a hat thought anyone could yell with their head half off.
‘You will agree with me,’ wrote Warren (which nobody in Whitechapel did), ‘that it is not desirable that I should enter into particulars as to what the police are doing in the matter. It is most important that our proceedings should not be published, and the very fact that you may be unaware of what the detective department is doing is only the stronger proof that it is doing its work with secrecy and efficiency.’26
Almost a hundred years later, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Sir Robert Mark was rejecting such junk in the columns of the Observer. ‘Detectives at the Yard,’ he wrote, ‘sheltered behind “a fictional police detective mystique” made all the easier by denial of proper facilities for the press.’27
Plus ça change. This nonsense didn’t cut it with Mark in the late twentieth century any more than it did with Fleet Street in 1888. ‘Warren’s letter,’ determined the Star, ‘is pitiful to read. We are asked to believe that because we hear nothing of discoveries by detectives, that only shows the detectives are especially active and energetic, and we are told for the thousandth time that the Metropolitan Police are hopelessly handicapped in dealing with a situation like this for want of reserves to draw on in an emergency.’
The Star had put its finger on it. On the one hand Warren was bemoaning the lack of police, and on the other bolstering them with dishonest claims of covert activity. We now come to this missive’s greatest contradiction and most vital deceit: ‘A large force of police have been drafted into the Whitechapel District.’28 The ‘saturation’ of the East End with an influx of cops is a favourite amongst the Fowler’s drinkers, swallowed whole and broadcast in all the popular books. Bearing Superintendent Thomas Arnold in mind, hear this from a leading Ripperologist: ‘Clearly the streets of Whitechapel and Spitalfields at this time were saturated with the dedicated men of the Metropolitan Police.’29
Clearly they were not. With a ‘dropsical eye’ on the Socialist mob, Victoria herself was nagging Scotland Yard. She feared ‘that the detective department is not as efficient as it might be’.30 You can say that again. And she did, the royal anxieties summoning new fiction out of Robert Anderson. ‘In reply to the Secretary of State’s enquiry,’ he wrote, ‘I have the honour to report that since the 8th September, the date of the Hanbury Street murder [Chapman], extra police precautions have been taken in the districts of the murders.’
‘Extra police precautions’ is not the same thing as ‘extra police’. It just sounds like it. Everything Anderson writes sounds the part, including the figures he gives for November: ‘The Division has been augmented by 1 Sergeant and 42 Constables, in addition to which 70 Constables have been supplied nightly from other divisions to fill the vacancies caused by men being supplied in plain clothes as above, and to patrol the Division; giving a total of 8 Sergeants and 112 Constables for night duty.’
I have no doubt that cosmetic displays for the press were occasionally organised, rather as a municipal toilet might be freshly painted for a visiting royal, but there is not a scrap of evidence – none whatsoever – in the record to substantiate Anderson’s claims of a radical augmentation of Whitechapel’s police.
Whitechapel belonged to Jack and his ‘Funny Little Game’, and some sections of the press were beginning to understand this, in both its overt and covert manifestations. After the dispatch of the next cunt in the Genius’s collection, Reynold’s News published an article that was as devastating as it was perceptive:
We have been assured that specially trained officers, both in uniform and plain clothes, are daily and nightly on the watch against another crime … Well, another was provided … and because the murderer – quite naturally, of course – from the point of view of the game [my emphasis] between him and authority, escaped once more … Must he oblige the police by committing the murder under their noses? They have exhibited an incapacity that amounts to imbecility, and whether it is the outcome of divided counsels in high quarters, or sheer incompetence, the result is the same.
For ‘divided counsels in high quarters’, read ‘Masonic paranoia’. By December Charles Warren had been replaced as Metropolitan Police Commissioner by James Monro, and we shall shortly be in a position to compare the window-dressing put up by the former with the reality of more police on Whitechapel’s streets under the latter.
In the meantime, camouflage of the royal-toilet variety continued. ‘The most extraordinary precautions were taken,’ enthused the Daily Chronicle on 8 October. ‘Large bodies of plainclothes men were drafted by Sir Charles Warren into the Whitechapel District from other parts of London.’ These were presumably members of the same large body of men who were so secret that nobody had ever seen them.
By contrast, Smith had his men on the City streets in unmistakable uniform. ‘The City Police,’ continued the Chronicle, ‘far from being outdone in their exertions to ensure the protection of the public, more than doubled their patrols, so that almost every nook and cranny of the various beats came under police supervision every 5 minutes.’ Meanwhile, needless to add, Warren’s undercover contingent sustained their remarkable invisibility. Punch magazine suffered from no delusions about the number of police on the street, and neither did the citizens of Whitechapel.
The caption reads:
FIRST MEMBER OF ‘CRIMINAL CLASS’: ‘FINE BODY O’MEN, THE PER-LEECE!’
SECOND DITTO: ‘UNCOMMON FINE! – IT’S LUCKY FOR HUS AS THERE’S
SECH A BLOOMIN’ FEW ON ’EM!!!’
On the day this cartoon was published, 13 October, the East London Observer reported a ‘Great Meeting at Spitalfields’, being a congregation of the irate who turned up to hear speeches from local worthies and dignitaries ‘condemning the police’ and demanding ‘better police protection’.
‘The incompetency of the Metropolitan Police Force,’ declared Mr J. Hall, to unanimous agreement, ‘had never been better exemplified than when three murders were allowed to take place without any steps being taken to increase that force [my emphasis]; or when, after all these terrible crimes had been committed, they still refuse to offer a reward.’31 Clearly no one in the hall had read the Chronicle, because not a voice was raised to the contrary. Where exactly were the extra police? These people lived and worked in the killing zone, and they well knew that the joke in Punch better represented their circumstances than anything coming out of treacherous Charlie. The local police were themselves appalled, insisted Mr Hall, ‘so disgusted with the manner in which they were tyrannised over, that he veritably believed that they were not at all disinclined for a strike against Warren and the Home Secretary’.
Interspersed with cheers or cries of ‘Shame!’, speaker after speaker condemned the ‘demoralisation and corruption of the Metropolitan Police Force’.32 We can but pity the honest cop on the street. His adversary was not only the most dangerous criminal in England, but also potential nemesis of the traumatised rabble in Whitehall, terrified that he might be caught.
‘We have had enough of Mr Home Secretary Matthews,’ declared the Telegraph with corrosive sincerity, ‘who knows nothing, has heard nothing, and does not intend to do anything. It is clear the detective department at Scotland Yard is in an utterly hopeless and worthless condition: that were there a capable director of CID [rather than Anderson] the scandalous exhibition of stupidity revealed in the East End inquests and the immunity enjoyed by criminals committing murder after murder, would not have angered and disgusted the public feeling as undoubtedly it has done.’ The paper demanded a clean sweep of red tape.
Red tape and spin were all Warren had. Two days after the perversion of Masonic ceremony had put an end to the life of Annie Chapman, the Echo became the designated vehicle for official propaganda: ‘the hundred and fifty police who, it is asserted, have been drafted down into this neighbourhood’.33 The only word of substance here is ‘asserted’, because these additional coppers were a figment of the imagination. Nothing had happened except an exchange of correspondence between Charlie and the Home Office. In one flight of fancy, Warren claimed that he was about to write to the Secretary of State asking for three hundred additional men – six hundred boots on a worthless scrap of paper.34
Amidst all the outrage and anguish, letters to The Times and waste-of-ink petitions to government, a moustached face had come to the fore. He was a forty-nine-year-old builder and decorator living off the Mile End Road, by the name of George Lusk.
At their wits’ end with Warren, Lusk and a bunch of local tradesmen had formed a Vigilance Committee. If the cops couldn’t catch the bastard, they would try, and night after night they congregated to patrol the streets. At the same time, as Chairman of the Committee, Lusk wrote to whoever he thought might listen – which was basically nobody: at a meeting of the Committee it was announced that ‘a third letter sent to the Home Secretary remained unanswered’. Despairing at the official indifference, they pledged to press on, adjourning their meeting with a vote of thanks ‘passed by acclamation, to the City Commissioners of Police’.
It is praise for Smith and condemnation for Warren that tells the tale of public feeling in the streets. They could see Smith’s police, but could only read about Warren’s. While preparing its own foredoomed letter, there was exasperation on the part of the Board of Works over Warren’s practice of importing in replacement men from different divisions. A contribution from the Reverend Dan Greatorex of Whitechapel exemplified the point. ‘He regretted,’ he said, ‘the frequent change of police divisions which was now the custom. If a neighbourhood was to be properly guarded, the constable should be permanently in charge of it, and know by sight almost every person in it. The new system made this impossible and was breaking down.’35
The Star agreed, and stuck it to Charlie. He had wrecked the police force, ‘disorganised it utterly, and thinking he had a genius for stamping out dangerous social tendencies [after suppressing the disorder at Trafalgar Square], let the rank crop of crime and misery grow untouched and uncared for’.
Warren’s system meant that units of police came and went, but it doesn’t mean that the number of constables was increased. On the day of the Board of Works meeting, Anderson authorised thirty-seven H Division coppers to wear civilian clothes. Thus, instead of thirty-seven helmets, there were thirty-seven bowler hats. These fellows were the mainstay of Warren’s ‘stronger proof’ that the detective department was ‘doing its work with secrecy and efficiency’. I’m sure they were doing their tyrannised best, but a change of hat turns no one into a detective, any more than it increases the aggregate number of police on the streets.
On 22 October Arnold wrote to Warren summarising the realities of the H Division picture. Reacting to the tradesmen’s petition, he begged to report: ‘It is impossible to at all times keep a constable on each Beat as owing to the number of men absent from duty from sickness, leave, attending the Police Court, or sessions [at night?] or employed on special duties, which are necessary, but for which no provision has been made.’
No mention of the phantom three hundred. The division has men missing, ‘for which no provision has been made’.36 Arnold makes it clear he can’t even cover the regular beats with so much as a single constable. Even if he had been able to do so, many commentators had identified ‘beats’ as the essence of the policing problem. ‘They go on Beats it takes them more than half an hour to cover,’ noted the Bradford Observer. ‘Beats of a night policeman should not be of uniform length. At present a criminal who knows his district can usually tell to a nicety, after an officer has passed a given spot, how long it will take to bring him to the same spot again.’37
If some provincial hack knew this, then so did Jack the Ripper. In our day it’s possible to access at least some information that was kept well hidden from the recalcitrant mob in EC2. We can actually see what the police numbers were on a day-to-day basis. Such information is contained in ‘Police Orders’, published at Scotland Yard for each twenty-four-hour period and signed off by senior officers – Warren, Anderson, Carmichael Bruce, etc.
Beginning prior to the death of Chapman on 1 September 1888, and throughout the following two months, there isn’t a single reference either to the murderer or to any increase in the number of police. Not one. The week-ending figures for uniformed police in Whitechapel in H Division are as follows:
1 September
Sergeants – (1st class) 19; (2nd class) 5; (3rd class) 13
Constables – (1st class) 220; (2nd class) 105; (3rd class) 143
8 September [Chapman murder]
Sergeants – (1st class) 19; (2nd class) 5; (3rd class) 13
Constables – (1st class) 219; (2nd class) 106; (3rd class) 144
16 September
Sergeants – (1st class) 19; (2nd class) 5; (3rd class) 13
Constables – (1st class) 219; (2nd class) 106; (3rd class) 145
Thus, a week after Chapman’s murder there were an additional two police officers working H Division Whitechapel, compared to the week before it.
22 September
Sergeants – (1st class) 19; (2nd class) 5; (3rd class) 13
Constables – (1st class) 219; (2nd class) 105; (3rd class) 145
29 September [Stride/Eddowes murder]
Sergeants – (1st class) 19; (2nd class) 5; (3rd class) 13
Constables – (1st class) 219; (2nd class) 104; (3rd class) 146
6 October
Sergeants – (1st class) 19; (2nd class) 5; (3rd class) 13
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br /> Constables – (1st class) 218; (2nd class) 105; (3rd class) 146
13 October
Sergeants – (1st class) 19; (2nd class) 5; (3rd class) 13
Constables – (1st class) 218; (2nd class) 106; (3rd class) 147
20 October
Sergeants – (1st class) 19; (2nd class) 5; (3rd class) 13
Constables – (1st class) 219; (2nd class) 106; (3rd class) 146
28 October
Sergeants – (1st class) 19; (2nd class) 5; (3rd class) 12
Constables – (1st class) 219; (2nd class) 106; (3rd class) 146
It can be seen that there was only a negligible variation in the number of police officers on the streets of Whitechapel throughout these crucial weeks. The pre-Chapman figures are almost identical to those following the Double Event (in fact, there was one constable less). In his letter of 22 October, Arnold had recommended an additional twenty-five men: ‘ten for Leman Street & ten for Commercial Street’, and the remainder to ‘Arbour Square which immediately joins Whitechapel and where the beats are somewhat long’. His request was at last granted, five days before Bro Jack finished Bro Charlie off on 9 November.
4 November
Sergeants – (1st class) 19; (2nd class) 5; (3rd class) 14
Constables – (1st class) 221; (2nd class) 110; (3rd class) 18138
The murderer, aware of this belated increase, abandoned the streets in favour of homicidal fun indoors. ‘The celerity with which the Ripper accomplished his purpose,’ wrote the New York Herald, ‘might be accepted as evidence that he was waiting for such an order, and that at the moment it was given he was aware of the circumstance.’ Mary Kelly was cut to bits in her own room on the following Saturday.
They All Love Jack Page 26