1. 4 Whitehall Place and its neighbour no. 5 were two highly respectable, three-storeyed buildings, formerly private houses, that were utilised by the police as offices.
2. After Robert Peel, although in the authors’ experience a century later this had switched to ‘John’ after the John Peel of the ‘Do you ken John Peel?’ hunting song.
3. David Ascoli, The Queen’s Peace. The Origin and Development of the Metropolitan Police 1829–1879, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1979, p. 273.
4. Browne, The Rise of Scotland Yard, 1956, p. 177.
5. This is a brief summary of his Masonic career as given by his grandson Watkin W. Williams in his biography The Life of General Sir Charles Warren. Warren was initiated in the Friendship Lodge, no. 278 (formerly no. 345) at Gibraltar in 1858, he was then 19 years old, and installed as master of the Lodge in 1863. He became a joining member of the Inhabitants Lodge, Gibraltar, no. 153 (formerly no. 178) in 1860, and was senior warden of that Lodge in 1862. His further progress in Masonry was as follows: Royal Arch, October 1861; mark master in the Gibraltar Lodge, no. 43, October 1861; Rose Croix, Europa Chapter, Gibraltar, November 1861; Knight Templar, 1863; Grand Elected Knight, K.H., 1879. He attained the rank of a grand lodge officer as a past grand deacon in 1887, and also became past grand sojourner in the Supreme Grand Chapter in the same year. He was district grand master of the Eastern Archipelago under the English Constitution from 1891 to 1895. The Charles Warren Lodge, no. 1832, was founded in his honour at Kimberley in 1879.
6. Warren, Underground Jerusalem, 1876, p. 168.
1. The title was thought appropriate as the new officers’ areas were larger than many towns and cities.
2. Margaret Harkness writing as ‘John Law’, In Darkest London: Captain Lobo, Salvation Army, London, 1889.
3. London, The People of the Abyss, 1903, p. 64.
4. From that time nos 4 and 5 Whitehall Place were left to the chief commissioner and his two assistants, Colonel Pearson, who was in charge of force discipline and Alexander Carmichael Bruce, who was in charge of civil business and matters connected with land, buildings, stores and provisions, and the Receiver, Mr Pennefather.
5. Porter, The Origins of the Vigilant State, 1987.
1. The title of local inspector was given to divisional detective inspectors, while that of divisional inspector was applied to uniformed inspectors.
1. The job of ‘knocker-up’ earned the police small perquisites. It involved the night beat officers in rousing workers who required an early call. Those who wanted an early ‘alarm call’ would visit the local police station and their names, addresses and the time for the call would be written down on a slate. The tips earned by doing this were very useful for the police but the practice was frowned upon by some senior officers who did not like the idea of their officers accepting money or performing ‘menial tasks’. The job was eventually taken over by enterprising gentlemen and looked upon as a ‘profession’.
2. Both authors were issued with capes and long overcoats when they joined the police force, and even then it was common for officers out on patrol to leave a heavy cape, or overcoat, with a nightwatchman or some other custodian if it was not needed.
3. Godley, then aged 30, was to remain on the Whitechapel murders inquiries and worked closely with Detective Inspector Abberline.
4. Now in a private collection.
1. The cat’s meat shop was run by Mrs Harriet Hardiman who slept on the premises with her 16-year-old son.
2. East London Observer, 15 September 1888.
3. At this time Chandler had fifteen years’ police service behind him. He was to retire ten years later.
4. At this time Swanson was aged 40 and had twenty years’ police service.
5. Mrs Long was also called Darrell in the newspapers which has caused confusion in various books over the years. The police file index entry HO 144/221/A49301C, f. 136 shows her as ‘Long Mrs. alias Durrell’.
6. Phillips was actually called at 6.20 and saw the body at 6.30.
7. 4.30 a.m.: Dr Phillips actually said ‘two or three hours earlier’ according to the same report.
8. For which see Geberth, Practical Homicide Investigation: Tactics, Procedures, and Forensic Techniques, 1996, pp. 215–17.
9. The Times, 14 September 1888.
10. Daily Telegraph, 14 September 1888.
11. The Times, 27 September 1888.
12. HO 144/221/A49301C, ff. 20–1.
13. In a report Warren sent to the Home Office on 19 September 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C, ff. 90–2.
14. See Daily Telegraph, 13 November 1888 and Police Orders, 3 November 1888.
15. The original document was in the hands of the Swanson family but is now believed lost.
16. In a conversation with Stewart Evans.
1. Presumably as a result of her surname, i.e. ‘Long Stride’.
2. Evidence that Stride stated she had had a quarrel with Kidney was given at the inquest by Catherine Lane, a fellow lodger at Flower and Dean Street.
3. The printing office was at the back of the club and was occupied at the time of the murder by the editor of Der Arbeiter Fraint (The Worker’s Friend), Philip Kranz, who heard nothing. Another inquest witness was William Wess, the overseer at the printing office. He left the yard at about 12.15 a.m. and had also seen nothing.
4. This would not be surprising because many marches and demonstrations started from the club. Interestingly, in March 1889, when Monro was commissioner, there was a fight outside the club involving between 200 and 300 people, one of whom was Diemschutz, who had found Stride’s body. According to one report, the police forced their way into the club, ‘broke windows, tore down pictures and posters and fell with their fists and batons upon a few of the comrades who happened to be there’. Diemschutz’s wife was thrown down ‘and kicked, others they beat until the blood streamed, three were dragged to the station, again beaten and then charged with assaulting the police’. The houses were searched twice and a loft door broken open.
5. Daily News, 1 October 1888.
6. Schwartz probably did not appear at the inquest because he spoke hardly any English and required an interpreter. The coroner had the authority to accept written statements in lieu of a witness actually appearing.
7. Some newspapers stated he was a Dane.
8. He was 38 according to the police record, but 35 according to The Times.
9. In 1888 Smith was only 26 years old and had 5 years’ service in the force.
10. The docket was the first paper given to a detective in any inquiry. It contained the bare facts and was ‘marked out’ to an inspector to allocate. As the papers relating to that inquiry built up, the initial docket remained with them and was tied up, labelled, catalogued, indexed and classified. In the case of an unsolved crime, the bundle of papers with the docket was stored for later retrieval if necessary.
1. Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 7 October 1888.
2. ‘Casual wards’ at local workhouses opened at 6 p.m. when a queue of destitute men and women would already be waiting to enter. As temporary residents of the workhouse they were asked if they had anywhere to sleep and when they replied in the negative they were allowed in. Men and women were separated, and men searched to see if they possessed more money than was allowed, usually 4d, or if they were concealing pipes, tobacco or matches on their person. After passing this check they had a compulsory bath and were then given a supper of a pint of gruel and bread. They were provided with a bed for the night. The next morning they received breakfast (the same fare as supper) and were then set to work, the women cleaning and washing, the men cleaning and oakum picking. They were required to work all day with only a break for a dinner of bread and cheese. In the evening they received another supper and were allocated a bed again. On the following morning, after a total of about 36 hours inside the workhouse, they were turned out on to the streets.
3. The severing of the nose may have been the murderer’s way of marking her as possibly syphilitic and a prostitute. Tertiary syphilis eats away the nose bone, leaving a hole in the face. Artificial noses could be bought in Whitechapel where prostitution was rife.
4. The difference between animal and human blood could not be distinguished until 1901. Blood grouping was unknown until 1905.
5. The inquest, presided over by the City Coroner Samuel Frederick Langham, was held at the City Mortuary in Golden Lane on 4 and 11 October.
6. Much has been made of the fact that Levy acted as a referee for Martin Kosminski (aged 43 and a furrier in 1888) in his application for British naturalisation in 1877; the implication being that Levy must have known the later-named suspect ‘Kosminski’. However, no family or other connection has ever been found between Martin Kosminski and Aaron Kosminski, who was incarcerated in an asylum in 1891.
7. The exact location of the message is uncertain. Warren indicated that it was on the entrance jamb, while other reports say it was on the black fascia inside the entrance. Arnold’s report indicated that it was written at shoulder height.
8. PC Long, who had only 4 years’ service in 1888, was dismissed from the force for being drunk on duty in July 1889. No doubt his brief on the night of the murder was to check all doorways as he patrolled but it is very likely that he failed to do so properly. Neglect of duty was a serious offence and he certainly would have said that he checked the doorway even if he hadn’t. Halse, when he rushed through Goulston Street looking for suspects, would have been taking little notice of debris on the ground or tiny chalkings on walls.
9. In the Littlechild letter to George R. Sims of 23 September 1913, now in the collection of Stewart Evans.
10. National Archives, Commissioner’s Letters File, MEPO 1/48.
11. Kate Webster was a notorious Victorian murderess. In 1879 she murdered her employer, Mrs Thomas, at Richmond and then impersonated her. She dismembered the body and partly boiled it before disposal. She was hanged on 29 July 1879.
1. HO 144/221/A49301C, ff. 163–70.
2. HO 144/221/A49301C f. 171.
1. Daily Telegraph, 2 October 1888.
2. Daily Telegraph, 3 October 1888.
3. Daily Telegraph, 4 September 1888.
4. Mansfield was born in Germany on 24 May 1854 of an English father and Russian mother. He moved to America with his mother (his father had died while Richard was still young) in the 1870s.
5. They were Le Grand and Batchelor of the Strand – see chapter 7.
6. Eliza Armstrong was the name of the young girl rescued from prostitution by W.T. Stead in 1885. This resulted in the ‘Modern Babylon’ scandal and the prosecution of Stead, who subsequently served a prison sentence.
7. See the Star, 19 October 1888.
8. This was stated in a letter from Lusk’s grandson, Leonard Archer, dated 16 April 1966, to the editor of the London Hospital Gazette.
1. The lodging house opposite the entrance to Miller’s Court was known as Commercial Street Chambers and was kept by the same Crossingham who owned the one at 35 Dorset Street, where Chapman had lodged. See the Sunday Times, 10 November 1888. The man seen by Sarah Lewis may well have been another witness, George Hutchinson.
2. This was the Britannia public house run by Mrs Ringer and situated at the north corner of Dorset Street at its junction with Commercial Street.
3. It was not until the Kelly murder that the police thought it advisable to take photographs of the scene and the body before it was moved, thus preserving a permanent record of the crime scene as it was discovered.
4. Because of Coroner Macdonald’s abrupt closure of the inquest, Dr Bagster Phillips had not been recalled to give evidence of all the wounds on Kelly’s body.
5. Australian researcher S. Gouriet Ryan has noted that this report appears to be in the hand of Bond’s assistant, Charles Hebbert. This indicates that Bond probably dictated at the scene while Hebbert made the notes.
6. Which is typically caused by bruising.
7. Old ‘tin’ kettles had the spout fixed on with solder, which had presumably melted resulting in the spout dropping off.
8. Hebbert was also curator of the Westminster Hospital Museum.
9. Richard von Krafft-Ebing, author of Psychopathia Sexualis, a medico-forensic study of sexual perversion first published in 1887.
10. An uncontrollable or excessive sexual desire in a man.
11. The guide for coroners, Crowner’s ‘quest Law, required that the nature of all wounds and the description of the weapon used, as well as the circumstances in which the injuries were inflicted, all be recorded. Macdonald’s action, apparently with the agreement of the police, was definitely incorrect and resulted in the lack of detail in the information on the Kelly murder that reached the public domain.
12. While the police were engaged in their formalities, securing the crime scene and investigating the use of the bloodhounds (which were not available), the local residents were allowed to be interviewed, and confused, by the press. Thus many of the statements appeared in the newspapers before witnesses were seen by detectives.
1. Dew, I Caught Crippen, 1938, p. 87.
2. Early in 1889 Abberline, a first-class inspector, moved on from heading the Whitechapel investigation and was replaced by his junior colleague, Inspector Henry Moore, who was not advanced to inspector first-class until December 1890. Both men retired in the rank of chief inspector, Abberline in 1892 and Moore in 1899.
3. It is interesting to note that during the Parnell Commission in March 1889 a query was raised as to whether Inspector Andrews, who had recently been in America, had seen the informant Le Caron before the Special Commission. He had not, but it does underline the possibility that Andrews’ North American trip was a three-fold ‘money saver’ for the Metropolitan Police (the Canadians paid his travelling expenses of £120), combining the return of the prisoner Barnett, an attempt to seek out Tumblety and inquiries relating to the Parnell/Fenian connections. See The Times, 22 March 1889.
4. HO 144/221/A49301C ff. 4–6.
1. The presence of these doctors is another indicator that this was initially perceived as a possible Ripper murder.
2. Police Orders show that George Frederick Farr of Slade House, 175 Kennington Road, had replaced Bond in this position as of 14 November 1888.
3. See also chapters 14 and 15.
4. All dismembered body cases.
5. New York Herald (London edition), 11 September 1889.
6. Tom Merry was the pen-name of British artist, cartoonist, caricaturist and performer William Mecham (1853–1902) whose main work was the large centre-spread political cartoons in St Stephen’s Review. He also gave ‘Lightning Cartoon’ presentations on the music hall stage and was filmed during four separate performances. He died suddenly at Benfleet Station, Essex, on 21 August 1902 aged 49 years.
1. Lushington was permanent under-secretary at the Home Office.
2. MEPO 3/140, ff. 97–108.
3. Daily Telegraph, 18 February 1891.
4. Morning Advertiser, Monday 16 February 1891.
5. Richardson, From the City to Fleet Street, 1927, pp. 277–9.
1. HO 144/221/A49301C, f. 117.
2. HO 144/221/A49301C, f. 167.
3. Pall Mall Gazette, 4 November 1889, article by American journalist R. Harding Davis.
4. Cassell’s Saturday Journal, 28 May 1892.
5. Cassell’s Saturday Journal, 11 June 1892.
6. Catherine Eddowes gave her name to the police as Mary Ann Kelly so we must assume that Arnold does not mean Mary Jane Kelly, the Dorset Street victim.
7. Eastern Post and City Chronicle, 3 February 1893.
8. This is interesting as, of the three suspects then named by Macnaghten, the first comment applies to M.J. Druitt and the second to Kosminski, two suspects given as better alternatives to the asylum detainee, suggested by the press. Macnaghten actually preferred the Druitt theory, while Anderson, apparently, preferred the Kosminski theory. But as Macnaghten observes, ‘no shadow of proof could be thrown on any one’.
9. Thomas Hayne Cutbush was a 29-year-old asylum detainee who was claimed to be Jack the Ripper in a series of articles in the Sun newspaper in February 1894.
10. Although Montague John Druitt’s father was a surgeon, he himself was a barrister and teacher, aged 31, who committed suicide by drowning in the Thames. The nature of Macnaghten’s ‘private inf.’ is not known and it is solely on Macnaghten’s word that his status as a suspect rests.
11. MEPO 3/140 ff. 177–83.
12. Windsor Magazine, vol. VI, Jan.–Jun. 1895, Griffiths writing under the pen-name ‘Alfred Aylmer’.
13. Pall Mall Gazette, 7 May 1895. It seems that most other reports referred to Grainger as William Grant.
14. Griffiths, Mysteries of Police and Crime, 1898, pp. 28–9.
15. The Nineteenth Century, February 1901.
16. Pall Mall Gazette, 24 March 1903.
17. The asylum inmate Aaron Kosminski was found by author Martin Fido during pioneering asylum records research for his 1987 book The Crimes, Detection & Death of Jack the Ripper.
18. Thomson’s Weekly News, 1 December 1906.
19. Daily Chronicle, 1 September 1908, front page.
20. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, March 1910.
21. Globe, 7 March 1910.
22. Morning Advertiser, 23 April 1910.
23. Indeed, the first suggestion of Anderson’s theory was in Griffiths’ piece in the Windsor Magazine in 1895.
24. People, 9 June 1912.
25. Adam, The Police Encyclopaedia, 1912, vol. i, pp. xi–xii.
26. Daily Mail, 2 June 1913.
27. The Littlechild letter of 23 September 1913 to George R. Sims (private collection).
28. Writer Douglas G. Browne’s works included short stories, novels and non-fiction. The original author of The Rise of Scotland Yard, Ralph Straus, was a friend of Browne’s but he died in the early stages of writing the book. Straus had reached the year 1850 and the work was continued by Browne. Both he and Straus received the generous help of the Metropolitan Police authorities in researching the book and were granted access to certain closed police records.
1. Sugden, The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, 2002, pp. 421–3.
2. Begg, Fido and Skinner, The Jack the Ripper A–Z, 1996, p. 23.
3. Adam, C.I.D.: Behind the Scenes at Scotland Yard, 1931, pp. 9–10.
4. Adam, C.I.D.: Behind the Scenes at Scotland Yard, 1931, pp. 12–13.
5. Anderson, The Lighter Side of My Official Life, 1910, p. 144.
6. Adam, Woman and Crime, 1914.
7. Adam, C.I.D.: Behind the Scenes at Scotland Yard, 1931, p. 14.
8. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, March 1910, p. 358.
9. Anderson, The Lighter Side of My Official Life, 1910, p. 138.
10. Swanson’s use of the words ‘where he had been sent by us’ appears to indicate that he was not at the identification (assuming that it occurred as described), otherwise he would surely have written ‘where we had taken him’.
11. Aaron Kosminski died in Leavesden Asylum on 24 March 1919 of gangrene of the left leg.
12. It was still generally referred to as ‘the Seaside Home’ when the present authors joined the police service in the 1960s.
13. See reports in the People, Sunday 1 March 1891.
14. However, recent research by author Alan Sharp has revealed that Anderson’s father Matthew, former Crown Solicitor for Dublin, died aged 85 years at his residence, Knapton House, Kingstown, Ireland, on 11 October 1888. Anderson travelled to Ireland on 13 October and attended the funeral. He then returned to London on the 17th. The house-to-house search was conducted between the 9th and the 18th.
15. MEPO 3/140 ff. 177–83.
16. Guardian, 7 October 1972.
17. Over the years many writers have erroneously referred to Mitre Square as Mitre Court. There were Mitre Courts off Fleet Street (City), Hatton Garden (Holborn) and Milk Street (Cheapside), so the mistake is, perhaps, understandable.
18. Anderson, The Lighter Side of My Official Life, p. 146.
1. For example, Begg, Fido and Skinner, The Jack the Ripper A–Z, 1996, p. 300.
2. It has been argued that Mrs Long could not have identified Chapman from a brief look and that Chapman’s appearance would have altered in death. However, the sighting was in near daylight and as we can see from the photograph of Chapman at about the time of her marriage she has distinctive features and is easily recognisable as the woman portrayed in the mortuary shot.
3. HO 144/221/A49301C ff. 162–70.
1. The Maybrick case was a great cause célèbre of 1889. It immediately followed the recognised 1888 Ripper murders and actually overlapped with the killing of Alice McKenzie in July 1889 when both crimes appeared in the press. Thus, over the years, these two cases have often been mentioned side by side in crime books which may have contributed to the idea that James Maybrick was ‘Jack the Ripper’.
2. This was first brought into prominence in late 1988 in a US television programme, The Secret Identity of Jack the Ripper (Cosgrove-Muerer Productions, Los Angeles) which, oddly enough, was not broadcast in Britain although it was later available as a commercial video recording. It was hosted by Peter Ustinov and featured a panel of experts that included FBI profilers Roy Hazelwood and John Douglas.
3. Larkins was well known to the police for his ‘Portuguese cattle-men’ Ripper theory and especially annoyed Anderson who referred to him as ‘a troublesome busybody’. His complex and unlikely theory was self-published as an impressively bound red-cloth, gilt-titled quarto book, a copy of which is preserved in the Royal London Hospital Museum archives.
4. More probably Bellsmith.
5. The original ‘From hell’ letter is now missing but there is a Victorian photograph of it preserved in the collection of Ripper-related material held at the Royal London Hospital Museum archives.