‘Then the woman screamed three times, but not very loudly,’ he explained, ‘and as I approached them I saw another man standing watching on the opposite side of the street.’
‘What was he doing?’ the inspector asked.
‘He was lighting a pipe,’ Schwartz replied, a somewhat unexpected answer.
‘Then what happened?’
‘The man with the woman saw me approaching and called out “Lipski”.’
That was a name which could be interpreted in a number of different ways, as the inspector knew very well.
‘I was not certain what to do,’ Schwartz continued, ‘and so I turned around and walked back the way I had come. Then I noticed that the other man, the man who had been lighting his pipe, was following me, and so I started to run. I ran as far as the railway arch and then looked behind me, but the man was no longer in sight.’
The first difficulty was that it wasn’t clear whether or not any connection existed between the two men Schwartz had seen. The second man could easily have been an innocent bystander, just like Schwartz himself, who had then decided to leave the scene and had simply chosen to follow the same route as Schwartz. The fact that this second man followed Schwartz for only a short distance suggests that this might have been the case. If he was an accomplice, and the other man had in fact been the murderer, it would be reasonable to assume that he would have caught up with Schwartz and either killed or beaten him badly to ensure that he would not act as a witness against them.
When Schwartz later viewed the body of Elizabeth Stride in the mortuary, he identified her as the woman he had seen being attacked, and was able to give quite accurate and detailed descriptions of the two men he had seen in Berner Street. But what Schwartz could not say was whether or not the man attacking the woman was in any way connected with the person on the opposite side of the street.
The description given by Schwartz was similar, but certainly not identical, to that provided by PC Smith. The height of the man he’d seen was different, as were certain aspects of his build, his dress and the colour of his moustache, but most of these discrepancies could be explained away fairly convincingly as being caused by nothing more than the circumstances of the sightings by the two men.
On a dark street, a brown moustache would look very much like a black one, and height is particularly difficult to estimate unless there is some object whose dimensions are known in the near vicinity. But perhaps the most important single factor was that the police officer saw a red rose on the front of the woman’s coat, and Schwartz positively identified the body in the mortuary as that of the woman he had seen. So at least the police could be certain that both witnesses had seen the victim, even if it was never entirely clear if either man had seen the murderer.
The use by the man Schwartz had seen of the name ‘Lipski’ was the subject of much debate. The name was well-known in the East End of London at this time, because the previous year a Polish Jew named Israel Lipski had been executed for the murder of a woman called Miriam Angel. So it was possible that the man seen by Schwartz had been speaking ironically, perhaps suggesting that he was going to do a ‘Lipski’ on the woman he was with. In other words, that he was going to murder her.
On the other hand, that name was common among the Jewish community in the area, and so it was possible that his companion – if indeed the man with the woman had some kind of relationship with the man standing on the opposite side of the street – might have been named Lipski, and was simply being addressed as such.
A third possibility was that, following the trial and execution of Israel Lipski, the word had to some extent entered the language as a slang term for a Jew, and so it was also conceivable that the man hadn’t been calling out to his companion at all, but was addressing Israel Schwartz himself, who had an unmistakably Jewish appearance.
Other witnesses were identified as a result of the house-to-house search, and one – a labourer named William Marshall – claimed he had seen Stride with a man somewhat similar in appearance to the description supplied by Smith and Schwartz. But his sighting occurred well over an hour before the killing took place and in that time she might have been approached by, or have approached herself, numerous different men, so his evidence was hardly considered significant.
And, perhaps inevitably, some witnesses came forward who weren’t witnesses at all, just people who decided that the time had come for their fifteen minutes of fame, and who relished their brief instant of celebrity status.
The most notorious of these was a fruit seller named Matthew Packer, who when first interviewed by the police stated categorically that he had neither seen nor heard anything on the night of the murder, and was unaware that the event had taken place until the following morning when it became common knowledge in the area.
Two days later, he was telling an entirely different story to anyone who would listen, claiming that he had not merely seen the murderer, but had overheard a conversation between the killer and his victim, and had then sold him half a pound of black grapes. This sale apparently took place, depending upon which account is relied upon, at 11 p.m., 11.30 p.m., 11.45 p.m. or midnight and he had closed his shop at 10 p.m., midnight, 12.15 a.m. or 12.30 a.m. The man to whom he sold the grapes also changed his appearance and age, ranging from a youthful 25 to between 30 and 35, all the way up to a predictably vague ‘middle-aged’.
It is perhaps significant that Packer’s account became increasingly detailed and specific as the monetary reward for information leading to the capture of the murderer grew to several hundred pounds, and as the newspapers began reporting details of the sighting by Israel Schwartz. Packer was also only too happy to oblige newspaper reporters by confirming whatever it was they were fishing for.
When a reporter from the Evening News suggested in passing, and entirely without foundation, that it was possible that the Whitechapel murderer’s voice might have an American twang to it, Packer immediately replied: ‘Yes, now that you mention it, there was a sound of that sort about it.’ Presumably if the reporter had suggested that the killer sounded as if he’d come from Wales or Scotland or even Outer Mongolia, or had three legs, Packer would have agreed with that as well.
And then there was a lady named Mrs Fanny Mortimer who, though she was entirely truthful in her account and invented nothing about the events of that night, unwittingly added one important detail to the legend of Jack the Ripper, a detail that became inextricably linked to the ‘Fiend of Whitechapel’.
Mrs Mortimer lived at 36 Berner Street, just a short distance down the street from Dutfield’s Yard, and had been standing outside her house between half past midnight and one in the morning when Elizabeth Stride was killed, so she was in an excellent position to see anyone entering or leaving the premises. When she was later interviewed by the police, she was adamant that she had noticed nobody passing through the gate in either direction, so she was of no assistance in providing a description of either the murderer or his victim.
But what she had seen was a man aged about 30 and wearing dark clothes who walked down Berner Street carrying a black shiny bag. This figure had come, not from Dutfield’s Yard but from Commercial Road, and so clearly could have had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder.
The man in question walked into the Leman Street police station a couple of days later, where he was cleared of any suspicion of involvement in the crime. His name was Leon Goldstein, he lived at 22 Christian Street and was a member of the International Working Men’s Club and when he was seen by Mrs Mortimer he had been returning home after leaving a coffeehouse in Spectacle Alley. His bag, which he showed to the police at the time, was found to contain nothing but empty cigarette boxes.
But the fact that a man had been seen in the vicinity of the killing carrying a black bag was widely published in the newspapers and this, coupled with the existing and widespread fear that the murderer could be a doctor, reinforced the belief that the black bag contained the deadly tools of the killer’s trade,
and this accessory then became an even more inseparable part of the image most Londoners already had of the Whitechapel murderer.
Monday, 8 October 1888
Whitechapel, London
When residents of Whitechapel awoke on the morning of Sunday, 30 September, news of the ‘double event’ was already coursing through the streets, and crowds of fascinated and horrified people began making their way to one of the two murder sites.
Both Mitre Square and Berner Street had been cordoned off by the police, but this made no difference. Thousands of people advanced on both locations, assembling outside Dutfield’s Yard and in the streets around Mitre Square. At one point during the day, Berner Street was choked with spectators, so many people, in fact, that even crossing the road was almost impossible. Any vantage point was quickly identified, and people fortunate enough to have a window in their property overlooking either site were quick to take advantage of the unique opportunity, opening the windows wide and arranging seats in front of them which they could rent to eager and ghoulish spectators for a few minutes at a time.
Tradesmen – costermongers and the like – set up their stalls and barrows in the area to supply food and drink to members of the crowd. And because everybody was both fascinated and horrified by what had occurred, the demand for further information was irresistible. Newspaper vendors were able to sell every paper they had, and several editions were reprinted throughout the day as the newspaper publishers attempted to cope with the demand. Groups of people gathered around anyone with a paper and listened eagerly as details of the brutal murders were read out to them. This was due in part to the shortage of newspapers, but also because many residents of the East End of London were illiterate and could neither read nor write, so they depended upon the news being imparted to them verbally.
Large crowds gathered at both Berner Street and Mitre Square not just on the last day of September, when news of the murders was fresh, but for several days afterwards. What was particularly noticeable was that when dusk fell the badly lit streets virtually emptied of both men and women, and those few people who were prepared to risk their lives by walking the streets where Jack the Ripper hunted his prey, tended to stick to the very limited areas which had proper street lighting.
The lodging houses and workhouses reported greatly increased occupancy as fear of the killer took hold of the lowest classes of women, and in some cases the doss house deputies turned a blind eye to those ‘unfortunates’ who did not have enough money to rent a bed for the night, and either allowed them to sleep for free or at the very least let them take shelter in the kitchen. Other deputies were less sympathetic, and without remorse turned out dozens of women to face the terrors of the night.
Many prostitutes armed themselves, concealing knives about their persons as a last desperate means of defence should they meet the Ripper. Others stayed together in groups, clustering in doorways or anywhere else that offered any kind of shelter from the elements as they waited for dawn to break and for the danger to pass.
But it wasn’t just the prostitutes who were affected by fear of the serial killer. Respectable and better-off men and women began to avoid travelling to or through the East End of the city if it could be avoided. Tradesmen inevitably began to feel the effects of the loss of custom. One report stated that the volume of trade in the area had dropped by almost a half in the previous month. The situation grew so grave that over 200 traders from Whitechapel would later request that the Home Secretary increase the number of police officers patrolling the streets of the district in an attempt to restore confidence.
Their statement said: ‘The universal feeling prevalent in our midst is that the Government no longer ensures the security of life and property in East London and that, in consequence, respectable people fear to go out shopping, thus depriving us of our means of livelihood.’
Both the police and the residents of the district were plagued by the inevitable crop of fantasists and jokers who began carrying knives about the place so that they could impersonate the killer by brandishing their weapons in front of terrified women. Fear of the unknown killer was so great that a number of deaths resulted, with both men and women taking their own lives either out of fear that the murderer was pursuing them, or because of – in the case of at least one of the men – an entirely misunderstood belief that the police were convinced that he was the Ripper.
But in the midst of all the fear and uncertainty, certain types of trade blossomed, principally the newspapers. And alongside the newspapers appeared broadsheets, written especially to provide information about the killings, some of which were produced in verse format, and which could be sung to the tune of popular songs of the time. Sellers of knives and swordsticks and similar weapons did a roaring trade among residents of the area.
Omnibuses and cabs brought crowds of eager sightseers from the more affluent parts of London to tour the dirty and squalid streets of Whitechapel, visiting the murder sites and perhaps allowing the tourists to catch a glimpse of a few of the ‘unfortunates’ whose fellows had become the chosen prey of Jack the Ripper. Pavement artists depicted the killings in brilliant colour to astounded gasps from spectators.
Providing access to the murder sites continued to be profitable once the police had left the area, and many residents took advantage of this interest, including the International Working Men’s Club in Berner Street, which began charging admission to spectators eager to inspect the scene of the killing of Elizabeth Stride in Dutfield’s Yard.
But it wasn’t all about making money off the back of the killings. Throughout the East End, there was a huge ground swell of sympathy for the sad and desperate victims of the Ripper.
The funerals of the dead women attracted enormous crowds of people, and several received a far more elaborate burial than they would have been granted had they simply died in their beds of natural causes, the funerals being paid for by others. Members of the press attended as well, to report the details to their readers, and the London papers received large numbers of letters from the more affluent residents of the capital, letters which in the main called for social reform, for better policing of the area and for an end to the slum conditions in the East End which, many writers seemed to believe, were a contributing part of the problem and which might even have spawned the shadowy and ghostly figure of Jack the Ripper himself.
Just after 1.30 in the afternoon on Monday, 8 October, Catharine Eddowes’s funeral cortège began the journey from the Golden Lane Mortuary to the City of London Cemetery in Ilford. Her body lay in an elm coffin bearing a plate which gave her name in gold letters, carried in an open hearse, this being followed by a mourning coach containing the chief mourners – four of Catharine’s sisters and John Kelly – behind which was a brougham carrying members of both the national and local press.
The route was lined with spectators, in some places so many that the pavements were completely choked with them. Other people leaned out of windows to watch the procession, and others even climbed onto the roofs of houses along the route to get a better view. The police were forced to clear a way through the streets to allow the funeral procession to continue its journey.
It took almost two hours before the coffin eventually arrived at its last resting place, where hundreds more people had already assembled to witness this sad final chapter of Catharine Eddowes’s life. The service at the graveside was performed by the Reverend Dunscombe, the chaplain of the cemetery, and the undertaker, George Hawkes, covered the cost of the funeral himself.
Tuesday, 9 October 1888
London
That morning Charles Warren sat in silence in his office at Scotland Yard and studied in detail the two post-mortem reports written by the doctors who had carried out the procedures on Elizabeth Stride and Catharine Eddowes. It was a small consolation, but it seemed clear to him that the Stride woman had barely suffered at all, death coming upon her so quickly that she hadn’t even released her grip on the packet of cachous she had been holding. A
nd apart from the deep wound in her throat, her body had apparently not been touched by the killer.
The murder of Catharine Eddowes was of course very different in almost every way. Again, Warren believed that the woman had been killed very quickly, and he was quite satisfied that all of the mutilations had been inflicted post-mortem, when she would have been past feeling. But that was hardly the point. It was bad enough that a faceless and unidentified killer was stalking the streets of Whitechapel murdering prostitutes, but it was the mutilations that had really grabbed the attention of the public. And, if the last note he’d received from ‘Michael’ was to be believed, the next murder would be infinitely worse than anything that had gone before.
And the report on Eddowes clarified one thing Warren hadn’t understood. A line in the message had read ‘A reminder on the cheeks of the last one’, which only made sense when he studied the autopsy report and noted the doctor’s statement that the killer had carved two inverted ‘V’ shapes into the cheeks of the dead woman. ‘Michael’ was again taunting him, providing a visual symbol on that victim of the two triangles or V-shapes which he had already described on the ground with the locations of his victims.
The only good thing was that the one person to whom that particular mutilation made any sense was Charles Warren himself, and he had no intention of explaining it to anyone else.
He was also concerned by another line in the last note he had received from the killer. One reason he had asked to see the reports was because of the short statement ‘Look out for the kidney’, and he had been entirely unsurprised to discover that Catharine Eddowes’s left kidney had been removed in its entirety from her body. The obvious and unpleasant conclusion was that ‘Michael’ had taken it away with him, and presumably intended to do something with it that would serve to further embarrass the Metropolitan Police and alarm the residents of Whitechapel.
The Ripper Secret Page 30