They All Love Jack

by Bruce Robinson

  My candidate had also come to Liverpool, to spend Christmas with his brother James, his sister-in-law Florence and their kids. Michael Maybrick was now approximately one hour by train from Bradford, and Florence Maybrick was under the same roof as the most dangerous man in England.

  Christmas at Battlecrease House must have been about as jolly as cancer. Despite the smiles and the presents, Michael Maybrick was preparing to bring catastrophe to this family. His homicidal plans were already well advanced, and were they not entirely justified? Dogs can’t see in colour, and psychos can’t see in human. Reducing those around the table to a psychopathic point of view, we have a fifty-year-old junkie and possible bigamist called James; his, wife, a twenty-six-year-old multiple adulteress, Florence; their two young children; and Bro Michael himself, a forty-seven-year-old serial killer with personal issues, and perfectly justified reasons for ripping out hearts.

  Battlecrease, with its gardens, servants and cook, was a Victorian ideal, ‘furnished with refined taste and elegance’. Within six months, Michael Maybrick would control and dispose of every stick of furniture in the place, from the Turkish carpets in the dining room to the Dresden candelabra hanging above them. Everything would be auctioned off, down to the last pathetic toy. Michael would own everything Florence Maybrick had ever had, including her husband, her children, and her freedom.

  I can’t be certain, but I am of the view that the children he was about to murder in Weston and Bradford were in some way connected in his head with Florie’s kids, surrogates for them, just as the Whitechapel scum were surrogates for their mother. He certainly took pleasure in frightening them, regaling them with tales of ghosts and coffins under the bed.31 The echo of screams rushing down the stairs amused him, but as far as Florence was concerned he was a malign presence, a ‘brute’.32

  Florence was later to claim that from the day of her wedding, Michael had ‘always had a spite against her’.33 But she had underestimated the strength of his rage. It was hate. He hated her in her mortgaged silk frocks, and whatever was to happen to her, she brought upon herself. She was nothing more than a fourpenny whore, blackmailing his stupid brother with her cunt. It may well be that he had once been attracted to her himself, and that it was her adulterous relationships with his younger brother Edwin, and with James’s handsome business associate Alfred Brierley, that finally triggered his murderous rampage.

  Maybe he’d made a pass, and been rejected – ‘Don’t be so silly, Michael, you like boys.’ Such a response, although no more than speculative, would be sufficient to snap the synapses in a diseased mind. Rejection of the great and famous man would threaten everything he was – his superiority, his masculinity and his money: and he’d lent the bitch a hundred pounds. Robert Ressler says the most dangerous trigger to a psychopath is an affront, or a perceived slight. She had fucked both his brothers, and said no to him? At his expense she was bleeding his drug-addicted idiot of a brother dry, and screwing Brierley, and she had the whore’s brass neck to reject him?

  I can’t take the scenario further, because apart from what was about to happen, I have no ancillary evidence to support it. But nothing happens by accident, and it brings me back to the postcard out of London on 12 November 1888, with its inverted ‘V’s’ and signed by ‘M Baynard’.

  Who in Jack the Ripper’s head was ‘M Baynard’?

  One of Michael Maybrick’s greatest pleasures was reading34 – he loved the ‘great poets’, he said. But this isn’t a reference to Richard Crashaw, but like ‘Andy Handy’, a reference to a novel. M Baynard is, I believe, M[r] Baynard, a character from the epistolary novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, by the comic writer Tobias Smollett. Baynard is a desperate middle-aged man out of his sexual depth, married to a vivacious and beautiful wife who, by her youth and extravagance, is dragging him to ruin. She doesn’t want to live in the sticks, she wants to live in the city. She doesn’t want silver plate, she wants it solid, and her wardrobe refreshed constantly with the apogee of Parisian haute couture. The narrator describes the progress of this disintegrating marriage with both relish and alarm. He’s a ruthless presence, taking pleasure above all in the knowledge that this young woman is ‘driving on blindly to her own destruction’. In terms of what was on its way for Florence, you might want to call the Baynards’ story prophetic.

  Florence was ‘driving on blindly to her own destruction’,35 and would get there with a little help from her brother-in-law. Everything was shaping up according to plan. Exploiting his brother’s obsessive hypochondria, Michael had suggested that James should travel down to London to consult his physician, Dr Fuller, and an arrangement was made.36 Thereafter, there were Judas kisses, coins for the kids, and the sweetest goodbyes for Florence.

  One of the greatest difficulties in writing a story like this is the need to refer to events that haven’t yet happened. Consolidation of the nightmare must wait until we get to the ‘trial’. Meanwhile, in respect of the collusion against Florence orchestrated by Michael and his Establishment chums, a paragraph will suffice. It comes from a book published over fifty years ago, thirty years before the absurdly named ‘Liverpool Document’ was to emerge. But it sinisterly predicts it. And as we progress with the motive of the Ripper, it’s worth bearing in mind.

  The principal antagonist of Mrs Maybrick was her husband’s brother, Michael. He had made up his mind that his brother was the victim of a designing and murderous woman. Only the sheer venom and spite of a man motivated entirely by hatred and antagonism can account for the way in which Michael Maybrick hounded his sister-in-law as closely as he could to the scaffold.37

  On Christmas Day 1888, the Carl Rosa Opera Company left Liverpool on a specially hired train for a five-night engagement at Bradford.38 Many of its stars were well known to Michael Maybrick, as he was to them – famous names performing a concert of sacred music that evening at the city’s St George’s Hall. I don’t know if Bro Michael Maybrick hitched a ride with Bro Carl Rosa – a fellow member of the Savage Club39 – but I do know with certainty that the Ripper also arrived at Bradford not later than Boxing Day, 26 December 1888.

  Bradford’s best hotel, the Alexandra, was attached to a theatre, the Empire. Built in 1877 and described by its architects as ‘the finest and most expensive of its class’, the Alexandra provided top-end accommodation for all itinerant thespians and concert singers who could afford it.

  The hotel was managed by a gent of Italian origin, Mr Carlo Fara, a name of particular interest. Fara was a Freemason, a member of the Shakespeare Lodge (1018) around the corner in Darley Street, where he presided as Grand Master.40 But more pertinently (and by what some would put down to extraordinary coincidence), he was also a founder member of the Golden Dawn in Bradford. It was actually in a room of the Alexandra Hotel that the Horus Temple was formally consecrated by Bro S.L. MacGregor Mathers on 9 October 1888.41

  It was this hermetic ceremony that had inspired Jack’s artwork of the same date. The nascence of the Golden Dawn and Warren’s occult association with its founders had thrown up fertile possibilities for amusement in the disease of the Ripper’s thinking. But this wasn’t Whitechapel, and that would dictate a modification of approach. His choice of East End victims was entirely opportunistic. The logistics were crude, and apart from his ridicule of Freemasonry, and Warren along with it, there was no master-plan. If you were perceived as his kind of girl and were unlucky enough to run into him, you were dead. But with Mathers and Westcott in mind there was a change of narrative. These murders of children were not only specifically advertised, but the geography of their destruction was pre-planned. In that sense the crimes were more ‘sophisticated’, if such a word can be used in the context of such horror. His planning for the murder of the little boy required a secure environment where he wouldn’t be discovered or disturbed.

  Jack was therefore obliged to wander for a while, selecting an area that attracted him, and making a reconnoitre for some suitable premises. On the Thorncliffe Road he
found what he was looking for. One of the houses was unoccupied, and had been ‘locked up for some time’. It’s likely this sombre residence was the referee of Jack’s thinking. It was here that he would prepare and wrap up Charlie’s promised Christmas present. The child, who as yet had no identity, was going to be murdered at Walmer Villas in the Bradford suburb of Manningham.

  Christmas at the Alexandra was busy, especially with the influx from Liverpool who had come to perform, or perhaps to listen to Carl Rosa’s American prima donna Miss Amanda Fabris. On the following night, 26 December, the hotel itself was to ring with music on the occasion of ‘The Eighth Annual Boxing Night Ball’. ‘The spacious entrance hall was tastefully decorated and arranged for dancing,’ reported the Bradford Telegraph, congratulating the ‘genial host, Mr Carlo Fara’ for his stewardship. There was a supper for over two hundred guests, followed by speeches, before the band finally struck up, and ‘dancing and merry-making were kept up with great zest until daylight dawned’.42

  Among the revellers were a twenty-three-year-old tailor, James Cahill, and his twenty-six-year-old wife Elizabeth. In the wake of what was to transpire, Mr Cahill insisted that ‘No one was aware of the fact they were going to the ball, except his employer.’43 But without question, somebody else knew the couple were at the Alexandra Hotel, even though he couldn’t have known who they were.

  Maybe there was a guest list somewhere, maybe a raffle-board on which people had written their names and addresses? Or maybe a list of those invited to the reception, with the names and addresses of those who’d turned up ticked off? All we can be sure of – all Jack needed to be sure of – is that if the Cahills were at the ball, they couldn’t be at home. Charlie’s Christmas present was going to come with all the usual Freemasonic trimmings, and here was an opportunity for the mocking to begin.

  It was probably some time after midnight that Jack left the hotel and climbed into a cab. The Cahills lived at 324 Heaton Road, Manningham, about two minutes from Walmer Villas.

  The Cahills didn’t get home until about ten o’clock on the following bitterly cold morning. It was Thursday, 27 December 1888. They had left their key hanging on a hook in a small outhouse just outside the front door, ‘and found it there upon their return’. What they saw next comes from an important but rather lengthy report, published in the Bradford Observer:44

  Upon opening the door, Mrs Cahill was startled at the sight of her umbrella opened on the floor. Picking it up [Mr Cahill] noticed that it did not belong to his wife or himself … looking into the living room he found a still more astonishing sight. His wife’s dress was hanging from a hook in the ceiling over the table in the centre, and his first impression was that somebody was hanging … On the table were a couple of drinking glasses which had apparently contained some spirit. But he had yet to see the most important and remarkable conditions of appearance which the room presented. On a table next to the front window were two knives, crossed, and with them was a card. Upon one side of this card were the words: ‘Half-past nine. Look out, Jack the Ripper has been here.’ Upon the other side were the words: ‘I have removed down to the canal side. Please drop in. – Yours truly, SUICIDE.’

  I’m reluctant to break into the report, which is far from finished. But this little jibe at the police can’t be allowed to pass. By some occult intelligence the intruder is not only signing himself ‘Jack the Ripper’, he’s also signing himself ‘SUICIDE’, and is clearly able to divine an association between the two. Once again we’re looking at a little ‘inside information’, and it’s less than eight weeks old. The convenient nonsense that the Ripper had committed suicide by drowning himself in the Thames after the murder of Kelly was cooked up in secrecy by worthless individuals in the Metropolitan Police, but was not brought into the public domain for another ten years.45

  But let us return to the Cahills and their discoveries:

  … pen and ink were on the table but the words were written in pencil. A clock in the room had been set to the time stated on the card and stopped. Upon the table on which the knives were was a large tin basin with some water in it, and the top of the table was saturated with water. Another open umbrella was found behind the door leading from the room to the back of the premises … No other room had been disturbed in any way, and nothing was missed from the house except a bottle of rum, and part of the contents of another bottle which had presumably been poured into glasses and consumed. Beyond the strange umbrella and the card there was nothing to afford a clue to the mysterious visitor or visitors.

  Mysterious indeed – and the police wanted it kept that way. It wasn’t until well after the discovery of the little boy’s mutilated body that the mystery found its way into the press.

  ‘A remarkable story came to light last night,’ reported the Bradford Observer, ‘which has been known to the Bradford Police for four days, but for some reason has been kept entirely secret by them.’46 But now it was out it had to be trashed, and regurgitating police misinformation, the newspapers sank to the occasion. ‘There is absolutely no foundation for the foolish attempt to connect the crime with “Jack the Ripper”,’ posited the Bradford Telegraph:

  The ‘remarkable’ and ‘startling’ story as to ‘Jack the Ripper’s’ visit to a house in Heaton Road, Manningham, which is published in some of our morning contemporaries, has absolutely no importance whatever. It was fully investigated by the police on Saturday morning, and at once set down as a very coarse and foolish Christmas joke. There never was the slightest question after the first enquiries that it was anything else but a joke, and so little importance was attached to the matter that it was not even communicated to the Chief Constable.

  Retracting its previous report, the Bradford Observer joined in: ‘The supposed visit of “Jack the Ripper” to a house in Manningham, on Thursday morning last, and where a communication had been left purporting to be from that mysterious individual, is now known with certainty to have been a practical joke of a relative of the tenant.’47

  Whoever this ‘relative’ was, was never discovered, and remained curiously unknown to either Mr or Mrs Cahill. The latter was so amused by the ‘relative’s joke’, that she refused to live another day in the blighted property. ‘It has taken such an effect upon his wife,’ reported the Bradford Observer, quoting Mr Cahill, ‘that he has been unable to persuade her to remain in the house alone, and has had to rent another house immediately, as she is afraid to live there.’48

  So from whence came this seasonal comedian?

  A question I would have liked to have asked in respect of the ‘relative’ – as mysterious as the intruder himself – is, did either of the Cahills have a ‘relative’ who was a Freemason?

  I would have asked the question because only a Freemason could have conjured up such a ‘joke’. A Masonic copper would have been able to read the Ripper’s ‘set-dressing’ like a book – although, of course, no Freemason would ever read it out loud.

  The ersatz ceremony Jack put together in the Cahills’ parlour was a DIY rendition of a Knights Templar initiation known as ‘the Fifth Libation’.49 It required a couple of glasses, a bottle of alcohol (wine at the real thing, rum at the Cahills’), a pen and ink, a bowl of fresh water, a pair of crossed swords, and a skull and crossed bones (the latter not available for another hour or two).

  At the lodge the Knights assemble under the instruction of the Grand Commander. Two rooms are required, and if only one is available it is divided by a veil (Mrs Cahill’s suspended dress). One half is called the Assilum, and the other the Council Chamber. It’s a convoluted ceremony, but in brief its mechanics are relatively straightforward. At the direction of the Junior Warden, the hoodwinked Initiate is requested to sit at a table in what is called ‘the Chamber of Reflection’. The explanation for the bizarre assembly at Heaton Road (specifically designed to mock the arcane procedures of Masonry) will now become self-evident. The candidate is told that on the table in front of him are a pen and ink and a sheet of paper, on whic
h are written three questions. He must answer them yes or no, and sign his name after each. He will also discover a bowl of pure water (the large tin basin with water in it at the Cahills’). ‘Wash your hands in the water,’ instructs the Junior Warden, ‘as a token of the purity of your intentions in the business in which you are engaged.’ He then retires behind the veil (the dress) and the Initiate removes his blindfold. Apart from the pen and ink and the bowl of water, he’s doubtless surprised to discover a human skull and crossed bones positioned on the table.

  Assuming these present no problem, he washes his hands in the bowl, answers the questions, and the Warden reappears from behind Mrs Cahill’s dress. A rather lengthy procedure ensues in which a year’s pilgrimage is represented by a tramp around the room. The candidate then walks down an avenue of Knights forming an arch with their swords, arriving at the lower end of the Council Chamber, where he kneels at an altar (a table in the window) sporting an open Bible, upon which are a pair of crossed swords (crossed knives at the Cahills’). Oaths are now sworn: ‘I do hereby and herein most solemnly promise and swear that I will always hail, forever conceal, and never reveal, any of the secret arts, parts or points appertaining to this Order of Knights Templars, etc.’

  Once the oaths have been completed the Grand Commander takes over and the initiation comes to its point. He congratulates the Pilgrim, but requires ‘some stronger proof of your fidelity to us’. Now the ceremony of the Five Libations begins. Alcohol is poured into a glass for each of them (two glasses in which rum had been drunk at Heaton Road), and here comes the First Libation: ‘To the memory of Solomon, King of Israel, our ancient Grand Master.’ Both drink, and then give the drinking sign by drawing the glasses across their throats. The Second and Third Libation follow, toasting Hiram King of Tyre and Hiram Abiff respectively. One or two selected verses of the Bible are then read (Matthew 26), until quaffing through the Fourth, they arrive at last in the Assilum, at the Fifth Libation. ‘It is emblematic of the bitter cup of death,’ intones the Grand Commander, and to show he’s not messing about he pours booze into the human skull and drinks. He then hands it to the Initiate, who’s also required to have one for the road. ‘The Fifth Libation,’ the Grand Commander says, ‘is called the “Sealed Obligation”,’ and if the candidate doesn’t like the sound of it he’s threatened with a bristle of Knights’ swords. Another oath to secrecy is sworn, ‘considered by Knight’s Templars, to be more binding than any obligation can be’. Both Charles Warren and Lord Kitchener had made these inviolable pledges, the latter, to Her Majesty’s chagrin, grave-robbing and silver-mounting the Mahdi’s skull for such a purpose.