‘Bloody quiet night, love,’ she said to the stranger, immediately identifying her as another ‘unfortunate’, simply because of the way she was dressed and the fact that she was walking by herself in the backstreets of Whitechapel at that hour of the morning. ‘No trade anywhere.’
The other woman nodded and moved closer, then stepped right beside her, never saying a word.
Catharine Eddowes turned slightly to face her, but by then was too late.
Pedachenko clamped the pad of cloth firmly over Eddowes’s nose and mouth, instantly silencing her, and ignored the struggling woman’s thrashing arms and legs. He knew from past experience that she would be still within about a minute.
It actually took a little longer than that, but just under two minutes after he had reached the side of the prostitute, she was lying flat on her back on the pavement, her clothes pulled and cut away from her body to expose her abdomen and groin, and Alexei Pedachenko was just beginning his bloody work.
But even after he’d finished with the unfortunate, Pedachenko had two more tasks to perform. First, he intended to up his game, to put even more pressure on Charles Warren, and to leave him and the people of Whitechapel an unequivocal message about what he intended to do next.
And then there was something else he had in mind which would serve to greatly increase the already heightened level of terror in the East End of London, a further refinement which followed on almost naturally from the extensive butchery which he had visited upon his latest victim. But he needed to make careful preparations first, and he also needed to decide exactly who should be the recipient.
But that, perhaps, was the easy part.
Sunday, 30 September 1888
Whitechapel, London
Police Constable 881 Watkins of the London City Police had walked through Mitre Square at about half past one, a few minutes before Catharine Eddowes had stepped into it, and PC James Harvey walked up Church Passage from Duke Street at roughly 1.40 and looked into the square, but did not enter it as all appeared to be quiet there.
At about 1.45, PC Watkins again walked into the square as a part of his normal patrol route, approaching it from the Mitre Street entrance, and immediately saw a huddled shape on the pavement over to his right. He crossed to it and saw at once that it was the dead body of a woman. And not just dead. As Watkins later described the sight to one of the newspaper reporters, ‘she was ripped up like a pig in the market. I have been in the force a long while, but I never saw such a sight .’
Watkins called out for help and ran across the square to attract the attention of George Morris, a watchman for the company of Kearley & Tonge, which owned the buildings located on the two opposite sides of the square.
‘For God’s sake, man, come out and assist me. Another woman has been ripped apart,’ he called out, when Morris opened the door to him.
‘All right. Keep yourself cool while I light a lamp.’
Watkins led Morris over to the corner of the square, where he clearly saw the mutilated body of a woman.
As Morris explained later: ‘I saw a woman lying stretched upon the pavement with her throat cut, and horribly mutilated. I then left the constable, Watkins, with the body while I went into Aldgate and blew my whistle, and the other officers soon made their appearance. The whole shape of the woman was marked with blood upon the pavement… she was so mutilated about the face that I could not say what she was like.’
The two officers Morris summoned were Police Constables James Harvey and James Thomas Holland. As soon as he’d been told what had happened, Holland went immediately to 34 Jewry Street, Aldgate, and at 1.55 he summoned a local doctor named George William Sequeira, who pronounced life to be extinct virtually as soon as he saw the body.
Some ten minutes after Watkins had discovered the dead woman, Inspector Edward Collard, based at the Bishopsgate police station, was informed of the killing, and set the wheels in motion.
Police surgeon Dr Gordon Brown was instructed to go at once to the crime scene, and arrived at Mitre Square at approximately 2.18 in the morning. He also examined the body to confirm that the woman was dead – though this would have been blindingly obvious to even the most uneducated layman – and to assess the injuries which had been inflicted on the victim. Dr Brown made a pencil sketch of the corpse on the spot, and also noted that a section of the apron the woman had been wearing had been cut off and removed from the scene.
The normal procedure followed by the police was for all corpses to be removed from the streets as soon as possible after death had been pronounced, and accordingly the body was swiftly transported by a horse-drawn ambulance to the City Mortuary in Golden Lane.
There was one very important difference between the latest killing and the earlier murders, but it had nothing to do with either the killer or the victim, only with the location, because Mitre Square fell within the boundaries of the City of London. Then, as now, the City had its own police force, which was responsible to the governing corporation. The investigation into the killing in Mitre Square, and the search for the man responsible, was directed by Major Henry Smith, who was the Acting Commissioner, and entrusted to Inspector James McWilliam, the head of the City Detective Department.
McWilliam was woken in the early hours of the morning to be told that yet another murder had been committed in London, and this time within the City boundaries. He dressed and proceeded initially to 26 Old Jewry, the City Detective Office, arriving there at about 3.45. He remained there only long enough to telegraph what information he had about the killing to Scotland Yard and then left the building to go to Bishopsgate Street police station, and from there on to Mitre Square itself. When he arrived at the scene, Detective Superintendent Alfred Foster, Inspector Collard, Major Smith and several other members of the force were already present.
Although the City of London Police had not been involved in the Whitechapel murders up to that point, because they had all occurred outside their jurisdiction, the force had certainly not been unaware of what was happening in the capital, and had actually instituted additional patrols along the eastern areas of the City boundary. In fact, almost one third of the available officers had been instructed to don plain clothes and keep a close watch on any woman suspected of being a prostitute, and on any male and female couple seen in the area. And while the killing was taking place in Mitre Square, three City detectives had been patrolling the streets just a short distance away.
The first detectives to appear at the scene were these same three City officers. They were Detective Sergeant Robert Outram and Detective Constables Edward Marriott and Daniel Halse, and they were told about the killing a couple of minutes after two in the morning. All three went immediately to Mitre Square.
Once they had satisfied themselves that a murder had been committed, they split up and headed out in different directions in an immediate search for suspects, stopping and questioning anyone they met, but without tangible result. When Inspector McWilliam arrived at the scene, he reinforced the actions already being taken and also instituted searches of nearby lodging houses.
But the murderer appeared almost ghostlike, seemingly able to materialize seconds after a patrolling policeman had left the scene, find his victim and accomplish his ghastly task, and then vanish once again. The killing in Mitre Square demonstrated his seeming invisibility in a spectacular fashion, as quickly became very obvious when the initial statements were taken and analysed.
PC Watkins had walked through the square and found it deserted at approximately 1.30 in the morning. Eleven or twelve minutes later, PC 964 James Harvey had inspected the square from Church Passage but did not actually enter the area, and neither saw nor heard anything suspicious. And then, at roughly 1.45, Watkins returned on his routine beat to find the mutilated corpse lying on the pavement. Neither man had seen either the killer or his victim enter the square, and nor had they seen anyone leaving it.
And it wasn’t just the police officers on street patrol who had failed to
hear or see anything. There were two nightwatchmen employed in Mitre Square that night. George Morris was working only a few feet inside the premises of Kearley & Tonge’s office building, where the street door was actually standing ajar. Morris was a former Metropolitan Police constable, and had actually looked out of the door a very short time before he was alerted to the murder by Constable Watkins.
The nightwatchman employed by Heydemann and Company was stationed at the rear of the premises in a room which overlooked the site of the murder itself. His name was George Clapp and he heard no sound that night, and saw nothing suspicious. There was also a City Police officer named Pearce, who lived in Mitre Square itself, at number 3, the windows of which property gave an excellent view of the murder site on the opposite side of the square. But Pearce and his wife slept through the entire incident.
So that night, two murder investigations were in progress in the East End of London by two different forces, the Berner Street killing being handled by the Metropolitan Police, and the murder in Mitre Square by the City force.
But there was one more completely unexpected surprise in store for the investigating officers of both forces that night.
Sunday, 30 September 1888
Whitechapel, London
A few minutes before three o’clock, PC 254A Alfred Long was patrolling in Goulston Street, and peered into the entrance hall of numbers 108 to 119 Wentworth Model Dwellings. There, sodden with blood, he discovered a section of a woman’s apron.
Long stared about him looking for any other signs of violence, another body or a weapon or any other suspicious object. He found nothing of that sort, but he did see something very different. The bricks which formed the wall on the right-hand side of the open doorway were black, and on them, written in white chalk, were the following words, written in cursive script:
The Juwes are
The men That
Will not
be Blamed
for nothing
At the end of the first line was the barely visible word ‘not’ which had clearly been written but then erased by the writer. Neither PC Long nor PC Halse, who arrived shortly afterwards, was in any doubt about the meaning the writer of the script intended to convey. It was a clear attempt to cast suspicion upon the Jewish community as a whole, and to suggest that one of their number was responsible for the Whitechapel murders.
Constable Long searched the staircases, but found nothing else. He summoned the constable from the neighbouring beat, told him to guard the entrance to preserve the piece of writing and also watch anyone who entered or left the building, and then took the section of apron to the Commercial Street police station, where he gave it to the duty inspector. Long arrived there at a few minutes after three in the morning.
Unsurprisingly, within a very short time the area around Wentworth Model Dwellings was busy with officers from both the City and the Metropolitan forces. Detective Constables Hunt and Daniel Halse went together to the Leman Street police station and then on to Goulston Street. They inspected the chalked message and then separated, Halse remaining at the scene to guard the message while Hunt returned to Mitre Square to report what had been discovered.
Inspector McWilliam had arrived at Mitre Square by the time Constable Hunt reached it and listened with interest to what the officer had to say.
‘Good work, Hunt,’ he said. ‘One more job for you. I’ll organize a photographer and get him down there as quickly as I can to record that message. You go back to Wentworth Model Dwellings. When you get there, you and Constable Halse are to search the buildings for anyone or anything that might be connected with this murder.’
The search was conducted by Hunt and Halse as McWilliam had instructed, but no suspicious individuals, objects or clues were found anywhere there.
But despite the order given by Inspector McWilliam, no photograph of the written message was taken, and for that decision, ultimately, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Charles Warren, was responsible, even though it actually wasn’t his idea.
News of the double murder had been transmitted to Warren at his home in the early hours of the morning, and for the first time – he had not visited any of the other murder scenes since the reign of terror in Whitechapel had begun – he decided to attend in person. Warren arrived at the Leman Street police station shortly before five, where Superintendent Thomas Arnold of H Division explained to him the circumstances of the two murders and also what had been discovered in Goulston Street.
‘I have already ordered one of my inspectors to proceed to the scene with a bucket and sponge, and to wait there until I arrive. I feel very strongly that we should wipe this message off the wall as soon as we can, and certainly before the daily activity starts in that area.’
‘Erase it?’ Warren asked. ‘It could be an important clue. It should be photographed at the very least.’
‘I don’t believe there’s enough time to do that, sir,’ Arnold replied. ‘My concern is with the possibility of civil unrest in that district if any of the residents see that message and realize exactly what it is implying.’
‘Which is what, exactly?’
‘You’ve seen the text, sir. It’s a very clear indication that the Jews of Whitechapel are responsible for the murders perpetrated by the killer we now know as Jack the Ripper. The fact that the blood-soaked missing section of the last woman’s apron was found directly below the message proves beyond any doubt that it was written by her murderer. It’s a crude attempt to throw us off the scent, and to throw suspicion onto an entire community. I fear that if the contents of the message become generally known, we could face a riot in the area, either one orchestrated by the Jews themselves, or by groups of English people manifesting their anti-Semitic feelings. Remember the problems we had with the “Leather Apron” situation.’
Warren didn’t reply for a few moments, mulling over what Arnold had just said. In fact, despite his apparent reluctance to have the message obliterated, he was absolutely determined that no record of it – or more accurately, no record of the handwriting – should be allowed to survive. He definitely wasn’t going to permit a photograph to be taken, just in case at any time in the future the handwriting on that message could be recognized as being the same as that on the letters which ‘Michael’ had sent him. He also made a mental note to burn all of the correspondence he had so far received from the man, and just to make a copy of the actual words he had used.
‘I understand your views, Arnold, but I think I should be the one to make that decision. I will accompany you to Goulston Street.’
Superintendent Arnold was later required to explain his recommendation to the Home Office, and the relevant section of his later written report read: ‘in consequence of a suspicion having fallen upon a Jew named John Pizer alias “Leather Apron” having committed a murder in Hanbury Street a short time previously, a strong feeling existed against the Jews generally and as the building upon which the writing was found was situated in the midst of a locality inhabited principally by that sect, I was apprehensive that if the writing were left it would be the means of causing a riot and therefore considered it desirable that it should be removed.’
And in reality Arnold had a point. There had been such an outburst of anti-Semitic rhetoric and actions in Whitechapel after the killing of Annie Chapman that he feared the consequences if the contents of the chalked message became public knowledge amongst either the Jewish or the Gentile communities in the East End or, even worse, in both, especially when the citizens of London learned the details of the two murders which had taken place that night.
Warren had listened carefully to Arnold’s recommendation, despite having already decided exactly what he was going to do about it. In his written report, he later stated that it was ‘desirable that I should decide this matter myself, as it was one involving so great responsibility whether any action was taken or not.’
Accordingly, when he left the Leman Street police station, he and Arnold proceeded
first to Goulston Street, after which he planned to continue on to Berner Street, the site of the first murder that night.
The two senior officers arrived at the location of the chalked message in Goulston Street shortly before 5.30, to find officers from both the City and Metropolitan forces in attendance. Warren inspected the writing – written in a hand that was unpleasantly familiar to him – and decided that it had to be obliterated immediately. When he announced his decision, the only dissenting voice was that of Daniel Halse, the City of London Detective Constable, who wanted it to remain, at least long enough for Major Smith to see it, but he was both outranked and outside his jurisdiction and he knew it.
‘Sir, couldn’t we just rub out the top line and leave the rest?’ he suggested. ‘This looks like a valuable clue to the killer, and I’m sure that Major Smith would want to inspect it.’
Warren shook his head and pointed out of the doorway, where the group of men was clustered around the chalked message, and gestured into the street beyond.
‘We can’t take the risk, Constable. It’s already starting to get light and people are out there walking the streets. If any of them see and read what it says here, we could find ourselves in the middle of a riot.’
Warren turned to one of the Metropolitan Police constables standing in the hallway.
‘Use that bucket and sponge, and clean that wall completely. I don’t want to see a single white mark left on it anywhere.’
By half past five, the chalk message had been deleted from the wall.
The last clue from Goulston Street was the section of bloodstained apron. Although there was little doubt about what it was and where it had come from, it was passed on to Dr Phillips. When he placed the piece of material against the rest of the apron found on the body from Mitre Square, it was a perfect match. There was therefore no doubt that the section of apron had been removed from the body by the killer after he had finished his mutilation, and had afterwards been placed in the entrance of the Wentworth Model Dwellings.
The Ripper Secret Page 27