And the situation was summed up neatly in a note made by Dr Anderson on 23 October, in which he confessed that the police had not discovered ‘the slightest clue of any kind’ despite now having investigated five separate and brutal murders.
The newspapers were scathing of the efforts by the police to catch the killer, but also caught the mood of the populace of the East End of London, which was approaching a state of hysterical panic and almost supernatural dread.
Abberline and Chandler, who were by now the two most senior officers leading the hunt for Jack the Ripper on the ground, were both frequently appalled by some of the reports and editorials which appeared in the daily press.
‘Have you seen this one, Fred?’ Chandler asked, holding up a copy of the East London Advertiser.
Abberline shook his head.
‘No. Give me the bad news.’
‘Right, then. Just listen to this: “Men feel that they are face to face with some awful and extraordinary freak of nature. So inexplicable and ghastly are the circumstances surrounding the crimes… that the mind turns instinctively to some theory of occult force and the myths of the Dark Ages… ghouls, vampires, bloodsuckers and all the ghastly array of fables which have been accumulated throughout the course of centuries take form, and seize hold of the excited frenzy. Yet the most morbid imagination can conceive nothing worse than this terrible reality; for what can be more appalling than the thought that there is a being in human shape stealthily moving about a great city, burning with the thirst for human blood, and endowed with such diabolical astuteness as to enable him to gratify his fiendish lust with absolute impunity.” How do you think that’s going to make the unfortunates of Whitechapel and Spitalfields feel?’
Abberline shook his head. He was, by that time, close to despair, with no idea what else he could do to try to stop the next killing – a killing which he privately thought was virtually inevitable – from taking place. No measures the police had implemented had produced any tangible results, and as far as he could see there was nothing else they could do except wait for Jack the Ripper to unsheathe his knife once again.
‘I suppose absolutely the only good thing to come out of the “double event” is that the latest killings seem to have driven a lot of prostitutes away from the streets of Whitechapel,’ Chandler added, picking up another paper, the Daily Chronicle. ‘There’s a report here which says that “It is not too much to say that the unfortunate creatures who ply their wretched vocation in the streets are paralysed with fear. How much so this is the case is attested by the deserted condition of the East End thoroughfares after half past twelve, and the unbroken solitude in which the side streets, alleys and backways slumber.” I suppose if there aren’t any unfortunates on the streets, the Ripper won’t find it quite as easy to locate his next victim.’
‘There’ll always be one,’ Abberline said. ‘Some poor woman with nowhere else to go, who’ll take a chance for the price of a drink or the price of a bed. When he starts again, he’ll find someone, you mark my words.’
But the so-called ‘unfortunates’ of Whitechapel were a hardy breed: they needed to be simply because of their circumstances. In the hours and days which followed each killing on the streets, the women stayed indoors as much as they could, and if they had to venture out after dark they usually did so in groups. But as time passed and the memories of the previous atrocities grew a little fainter, their courage and independence of spirit rose to the fore again, and towards the end of the month they were to be seen patrolling their patches alone or sometimes in the company of one other of their kind, with perhaps just a small and hopelessly inadequate pocket knife for protection.
Many of them even adopted a philosophical attitude to their situation, and some police officers reported that prostitutes would call out to them on the streets late at night, saying that they were ‘the next for Jack’ or something similar.
Days turned into weeks, and no other murders were committed in the area. Slowly, life in Whitechapel seemed to return almost to its ghastly norm, and some people began speculating that, whoever Jack the Ripper was, his hideous reign of terror was now over.
But in that respect, they were sadly mistaken.
Wednesday, 7 November 1888
London
Ever since what become known in the press as the ‘double event’, London as a whole and Whitechapel in particular had been noticeably quiet, and the residents of that depressed and deprived area were finally beginning to feel safe again. Or, at least, safe from the vicious blade wielded by Jack the Ripper, though assaults, robberies and fights were still part of daily life in the district. Even some police officers were expressing the view, at least in private, that the Whitechapel murders had finally ended, the killer having ceased his reign of terror for some reason. Perhaps he had moved away, or died, or had even been taken into custody for some entirely unrelated offence.
Charles Warren, of course, knew better. And he also knew that ‘Michael’ had told him in his last communication that he had one month before the next murder would take place. Ever since the first of November he had been on tenterhooks, waiting for news of another killing. So far, though, all had been quiet.
But that evening, another handwritten letter was waiting for him at home. And, again, nobody in the household had seen who delivered it, or even knew when it had arrived.
Warren took it up to his study, sat down at his desk and opened the envelope. The note inside was short and very much to the point:
You now have two days. Then I start again. First the Masons, then the Jews. Two triangles for the star. Six in six weeks, cut down to the bone. Resign to show agreement, then deliver the relic exactly one week later. This is my last message.
He held the note in his hand and read it half a dozen times, then laid it down on his desk. It was a stark ultimatum, giving him no leeway, but at least it wasn’t unexpected. He had been anticipating something of the sort for the last four weeks, and he hadn’t been idle during that time.
Charles Warren had looked at the problem from all sides. And eventually he had come up with a plan that was both daring and dangerous, and with which a number of things could go very badly wrong. But if it worked, he would be able to walk away from the nightmare of the Whitechapel murders, and that was the result he was desperately hoping to achieve.
Central to the plan was one simple assumption, which he hoped was correct. As far as Warren knew, the only person alive right then who had ever seen the menorah was he himself. Every Jew knew what it looked like, but nobody apart from him knew exactly how big it was, and that was the lynchpin of the scheme he had concocted.
The instruction from ‘Michael’ that he was to show his agreement to hand over the relic by resigning as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was unexpected, but the more he thought about it, the less Warren was bothered by this. He hadn’t wanted the job in the first place, though he had tried to fulfil his tasking to be best of his ability. The circumstances and events of the last year had meant that he was being publicly reviled in the newspapers almost every day, he had an extremely fraught relationship with his immediate superior, the Home Secretary, Henry Matthews, and he simply didn’t get on with the senior officers who were supposed to be his colleagues at Scotland Yard.
Warren himself knew that part of the problem was his personality, and there was little he could do about that, but the biggest obstacle to the smooth running of the Metropolitan Police was the fact that he was a military officer, used to the strict discipline and ordered structure of an army unit, and the London police force was, by comparison, a ramshackle civilian organization. It was no wonder that he hadn’t been successful in his post.
If he did resign, he would be able to walk away from all that and return to the military world which he had always regarded as his second home, free from all the problems that he had encountered at Scotland Yard.
But if he was to return to the army without any kind of stigma being attached to his posting as th
e Commissioner, he couldn’t just resign and walk away, because that would imply that he had found the job too difficult to cope with or that he had simply given up in view of the problems which he had faced. What he needed was a reason to resign, some point of principle or other matter to which he could refer in the future and tell people ‘I could not work with that man because…’ or ‘that regulation hampered me so much that I was completely unable to continue in the post’ or something of the sort.
In short, he needed an excuse, a good reason, to go. And at this point fate, in the person of Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary, played right into his hands.
Thursday, 8 November 1888
Whitechapel, London
Charles Warren was sitting at his desk in his office at 4 White hall Place the following morning when one of the internal messengers knocked on his door.
‘Come.’
‘I have a letter for you, sir,’ the man said and passed an envelope to the commissioner.
As the man turned and walked away, Warren glanced down at the envelope, which bore the unmistakable stamp of the Home Office. He wasn’t expecting anything from Henry Matthews, and he assumed that the missive probably contained yet another few suggestions about how he might be better able to catch the Whitechapel murderer, suggestions that in all probability the Metropolitan Police would already have implemented without success. Warren had received a number of such communications, including one which had originated from Queen Victoria herself.
Warren took a paper knife from his desk, slit open the envelope and removed the single sheet of paper which it contained, more curious than anything else.
As he read the closely typed paragraphs, his expression changed from one of casual interest in the contents of the letter to deep anger and irritation.
‘How dare that pompous imbecile address me in such a fashion,’ he muttered.
Then he read what the Home Secretary had written once more, and at that moment he knew that Matthews had done him the most incredible favour, a favour that would allow him to resign from his post on a matter of principle, and which would also allow him to tender his resignation immediately. That might mean ‘Michael’ would have no need to carry out any further attacks on the prostitutes of the East End of London. It was a fantastically convenient occurrence, both in terms of what it signified, and in its providential timing.
The crux of the matter was almost triflingly inconsequential.
Some weeks previously, Warren had felt strongly enough about the daily criticism being heaped upon the officers and men of the Metropolitan Police that he had spoken out in their defence, largely because criticism of the force was also, obviously, a criticism of him. Specifically, he had written an article discussing the administration and conduct of the Metropolitan Police, and this article had subsequently been published in Murray’s Magazine. In truth, Warren had virtually forgotten about the article which, though typical of his style in that it was a blustering condemnation of anyone who dared criticize the Metropolitan Police, actually contained nothing particularly contentious, and certainly nothing which most people would have been surprised to hear Warren say.
But what Charles Warren was genuinely unaware of was that a ruling had been approved by the Home Office almost ten years earlier, in 1879, which stated that all serving officers were to obtain the prior permission and approval of the Home Secretary before they were permitted to publish anything relating to the Metropolitan Police force. This meant that anything the commissioner wrote, from the shortest missive to a newspaper to an entire article, had first to be personally inspected and approved by Henry Matthews.
The ruling had clearly been designed to prevent police officers from making intemperate statements to the press which contained information that the Home Office did not wish to be made public, and was arguably a sensible regulation. Charles Warren genuinely didn’t see it that way. If his relationship with the Home Secretary had been better, then without a doubt the two men could probably have come to an amicable agreement about the ruling, but as far as Warren was concerned on that morning, Henry Matthews had simply provided him with the opportunity he needed to get out of a job that he was beginning to loathe.
The letter which he had just read was a formal reprimand for Warren over the article which had been published, and also contained an instruction requiring him to comply with this Home Office regulation at all times in the future.
For a few minutes Warren considered what action he should take, and what form of words he should use. Then he called in a secretary and dictated a reply which, he anticipated, would produce an immediate reaction at the Home Office.
Warren began by categorically refusing to accept either the reprimand or the instruction to comply with the ruling. He then went on to question the legal authority of the Home Secretary to issue any such order to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and added that, had he known of the existence of such a regulation prior to his appointment, under no circumstances would he have agreed to assume the post. And, finally, Warren tendered his resignation.
The secretary who was preparing this letter looked across the desk at the commissioner with raised eyebrows.
‘Are you sure about this, sir?’
‘Quite sure,’ Warren snapped. ‘Get that typed up for my signature immediately and then have it sent to the Home Secretary by special messenger. He is to receive it within the hour.’
The only thing that Warren didn’t know at that point was exactly when Matthews would accept his resignation – though he was absolutely certain that the Home Secretary would be delighted to see him go – and his major concern was whether or not it would be in time to prevent ‘Michael’ from striking again.
He just hoped that it would be.
Friday, 9 November 1888
Whitechapel, London
Mary Jane Kelly had been born in Limerick in about 1863, but her family had crossed the Irish Sea and settled in Wales when she was still a child. Her father, John Kelly, had found employment in an ironworks, and had risen to the rank of foreman.
When she was about sixteen years of age, Mary had married a collier named Davies, but he had been killed in a mine explosion only a couple of years after their marriage. In 1884, she travelled to London seeking work and, perhaps inevitably given that she was young and good-looking, but destitute, ended up working in a brothel in the West End. Several clients of the establishment enjoyed the company of the young Irish girl, and one reportedly took her on a trip to France.
That relationship ended quickly, but other men supported her financially at different times, and when she found herself temporarily unattached to somebody who would pay her bills, she derived an adequate income from general prostitution, not least because, by all accounts, Mary Kelly was attractive. She stood about five feet seven inches tall with a rather stout build, and had a fair complexion, blue eyes and very long hair which reached nearly to her waist.
Soon after her arrival in London, Kelly also reportedly spent some time working for a French lady who had a property in Knightsbridge, and made a number of trips to Paris in her company. It was probably because of these exotic, for the time, excursions to the continent that Mary Kelly liked to be known as ‘Marie Jeanette’ rather than ‘Mary Jane’, and occasionally affected a trace of a foreign accent.
But this phase of her life was soon over and by 1885, with an inevitability that was tragically predictable, she had left the West End and gravitated downwards to the sordid surroundings of the East End of London, her profession remaining the same but her clientele becoming noticeably rougher and more uncouth. She had lodged first in St George’s Street and then at Breezer’s Hill, Pennington Street, in a house owned by a Mrs Carthy, and which was almost certainly a brothel. She stayed there for two or three years, and then left to move in with a man believed to be in the building trade, who was possibly a mason’s plasterer named Joe Flemming. But at more or less the same time, in 1887, she met Joe Barnett in Commercial Street, and be
gan a relationship with him. Barnett was an Irish cockney, a respectable man who was employed as a porter at Billingsgate market. Despite her new paramour, Mary Kelly apparently remained on very good terms with Flemming.
She and Barnett quickly established an intimate relationship, and Mary apparently agreed to move in and live with him at a lodging in George Street during the course of only their second meeting. That was far from being a permanent address, and they soon moved to Little Paternoster Row in Dorset Street and from there to Brick Lane, at least one of these moves being precipitated by their failure to pay the rent. Early in 1888 they moved house again, this time to 13 Miller’s Court, at the northern end of Dorset Street.
Kelly could perhaps be considered to be a member of the better class of ‘unfortunate’ in the area because, thanks to her relationship with Joe Barnett, she was not forced to frequent the common lodging houses like so many other prostitutes in the East End. She had her own accommodation, albeit only a single mean room, located at the northern end of Dorset Street.
This road was dominated by large doss houses, thirteen of them registered but many others not, in all capable of accommodating some 1,500 men and women in the most basic manner imaginable. The largest of these was Crossingham’s Lodging House, virtually opposite Miller’s Court at 35 Dorset Street, which had a capacity of over 300. There were also a number of courts, narrow passageways surrounded by rooms which had been formed from the subdivision of larger premises, rooms which were let on a weekly basis, principally to prostitutes.
Miller’s Court was one of these, a stone-flagged cul-de-sac approached down a narrow passage from Dorset Street itself. Within the court was a T-shaped open space equipped with a single water pump and a gas lamp, and surrounded by tenement houses and individual rooms. Mary Kelly’s accommodation at number 13 had previously been the rear parlour of 26 Dorset Street, and lay on the right-hand side of the court at the end of the narrow access way.
The Ripper Secret Page 34