Complete History of Jack the Ripper (15 page)

Take ‘Bloody Sunday’. On Sunday, 13 November 1887, the police, assisted by detachments of Life and Grenadier Guards, successfully held Trafalgar Square against converging processions of socialists, radicals and Irish Home Rulers intent upon holding a rally there in defiance of a ban by the Commissioner. As regular as clockwork we are told that Warren’s stern policing of meetings of socialists and the unemployed, culminating in this fierce battle, embittered relations between the police and working-class people, and are led to infer that this somehow impeded their investigation of the murders. In some districts, it is true, ‘Bloody Sunday’ lingered as a bitter memory for more than twenty years. And Warren himself received hate mail. ‘Beware of your life you dog’ began one such communication. ‘Dont venture out too fur [sic]. Look out. This is yours – ’ and a drawing of a coffin followed.
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But not one jot does any of this seem to have affected police operations in the East End. There, as we shall see, large numbers of people had reasons of their own for avoiding the police but neither that nor Warren’s attempts to preserve public order at the expense of free speech prevented them from co-operating with them to ensnare Jack the Ripper. The murderer’s victims were drawn from the weakest and most vulnerable members of the community, ‘the poorest of the poor’, as the
Observer
reminds us, and impelled by a sense of common outrage as well as rapidly increasing reward money, East Enders not only organised themselves into a proliferation of local vigilance committees to assist the police but flocked to them in such numbers with information that Abberline, co-ordinating the inquiry at ground-level, almost broke down under the strain of processing it. Even in October 1888, when Warren sanctioned a massive house-to-house search north of Whitechapel High Street/Whitechapel Road, and when he feared that the socialists might orchestrate determined opposition to such an arbitrary measure, the community willingly accorded the police access to their homes. Both Warren, in a press notice of 17 October, and Robert Anderson, then head of CID, in a confidential minute six days later, happily acknowledged the fact, and for once the press agreed: ‘the greatest good feeling prevails towards the police, and noticeably in the most squalid dwellings the police had no difficulty in getting information.’
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The skirmishing between Matthews and Warren was much more than a clash of uncongenial personalities because the two held widely
divergent views on the extent of the Home Secretary’s authority over the force and on matters of general policy. Again, however, although they ultimately produced Warren’s resignation in November 1888, their squabbles did not exert a significant effect upon the conduct and prospects of the murder hunt. The records of the Whitechapel investigation do attest to the state of tension and distrust that existed between the two men. But Matthews supported a succession of initiatives proposed or endorsed by
Warren – the experiment with bloodhounds, the house-to-house search and, belatedly, the offer of a pardon to any accomplice of the murderer who would betray him – and vetoed only one, the offer of a government reward. The reward question was a complicated one. However, there were good reasons for the rejection of such a proposal and the nature of the crimes, together with the failure of substantial City and private rewards, suggests that a government offer would not have been successful.

Exactly what the impact of Warren’s reforms within the force itself was is more difficult to judge. At the time the central complaint of the radical and opposition press was that under Warren the police were being transformed from a civil into a military force primarily intended, not for the prevention and detection of crime, but for the policing of political rallies and demonstrations of the poor and unemployed. The results, according to the exponents of this view, had been far reaching and pernicious – increasingly centralized control of the police, an emphasis upon drill and discipline, the discouragement of individual initiative throughout the force, the diversion of manpower and resources from the pursuit of criminals to political work and the consequent neglect of the CID.
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But the fact that such politically inspired vituperation was widely credited in 1888 does not oblige us to believe it now. Warren’s regime at Scotland Yard is badly in need of reappraisal and until some diligent research student undertakes the task we have few firm facts to go on. The little we do know, however, suggests that the embattled Commissioner may have been grossly maligned.

Certainly Warren’s appointment was followed by those of five other army officers, three as chief and two as assistant chief constables, and certainly, to improve discipline, he greatly increased the number of inspectors and sergeants. It is also true that Sir Charles quarrelled with some of his colleagues, including Sir Richard Pennefather, the Receiver for the Metropolitan Police District, and James Monro, the Assistant Commissioner in charge of CID. The Warren – Monro feud is especially significant here in that it is held to have left the detective branch leaderless and demoralized at the very time that it was confronted by the Whitechapel murders.

There were several sources of conflict between the two men.
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One lay in Monro’s dual role as Assistant Commissioner (CID) and Secret Agent. In the latter capacity he was the head of a small cadre of four CID inspectors designated Section D. Engaged entirely in political intelligence work, they were funded not from Metropolitan Police but Imperial funds, and Monro, as their chief, reported not to Warren but direct to the Home Office. Now Warren held the view that the position of Chief Commissioner was analogous to that of the general in the field, subject to higher authority for general purposes but in complete control of the internal administration and discipline of his force. Naturally, then, he resented the independence of Section D and considered its existence subversive of good discipline. Monro, on the other hand, strove to retain his independence as Secret Agent and even to extend it to his functions as Assistant Commissioner in charge of CID, and became increasingly exasperated by Warren’s attempts to restrict his freedom of action. There were other difficulties. Since the CID was undermanned and overworked, Monro proposed the creation of a new post of Assistant Chief Constable (CID) and nominated his friend Melville Macnaghten for the job. Warren suggested that Monro shed his secret service duties instead. In March 1888 the Home Office agreed to the appointment but when Warren objected that Macnaghten was unsuitable for the post quickly rescinded it. Eventually, in August, Monro resigned in protest against the ‘change of policy and system’ which the Chief Commissioner was seeking to impose.

Notwithstanding all this, the view that Warren was a military despot, alienating his men, is greatly overdone. It assumes that the alleged proofs of Warren’s militarization of the police were all accurate which they were not. He did not, for example, greatly increase the number of army reserve men in the force since the Chief Commissioner had for several years been restricted to the employment of only 500 such at any one time. And it ignores Warren’s not inconsiderable leadership qualities, demonstrated over many years of active service abroad. An early riser, he had an immense capacity for work; a strong disciplinarian, his strictness was tempered by humour and by a solicitous care for the welfare of his men; and a courageous soldier, he had displayed a disposition to lead by example,
to share the dangers and privations of his command. Such qualities do not foment disaffection, at least among the rank and file.

Writing in 1910, Robert Anderson, Monro’s successor, conceded that at first there was a ‘dangerous want of sympathy’ between Warren and his men. But when Sir Charles stoutly defended the force from Home Office imputations after ‘Bloody Sunday’ the constables forgot their grievances so that, by the time Anderson joined the service, the Chief Commissioner’s ‘popularity with the uniformed force was established’. The deputation of police superintendents that called at Warren’s home to pay him tribute after his resignation in November 1888 suggests that this was indeed the case. Superintendent Draper, their spokesman, admitted that Warren had been a stickler for discipline but ‘repudiated the idea that such discipline was in any degree distasteful to the force so long as the regulations were administered with the fairness and equity which had characterized Sir Charles Warren’s tenure of office.’
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In the CID, admittedly, things may have been a little different. Monro’s resignation took effect on 31 August, the day that Polly Nichols died in Buck’s Row. His successor, Dr (later Sir) Robert Anderson, possessed a keen analytical mind and twenty years’ experience in intelligence work for the Home Office. But he came to the Yard suffering from fatigue and was in such poor health that Dr Gilbart Smith of Harley Street immediately prescribed him two months’ leave for overwork. ‘This, of course, was out of the question,’ Anderson related in his memoirs. ‘But I told Mr Matthews, greatly to his distress, that I could not take up my new duties until I had had a month’s holiday in Switzerland. And so, after one week at Scotland Yard, I crossed the Channel.’
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Yet even these upheavals do not seem to have seriously prejudiced the murder inquiries. It should not be supposed, for example, that the departure of Anderson left the Ripper hunters leaderless. In the East End Inspector Abberline co-ordinated their activities, while at the Yard central continuity of supervision was provided for on 15 September by the appointment of Chief Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson to oversee the investigation. Swanson, a shrewd Scot with twenty years’ service in the Metropolitan Police, was freed from all other duties. He was given an
office to himself. And he was to see ‘every paper, every document, every report [and] every telegram’ relating to the inquiry. ‘I look upon him,’ wrote Warren, ‘as the eyes and ears of the Commissioner in this particular case.’
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When Anderson succeeded Monro he found some CID officers smarting over the treatment accorded their late chief. But the rift between Warren and the detective branch was but temporary. Anderson soon established a harmonious working relationship with the Chief Commissioner. ‘My relations with Sir Charles were always easy and pleasant,’ he wrote later. ‘I always found him perfectly frank and open, and he treated me as a colleague, leaving me quite unfettered in the control of my department.’ In the East End detectives showed no lack of commitment to the murder hunt. To judge from their reminiscences Abberline and Dew nearly exhausted themselves in the effort. And after the double murder of 30 September even the radical
Star
, ever eager to disparage Warren and his force, felt obliged to acknowledge their diligence: ‘The failure of the police to discover the Whitechapel murderer is certainly not due to inactivity. No one who has had occasion to visit the police offices whence the investigations are being conducted can escape the impression that everybody is on the move, and it is probably a fact that very few of the chief officials and detectives have had their regular rest since last Sunday morning. One hears no complaint against the demand for extra duty, except in instances where the pressure is unevenly applied, for the police are individually more interested in the capture of the murderer than anyone else.’
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The general troubles of the Metropolitan Police, then, scarcely touched the Ripper investigation, and those writers who have sought in them some explanation of the killer’s escape have largely misdirected their efforts. More, by dwelling upon them they have diverted attention away from the real causes of the police failure, which lay specifically in the nature of the detective problem in Whitechapel. The murders posed a most formidable challenge to the fledgling CID. Their difficulties stemmed from the character of Whitechapel and Spitalfields, the area of the atrocities, from the primitive state of Victorian methods of criminal detection and, most of all, from the nature of the crimes themselves. Together these factors operated to stack the odds in favour of the murderer from the first.

Throughout the century Whitechapel and Spitalfields had been reputedly criminous as well as poor. For the criminal a residence on the border between the City and Metropolitan Police jurisdictions was highly advantageous and the Whitechapel-Spitalfields district lay just outside the City’s north-eastern boundary, on and beyond the arc from Bishopsgate round to Aldgate. The market in Petticoat Lane, moreover, afforded ample facilities for the disposal of stolen goods. ‘If the King’s crown were to come within half a mile of Petticoat Lane,’ boasted one thief in 1835, ‘money would be found in an hour for its purchase.’
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The main refuge of the poor, criminal and non-criminal alike, lay in a maze of dirty streets, courts and alleys between Petticoat Lane and Brick Lane. But by 1888 the area was being transformed by the demolition contractor and by Jewish immigration into the East End.

The cutting of Commercial Street in the 1840s and the redevelopments inaugurated by the Artisans’ Dwelling Act of 1875 cleared much slum housing. At the same time blocks of tenement flats, like the first Peabody Buildings in Commercial Street in 1864, were being erected to provide decent homes for the working poor. The effects of such developments were not entirely beneficial. Slum clearances tended to drive the poor into surrounding streets which were themselves overcrowded, and model dwellings offered accommodation at rates only the most prosperous artisans could afford to pay.

Jewish immigration is generally held to have improved the character of some streets. A colony of Iberian Jews, rich and respected Jews of the Sephardim, settled in London during the Protectorate and in the reign of Charles II. The Ashkenazim settlement in the capital dates from the close of the 17th century and their first synagogue, in Duke’s Place, Aldgate, was established in 1722. Thereafter every continental upheaval in which the Jews were sufferers brought influxes of refugees into England. The Russian pogroms of 1881–1882 and Bismarck’s expulsion of alien Poles from Prussia in 1886 encouraged a new wave of immigration from Eastern Europe. Low rents, the proximity of the central business district and the presence of an existing Jewish community drew the newcomers in large numbers to Whitechapel, where the streets they overran became, by and large, quiet, law-abiding and clean. ‘They have already taken one end of Great Pearl Street,’ wrote Charles Booth, ‘and it is probably the Jews alone who will turn out the prostitutes from the end that is still bad.’
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