The Ripper of Waterloo Road

by Jan Bondeson

  Hubbard’s hysterics were accompanied by those of the young servant Mary Fisher, who had waited on Hubbard and Eliza for the last two years, and the piteous crying of poor Mary Glover, who had known Eliza well. How could some person have murdered her friend in the room just underneath her own, without the slightest noise being heard by any person in the house?1

  Having managed to calm down Hubbard and the two women, the cool-headed Mr Best went outside to give the alarm. Soon, a crowd of curious neighbours and passers-by congregated on the pavement outside No. 12 Wellington Terrace. One of them went to the old watch-house in Waterloo Road, where a watchman alerted Constable Charles Burgess Goff from his beat near the toll gate on Waterloo Bridge. Constable Goff, a young and alert policeman, immediately went to the murder house, where Best told him what had happened.2

  The distraught Hubbard had gone to No. 88 York Road to get the local surgeon, who probably did not appreciate being woken up that early on a Saturday morning. The bleary-eyed Surgeon William Henry Cooke reluctantly got dressed and trudged after Hubbard the short distance to Wellington Terrace.

  He had a brief look round before asking Hubbard what he thought had happened. Hubbard said, ‘I believe somebody has …’ and pulled his hand across his throat to indicate that Eliza had been murdered. But Mr Cooke pooh-poohed this notion. It was of common occurrence that unfortunate young women destroyed themselves, he said, and he had no doubt this was yet another suicide.

  Eliza Grimwood’s stays, from the Weekly Chronicle of 10 June 1838.

  The trembling, almost hysterical Hubbard, who kept exclaiming, ‘Oh, my poor Eliza! Oh, my dear Eliza!’ was led out into the kitchen by his brother and mother, who had come to the house, and given a tot of gin and his tobacco pipe to calm his nerves. Since Hubbard’s cupboard was in a similar state to that of his elderly female namesake,3 Mary Fisher was sent to the local grocer to purchase some eggs and cheese, so that his relatives could have a proper luncheon.

  4

  AN INSPECTOR CALLS

  About an hour after the surgeon had left the murder house, another visitor knocked on the front door, and was admitted. It was Inspector Charles Frederick Field, one of London’s best-known police officers. Born in Chelsea in 1805, he had started a career as an amateur actor in various theatres. Charles Frederick Field joined the New Police on its formation in 1829, and since he stood out from the other applicants with regard to education and intelligence, he was immediately made a sergeant. He had several early successes, among them the capture of a notorious highway robber in a raid of a thieves’ nest off St Giles’s High Street. In 1833, he was promoted to inspector and posted to the ‘L’ or Lambeth division. This seedy part of London contained many rookeries, thieves’ dens and brothels. The area around Waterloo Road was a favourite haunt for prostitutes, who used to cross Waterloo Bridge to pick up clients in the theatres and music halls near the Strand.

  Inspector Charles Frederick Field, from the Illustrated London News of 1855. In 1838, of course, he looked a good deal fitter and more youthful than this.

  Then as well as now, being a London police officer was a tough and hazardous job. Some contemporary newspaper notices provide details of some dramatic episodes from Inspector Field’s career in Lambeth. In July 1835, two pugilists named March Barber and John Thibbert amused themselves by knocking some people down. When Inspector Field and some constables gave chase, the boxers dodged them by leaping into the Thames and swimming to the north side. When the intrepid inspector caught up with them, he ‘was ducked several times and nearly drowned’. Some weeks later, after the two pugilists had again made a riot, they once more escaped by swimming the Thames, with Inspector Field, Sergeant Powell and several constables in hot pursuit. But this time, the canny inspector had sent some constables to make a shortcut over Waterloo Bridge, and they caught the two miscreants, who were fined 20s each. In June 1836, when there was a fire at the rear of Astley’s Amphitheatre, Inspector Field was quickly at the spot with a strong body of police, who were instrumental in preventing a full-scale fire. In April 1837, a rapist named Richard Jackson escaped from Newgate and disappeared without trace. Inspector Field tracked him down to some rooms in Queen Street, Lambeth, and valiantly went in to recapture him. The desperate criminal threatened him with a razor, but the inspector pulled up a pistol and held him at gunpoint. For the capture of Jackson, the inspector was highly complimented by the governors of Newgate.1

  In the five years Inspector Field had served in the Lambeth area, he had made the acquaintance of many of its inhabitants. He had of course known Eliza Grimwood, who had commonly been called the Countess, because of her handsome appearance, elegant clothes and proud way of carrying herself. As he later told his friend Charles Dickens, ‘when I saw the poor Countess (I had known her well enough to speak to), lying dead with her throat cut, on the floor of her bedroom, a variety of reflections calculated to make a man rather low in his spirits, came into my head’.2 But when the inspector had a closer look at the body, his detective instincts took over. Could this really be a case of suicide? He thought the terrible cut that had severed the throat down to the vertebrae could hardly have been made by a suicide, let alone a woman. Inspector Field turned the body around, something the careless doctor had not bothered to do, and found another deep gash at the back of the neck. In his own words, this is what happened next:

  Ordered by Mr Superintendent Grimsall to make enquiries at the house [of the] deceased Eliza Grimwood, went there and on Examining the Head found a Cut at the back part, sent for Dr Cooke, who stated that he did not see that in the Morning when he first was called in.

  Said that she must have been murdered, commenced immediately to search the house. First examined Hubbard his clothes. Shut the Bed he slept in found a Card with a Blood between the Mattress and Bed, examined the Doors and passages, searched minutely all the Rooms and Cellar, ascertained that the Deceased came home the night before with a Gentleman.3

  Eliza Grimwood’s bedroom with the body; from the Weekly Chronicle of 3 June 1838.

  It turned out that Eliza had lived in two large rooms on the ground floor, a parlour and a bedroom. The furniture in these rooms was of surprisingly good quality. On the first floor, Hubbard had a small room, while the larger front room was let to William Best and Mary Glover. There were also two small and bleak-looking attic rooms, both rather understandably without a tenant. The servant girl Mary Fisher, who waited on Hubbard and Eliza, slept in a small room adjoining the kitchen, which was situated at the back of the house, down half a flight of stairs from the ground floor. The house also had a large cellar, but this was too cold, dark and damp to be fit for human habitation. The curious layout of the terrace of houses meant that a flight of stairs down from this cellar led into another, even deeper cellar, and then into a small yard, from which there was a door to the dry arches of Waterloo Bridge, facing Commercial Street. Inspector Field found it unlikely that the murderer could have escaped through this tortuous route, had he not known the house intimately.

  Having pondered the known facts, Inspector Field made some important early deductions. He had formed a low opinion of the truculent Hubbard, who could not deny that he had been partly supported by Eliza’s earnings. It did not seem at all unlikely that this unsavoury prostitute’s bully had killed Eliza in a fit of rage or jealousy. But there was no blood on Hubbard’s clothes, except what had splashed onto his trousers in his mad dash to get out of the murder room, nor was there any trace of the murder weapon. And could Hubbard, who was clearly a creature of modest intellect and dissipated habits, really have committed the murder without alerting any other person in the house, or leaving any worthwhile clue? Like the experienced policeman he was, Inspector Field reserved his judgement. Since it was important to keep Hubbard under close observation, he posted Constable Goff to stay in the murder house, where he would guard the crime scene and keep out the curious onlookers who had already begun to gather in the street outside the house.

&nb
sp; Inspector Field spent all Sunday looking for Eliza’s elusive Friday night customer. Surely, if this man was found and could give a good account of himself, the net tightened around Hubbard. On the other hand, if this mystery man did not come forward, he would himself become the main suspect. Knowing, from the evidence of the servant Mary Fisher, that Eliza had travelled home from the Strand Theatre by cab, the inspector walked down to Waterloo Bridge and began questioning the cabmen at the ranks there. Tracking down a specific cab driver in London today would be like finding a needle in a haystack, but London was of course much smaller back in 1838, the cabs plied a limited area, and the cabmen all knew each other. It did not take long for Inspector Field to have ‘traced out the Cab Man who brought Deceased home from the Strand Theatre’, as he expressed it, and this individual had some very interesting things to say. Joseph Spicknell, driver of cab No. 949, said that a lady and a gentleman had hailed him near the Strand Theatre the evening of the murder. They seemed to know each other and the gentleman addressed his companion as ‘Lizzy’, the name under which Eliza Grimwood was known to her friends. The lady was very good-looking, wearing a dark dress and a fawn-coloured bonnet. The man was 5ft 7in or 8in tall, young and foreign-looking, with dark hair and whiskers but no mustachios. He looked like a gentleman in an elegant waistcoat, a dark dress-coat and a dark, wide-brimmed hat. Although the weather was fine, he carried a mackintosh on his arm. The cabman drove them to the Hero of Waterloo public house near Wellington Terrace. After the woman had paid him his fare, she smiled at him, stroked the nose of his horse and said, ‘You have a nice horse’, before walking towards Wellington Terrace with her friend.

  Eliza Grimwood, from the Weekly Chronicle of 10 June 1838.

  It was fortunate for Inspector Field that, due to her attractive looks and fashionable dress, Eliza Grimwood was just the kind of person to get noticed. Outside the Strand Theatre, a certain John Rockall, waterman to the rank of cabs nearby, could well remember her entering one of these cabs along with a gentleman. When the waterman had opened the door for them, he heard Eliza say that she wanted to go across Waterloo Bridge. Inside the theatre, the inspector made further progress. The waitress Charlotte Parker, who had known Eliza for some time, could well remember that on the evening of the murder Eliza had come up to the refreshments stall and ordered a glass of wine, which she sat down and drank. As usual, she was quite elegant in her fawn-coloured dress, and her dark shawl and a blue bonnet. A foreign-looking young man in a broad-brimmed hat had paid 6d for the glass of wine; she got the impression he was a Frenchman. When she gave him his change, he said, ‘Did I not give you half a sovereign?’ but she was wise to this old trick and showed him the sixpence coin. The man was 5ft 8in tall, with dark hair and whiskers, but no mustachios. He was smartly dressed, rather like a respectable gentleman’s servant, and spoke good English.

  Inspector Field also found a jolly young prostitute who called herself Catherine Edwin. Although she looked very much like a teenager, she claimed to be 24 years old. Yes, she had known Eliza Grimwood; and yes, she had seen her the evening before, with a foreign-looking man. She had seen this individual with Eliza a few times before. He was always neatly dressed, with black whiskers and dark brown hair; he sometimes wore green-tinted spectacles like if he wanted to disguise himself. She did not know if this man was French or Italian, but he was definitely a foreigner, although he spoke fluent English. Rather overwhelmed by this unexpected torrent of information, the inspector asked her how she could be so certain about his nationality. She answered, with a merry giggle, that she had heard him speak French once or twice. He had probably spoken Italian when he had taken her, Eliza and another young lady to have coffee in Mrs Rosedale’s pastry-cook’s shop near Piccadilly just a few days ago. Miss Edwin had to admit, however, that she herself could not speak a single word of either French or Italian. She seemed to think the entire situation exceedingly funny, giggling excessively and making various flippant remarks, until the inspector gruffly remarked that if she had really been such a close friend of Eliza Grimwood, she had a very strange way of mourning her death. At this well-deserved rebuff, Miss Edwin began to cry theatrically. One of her friends brought the smelling salts as she seemed totally overcome with grief. Disgusted with these histrionics, the inspector stood up to leave. Catherine Edwin’s hysterical sobbing suddenly ceased when the inspector summoned her to give evidence at the coroner’s inquest, like he previously had the cabman, the waterman and the waitress.

  The cellar of No. 12 Wellington Terrace, from the Weekly Chronicle of 10 June 1838.

  As the inspector angrily walked out of the theatre, he kept pondering the novel evidence about the Foreigner. Could this giddy young Catherine Edwin at all be relied upon? Unlike the other witnesses, she had been flippant and disrespectful, and wholly unimpressed by the dignity of an inspector of police. Inspector Field had heard many a lie in his day, and he thought it sounded like she was making up her story as she went along. But like the experienced policeman he was, the inspector immediately fastened on the one point in Catherine Edwin’s story that could be proved or disproved. He went to Mrs Rosedale’s shop and asked the relevant questions. She could well remember a foreign-looking young man, probably a Frenchman, treating three gaily-dressed young ladies to pastries and coffee. This rather unexpected corroboration of Catherine Edwin’s story made the inspector thoughtful. Had the blasted little minx been telling the truth after all? He still pondered these matters as he travelled across Waterloo Bridge in a cab, reconstructing the final journey of Eliza Grimwood and the Foreigner.4

  When the inspector returned to the murder house at No. 12 Wellington Terrace, he was pleased to see that Constable Goff had been joined by Sergeant Price, another keen young policeman with a talent for detective work. When making some inquiries locally during the day, the sergeant had found two further witnesses. Firstly, a woman named Mary Chambers, who lived at No. 6 Waterloo Road, had seen an old-fashioned cab, with a door opening backward, coming up to Wellington Terrace between midnight and 1 a.m. the night of the murder. A young woman fitting the description of Eliza Grimwood had alighted, followed by a man in dark clothes, about 5ft 8in tall. Secondly, a musician named Chapman had testified that as he had been walking across Waterloo Bridge the night of the murder, he had been passed by a box cab containing two people, one of whom was female. He had then walked on towards Wellington Terrace, where he saw Eliza Grimwood and the Foreigner, standing directly outside No. 12; he passed them not 6ft away. He observed that Eliza was gaily dressed; the man had large features, dark whiskers and a fashionable coat. Constable Goff could report that throughout the day, Hubbard had been in a state of prostration, drinking and smoking immoderately, and ranting and raving about his dear Eliza. When the inspector went to see Hubbard, the bricklayer looked much the worse for wear after these excesses. When he asked why he was kept under guard at the house, the inspector gruffly replied that it was for his own good, since throughout the day, large and rowdy crowds had gathered outside the murder house, baying for his blood.

  The murder of Eliza Grimwood was headline news in every newspaper. The savage mutilation of the body, and the sheer mystery of the crime, put it in a class of its own among London murders. Not since James Greenacre had murdered Hannah Brown back in 1836 had there been a similar outrage in the metropolis. The alert London papers The Observer, The Times, The Morning Post and Morning Chronicle had already managed to tell the basic story of the murder already on Monday 28 May, although they got the victim’s name wrong; ‘Eliza Greenwood’, described as a remarkably handsome young female aged around 25, had been brutally murdered through having her throat cut, and her room was deluged in blood. Hubbard, the man who slept in the house, had discovered the dreadful spectacle.5

  According to Bell’s New Weekly Messenger, ‘The horrible transaction has caused a frightful sensation in the neighbourhood, and during the whole of Sunday crowds were collected in front of the house.’ The Globe wrote that:

&
nbsp; No occurrence of the kind that have taken place in the metropolis for years (not even the horrible atrocity perpetrated by Greenacre) has excited so much interest as this mysterious affair. During the whole of yesterday crowds collected in front of the house where the murder was committed; and at seven o’clock in the evening not fewer than a hundred and fifty persons had thus assembled, who were eagerly engaging in discussing the circumstances connected with the shocking occurrence. An individual who seemed to be a street-preacher attempted to ‘improve’ the event, but as no one appeared disposed to listen to him, he soon shifted his quarters. The toll-takers at Waterloo Bridge state that the receipts from foot passengers during the week have trebled the usual average, so great has been the crowd of curious gazers from all parts of the town.6

  For those who could not afford to buy newspapers, there were handbills pasted up all over London to proclaim that a horrible murder had been committed. In Whitechapel Road, a man was parading with ‘a show’ representing, as his placard announced, ‘the brutal murder of Eliza Grimwood’. The Morning Herald deplored that ‘the recent horrible murder of Eliza Grimwood in the Waterloo-road has furnished subject for the pictorial talents of the penny showmen. This was too rich, too sanguinary, too disgusting, to be neglected by the itinerant caterers for the enjoyment of the rising generation …’7

  5

  THE INQUEST BEGINS

  On Monday 28 May, the coroner’s inquest on Eliza Grimwood began at the York Hotel, a well-known local ‘gin palace’ situated at the crossing of York Road with the Waterloo Road.1 Mr Richard Carter, the coroner for Sussex, first led the jury over to the murder house to see the corpse, which had been left in situ on the floor of the back parlour. A newspaper report says that the jurymen were much affected by the gory sight. Since the majority of them were ordinary shopkeepers and artisans, they had never seen a murdered woman before. After inspecting the body, the coroner said that it was obvious that she had been murdered. The dreadful wound in the neck nearly severed her head from the shoulders, and there were some deep cuts to the fingers of the left hand, as if the wretched woman had tried to grasp the murder weapon. Her face and hair were smeared with blood, as if she had been thrashing about with her hands in the agonies of death. Eliza’s body was fully clothed, with the exception of her gown and bonnet.2 There were still two visible impressions on the pillows on the bed, as if two people had been lying down, and the coroner suggested that Eliza had perhaps been murdered when she got out of bed. A Weekly Chronicle journalist invited to see the murdered woman was not the only person who found it ‘extraordinary that, although there were several people sleeping under the same roof the night of the murder, none of them were awakened by the noise and scuffling which must have taken place during the perpetration of the murder’.3 As the coroner and jury returned from the murder house, Inspector Field told Mr Carter about his promising clues from the Strand Theatre. He pointed out that the testimony of Catherine Edwin seemed suspect and stated that he wanted more time to try to corroborate it. Mr Carter agreed to wait a few days before seeing the Strand Theatre witnesses; anyway, it seemed only reasonable to begin with Hubbard and the other residents of the murder house.