The Complete and Essential Jack the Ripper
Page 12
Ludwig then appeared at a coffee stall in Whitechapel High Street at 3.00 a.m. and pulled a knife on a bystander, for which he was arrested and remained in custody for a week. They also learned that he was believed to have had blood on his hands on the day of Annie Chapman’s murder. His remands continued, as he was the most promising arrested suspect hitherto. For a moment, elements of the press regarded him as being ‘connected by popular imagination with the murder’.12 However, he, and Isenschmid, would later be exonerated of the crimes, when it became apparent that both were safely in custody when the later atrocities occurred.
Another interesting line of enquiry at the time, and one which fitted the notion of suspects with experience in medical fields, was the case of a group of three ‘insane medical students’ who had gone missing. Enquiries were made, and two were located and accounted for, but the third, John Sanders, could not be traced. Sanders studied at the London Hospital in 1879, but his mental condition had deteriorated to the extent that by 1887 he was becoming increasingly violent. His mother was traced to the leafy suburbia of St John’s Wood, north-west London, but she told the police that he had ‘gone abroad’ two years earlier.13 From what is known from the surviving documents, the hunt for John Sanders came to a dead end.
So the policemen on the ground, the press and the general public, few of whom knew about motiveless murders and struggled to rationalize a succession of crimes apparently committed by the same person on a class of society who had nothing of value, were looking for more prosaic explanations. The attack on Emma Smith was perceived, owing to her account, to be the work of a gang, a theory that still held sway following the death of Martha Tabram and maintained at the time of the murder of Mary Ann Nichols:
The officers engaged in the case are pushing their inquiries in the neighbourhood as to the doings of certain gangs known to frequent these parts, and an opinion is gaining ground among them that the murderers are the same who committed the two previous murders near the same spot. It is believed that these gangs, who make their appearance during the early hours of the morning, are in the habit of blackmailing these poor unfortunate creatures, and when their demands are refused, violence follows, and in order to avoid their deeds being brought to light they put away their victims.14
‘High Rip’ gangs were mentioned frequently in the press during the autumn of 1888, the most notable being the gang of that name from Liverpool, who were known for their extreme violence. The ‘High Rips’ were often portrayed as having some level of organization, which they used to plan criminal activities. However, one of the most terrifying features of the gang was their willingness to engage in random acts of violence. There was often no attempt at theft, and it seemed that nobody could pass without some form of abuse or assault being inflicted upon them.15 They had their equivalents elsewhere, such as the notorious ‘Scuttlers’ of Manchester; these were essentially youth gangs, deprived of moral values and self-discipline and downtrodden by the monotony of the city’s slums. Extreme violence was usually meted out between rival gangs, and by 1890 it was believed that more young people were in Strangeways prison for scuttling than for any other crime.16 Both examples appear to demonstrate violence for its own sake.
London, like any large metropolis, was also the home of similar gangs; in November 1888 an American newspaper listed the ‘Marylebone Gang’, the ‘Fitzroy Place Gang’, the ‘Jovial Thirty-two’ and the ‘Black Gang’, to name but a few.17 In the East End there were immigrant gangs from Eastern Europe such as the rival ‘Bessabarabians’ and ‘Odessians’, as well as the ‘Hoxton Mob’ (or ‘Hoxton High Rips’) and the ‘Monkey Parade’. The disruptive and often dangerous activities of the latter were reported weekly in the local press. However, what they got up to was not a patch on what was happening to the unfortunates on the streets of Whitechapel.
Of course the idea of ‘aliens’, or foreigners, being to blame was also very much a part of the picture, with the incitement of suspicion against the Jewish community being prevalent early on. The scare surrounding the mysterious – and perhaps non-existent – ‘Leather Apron’ was a significant element of that suspicion, especially when the newspapers began circulating sinister descriptions of the ‘mad Jew’. Enter Edward Knight Larkins, a clerk in the HM Customs statistical department, who had the idea that the murderer was a Portuguese sailor who came to London from Oporto on cattle-boats. Over several years, Larkins approached many authorities, including the senior police officials involved in the Ripper case, and surviving official documentation shows that they took his highly detailed endeavours very seriously, at least early on. Two specific boats, the City of Cork and the City of Oporto, were earmarked by Larkins as being in the London docks at the time of each of the Whitechapel murders, all of the crews being Portuguese, which was important to Larkins, as he felt a need to comment on what he considered to be the ‘vengeful character’ of that nation.18 He initially settled on Manuel Cruz Xavier and José Lourenço as individuals to be followed up, and Scotland Yard did indeed make enquiries of the consulate in Oporto. Even Montague Williams QC, nobody’s fool, was convinced that Larkins was on to something. Larkins was extremely persistent, and initially the police were of the opinion that the theory was of ‘great practical interest’, until the inconvenient absence of the names of the suspects from the relevant crew lists led Larkins to construct more elaborate scenarios based on them changing ships, or travelling as stowaways, or even the involvement of a third ship. Robert Anderson eventually stated that Larkins was ‘a troublesome “faddist” & it is idle to continue the subject with him’.19 Nonetheless, Edward Knight Larkins, through his persistence, could be considered the first ‘Ripperologist’. However, his case illustrates a problem that would continue to beset researchers, writers and readers even to this day – namely the extent to which it is legitimate to modify a theory as new information emerges. If Jose Lourenço, for example, had been found hunched over Mary Kelly’s body, bloody knife in hand, he would not have been released simply because his name wasn’t on a crew list. An explanation for the anomaly would have been sought, and the idea he had entered the country as a stowaway would then have seemed plausible enough.
The London docks were very much a focus for investigation even before Larkins’s Portuguese sailor theory hit the desks of Scotland Yard. Chief Inspector Donald Swanson’s report detailing police efforts following the double murder noted the work of the Thames Police as they made enquiries into sailors at the docks and rivers, making a particular effort regarding the presence of ‘asiatics’, which resulted in upwards of eighty people being detained.20 As early as September 1888 the Daily Telegraph hoped that the detective service was energetic enough to ‘direct the persistent, unrelaxing, inexorable inquiry which should be made in every court and alley, not only in Whitechapel but in maritime London, among the waterside characters and on board every vessel in the docks’.21 In the aftermath of the double event it was reported that ‘every vessel that has left the harbour since the hour of the commission of the last crime has been thoroughly overhauled’.22
In early October 1888, the police reacted with great interest to a telegram sent from New York from somebody who called himself ‘Dodge’, suggesting that the murderer was a Malay cook named ‘Alaska’. This enigmatic character (who was never traced) had claimed to have been robbed of all he had by a ‘woman of the town’ and that ‘unless he found the woman and recovered his property, he would kill and mutilate every Whitechapel woman he met’.23 Intensive investigative activities in the world’s busiest port were therefore taking place almost from day one, a fact apparently unknown to many who subsequently advanced what they thought were original ‘seaman’ theories. One recent commentator wrote, ‘I suspected that Jack the Ripper may have been a merchant seaman. I could find nothing to suggest that the police pursued this line of inquiry at the time.’24
Even the police themselves were not exempt from suspicion during these tentative forays into identifying the murderer. Somebody
calling himself ‘An Accessory’, who wrote to the City Police on 19 October 1888, stated that:
The crime committed in Mitre Square City and those in the district of Whitechapel were perpetrated by an Ex Police Constable of the Metropolitan Police who was dismissed from the force through certain connection with a prostitute. The motive for the crimes is hatred and spite against the authorities at Scotland Yard one of whom is marked as a victim after which the crimes will cease.25
PC Edward Watkins was also suspected by an anonymous correspondent from Trowbridge, who suggested that the authorities ‘keep an eye on him’, later adding: ‘Please be careful and keep this quiet not let him know you are watching him.’26 Another name familiar to the case was Sergeant William Thick, the well-respected and prominent officer who has become probably the best-known police character after Frederick Abberline. Thick was suspected by Henry T. Haselwood in a letter to the Home Office of 14 October 1889:
I beg to state that through the information I have received I believe that if Sergt. T. Thicke otherwise called ‘Johnny Upright’ is watched and his whereabouts ascertained upon other dates where certain women have met their end, also to see what deceace he is troubled with, you will find the great secreate this is to be strictly private and my name is not to be mentioned.
A note made on a covering letter made the police opinion very clear: ‘I think it is plainly rubbish – perhaps prompted by spite.’27 Even police suspects had to have a motive or disease which caused them to kill, it seems, but other correspondents merely felt that the culprit dressed as a policeman to evade capture without necessarily offering a reason why they were killing in the first place.
Or was the Whitechapel murderer a religious fanatic, exacting brutal punishment upon the fallen women of Whitechapel? So thought Edgar Sheppard MD, who wrote to The Times, believing that the murderer might not necessarily have been an escaped or recognized lunatic, but that he was on ‘a mission from above to extirpate vice by assassination. And he has selected his victims from a class which contributes pretty largely to the factorship of immorality and sin.’28 Whitechapel and neighbouring Spitalfields would have been seen as the epitome of ‘immorality and sin’ – the police estimate of around 1,200 prostitutes was a staggering statistic for so small a district and enquiries were made to ascertain the number of disreputable houses in the area. In reply to a query from the Home Office on the very subject, Sir Charles Warren stated that:
during the last few months I have been tabulating the observations of Constables on their beats, and have come to the conclusion that there are 62 houses known to be brothels on the H or Whitechapel Divn and probably a great number of other houses which are more or less intermittently used for such purpose.29
And so, any such fanatical religionist would be well placed in such a district to conduct their own unique brand of ‘street cleaning’.
In late 1889 the figure of Lyttleton Forbes Winslow re-emerged. He had been persistent in his attempts to get the police to employ his apparently expert services but was constantly rebuffed. He had convinced himself that he knew the identity of the Ripper and, facing persistent indifference from the investigating authorities, he went on to expound his theories to the newspapers. By now he actually had a suspect, who, it emerged, was one G. Wentworth Bell Smith, who had been lodging at the house of Mr and Mrs Callaghan of Sun Street, Finsbury, since August 1888. Mr Callaghan had noted that Smith was in the habit of writing reams of religious tracts and had delusions about women, prostitutes in particular, whom he said should be drowned. Smith also claimed to have performed ‘operations’ on them. Apparently he would stay out at all hours of the night, wearing silent, rubber-soled shoes, and on his return would collapse on the sofa and foam at the mouth. The Callaghans logically considered him to be insane.30
The theory surrounding Wentworth Bell Smith was discussed by the police, and the story of a man answering to his description, acting suspiciously in the Finsbury area between the murders of Tabram and Nichols, was investigated by Inspector Abberline and detailed in a report circulated by Donald Swanson.31 Forbes Winslow eventually published his memoirs in 1910, the first book to discuss the Ripper correspondence at length which printed facsimiles of letters that he had claimed were sent to him personally.32 One letter, apparently written on 19 October 1888, predicted that the next murder would take place on 8 or 9 November (subsequently the date of the Kelly murder). Forbes Winslow obviously accepted such letters as genuine; however, enquiries found that the address given by the sender, 22 Hammersmith Road, did not exist. It was also noted that the date on this letter, ‘Oct. 19th 88’, was actually ‘89’, the last digit being altered to make the date more relevant to the murders.33 It is fair to say that only Forbes Winslow could have made such a ‘convenient’ adjustment and, allied to his conviction that once he had made public his theories on the Ripper the murders ceased (he believed Alice McKenzie was a genuine Ripper victim), the whole scenario began to appear as a seemingly desperate attempt to be recognized for solving the case. Unlike Edward Knight Larkins, who was prepared to alter a theory to reflect new discoveries, Forbes Winslow could be seen as an early example of a theorist who was obviously willing to manipulate facts to suit a theory.
Speculation about a religious motive got off on a new tack when word got around, via the press, that a similar series of murders had been committed in Austria a few years before. A Galician Jew by the name of Mosheh Ritter had been sentenced to death for outraging a young Christian girl named Francis Mnich in Krakow and then instructing a Pole named Stochlinski to murder and mutilate her. Each time the verdict was reversed by a higher court on the grounds that the evidence was not sufficient, and Ritter was finally let go. So whoever the actual murderer was might have escaped to carry on his dreadful butchery in the East End.
The interesting feature of the Ritter case was that witnesses had come forward at the trials to testify that among fanatical Jews it was held that, if ever a Jew succumbed to temptation and had illicit intercourse with a Christian woman, it was his duty to atone for the offence by killing her and carrying out atrocious sexual mutilations. However, no such authorization is given in the Talmud. The press made a link between this case and a more sinister motive:
In various German criminal codes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as also in statutes of a more recent date, punishments are prescribed for the mutilation of female corpses with the object of making from the uterus and other organs the so-called ‘diebalichter’ or ‘schlafslichter’, respectively ‘thieves’ candles’ or ‘soporific candles.’ According to an old superstition, still rife in various parts of Germany, the light from such candles will throw those upon whom it falls into the deepest slumbers, and they may, consequently, become a valuable instrument to those of the thieving profession.34
Thieves’ candles also played an important part in the trials of robber bands at Odenwald and in Westphalia, in 1812 and 1841 respectively. They were heard of at the trial of the notorious German robber Theodor Unger, who was executed at Magdeburg in 1810. It was on that occasion discovered that a regular manufactory had been established by gangs of thieves for the production of such candles. Their use was believed to have survived among German thieves, as was proved by a case at Biala, in Galicia, in 1875.35
It wasn’t just elements of the arcane that were suggested as motives for the murders; some went as far as to use spiritualism in their endeavours to track down the killer. Following the death of Alice McKenzie, Stuart Cumberland, a medium and ‘thought reader’, published a description of the Ripper in his own illustrated Sunday publication, the Mirror. It was accompanied by a drawing of the supposed murderer, the appearance of whom came to Cumberland in a dream.36
A story first published in the Chicago Sunday Times Herald in April 1895 said that spiritualist and medium Robert Lees had tracked the Whitechapel Murderer to the home of an eminent London physician. Lees, dogged by visions and premonitions, claimed to have attempted to use his gifts to
help the police during the autumn of 1888 but was rejected as a ‘crank’ a number of times. However, on one occasion he was apparently accompanied in his endeavours by a police officer:
After an earnest appeal from the inspector, Lees consented to try and track the Ripper, much in the same way as a bloodhound pursues a criminal. All that night Lees traversed swiftly the streets of London. The inspector and his aids followed a few feet behind. At last, at 4 o’clock in the morning, the human bloodhound halted at the gates of a West End mansion. Pointing to an upper chamber where a faint light gleamed, he said: ‘There is the murderer you are looking for.’
‘It is impossible,’ returned the inspector. ‘That is the residence of one of the most celebrated physicians in the West End; but, if you will describe to me the interior of the doctor’s hall, I will arrest him.’37
Apparently, the interior of the mansion matched Lees’s description. The doctor in question was examined and certified insane. However, such was his profile that, to avoid embarrassment, a fake funeral was arranged and an empty coffin interred in Kensal Green cemetery, whilst the physician himself was placed in an asylum under the false name of Thomas Mason, alias ‘No. 124’.
But even the full-blown use of black magic was suggested. In December 1888, self-styled occultist Roslyn D’Onston Stephenson (writing as ‘one who knows’) sent a suggestion to the Pall Mall Gazette, blatantly putting forth the idea that the Whitechapel murders were committed by a Frenchman; his reasoning was that the word ‘Juwes’ as found on the wall in Goulston Street probably said ‘Juives’, the feminine French form of ‘Jews’, and that prostitute murder was ‘considered to be almost peculiarly a French crime’. The motive was indulgence in ‘unholy rites’, in that the sexual organs missing from the victims could be used with other ingredients in black magic rituals and that the locations of the murders – except Mary Kelly’s – formed a perfect sacrificial cross.38