The Ripper Secret

by The Ripper Secret (retail) (epub)

  Chandler looked again at the text of the blood-smeared letter, and shook his head.

  ‘But I still don’t understand why he would need to do that. Why would he need to send a letter at all? Or disguise his handwriting? I hear what you say about the Goulston Street writing, and I think it probably was an attempt to throw suspicion on the Jewish community, for whatever reason. But with this kidney, why would he bother? Why didn’t he just send the kidney and leave it at that if he didn’t want anybody to see his handwriting?’

  Abberline shrugged.

  ‘I can’t be sure, obviously, but I think he probably wanted to make absolutely sure that George Lusk wouldn’t just throw the kidney away as soon as he’d opened the box, which is what most people would probably have done. Jack the Ripper had a very good reason for removing that poor woman’s kidney, and then for sending it to Lusk. He wanted to make absolutely certain that both the kidney and the letter would end up in the hands of the police but he still needed to send it to a civilian, because his sole objective in doing this, in my opinion, was to make sure that the newspapers get to hear about it. If he’d just sent it to a police station, there was a chance that it would have remained confidential, but I’m almost prepared to wager money that George Lusk is already giving interviews.’

  ‘I see what you’re driving at,’ Chandler nodded. ‘He’s putting on the pressure, isn’t he? It’s not enough that he’s terrifying the women of Whitechapel and Spitalfields. Now he’s adding an extra dimension to the horror, because he’s also eating them. Or claiming that he is.’

  ‘I remember what you said, Joseph, when you came back from seeing the body of Annie Chapman at Hanbury Street. You said it looked almost as if it had been prepared, the way a butcher prepares an animal’s carcass. I had a feeling then that this might be the next step. First he kills them, then he mutilates them, then he takes away trophies, like he did with Chapman, and finally he cuts out organs, as he did with Catharine Eddowes, and eats them. Or at least, as you said, that’s what he’s claiming he did. We’ll never know for sure whether that’s the truth or if it’s just another way – and a very effective way – of increasing the terror in the East End of London.’

  Abberline paused for a moment, glanced down at the text of the letter in front of him, then looked up at Chandler.

  ‘And what really worries me, Joseph,’ he said, ‘is that we’ve got no idea what he’s going to do next. But the one thing I am certain about is that he hasn’t finished yet.’

  * * *

  Charles Warren was of course informed about the kidney, but the information was hardly a surprise to him. Ever since he’d received the last note from ‘Michael’, he’d been expecting to hear that the missing kidney, or a part of it, would be sent to a newspaper or some other organization. He hadn’t expected that one of the vigilance committees would be the recipient, but the effect had been much the same as if it had been sent to a newspaper.

  He knew the organ had been sent by ‘Michael’, and the only real surprise to him was the note which accompanied it. Warren assumed that he had deliberately disguised his handwriting and had taken considerable care with the text to ensure that he appeared to be only semi-literate. The writing was entirely different to that found in the doorway at Goulston Street, and the different hand was presumably another attempt to muddy the waters.

  But ‘Michael’ would be certain that Warren wouldn’t be fooled, and that the commissioner would know that the two ‘messages’ had been the work of the same person, just as Warren was now certain that the ‘Dear Boss’ letters were a hoax.

  Warren knew that and, just like Detective Inspector Abberline, he also knew that Jack the Ripper hadn’t yet finished his work.

  Tuesday, 23 October 1888

  Whitechapel, London

  The inquest into the murder of Catharine Eddowes had been opened on 4 October at the Golden Lane Mortuary under the direction of the City Coroner, Samuel Frederick Langham, but was quickly adjourned to the eleventh of the month. When the jury finally returned their verdict, it was entirely predictable: wilful murder against some person unknown. The fact was that nobody had the slightest idea who the murderer was, except that it was now fairly clear that the police were looking for a single killer, not a gang of two or more people working together.

  The report on the inquest published in the Daily News summed up the situation quite neatly: ‘Practically the world knows nothing more of this crime than it did on the morning when it was first announced. We have some details about the victim, few or none about the murderer. The “person unknown” has every right to his designation.’

  The inquest on Elizabeth Stride was conducted by Wynne Baxter and had begun three days earlier than that of Eddowes, on 1 October. Baxter was meticulous in his examination of the witnesses, and reviewed every piece of evidence in great detail, adjourning the inquest four times before finally terminating it on the 23rd of the month. But despite his very different and more exhaustive approach, Baxter fared no better than Langham, and the jury produced precisely the same result.

  The fact that Jack the Ripper was still at large, and that the police still appeared to have not the slightest idea who he was, and had no obvious prospect of stopping or catching him, produced renewed calls for a government reward to be paid to anyone who could bring him to justice. Because Catharine Eddowes had died within the City of London, the Lord Mayor was able to offer a reward of £500 to anyone who could provide information which would lead to the capture and conviction of the Ripper.

  But attempts to persuade the Home Secretary, Henry Matthews, to do the same were repeatedly rebuffed. The prime mover in this correspondence was the Mile End Vigilance Committee, under the chairmanship of George Lusk. On 30 September, the committee secretary, Mr B. Harris, wrote to Matthews requesting that he reconsider his position. The reply from the Home Office on 2 October was unequivocal: the Home Secretary saw no reason to change his position. On 7 October, some ten days before he received the section of kidney through the post, George Lusk tried again, requesting not only a government reward, but also a free pardon for any accomplice of the Ripper who would provide information that would convict the killer.

  Support for the idea of a pardon came from Charles Warren himself, which was a calculated gamble by the commissioner. He had thought long and hard before adding his voice to the proposal, but had reasoned that his relations with the Home Secretary were so poor that he was almost certain any suggestion he made would be rejected out of hand by Matthews. And he was quite right. The Home Office refused to agree and the only response was a bland statement that they would keep the matter under review.

  Other citizens and organizations also suggested offering a reward. The editor of the Financial Times, Harry Marks, had forwarded a cheque in the sum of £300 to Matthews early in October, but this was returned to him almost immediately. The officer commanding the Tower Hamlets Battalion of the Royal Engineers offered £100 and the services of fifty soldiers. Again, Matthews refused to accept either offer.

  But private donors exhibited none of the qualms and doubts which appeared to afflict the Home Secretary, and within days of the ‘double event’ taking place, the huge sum, for the time, of £1,200 had been committed and would be paid to anyone who could identify or apprehend the murderer.

  The Mile End Vigilance Committee was active in other ways as well. It was clear that the police presence in the East End of London was having little or no effect upon the activities of Jack the Ripper, and so the Committee decided upon vigilante action as well as simple vigilance. They selected strong and fit men from their ranks, armed them with stout sticks and whistles, paid them a small wage, and instructed them to patrol the streets of Whitechapel every night, beginning at around midnight and continuing until about four or five o’clock in the morning. In addition, the Committee met every evening at nine in a private room at the Crown public house on Mile End Road to discuss the work of their patrols and to consider other ways in which the s
afety of the women of Whitechapel could be improved. They also employed a private detective agency, Grand and Batchelor, to provide professional supervision of their patrols.

  It’s by no means clear what these patrols by the Mile End Vigilance Committee –which were soon supplemented by others from the Working Men’s Vigilance Committee, based in Aldgate – actually achieved, if anything.

  From the point of view of the Metropolitan Police officers charged with keeping the streets safe, these vigilante efforts were not an immediately obvious help. They simply meant that large numbers of men began walking the streets of Whitechapel in the early hours of the morning, men who had to be watched by the police and their identities confirmed if they appeared to be acting in a suspicious manner. In many cases, it was obvious that there were plain-clothes detectives watching vigilante volunteers, who were in turn watching other detectives, and all of them were being observed by uniformed officers.

  But it was also undeniably true that these amateur patrols provided additional observers in the area, and numerous reports on potential suspects were forwarded to the police for investigation. Almost inevitably, these ‘suspects’ turned out to be entirely innocent men going about their normal trade or business. Several doctors were arrested on suspicion, simply because they were carrying black medical bags, such was the strength of the powerful and enduring belief in Whitechapel that the killer was a medical man. This belief was fuelled further when it was suggested that the murderer was using chloroform to subdue his victims before killing them, though none of the post-mortems carried out on the dead women had shown the slightest evidence of this.

  And the police were visibly doing more in their attempts to catch the killer. After the ‘double event’, additional officers, many of them in plain clothes, were sent into the area to supplement the local force, to increase the number of policemen on the streets, in an attempt to try to deter Jack the Ripper from striking again. These extra officers were also a source of some confusion to the uniformed men, who had to identify them just as they had to check the identities of the unofficial patrols.

  And Abberline’s decoy officers – the young constables who had been armed with revolvers and dressed in women’s clothing – were still walking the darkened streets of Whitechapel but without any results so far, apart from the angry reactions of a handful of clients who had believed them to be precisely what they appeared: available prostitutes. Abberline had inspected half a dozen of these young officers, and was frankly amazed that anybody would mistake them for women, even in poor lighting, but clearly there were men out there who were a lot less discerning and discriminating, or perhaps simply didn’t see very well.

  And that, really, was about all the police could do. They still had not the slightest idea who Jack the Ripper actually was, apart from the most basic of deductions – that he apparently possessed a certain amount of anatomical knowledge which suggested he might have worked in the medical profession or as a butcher or something similar – and they still had no firm clue regarding his motive, except that he was clearly targeting prostitutes. And even that could simply be circumstantial: they were usually the only women walking the streets in the early hours of the morning. With nothing else to go on, and no apparent way of identifying the killer in the teeming streets of Whitechapel, all the police could do was try to deter him from striking again.

  But a suggestion by Sir John Whittaker Ellis, who was a former Lord Mayor of London, that the Metropolitan Police should enter and search every house and premises in the centre of Whitechapel in the search for the killer did spark a new initiative. Ellis’s proposal could not be implemented simply because the police had no right to enter and search any premises unless they possessed a warrant issued by a magistrate, and such a warrant would not be provided unless there was sufficient justification for that search.

  If, however, the consent of the owner or tenant of the property could be obtained, then the police could legally enter and inspect the premises. The obvious flaw with this scheme was that if by some chance the police did happen to knock on the door of a house occupied by Jack the Ripper, all he had to do was to say ‘no’ when they asked to be admitted, and the police would have to just walk away. By definition, the only people who would allow their homes to be searched would be those with nothing to hide.

  But in mid October they tried the tactic anyway. The Metropolitan Police chose an area that included the most desperate slums in Whitechapel and Spitalfields and for almost a week detectives wearing plain clothes searched every property that they could, checking the interiors of the buildings for hiding places and suspicious persons, examining every knife they could find and questioning everybody there. It was perhaps unsurprising that few owners or tenants refused admission to the police, because the dark shadow that Jack the Ripper had cast over this part of the city meant that everybody, rich or poor, male or female, desperately wanted the man to be caught and for his reign of terror to be finally brought to an end.

  Also unsurprising was the fact that the police found absolutely nothing, despite the large number of premises they inspected. In fact, the only positive result of this major effort was that it showed the residents of the East End of London that the forces of law and order were doing something about the murderer, even if what they were doing actually made little sense.

  The use of bloodhounds in the hunt for the Ripper had been suggested on several occasions by both the press and members of the public, and Charles Warren decided to sanction their use with the support of the Home Office, but this was not a success. For one thing, the Metropolitan Police did not own any bloodhounds, which meant they were forced to approach a private individual for the use of his animals, which raised inevitable questions about funding. Were the dogs to be hired or bought? Where were they to be kept and who would act as their handler? There was no provision in the budget for any such financial outlay, and when Warren requested a comparatively modest allowance to permit bloodhounds to be stationed in London, the Home Secretary only authorized a small proportion of the sum he had suggested.

  On a more practical note, bloodhounds are extremely efficient at tracking an individual once they have been given his or her scent to follow, and that was probably the biggest problem the police faced. Jack the Ripper had already proven himself extremely adept at leaving no clues behind at the scenes of his various crimes, and ideally the bloodhounds needed to be offered a piece of clothing or other material which the criminal had worn or at the very least touched. The reality was that most of the scents available at the crime scene were those of the victim herself and of the person or persons who had discovered her body. And even if by some stroke of luck one of the bloodhounds did manage to detect the scent of the murderer, the chances of the animal being able to follow the trail through the crowded and polluted streets of Whitechapel were extremely remote. And, in the event, although the use of bloodhounds was trialled by the police, the dogs were never employed at any of the crime scenes.

  Other suggestions and ideas, many of them verging on the ridiculous, were also offered to the police, and in at least one case suggested by a police officer who should have known better. Dr Robert Anderson was the new head of the Metropolitan Police Criminal Investigation Department and, in conference with Charles Warren and the Home Secretary, he suggested that every known ‘unfortunate’ or prostitute found on the streets after midnight should be arrested. The fact that Anderson was able to make this laughable suggestion shows clearly that he had little or no idea of the conditions that existed in Whitechapel and the East End.

  A police report which was prepared in October 1888 estimated that there were at least sixty-two functioning brothels in Whitechapel alone, over 230 common lodging houses together accommodating some 8,500 inmates, over half of them women, many of whom were forced to sell their bodies on the streets from time to time in order to live, and well over 1,000 working full-time prostitutes. Anderson also seemed aware that many of these ‘unfortunates’ were forced out o
nto the streets every night simply to earn enough money to pay for a bed in a doss house.

  They were not streetwalkers in the usual sense of the expression, looking for customers they could take back to their lodging. Most of their business was conducted out in the open, on the streets and in the warren of dark back alleys that characterized the Whitechapel area, and if they could find no clients who were willing to pay for their services, they had no option but to keep walking the streets until the following day, or sleep rough.

  Despite the lack of any positive information, the police were still active and zealous in their pursuit of the elusive murderer. In October, Chief Inspector Swanson reported that, following the murder of Elizabeth Stride, some eighty men had been interviewed at police stations, and the movements of over 300 other potential suspects had been checked. In all, Swanson reported, in addition to the police reports, nearly one thousand dockets had been created in which details of this vast number of suspects and people of interest had been recorded.

  There was plenty of activity on the part of both the Metropolitan and City forces, both of whom were now involved in the hunt for the Ripper, but frustratingly little actual progress had been made. Swanson admitted as much in a report to the Home Office, when he stated that although ‘very numerous and searching enquiries’ had been instituted, the police had obtained no ‘tangible result’.