Read Complete History of Jack the Ripper Online
Authors: Philip Sudgen
Complete History of Jack the Ripper (54 page)
I have never myself shared to the full extent the HO prejudice against rewards; nor have I thought Harcourt’s reasoning on the subject at all conclusive. I am disposed to regret now that in the first instance I did not sacrifice to popular feeling and offer a considerable reward. But in as much as I did yield to the official view and refuse to make an offer and subsequently repeated that refusal, I feel that my hands are tied . . . I feel very strongly that to make such an offer now, after what has passed, so far from conciliating public opinion . . . would cover me with ridicule and contempt – as having given way to popular pressure – with nothing to justify or call for a change, which would of itself be the strongest condemnation of my previous action.
Warren’s position was different. Consulted by the Home Secretary on 3 October, he said that although a government reward might do something to appease public opinion it was unnecessary from a police point of view because £500 had already been offered by the City authorities. All this must have been music to Matthews’ ears. But two days later the Commissioner had had second thoughts. Popular agitation for decisive action had not diminished. The CID was doggedly pursuing every lead it had but seemed no closer to a solution of the mystery. And it was beginning to look as if the City reward had been insufficient to produce results. So Warren called at the Home Office and told Ruggles-Brise that he had come round to the view that a large government reward might, after all, succeed in detecting the murderer. Matthews, fearful that a change of policy would damage him irreparably, was embarrassed and furious at Sir
Charles’ endorsement of a reward. ‘Anybody can offer a reward and it is the first idea of ignorant people,’ he fumed in his letter to Ruggles-Brise. ‘But more is expected of the CID. Sir C. W. will not save himself, or put himself right with the public, by merely suggesting that. His conversation with you looks as if he wanted to hedge at my expense.’
In succeeding days the Home Secretary and his Commissioner fenced inconclusively. Matthews understood that he might eventually be forced to bow to public opinion and offer a reward and he knew that if that day came his political survival might depend upon his ability to show good cause for his change of tack. Perhaps there was such cause – in the incompetence of the police. Matthews, again, to Ruggles-Brise:
If Sir C. W. felt able to write to me officially that the police had exhausted every means at their command – that they had not only failed, but had no expectation of succeeding in tracing the murderer – and that therefore, as a last resort, he felt bound to suggest recourse to an expedient which experience proves to be unsatisfactory and even mischievous, namely the offer of a reward – I might act on such a letter – provided I might make it public.
Such a letter, of course, would have freed Matthews from the hook only by gaffing Warren. Nevertheless, on 7 October, intimating his willingness to review his policy on rewards, Matthews solicited from Warren written answers to three questions. The first was a cynical ploy, designed to trap the Commissioner on paper so that he might be saddled with the responsibility for any future Home Office climb-down: ‘Is it your opinion that the police & the CID have now exhausted all the means within their power of discovering the criminal, & have not only failed, but have no reasonable prospect of succeeding in any moderate time?’ Sir Charles was too wily a bird to be thus ensnared and when he replied, ten days later, he gave Matthews nothing that could be used against him: ‘To this I have to reply, NO. I think we have hardly begun: it often takes many months to discover a criminal.’
For his part Warren discomfited the Home Secretary with repeated written advice in favour of a reward. Thus, on 6 October, he urged Matthews to offer a free pardon to any of the killer’s accomplices who would inform, together with a government reward of £5,000,
and hinted darkly that ‘if other murders of a similar nature take place shortly . . . the omission of the offer of a reward on the part of the government may exercise a very serious effect upon the stability of the government itself.’ Worse, if questions were to be asked in parliament, Warren wanted Matthews to say that the Commissioner of Police was of the opinion that a government reward should have been offered.
It was all very sad. A Home Secretary – once, perhaps, open-minded, now an embattled partisan – resisting the offer of a reward for the worst of reasons, to save his own skin, and determined, if he should be forced to yield, that the Commissioner of Police would take the blame. And a Commissioner of Police, looking to such a reward for the rescue of his floundering CID, and intent on the Home Secretary shouldering the blame for
not
issuing one. On 13 October
Moonshine
, a strong Tory journal, carried a cartoon captioned ‘A Question of Resignation.’ In it Matthews and Warren are depicted glaring at each other, eyeball to eyeball, across a desk strewn with news reports and petitions relating to the murders. ‘Why don’t you resign?’ urges Matthews. ‘Why don’t
you
resign?’ growls Warren. In the background stands the long suffering figure of Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister. ‘Why don’t they
both
resign,’ he sighs in an aside. Unhappily there was more truth in that cartoon than any of
Moonshine’s
readers could have guessed.
32
Another possibility, urged upon the Home Office by both Warren and Lusk, was the offer of a pardon to any accomplice of the murderer who would betray him to the police. Matthews was willing to consider this proposal. It would not have been as open to abuse as that of a reward and since he had not already refused a pardon he could act on the suggestion without loss of face. The main objection was the absence of credible evidence that the murderer had an accomplice. Curiously, when Warren wrote in support of Lusk’s proposal on 9 October he made no mention of Israel Schwartz’s story. He did, however, refer to an anonymous letter. It had reached the Yard that very day and the writer, who claimed to be an accomplice of the killer, was asking for a free pardon. Warren told the Home Office that he was attempting to contact the writer through an advertisement in a journal but conceded that the letter was probably a hoax, the police having received ‘scores of hoaxing letters’. It would be interesting to know more about this intriguing episode. Eight days later, in a note to Charles Murdoch, principal clerk at the Home
Office, Warren referred to it again: ‘The alleged accomplice did not turn up & it looks like a hoax: but a communication has come in from another source which looks more genuine. We have not tested it yet.’
33
On 12 October George Lusk was told that the Home Office was keeping the offer of a pardon under review. But the decline of public interest towards the end of the month signalled a waning in the government’s determination to grapple with the Whitechapel problem. It was also well understood at Whitehall that another murder might occur at any moment. If that happened the beleaguered Home Secretary would be faced with an outcry for action greater than anything he had yet endured. It would be well to keep measures in reserve to meet that emergency. So the reward and pardon questions were quietly shelved.
The prize for the silliest proposals must go to Dr Robert Anderson, the new head of CID. His absence during the crisis had by no means gone unnoticed by the press. ‘The chief official who is responsible for the detection of the murderer,’ carped the
Pall Mall Gazette
, ‘is as invisible to Londoners as the murderer himself. You may seek Dr Anderson in Scotland Yard, you may look for him in Whitehall Place, but you will not find him . . . Dr Anderson, with all the arduous duties of his office still to learn, is preparing himself for his apprenticeship by taking a pleasant holiday in Switzerland.’ In response to an urgent appeal from Matthews, Anderson returned to London on or soon after 5 October. No doubt he was briefed by Chief Inspector Swanson. And, according to his memoirs, he spent the day of his return and half the following night in ‘reinvestigating the whole case’. The next day he joined Matthews and Warren in conference:
‘We hold you responsible to find the murderer,’ was Mr Matthews’ greeting to me. My answer was to decline the responsibility. ‘I hold myself responsible,’ I said, ‘to take all legitimate means to find him.’ But I went on to say that the measures I found in operation were, in my opinion, wholly indefensible and scandalous; for these wretched women were plying their trade under definite Police protection. Let the Police of that district, I urged, receive orders to arrest every known ‘street woman’ found on the prowl after midnight, or else let us warn them that the Police will not protect them. Though the former course would have been merciful
to the very small class of women affected by it, it was deemed too drastic, and I fell back on the second.’
These measures were frankly absurd. The suggestion that all prostitutes found ‘on the prowl’ after midnight could be arrested was utterly unworkable. A police report prepared that same month estimated the number of known brothels in H Division at 62, the number of common lodging houses at 233 (accommodating about 8,530 people), and the number of prostitutes at about 1,200! Anderson’s second proposal implied, moreover, that these women enjoyed the option of ready accommodation. In fact, had he read the Nichols and Chapman evidence more carefully, he would have known that many prostitutes were forced to ply their trade in order to earn their fourpenny doss, that if they did not do so they would be obliged to walk the streets all night.
34
While their superiors pondered fresh initiatives, Abberline and his colleagues struggled to process the mass of information coming in from the general public. Some idea of the scale of their labours can be gleaned from Swanson’s report on the Stride murder. Writing on 19 October, he said that about eighty people had been detained at Metropolitan Police stations and that the movements of more than three hundred others, about whom communications had been received by the police, had been investigated. ‘There are now,’ he concluded, ‘994 dockets besides police reports.’
35
Walter Dew’s reflections on the Ripper hunt conjured up painful memories of long hours on duty, sleepless nights, loss of appetite and nausea inspired by the sight of butcher’s shops. Abberline, co-ordinating Metropolitan Police inquiries in the East End, had even greater cause to remember it. The public were so eager to help the police, especially after the City reward offer, that he and his team were deluged with statements, all of which had to be recorded and followed up. In all they made out 1,600 sets of papers about their investigations. When he came off duty Abberline would patrol the Whitechapel streets until four or five in the morning instead of going home. Then, having driven home, he would sometimes discover, just as he was about to flop exhausted into bed, that he would be summoned by telegraph back to Whitechapel, there to interrogate some lunatic or suspect whom the inspector in charge would not take the responsibility of questioning. Not surprisingly, he nearly broke down under the strain.
36
The search for Kate Eddowes’ killer was the responsibility of the City Police. Unfortunately, apart from a collection of letters to them from members of the public, now preserved at the Corporation of London Records Office, no files relating to the investigation appear to have come down to us and we know next to nothing about it. Searches similar to those undertaken by the Metropolitan force were conducted. We know, for example, that McWilliam sent officers to all the lunatic asylums in London to inquire after patients recently admitted or discharged. And, when a correspondent wrote to direct the attention of the City Police to the possibility of the murderer being a Jewish slaughterman, Major Smith drafted a reply on the back of his letter thus: ‘Thank him for the suggestion and say we have accounted for the times of all the butchers and slaughterers.’
37
Tragically, all this effort brought police no nearer to the Ripper. On 13 October Warren was mooting the possibility that the crimes had been committed by a secret society. Eleven days later, transmitting Swanson’s summary reports on the murders to the Home Office, he confessed that although ‘very numerous and searching enquiries’ had been made, no ‘tangible result’ had been achieved. And Dr Anderson, in a minute dated 23 October, admitted that despite five successive killings the CID had not unearthed ‘the slightest clue of any kind.’
38
Although hundreds of men fell under suspicion between the double murder and that of Mary Jane Kelly in November the names of but a handful are given in the surviving evidence. During the research for this book I recorded those of nine who made false confessions and seven other suspects. Only one – Michael Ostrog, dealt with in a later chapter – is of any significance.
Popular speculation about the killer’s identity was rife. On one point there was widespread agreement – that such a monster could not possibly be an Englishman. This notion naturally produced accusations against all manner of foreigners and soon found expression in broadsheet doggerel:
In famous London City, in eighteen eighty-eight,
Four beastly cruel murders have been done . . .
began one, and continued:
Some say it was old Nick himself,
Or else a Russian Jew.
Some say it was a ‘cannibal’ from the
Isle of Kickaiboo.
Some say it must be Bashi-Bazouks,
Or else it’s the Chinese
Come over to Whitechapel to commit
Such crimes as these.
