The Jack the Ripper Location Photographs: Dutfield's Yard and the Whitby Collection (8 page)

All this detective work came to fruition when, much later in the album, I found the (now empty) page that had once held the missing photograph of the actor Anton Lang. In very faded ink at the bottom of the page was the words ‘Anton Lang, Christus of Oberammergau Passion Play 1900’. Lang, a potter, was almost certainly the best-known of all the many actors who have played the role of Christ at the world-famous German event, consisting of a cast of local people, over the many years it has taken place. He played the role several times in the early 20th century in 1900, 1910 and 1922. Thus the date of 1900 was virtually confirmed.

Anton Lang

The Album
The album containing the photographs is now extremely fragile. It measures 8” x 6.5” x 1.25”. The cover is very brittle and is made of board, backed with a white cotton weave and fronted with a dark brown knobbled and textured veneer. The spine is missing but traces of the same veneer still exist where it once lay. It is held together with three round-headed pins on the front face of the album. The back has warped and appears to have some water damage. A label is affixed to the bottom left corner of the inside back page, reading ‘MFD BY THE HEINN SPECIALITY CO. MILWAUKEE, WIS. BADGER ALBUMS’, with the number ‘642’ stamped in red ink in a small cartouche beneath. The whole album gives off a curious strong scent of sherbet.

The front of the photograph album

The Heinn label in the album

The paper inside, cream but yellowing with age, is dry, thick and textured, similar to the paper one would find in a scrapbook today. The binding is still tight in spite of the damage to the album. It consisted of 82 pages and only the last 12 pages are unused. The last nine photographs clearly date to a later period than the rest of the album, as they are all postcard-style, on card with white borders. The last nine images are also American in origin, whereas all the other images (save the first in the album) were taken throughout Europe.

Reconstruction of the album was a slow process. Thankfully, nearly all the images from the European tour had explanatory notes (sometimes extensive) on the pages if the photograph had been removed. All matched with tears on the paper or with an explanation of the subject. Once these had been grouped and reglued, the loose pages were replaced in their original locations. This could only be achieved by comparison of the tears close to the binding and on the pages themselves. Thankfully, all of them had slight deviations which made accurate matching easier.

Once this process was completed, it was discovered that only one sheet of the album was missing. That sheet was the page from which the Horseguards image had come. There was no sign of the image that would have once been affixed to the other side of the sheet and this initially gave rise to some curiosity. The preceding images had come from the photographer’s time in London, and the next complete sheet continued in Ireland. Was the missing image a London photograph and, if so, did it have a connection to the Whitechapel Murders? Such possibilities were brought to an end when, in early 2009, Larry discovered the missing image and forwarded it to me – a street scene in Dublin.

This made a total of 58 remaining photographs of the European section of the album. The photographs were all centred on their pages and appeared to largely (but not exclusively) be in some kind of order, generally grouped by country – and there were many countries covered. Most of the images had taken on a strange yellow-purple-brown tint over the years. Silver gelatine prints are known to be unstable and liable to alter their hues, sometimes fading completely. Indeed, several of the prints in the album had faded a great deal, whereas others retained their full tonal range in spite of the general colour shift. Thankfully, the important photograph falls into the second category.

The photographs were on thin photographic paper and all appeared to have been carefully cut by hand, mostly being of slightly different sizes. Initially, I had suspected that the photographs had previously been kept in a different album with apertures for viewing the images as many of the photos had thin lines of the print flaked off a little way from the edges. I later discovered that each section of damage corresponded exactly with the placing of the print on the page next to it. This is because the photographs were originally glued on their backs right up to the edges and small amounts of adhesive had clearly seeped over the rear face of the photographs and touched the front of whatever was placed on top of, or below, it. Sadly, this also affected the main photograph in the series and it took a great deal of work with editing software to repair these faults. The tiny flakes pulled from the image in antiquity are still affixed to a photograph of St James’s Park on the opposite page. Unfortunately, the Dutfield’s Yard image appears to have suffered more damage in this way than any other photograph in the album.

Detail of damage to the Dutfield’s Yard photograph

It is generally agreed by all who have seen the photographs that they were taken with an early Box Brownie, with a fixed length lens. All the images are clear and sharp except when subjects are very close (two metres or less) from the camera.

Authentica
tion of the Image
Initially, I informed a small circle of Ripper and East End historians known to me personally about the possible discovery. The work of some, most notably my co-author on
The London of Jack the Ripper Then and Now,
Robert Clack, and Jake Luukanen was to prove extremely useful.

Dutfield’s Yard, circa 11:30 am, late June – early July 1900
(Photographic restoration 2008-9 © Philip Hutchinson)

The same spot today

Firstly, I had to work out why this alleyway looked a great deal longer than we know Dutfield’s Yard to have been. It quickly became obvious. The individuals were not lining the alleyway at all, but most of them were standing at the entrance and well into the road of Berner Street itself. This instantly made sense because of the change in the direction of the setts on the floor and, most tellingly, shadows cast by the first half-dozen people on the left. If they had been standing inside the yard, backs against the wall, these shadows would not have been cast. Indeed, a solid shadow runs right across the yard just beyond here. Thus, three people were standing where the pavement breaks to allow vehicular access and three actually in the main road. The photographer would have been closer to the other side of Berner Street than the side being photographed. At the bottom left, there are two further shadows of people not seen in the photograph, forever immortalised as no more than silhouettes. Researcher Neil Bell has estimated from these shadows that the photograph was taken at approximately 11:30 am. It is likely to have been sometime close to the middle of the year because, although the males are largely suited as was the fashion, the girls and women are not generally wearing coats, shawls or jackets.

Having established the date as 1900, the next step was to confirm with other researchers that this was indeed Dutfield’s Yard. Firstly, there was the issue of the single doorway on the right hand side, when some illustrations show a series of doors. This was easily explained away as artistic errors. It is known from maps and descriptions that there was but one doorway into the building on this side. Illustrations, later erroneously repeated, marked the numerous windows as being doorways. It always was, of course, extremely unlikely that there would be a whole series of irrelevant doors right next to each other down the length of the building. Next, there was the issue of the staircase and doorway at the end of the yard, placed next to the left-hand corner. Whenever they were shown in illustrations, they had been on the right-hand side. Inspection of Goad’s fire insurance maps quickly confirmed that the illustrations were all wrong, and the staircase and doorway had always been where they appeared in the photo. Finally, it was understood that at the time of the Stride murder, the alleyway had been largely unpaved and was muddy. Indeed, one side of Stride’s body was found to have mud on it where she had been dropped in a gutter. Why do we see it paved here? Well, the meeting place of the International Workers’ Educational Club (the building at the rear with the many windows) was deemed unsafe by the Buildings Inspector in 1892 and it is probable that the shoring of the building (spanning the top of the photograph) and the paving date from this time. The three lengths of rope hanging from the forward beam, terminating at least 10’ above the ground, are less easy to explain.