Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Edmund Reid
NICHOLAS CONNELL on
the Further Adventures of
the Detective Inspector
LINDSAY SIVITER on
the Masonic Career of
Frederick Abberline
JAN BONDESON’S
Murder House Casebook
Victorian Fiction by
DINAH MARIA MULOCK
Ripperologist 147
December 2015
EDITORS
THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF Gareth Williams
DETECTIVE INSPECTOR EDMUND REID Eduardo Zinna
by Nicholas Connell
REVIEWS EDITOR
BROTHER ABBERLINE AND Paul Begg
A FEW OTHER FELLOW NOTABLE FREEMASONS
by Lindsay Siviter EDITOR-AT-LARGE
Christopher T George
JTR FORUMS: A DECADE OF DEDICATION COLUMNISTS
by Howard Brown Nina and Howard Brown
David Green
FROM THE ARCHIVES: The Gentle Author
SWEATED LONDON BY GEORGE R SIMS
From Living London Vol 1 (1901) ARTWORK
Adam Wood
FROM THE CASEBOOKS OF A MURDER HOUSE DETECTIVE:
MURDER HOUSES OF RAMSGATE
Follow the latest news at
by Jan Bondeson www.facebook.com/ripperologist
Ripperologist is published by Mango Books. The views, conclusions and opinions expressed in signed articles, essays, letters and other items published in Ripperologist
are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, conclusions and opinions of Ripperologist, its editors or the publisher. The views, conclusions and
opinions expressed in unsigned articles, essays, news reports, reviews and other items published in Ripperologist are the responsibility of Ripperologist and its
editorial team, but do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher.
We occasionally use material we believe has been placed in the public domain. It is not always possible to identify and contact the copyright holder; if you claim
ownership of something we have published we will be pleased to make a proper acknowledgement.
The contents of Ripperologist No. 147, December 2015, including the compilation of all materials and the unsigned articles, essays, news reports, reviews and other
items are copyright © 2015 Ripperologist/Mango Books. The authors of signed articles, essays, letters, news reports, reviews and other items retain the copyright of
their respective contributions. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or otherwise circulated
in any form or by any means, including digital, electronic, printed, mechanical, photocopying, recording or any other, without the prior permission in writing of
Ripperologist. The unauthorised reproduction or circulation of this publication or any part thereof, whether for monetary gain or not, is strictly prohibited and may
Ripperologist
constitute copyright infringement as defined in domestic laws and international agreements and give rise to civil liability118 January
and criminal 2011
prosecution. 2
The Anniversary Waltz
EDITORIAL by ADAM WOOD
The thing about anniversaries is that there’s something to be found when you need one. As we
publish this edition of Ripperologist, on 31 December 2015, it’s 127 years to the day that Henry
Winslade recovered the body of Montague Druitt from the Thames at Thornycroft’s torpedo works,
Chiswick. And tomorrow will be the 126th anniversary of James Kelly’s escape from Broadmoor.
It’s doubtful that Mark Galloway was contemplating these events when he hit upon the idea of bringing together like-
minded people to meet and discuss the Ripper crimes over a pint or two, but that’s exactly what he did late in 1994.
His most excellent plan quickly captured the imagination of many and the Cloak and Dagger Club was formed, with a
ten-page Pilot Newsletter published to mark the first meeting on 3 December, making us 21-years-old this month. And
boy, do we feel old...
As the Club grew so did the newsletter, being renamed Ripperologist magazine with Issue 5, December 1995 - making
it 20 years of publication under this name with Rip 147.
While that site continues to house the largest collection of transcribed Ripper-related newspaper articles and other
crucial content, perhaps the platform for most discussion today is JTRForums.com, run by Howard Brown and which -
you’ve guessed it - in September this year celebrated an anniversary of its own, ten years since doors opened.
Elsewhere in this issue, How Brown describes those heady early days and the well-oiled machine which is the message
boards of JTRForums today.
To finish this numbers-based editorial of exactly 1,888 words (it’s not really, but did you start counting?), here’s a look
to the future... we’ll be publishing the 150th issue of Ripperologist in August 2016 - perfectly timed to coincide with
the 128th anniversary of the Autumn of Terror. In fact, we anticipate publishing the special edition on the anniversary
of Polly Nichols’ death.
We’re planning something very special to mark the occasion, so keep reading future issues to make sure you don’t
miss out... Finally, the team at Ripperologist wish every single one of our readers good health and happiness in the New
Year. Thank you for your support over the past 21 years.
Since the publication of the last edition of The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper several new
sources have come to light that provide new information on Edmund Reid, the former head of
Whitechapel CID.
Upon retiring in 1896 Edmund Reid was interviewed by several newspapers including the News of the World
who boasted that their feature on his involvement in the Jack the Ripper investigation would ‘place before the
public facts they never before learned, and to clear up a volume of curious misconceptions which were made by
theorists, learned and unlearned, who took a deep interest in the crimes at the time of their committal.’
The News of the World journalist justifiably described Reid as ‘one of the most remarkable men ever engaged in
the business of detecting crime.’ They met at Reid’s home and when sat at the drawing-room table the journalist
bluntly asked the detective: ‘Tell me all about the Ripper murders.’1 Reid responded by opening a cabinet drawer
that contained ‘assassin’s knives, portraits, and a thousand and one curiosities of criminal association.’ Among
the criminological ephemera was ‘probably the most remarkable photographic chamber of horrors in existence.’
Reid owned a set of Jack the Ripper victim photographs which he spread out on the table before telling the tale
of the Whitechapel murders:
1 Presumably the interview took place at Stepney Buildings, Stepney, the address given in Reid’s pension papers (PRO, MEPO 21/25).
Edmund Reid, by the way, is still one of the most popular men in the East End, and an influential
committee has been formed, of which Mr Solomon, of 18 Commercial-street, is the secretary, for the
purpose of presenting him with a handsome testimonial from Whitechapel tradesmen, as a memento of
his services among them.2
I do not wish to egotise, but should like to say that I was a detective-inspector twelve years, both at
the Yard and Whitechapel during the Ripper murders, and only left in 1896, and now am asked to offer
myself for duty during the Coronation at the same price as a constable who has just managed to get a
small pension with the skin of his teeth.
I certainly think that some distinction should be made according to rank, and that all should be asked
to assist. I do not intend to offer myself after the disrespect shown to an officer who also left with a
good character.4
Despite this disagreement with his former employers it seems that Reid was still willing to do them a good
turn. In 1912 and 1913 he advertised his services, free of charge, to advise young men who wished to join the
Metropolitan Police Force.5
By the time of the Coronation Reid had left London for his native east Kent and in the early 20th century was
registered as living at ‘Reid’s Ranch’ in Hampton-on-Sea, a tiny seaside hamlet of Herne Bay. He was simultaneously
living at a house in Borstal Hill in the neighbouring town of Whitstable. There he joined the quoit club6 and
wrote letters to the local newspaper. In 1905 a Whitstable resident, writing under the name of ‘A Progressive’,
complained in a letter to the Whitstable Times about the state of the town which ‘excels in untidiness. Many
of the roads are overgrown with weeds and the water channels at the side of the roads are full with grit and
manure.’ The seafront was in a ‘deplorable’ condition, and worst of all, a refuge dump had been established at
the eastern entrance of the town, close to the main road.7
Why, what ever is the matter with the anonymous writer who signs himself ‘A Progressive’ in your last
week’s issue touching the above subject [‘Progressive Whitstable’].
Why don’t he come and live up Borstal Hill way, where all is peace and joy? We ain’t got no troubles up
our way like he writes about.
We ain’t got no path to get out of order between ‘The Four Horse Shoes’ Hotel and the end of Whitstable
District.
We ain’t got no gas lamp that wants lighting to show us our way home on a dark night like they have at
Tankerton.
We ain’t got no scavengers coming and taking away our dust and putting it in a heap to annoy our
visitors. We look after that ourselves.
We ain’t got no trouble to
read any acknowledgement
to our applications for a
gas lamp and a path to the
end of Whitstable District
(which we pay for), because
they never send one.
Cheer up, old boy, better
days in store.
Thanking you in anticipation
for a good time coming,
when we shall all know the
boundary of Whitstable on
the road to Canterbury by
the erection of a gas lamp
on a footpath.8
making an issue of it. Furthermore, the tenancy agreement Reid had signed placed him under obligation to keep
the house in a good state of repair. Reid countered this by asking why, if that was the case, Hall had paid for
previous repairs to the house. The judge said this was irrelevant and even ‘if the roof fell in about your ears it
would be no defence in law.’ Reid retorted that ‘It has been down twice and he has put it up again.’
By now Hall’s patience had run out. He told Reid that he had another potential tenant who would take the
house immediately, ‘but I won’t release you Mr Reid. Oh no!’ Reid replied ‘It is a hornet’s nest about my ears.’
Hall seemed to relent and said ‘If you will compensate me I could let it tomorrow.’ The judge’s ruling was that
Reid had to pay the outstanding £5 10s by the end of May, but not the 5s interest. Hall’s lawyer pointed out that by
then another quarterly payment would be due, to which Hall said ‘And I will have him for it.’ Playing to the court,
Reid glibly replied ‘You will have your pound of flesh.’ This raised a laugh, but Hall was unamused, responding
‘Yes, I will.’11
This episode shows Reid in a poor light. He had failed to pay his rent for a house which the landlord had
maintained, despite it being Reid’s responsibility. Hall’s anger towards Reid is understandable and it is to his
credit that he stood up to Reid, who he knew was a former Scotland Yard inspector as well as something of a
local celebrity. And why was Reid keeping two houses at once? In 1912 and 1913 when offering to help potential
Metropolitan Police recruits he again had an address in Whitstable while still living at ‘Reid’s Ranch.’ On that
occasion it was 84 High Street.
Reid owned the ‘Ranch’ at Hampton and when it was inspected for the 1910 Finance Act survey it was noted
that: ‘The house is in a very dilaptd [sic – dilapidated] Condition’, and that the sea was rapidly encroaching.12 It is
not clear if this indicates that the interior of the house was dilapidated or if coastal erosion had started to attack
the foundations and exterior of the ‘Ranch’. A number of properties in Hampton were lost to coastal erosion
around 1910, although Reid did not leave the Ranch until 1916. An earlier visitor to the ‘Ranch’ said it was ‘a well
arranged cottage.’13
The world seemed to drop down from us. I felt no motion at all. It was not long before a dark cloud
came all around us, then the cloud went down, and we were in the light again with the blue sky over our
heads. But all at once there was a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder, and I began to think. I said
to Mr Lythgoe ‘What’s that?’ He replied ‘Oh, that’s nothing.’ I said ‘You call that nothing.’ He replied
‘Let the lightning flash and the thunder roar, it won’t hurt us as we are not attached to the earth.’ And
it didn’t, or I should not be writing this now.
Why it looks to me like a lot of red bricks thrown into a field. Then I began to think – there are
thousands of houses down there, and thousands and thousands of people, some walk about as if the
world belong to them only; some that will sometimes condescend to speak to you under circumstances
to suit themselves only; others that work hard to live, yet I cannot see one, then what am I when I am
down there, nothing, not so much as a grain of sand. I think that if there is anything to take the pride
out of anyone it is being up in a balloon. It teaches that the world can go on very well without us, and
perhaps better, and whenever anyone tells you all about what is up here, that has never been, well to
put it in a mild form, you can look at them and think. I have never heard the angels sing yet, and I have
made many balloon ascents in my time.15
14 Thomas Lythgoe worked as a meter inspector to the Metropolitan Gas Company, retiring in 1885 to become landlord of the Duke
Inn at St Albans. He later took over the Old Oak Inn in Hertford where he died in 1893 aged 61. He made 405 ascents over 43 years.
(Hertfordshire Mercury, 1 April 1893). Reid’s memory was working reasonably well on this matter some twenty years later. He
wrote that ‘After he [Lythgoe] gave up ballooning he kept ‘The Old Oak Hotel’ at Hertford, where he died a natural death.’
However, Reid asserted that Lythgoe had made over 500 ascents. (Whitstable Times, 11 January 1913).
15 Whitstable Times, 11 January 1913.
Ripperologist 147 December 2015 10
This sounds similar to Yuri Gagarin’s alleged quote, ‘I see no god up here’, made during his pioneering 1961
space flight. It is purely speculation, but could this have been the origin of Reid’s agnosticism? Having ascended
to the heavens and finding nothing there, did Reid abandon any idea of a Biblical Heaven, or did he have doubts
before then? He had been baptised at St Alphege Church in Canterbury city centre on 4th October 1846, but it is
not clear how seriously he took religion in his youth.
Lythgoe spotted a likely landing site by the railway station and the balloon descended at Shorne in Kent. Reid
‘saw the green grass grow into a wood, houses come up through the earth; people popped up out of holes, and
the earth came up and hit the bottom of the car… when the gas was all gone out of the balloon we all got out,
and then I said to myself ‘I have done it.’’16
They packed the deflated balloon into the empty car, loaded it onto a cart and went to the nearest pub for tea.
On the train back to London Bridge, Reid reflected on how much he had enjoyed the experience and thought that
‘if I had been blindfolded in the car, I should not have known that the balloon had started as I felt no motion.’17
Reid later wrote of another ascent he made from the Crystal Palace. He decided to amuse the crowds of
children who were in attendance:
I obtained a long piece of string and attached one end to the balloon car and laid the rest over the side
so that it should not be entangled, then I made a small hole in the brim of my straw hat, and when
everything was ready I tied the other end of the string to my hat and put it on my head, let go the
liberating iron, when down went the world with the people in it, and as they were going down, I took
off my hat and shouted ‘Hurrah,’ swinging my hat round and round, then let it drop down.
I heard a general shout of laughter and cries ‘He’s lost his hat.’ When the hat had reached the length of
the string I pulled the hat up and swinging it round again shouted ‘Hurrah,’ and I could hear the people
laughing again at the fun of the thing.18
As Reid drifted over Chislehurst he shouted down to the residents, ‘You have got the grandest garden that I
have ever passed over.’ Reid explained that by speaking loudly and distinctly it was possible to communicate with
people on the ground from up to half a mile high. Over Hayes Common, Reid performed his hat trick again for a
group of school children, then passed over some fields where he dropped a bottle of water over the side of the
car, seeing it vaporise into a cloud of dust when it hit the ground.
He later dropped some ballast on a strawberry picker who had responded to Reid’s request for some strawberries
by saying, ‘Come down and break your neck.’ Reid eventually landed in a field in Westerham and bought drinks
for the locals who had helped him pack up his balloon. As they entered the Pig and Whistle pub one of the helpers
called out: ‘See what I have brought you, a gentleman from the clouds.’19
Reid made another ascent from the Crystal Palace at a police fete with two friends. He had secretly obtained
two bullocks bladders which he filled with gas and sealed with wax before fastening them with two pieces of
string beneath the balloon car. As they took off Reid looked down and saw ‘about seven thousand policemen, their
wives and sweethearts (or someone else’s).’ One of Reid’s friends had bought two pigeons, the first of which was
released when the balloon was about half a mile high and the other at a quarter of a mile above that. They both
fell some way before they were able to open their wings and safely fly off.
Shortly afterwards, the bullocks bladders exploded:
All of a sudden there was a loud report as of a cannon being fired off, when both my friends called
out ‘What’s that: what’s the matter?’ I replied ‘Oh, it’s all right,’ when bang went another, somewhat
louder than the first. That did it. They both looked as if they had been eating Whitstable oysters that
had been crossed in love.
I afterwards explained to them that it was only the two bladders burst owing to the expansion of the
gas, the same as the balloon would burst if the mouth was not left open to allow the expanded gas to
escape.
We put the matter right by having a sip of that which cheers the heart and gives us courage, and drunk
to the health of those we left behind, and when we looked over the side of the car we found that we
were passing over Forest Hill cemetery, a very healthy place to be buried.20
The wind dropped and it took the balloon over half an hour to float across the River Thames instead of the usual
ten minutes, only for it to be blown back again and left stranded in mid-air as the boats below blew their whistles
in greeting. The balloon eventually ended up over Barking in East London where it unceremoniously landed in an
onion field and crowds of curious onlookers gathered around, trampling over the crops.
Reid had a low opinion of Barking locals and felt that they had been watching the balloon as if it were ‘a ship at
sea, watching to divide the spoil.’ He sent for the farm owner, only to be confronted by his bailiff who demanded
£100 in compensation for the damage done to the fields by the mob. He had sent for the police and two officers
arrived at the scene. Reid was unconcerned, arguing that the balloon itself had not caused any damage and had
only landed there by accident. As this was going on, Reid and his friends were packing up the balloon as quickly
as they could and his friends managed to leave the scene with the balloon as Reid was taken to Barking Police
Station.
Recognising the sergeant on duty, Reid explained that the ascent had been made for the benefit of the Police
Orphanage and that the onion field was the only viable landing site, after having been stranded over the River
Thames and three different cemeteries. The sergeant said that there could be no criminal charges against Reid,
but suggested to the bailiff that he could take out a summons against him. The bailiff threatened to keep Reid’s
balloon until he received the money, but Reid pointed out that the balloon had already been taken away, a fact
that made the bailiff look like ‘he had been eating fried oranges that didn’t agree with him.’ Reid supplied
his name and address to the bailiff should he wish to sue him and then threatened to counter-sue for false
imprisonment, after which the bailiff left the station.
Reid stayed to chat with the sergeant but was growing concerned about the mob that had gathered outside
the police station who thought they were entitled to payment for helping the balloon down. Those that had
20 Whitstable Times, 5 April 1913. It was said of Reid that he ‘never tasted intoxicants’ until he was 36 (Lloyd’s Weekly News, 4
February 1912), so presumably this escapade occurred after 1882.
This eccentric detective, daring balloonist and notable man of Kent, whether up in the air, or with his feet on
terra firma, remains one of the most interesting and unusual individuals associated with the Whitechapel murders.
NICHOLAS CONNELL is the co-author of The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper: Edmund Reid-Victorian Detective.
Today the United Grand Lodge of England claims to have over a quarter of a million Freemasonic
members. Worldwide there are approximately six million freemasons.1 For many years, Ripperologists
and indeed the wider public have been fascinated with the notion that the Freemasons were
somehow involved in a conspiracy to conceal the truth about the identity of the perpetrator of the
infamous Jack the Ripper murders. While this theory is very much currently in the news thanks to
Bruce Robinson's They All Love Jack, much of it began back in 1976 with an intrigue convincingly
weaved by the late Stephen Knight in his book, Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution. So powerful
was the impact of this book that over the years several films have been heavily influenced by it,
most notably Murder by Decree in 1978 and From Hell in 2001.
However, before Knight's book was published, the premise had
already been established in an episode of the six-part series Jack the
Ripper in which two popular fictional TV detectives, Barlow and Watt,
took a look at the Whitechapel murders through the eyes of two modern
policemen. Towards the end of the series Joseph Sickert was seen briefly
explaining an amazing tale. Joseph claimed the murders were done as
a way of securing the silence of several women who had knowledge of
Queen Victoria’s grandson, Prince Albert Victor, having secretly married
a shop-girl called Annie Crook.
The secret wedding had apparently been witnessed by Mary Jane
Kelly, the final of the Ripper's canonical victims, who had to be silenced
after she threatened blackmail. Annie Crook, according to the story,
subsequently gave birth to a baby girl called Alice, whom Joseph Sickert
claimed to be his mother.
Knight later met Joseph, who supplied further details, and the
impressive tale was subsequently expounded on throughout Knight's
book. Whole sections argued that a masonic cover-up of the Ripper
murder had occurred, with several high-ranking freemasons being
involved including Sir William Gull, Lord Salisbury and Sir Charles
Warren.
As part of his research for the book, Knight spoke to John Hamill,
the Librarian at United Grand Lodge Library & Museum in Great Queen
Street, London, who told him that in actual fact only the latter of the
three men previously mentioned was a freemason. However, for some
Prince Albert Victor reason, Knight chose to ignore this information, publishing several
erroneous statements in his book about how Gull, Salisbury and others
were freemasons despite official evidence to the contrary.
Abberline’s Date of Initiation in 1889 coincides with him finishing working on two of the biggest investigations
in his career: the Whitechapel Murders (1888) and the Cleveland Street Scandal (1889). As a Candidate Abberline
would have met most of the active members of his chosen Lodge before he was initiated, typically having been
introduced by a friend within the Lodge, or at a Lodge open evening or social function. To become a Freemason,
Abberline would have filled out a petition requesting that the Lodge admit him into its membership. After a
process of investigation and getting to know him, the Lodge would have voted to decide whether to accept his
petition or not. Once the Lodge voted in favour then Abberline would have been then invited to the next meeting
to receive his Entered Apprentice degree. This is where candidates are initiated into the Fraternity.4
The few membership records of Zetland Lodge that survive inform us that Abberline was listed (abbreviated)
as an Inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department aged 46. He was initiated on the same day in 1889 as
Mr Arthur Alfred Hare, a 34-year-old CID Inspector at Scotland Yard who had worked on the recent Thames Torso
Murders and was probably good friends with Abberline. The two initiates would have done part of the rituals in
the ceremony separately, and other parts would have been completed together.
During the Ceremony of Initiation, the candidate is expected to swear (usually on a volume of a sacred text
appropriate to their personal faith) to fulfil certain obligations as a mason. In the course of three Degrees, the
new member promises to keep the secrets of their Degree from lower Degrees and outsiders. They also pledge to
support a fellow mason in distress as far as the law permits.5 The Degrees of Freemasonry retain the three grades
of medieval craft guilds: those of Apprentice, Fellow (now called Fellow craft) and Master Mason. These three are
what are known as Craft Freemasonry.
The Masonic Lodge Freemasonry is an organisational unit of Freemasonry and it meets regularly to conduct
formal business such as paying bills, organising charitable events and to elect new members. In addition to this
formal business, meetings may be used to perform ceremonies to confer a masonic Degree or to present lectures
on masonic history or rituals.
Candidates are progressively initiated into freemasonry in the first Degree as an Entered Apprentice. They
are then Passed into the second degree of Fellowcraft and are finally Raised to the Third Degree level of Master
Mason. The registers tell us Abberline was Passed to the second Degree Freemasonry on 5 February 1890 and
Raised to become a Master Mason on 2 April 1890. He progressed quite quickly through the three Degrees of Blue
Lodge Freemasonry, as sometimes this can take many months to achieve.
The column in the Registers saying the word Raised is as Mackey’s Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry explains:
When a candidate has received the Third degree he is said to have been raised to the sublime Degree of
Master mason. The expression refers materially to a portion of the ceremony of initiation, symbolically
to the resurrection which it is the object of the Degree to exemplify… and also means the acceptance
of the candidate officially by the fraternity.6
The Register also reveals that Abberline obtained his Certificates on 11 April 1890. This refers to a Grand Lodge
certificate, which a member receives on completion of his three Degrees. Freemasonic certificates recognise
a Master Mason’s special achievement of having been raised to the highest degree in Craft Freemasonry being
rewarded in recognition of three main things.
Firstly, your devotion to your Lodge, the Craft and the Brotherhood overall. Secondly, it represents your personal
dedication and commitments to the principles which organise Freemasonry. Thirdly, it symbolises your continual
journey in the quest for more (spiritual) light.7 It is necessary for a mason to be certificated and the certificates
themselves are regarded as a kind of Masonic passport to help gain admission to other Lodges.
4 ‘What happens behind the scenes of a freemason’s initiation ceremony’ by Joel Montgomery, Master Mason on www.quora.com.
5 www.wikipedia.org/freemasonry.
6 Mackey’s Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry on www.masonicdictionary.com.
7 www.masonic-lodge-of-education.com.
8 Ibid.
9 Freemasons Chronicle, February, 1891, p.9.
10 See Lane’s Masonic Records: The Library & Museum of Freemasons website (www.hrionline.ac.uk/lane/record).
11 Correspondence between Zeb Micic and Peter Aitkenhead dated 29 April 2015.
12 Ibid.
13 Lane’s Masonic Records: The Library & Museum of Freemasons website (www.hrionline.ac.uk/lane/record)..
14 Article containing information on the building’s history can be seen on www.archiseek.com as well as an illustration from The
Building News, 12 December 1879.
15 ‘Andertons Hotel’ by Stephen Harris on www.pubshistory.com.
16 Copies of various pages from the Minutes of Zetland Lodge, Minutes of a meeting of Zetland Lodge meeting held on 1 October 1902,
No. 511 courtesy of W. Bro. Barry Mitchell. attended by John Littlechild and Frederick Abberline
17 Ibid.
18 Oswego Daily Times, 30 July 1902 and Utica Herald-Dispatch,
30 July 1902 as seen on www.kpoulin1.wordpress.com.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to say special thanks to Zeb Micic, W.Bro Barry Mitchell, UGLE Librarian Martin Cherry
and Adam Wood.
Sources
Stephen Knight: Jack The Ripper: The Final Solution, 1976; Freemasonic Membership Registers via www.
ancestry.co.uk; Private email from Peter Aitkenhead to Zeb Micic dated 29 April 2015; The Freemasons Chronicle,
February 1891 p.9; Lane’s Masonic Records: The Library & Museum of Freemasons website (www.hrionline.
ac.uk/lane/record); The Freemason, 23 November 1895 p.10; The Freemason, 14 November 1896 p.9; Minutes
for Zetland Lodge 1902-03; www.freemasonry.london.museum; www.masonicdictionary.com; www.wikipedia.
org/freemasonry; www.masonic-lodge-of-education.com; www.ugle.org.uk; www.quora.com; www.kpoulin1.
wordpress.com; www.pubhistory.com and www.archiseek.com.
27 Lane’s Masonic Records: The Library & Museum of Freemasons website (www.hrionline.ac.uk/lane/record).
28 Ibid.
LINDSAY SIVITER is a trained historian who has worked for over thirty years in museums and archives throughout
the UK, and since 2013 as a volunteer assistant to the Curator at the Crime Museum at Scotland Yard. Lindsay is the
youngest Committee member on both The Metropolitan Police History Society and the Police History Society and is
also a member of The British Society of Criminologists. Lindsay has been researching the Jack the Ripper case for
over twenty years and is an active member of The Whitechapel Society, and since 2001 has worked for Discovery
Tours as one of their Ripper tour guides. She continues to research, as his official biographer, the first ever biography
of Ripper suspect Sir William Gull and in 2011 was the first researcher granted privileged access to his private papers
and personal possessions and travelled to Cape Town, South Africa to stay with his descendants to examine these.
Lindsay has contributed articles to Ripperologist and The Whitechapel Society Journal, and regularly gives lectures
and presentations and has been a guest speaker at many conferences. As an historical adviser and consultant to
companies including the Museum of London and the BBC, Lindsay has also appeared in over twenty television
documentaries including Unmasking Jack the Ripper (2005), The World of Jack 147
Ripperologist the Ripper (2008)
December and Jack 20
2015 the
Ripper: The Definitive Story (2011).
JTRForums:
A Decade of Dedication
By HOWARD BROWN
I was asked by Adam Wood to prepare a brief history of JTR Forums, now entering its eleventh
year, for the readers of the Rip.
Back in the Fall of 2005, Tim Mosley and I took the original domain name which he had established in 2003 and
applied it to software he had at his disposal. The current version of the Forums was born on 19 September 2005.
At first, we laid the foundation... sections for victims, suspects, aspects of the case, etc. A labor of love, we
quickly filled the main page with a wide of assortment of topics for newcomers and long time researchers and
aficionados.
Membership numbers were slow in accumulating. The majority of Ripper-related discussion took place on
Casebook, the pioneering effort of Stephen Ryder in the mid-1990s and one of, if not the most important
developments in the history of Ripperology. Although social media Ripperology such as Facebook might have given
any message board a run for its money in terms of being the most frequented, had it been available in the late
'90s, Casebook had the finest collection of newspapers and archival material for public consumption anywhere,
which remains that site's most valuable asset.
The question became: What could the Forums do which would establish itself as a viable entity at that time?
I had had a considerable number of ideas which I considered testing on Casebook (one of which was Trivia Night,
a weekly online game which involved teams of players in Casebook's chat room... another was an organized,
coordinated section on Ripper suspect Robert D'Onston Stephenson, which, unlike the Trivia Night idea, didn't take
off and fly), but I felt it would be a little too intrusive, along with the fact I wasn't sure they would be embraced
by Casebook's membership. I felt that there were quite a few concepts that hadn't been explored, but which
should be.
I set those ideas up on JTRForums, beginning in late 2005, some of which remain to this day:
Registration Policy
Most websites in any field of endeavor, not just Ripperology, find people usually registering under aliases or
unusual handles. On the Forums, it was decided that we'd register people under their full names to avoid the
silly screen names and spammers. Of the latter pestilence I will give a graphic example as to why our registration
policy is different than almost every site in any field you'll come across. I temporarily lifted the disabling feature
which allowed people to register without any further requirements from management. Within ten minutes, more
than ten spammers had registered. I immediately removed those screen names and disabled the feature. Besides,
unless you are an SPE or CGP, letters to people's names which are familiar to everyone in the field, using one's full
name carries a certain responsibility which I believe manifests itself in how members conduct themselves, if not
all the time, then nearly all.
Points To Ponder
A section of the boards where members vote on the most likely scenario or answer to the question presented
to them. They include retrospective questions such as 'What would you do if you were in charge?' and other
provocative theories.
These are the major site features which stand out in my mind.
Now, on to the major players who have helped build the boards.
JTRForums, it can be said, took it up a major notch when we obtained a copy of the O'Donnell Manuscript, the
never-released 350-page work written in 1959 by British journalist Bernard O'Donnell entitled This Man Was Jack
The Ripper.
The manuscript, which attempts to pin the murders on writer and fantasist Roslyn D'Onston, was made available
through the generous efforts of Andy Aliffe, talented researcher and BBC personality, in October 2006. After
struggling with the technical side of putting the massive work on the boards, it finally appeared in the latter part
of October and early November of the same year. This was the first major step in the rise of JTRForums.
Other individuals who helped the Forums getting established include researcher and asylum history expert Mark
Davis of Bradford. Mr Davis helped me in acquiring some otherwise inaccessible sources. Stewart Evans provided
scans of hundreds of his personal files which have been of importance to researchers in that the documents he
shared would otherwise not have been seen and therefore not used in future books and articles. Mike Covell,
whose efforts in the area of D'Onston-related research have been instrumental in making the site the foremost
repository of D'Onston-related material anywhere.
Recently added members to the cadre like Jerry Dunlop, Anna Morris, Gary Barnett and Sean Crundall, have
augmented the Forums with their approach, intelligence and insights, which combined with Rob Clack, Mark
Ripper, Tom Wescott, Chris Phillips and others make the Forums an ideal place for researcher participation.
Newcomers are always welcome, some of whom have taken the bull by the horns and entrenched themselves on
the boards.
Above all, if there was a Most Valuable Ripperologist award, that would go to Debra Arif, whose name is
synonymous with Ripperological research. There isn't enough time to list her Forums contributions on LeGrand,
Brodie, D'Onston etc, to name but a few, and help in acquiring new sources and helpful assistance in numerous
other capacities.
One would have thought that the meaning of the word "sweating" as applied to work was
sufficiently obvious. But when "the Sweating System" was inquired into by the Committee of the
House of Lords, the meaning became suddenly involved. As a matter of fact the sweater was
originally a man who kept his people at work for long hours. A schoolboy who "sweats" for his
examination studies for many hours beyond his usual working day. The schoolboy meaning of the
word was originally the trade meaning.
But of late years the sweating system has come to mean an unhappy combination of long hours and low pay.
"The sweater's den" is a workshop - often a dwelling room as well - in which, under the most unhealthy conditions,
men and women toil for from sixteen to eighteen hours a day for a wage barely sufficient to keep body and soul
together.
The sweating svstem, as far as London is
concerned, exists chiefly at the East End, but
it flourishes also in the West, notably in Soho,
where the principal "sweating trade," tailoring,
is now largely carried on. Let us visit the East
End first, for here we can see the class which
has largely contributed to the evil - the destitute
foreign Jew - place his alien foot for the first time
upon the free soil of England.
Some of the steamers arrive in St Katharine's
Docks, and the immigrants - principally Russian,
Polish, and Roumanian Jews - have the advantage
of stepping straight from the ship in which they
have been cooped up for two days and two nights
under conditions which, if it be rough weather,
cannot be conducive to comfort.
Many of them, especially those who have come
from Russia, have already been despoiled of the
little money they had. At the frontier they are
sometimes detained for two or even three days, in order that they may be robbed by harpies in collusion with
certain subordinate officials. In some cases a man when he asks for a ticket at
the frontier railway station is refused by the booking clerk. He is told that tickets
can only be issued to emigrants through an agent. The agent then introduces
himself, and on one plea or another succeeds in invoking the immigrant in
expenses which leave him with scarcely a rouble in his pocket at the journey's
end.
If he escapes the foreign harpies the immigrant is not even safe when he
has reached London. Men, frequently of his own faith and country, wait for
In the 1860s, Stephen Forwood mixed in London society, making use of the name Southey to prevent his Ramsgate wife
from tracking him down and demanding maintenance money for her daughter. He was living in sin with Mrs White, who had
In 1865, Stephen Forwood seemed to be losing his reason altogether. Money was running out, and he was living in
the direst poverty. The flighty Mrs White was threatening to leave him, and go to Australia with her children. He spoke
confusedly about the £1,000 he was owed, and threatened that if the debt was not paid, he would commit suicide,
murder Lord Dudley, or commit some great and horrible crime. People did not take him seriously, but on 7 August, he
turned up at the Star Coffee-House in Red Lion Street, Holborn, bringing with him his three illegitimate sons Henry,
Thomas and Alexander, aged between ten and six years. He booked two rooms for the children, and said that he would
be back to fetch them the following morning. When
he did not turn up, the keeper of the coffee-house
went up to see the three little boys. He found them
all dead, poisoned with prussic acid.
Initially, William Noel’s butcher’s shop met with difficulties, and he had to borrow £150 from his wife’s father to keep
it running. A steady, industrious man, Noel worked hard to make his business a success, travelling into the countryside
to buy livestock, and employing two journeymen and a lad. The borrowed £150 was soon repaid, and Noel was able to
save some money. The two Noels were very respectable people, and pillars of Ramsgate lower-middle-class society. They
were strict Wesleyans, and active members of their church community. There was of course gossip about this out-of-
town childless couple, with the husband being ten years younger than the wife, but although mischievous people were
whispering that William Noel was fond of chasing the country lasses when he was out buying livestock, the two Noels
appeared to be getting along perfectly well.
On the afternoon of Sunday, 14 May 1893, everything seemed perfectly normal in the Noel household. After having
had his luncheon, William Noel sat in the downstairs parlour and read through the lessons, since he was a society steward
at the St Lawrence Wesleyan Sunday School. The Noels had a servant girl named Nelly Wilson, but she was given Sunday
afternoon off. Sarah Dinah Noel counted the morning’s collection from church, which amounted to ten shillings, and
went to lock the money away. At around 2.15 pm, William Noel went off to the Sunday school, leaving his wife behind
in the company of the family dog Nip, a large and sturdy black retriever. Nip was something of a disreputable dog, who
had savaged a number of smaller dogs, and bit one or two children as well. His guarding instinct was in good working
order, and when a man had tried a retrieve a chair he had deposited in the Noels’ back yard, the angry and powerful
Nip had kept him out.
At 2.20 pm, the neighbour Lavinia Squires saw William Noel walking past her house on his way to the Sunday school.
He arrived there at 2.25 and took part in the teaching until 3.45 pm, being observed by many people, and behaving
just like he usually did. When leaving the Sunday school, he was accompanied home by some of his pupils, enjoying a
theological debate with these juvenile Wesleyans. When he knocked at the door at No. 9 Adelphi Terrace, there was no
response, although he could hear the dog barking. Noel went to see some of his neighbours, and with some difficulty, he
entered the back yard and forced open the parlour window. Sarah Dinah Noel was lying on the floor in a pool of blood,
quite dead and with a bullet wound to the head. The dog Nip was keeping vigil next to the corpse.
The murder house had been ransacked for money, and the cash-box had been broken into and its contents stolen.
The murdered woman was wearing five rings and a watch and chain, but these had not been touched. Chief Constable
Bush and Inspector Ross were soon at the scene, to take charge of the murder investigation. They found it curious that
although the dog Nip was considered to be of a ferocious disposition, none of the immediate neighbours had heard
any barking from the house. Mrs Noel had been shot at close range, the bullet passing through the head and killing her
instantly. When a party of five police constables was detailed to search the murder house, Inspector Ross gave them two
bottles of beer from Noel’s cellar for them to be in good cheer. At the coroner’s inquest on Sarah Dinah Noel, the dog
Nip was exhibited in court: he showed no appearance of ferocity, but wagged his tail amiably and made friends with
some of the bystanders. Nelly Wilson, the servant girl employed by the Noels, had never heard her master and mistress
utter an angry word at each other. The day of the murder, they had both appeared exactly as usual. The dog Nip was in
fact quite timid, she said, and sometimes retreated into the corner of the room on hearing an unusual noise. She had to
admit, however, that the dog had once flown at her and bitten her hard. William Noel himself was grilled at length by the
coroner and the jury: his wife had been alive and well when he left for the Sunday school; he had never possessed any
firearm and did not understand their use; his wife’s life had not been insured. An important witness was Mrs Sarah Dyer,
the wife of a chemist who lived not far from Noel’s shop: at 2.45 pm the afternoon of the murder, she had heard Noel’s
dog bark and growl, and then a loud report. The dog ceased barking once the shot had been fired, but recommenced at
around 4 pm, when Noel was returning home.
But Inspector Ross did not agree with this benign picture of William Noel. Since a number of valuables had been left
at the murder house, he felt convinced that the robbery had been ‘staged’ by the murderer. Since Mrs Noel did not seem
to have any enemies, and since the dog had not barked much at the time of the murder, he thought William Noel the
prime suspect: he had shot his wife just before leaving for the Sunday school, and then successfully played the innocent
husband. Inspector Ross lent a willing ear to the Ramsgate gossips who spoke of Noel’s immoral activities. The lustful
butcher had once employed a young lady book-keeper named Miss Miller, and an old woman had once seen these two in
a compromising position, lying together on the floor. A farm labourer had once met Noel, who was coming to purchase
some lambs; he had been accompanied by a young woman, for whom he gathered a bunch of wild flowers. Several other
When charging the Grand Jury at Maidstone, Mr Justice Grantham paid particular attention to the Noel case. He
boldly declared that the evidence against William Noel was wholly inadequate. Indeed, “In the whole course of his
experience he had never met with a case in which there was, on the part of the prosecution, so much incompetence,
impropriety, and illegality. During the sixteen days the case was before the Magistrates there was not adduced more
evidence than might be compressed into one small piece of paper.” The police had been guilty of vastly exaggerating
the case against Noel, and the gullible magistrates had willingly played along. Of course, it remained possible that Noel
had committed the crime, but his own task was to evaluate the quality of the evidence against him, and the facts of
the case did not at all support the guilt of the Ramsgate butcher. After such an angry juridical tirade from Mr Justice
Grantham, the only action open for the Grand Jury was to throw out the bill against William Noel; the butcher was set
at liberty, and reunited with his niece Alice Simmons and the dog Nip.
Mrs Gardner, an elderly woman living next doors at No. 12 Flora Road, felt the house shaking and heard the tremendous
explosion. Her own scullery had been damaged by the blast, and when she went to inspect it, she heard a cracked voice
calling for help. She saw that William Henry Wells, the young man who lodged with the Hensons, had been blown straight
out of his bed when the house exploded: dressed only in his nightshirt, he was desperately clinging to a downpipe. Mrs
Gardner let the shaken lodger in through her bedroom window. When a police constable and four neighbours entered
No. 14 Flora Road, the wrecked house was filled by a choking, sulphuric odour. The rear of the house had been entirely
blown away, and the front of the house was full of debris: furniture, pictures, bricks and woodwork thrown about by the
explosion. Samuel Henson was still alive, although he had a wound in the throat. Mrs Henson was pinned against the wall,
underneath an overturned sofa, with deep wounds to her head and throat. After the two Hensons had been removed to
the hospital, on stretchers, the search of No. 14 Flora Road continued. Back in the scullery, the scattered remains of
William Henson were found, amidst much rubble and bricks from the explosion.
A Ramsgate correspondent to the rather disreputable crime weekly Illustrated Police Budget went to have a look at
No. 14 Flora Road the morning after the explosion. Windows were broken in houses within 300 yards from the explosion,
and the knockers had been blown off the front doors of many houses in Flora Road. In the ruined scullery of No. 14, full
of debris from the explosion, a large framed portrait of Queen Victoria rested on a ledge, its glass perfectly unharmed.
Old Mrs Gardener at No. 12 described how she had helped rescue the lodger Wells. Mrs Newby at No. 16 said that at the
time of the explosion, her children had screamed, and she had been too terrified to venture outdoors. She had several
times heard Samuel Henson quarrelling with his wife, who was 14 years younger than him, and accusing her of consorting
with other men when he was away working at the building sites. No. 10 Flora Road had a henhouse in the garden, and the
hens had been blown off their perches by the explosion, the wretched birds remaining on the ground all morning, like
if paralyzed. There was grief among the many friends
of young William Henson, who worked as a bricklayer,
and also in Ramsgate Town football club, where he
was centre-forward in the ‘A’ team. Rather ironically,
William Henson left all his effects, value of £100, to
his father Samuel the railway-ganger. “The Ramsgate
Horror! – Terrible Triple Tragedy! – Attempted Wife
Murder and Suicide! – Heroic Son Killed by Dynamite!”
exclaimed the breathless headline of the Budget,
accompanied by lurid illustrations of the bomb
exploding, and the two injured Hensons found in the
half-destroyed house.
When Will Pitcher appeared at the Maidstone Assizes on 21 The murder house at No. 24 Seafield Road
June, before Sir Charles John Darling who had sentenced the
desperado Samuel Henson to death eleven years earlier, there
was no doubt that he was the guilty man. The only thing his defence team could try was playing the ‘insanity card’: they
had got hold of a ‘tame psychiatrist’ who testified that there was insanity in the family, and that one of Will Pitcher’s
sisters was an epileptic and a mental defective. With must have been a very narrow margin, the jury returned a verdict
of Guilty but Insane, and Will Pitcher was committed to Broadmoor until His Majesty’s pleasure be known. This would
not happen in a hurry: Will remained at Broadmoor for many decades, but it appears that he was either released or
transferred to another asylum in his old age, since he is recorded to have died in Canterbury in 1975, aged 80.4
4 W H Bishop in Bygone Kent, December 1990, W H Johnson, Kent Murder Casebook (Newbury 1998), 42-51;
Times 20 and 24 February 1914.
Mary Jane and Margery were quite happy to escape the London drudgery, and they set themselves up in their new shop.
The Church Road house was far from a luxury dwelling, containing the shop and a small parlour on the ground floor, and
two bedrooms on the first floor, but the two Wren sisters were used to cramped and insalubrious living conditions. There
was no bathroom, and the toilet was out in the yard. The 1901 Census lists Mary J. Wren as a Confectioner, and head of
the household, and the younger sister Margery as cook. In 1911, the Wren sisters were 65 and 60 years old, respectively,
Margery Wren and the murder shop, from the Illustrated Police News, 2 October 1930
the front of the shop. At about the
same time, a well-dressed woman
with a red hat came calling at the shop, leaving a perambulator outside.
At shortly after 6 pm, the 11-year-old Ellen Marvell came up to the shop at No. 2 Church Road, on an errand from
her mother, to purchase some blancmange powder. Since Miss Wren was known to keep her shop open at late hours,
Ellen was surprised to find the door to the little shop locked, and she knocked it hard to alert the elderly shopkeeper. It
took quite a while for Miss Wren to answer the door, and when she finally opened, Ellen could see that she was looking
quite bedraggled, and that she was bleeding badly from the head. Although frightened by the appearance of the old
woman when she came staggering up to open the door, Ellen’s main thought was the blancmange powder, and she finally
managed to get through to the dazed shopkeeper what she wanted. Miss Wren had quite a supply of blancmange powder
on the premises, and she had Ellen select what flavour she wanted. Ellen Marvell ran home and told her father what had
just happened. When he went to the shop, he found Margery Wren collapsed on the floor, and he sent his two daughters
for a doctor and a police constable.
When Margery Wren regained consciousness, she explained to Mr Marvell that she had fallen down hard and hurt her
head. When Dr Richard Archibald, a veteran Ramsgate practitioner who had been looking after the medical needs of
the Wren sisters for many years, came to the shop, he could see that the old lady’s extensive injuries were clearly not
the result of a fall, but to multiple lacerations of the head by some blunt instrument. A pair of blood-stained fire tongs,
which were laying on the floor, were a prime candidate for being the blunt instrument in question. Miss Wren told Dr
Archibald that she had been assaulted inside the shop: “He caught me by the throat, and then he set about me with the
tongs.” When the doctor asked her to name her assailant, she just said “You will never get him, doctor. He has escaped.”
Dr Archibald found it strange that for some reason or other, Miss Wren did not want the name of her attacker to become
known.
Margery Wren was taken to the Ramsgate Hospital, where she lingered for five days. She spoke confusedly about
what had happened to her, telling Dr Archibald, a policewoman and various other people that “They were two of them
set about me. If I had not had my cap on they would have smashed in my brain-box.” She then said that there had
been three, or even four, assailants. She accused an elderly man named Albert Williams of having been the man who
attacked her, but then pointed the finger at “Hamlyn of No. 19”. Several times, she said “Hope did it!”, once adding
“Hope of Dene Road!” Mr S F Butler, the Chief Constable of Ramsgate, communicated with Scotland Yard, and Chief
Inspector Walter Hambrook was dispatched to Ramsgate to take charge of the murder investigation. When he arrived on
24 September, Miss Wren had become comatose, so it was impossible for him to question her in person. Hambrook was
quite baffled by the contradictory statements from the dying woman, accusing a number of respectable, elderly people
of having attacked her. When the magistrate had come to take her dying depositions, she had merely said “I do not wish
him to suffer. He must bear his sins. I do not wish to make a statement.” The local vicar had been equally unsuccessful
in getting Miss Wren to denounce the identity of her attacker; after he had left frustrated, Miss Wren said, with a note
of satisfaction, “I did not tell him anything, see”. The badly injured old woman died on Thursday, 25 September, and the
case was now one of murder.
Walter Hambrook went to see the murder shop, which was quite a dismal sight, the premises being in a very dirty
and verminous condition. There was not much stock in the gloomy old shop, and he got the impression that very little
business was done in there. The shelves contained a variety of archaic merchandise: a variety of fly-papers, Sunlight
soap, Zebo for cleaning the grate, and Bird’s custard powder, along with a selection of rather unappetizing sweets
kept in old-fashioned glass jars. Miss Wren had told some people that she was the owner of valuable house property in
London, but she had told others that she was very poor, and had even had her meals at a soup kitchen for the destitute.
Hambrook thought it likely that Margery Wren knew the man who had assaulted her, but that for some strange reason,
she had wanted to keep his identity a secret. The beneficiaries in her will were two elderly cousins: Mrs Hannah Cook,
72, and Mrs Ann Wilson, 84 and an invalid. Neither of these two were physically capable of committing a violent assault,
but the police were interested in Hannah Cook’s son, Police Constable Arthur Cook, but he had an unblemished record,
and his clothes were free from blood stains. There was brief optimism when a prisoner named John Lambert confessed
to committing the murder, but when questioned by Walter Hambrook, he told many untruths, and was incapable of
describing the topography of Ramsgate. On her deathbed, Miss Wren had mentioned the name of Albert Williams, a
69-year-old man from Dover, who had visited her at 1 pm the day of the murder, to complain that his nephew was
leaving him and his wife, to find lodgings elsewhere, but nothing transpired to link him with the murder. Miss Wren had
The coroner’s inquest on Margery Wren was opened by Dr F W Hardman on Friday, 26 September, at the police station
parade room. It would go on for many weeks to come, with scores of witnesses examined, although at the advice of Chief
Inspector Hambrook, none of the people denounced by Miss Wren on her death-bed were named in court. Hannah Cook
the cousin gave evidence about the hermitical habits of the deceased, and her neglect of the house and shop, which
were never cleaned. She was supposed to have kept some of her money and valuables in a small black bag, but although
the bedroom at No. 2 Church Road was found to contain a bag with £8 10s in notes, and another full of buttons, none of
these bags was black. Dr Gerard Roche Lynch and Sir Bernard Spilsbury recounted the medical evidence: Miss Wren had
been seized hard by the throat in an attempt to strangle her, and then beaten down with repeated blows to the head
with the iron tongs. A policewoman, who had been present in Miss Wren’s room at the hospital, gave a lengthy account
of the dying woman’s confused mutterings on her death-bed. In spite of a police appeal, the woman in the red hat, who
had visited Margery Wren’s shop shortly before the murder, was never identified. The coroner’s inquest went on until 24
October, returning a verdict of murder against some person or persons unknown.
Since Miss Wren had more than once said ‘Hope did it! Hope was the one who did it!’ every person in Ramsgate by
that name was investigated. There was a man named Hope living in Dene Road, but he was 84-years-old and his two sons
had both been in Tunbridge Wells at the time of the murder. The police were interested to find another suspect living at
No. 88 Church Road, namely the 20-year-old thief Charles Ernest Hope. He had once been a private soldier in the Royal
Corps of Signallers, but had been discharged for larceny. After spending some time in Borstal, he was arrested in London
on 27 August 1930, for stealing jewelry worth £10 from a bag in the luggage compartment of a train. The police found
out that Charles Ernest Hope had spent 18 and 19 September at the Salvation Army Hostel in Euston Road, but on the
following day, he had travelled from Victoria to Ramsgate by train, arriving at 4 pm and reaching the house of his parents
in Church Road at 4.20. There were bloodstains on his jacket, trousers and kit bag, which he explained by claiming to
have injured himself when cutting the bag open during the robbery back in August, but the police inspector who had
arrested him denied that he had any fresh cuts on his hands at the time. Hope also lied about his movements the day of
the murder, claiming to have left the train at Dumpton Park rather than at Ramsgate. He was clearly a petty crook, and
perfectly capable of robbing Miss Wren, who was reputed locally to be hoarding money and valuables in her little shop.
As time went by, and the police detectives were baffled, there was several unverified newspaper anecdotes about the
two Wren sisters. According to one version, they had been servants in a wealthy London household when the daughter of
the householder, a person of quality, had given birth to an illegitimate child. The two Wren sisters had taken care of the
little girl, and brought her up, for a liberal allowance. This story disregards that no person had seen any little girl at No.
2 Church Road. Another newspaper story said that the two Wren sisters had once been servants to a wealthy Admiral who
lived in Portman Square, and that he had rewarded them well for their work, and given them his framed photograph,
which was hanging in the parlour of the murder house. No Census record supports this version, however: although the
two sisters were in service in London for some considerable period of time, their masters were gentlemen without any
nautical ambitions. A more adventurous version said that the two sisters were related to none less than Sir Christopher
Wren, and that the portrait of another distinguished member of the family, Admiral Wren, was hanging in the parlour.
Unfortunately for this version, there does not appear ever to have been a British admiral by that name. Finally, the
most sensational story told that Margery Wren had once herself given birth to an illegitimate son, and that it was this
individual who had returned to Ramsgate to murder her. Once more, there was no medical evidence that the Ramsgate
murder victim had ever given birth to a son, and no person had seen a little boy at No. 2 Church Road; the police file on
the murder makes no mention of either of these newspaper concoctions.
Although no person was ever charged with the murder of Margery Wren, the police file makes it clear that there was
a main suspect, namely Charles Ernest Hope, for some obscure reason called by the police ‘Ernest Charles Hope’. He
lied to the police about his activities the day of the murder, and his clothes were stained with blood. As a petty crook,
it would not have been out of character for him to try to rob the shop at No. 2 Church Road, to steal the money he had
presumed Miss Wren had been hoarding; nor would it have been beyond him to try and strangle her, and then beat her
down, when he was caught searching the house. According to his birth certificate, Charles Ernest Hope was born on 1
October 1910, at No. 88 Church Road, Ramsgate, son of the journeyman house-painter Charles Hope and his wife Louisa.
‘EXCEEDINGLY MEAN’
Ernest Charles Hope, a private in the
Royal Corps of Signals, was bound over at
Scarborough for what the chairman of the
magistrates described as an exceedingly mean
trick. He collected for Scarborough Hospital on
Rose Day, and, it was alleged, stole 3s 11d.
JAN BONDESON is a senior lecturer and consultant rheumatologist at Cardiff University. He is the author of
Murder Houses of London, The London Monster, The Great Pretenders, Blood on the Snow and other true
crime books, as well as the bestselling Buried Alive.
*****
Chapter V
An Emissary of Darkness
It was midnight - midnight in the heart of London. Big Ben was just striking the hour, and its sonorous notes were
being wafted across the dark running Thames, when Colonel Mansfield entered his chambers in the Temple. He struck a
light on entering, and seated himself in an armchair, burying his face in his hands as if in deep thought.
For several minutes he sat thus without moving; then he raised his head. Upon his face was an expression of marked
determination and a strange far off look was in his eyes. “For her sake I have done it; for her sake,” he muttered to
himself. He opened a cabinet close at hand and took from it a miniature. It was the portrait of a beautiful girl. He looked
at it fondly and kissed it several times. “How very like her daughter. Evie has her eyes, her look - her soul,” he said,
gazing at the portrait with rapt attention.
“For your sake I will brave all,” he continued. “In life we have been separated; in death we should be united - in
death, which is the life beyond, our souls would come together. So be it.” He returned to the miniature to the cabinet.
“The night has waned, the hour for putting the matter to the test has arrived,” he said, looking out his window upon
the silent garden below. With this he entered his bedroom. In about ten minutes he returned dressed in a long flowing
robe of white. His appearance was entirely altered, and he looked more like the figure of a Persian magi than an English
officer. In his hand he carried a scroll and an ebony rod carved with numerous symbols. He stood in the center of the
room, where he lifted up his eyes as if in prayer, although no words escaped his lips. Then he blew out the light, but he
was not in darkness, for a most remarkable thing happened; the scroll when opened appeared to be illuminated with
some luminouis substance, and, as he held it up to read, the light therefrom shone upon his face.
Slowly and impressively he read in a strange tongue from the pages he held. Then taking the rod in his right hand, and
drawing a circle round him where he stood, her commenced the following incantation:- “MASTER, HEAR ME! BROTHERS,
HEAR ME! I WHO HAVE DRUNK THE WATER OF PURITY AND HAVE EATEN OF THE FRUIT OF ETERNITY; I WHO AM EVEN AS
THOU ART, NEED THY GUIDANCE, DENY IT ME NOT, MY MASTER; DENY IT ME NOT, MY BROTHERS. BY THE SIGN OF OUR
BROTHERHOOD I ADJURE YE.”
Chapter VI
The Shadow of the Dagger
It was some hours past midnight. A great silence was over the earth. Not a sound was heard in the streets, not even
the footsteps of the policemen on beat. Evelyn Hardcastle lay in bed sleepless and restless.
Once she had closed her eyes and had dreamed a horrid dream. Dark figures with evil eyes surrounded her. They
sought to clutch her and tear her limb from limb. Then came to lithe form of a man with a dagger in his hand. His face
was dark, but his eyes were like coals on fire. He approached her bed and muttered some incantation over her. She
could neither move nor cry out. All power of resistance was subdued in her. Nearer came the man, and then he raised
his dagger-formed like a serpent with pale, flashing eyes - and held it over her. Down it came, and a pain like the thrust
of a red-hot iron smote her in the region of the heart. She awoke with a start, bathe in perspiration.
“How horrible.” she said, looking tremblingly around the room.
She was not a superstitious girl, but the circumstances seriously impressed her. What if it should be a warning of
her approaching end? She remembered that the night before Geraldine Ulverstone was murdered her friend had had a
somewhat similar dream. Could it be that she was to die in a like manner?
“Oh! Fred, Fred, what will happen to you if I am killed?” Her first thoughts were of her lover. “And, father dear, you
would be so lonely if I were dead; you have no one but me since poor mother died and dear old Uncle Lal, he would
miss me too. And I am so young to die. O Father in Heaven, have mercy on me. For their sakes protect me this night.”
She prayed long and fervently, and at the conclusion was considerably calmed. Once she thought she heard mocking
voices, and flapping of the window blind made her heart leap with fear. She tried to sleep, but her thoughts were too
active.
Presently she arose and looked at her watch. It was close upon 5 o’clock. “I was born at 5, they tell me; so now I am
21. To-day, too, the new moon is born.”
Introduction
During the first decades of the nineteenth century, Gothic fiction, which had ruled unopposed since 1764, when
Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto, started losing some of its supremacy to a humbler newcomer,
the ghost story. The world was changing, and the creatures of the night changed with it. They moved from
the dungeons of decrepit castles and the secret passages of ruined abbeys to the comfortable sitting-rooms
and manicured gardens of the emerging bourgeoisie. Their apparitions were no longer reported in three-volume
Gothic novels but in the pages of the monthly magazines. Still they came; and where they passed, they were not
forgotten.
Charles Dickens played a major role in the development of the
ghost story and its association with Christmas, both through the
stories he wrote and the stories he published in the magazines
for which he served as editor. In 1843, he subjected the miser
Ebenezer Scrooge to the ministrations of a parade of restless spirits
in A Christmas Carol. In 1851, he launched a special Christmas
supplement of his magazine Household Words and invited
writers to contribute to it. In subsequent years, he continued to
write ghost stories and to release Christmas supplements to his
magazines. When he started All the Year Round in 1859, he made
sure ghosts were not left out of its pages; he ran stories by Amelia
B Edwards, Rosa Mulholland, Charles Collins, R S Hawker and, in
particular, the early master of the ghost story, Joseph Sheridan
Le Fanu.
Many of the authors who supplied the magazines with
supernatural fare were women. Among them were Mary Elizabeth
Braddon, Mrs Henry Wood, Charlotte Riddell, Margaret Oliphant
and Rhoda Broughton in the 1860s and 70s, later joined by Vernon
Lee, Edith Nesbit, Louisa Baldwin, Mary Cholmondeley and Violet
Hunt. Although they excelled as authors of ghost stories, women
had no special affinity with them. In many cases, educated
women who needed to support themselves and, sometimes, their
families, found in authorship lucrative opportunities which at
the time were not available to them in other fields. The work
of some of these women has already appeared in the pages of
Dickens’s A Christmas Carol
Ripperologist; the work of others will not fail to follow.
Dinah Maria Mulock, afterwards known as Mrs Craik, was a
novelist, poet and essayist. The eldest daughter of Thomas Mulock, a nonconformist minister, and his wife, Dinah
Mellard, she was born on 20 April 1826 in Stoke-on-Trent. In 1839, an inheritance allowed the family to move to
London. A few years later, in 1844, Thomas Mulock, a charismatic but emotionally unstable man, deserted his
COMING SOON
I am not a believer in ghosts in general; I see no good in them. They come - that is, are reported to come
- so irrelevantly, purposelessly - so ridiculously, in short - that one’s common sense as regards this world,
one’s supernatural sense of the other, are alike revolted. Then nine out of ten ‘capital ghost stories’ are
so easily accounted for; and in the tenth, when all natural explanation fails, one who has discovered the
extraordinary difficulty there is in all society in getting hold of that very slippery article called a fact, is
strongly inclined to shake a dubious head, ejaculating, ‘Evidence! a question of evidence!’
But my unbelief springs from no dogged or contemptuous scepticism as to the possibility - however great
the improbability - of that strange impression upon or communication to, spirit in matter, from spirit wholly
immaterialized, which is vulgarly called ‘a ghost’. There is no credulity more blind, no ignorance more
childish, than that of the sage who tries to measure ‘heaven and earth and the things under the earth’,1
with the small two-foot-rule of his own brains. Dare we presume to argue concerning any mystery of the
universe, ‘It is inexplicable, and therefore impossible’?
Premising these opinions, though simply as opinions, I am about to relate what I must confess is to me a
thorough ghost story; its external and circumstantial evidence being indisputable, while its psychological
causes and results, though not easy of explanation, are still more difficult to be explained away. The ghost,
like Hamlet’s, was ‘an honest ghost’.2 From her daughter - an old lady, who, bless her good and gentle
memory! has since learned the secrets of all things - I learnt this veritable tale.
‘My dear,’ said Mrs MacArthur to me - it was in the early days of table-moving, when young folk ridiculed
and elder folk were shocked at the notion of calling up one’s departed ancestors into one’s dinner-table,
and learning the wonders of the angelic world by the bobbings of a hat or the twirlings of a plate. ‘My dear,’
continued the old lady, ‘I do not like playing at ghosts.’
‘Why not? Do you believe in them?’
‘A little.’
‘Did you ever see one?’
‘Never. But once I heard -’
She looked serious, as if she hardly liked to speak about it, either from a sense of awe or from fear of
ridicule. But no one could have laughed at any illusions of the gentle old lady, who never uttered a harsh
or satirical word to a living soul; and this evident awe was rather remarkable in one who had a large stock
of common sense, little wonder, and no ideality.
I was rather curious to hear Mrs MacArthur’s ghost story.
‘My dear, it was a long time ago, so long that you may fancy I forget and confuse the circumstances. But
I do not. Sometimes I think one recollects more clearly things that happened in one’s teens - I was eighteen
that year - than a great many nearer events. And besides, I had other reasons for remembering vividly
everything belonging to this time, - for I was in love, you must know.’
She looked at me with a mild, deprecating smile, as if hoping my youthfulness would not consider the
thing so very impossible or ridiculous. No; I was all interest at once.
‘In love with Mr MacArthur,’ I said, scarcely as a question, being at that Arcadian time of life when one
takes as a natural necessity, and believes as an undoubted truth, that everybody marries his or her first
love.
1 Cf. ‘That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth’,
Philippians 2:10 (King James Version).
2 Cf. ‘Touching this vision here, It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you’, Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1. Scene V.
3 Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress, is a novel by English author Fanny Burney (1752–1840), published in 1782. It recounts
the trials and tribulations of Cecilia Beverley, a beautiful heiress who moves to London. Mortimer Delvile [sic] is a tall
and athletic young man, more seductive than handsome. Cecilia falls in love with him, but is unsure of his affections and
his pride may keep them apart. A passage in Cecilia: ‘…if to pride and prejudice you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is
good and evil balanced, that to pride and prejudice you will also owe their termination’ may have inspired the title of Jane
Austen’s celebrated novel Pride and Prejudice.
4 John Philip Kemble (1757–1823) was an English actor who often appeared with his elder sister, Sarah Siddons, on the stage
of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
5 Joseph Grimaldi (1778–1837) was an English actor, comedian and dancer who became the most famous and popular of all
the clowns in harlequinade and pantomime. He was the original ‘Clown Joey’ and created many popular catchphrases such
as ‘Here we are again.’ At Drury Lane In the early 1800s he played the Second Gravedigger in Hamlet, alongside John
Kemble.
Back in January and looking at the year ahead, I forecast that Simon Wood’s Deconstructing
Jack was likely to be the best offering of the year. It isn’t an especially good book, the biggest
downside being the sheer improbability of its incomplete conspiracy theory. However, the
extensive research was commendable and it caused one to look at the case from different
perspectives, which is always a good thing.
The two dark horse books which might easily have knocked Simon Wood’s
book from its number one position were Wynne Weston-Davies’ The Real Mary
Kelly and Bruce Robinson’s They All Love Jack. The Real Mary Kelly turned
out to be interesting and entertaining reading, but relied far too heavily on
supposition, and Bruce Robinson’s They All Love Jack cast aside the normal
standards of historical research, proffered a cock-and-bull theory, and could
be a contender for the worst Ripper book ever, thought the competition for that is very stiff.
Otherwise, nothing memorable appeared and the Ripper year was mostly dominated, not by a
book, but by a load of overblown nonsense about the Jack the Ripper Museum in Cable Street. What
came as a surprise was J J Hainsworth’s Jack the Ripper - Case Solved, 1891 (reviewed below).
It’s the third conspiracy theory of the year, but on a very small scale. Jonathan Hainsworth would
have you believe that Sir Melville Macnaghten wanted it known that the police knew the identity
of Jack the Ripper, but at the same time didn’t want anyone to discover who it was, so he dribbled
information and misinformation to cronies like George R Sims.
The theory doesn’t really hold together, I’m afraid, but Hainsworth provides a makings of a
biography of an Eton-obsessed, schoolboy-minded Macnaghten, and it’s the first book about Montague
John Druitt to have appeared in many a long year - and a lot of new information has emerged in that
time which has desperately needed to be brought together in a single volume. Hainsworth’s book
isn’t the one I’d have wished for to do this, but in this case Begg can’t be a chooser. However, I think
Hainsworth’s book is probably the best Ripper book of the year, pipping Simon Wood at the post.
But if 2015 has been a bit on the bleak side, 2016 looks is a positively wintery wasteland. As of
writing, there’s not a single new Jack the Ripper title announced for publication!
On the last day of December 1888 a waterman dragged the body of Montague John Druitt from the water off
Thorneycroft’s Torpedo Works in Chiswick. It was an unremarkable suicide that barely made the newspapers, but in 1894
the Chief Constable of the C.I.D. at Scotland Yard, Melville Macnaghten, wrote a report in which he ventured his opinion
that Druitt was Jack the Ripper. For some reason Macnaghten described Druitt as a 41-year-old doctor. In fact he was a
31-year-old barrister/schoolmaster. Macnaghten added a few details in his 1913 memoirs, not, of course, naming Druitt,
but claiming that ‘certain facts’ pointing to Druitt’s guilt were not in the possession of the police until some years after
June 1889. He added that Druitt lived ‘with his own people’ (either his nuclear family or just possibly with his class of
people) and absented himself from home at certain times’. He had never been in an asylum. The theory advanced by
Jonathan Hainsworth in this book is that Melville Macnaghten used writer friends Sir Arthur Griffiths (who wrote of the
drowned doctor theory in 1898) and George R Sims (from 1899) (and latterly his autobiography) to make public that the
police almost certainly knew the identity of Jack the Ripper, but at the same time did everything he possibly could to
prevent anyone from identifying the suspect as Montague Druitt.
The question is why Macnaghten would have done this, and sadly it’s a question Hainsworth struggles to convincingly
answer. One can understand that Macnaghten may have wanted to make it public that the police knew who Jack the
Ripper was, and it is also reasonable that he might have wanted it known that it was on his watch that the information
identifying Druitt came to light and that Macnaghten (rather than, say, Anderson) recognised its significance. But if that
was the case, why provide Griffiths and Sims with sufficient information to make an identification possible.
Peter Ackroyd says that at the headquarters of the River Police in Wapping there is a “Book of the Dead” or “Occurrence
Book”, otherwise a registry of bodies pulled from the river. I don’t know whether this book existed in the late 1800s, but
I assume something like it must have done and that it would have been a relatively simple task for any journalist worthy
of the name to have checked for bodies pulled from the Thames on the last day of December 1888. The misidentification
of Druitt as a 41-year-old doctor would surely have been no obstacle to identifying Montague Druitt as the man of whom
Griffiths, Sims or Macnaghten wrote.
The other possible problem for Hainsworth’s theory is that we must allow for the possibility that Macnaghten was not
responsible for the Thames suicide being identified as Jack the Ripper. In 1891 a member of parliament named Richard
Farquharson was telling people about a doctor who committed suicide and who he believed was Jack the Ripper. The
scant details suggest that he was referring to Druitt, although it is not known whether he was naming him. Farquharson
could have been Macnaghten’s source or he and Macnaghten could have shared a common source. Seventeen years later
a writer named Frank Collins Richardson referred to the Whitechapel murderer as having flung himself into the Thames
and being named Dr Bluitt.
Assuming this was a thinly-veiled reference to Druitt, the name was presumably in the public domain by 1908. I know
that rumours circulate about people for decades before eventually appearing in print. Both Jimmy Saville and Cyril Smith
were known about long before their posthumous exposure, especially among journalists, so I see no reason why Druitt’s
name couldn’t have been linked with the Ripper murders without ever having made it into print, especially as journalists
back then seem honourable and lacking curiosity - nobody, it seems, bothered to follow up on the Farquaharson story,
for example, and later a vicar claiming that the Ripper had admitted to his crimes under seal of the confessional asked
that a national newspaper not reveal his name because it could help identify the killer, and the newspaper agreed. No
other journalists seem to have followed up that story either. Different days, different ways.
Setting aside Hainsworth’s theory, off the top of my head the last book about Druitt was D J Leighton’s Ripper Suspect
in 2006, and so much interesting information has come to light since then that a book bringing it together between two
covers has been long overdue. I’ve already mentioned some of this information, namely Farquharson and Richardson. In
1892 an East End Catholic priest allegedly left a sealed packet addressed to Sir Edward Bradford in which was revealed
the identity of Jack the Ripper, information apparently received under seal of the confessional.
Hainsworth also examines the “North-country Vicar” story; a north-country vicar claimed that a fellow clergyman
had received under seal of the confessional an admission to having committed the Jack the Ripper murders. The vicar
had agreed to make the admission public, but in a form so heavily fictionalised that the murderer’s identity could never
be learned. The vicar himself apparently bore a name which would help identify the killer and he asked the newspaper
not to publish it, a request to which the newspaper remarkably agreed and did nothing further to pursue the story.
Hainsworth suggests the identity of the vicar.
Undertake no investigations, but leak the story to the press via journalist and
writer friends like Griffiths and Sims, providing just enough information to set
any self-respecting investigative journalist on the trail of the suspect’s identity?
There’s not enough information to allow comfortable theorising, but the fact
is that Macnaghten gave away sufficient information for Druitt to be identified,
and if journalists had been more aggressive newshounds than they appear to have
been, his identity would surely have been known. It is difficult to believe that he
was really trying to protect anyone. Indeed, it is entirely possible that Druitt’s
name was already in or making its way into the public domain, albeit not in print.
Also, three short stories by G R Sims. Like a lot of Hainsworth’s material, much of this material has been discussed
on the forums, but this is the first time it has appeared in a book. It deserves close analysis. In fact, it’s a pity that
Hainsworth has discussed his theory so extensively on the forums, where it must be said that his theorising has generally
been greeted with disagreement and, it is sad to say, occasional vile comments.
Jonathan Hainsworth comes close to writing a biography of the Eton-obsessed Macnaghten, a grown man embracing a
little boy’s love of manly sports like cricket and a sense of adventure. He doesn’t achieve it - and a biography was never
his intention - but his efforts to delve into the mind of the man to explain his view of the world and why he wrote what
he did are well worth reading.
Finally, there are some great new photographs in this book too.
Overall, Jonathan’s book is a conspiracy theory and one that probably goes way over the top, Macnaghten being
Overall, 2015 kept the best for last. If you had to buy
one Ripper book this year, this would be it.
But at least Craig Fraley is honest about it. “All the information in this book can be found online”
he says in his introduction, or “Disclaimer” as he calls it. And the emboldened emphasis is his too.
He even admits that the newspaper reports can be found on Casebook.org.
Quite a few books reprinting press reports have appeared over the past few years and the
majority mercilessly plunder the transcribed newspaper reports freely available on Casebook. Most
add nothing. Fraley is different. He has written his own text, then, whenever he seems able, he
quotes from the newspapers, often very long extracts from the inquest reports in the Times.
As the cover price indicates, this is an academic book, written in an academic style, and
unfortunately for some reason printed in a typewriter typeface that I found frustratingly awkward to read. Nevertheless,
it was and remains an interesting examination of the development of provincial police forces following the passing of
the County and Borough Police Act in 1856, which made it compulsory for any county in England (and Wales) which had
not already established a police force to do so.
The book has two parts, “Government and Policing” and “Men and Policemen”, the latter being a particularly
interesting analysis of the places and occupations from which policemen were recruited, the possible reasons why some
men saw policing as an attractive opportunity, and how and why recruits very often failed to make it through their first
year on the beat.
At first the bulk of recruits were men in their mid-20s, but soon they were in their early-20s, and a good many had
worked the land before joining the police. Farm labourers worked hard for little pay, so police work seemed immediately
attractive, but many found the police to be less appealing than it had first appeared. Roughly half of those who joined
the police survived a year in the job and a mere 12% made it through to receiving their pensions. These figures remained
pretty much the same throughout the period covered by the book. Interestingly, of those who left in their first year, 47%
resigned and 53% were dismissed. The dismissal rate dropped quite dramatically as the years of service increased, but
the chance of dying whilst in harness increased.
What we often overlook is that policemen were almost exclusively working-class, whilst those they policed and over
whom they had to exercise a degree of authority were middle- and upper-class. It was therefore psychologically difficult
for a man to become a policeman, stepping out of his class, and having to deal with people who considered him his social
inferior. It’s something which may have had an unappreciated impact on the Ripper investigation.
I enjoyed this book. I can’t recommend that you rush out and buy it, but if you’re interested in the history of the
police you should certainly see if your local library can source it for you.
So wrote Sir Melville Macnaghten. But, of course, the nights when Jack killed were not foggy.
The image of Jack disappearing wraithlike into a swirling pea-souper is one of the enduring canards
about Jack, but the famous London fog - or smog, a mixture of smoke and fog - is so ingrained in
both Ripperlore and London history that it’s almost impossible to escape it. It’s been gone now for
fifty-three years, but even today non-Londoners still refer to the capital as “the smoke”.
Christine Corton discusses Jack the Ripper and the fog, but in a chapter about the danger the fog presented for
women. The chapter opens with reference to the closure by Richard Mansfield of his play Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and
moves on to Marie Belloc Lownde’s masterful The Lodger, which opens on a day “so cold, so foggy, so-so drizzly”, and
a knock on the door that heralds the peculiar presence of a desperately needed lodger, Mr Sleuth. She also mentions
William Hardinge’s novel Out of the Fog, published in 1888 though it had been serialised the previous year. This story
portrays the fog as a prison, which it must have been for a great many women, its thickness determining how far she
dare walk outside, if she dare walk outside at all.
The diarist John Evelyn, who thought the sulfurous clouds caused by the burning of sea-coal had turned London into
a “hell upon earth”, proposed moving industry elsewhere and surrounding London with flowers and hedges. His idea met
with the enthusiastic approval of Charles II, but nothing was done. Nor would anything be done until the 1950s. On 4
December 1952 a thick yellow fog hung over London and everywhere up to 20 miles from the centre, and this unwanted
guest stayed for a week, even penetrating buildings. This “Great Killer Fog” claimed 12,000 lives. It was an MP named
Gerald Nabarro who eventually got the Clean Air Act pushed into law.
It was in Victorian times that the thick, yellow fog that lay heavy beyond the Bunting’s red damask curtains really
became a feature of London. Some sixty of these fog occurred every year. East London invariably copped the worst of it,
The book isn’t all doom and gloom. Ms Corton has managed to gather some highly memorable little stories, such as
the time when an opera at Sadlers Wells had to be abandoned, the fog being so thick in the theatre that the audience
couldn’t see the stage. Or when a a heavy, thick fog joined the congregation inside St Paul’s Cathedral and obscured the
pulpit from which the sermon was delivered, the text being “I am the Light of the World”.
I thoroughly enjoyed this very handsome book. Having struggled through some almost impenetrably written academic
titles and fearing the same from this offering another university press, I was delighted to find that this was a clearly
written, superbly researched, very detailed, and, to me at least, original investigation of the London fog.
Highly recommended.
People of importance have probably always worried about how their contemporaries perceive them, and a few with
an awareness of history will have worried about how future generations would see them - a classic example being the
way in which Henry VII had his predecessor’s reputation blackened, even attributing to Richard III the murder of the
princess in the Tower. With the removal of the “tax on knowledge” and growing literacy among the working classes, the
number of newspapers grew and politicians had more to worry about than how they would be remembered after they
were dead. The newspapers could lose them votes or win them. Quietly, but with determination, it became necessary
to manipulate the truth, to make the unfavourable appear favourable.
It’s often said that newspapers and journalists in in 19th century were fairly low on the status scale. Towards the
end of the 19th century journalism changed. The “New Journalism” catered for a popular audience, the newly literate
man in the street. It didn’t simply report the news, it delivered interpretation and ready made opinion. W T Stead is
often cited as its prime moving force, and Stead also wanted to deliver the story behind the news and so gave birth
to investigative journalism. This was a wholly new phenomenon that politicians, businessmen, and other prominent
individuals did not like. They were used to making statements, not to being probed and questioned and having their
foibles and mistakes exposed to the world.
The “new journalism” flowered with the launch of Alfred Harmsworth’s hugely successful Daily Mail, which Lord
Salisbury described as “written by office boys for office boys”. Lord Palmerston (1784-1865) was probably the first prime
minister to use the press to his own advantage, passing on information in return for favourable reporting and support.
He invited journalists to pleasant social gatherings, he leaked information, wrote anonymous articles, and bestowed
sinecures on newspapermen. His association with The Times’s editor John Thadeus Delane (1817-1879) was described
by Lord Brougham as “devil-worship”. All Victoria’s prime ministers did the same, but most were a little more adept
at pretending otherwise, hiding behind a not altogether untrue disdain for the grubby journalists and newspapers
whilst feting them behind closed doors. Balfour even claimed that he never read the newspapers, which in fact he did.
His uncle, Lord Salisbury, the prime minister at the time of the Ripper murders, also gave an outward appearance of
disdaining newspapers, but in the early part of his career, before he inherited the title and estate and family fortune,
I’d have liked to have had more about Lord Salisbury and particularly the ramifications of “Parnellism and Crime”.
It must have been from Salisbury, or those close to him, who fed information to The Times, sanctioned its journalists
access to the files and secret papers at Dublin Castle, and even drew in the complicity of the Metropolitan police and
perhaps even encouraged Anderson’s articles.
I enjoyed Paul Brighton’s book, but found it a little thin in parts and the closing years of Victoria’s reign, so important
in the history of British newspapers, seemed rushed. Overall, though, it was interesting reading.
Her name was Lillian Rose Kendall, born in Wandsworth in 1902, indicted into the
Forty Elephants, and by 1920 prostituting herself in the East End for a man named
Henry ‘Harry’ Goldstein, who went to prison for living on immoral earnings.
Brian McDonald, who also authored a family memoir, Elephant Boys (2000),
about Charles McDonald and the south London McDonald gang, tells the full story
of the mainly female Elephant and Castle-based Forty Elephants, sometimes called the Forty Thieves. The leader was
called the ‘queen’ and the first is generally thought to have been Charlie Pitts. By 1896 it was a woman named Mary
Carr. By the 1920s it was Alice Diamond (aka Diana Black). A junior lieutenant in Alice’s gang was Maggie Hill, who would
succeed her as ‘queen’ in the 1930s. Maggie’s 13-year-old brother was Billy Hill, who later claimed to be Boss of Britain’s
Underworld. The gang initially targeted shops and department stores, shoplifting a staggering amount of booty, the
organised getaway involving hoisters, who did the actual thefts, boosters, to whom the stolen goods were passed, and a
third group who discouraged pursuers.
When London got too hot, the gang moved into the provinces and seaside towns,
often organising a ‘blitz’ attack on a large number of businesses in one town. When
shoplifting became too difficult, the gang moved into smash and grab raids and
housebreaking. She was born in 1896. She acquired a record as a juvenile, came to
police attention when in her late teens, having been arrested in 1912 for stealing
chocolate, in 1913 for stealing a blouse, and in 1914 she received 12-months with
hard labour for assorted thefts. By 1926 was the accepted ‘queen’. She had light
brown hair, green eyes, a dimpled chin, and stood 5ft 10ins in her stockinged feet,
which was remarkably tall for the time, and her diamond rings were as effective
as a brass knuckle-duster. She was also in and out of prison, her last conviction
being in 1929. Alice Diamond was not mad, but to paraphrase Lady Caroline Lamb’s
description of Lord Byron, eh was most certainly bad and dangerous to know. For
example, just before Christmas 1925 Alice and a gang of men and women raided the
home of William Britten. It was a brutal attack, Britten being badly injured, his son
hurt and his wife threatened with a gun. These were definitely not nice people. Alice
received 18-months.
Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants isn’t the easiest of books to read. There are a lot of names and relationships
to remember, and the narrative does follow a sequential dates, but sometimes skips about a bit. But once you settle into
the book it’s easy enough.
Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Thelma Todd was an intelligent woman destined to become a
housewife and a teacher, but her mother encouraged her to enter beauty pageants and after winning the Miss Massachusetts
title, she was recognised by a Hollywood talent scout and quickly became a star. A distinguished comedienne, she made
roughly 120 movies between her first, Fascinating Youth, in 1926 and her last, The Bohemian Girl with Laurel and Hardy,
in 1935. They were mostly shorts, but she was one of the lucky silent screen actresses to successfully make the transition
to talkies.
Away from the screen, Todd displayed an appalling choice in men, but a good business sense, running a successful
restaurant, the Sidewalk Cafe, which she co-owned with Roland West and his ex-wife.
The morning of Monday, 16 December 1935, Thelma Todd was found slumped in her Lincoln convertible inside the
garage of Jewel Carmen, the former wife of Todd’s lover and business partner, Roland West. She was dead from carbon
monoxide poisoning, apparently a suicide. On Saturday night, 14 December, she had had an unpleasant exchange with
her ex-husband, Pat DiCicco, at a party at the Trocadero, but had left the party in good spirits. LAPD detectives
concluded that Todd’s death was accidental, a Coroner’s Inquest jury decided the same, as did a grand jury, but there
was no motive for suicide and no suicide note, and speculation that Todd was murdered, either by Roland West or by
gangsters has continued. In her book Hot Toddy (1991), Andy Edmonds suggesting that the hit was ordered by mobster
Charles “Lucky” Luciano, who wanted to open an illegal casino on one of the Cafe’s floors, possibly with the intention of
luring studio bosses into getting huge gambling debts which would give Luciano a way of taking over the studios.
The book is well served by notes, bibliography and index. There’s a good but unexciting selection of images. Overall,
I thoroughly enjoyed Michelle Morgan’s book. Thelma Todd was a star who doesn’t twinkle in the Hollywood firmament
as brightly as it did in the early days of the talkies, but the manner of her death is a real mystery. Highly recommended.
Back in the early 1970s there was a television series I was fond of called Alias Smith and Jones, which wasn’t the last
western series but feels like it. In case you didn’t see it or haven’t caught the re-runs, it was about two outlaws who
were granted an amnesty, but only if they could go straight for a year. The hitch or catch was that nobody could know
about the deal, which meant that the boys still had a reward on their heads and that sheriffs and bounty hunters would
still be after them. One of the outlaws was called Hannibal Hayes. The other was Jed “Kid” Curry and he was very fast
with a gun, but he was very reluctant to draw.
There never was a Hannibal Hayes, but Kid Curry was real enough. His real name was Harvey Logan and like the TV
character he was fast with his gun, but had no reluctance about pulling the trigger. He was a cold-blooded killer, possibly
the most feared fugitive in America.
From 1894 to 1904 he robbed banks and trains and eluded the posses that rode after him. He rode with his own
gang, with such famed outlaws as Thomas “Black Jack” Ketchum and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In a famous
photograph known as the “Fort Worth Five” of the Wild Bunch in their Sunday best, he stands on the right, his hand
resting on Butch Cassidy’s shoulder.
He was the third son of William Logan and Eliza (nee Johnson). His brothers were James, Henry (Hank), John, and
Lorenzo (Lonie). He also had a sister named Arda. When their mother died all the children (except the eldest boy) went
to live with an aunt in Dodson, Missouri . He moved around a bit and it was when breaking horses on a ranch in Texas
that he met George “Flat Nose” Curry, whose surname he and his brothers adopted. Harvey Logan was a hard worker,
mild-mannered, likable, and loyal, but when he had sufficient money in his pocket he liked to indulge in prostitutes and
alcohol. He wasn’t particularly likeable when drunk.
It was in 1894 that Curry ran across Powell “Pike” Landusky in Jake Harris’s saloon in Chouteau County, Montana.
Landusky drew his gun and fired, but the gun jammed. Curry’s borrowed gun fired and Landusky died. Curry didn’t
believe he’d get a fair trial, so he fled and in due course joined up with Thomas “Black Jack” Ketchum. His life from
then on consisted of riding the outlaw trail, a glamorous adventure in these declining years of the wild west, but which
in reality was a succession of robberies, some killings here and there, and eating a lot of dust as the gang fled posses.
The Life and Death of Kid Curry isn’t the first book to chronicle the career of Kid Curry, but it can probably lay claim
to being the most meticulously researched. It isn’t particularly well-written and there are some typos here and there,
but Wilson manages to hold your interest as he recounts the succession of crimes and escapes. What one really wants
to get to is Curry’s death.
But all is not quite that clear cut. Doubts that it was Kid Curry began to mount until it was decided to exhume
the body. Curry had scars on the right wrist and arm and one newspaper reported that these were not visible on the
corpse, but another newspaper reported that the body was so badly decomposed that identification was impossible. The
Pinkertons were happy to declare that the body was that of Kid Curry.
There are quite a lot of reported sightings of Kid Curry by friends and others in the years that followed. It was even
claimed that Curry had never been involved in the robbing of that train near Parachute, but that he’d joined Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in Argentina. The truth will probably never be known.
As said, this book isn’t particularly wellwritten and it was sometimes difficult to sort out who was who and where was
where, but I thoroughly enjoyed Gary A Wilson’s account of the life and criminal career of Kid Curry. It is the result of a
decades research by Mr Wilson and some of the information here is apparently published for the first time, and Wilson
should be congratulated for the final result.
If you are an author or publisher of a forthcoming book and would like to reach our readers,
please get in touch at contact@ripperologist.biz
AN EYE TO THE FUTURE.THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS - Cory (Patricia), HVEM VAR JACK THE RIPPER? EN DANSK FORHORSDOMMERS
UNDERSOGELSE. (WHO WAS JACK THE RIPPER? A DANISH JUDGE’S INVESTIGATION) - Muusmann (Carl), IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF
THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS: AN EXAMINATION OF THE JACK THE RIPPER MURDERS USING MODERN POLICE TECHNIQUES - Plimmer (John F.)
and JACK THE MYTH: A NEW LOOK AT THE RIPPER - Wolf (A.P.)
BELL (NEIL R.A.) / WOOD (ADAM) - Sir Howard Vincent’s Police Code MORLEY (CHRISTOPHER J.) - Jack the Ripper: A Suspect Guide.
1889. Facsimile Edn. New h/b Signed £20 E-Book As New s/c £25
CLACK (ROBERT) / HUTCHINSON (PHILIP) - The London of Jack PULLING (CHRISTOPHER) - Mr Punch and the Police. hb/dw Signed
the Ripper Then and Now. Revised & Updated hb/dw Signed Clack/ £40
Hutchinson + Stewart Evans £35
RIPPEROLOGIST/RIPPER NOTES/RIPPERANA - back issues of all
CONNELL (NICHOLAS) / EVANS (STEWART) - The Man Who Hunted available
Jack the Ripper. hb/dw Signed Connell/Evans + Whittington-Egan As
ROBINSON (BRUCE) - They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper. New hb/
New £35
dw Signed £25
CULLEN (TOM) - Autumn of Terror Jack the Ripper: His Times and
SHELDEN (NEAL) - Annie Chapman Jack the Ripper Victim, A Short
Crimes. reprint hb/dw £25
Biography. s/c Rare £40
DIMOLIANAS (SPIRO) - Jack the Ripper and Black Magic. New s/c
SHELDEN (NEAL) - Jack the Ripper and His Victims. s/c Rare £40
Signed £33
SIMS (GEORGE R.) - The Mysteries of Modern London. h/b Good only
DEW (WALTER) - I Caught Crippen. h/b Various copies ranging in
Scarce £125
price from £300 - £450 or Offers
STRACHAN (ROSS) - Jack the Ripper : A Collectors Guide To The Many
McCORMICK (DONALD) - The Identity of Jack the Ripper. hb/dw
Books. Published Rare 1st Edn. s/c Signed As New £30
Signed £50
WHITTINGTON-EGAN (RICHARD) - A Casebook on Jack the Ripper. h/b
McLAUGHLIN (ROBERT) - The First Jack the Ripper Victim
Signed. Various copies priced from £150 to £250 or offers
Photographs. Ltd. Edn. Numbered (73) Signed Robert +
Whittington-Egan label As New s/c £225 WOODHALL (EDWIN T.) - Jack the Ripper Or When London Walked in
Terror. Ltd. Numbered Facsimile Edn. New s/c £20
MATTERS (LEONARD) - The Mystery of Jack the Ripper. 1948 Reprint
h/b £45 YOST (DAVE) - Elizabeth Stride and Jack the Ripper. Signed s/c As
New £30
MAYBRICK (FLORENCE ELIZABETH) - Mrs. Maybrick’s Own Story. h/b
£90
*****
At the crudest level, this is an anthology of serial killer stories. But Jakubowski’s selections are broad and wide-ranging, keen
to explore the myriad ways in which victims and assailants interact and respond to violence. This diversity is welcome, and it
serves to demonstrate how far Ripper fiction has matured from the stalk-and-slash yarns of old.
Naturally, the stories vary in style and quality, and readers will need to find for themselves the entries that work best for
them. Perhaps a couple of the stories have been too arduously crafted, while others seem to me to offer little beyond a ‘shock’
revelation about the Ripper’s identity.
Overwhelmingly, though, this is a very strong collection. What distinguishes the best stories is a willingness to take risks coupled
with a clear commitment to the Ripper theme in its purest form. Standouts include Adrian Ludens’s supernatural horror tale
‘The Monster’s Leather Apron’, which follows Jack the Ripper out into the Yukon goldfields for a savage encounter with an Innuit
monstrosity. Equally successful is Sally Spedding’s creepy and menacing look at Aaron Kosminski’s troubled schooldays in Congress
Poland. Catherine Lundoff contributes a tense domestic drama about patriarchal violence, focusing on the Ripper’s terrorizing
influence over the cowed female members of his household. In ‘A Small Band of Dedicated Men’ Andrew Lane shows what happens
when a group of men unfairly accused of being the Ripper - Ostrog, Tumblety, Seweryn Kłosowski, Francis Thompson, etc – join
forces to hunt down the real killer: it’s a fantastic story with absolutely the best nasty twist in the book. Interestingly, there is
tale called ‘They All Love Jack’ by Nick Sweet featuring Michael Maybrick as the Ripper.
This anthology is crammed with intelligent and consistently entertaining fiction that will appeal to even the most jaded souls.
It’s a fitting high point on which to end what has been an outstanding year for Ripper fiction.
This is the third instalment in David Barnett’s energetic, rip roaring steampunk adventure series set in an alternative
British Empire where the American Revolution never took place and where airships traverse the skies piloted by cyborgs.
The novel is chock-a-block with steampunk motifs - brass dragons, dinosaurs in the sewers, hydraulic police truncheons,
clockwork bloodhounds, and best of all, Maria the Mechanical Girl with a body made of coils, gears, pistons and cogs but the
emotions of a woman. Add Jack the Ripper to the stew, and you have a colourful, action-packed drama, variously decadent and
swashbuckling, blood-curdling and goofy, full of weird and wonderful and abominable characters. Hugely enjoyable.
One evening, outside the Griffin Hall in Shoreditch, she meets up with a childhood friend she hasn’t seen in over twenty
years - Kate Eddowes, now fallen on hard times and eking out a piteous existence on the streets of Whitechapel. At the same
time, a peculiar American herbalist enters Dot’s life - a Dr Frank Townsend, who may be a Fenian terrorist, or a pervert. Or
something far worse… It’s the autumn of 1888 and Jack the Ripper is about to begin his murder spree.
Readers of this journal will have a fairly good idea where the story is heading, and if this dark, elegantly written, funny novel
has a minor fault it is only that there are so few surprises plot-wise. Even so, it is Laurie Graham’s probing of the underside of
East End Victorian life - the doss houses, the cellar kitchens, the despair and the squalor - that gives her novel real depth and
substance. It sparkles with a touching, heartfelt portrait of Kate Eddowes, depicted not as a mutilated cadaver but as a warm,
living human being with memories and hopes for the future.
Dot Allbones is a strong female character with an engaging voice full of acid wit and melancholy observation, and she makes
a perceptive commentator on the growing public hysteria surrounding the murders. One of her admirers is the journalist Tom
Bullen, who provides her - and us - with extra inside information on the atrocities.
The fellowship of backstage music hall life is thrillingly evoked. Readers will enjoy the front row seat and marvel at the
antics of Randolph the Cycling Trumpeter, Dickie Dabney and his Mathematical Crows, the Infant Prodigy, and Valentine the
male soprano. Yet beneath the greasepaint and behind the stage scenery lies a whole universe of pain and sorrow, rivalry and
thwarted ambition, lust and secret desire.
The Night in Question is a deeply moving novel about men and women, about the power of female friendship, and the way
chance and ill-fortune can intercede in life. It’s an absolutely exceptional novel, worldly and passionate, and my favourite
work of fiction in 2015.
Frederick W Rose (1849-1915) was born in Paddington, the second son of a Highland army officer.
He entered the Civil Service at the age of eighteen and remained there till his retirement more
than forty years later. So far as we know he enjoyed a happy and busy career, full of diverting civic
incident. For most of his adult life he lived at No. 4 Cromwell Crescent in South Kensington. In 1870
he married Catharine Gilchrist, also of Scottish descent, but filed for divorce in 1891, citing his wife’s
adultery. He fathered three sons.
Rose was a great European traveller and an accomplished artist and illustrator. His hugely influential
political cartoon maps are still very popular today. He also had a life-long interest in murder and true
crime, becoming an early member of Our Society (later the Crimes Club).
When he was forty-three, Frederick Rose published his second novel, I Will Repay (Eden, Remington & Co, 1892). Set in
Pimlico, it’s a grim, rather horrific tale based on the Jack the Ripper murders. It advances the theory that the killer was an
epileptic suffering from religious mania who believes he has received instruction from the Almighty to punish prostitutes.
The novel contains a fair amount of autobiographical detail in its descriptions of middle class and bohemian party life,
but it is the darker material that really impresses. Early on, we watch as the antagonist Wargrave Leinster learns to savour
the culling and gralloching of deer on the moorland estates around Perth. An old Spanish bull-fighter teaches him the art
of severing the buck’s spinal cord with a single slice of the knife. Later, there are several spectacularly grisly scenes where
Leinster dismembers his first female victim using his father’s surgical implements, disposing of the torso and body parts in
Epping Forest, Woking, and stations along the suburban East London line. There are episodes, too, verging on necrophily, where
Leinster drools over the contents of his large carved oak chest wherein are stored the dead bodies of his victims. One wonders
where the author’s venom came from to produce all of this, and it is tantalising to reflect that at the time Rose was writing I
Will Repay he was embroiled in an ugly divorce and a bitter public dispute over the custody of his children.
I Will Repay is certainly a macabre affair, but it has great merit and significance as perhaps the first serious fictional attempt
to understand the psychopathology of the Whitechapel serial killer: by presenting a credible scientific rationale for the Ripper
crimes, Rose’s novel stands apart from the shilling shockers and supernatural thrillers that typified most Ripper fiction in the
first quarter of a century after the murders.
Not unexpectedly, his novel provoked controversy. A reviewer for the Manchester Courier complained that ‘The public does
not wish to know about these ghastly horrors, and will decline to go back to the atrocities of the Whitechapel murders, even
when presented under the thin disguise of ‘Pimlico’ as the locality.’ The Freeman’s Journal regretted that the author’s obvious
literary talent had been wasted on such a ‘gruesome and somewhat undesirable subject’, while The Yorkshire Post dismissed
it as an ‘unpleasant novel of which little or nothing can be said in praise.’
Possibly Rose was stung by these hostile reactions, for he gave up fiction writing altogether. Yet it seems likely to me that
Rose will have returned to his speculations on epilepsy and murder twelve years later, when he and his fellow enthusiasts at
the Crimes Club met over lunch and drinks to debate celebrated murder mysteries such as the Jack the Ripper case.
References: For details of Rose’s membership of Our Society, see Arthur Lambton’s article ‘The Crimes Club’ in the London Magazine for
March 1923. Rose’s contribution to map-making is briefly covered in Gillian Hill’s Cartographical Curiosities (British Library Publishing, 1978,
pp. 46-49). For contemporary reviews of Rose’s novel see ‘Manchester Courier’, January 9, 1892; Freeman’s Journal, January 23, 1892; and
The Yorkshire Post, January 27, 1892. A biography of Rose has been announced by Rod Barron, the antiquarian map dealer. There is a copy of
I Will Repay in the British Library (shelf mark lsidyv3aed10a0).
IN THE NEXT ISSUE we take a look at the new three-part English language translation of Philippe R Welté’s novel
Jack the Ripper: The Secret of Mary Jane K., which was a best seller when released in France in 2006. Plus all the
latest Ripper fiction.
DAVID GREEN lives in Hampshire, England, where he works as a freelance book indexer. He is currently writing
(very slowly) a book about the murder of schoolboy Percy Searle in Hampshire in 1888.