22

‘I Have Disgraced You Before all the Country’

If Severin Bastendorff felt a prickling sixth sense of paranoia in the weeks before his trial, it was perfectly justified; the publisher George Purkess and Hannah Dobbs were preparing for the forthcoming court case with deadly seriousness, and with methods that were devious. Bastendorff had denied any sexual relationship with Hannah; the journalists from the Central News Agency were employing a range of furtive tactics to prove otherwise.

On one Saturday afternoon in September 1879, it was Severin Bastendorff who, having just returned home, went to answer the persistent knocking on the front door of 4, Euston Square. Standing on the step was a young woman, simply dressed. He did not recognise her; and she did not give her name.

Her request was curious: she very much needed to get to an address on the Caledonian Road, she told him. Could he oblige her by giving directions?

A little bewildered, Severin Bastendorff did so; he told her to go back to the Euston Road, turn left, walk on for a little past St Pancras and Kings Cross stations, and she would find Caledonian Road branching off to the left.

The young woman told him she was grateful; and with that, she turned and left.

Given the pervasive anxieties that he and his wife faced, Bastendorff may not have given any further thought to this curious encounter. The meaning of it, however, would become clear in court some weeks later.

He was not being entirely passive himself though: part of Hannah Dobbs’ pamphlet had alleged that she and Bastendorff had gone to Redhill for an illicit weekend; and he and his lawyer understood that it was now important to reach the landlady of the inn that Hannah had named. It transpired that this landlady, Mrs Anne Carpenter, had recently moved a few miles away to Reigate, Surrey, to manage another tavern and hotel called The Beehive.

It is not known whether Bastendorff or his lawyer first had the inspiration; but when summonsing Mrs Carpenter as a possible witness in the forthcoming trial, the idea was to suggest to her that it was not Severin Bastendorff she had seen with Hannah Dobbs – but his brother, Peter.

Both Bastendorff and his lawyer caught the train down to Reigate; and a horse-drawn cab took them to The Beehive. But they were too late.

Mrs Carpenter had already been summonsed: by journalists and a lawyer employed by George Purkess. Beside the large roaring fire of that comforting inn, they had outlined to her the parameters of the coming case, and the importance of remembering that it had definitely been Severin Bastendorff she had seen in Redhill two years previously.

Other witnesses were gathered by the defendant; friends of Bastendorff, many from the German community, all hard-working and respectable and articulate. They would be there first to attest to his fine nature and his happy marriage; and also to account for his movements on certain key dates. These were men with whom he enjoyed shooting and fishing.

During this pre-trial period, the strain must have told on Hannah Dobbs too; it must have felt as though she and Bastendorff were now locked in a lethal duel. She and the lawyers were acutely aware of the new hazards that cross-examination in such a case would bring; the way that Inspector Hagen and associates in Scotland Yard would be poring over every word of testimony, alert to any inconsistency.

She was specifically tutored how to respond to any questions concerning her story about the murder of the small boy, and about the child’s flesh being fed to Riggenbach’s dog. Hannah was told to say: ‘I decline to answer.’

Aside from avoiding pitfalls, George Purkess and his lawyer wanted the limelight kept very firmly on the relationship between Hannah Dobbs and Severin Bastendorff.

During this period, Hannah had either bought for herself – or more likely had Purkess and his journalists pay for – some new and ever more elegant clothing. The time for penitential display was past: the new clothes – which would lead to newspaper reporters describing her as ‘showily-dressed’ – were clearly intended to emphasise that she was not a common serving girl, but rather a lady who commanded respect.

And so, in the well-lit court at Bow Street, at the end of October 1879, there was a pre-trial hearing before the magistrate Mr Flowers.

At this, Hannah took the stand as the central witness; and immediately, under questioning, she was insistent that she and Bastendorff had first met when she was cleaning windows at Torrington Square in 1875; and she was very much more explicit now about the intimacy of their relationship. She even detailed occasions at Torrington Square and elsewhere when such intimacies took place.

In applying for an injunction to have Hannah’s pamphlet withdrawn, Bastendorff’s solicitor Mr Sims had declared that it ‘had seriously injured his client in business, by destroying his credit’.¹ But this court seemed not interested in Bastendorff’s legal grievance; there was only time for his alleged perjury.

And indeed, the court was told, that intimacy continued after Severin had arranged for Hannah to get the position as maid-of-all-work at 4, Euston Square in June 1876. Very shortly after this, Bastendorff had arranged to take her away for the weekend to the town of Redhill in Surrey. She ‘had occupied a room with him from Saturday to Monday’ at the Red Lion Inn.

Hannah told the court that Bastendorff’s appearance had changed a little over the years; for that weekend, he ‘wore a long beard and a light suit of clothes’.

Mr Poland stepped up to cross-examine her. She told him that before Bastendorff, she ‘had never been in the habit of going out with gentlemen’ though she added that she was ‘not a chaste woman’.

So what then of her relationship with Severin’s younger brother Peter? She told Mr Poland she had made the younger man’s ‘acquaintance’ and ‘had been guilty of immorality with him’. She added that ‘he had a key of 4, Euston Square and was in the habit of letting himself into the house at night and leaving before the family was up in the morning’. She added that Severin was ‘well aware of this’ as she herself ‘used to tell him’; conversely, Hannah did not tell Peter ‘what had occurred’ between herself and Severin.

Here was a world of illicit nocturnal assignations, according to Hannah Dobbs, who seemed to experience no awkwardness or embarrassment in relating these adventures to the court.

Mr Poland focused on the final paragraph of Hannah Dobbs’ pamphlet: her sworn statement to the truth of everything within it. On the back page of the pamphlet, this was accompanied with a reproduction of what was apparently her signature. ‘This, I see, purports to be a facsimile of your writing,’ said Mr Poland. ‘Is it so?’

Hannah Dobbs said: ‘I decline to answer.’

The unspoken subtext of his question was: who was the real perjuror here? Mr Poland took her through the list of her previous offences, even though this made the magistrate Mr Flowers uneasy: ‘Surely,’ he said, ‘we need not go into that matter?’ But for Mr Poland, this was about establishing character. And for her own part, Hannah Dobbs was happy to answer him defiantly, despite her defence counsel Mr Montagu Williams objecting to this trawl through ‘the whole of the pamphlet’ when Bastendorff’s alleged perjury only featured in one paragraph.

Mr Poland asked Hannah about her statements concerning Mr Findlay being murdered; about apparently being given his watch; about the possessions of Matilda Hacker that she acquired; and about her account of the murder of Matilda Hacker, and how she herself came to leave 4, Euston Square. In her responses, Hannah Dobbs adhered broadly to the published text.

Then there was the molten core of Dobbs’ astonishing pamphlet: the mystery over the murder of Miss Hacker was one thing. The sensational allegation concerning the frenzied killing of a small boy was another.

‘You speak of having seen a boy murdered,’ said Mr Poland, ‘so of course you were present?’

Hannah Dobbs hesitated, and then said: ‘I decline to answer.’

‘Then’ said Mr Poland, ‘you decline to say whether that story is true or not?’

Hannah remained silent. Poland then found the relevant passage, and he read it out to the court in full, including the ‘crushing blows’ of the poker, and ending with the little boy’s clothes being destroyed ‘at the workshop fire’.

‘After this,’ said Mr Poland, ‘you go on to say that you smelled a strong odour like the boiling of grease and other matter, and you say you are ‘obliged to suppress all names’. Do you refuse to give us any particulars about this boy?’

‘Yes,’ said Hannah, ‘I do.’

‘Was he employed at Mr Bastendorff’s?’

‘I decline to answer.’

‘Do you mean to insinuate that Mr Bastendorff, your master, murdered him?’

‘I decline to answer the question.’

‘And you won’t even say whether the boy was in his employ?’

‘No, he was not,’ said Dobbs. ‘I decline to answer anything.’

‘How long was this,’ persisted Mr Poland, ‘after the murder of Miss Hacker?’

‘I decline to answer,’ said Dobbs, adding sharply: ‘It has nothing to do with this case.’

The magistrate Mr Flowers ‘remarked that this was no doubt the fact – but if the object was to test the credibility of the witness, the learned counsel might infer that she was not a credible witness.’ Mr Poland said that ‘he was satisfied with that intimation’. Yet there was little comfort to be drawn from this by the Bastendorffs.

For there were other witnesses: Hannah Dobbs’s former colleague Selina Knight was called. She declared ‘to the best of her belief’ that four years ago she saw Severin in Torrington Square and that he and Hannah first met then. But Mr Poland forced her to admit that journalists from the Central News Agency had recently persuaded her to ring the bell of 4, Euston Square to see once more the face of Severin Bastendorff. She was the woman who had randomly asked Bastendorff for directions to the Caledonian Road. It was obvious this was to ensure that she would corroborate the pamphlet.

When probed a little further about the reliability of her memory, she said: ‘I recognised his voice from the German accent … I believed when I first saw him that he was the man who courted Hannah Dobbs and I believe so still.’

Also called was Mrs Carpenter, former landlady of the Red Lion Inn in Redhill, Surrey. She remembered in August 1877 that Hannah Dobbs came to stay there and ‘she had a gentleman with her’. She added: ‘I have seen him today. I have learned since that it was Severin Bastendorff.’

They had, said Mrs Carpenter, arrived on the Saturday evening and they stayed until the Monday morning. ‘They occupied the same room,’ she said, to ensure there could be no doubt on this matter. When they arrived, ‘I carried their black bag and parcel upstairs. He was dressed in rather a light suit. They sat in the smoking room before going to bed.’ He had a glass of ale; they shared a plate of biscuits. The recollections were strikingly acute.

Was there any chance, the defence counsel asked, that she might have played host to Peter, rather than Severin? She insisted not, adding that Severin might have had ‘a longer beard’ back then.

The beard was important to the defence; for Mr Poland was still hopeful of proving that the older brother might in fact have been mistaken for the younger. But in fact it was going to cause further confusion. The next witness, John Aldolphus Dicke, a ‘cabinet maker’ in Charlotte Street, told the court that he knew both Peter and Severin Bastendorff. He ‘knew the former [Peter] in 1875, when he could hardly speak English to be understood, and had no beard. He was,’ said Dicke, ‘little more than a boy at the time.’

At this, a photograph of Peter, taken around 1875, was produced by the prosecution. It showed him as ‘a beardless boy’ and Dicke agreed that it was very ‘like him’. Dicke ‘knew Severin a year before’ he knew Peter. ‘He had a fine beard always,’ he told the court, ‘and longer … than it appeared to be at present.’

This might have seemed the most absurdly trivial point; but given the defence’s line that Hannah’s pamphlet had deliberately misled by naming the wrong Bastendorff brother, and that this was a sinister case of swapped identities, it actually seemed to have become central. Prosecutor Mr Williams lost patience: and he angrily demanded ‘the committal of the defendant’. This would have placed Severin Bastendorff in jail, awaiting a main trial.

Responding with a fiery tone, Mr Poland in turn took the magistrate back into the twisted roots of the conflict; the original charge of murder – and the opportunism of an amoral press.

‘Two gentlemen connected with what is called The Central News Agency invited the cooperation of this abandoned woman,’ he declared, ‘and with Mr Purkess, the plaintiff in this case, induced her to reveal the secrets, real and imaginary, of her polluted life, and paid her money for “revelations” which they should, in the interests of society and even of the woman herself, have done all in their power to discourage.’ These ‘revelations’, he insisted, including being the ‘accomplice of at least three murders’, had not been mentioned at her trial.

He then pleaded that there was no other evidence and ‘asked the Court to pause before it branded the defendant and his wife with the infamy imputed to them by this abandoned woman, encouraged by men who ought to have known better and ought rather to have advised her to remain in obscurity for the remainder of her tainted life’.²

After this powerful plea, there then followed some legal bickering with the magistrate Mr Flowers becoming tangled in Severin Bastendorff’s action for libel against the Central News Agency and Hannah Dobbs; before there could be any proceedings for perjury, surely he ought to wait until the result of that libel case was known?

Yet Mr Williams the prosecutor somehow managed to suggest that ‘the alleged perjury had no relation whatever to the (libel) action.’

And caught up in these legal thickets, the seemingly ineffectual Mr Flowers made his decision. As there had been ‘four witnesses to the alleged perjury’ he was therefore ‘bound to send the case for trial’.

The case would be heard at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey.

Mr Flowers asked Severin Bastendorff if he had anything to say. All he could think to reply was that Hannah Dobbs’ story was ‘a pack of lies’.³

He was required to give the court £5, in the meantime, as a surety that he would appear at the trial, which was set for a few days hence.