The Worst Street in London: Foreword by Peter Ackroyd (15 page)

According to Pearly Poll, she and Martha had picked up two soldiers on the night of the murder. One was a corporal, the other a private. She did not know what regiment they belonged to but remembered they both had white bands around their caps. The foursome spent a short amount of time together and then each couple went their separate ways. Pearly Poll took her man up Angel Alley but did not know where Martha was planning to take her conquest. Either the soldiers never told the women what their names were or Pearly Poll had decided not to divulge them.

Spurred on by this new and important witness, the police hurriedly set up an identification parade at the Tower of London (the closest barracks to Spitalfields). In the line-up were all privates and corporals who were on leave on the night of the murder and the police were optimistic that they would secure a positive identification of at least one of the men. They were however to be disappointed. Pearly Poll decided not to turn up for the first parade and it took two days and the involvement of the CID before she was found. A second parade was organised and this time Pearly Poll did show up, but immediately discounted all the soldiers because they didn’t have a white band around their caps.

Undaunted, the police tracked the uniform Pearly Poll described to the Wellington Barracks and organised another parade. This time Pearly Poll picked out two men. However, the two soldiers she identified had cast-iron alibis for the night of the murder. The police were back to square one and their unreliable witness fled to Dorset Street where she disappeared into one of the many overcrowded, anonymous lodging houses, never to be heard of again apart from a brief appearance at the inquest. Left with no clue, no motive and no other witnesses, the murder inquiry ground to a halt and the inquest jury were forced to return a verdict of wilful murder against some person, or persons unknown.

Pity the police of H Division. Not only did they have to contend with law enforcement of a district renowned for its lawlessness, they now had two unsolved, and particularly violent, murders to deal with. At a time when forensic science was in its infancy, the chances of bringing a murderer to justice when there were no witnesses and no clues left at the scene of the crime were virtually nil. But their already difficult and frustrating job was about to get worse. Much worse.

On 31 August, less than four weeks after the Tabram murder, a carman named Charles Cross was on his way to work along Buck’s Row, just off the Whitechapel Road, when he noticed something lying across a gateway that looked like tarpaulin. As he got closer, he realised it was the body of a woman. As Cross approached the body, he was joined by another carman named Robert Paul who was also on his way to work. The two men knelt down by the body to get a closer look. It was still dark and difficult to see. Cross felt the woman’s hand, which was cold and told Paul, ‘I believe she is dead’. Paul put his hand over her heart and thought he could detect breathing, albeit very shallow.

After deciding against moving the body, the two men went to get help and soon found PC Mizen on his beat in nearby Baker’s Row. The three men returned to Buck’s Row and found another policeman, PC Neil, already there. PC Neil felt the woman’s arm and noticed that it was still quite warm above the elbow, suggesting that the woman had not been dead long. Indeed, there was a very slim chance that she was still alive. Dr Llewellyn, who lived nearby on the Whitechapel Road, was fetched without further ado and came immediately. However, by the time he arrived, whatever little life may have been left in the woman was now extinguished and she was pronounced dead.

While arrangements were being made to move the body to the mortuary, PC Neil went to the nearby Essex Wharf to ask if anyone there had heard any sort of disturbance. No one had.

The woman’s body was taken on an ambulance (in those days, a stretcher on wheels) to the mortuary, where Inspector Spratling from H Division took a description of the deceased and then began a thorough examination of the body in an attempt to find a clue to the perpetrator. As he lifted up the woman’s skirts he made the most horrific discovery. The woman had been disembowelled.

Inspector Spratling’s discovery made it clear that the murder was unlikely to be the result of a domestic dispute or a disagreement over payment for services rendered. Poor Martha Tabram’s injuries had been horrific enough, but they paled in comparison to the damage inflicted on the latest victim.

Understandably convinced that no one could be disembowelled on a London street without anyone noticing, the police began an exhaustive search of the area surrounding the murder site. PC Thain was sent to examine all the premises close by while Inspector Spratling and Sergeant Godley searched the nearby railway embankments and lines and also the Great Eastern Railway yard. As with the two previous murder sites, nothing that looked even remotely like a clue could be found. Stranger still, no one in this densely populated part of the metropolis seemed to have seen or heard anything untoward. A policeman who had been on duty at the gate of the Great Eastern Railway yard, only about 50 yards away from where the body was found, had neither seen nor heard anything suspicious.

Emma Green, who lived opposite the murder site and was awake at the estimated time of the murder hadn’t heard any sound. Neither had Mrs Purkis, a neighbour who had also been awake since the early hours of the morning. The employees of Barber’s slaughter-yard, a mere 150 yards away from the murder site, had neither seen nor heard anything that could be described as unusual or suspicious. Even the police, who were still reeling from having to deal with the violent death of Martha Tabram, had failed to notice anyone or anything that might be connected with the terrible, savage attack.

With no witnesses and no clues left at the scene of the crime, the police turned their attention to the victim’s identity, in the hope that it might help them catch her murderer. Items of her clothing bore the mark of the Lambeth Workhouse so the police made enquiries at this establishment and found out that the woman’s name was Mary Ann Nichols, commonly known as Polly.

Polly’s story echoed that of Martha Tabram. She had been married to a man named William Nichols, a machine printer, for some years. However Polly developed alcoholism and in consequence, the couple split up about nine years before she died. To begin with, her husband paid her an allowance but in 1882, he discovered she was working as a prostitute and so the payments stopped.

From that time on, Polly drifted through various workhouses throughout London until 12 May 1888, when she was offered a position below stairs at a house in Wandsworth. This new job, which later turned out to be Polly’s last opportunity to get her life back on track, did not work out and on 12 July, she absconded from the house, taking £3-worth of clothing with her. Like so many of her kind, Polly then found herself in the rookeries of Spitalfields, taking nightly beds at common lodging houses in Thrawl Street and Flower and Dean Street.

On the night of 30 August, Polly was seen plying her trade on the Whitechapel Road, a popular haunt of streetwalkers. At around midnight, she visited the Frying Pan public house in Brick Lane for some liquid refreshment and then visited one of her preferred lodging houses at 18 Thrawl Street where she tried to secure a bed for the night unsuccessfully on account of the fact that she had spent all her money in the pub. The last time Polly was seen by anyone who knew her was at approximately 2.30am on the morning of 31 August when her friend and fellow lodger Ellen Holland encountered her on the corner of Osborn Street; pretty much the exact spot where Emma Smith had been fatally assaulted four months previously. Ellen Holland found Polly to be very drunk but determined to obtain the money for her bed and the two women parted company. Polly set off in the direction of Bucks Row. Just over an hour later, she was dead.

The police were once again baffled regarding both the killer and the motive. Polly had no money, so it was inconceivable that she was the victim of a violent robbery and all her friends and family said she was an affable person who had no enemies.

Clutching at straws, the police re-interviewed anyone who they considered to be the slightest bit suspicious. Suspects included workers at the nearby slaughterhouse in Winthrop Street and an odd character named John Piser, commonly known as ‘Leather Apron’. Piser was well known among the Spitalfields prostitutes’ fraternity because he regularly tried to blackmail the women and would assault them if they didn’t comply with his requests. The press, who by now were beginning to see the opportunities for increased circulation in reporting on the murders, leapt on the Piser story and virtually convicted the man before he had even been interviewed by police.

Not surprisingly, Piser went to ground and when police eventually found him (on 10 September) it turned out that he had a cast-iron alibi for the night of the Nichols murder. The police were back to square one, this time with the added problem of unwanted attention from the press. Polly Nichols’ inquest did not shed any further light on either murderer or motive, despite interviewing virtually anyone who had any sort of connection with the murder. The jury was forced to reach a verdict of ‘wilful murder against some person or persons unknown’ for the third time in little over four months.

The three murders that had occurred in Spitalfields during the first eight months of 1888 had brought a lot of unwelcome attention to the lodging houses and furnished rooms of the area. So far, most attention had been given to the residents of George Street, Thrawl Street and Flower and Dean Street because they were the roads in which the victims had resided prior to their untimely deaths. Consequently, the residents of Dorset Street had gone relatively undisturbed. Landlords McCarthy and Crossingham were no doubt relieved that this was the case as they would have benefited from the relocation of erstwhile residents of the victims’ lodgings who were keen to avoid police interest at all costs. This is not to say however, that anyone who avoided the police did so because they were involved in the murders.

On the contrary, although Spitalfields was notorious for its lawlessness, murder (particularly that of a woman) was rare. The tenants of the lodging houses, although considered the lowest of the low by the chattering classes, were no doubt horrified that such violence was being perpetrated on their doorstep. In addition to this, their livelihoods were threatened by the murders; since the murder of Polly Nichols, the police were more vigilant than they had ever been before, thus making the crimes of theft and burglary more difficult. The prostitutes’ job had become fraught with danger too and the women were more wary of strangers, until they were too drunk or desperate for a bed to care.

Throughout August 1888, Crossingham and McCarthy reaped the benefits of the migration away from the east side of Commercial Street, blissfully ignorant of the fact that within a matter of days, they too would become embroiled in what the press had now christened the ‘Whitechapel Murders’.

At about 2am on 8 September, Timothy Donovan, the deputy in charge of William Crossingham’s lodging house at 35 Dorset Street was visited by one of his regular lodgers. Annie Chapman (otherwise known as Siffey) was 45 years old. Like Martha Tabram and Polly Nichols before her, she had left her husband at the beginning of the 1880s, the break-up being precipitated by her addiction to alcohol. Since that time, Annie had wandered aimlessly through life (unknowingly with a potentially fatal disease of the brain) until she found herself on the streets of Spitalfields. Timothy Donovan was well acquainted with Annie. According to him, she had been working as a prostitute for well over a year and had become a regular at 35 Dorset Street some four months previously.

Annie’s reason for seeing Donovan on the 8th was to try to blag a bed for the night, despite the fact that she had no money to pay for it. Donovan was well used to pleas for mercy such as this and refused. However, he did allow her to have a rest in the communal kitchen before resuming her hunt for punters. As she left, Annie told him not to let the bed as she would be back soon. It was the last time Donovan saw her alive.

About four hours after Annie had left Crossingham’s lodging house, John Davis stepped out of the back door of a crowded, terraced house he shared at 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields and got the shock of his life. Lying at the bottom of the back steps was the body of a woman. Fearing the worst, Davis stumbled back through the house and out into Hanbury Street where he found two men on their way to work at Bailey’s packing case factory, which was situated a few doors away. The two men followed Davis down the side passage of the house, took one look at the body and immediately went to fetch a policeman, telling several colleagues about their gruesome discovery on the way.

The men ran up Hanbury Street and soon found Inspector Joseph Chandler, who was on duty in Commercial Street. Inspector Chandler returned to the yard with the men. He found quite a few neighbours and passers-by loitering in the passage, but thankfully, all of them seemed too scared to approach the body in the yard. Seeing that the woman was either dead or dying, Inspector Chandler wasted no time in sending for the Divisional Surgeon, Dr Bagster Phillips, who lived in Spital Square.

Once the doctor was on site, it became obvious that the woman had been violently and ruthlessly assaulted. Her throat was deeply cut and she had been disembowelled, just the same as Polly Nichols. Unlike Nichols however, her internal organs had been savagely hacked and strewn around her corpse. Following a closer examination, it was found that some organs, including her womb and part of her bladder, were missing, presumably taken away as trophies by the murderer.

Still reeling from the shock of this latest brutal slaying, the police set about attempting to identify and apprehend the perpetrator, hoping they would meet with considerably more success than last time. They interviewed all the residents of number 29 Hanbury Street and searched their rooms. When nothing incriminating was found, they widened their search to the surrounding houses and sent officers to all common lodging houses in the area to find out if any of the deputies had admitted anyone that morning who either looked suspicious or was acting strangely. Again, nothing. Usual suspects were rounded up and interviewed, prostitutes were questioned, statements were examined and re-examined. Nothing yielded any clue. The Whitechapel Murderer had claimed another victim. And this time, Dorset Street was right in the thick of the police enquiry.