The title Black Museum, apparently coined in 1877, is appropriate, as the collection includes weapons used in actual murders, pieces of crucial evidence from hijackings, sieges, robberies and, most creepily, the death masks of various prisoners hanged at Newgate prison, as well as a plethora of other true-crime ephemera. Some of the more well-known criminal cases represented by the collection include those of John Christie, Ruth Ellis, the Great Train Robbery, Dr Crippen, Dennis Nilsen, the Kray Twins and – not surprisingly – Jack the Ripper.
With the date of the auction fast approaching, I decided to contact the Black Museum to see if I could find out any more about the history of the shawl, and the likelihood of it being genuine (although I was increasingly sure that it was). I rang Scotland Yard and was put through to Alan McCormack, the curator of the Crime Museum. I realized immediately that he was friendly and down-to-earth, so I explained that I was thinking of buying the shawl, and asked if he could tell me anything about it.
I cannot recall the exact conversation, but paraphrased, it went something like this:
RE:
I wonder if you can tell me any information you have regarding the Jack the Ripper shawl that was taken from Catherine Eddowes’ body on the night of the murder?
AM:
Well it was never proven to be linked to the case because we’ve never done any DNA testing on it. In fact, we had it over the years as part of our training museum. Most people call this the Black Museum, but it isn’t. It’s the Scotland Yard training museum.
RE:
Would you say it is genuine?
AM:
I can’t say one way or the other; it was on loan to us from the descendant of one of our policemen at the time of the murders. If it was ever shown to the public, it would have to say that it was alleged so there would be no comeback.
RE:
OK, what if I was to say I had found something about the pattern on the shawl which relates significantly to the dates of three of the murders?
AM:
Well that would be fresh news that we haven’t got and we would be very interested.
RE:
When I knew that the shawl was up for sale, I had a look on the internet and saw that the East London Observer printed on Saturday, 6 October 1888, that the victim was wearing a dark green chintz dress with Michaelmas daisies, with a golden lily pattern. I noticed that many newspapers had printed the same, so I concentrated on the pattern and tried to find a clue in the significance of the pattern.
AM:
Did you find anything?
I told him about the relevance of the celebration dates of Michaelmas to the murders of Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly and he said: We never knew that, that’s new.’
I felt really pleased: it was the first confirmation I’d had that I was onto something from someone who knew about the case. Now I knew I had to buy the shawl.
But before I had long to savour my success, Alan threw something else of vital importance into the ring. He said he could not understand why people still continued to talk about who the Ripper was, because – he claimed – Scotland Yard had always known who he was, and that they had documentation to prove it. I asked if he minded telling me the name:
AM:
Well I can tell you the name but you have to go and do the work. Considering you’ve told me the first bit of news that I didn’t know in years, I’ll tell you: the murderer was and always has been Aaron Kosminski.
RE:
Really? He’s always been one of the three publicized suspects.
AM:
Yes, but they make too much money on programmes and books to actually give the real culprit!
RE:
What do you think about the shawl now?
AM:
Well, I don’t know now, it is very old. I know Sotheby’s examined it and found it could be very early twentieth century, but it could be older. If you feel you want to buy it let me know how you get on. You never know, it could be real after all.
RE:
I will keep you posted. So Aaron Kosminski was Jack the Ripper?
AM:
Yes, we’ve got all the information right here, but the museum isn’t open to the public. Tell you what, if you buy the shawl, we would be interested in having it back. I’ll let you come and see the documents if you ever write a book on it and give me a signed copy.
RE:
That would be amazing. Thank you ever so much, I’ll let you know how I get on.
So now, in an astonishing couple of days, I had found out the significance of the shawl and, incredibly, the true identity of Jack the Ripper – at least according to Alan McCormack’s understanding of the police evidence.
And that is how I came to be at the auction in Bury St Edmunds in March 2007 and a couple of days later agreed to buy the shawl.
When I got it home I spread it across a large footstool covered in pale cream velvet in our drawing room to look at it properly. It was surprisingly large and existed in two sections, the bigger one being 73.5 inches in length and 25.5 inches wide. The smaller piece had been cut more and was 24 inches long and 19 inches wide. The predominant colour was dark brown, with a more golden brown on the reverse. At both ends were blue sections measuring about 2 foot long, patterned with a design of Michaelmas daisies and golden lilies in hues of red, ochre and gold. This pattern also ran along the edges of the main brown central section in the form of a border. Pieces had been cut from the shawl at some time, leaving jagged edges at one end of each piece. The other edges of both sections had a fringe of small tassels.
There were a number of stains on both sections; on the larger, a multitude of small dots could be seen near the fringe and a larger dark stain slightly further in. In the middle brown section, similar dark stains were present as well as some smaller white dots where the colour had leached out. The smaller piece had some minor dark stains and again, near the fringe, more little markings. I was fascinated by the stains. I could clearly see what looked as if it was blood, but I was surprised there wasn’t more blood, and I dismissed the white marks as probably nothing more significant than the ageing process. Another pale stain I thought had been caused by bleach. Little did I know.
I stored the shawl in an antique glass-fronted cabinet I bought specifically for the purpose at an antiques shop in The Lanes in Brighton, then carefully concealed the shawl beneath a display of silver which Sally and I also chose: I thought that if we were burgled, the burglars would get away with the silver and would not bother with a couple of old pieces of cardboard and some tatty fabric that were lining the bottom of the cabinet. Storing the shawl there also kept it out of sunlight and contamination.
I read and re-read the letter of provenance from the previous owner:
To Whom it May Concern
I would confirm that I David Melville-Hayes am the Great Great Nephew of Acting Sergeant Amos Simpson who became the owner of the said Catherine Eddowes shawl after it was taken from her body.
The shawl was then given to my Great Grandmother who was Mary Simpson who died about 1927. The ownership of the Shawl then passed to my Grandmother Eliza Mary Smith (1875 to 1966). On her death the shawl was left to my Mother Eliza Elise (Mills) later Hayes (1902 to 1997). The shawl was given to me at the time my Mother went to live in Australia in 1986. However my Mother returned to England in about 1989. Full information on this background is available on my Family Tree, which I will make available to, these details cover approx. Seventeen Pages of Foolscap.
For further information I would suggest contacting Andrew Parlour on (telephone number) who has much information on the Metropolitan Police Records.
I am, Yours faithfully,
David Melville-Hayes.
The letter included his address and phone number.
I had already met Andy Parlour at the auction, and I knew from that encounter that he and Sue knew more about the history of the shawl than anyone else. They only had one copy of their book at the a
uction, and, besides, I had not wanted to show my hand by being too eager for it at the time. But now I had their telephone number, and within a couple of days I gave them a ring, told them I had the shawl, and arranged for them to come to my house.
Andy and Sue have been helpful and kind friends throughout this journey of mine. They have not betrayed to others who owns the shawl, and they have acted as a buffer between me and various people wanting access to it: lots of people assume it is in their possession. I am, and have always been, very grateful to them.
It was from them, and their book, that I discovered the full history of the shawl.
In December 1993, the curator of the Crime Museum at the time, Bill Waddell, published The Black Museum: New Scotland Yard, in which he wrote:
Recently I acquired a silk screen printed shawl. It had been in the donor’s possession for many years and a large section had been cut out by his mother, because she did not like the blood stains on it. I am told that it was the shawl worn by Catherine Eddowes when she was killed. Who knows what will come to light next?
Waddell was not the first person to mention the existence of the shawl in print. That honour went to Paul Harrison in his 1991 book Jack the Ripper: The Mystery Solved in which he set out his case for Mary Kelly’s former lover, Joseph Barnett, being the Ripper. During his research for the book, Harrison, who at that time was a serving sergeant in the Nottinghamshire Constabulary, received a telephone call out of the blue from London-based Chief Inspector Mick Wyatt, who had heard of Harrison’s Ripper research and felt that he would like to know about a possible genuine artefact from the murders. Harrison was fully expecting the item to be a knife and was surprised when Wyatt said that it was a shawl belonging to one of the Ripper’s victims, though he could not be sure which one. He gave Harrison the address, in Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, where the shawl was kept.
In late November 1989, about a year after he spoke to Wyatt, Harrison followed up this lead, and found that the address given to him was a video shop owned by John and Janice Dowler. Eventually, Harrison met the Dowlers at their shop in St Osyth Road and found them very helpful, but also very cynical about the genuineness of the shawl, which by then they had returned to its original owner. The story the Dowlers had been told was that the shawl had been taken from the body of Catherine Eddowes. Either the shawl had been acquired at the scene, or en route to the mortuary. A friend in the antiques business offered it to the Dowlers a few years earlier, knowing they were from London and thinking that they might be interested in a piece of London history.
The alleged background to the shawl made them feel a little uncomfortable, but they accepted the gift. They were told that the missing section had been removed because of bloodstains, but there were still stains visible on the remaining fabric, which disturbed them enough to ask their friend to take it back. They were presented instead with two cuttings from the shawl which had been placed in a mount and framed, and which they displayed in their shop. On the back of the frame was the inscription:
Two silk samples, taken from Catherine Eddowes’ shawl at the time of the discovery of her body by Amos SIMPSON in 1888. (End of September). Victim of Jack the Ripper.
Arabella Vincent (Fine Art)
Hand-made Illustrated Mounts
UK Studio, Tel. Clacton —
Surface printed silk
Circa 1886
Framed 100 years to the day.
(A. Vincent)
The friend in question was David Melville-Hayes who actually worked for Arabella Vincent Fine Art and who specialized in hand-colouring prints. It is a family tradition: both David’s father and grandfather were colourists, and he believes the line of colourists goes back to 1764. David himself has done work for the Queen Mother. He is the great-great-nephew of the police officer Amos Simpson who had acquired the shawl, and the history of the shawl had been passed down over generations. What follows is what David had learnt from his family, and what he, in turn, passed on to me. It is important to put this specific version of events across, as the story of the origins of the shawl has been muddied with the passing of time:
Simpson, being on ‘special duties’ at the time of the double murder, had gone to Mitre Square with several other officers from both the City and Metropolitan forces, and with another policeman accompanied the body of Catherine Eddowes as it was wheeled to the City mortuary in Golden Lane. Seeing the shawl, he asked one of the senior officers if it was fine to take it, as he thought his wife Jane might find the silk useful for dressmaking. David believes that it was his rank, Acting Sergeant, that allowed him to have the shawl. When Simpson showed the bloodstained shawl to Jane, she understandably wanted nothing to do with it. Regardless of Jane’s opinions, it was not disposed of: and that’s one of the first and most important pieces of luck in this sequence of events. Some time prior to his death in 1917, Simpson passed the shawl to his sister, Mary Simpson, David Melville-Hayes’ great-grandmother, and on her death in 1927 it was given to her daughter Eliza Mary Smith. When she in turn died in 1966, the year I was born, the shawl once again moved down a generation to her daughter, Eliza Elise Hayes, David Melville-Hayes’ mother. At the age of eighty-four, in 1986, Eliza Elise moved to Australia and before leaving offered the shawl to David’s two brothers. Again, the shawl had a lucky escape, as the brothers, with little interest in its story, intended to burn it, which prompted David to take it off their hands and rescue what he felt was an important piece of history.
That is the basic version set out by David according to the original family story, but over the years he has added new observations; for example, he believed that it was possibly his grandmother, Eliza Mary, who had cut the large chunk from the shawl to be rid of the heavy bloodstains and that she may also have attempted to bleach out other smaller stains. He also remembers seeing the shawl for the first time when he was about eight or nine years old and that it was kept in a large wooden sea chest with ‘waxed handles’ which was also used to store the family’s ‘Sunday-best’ clothes, and which David still owns. One element of the story is more problematical: David states that Amos Simpson gained access to the shawl because he was the first officer at the scene in Mitre Square and it has even been said that he discovered the body himself. This version of events has also surfaced in the media from time to time. That he was the very first on the scene seems unlikely.
To remind us, the police reports state that, as we’ve seen, it was PC Edward Watkins who found Catherine Eddowes’ body that morning, and went for help to George Morris, the nightwatchman at Kearley and Tonge. After Morris, an ex-Metropolitan police officer, raised the alarm a number of officers swiftly arrived at the scene, including PC James Harvey who had been near the entrance to Mitre Square only five minutes earlier and PC Frederick Holland. Also alerted were City detectives Edward Marriott, Robert Outram and Daniel Halse who were standing at the bottom of Houndsditch nearby.
As the word of another savage murder of a prostitute was spread along the police lines of communication, senior officers would have arrived at the scene and further police reinforcements would have been sent from Bishopsgate and other City police stations to perform various duties. Owing to the loss of City police files on the Ripper case, it is impossible to know exactly how many policemen would have been present at any one time, and it is likely that apart from those directly involved following the immediate discovery of the body, not all would have been recorded. In effect, the fact that Amos Simpson’s name does not appear in any of the few surviving reports does not necessarily mean he was not there at some point, even early on. Catherine Eddowes’ body was removed from Mitre Square at 2.20 a.m. and according to the story passed down by his descendants, Amos Simpson accompanied it. But Simpson was a Metropolitan police officer, so what was he doing on City police territory?
Amos Simpson was born in 1847 in Acton, Suffolk, the fourth child of eleven born to agricultural labourer John Simpson and his wife Mary. I found out from talking to his descendant, David Melvill
e-Hayes, that the malting house where Sally and I lived was only three villages away from Amos’s birth place. Amos was working with his father on a farm at Barrow Hill by the time he was fourteen years old, but the desire to branch out and go to the big city must have been great, and he joined the Metropolitan police in 1868 aged twenty-one, where he was first posted to Y Division (Holloway). In 1874 he married Jane Wilkins (who was born in 1848 in Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire) at the ancient Old St Pancras Church in London and together they had two children, Ellen and Henry. Simpson was promoted to acting sergeant in 1881 and five years later transferred to N Division (Islington) where he was still based at the time of the Ripper murders. Later in his police career, he moved to Cheshunt in Hertfordshire and served with the Hertfordshire Constabulary until his retirement, when it appears that he and Jane, with daughter Ellen and her children, returned to the farm in Barrow Hill to continue the work of his father who had died in 1892. In the 1911 census, Amos is recorded as a Metropolitan police pensioner and retired farm labourer, ably assisted in the running of the farm by the large Stearns family (his daughter’s family).
Amos Simpson was remembered as an upright and moral man by his family and was greatly respected in the community. The report of his death in the Suffolk and Essex Free Press of 18 April 1917 said:
His wife died 5 years ago and since then he has been attended to by his devoted daughter who lost her husband (killed in action) on September 13th 1916 leaving 5 young children. His son and daughter in law came to spend the Easter with him and they had a pleasant time. Mr. Simpson was very cheerful on the Monday morning and sang “The Last Rose of Summer” to the monophone. He was taken suddenly ill in the evening and died on Tuesday morning at 8 o’clock leaving 1 son, a widowed daughter, a daughter in law, 5 grandchildren and many relatives and old friends to mourn their loss.
Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888 Page 12