It was Whitsuntide and the population of London was celebrating the beginning of the summer season. That bank holiday had seen hundreds of thousands of sightseers, holidaymakers and pleasure-seekers take to the roads and railways for trips across the country, to Brighton and the South Coast, to Windsor Palace, Southport and Skegness. Others took the opportunity to visit the attractions of the capital – 4,500 to see the pygmy skeleton at the Natural History Museum, 7,000 to the National Gallery, 26,000 to Regent’s Park Zoo and 70,000 to Hampstead Heath. At the Alexandra Palace crowds were entertained by a troupe of Russian gymnasts, ventriloquists, puppeteers, a roller coaster, panoramic railway, shooting galleries and a pyrotechnic reproduction of The Last Days of Pompeii. The weather was fine and the whole city was enjoying itself.
The holiday mood was still in the air a few days later on Thursday 24 May 1888, when two young couples set off for a walk to Regent’s Park. There was Joseph Rumbold, a twenty-one-year-old printer, and his date Elizabeth Lee, her cousin Emily Lee and a colleague of Joseph’s called Alonzo Burns. They entered the park by York Gate, just down the road from the new Madame Tussauds’ building on Marylebone Road, and turned left on to Outer Circle along the fence up towards Clarence Gate. It was about 9 p.m. and there was an organ playing to a small crowd enjoying the last light of the day. Just past a bend in the road, not far from Cornwall Terrace, Elizabeth noticed five young men were ‘larking around’ playing some version of tag. The group then walked past them a few yards before turning round and blocking their path. One of them said to Joseph, ‘Are you Macey?’
‘So help me God, I don’t know what you mean,’ Joseph replied. Then three more young men – they were all about sixteen or seventeen – came across and joined the group.
‘Yes, that’s him, that’s him,’ they shouted. The first man grabbed hold of Joseph by the neck and repeated his question, ‘Are you Macey?’
At this, Joseph decided to run. Twisting his neck away from his attacker, he dropped his hat and fled back towards York Gate followed by the gang. Elizabeth picked up the hat and ran after them. By the time she caught up to him he was leaning on the railings next to the park-keeper’s house with blood on his mouth. ‘Call me a cab, I am stabbed,’ he gasped.
Elizabeth left her cousin to get help and chased after the gang as they ran out of York Gate, yelling, ‘Stop thief’ in an attempt to attract aid. She did not get very far before two of the group punched and kicked her to the ground. The next she saw of Joseph was at the Middlesex Hospital. He had been brought in just before 10 p.m. with two stab wounds to the neck and back, but nothing could be done. The second injury was the fatal one, penetrating just below the shoulder blade into the right lung and severing a branch of the pulmonary artery. Joseph had bled to death within minutes.152
Alonzo Burns and Emily Lee had been 20 yards behind Joseph and Elizabeth when the scuffle started. A group of young men had run up to them and recognised Burns as being local to Lisson Grove in Marylebone. ‘Hallo Lonnie,’ one said. Another added, ‘Oh, he is all right, I know him.’ They ran off round the bend in the path. Moments later the couple saw Joseph being attacked.
‘I saw a scuffle and I saw him dart out from the midst of him,’ recalled Alonzo. ‘He ran right past me. I saw blood coming out of his mouth. I said “Joe!” – he could not answer me, he squirted out some blood.’
The first clue as to why Joseph had been attacked came when they approached a member of the group who had stayed behind rather than join the chase. ‘What have you done to Joe?’ Burns asked. The young man said they were getting revenge for a rival gang ‘banging our fellows and giving a girl a black eye’.
The ‘banging’ had occurred the previous evening at around 9 p.m. A member of the ‘Fitzroy Place lads’ gang, eighteen-year-old Francis Cole, had strayed into the territory of their rivals from Lisson Grove in Marylebone with his girlfriend Louisa ‘Cissy’ Chapman. They were in the Marylebone Road near Madame Tussauds when two men approached them and asked where Cole was from. Cole replied that he was from the Hampstead Road.
‘Do you know any of the Fitzroy Place lads?’ one of them asked.
‘Yes, and glad to know them too,’ said Cole, either out of bravado or because he was unaware of the danger.
With that, one of the two young men whistled and about twenty others came running down the road. One of them punched Cole in the face and knocked him down, and some of the others began kicking him while he lay on the ground.
‘How many more of you?’ shouted Cissy, taking up the challenge.
‘Take that you cow,’ one of the youths replied, punching her in the face. The gang ran off with Cole’s hat.
This was just the latest incident in a long-running feud between the two gangs and news of the attack quickly spread round the other Fitzroy Place lads, who were all based in and around the Tottenham Court Road. Frank Cole and his friends David Cleary and George Galletly immediately began rounding up recruits for a revenge attack on Marylebone. The following evening Galletly approached Adolph Fontaine at a pub called the Blue Posts and asked, ‘Have you heard about Frank being bathed? Frank has got a bash in the eye and Ciss has got a black eye.’ Fontaine agreed to go with him to meet Cole at the ‘Fair’, half an acre of disused land between Tottenham Court Road and Whitfield Street, but sensibly backed out of the plan to go to Marylebone by claiming he had to meet his ‘young lady’. Others were more keen to join and Cole soon had a small expeditionary force of up to sixteen young men aged between fifteen and nineteen.
They found their first Marylebone lad in nearby Howland Street, but he was able to run off after being punched and kicked. This didn’t satisfy them, and after failing to find more prey in the Green Man pub on Union Street, they headed for Regent’s Park.
What followed appears to have been a tragic case of mistaken identity. But for the newspapers it was the inevitable result of ‘roughs’ being allowed to terrorise areas of London with impunity. There was even a suggested link to prostitution. On 26 May, The Times printed a report that: ‘The gang is supposed to be a number of men who are in connection with a number of disorderly women who gain their living by visiting the Outer and Inner Circle [of Regent’s Park] for immoral purposes.’ Another piece stated that: ‘For some months past a gang of roughs has infested this district nightly, some of them being in the habit of levying blackmail on respectable couples walking around the park. They are also the companions of a number of disorderly women that frequent this and other portions of Regent’s Park.’
The reports sparked a series of letters to The Times, beginning with one from someone calling themselves ‘Regent’s Park’, who claimed that the area had been neglected by the overworked police because of ‘the public taste for monster processions and demonstrations’.
The letter continued: ‘Whatever happens the moral of this sad occurrence is plain. Places in the heart of a great city like London, which are exceptionally quiet by day, want very careful attention at night, and if this be withheld society will some day be awakened by a very rude shock.’
This prompted a local resident, George Romanes of Cornwall Terrace, to complain that the Regent’s Park district ‘is becoming more and more generally recognised as the happy hunting-fields of the worst rowdyism of London … For several years past my neighbours and myself have found it prudent as much as possible to avoid the precincts of the park when returning home after night-fall’. Concerns over the policing of the park were raised in Parliament the following month and it was announced that the Commissioner of Police, Charles Warren, had made changes to ensure ‘a better control of disorderly persons’.153
Although the case was covered in detail by the newspapers, and featured on the front page of the Illustrated Police News, it did not cause anywhere near the prolonged excitement of the Ripper murders. This was partly due to the success of the police in rounding up all the suspects by the end of the week. Two of the suspects had decided to turn ‘Queen’s’ and gave evidence against their fellow gang members after reading about the offer of a full pardon in the Daily Echo on 26 May.
David Cleary, an eighteen-year-old out-of-work baker with a previous conviction for stealing bacon, and Thomas Brown, a sixteen-year-old polisher, both pinned the blame on George Galletly, known as ‘Garry’. According to their statements, the group that had gone to Regent’s Park also included: Francis Cole; William Elvis, a sixteen-year-old porter from Euston Road; William Graefe, a nineteen-year-old cutter from Tottenham Court Road; William Henshaw, a sixteen-year-old French polisher from Hampstead Road; Charles Govier, a sixteen-year-old farrier’s boy from Drummond Street; Michael Doolan, a fifteen-year-old porter from Sexton Street; and Peter Lee, a nineteen-year-old sailor. As they left ‘the Fair’ Lee couldn’t resist boasting about a knife he kept in a sheath on his belt. He took it out and twirled it round.
‘Show me that knife,’ Galletly told him, taking the knife from Lee’s hand. ‘This will do for one of them.’ Later, when they reached Portland Place, Galletly asked Lee to lend him the knife and put the belt with the sheath round his waist.
According to Cleary, it was also Galletly who suggested they go to Regent’s Park. The group then split up, with some going round to Clarence Gate via Marylebone Road, while Clearly and the rest entered through York Gate and headed left round the Outer Circle. The second group soon came up behind Alonzo Burns and Emily Lee, but Cleary recognised him and told Galletly, ‘He is all right, I know him.’ The group then ran past towards Joseph Rumbold.
Neither Cleary nor Brown admitted seeing the stabbing, perhaps in an attempt to conceal their true involvement. Their story was that they had run ahead to meet Elvis and Doolan before turning back. As they rounded the bend near Cornwall Terrace they came up to Galletly, red-faced and out of breath.
‘I have stabbed him,’ Galletly said.
‘Who?’ asked Brown.
‘One of them,’ Galletly replied. Asked where he stabbed the victim, Galletly indicated the back of his neck. As they walked back to Tottenham Court Road he boasted that he had ‘laid one out’ and showed off the bloodstained blade. He had exacted his revenge for the attack on his friend Cissy Chapman.
After taking Cleary and Brown’s statements, the police began to round up the suspects. Inspector George Robson arrested Galletly the same night, 26 May at 10.30 p.m. outside the Duke of York pub in Charlotte Street off Tottenham Court Road. ‘I know nothing about the murder,’ said Galletly. An attempt to rescue him was made by one of his friends as he was being led away to the station, but Robson held tight to his suspect.
‘That bleeding Dave and Brown have turned coppers to try and hang me,’ muttered Galletly.
Four hours later, at 2.30 a.m. on the 27th, Inspector Thomas Bannister, accompanied by Cleary and Brown and several police officers, went down to No.23 Whitfield Place to arrest Peter Lee.
‘I hope you don’t think that I stabbed the man,’ said Lee. In his defence he said:
I know I was with the mob, and the man that did it had my knife, but I don’t know his name. I never spoke to him till that night, and I have not had my knife since. Them other two chaps that was with you were there as well, and they know the man that stabbed him.
By 4 a.m. Bannister also had Graefe in custody. Henshaw was arrested near his home in Frederick Street that afternoon. The rest handed themselves in after hearing that Brown and Cleary had turned Queen’s. Govier came to the police station with his mother at 6.30 p.m. and an hour later Elvis and Doolan turned up. They all admitted they were with the mob, but denied being there when Joseph Rumbold was stabbed. The last of the group, Francis Cole, was brought to the station at 11.30 p.m. by his father. Rounding off what was turning into a highly efficient investigation, the murder weapon was discovered in its sheath in a sewer in Upper Rathbone Place three days later.
All eight young men were charged with murder and committed for trial at the Old Bailey. The case was due to start in the session beginning in early July, but was postponed until September because two of them had yet to find a barrister to represent them in court. While they waited, safely behind bars, the feud between the Fitzroy and Marylebone lads continued. ‘They walked about with sticks concealed up their sleeves, and complaints were daily received at the Tottenham Court Road police station about the pavement being impassable owing to their conduct,’ reported The Times. ‘They went about in gangs, used foul language, and respectable persons were afraid to go near them.’ On 30 July, two gangmembers were convicted of disorderly behaviour following a disturbance in Fitzroy Square and were ordered to put up 40s on promise of good behaviour in future.154
The trial, which began on 1 August 1888, centred on the evidence of Cleary and Brown, and both were heavily cross-examined by counsel representing the eight defendants. Neither was entirely convincing, particularly when it came to their involvement in the attack. Both denied being a Fitzroy Place lad or a ‘Decker lad’ from the Seven Dials, although Brown eventually admitted that he had been present at an earlier ‘combat’ between Fitzroy Place and Marylebone. Further questioning revealed that Brown had pawned his trousers shortly after the murder. Also suspicious was the way that Cleary and Brown had decided to go to the police together on the night of the 26th. According to Brown it was Cleary’s idea. Brown told the court:
He said, ‘Will you come up to the station with me and give information about the murder?’ It took us about five minutes to go to the station. We were not talking about the case on our way… we were talking about other things, but not a word about this case.
At the close of the prosecution evidence, it was clear that there was little tangible proof to show that anyone but Galletly and Lee knew of the knife. Following a submission by the defence, the judge Mr Justice Hawkins directed that Graefe, Henshaw, Govier, Doolan, Elvis and Cole should be found not guilty. Only Galletly and Lee remained. It was now up to the jury to decide whether or not Galletly had intended to kill or seriously injure Joseph Rumbold at the time of the attack. To find Lee guilty of murder, they would have to find that Lee had contemplated that his knife might be used to stab somebody and then encouraged its use.
It was almost 5 p.m. when the jury returned to convict Galletly of murder. They also tried to find Lee ‘guilty of being an accessory before the fact, and aiding and abetting’, but after being told by the judge that this amounted to murder, they changed their verdict to not guilty.
The clerk of the court then stood up to ask, ‘George Galletly, have you anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed on you?’
‘All I have got to say is that I only used the knife once,’ replied Galletly.
Unusually, Mr Justice Hawkins did not put on the black cap to pass the death sentence:
It is a painful thing to contemplate a lad of your age standing to receive sentence for a crime as cruel and brutal as it is possible to conceive. You and the gang who accompanied you found this unfortunate young man walking with a girl in Regent’s Park. He had done you no harm, had not wronged one of your party, but simply because you thought he lived in the district where some men resided who had insulted and outraged two of your comrades on the previous evening, you cruelly stabbed him twice, defenceless as he was.
‘Only once,’ interrupted Galletly.
You stabbed him once in the neck and once in the back and he died from the act of brutal and cruel violence on your part. For you, even a long life would be too short to pray for pardon for the great sin which you have committed and if it should be that He in the exercise of His duty – stern imperative duty – should see no reason to interfere with the due course of the law, then it would behove you to spend the time that remains to you in earnestly imploring forgiveness from the Almighty.155
Galletly’s execution was fixed for 24 August but on the 15th it was reported that the death sentence had been replaced with one of penal servitude for life.156
It only remained to sentence the remaining seven prisoners on their guilty pleas to the lesser charges of assault and unlawfully conspiring to assemble and commit a breach of the peace. Lee, the owner of the knife, and Govier, who was said to be the one who first grabbed Joseph Rumbold, received fifteen months’ hard labour; Henshaw nine months; Cole eight months; Graefe seven months; and Elvis and Doolan six months. ‘Your imprisonment will operate as a warning to others in the future not to be parties to such grievous outrages as those for which you have been convicted upon your own confession,’ said the judge.
On the same night that the verdicts were returned, there was another fight between the Marylebone and Fitzroy lads. Arthur Charlton, a sawyer from Somerstown, was confronted by a mob in Stanhope Street off Euston Road, knocked to the ground and repeatedly punched and kicked. Police arrested two of the attackers, Patrick Gorman, a twenty-two-year-old plasterer, and Henry Lee, the nineteen-year-old brother of the trial witness Emily Lee. When the case came to Marylebone Police Court, Lee explained that he had gone with his sister to collect their witness money from Albany Street police station. As they passed through Fitzroy Place they were approached by Charlton and asked how the trial had gone. When they told him the result he replied, ‘It served them right.’ But a few minutes later he reappeared with a gang of lads who began to attack them with belts. Emily Lee suffered a serious injury to her eye.
The magistrate had no sympathy for Lee’s story and sentenced both him and Gorman to two months’ hard labour, remarking that he hoped the punishment would ‘put a stop to this sort of ruffianism’.157
The Times welcomed the verdicts by dwelling on ‘the painful interest on the revelation which the trial gives of the thick stratum of barbarism underlying our civilisation’. London was ‘the theatre of systematic local feuds’ between rival gangs, each with its own ‘codes of fellowship’ that demanded retribution for an assault on one region by the other. The paper expounded that:
Ruffianism of this organised kind must be put down, even though the motive of it may be to punish attacks upon women, and attacks by the many upon the few. The only condition upon which life is possible in a great city is that feuds of the sort which have come to light in this trial should not be allowed to settle themselves by violence.158
By contrast, the liberal Pall Mall Gazette saw the Regent’s Park murder as proof that the police and particularly the Commissioner Sir Charles Warren were at fault. ‘The hoodlum and the larrikin of civilization is the standing difficulty of our sentimental age,’ it declared, in a report on ‘The Bandit Gangs of London’. Its list of gangs included those in Marylebone and Fitzroy Place, the Black Gang of Borough and the aptly named ‘Gang of Roughs’ from Norwood, as well as more unlikely sounding groups like ‘The Monkey Parade Gang’ of Whitechapel, and ‘The Jovial Thirty-Two’ of Upper Holloway. The report also portrayed Lisson Grove as an uncharted land of savages, much like Whitechapel. Groups of up to a dozen youths roamed about blocking pathways, yelling obscene and blasphemous abuse into the ears of women and children, and hung about with prostitutes. According to a local shopkeeper, they were thieves and blackguards, associates of ‘immoral women’ or members of the part-time militia (in fact most of the defendants in the trial were working men). They had no fear of the police and frequently got the better of them in street riots, it was claimed.
The Gazette had not forgiven Sir Charles Warren for Bloody Sunday, and took the chance to blame him for ‘this recrudescence of violence and ruffianism’ on the basis that he had stopped his officers from cracking down on brothels. It asserted that gang members were almost always pimps who worked with prostitutes to steal from the public. ‘Every one of these really disorderly houses is a centre and breeding ground of crime and indolence and dishonesty and violence,’ it concluded. ‘Need we wonder that disorder riots in our streets, when its nesting places are specially preserved by the order of the Chief Commissioner?’
The Regent’s Park murder also demonstrates that modern fears of teenage gangs, ‘postcode wars’ and knife crime are nothing new. Neither is the belief that society is at risk from spoilt children with no respect for authority. ‘A generation is growing up around us which has never been disciplined, either at home or at school,’ said the Gazette in 1888. ‘So they grow up like wild asses’ colts, and are the despair of law and order.’159