Chereads / The Legend of Jack The Ripper / Chapter 10 - Ch10: Another witness to the story

Chapter 10 - Ch10: Another witness to the story

James Brown, a resident of Fairclough Street, went out to get some supper a little before a quarter-to-one, on the morning of Sunday, 30th September 1888. As he made his way along Fairclough Street, he passed a man and woman standing by a wall. When taken to see the body of Elizabeth Stride at the mortuary, he identified her as the woman he had seen, and, in consequence, he appeared as a witness on the fourth day of the inquest into her death. The Scotsman published an account of his testimony in its edition of Saturday, 6th October 1888:-

I live on Fairclough Street. I am a dock labourer. I have seen the body at the mortuary. I do not know the woman. I saw her on Sunday morning about a quarter before one o'clock. I was going from my own house to get some supper at a chandler's shop at the corner of Berner Street and Fairclough Street. I was in the shop for three or four minutes and then went back home. On my way, I saw a man and woman standing against the wall by the Board School in Fairclough Street. I heard the woman say, "No, not tonight, some other night."; That made me turn around, and I looked at them. I saw enough then to enable me to say that I am almost certain the deceased was that woman. I did not notice any flowers in her dress. The man was standing with his arm leaning against the wall. The woman was standing with her back against the wall facing me.

The Coroner:- "Did you notice the man?"

Well, I noticed that he had a long coat on, which reached very nearly down to his heels. It appeared to be an overcoat. I could not say what kind of hat or cap he had on. They were in a rather dark place. He was wearing a dark coat. I saw nothing light in colour about either of them. He was leaning over her. It was not raining at the time.

I went on and indoors.

When I had nearly finished my supper, I heard screams of "police" and "murder." There had been an interval of about a quarter of an hour between my getting home and these screams. When I came in at twelve o'clock I did not think it Was raining.

The Coroner:- "Did you notice the height of the man?"

I should think he was about the same height as myself - 5 feet 7 inches. He was of average build.

Neither of them seemed the worst for drinking. The speech of the woman was as if she were sober. I did not notice any foreign accent about the woman's remark.

When I heard the screams of "murder" and "police" I went up to the window and looked out, but I did not see whence they proceeded. They ceased when I got to the window.

The cries were those of moving persons going in the direction of Grove Street. Shortly afterwards, I saw a policeman standing at the corner of Christian Street."

At the height of the Ripper scare, on the morning of 10th October 1888, Henrietta Barnett, the wife of the Reverend Barnet of St Jude's Church Commercial Street forwarded a petition signed by four thousand "Women of Whitechapel" to Queen Victoria begging her to prevail upon "your servants in authority" to close down the Common Lodging Houses.

The petition was passed to the Home Office which asked the police to provide information on East End prostitution, brothels and the Common Lodging Houses.

Based on the observations of the H division constables, whose beats took in the district to the west and east of Commercial Street, the police set the number of Common Lodging Houses at 233, the number of residents at 8,530 and the number of brothels at 62.

The police reply also stated that "we have no means of ascertaining what women are prostitutes and who are not, but there is an impression that there are about 1200 prostitutes, mostly of a very low condition.

It was an intense subject of debate throughout the Jack the Ripper investigation   whether or not a reward should be offered by the authorities to induce someone to come forward with information that might lead to the killer's apprehension. Because most of them were poor and did not want to lose their valuable time for nothing.

At the inquest into the death of Mary Nichols the foreman of the jury had stated that had a reward been offered by the Government after the murder of Martha Tabram then "very probably the two later murders of Mary Nichols and Annie Chapman would not have been perpetrated."

Indeed, just how unhelpful the prospect of a reward could prove is amply demonstrated by a report that appeared in the Daily News on 13th October 1888:-

"The lapse of time diminishes the prospect of the discovery of the Whitechapel murderer. No attempt is made by the police themselves to disguise the fact that arrest upon arrest, each equally fruitless, has produced in the official minds a feeling almost of despair.

A corps of detectives left Leman street yesterday morning, and the officer, under whose direction they are pursuing their investigations, had in their possession quite a bulky packet of papers all relating to information supplied to the police, and all, as the detective remarked, "amounting to nothing."

The difficulty of our work," he said, "is much greater than the general public are aware of."

In the first place, there are hundreds of men on the streets answering the vague description of the man who is "wanted" and we cannot arrest everybody.

The reward for the apprehension of the murderer has had one effect - it has inundated us with descriptions of persons into whose movements we are expected to inquire for the sole reason that they have of late been noticed to keep rather irregular hours and to take their meals alone.

Some of these cases we have sent men to investigate and the persons who it has proved have been unjustly suspected have been very indignant, and naturally so. The public would be exceedingly surprised if they were made aware of some of the extraordinary suggestions received by the police from outsiders.

Why, in one case, the officer laughingly remarked, it was seriously put to us that we should carefully watch the policeman who happened to be on the particular beat within the radius of which either of the bodies was found.

The amount of work done by the detectives through this series of crimes has been, he added, enormous.

We do not expect that the batch of inquiries to be undertaken today will lead to any more satisfactory result than those of previous days…"

On 16th October 1888, George Lusk, leader of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee received a letter.The handwriting and style are unlike that of the "Dear Boss" letter and "Saucy Jacky" postcard. The letter came with a small box in which Lusk discovered half of a human kidney, preserved in ethanol. The author of the letter wrote,

From hell.

Mr Lusk,

Sory

I sent you half the Kidney I took from one woman and preserved it for you together.The other piece I fried and ate was very nice. I may send you the bloody knife that took it out if you only wait a while longer

signed

Jack the Ripper

Two weeks after the Torso incident on October 17th, a reporter called Jasper Warning was permitted to search the site with a Russian Terrier dog. The dog located the leg  buried under the dirt. After the forensic examination of the torso and the legs, it was revealed that the killer had removed her uterus. The woman's left lung had signs of severe pleurisy. She was killed two months ago before being buried. John Lardy made a brief appearance in the Victorian newspapers in early October 1888. He approached the City Of London Police on the afternoon of Thursday, 18th October 1888, and made a statement regarding a suspicious-looking man, who,he said, had the appearance of an American, and whom he and a friend had followed all over Whitechapel from 10.30 pm on Wednesday, 17th October.

The Daily News, published a full account of his statement on Friday, 19th October 1888:-

The City Police have under observation a man Whose movements in Whitechapel, Mile-end, and Bermondsey are attended with suspicion.A man, who is said to be an American, was arrested in Bermondsey at one o'clock yesterday morning and taken to the police station.His conduct, demeanour, and appearance gave rise to great suspicion, and his apprehension and general particulars were wired to the City police.Following this, a conference took place yesterday afternoon between a young man named John Lardy, of Redman's-row, Mile-end, and the head of the detective department at the Old Jewry, at which he stated as follows:-

"At 10.30 last night, I was with a friend and a young woman outside the Grave Maurice Tavern, opposite the London Hospital, when I noticed a man whom I had never seen before coming across the road, look into each compartment of the tavern, and enter the house.

He came out again directly, carefully looked up and down the road, and then walked over the road to the front of the hospital, where two women were standing talking. They were, I believe, loose women.

The man said something to them, but I did not hear his words. The women shook their heads and said, "No".

I said to my friend, "What a funny-looking man. I wonder if he is the murderer." My friend replied, "Let us follow him."

We said goodnight to our friend and followed the man.

When opposite the Pavilion Theatre, he drew himself up in an instant and looked carefully around. We believe that he saw us following him, and he disappeared into a doorway.

We stopped for a moment or two, and he came out of his hiding place and went into a newspaper shop next door. shop next door.

During the whole time, we saw him his right hand was in his overcoat pocket, apparently clutching something.

He bought a paper at the shop, folded it up on his chest with his left hand, and then left the shop, looking up and down the road as he did so, and carefully reading the placards outside the shop window.

He afterwards started towards Aldgate, and we followed him.

When he got to the corner of Duke-street, the street leading to Mitre-square, he turned, and, seeing that we were following him, re-crossed the road and walked back to Lemon-street.

When he reached Royal Mint-street, he went into King-street, which is very narrow, and my friend and I ran round to the other end of the street, hoping to see him come out there. Just as we got to the other end of King-street we heard a door close, and we waited to see if the man reopened it, for we felt sure that he was the man, although we had not seen him go into the house.

We both waited for 25 minutes when we watched the same guy come out of the house. He came up the street, and we stepped back and allowed him to pass, and he went in the direction of the Whitechapel road.

He went away so quickly that we lost sight of him in the fog, which was then very thick. The time then was just after 12.

When he reappeared from the house we noticed that he was very differently dressed from what he was when we first saw him, the most noticeable being his overcoat. At first, he was wearing a sort of short, frock coat reaching his knees only, but when he came out of the house in King-street he had on a large overcoat which reached to within three inches of the ground.

From what I could see, he appeared to be between forty and forty-five years of age, and from five feet eleven inches to six feet in height.

He wore a low hat with a square crown, but I Cannot describe either his trousers or boots.

He had the appearance of an American. His cheekbones were high and prominent, his face thin, cheeks sunken, and he had a moustache only, his cheeks and chin being a clean haven. The moustache was, I believe, a false one, for it was all awry, one end pointing upward, and the other towards the ground. His hair was dark, apparently black, and somewhat long."

From what has since come to the knowledge of the police it is inferred that, on leaving King-street, the stranger made his way over London Bridge into Bermondsey, where he was apprehended, and there is no doubt that the description of the Bermondsey and King-street men tally in nearly every particular."

On the same day Chief Inspector Swanson reported that 80,000 leaflets appealing for information about the murder had been distributed around Whitechapel, noting that, among other lines of enquiry, some 2,000 lodgers had been interrogated or investigated in relation to her death.

The Star Newspaper published a report on the kidney that was sent to Mr George Lusk in their 19th October edition. The report states:The portion of the kidney which it enclosed has, according to the medical experts, been preserved for some time in spirits of wine. The person from whom it was taken was probably a circumstance which fits in with the suggestion that the organ may have been taken from the body of the deceased woman Eddowes, murdered in Mitre-square. Another fact is that the kidney is evidently that of a person who had been a considerable drinker, as there were distinct marks of disease. The handwriting of the letter differs altogether from that of "Jack the Ripper," specimens of whose calligraphy were recently published. The writing is inferior, evidently disguised, while the spelling, as will be seen, is indifferent.

There seems to be no room for doubt that what has been sent to Mr Lusk is part of a human kidney, but it may be doubted whether it has any serious bearing on the Mitre-square murder. The whole thing may turn out to be a medical student's gruesome joke.

It Had Been Preserved in Spirits. Dr Openshaw told a Star reporter that after having examined the piece of the kidney under the microscope he was of opinion that it was half of a left human kidney. He couldn't say, however, whether it was that of a woman, nor how long ago it had been removed from the body, as it had been preserved in spirits.

It is believed that the "revolting parcel" is not from the murderer, but is merely a medical student's practical joke.

The Metropolitan Police last night handed the piece of kidney over to the City Police on the assumption that if the whole thing is not, as is most likely, the disgusting trick of some practical joker, it relates to the Mitre-square crime."

Ultimately the antics of the popular press proved counterproductive to the police investigation into the Jack the Ripper murders since the reporting threw up so many false leads and red herrings that the, already overstretched, detectives were stretched almost to breaking point.

Also, the anti-Semitism that stories such as the Leather Apron scare provoked diverted valuable police resources, such as on-the-ground constables, away from trying to prevent another ripper outrage to simply maintaining public order in the area.

On 20th October 1888, the Illustrated Police News published sketches of two possible suspects. However, these were little more than an artist's impression of what an evil and villainous murderer such as Jack the Ripper should have looked like, as opposed to an accurate depiction of suspects based on witness descriptions. The police were extremely outnumbered compared to the size of the area, they had to look into. Many people, claimed to know the killer, but it all circled back to zero.