They All Love Jack

by Bruce Robinson

  Monro approached the problem of controlling the court by controlling the man in charge of it, i.e. the coroner. À propos of the ruse in question, I’ve edited Monro’s account only to avoid particularities and superfluous names:

  The coroner was seen and the importance of the case explained to him. I took great care that the representatives of the press were duly informed that an inquest would be held, and the result was that on the appointed day the coroner’s room was filled with what one of the papers described as a singularly respectable audience. As a matter of fact, half of the audience consisted of detectives, the other half newspaper reporters. The police who were present thoroughly trusted that I had some definite objective in view, although they did not understand what it was. The next day all the papers commented in a bewildered fashion upon the inquest and what it meant. Of course they did not know what it meant.21

  This comment from an Assistant Commissioner of Police demonstrates the underhand control men of bad faith could exercise over such proceedings. A court as compromised as Baxter’s could be made to arrive at any conclusion desired.

  It requires no significant imagination to understand the suppression of the grapes. Where had they come from? How had they arrived in Stride’s hand? Had Stride been discovered with a bicycle pump shoved down her throat, it might well have behoved investigators to begin their enquiries at the nearest source of such pumps. Two doors down from Dutfield’s Yard was a little grocer’s shop. It was open for business that night, and – would you believe? – selling grapes.

  Acknowledgement of grapes and their debris would have demanded the examination of a witness who, to put it mildly, would have been as important as he was unwelcome. Berner Street was as black as your hat, and lousy with rain. But there was a better than even chance that the fruit-seller might actually have seen Elizabeth Stride with the man who murdered her.

  Denial of the grapes was therefore paramount to Warren and his deceitful crew. If Monro could have a word in a coroner’s ear, then so too could Charlie Warren (although of course the ‘word’ was already out). With the word in mind, and with Inspector Reid of H Division watching on behalf of the CID, Wynne Baxter opened his enquiries into the murder of Elizabeth Stride at the Vestry Hall, Cable Street, St George in the East.

  Baxter began as he meant to continue, establishing the parameters within which he intended to remain. Several ‘witnesses’ were called on that opening day, the first demonstrating where Baxter was at. He was a printer named William West who worked at premises adjoining the International Workingmen’s Club. A radical Yiddish-language newspaper was published out of them called Der Arbeter Fraint (The Worker’s Friend).

  Anyone of a cynical disposition might not consider West an ideal witness. He was nowhere near Dutfield’s Yard at the time of the murder, and was probably asleep. Declining to be sworn, he affirmed who he was, following this with a description of the club and the printing works in relation to the crime scene. ‘On the left side of the yard is a house,’ he said, ‘which is divided into three tenements, and occupied, I believe, by that number of families. At the end is a store or workshop belonging to Messrs Hindley & Co., sack manufacturers. I do not know if a way out exists there. The club premises and the printing office occupy the entire length of the yard on the right side.’

  West recalled that the compositors had finished work at two in the afternoon that Saturday and gone home, leaving only the editor in the building. His name was Philip Krantz, and he was to remain there until the discovery of the body.

  ‘On Saturday last,’ continued West, ‘I was in the printing office during the day and the club during the evening. From nine to half past ten at night I was away seeing an English friend home, but I was in the club again until a quarter past midnight. A discussion was proceeding in the lecture room, which has three windows overlooking the courtyard. From 90 to 100 persons attended the discussion which terminated soon after half past eleven, when the bulk of the members left using the street door, the most convenient exit. From 20 to 30 members remained, some staying in the lecture room and the others going downstairs. Of those upstairs a few continued the discussion while the rest were singing.’

  BAXTER: How do you know that you finally left at a quarter past twelve o’clock?

  WEST: Because of the time that I reached my lodgings.

  West lived at 2 William Street, Cannon Street Road, five minutes’ walk from Dutfield’s Yard. He left the club forty-five minutes before the murder, and was almost certainly in bed at the time of it.

  According to testimony subsequently given by Inspector Reid, there were twenty-eight people detained in the yard that night, and Baxter took evidence from not one of them. Instead, he elected to open proceedings with the recollections of a man who was at home a dozen streets away. Would it not have been more productive to have taken evidence from Philip Krantz, the editor of the newspaper, who was actually still present at Berner Street? But Krantz wasn’t heard from for another five days, his appearance wedged in at the very end of the penultimate hearing, and so fleeting as to be ridiculous. He was asked nothing of substance. The few seconds he got were contrived towards diversion, rather than to anything he might actually have seen.

  BAXTER: Supposing a woman had screamed, would you have heard it?

  Baxter must have known that the nature of the violence inflicted upon Stride would have made a scream impossible. He had been told this repeatedly by the doctors. No one needed to know what Krantz didn’t hear. The jury needed to know what he had seen. Of a mind to avoid such a delicate topic, Baxter came up with a question that must surely go down as a classic: ‘Did you look to see if anybody was about – anybody who might have committed the murder?’

  What do you mean? Apart from the geezer with the canine fangs and bloody knife? Funny you should mention that …

  It seems incredible that anyone could be beguiled by this malarkey. Krantz was asked nothing about the body, nothing about the yard, in fact nothing about anything.

  We now return to Dutfield’s Yard for the exit of William West. Before leaving the club, he ‘had occasion to go to the printing office to put some literature there’. There was no light in the yard, he said, ‘no lamps in Berner Street that could light it’. When he arrived at the office, Krantz was still in there, reading. Voices could be heard from the club, ‘but there was not much noise on a Saturday night’. West walked back across the yard towards the gates. Nothing unusual attracted his attention. ‘I’m rather short-sighted,’ he said. And with that, Baxter’s debut witness vanished into the myopic rain.

  Having heard the full account of the man who was a quarter of a mile away, let us brace ourselves for testimony of the next witness up. It will be remembered that it was Mr Maurice Eagle who scurried off in search of the elusive policemen. ‘I and others went off to find the officers,’ he testified, ‘so I had no opportunity of seeing the body.’

  Thus, of Baxter’s first two witnesses, one wasn’t there, and the other didn’t look at the body. So far, so good, for anyone in denial over grapes. But with West and Eagle out of the picture, Baxter was facing difficulties. At least seven other people had seen the grapes. His selection of further witnesses was therefore somewhat circumscribed. According to the Evening News of that very day, ‘The next person on whose information we may look forward to getting a clue to the perpetrator of these outrageous crimes is Mr Isaac M. Kosebrodski.’22

  It could have printed the name in neon, but Baxter was apparently in perfect ignorance of it. It hardly needs to be restated that Kosebrodski was one of the first witnesses into the yard that night. In a statement to the press, he had said, ‘While the doctor was examining the body, I noticed that she had some grapes in her right hand.’23 Needless to say, Kosebrodski was not called to give evidence at any of the Stride hearings.

  We therefore move on to Mrs Fanny Mortimer, who had corroborated Kosebrodski’s account with the following: ‘The woman appeared to be respectable, etc., etc., and in her hand
were found a bunch of grapes and some sweets.’24 Needless to say, Mrs Mortimer was not required to give evidence at any of Stride’s hearings either.

  It’s presumably upon this basis that Mr Evans and Mr Rumbelow conclude that there were no grapes or grape remains at Dutfield’s Yard. I think such a judgement is untenable. Witnesses who had seen grapes were dealt with by the same means that would be deployed energetically at the Mary Kelly inquest some weeks hence. Mouths were kept shut by ignoring them. Such a strategy served the System well, albeit with an occasional unavoidable intrusion.

  Because it was he who had discovered Stride’s body, it would have been problematic not to call Louis Diemschutz, so on that first day he was put up. Everything he had told the press about grapes, hands and cadaveric spasm had now entirely escaped his mind. ‘As soon as the police came,’ reported The Times, ‘witness went into the club and remained there.’ Thus, from being the best of witnesses, Diemschutz had become no witness at all.

  BAXTER: Did you notice the hands?

  DIEMSCHUTZ: I did not notice what position her hands were in.

  Twelve hours earlier he’d told the Evening News: ‘her hands were tightly clenched, and when they were opened by the doctor, I saw immediately that one had been holding sweetmeats and the other grapes’. Does anyone imagine that Diemschutz (and six others) was making that up? Or, bearing in mind what Monro had written about police interference with coroners’ courts, might one imagine that Baxter and the police were causing it to be suppressed?

  If the cops had told Diemschutz they had very good reason for withholding any mention of grapes, he would naturally have accepted that, just as the jury at Catherine Eddowes’ inquest accepted Crawford’s instruction to Joseph Lawende to withhold his description of a suspect. Plus, Diemschutz had reason enough to be ‘really afraid of the consequences’ if he defied the police. By March of the following year, both he and his pal Kosebrodski would be in jail for precisely that.25

  Diemschutz’s amnesia was terminated by an adjournment. PC Henry Lamb was the first witness up that afternoon. He described his arrival at Berner Street, where he had blown his whistle: ‘I turned my light on and found it was a woman.’ He put a hand on her face, and felt it slightly warm. ‘I then felt the wrist but could not feel the pulse.’

  BAXTER: Did you do anything else to the body?

  PC LAMB: I did not, and would not allow anyone to get near the body.

  He estimated that there were about twenty or thirty people in the yard. By now one or two more uniforms had arrived. ‘I put a constable at the gate,’ said Lamb, ‘and told him not to let anyone in or out.’ Despite what he’d told the Telegraph, he made no mention of grapes, Baxter cueing him with an opportunity not to: ‘Did you examine her hands?’ Lamb replied: ‘I did not. But I saw that her right arm was across her breast, and her left arm was lying under her.’

  These dead hands will shortly start dancing around like an Italian describing a car crash. They will be open, closed, hidden, exposed, each new witness proffering a new untruth to try to make them fit the required point of view.

  The duplicity over Stride’s hands escalated with the arrival of the medical contingent. Edward Johnson, assistant to Drs Kay and Blackwell, was first on the scene. He made a cursory examination of Stride and her injuries, insisting that no one had disturbed the body, but adding that he undid her dress to see if her chest was warm. He said he ‘found that it was all warm with the exception of the hands which were quite cold’. Baxter asked: ‘Did you look at the hands?’ To which Johnson replied: ‘No. I saw the left hand was lying away from the body, and the arm was bent.’

  We’re already into a major contradiction, and this between witnesses who were but minutes apart. PC Lamb said ‘her left arm was lying under her’, while Johnson said ‘the left hand was lying away from the body, and the arm was bent’. These are not idle witnesses. One was a medical assistant to a pair of police surgeons, the other a police constable. Both are under oath. They can’t both be right. A page or two must pass before the disharmony over the hands compounds into the usual burlesque.

  Meanwhile, with his colleague posted at the gates, Lamb was making a search of the yard and knocking up residents. He went on to describe how he had searched water-closets, dustbins and a dungheap, finally looking through the windows of Messrs Hindley, whose doors were locked. ‘When I returned from there, Doctor Phillips and Chief Inspector West had arrived.’ That just about wraps it for Lamb. Before dismissing him, Baxter asked a question that was to become meaningful. It referred to the constable’s regular beat earlier that night: ‘Did you see anything suspicious?’ Lamb replied: ‘No, I saw lots of squabbles and rows such as one sees on Saturday nights.’

  Such altercations were clearly common on Whitechapel’s streets. They will evolve into a point worth remembering.

  By now it had become almost a maxim of my research to go after whatever the authorities tried to dismiss. Nowhere was the hush-up more obvious than in the matter of the grapes. Baxter would habitually ask a witness to consider the victim’s hands, providing an opportunity for abstract denial. ‘Did you see the hands?’ became obligatory, prompting Diemschutz, Lamb and Johnson to say that they had not. Under any circumstances this seems implausible, Lamb having felt for a pulse, and Johnson feeling both hands to see if they were warm. This constant proof of a negative is most noticeable, and in view of what was to develop, nobody should be surprised.

  Baxter’s court had been convened within thirty-six hours of the murder and its attendant coverage in the following morning’s newspapers. It was likely that many of the jurors were unacquainted with the press reports. This would have been useful à propos clenched hands and grapes. Such a consideration may well have been material to the urgency with which the inquest was held.

  It was haste without precedent. Two days had elapsed before a jury assembled for Annie Chapman, three for Mary Anne Nichols, and the City inquest into the murder of Catherine Eddowes wouldn’t kick off for another five days. How the Met had time to sort out the witnesses is baffling. But I would argue that the intention was to avoid calling them. In my view they had only one to worry about, and he, Louis Diemschutz, was successfully dispensed with on the opening morning. Baxter must have been signing warrants before he had got out of bed. This isn’t as absurd as it sounds. Inspector Reid, who had been awake all night, was sitting in court on behalf of the Metropolitan Police. It was he who at 4.30 a.m. had taken time out from the enquiries at Dutfield’s Yard to go personally to Baxter’s residence and inform him of the murder. The Comic Coroner would thus have had a first-hand account of whatever evidence had been discovered, or was considered pertinent for him to suppress.

  Back in court, Drs Phillips and Blackwell came and went on consecutive days, contradicting themselves and each other with a frequency too tedious to get into. Both, however, confirmed the discovery of some cachous. ‘The left arm was extended,’ said Phillips, ‘and there was a packet of cachous in the left hand. A number of these were in the gutter. I took them from her hand and handed them to Doctor Blackwell.’ The presence of these sweets substantiates the descriptions given to the press by Kosebrodski, Mortimer, Diemschutz et al. We’re halfway there, although neither physician trespassed into a description of Stride’s right hand. But that right hand wasn’t going to go away, and neither was the reality of the grapes. On 6 October the Daily Telegraph published a letter that was to be the harbinger of unwished-for problems:

  In reading your report on Monday of the murder in Whitechapel I notice that the unfortunate woman, when seen by Constable Lamb 252 H Division, was clutching some grapes in her right hand and sweets in her left. Is it not probable that the murderer bought the grapes for his victim? Supposing that to be so, is it not also probable that the grapes were purchased only a few minutes before the murder and in the immediate neighbourhood? I would suggest a strict enquiry among the vendors of fruit in that locality.

  This was everything Baxter & Co. didn’t wa
nt to hear. Mr Webb of Bedford House, Bognor, had hit a barely hidden nail right on its obvious head. Of course it was probable that the murderer had bought the grapes for his victim, and of course it was probable that the grapes had been purchased in the immediate neighbourhood. Written on 4 October, Webb’s letter could (and certainly would) have been ignored, had it not been for a startling revelation published that same day. The very man the police were desperate to avoid had decided to speak up.

  On 4 October the Evening News published ‘MATTHEW PACKER’S STORY’, describing it as an ‘INTERVIEW WITH THE MAN WHO SPOKE TO THE MURDERER’ and claiming it was at his fruit shop in Berner Street that Jack had ‘BOUGHT THE GRAPES FOUND BESIDE THE MURDERED WOMAN’. A symphony of flatulence must have echoed around Scotland Yard. Mr Packer’s intercession was to become the catalyst for one of the most extraordinary escalations of misfeasance to engulf Warren’s tenure. A vigorous programme of damage limitation was initiated, Vincent’s Code torn up like shit-paper. At all costs this fruit-seller had to be shut up.

  Meanwhile, his intervention had an immediate effect on Baxter’s ongoing enquiries. Having ignored all the press reports of grapes, our serpentine coroner was now anxious to put up questions about them. On 5 October, the day after Packer’s sensation, Dr Bagster Phillips was recalled. On this occasion proceedings were watched for the first time by Superintendent Arnold for the Met.