The Worst Street in London: Foreword by Peter Ackroyd (16 page)

Reasoning that it was probably best to be entirely cooperative with the police on this occasion, William Crossingham sent his deputy, Tim Donovan and his doorman (a man named John Evans), along to Annie Chapman’s inquest with the instruction to be as helpful as possible.

Both men were questioned by the coroner and they agreed that it was inconceivable that anyone would want to harm Annie in such a vicious and horrific way. Donovan stated that he had never experienced any trouble with Annie and believed her to be on friendly terms with all the other lodgers at 35 Dorset Street. Evans was slightly less complimentary, saying that Annie had fought with another woman in the kitchen of the lodging house on the previous Thursday. That said, he had never heard anyone threaten Annie and was not aware that she was afraid of anyone. Various other witnesses were called, including policemen, residents of Hanbury Street and people who admitted to being in the street on the night of the murder. None of their testimonies revealed any incriminating evidence and once again, the inquest jury were forced to agree on the verdict ‘wilful murder against some person or persons unknown’.

While the police were tearing their hair out trying to capture the murderer or murderers, the press were having a field day. Spitalfields, with its gross overcrowding and its volatile mix of cultures and ethnicities had long since been in a state of crisis. The appearance of the ‘Whitechapel Murderer’ had brought things to boiling point. The impoverished Huguenots blamed the Irish. The Irish blamed the Jews. The Jews (most of whom were relatively new to the area) kept their heads down and hoped to goodness it wasn’t one of them.

The press fed off this mutual distrust and began publishing salacious stories concerning the murders, many of which were pure fantasy. A common theory was that an Englishman could never have committed such heinous crimes. Therefore, it was a foreigner that was to blame.
The Star
even went so far as to name John Piser (who was Jewish) as the killer. This frankly stupid move almost resulted in a costly legal battle for
The Star
when Piser quite understandably threatened to sue.

Rightly or wrongly, the police withheld a lot of information from the press and consequently, journalists began to speculate rather than report hard facts. Assuming the police were looking for just one man, the newspapers began to paint a disturbing picture of a spectral monster with an insatiable bloodlust who roamed the streets of Spitalfields searching for his prey. The fact that his victims were prostitutes gave journalists another angle and numerous valedictory articles appeared on the dismal plight of the fallen woman.

The spectral image of the murderer also gave rise to a number of press reports with a supernatural theme, the most famous being the myth that the image of the murderer was preserved, like a photograph, on the pupils of the victims’ eyes.

This sensational style of reporting resulted in the residents of Spitalfields developing a morbid fascination for the dreadful crimes that were being perpetrated in their midst. As a subscriber to the
East London Observer,
Jack McCarthy kept himself up-to-date with the press’s take on events. Meanwhile, his tenants in 13 Miller’s Court also read the newspaper reports. Mary Kelly was no doubt greatly relieved that as long as she stayed with Joe Barnett, she wouldn’t have to take her chances on the streets.

Annie Chapman’s murder had brought things much closer to home. Chapman had been a long term resident of Dorset Street. Prior to her moving into Crossingham’s lodging house at number 35, she had regularly stayed at McCarthy’s lodgings at number 30. Therefore it is inconceivable that she was unknown to the McCarthy family and highly likely that she was acquainted with Mary Kelly and Joe Barnett. Annie Chapman was not some unknown, washed up unfortunate. She was a real person, possibly even a friend. As they read through the newspaper reports and dodged the increasing number of journalists that prowled Dorset Street for good copy, McCarthy, Crossingham and their tenants must have longed for the day that the miserable street they called home ceased to be front-page news on virtually every newspaper in Britain. That day would be a long time coming.

Three weeks after the murder of Annie Chapman, at 1am on the morning of 30 September, Louis Diemshutz drove his pony and coster barrow down Berner Street, just off the Commercial Road in Whitechapel. He was making for the yard of International Working Men’s Educational Club, where he stored his goods. As Diemshutz turned to go through the gates by the side of the club, his pony shied to the left. Although it was very dark in the yard, Diemshutz looked down to his right to see what was obstructing the pony’s way and saw a shape on the ground. Unable to make out what it was, he tentatively poked it with his whip, and then when it didn’t move, he got down and lit a match.

The wind blew the match out almost immediately, but Diemshutz had enough time to see that the object on the ground was a woman, presumably in a state of inebriation. He went into the club and emerged again with a candle. This time, he could see that the woman was not simply drunk. There was blood. Wasting no time, Diemshutz went off to find a policeman. At first his search proved fruitless despite him shouting as loud as he could and he returned to the yard with another man he had met on the street. This man knelt down to look at the woman and gently lifted her head. It was then that to their horror, the two men realised her throat had been cut.

Eventually, Constable Henry Lamb was found on the Commercial Road and soon the police found themselves conducting yet another murder enquiry. The visitors to the Working Men’s Club were interviewed, as were neighbours and passers-by. Once again, absolutely no clue was to be found, but this time, there was apparently a witness.

Israel Schwartz happened to be walking down Berners Street towards the Working Men’s Club about a quarter of an hour before Louis Diemshutz arrived with his pony and barrow. As he approached the yard, Schwartz saw a man stop and speak to a woman who was standing in the gateway. He then watched as the man grabbed the woman and tried to pull her into the street. When she wouldn’t move, he turned and threw her onto the ground. The woman screamed, though not very loudly.

Not wishing to become embroiled in what seemed to be a domestic dispute, Schwartz crossed over the road and while doing so, noticed a second man standing a short distance ahead of him lighting his pipe. The man who had thrown the woman to the ground then called out, apparently to alert the man with the pipe of Schwartz’s presence. Alarmed at this rather strange series of events, Schwartz quickened his pace in order to get away from the scene but to his dismay, found that the man with the pipe was following him. Now quite afraid, Schwartz broke into a run but thankfully, the man did not follow him far.

Israel Schwartz’s story was the biggest lead the police had received to date and they wasted no time in taking him to the mortuary where he identified the dead woman as the one he had seen outside the yard. He also gave detailed descriptions of the two men he saw: the first man was aged about 30, approximately 5’5” in height, with dark hair and a fair complexion. He had a small brown moustache, was broad-shouldered and had been wearing a black cap with a peak. The second man was about five years older than the first and about six inches taller. He had light brown hair and was wearing an old, black felt hat with a wide brim. The police immediately circulated the description of the first man to their officers. Strangely, they discounted the second man and no attempt seems to have been made to find him.

In addition to finding themselves a possible witness, the police also managed to identify the murdered woman. Her name was Elizabeth Stride, although she was commonly referred to as ‘Long Liz’, seemingly a reference to her face-shape, as she was not a particularly tall woman. She was about 38 years old and was originally from Sweden. Interestingly, Liz had more than one thing in common with the previous victims. In addition to being a prostitute, she favoured two lodging houses more than any others. One was in Flower and Dean Street (number 32) and the other was at number 38 Dorset Street – one of Jack McCarthy’s properties and just three doors down from the lodgings used by Annie Chapman. As the police searched in vain for clues, a pattern seemed to be slowly forming, the epicentre of which appeared to be Dorset Street.

Although they feared that Elizabeth Stride had fallen victim to the ‘Whitechapel Murderer’, the police were puzzled that her body had not been mutilated. Some surmised that her killer had been disturbed by Diemshutz’s pony and barrow. Indeed it was quite likely that the killer had still been at large while Diemshutz was in the pitch-black yard and had only made his escape when he went inside the club to get a candle. A disturbing thought, especially for Louis Diemshutz. However, within a matter of hours, it became glaringly obvious that Elizabeth Stride’s killer had indeed been disturbed and he had left Berner Street to stalk prey elsewhere.

As Elizabeth Stride was being savagely attacked in Berner Street, a 43-year-old woman named Catherine Eddowes left Bishopsgate Police Station and walked down the street towards Houndsditch. Catherine had been locked up in the police cells at the station for a few hours after being found extremely drunk and rather amusingly impersonating a fire engine on Aldgate High Street. Seeing that she was temporarily incapable of looking after herself, the police decided to put her in a cell until she was sober enough to get herself home. By 1am the next morning, she had sobered up sufficiently to give the desk sergeant a false name and address (Mary Ann Kelly of 6 Fashion Street) and was allowed to go. As the gaoler let her out of the station, Catherine asked him what the time was. When he told her it was 1am, Catherine responded by telling him that she would get ‘a damned fine hiding when I get home’.

But Catherine never did go home. Although she began walking in the direction of the lodgings that she shared with her lover, John Kelly in Flower and Dean Street, she then changed direction and headed east, back towards the spot where she had been arrested.

At about 1.30am, Joseph Lawende and his friends Joseph Levy and Harry Harris, left the Imperial Club in Duke Street, a short distance away from Aldgate High Street. As they passed a small passage that lead to a quiet backwater called Mitre Square, Lawende noticed a man and a woman standing in the shadows. The woman had placed her hand on the man’s chest. Thinking nothing of it, Lawende and his two companions continued their journey.

Less than a quarter of an hour later, PC Edward Watkins walked into Mitre Square on his usual beat and discovered the body of a woman who had been savagely attacked. Her throat had been cut, her face disfigured and her skirts were drawn up round her waist, revealing the fact that she had been disembowelled. Watkins raced over to a nearby warehouse to call for help. Catherine Eddowes had become the Ripper’s penultimate victim.

Due to the location in which the body was discovered, Catherine Eddowes’s murder fell under the jurisdiction of the City Police, rather than the Metropolitan Police (who had been responsible for the other murder enquiries). The City Police Officers were determined not to be outwitted like their Metropolitan colleagues and immediately launched an exhaustive search of the area. The Metropolitan Police were kept informed of developments and just before 3am, PC Alfred Long stumbled across the first real clue.

PC Long had been walking his beat along Goulston Street, a road that ran north from Aldgate, up towards the Dorset Street area. On passing a block of Model Dwellings, he noticed a blood-stained piece of material in the passageway. On picking it up, PC Long noticed that the blood was still wet. Above the spot where the material had lain was a chalked message that read ‘the Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.’ The material was promptly taken to the mortuary and it was found to have been cut from Catherine Eddowes’s apron. After six murders and months of frustration, the police had their first clue.

The City and Met Police’s confidence in their chances of apprehending the elusive murderer was temporarily boosted by the discovery of the piece of apron. They now knew that the assailant(s) had fled towards Spitalfields once they had committed the dreadful atrocities on poor Catherine Eddowes. The chalked graffiti on the wall of the Model Dwellings was another matter entirely. Both police forces were undecided as to whether it was pertinent to the murder inquiry or simply a racist message scrawled on the wall by a disgruntled local, intolerant of the area’s newest immigrants. However, given the fact that race relations in the district were currently at boiling point, the Met police thought it best to wash the graffiti away before it was seen by the locals. Thus what could have been an indispensable clue was erased before it could even be photographed.

Concentrating their efforts on the discovery of the piece of apron, the police made their usual rounds of all the homes and businesses in the area to ascertain whether anyone had seen or heard anything suspicious on the night of the murder. Given the response from their previous enquiries, they might have guessed that nobody had noticed anything untoward.

As the police’s frustration at the lack of progress in any of the murder inquiries grew, so did the frustrations of Londoners, particularly those living in the East End. Men in the area formed vigilante groups, the most well known of which was the East End Vigilance Committee, headed by a builder from Mile End named George Lusk. Soon after the murder of Catherine Eddowes, Mr Lusk was the recipient of a bloody parcel containing a portion of kidney that the sender claimed belonged to the murdered woman. Accompanying the kidney was a letter from the supposed murderer within which he admitted to eating the other half. The sheer sensationalism of this admission caused many people involved with the case to suspect that the letter was the work of either an enterprising journalist or a medical student with a fondness for sick jokes. However, it was never disproved that the kidney came from Catherine Eddowes.