by Paul Begg
The problems of the East End, the ‘second square mile’ that sat in complete opposition to its eminently wealthy neighbour, the City, were many. Throughout the industrial revolution of the early nineteenth century, it became a magnet for migrant workers from the shires and provinces looking to earn a living in the factories and workshops placed there by a city wary of ‘noxious trades’. Breweries, slaughterhouses, tanneries and smithies flourished in an area where prevailing winds would blow pollutant fumes and smoke away from the financial quarter. Some, disposed to working at home or in less industrial surroundings, would settle into smaller industries like cigar and cabinet making, matchbox assembly or tailoring. The creation and subsequent growth of London’s docks had seen to it that areas close to the river grew phenomenally quickly as London became a hub of world trade. But could the East End comfortably cope with the rapidly growing population? It appeared not; fields gave way to the urban sprawl and orchards and tenter grounds disappeared under new housing, crammed dangerously into the limited spaces available and often accessible only through small alleyways and dark passages. The average population density in London in 1888 was 50 people per acre, but in Whitechapel it was 176; shockingly, in the Bell Lane district of Spitalfields it was 600 people per acre.2 Such a vast population made the availability of work for all practically impossible, and with the ravages of a long-standing recession, ‘unemployment’, a word coined in the 1880s, became a condition which touched many. By 1888, it is believed that out of a population of 456,877 in Tower Hamlets, over a third lived below the margins of subsistence, with a total of 13 per cent being ‘chronically distressed’ – in other words, facing daily starvation.3
Some of the most notorious neighbourhoods existed in the back streets of Whitechapel and Spitalfields; namely those districts where property owners had seized on the needs of a transient and fundamentally poor population, providing them with beds in common lodging houses. Spitalfields became particularly notorious; once the prosperous home of immigrant Huguenot silk weavers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the area had suffered with the passing of time. As the silk-weaving industry faltered in the early nineteenth century, the French settlers moved on, allowing their once handsome properties to become sublet or converted into doss houses, and their gardens, once planted with fruit and mulberry trees, were replaced by cramped tenements. The most notorious district consisted of the streets around Commercial Street, a road which had been built in the 1850s with the intention of clearing slums as well as extending trade routes from the London docks. It cut through leprous, overcrowded warrens, but the displaced population did not disperse far and wide, and the already crammed thoroughfares on either side filled up with the exiled poor. Flower and Dean Street, Thrawl Street and Dorset Street were names that even today are historically synonymous with the worst of London poverty. And it was in the common lodging houses here where could be found the Ted Stanleys, the Eliza Coopers, the Pearly Polls and of course the Mary Ann Nichols, Martha Tabrams and Annie Chapmans of this world. As one correspondent described it:
Thieves, loose women, and bad characters abound, and, although the police are not subject, perhaps, to quite the same dangers as they were a few years ago, there is still reason to believe that a constable will avoid, as far as he can, this part of his beat, unless accompanied by a brother officer. The district, in short, is one of common lodging-houses, and it is believed by some that if the mysteries of their ownership were exposed to the public eye much would be made clear.4
Philanthropy, however, was not scarce. Commercial Street was home to Toynbee Hall, set up in 1884 by Canon Samuel Barnett of St Jude’s Whitechapel to bring help, education and culture to the impoverished east Londoner. The Salvation Army, formed by William Booth in 1865, saw its genesis on these very streets. And Thomas Barnardo, a former medical student at the London Hospital on Whitechapel Road, was moved to provide care and shelter for the destitute children of the East End in the 1880s after seeing so much impoverishment. But these well-meaning social reformers were taking on a resilient adversary, and the problems endured, with many of the solutions failing or being too slow to effect positive change. East London had become a Gordian knot – a problem insoluble in its own terms. With the murder of Annie Chapman, the dark underbelly of the East End slums was brought into focus like never before. Suddenly, newspaper readers around the globe were made aware of the conditions, and it did not reflect favourably on what was then the world’s largest and wealthiest city.
One other ingredient impacted on the life of the East End significantly during those turbulent 1880s – immigration. Proximity to the river Thames meant that this quarter of the capital would invariably receive waves of immigrants who would go on to stamp their mark on the area. After the Huguenots came Irish travellers, fleeing problems caused by the potato famine of 1845–52, and from 1881 onwards Jews from Eastern Europe, and it was this latter wave of settlers whose presence was felt by many to exacerbate the already ingrained problems.
On 1 March 1881, Tsar Alexander II of Russia was assassinated, provoking a wave of persecution against Jews in Eastern Europe, even though only one of the five assassination conspirators was Jewish. Anti-Jewish ‘pogroms’ ensured huge migration as thousands attempted to flee dire poverty and unremitting maltreatment, and for many the only way to escape the relentless hardship and enforced transience was to go overseas. London, and specifically the East End, with its small, previously established Jewish communities, was an ideal choice for many. Whitechapel became the first point of entry to the United Kingdom for those who disembarked at St Katherine’s Dock near the Tower of London. The influx was more like an avalanche – by 1888, it is estimated that in the district of Whitechapel, over 40 per cent of the population were Jewish settlers, forming micro-communities or ‘ghettos’ of their own. With the unemployed scraping to survive, these newcomers, who needed work as much as anybody else, were blamed for inflaming the situation. Large numbers of unskilled and semi-skilled Jewish workers were prepared to work long hours for poor wages, effectively putting the indigenous workers out of the job market. As these newcomers began to descend upon specific areas of Whitechapel and Spitalfields, further resentment was forthcoming from those who believed that they were responsible ‘for pushing up rents by accepting overcrowded conditions, therefore forcing native East Enders to move out’.5 As the alarm surrounding the Whitechapel murders took hold during September 1888, eyes inevitably turned to the Jews, again the ideal scapegoat:
On Saturday in several quarters of East London the crowds who had assembled in the streets began to assume a very threatening attitude towards the Hebrew population of the district. It was repeatedly asserted that no Englishman could have perpetrated such a horrible crime as that of Hanbury-street, and that it must have been done by a Jew – and forthwith the crowds proceeded to threaten and abuse such of the unfortunate Hebrews as they found in the streets. Happily, the presence of the large number of police in the streets prevented a riot actually taking place.6
Just as our correspondent was writing a gang of young vagabonds marched down Hanbury-street shouting ‘Down with the Jews!’ ‘It was a Jew who did it!’ ‘No Englishman did it!’ After these the police were prompt, and whenever there was a stand they quickly, and without ceremony, dispersed them. There have been many fights, but the police are equal to it, as men are held in reserve under cover, and when there is a row they rush out and soon establish order. As the night advances the disorderly mobs who openly express antipathy to the Jews increase, and a request has been forwarded to headquarters for extra men.7
The heady mix was, of course, being continually stirred by the sensationalist newspapers. The Star, perhaps the most lurid of them all,8 boasted that its circulation on the Monday after Annie Chapman’s murder was 261,000 – 55,000 more than any other evening paper in London. The Star could also be said to have been responsible for one more unwitting victim of the Whitechapel horrors, when Mary Burridge, a resident of Blackfri
ars Road, collapsed in a fit after reading one of their reports. After regaining consciousness for a brief while after, she promptly died.9
Such unrest led to the formation of the Mile End Vigilance Committee, a group of local businessmen who felt that the scares surrounding the murders were affecting trade. At a meeting of the committee on 10 September, George Lusk, a painter and decorator of Tollet Street, Mile End, was nominated chairman. The question of rewards was now a major concern, and the Mile End Vigilance Committee, along with the already extant St Jude’s District Committee, were committed to pressurizing the authorities to offer them. A long list of subscribers was drawn up with the aim of securing £100 from private contributors to bolster the same amount already being offered privately by Samuel Montagu MP. Direct pleas to the home secretary, Henry Matthews, were unsuccessful, with the reply stating that ‘such offers of reward tended to produce more harm than good, and the Secretary of State is satisfied that there is nothing in the circumstances of the present case to justify a departure from this rule’.10
But all was not well as far as the investigation was concerned; with the newspapers reporting fresh incidences of knife crime and threats against women around London and the East End, it was becoming difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. Detectives were now increasingly irritated by using precious time sifting through innumerable reports and claims which had no foundation.11 One example was the case of Edward McKenna, who was arrested on suspicion of being a man seen in Flower and Dean Street with a knife on the day of Chapman’s murder. Several members of the public were found who had seen suspicious individuals that morning, including the potman of the Ten Bells and Joseph Taylor, the man who had followed the suspicious individual from the Prince Albert pub,12 but all to no avail. As Annie Chapman lay cold in the Whitechapel workhouse mortuary, Dr Robert Anderson was on his way to Switzerland for his first day of sick leave and, despite not mentioning his inconvenient absence, the radical press were apoplectic at the investigating authorities’ lack of progress:
And when public opinion is at last aroused, and the whole East-end is under a Red Terror, our authorities refuse to take the most obvious and elementary precautions for ensuring detection. All we can say is that if a mad panic sweeps through the quarters desolated by a maniac’s knife, the Home Office and Scotland-yard will be alone to blame. It is impossible to exaggerate the utter want of confidence in the whole police system which this frightful tragedy has evoked; and if sheer fright grows into crazed fury we shall hold Mr MATTHEWS and Sir CHARLES WARREN responsible.13
On 10 September, the Evening Standard made a passing mention that a message had been found on a wall in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, reading ‘Five; 15 more, and then I give myself up.’ This story, mentioned in other forms and with different wording, would remain unsubstantiated; however it did hint at a more tangible and genuine phenomenon to come – alleged communications from the murderer, namely in the form of letters. The first known example14 was written on 24 September and sent to Charles Warren:
Dear sir
I do wish to give myself up I am in misery with nightmare I am the man who committed all these murders in the last six months my name is so [drawing of coffin] and so I am horse slauterer and work at Name [blacked out] address [blacked out]
I have found the woman I wanted that is chapman and I done what I called slautered her but if any one comes I will surrender but I am not going to walk to the station by myself so I am yours truly [drawing of coffin]
Keep the Boro road clear or I might take a trip up there
Photo
[drawing of knife]
of knife
this is the knife that I done these murders with it is a small handle with a large long blade sharpe both sides
It was seemingly given little consideration and was certainly not made public, but, unbeknownst to the author, it was to be the first of its kind in a case that would be deluged with such missives on a scale never seen before. Soon after, a second letter was received by the Central News Agency on New Bridge Street, London on 27 September. Written in red ink, it read:
25 Sept 1888
Dear Boss,
I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha. ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck.
Yours truly
Jack the Ripper
Dont mind me giving the trade name
PS Wasnt good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it No luck yet. They say I’m a doctor now. ha ha 15
The letter was sent to the Metropolitan Police on 29 September with a covering note in the handwriting of Central News journalist Thomas Bulling, which claimed that the agency had treated the thing as ‘a joke’.16 What the police initially felt about it is unclear, but in accordance with the author’s wishes, they did indeed keep the letter back until the murderer struck again. And they did not have long to wait.
5.
‘No, not tonight, some other night’
As Elizabeth Stride served customers in the Poplar coffee shop she ran with her husband, she must have felt that, for once in her life, things were going fine. The establishment offered some security for a woman living far away from her native country and newly married to an Englishman. But it had not always been that way.
She was born Elisabeth Gustafsdotter on 27 November 1843 at a small farm called Stora Tumlehed, in Torslanda parish, north of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her parents, Gustaf Ericsson and Beatta Carlsdotter, had four children, two girls and two boys, of which Elizabeth was the second eldest. Very little of her childhood is known, save for records of her religious instruction between 1848 and 1854, which commented that her biblical knowledge was good. In 1859, she applied to work in Gothenburg and was accepted, her behaviour being deemed ‘good’ and her biblical knowledge ‘extensive’.1
At the age of seventeen, she secured a job as a maid for Lars Frederick Olofsson and his family, staying there until 1864, after which her life began to crumble. In August of that year her mother died, and by the following month Elizabeth had become pregnant. There were complications – she had been diagnosed with a venereal disease (condyloma, or genital warts) and on 21 April 1865 gave birth to a stillborn daughter. Soon after, she was treated for chancre, a highly contagious ulcer which forms in the early stages of syphilis, but by November, she was given a clean bill of health, appearing in police records as a professional prostitute. Her eventual discharge from the records was helped by her obtaining further employment as a maid, but by 1866 Elizabeth had inherited a respectable sum of money from her mother’s estate, enabling her to go to Britain, and in February 1866 she arrived in London.
She was registered at the Swedish church in Princess Square, St George-in-the-East, in July 1866 and, according to some who knew her later in life, she went into the service of a ‘foreign gentleman’ or a family living near Hyde Park.2 A life in the West End of London during this period is borne out by her address in 1869, given as 67 Gower Street at the time of her marriage to a carpenter, John Stride, on 7 March at the church of St Giles-in-the-Fields. By the following year they had opened the coffee shop in Upper North Street in Poplar, moving the business a few years later to 178 Poplar High Street, where they remained until 1875. From then on, records show
that Elizabeth’s life began to take the same problematical course that she might have thought had been left behind in Sweden.
At the Thames Magistrates Court on 21 March 1877 she is recorded as being sent by the police to the Poplar workhouse for reasons unknown. The Swedish church in London records that Elizabeth sought financial assistance in January 1879 owing ‘to her husband’s illness’.3 By 1881, Elizabeth and John were living in Usher Road, Old Ford, Bow,4 and it is believed that they were at this address when the couple separated. From 28 December until 4 January 1882 Elizabeth was admitted to the Whitechapel workhouse infirmary on Baker’s Row, suffering from bronchitis, where her address was given as Brick Lane. After her discharge, she entered the workhouse on South Grove for three days – it was after this that she found lodgings at 32 Flower and Dean Street, Spitalfields, the doss house which became her favoured residence for much of the remainder of her life. In the meantime, the illness that had seemingly afflicted John Stride resulted in his death from heart disease in 1884 – he was sixty-three years old. We cannot be sure how John’s death affected Elizabeth, but many accounts from those who knew her said that she claimed to have been involved in the Princess Alice disaster in 1878, when the paddle-steamer Princess Alice was struck by the collier boat Bywell Castle at Galleon’s Reach, a terrible incident which resulted in over 600 deaths and which remained the Thames’s worst boating disaster for many decades. Elizabeth claimed that she lost her husband and children in the tragedy, which was blatantly untrue and which has led many to believe that Elizabeth had wilfully created a fantasy to account for her predicament.