Jack The Ripper - The Definitive History Part 2

8. Stow, John (1912) The Survey of London. London: J.M. Dent. Everyman edition with a new introduction by Valerie Pearl. London: J.M. Dent, 1987, p.376.

9. von Archenholtz, Johann William (1797) A Picture Of England: Containing A Description Of The Laws, Customs, And Manners Of England. Intersperced with Curious and Interesting Anecdotes Of Many Eminent Persons. London.

10. Jones, Gareth Stedman (1971) Outcast London: A Study in the Relations.h.i.+ps between Cla.s.ses in Victorian Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harmondsworth, Middles.e.x: Penguin Books, 1976, p.160.

11. It has been widely accepted, largely on the a.s.sertion of Sir Melville Macnaghten, later Deputy Commissioner, CID at Scotland Yard, that Jack the Ripper killed five women Mary Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catharine Eddowes and Mary Kelly. These are generally referred to as the canonical victims.

12. G.o.dwin, George (1859) Town Swamps and Social Bridges, p.20. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1972.

13. Quoted in Denton, William (1861) Observations on the Displacement of the Poor by Metropolitan Railways and other Public Improvements, p.6.

14. George, M. Dorothy (1925) London Life in the Eighteenth Century. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co. Ltd. London: Peregrin Books, 1966. p.97, quoting Middles.e.x Records, Orders of Court, cal., p.153.

15. There were four major epidemics of cholera in London, in 183132 (6,536 people died), 184849 (14,137), 185354 (10,738) and 1866 (5,596). The last of these epidemics was confined to the East End between Aldgate and Bow and was due to the contamination, through gross negligence, of the reservoirs of the East London water company and the company's failure to comply with the requirements of the 1851 and 1852 Metropolis Water Acts. The only benefit was that it became beyond doubt that cholera was primarily water-borne. For a full account of the cleaning of London see Halliday, Stephen (1999) The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis. Stroud, Gloucesters.h.i.+re: Sutton.

16. Willan, Dr. (1805) Diseases in London, p.255.

17. Jones, Gareth Stedman op. cit., p.169.

18. Rubinstein, W.D. (1998) Britain's Century: A Political and Social History 18151905. London: Arnold, p.173.

19. Rivington, F. (1880) A New Proposal for Providing Improved Dwellings for the Poor. . . London, p.1.

20. Fishman, William J. (1988) East End 1888: A Year in a London Borough Among the Laboring Poor. London: Duckworth. London: Hanbury, 2001.

21. Ensor, Sir Robert (1936) England 18701914. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.127.

22. Mearns, Andrew (1883) 'The Outcast Poor. II. Outcast London'. Contemporary Review, XLIV, December, p.933.

23. William Preston was an experienced journalist and novelist and an ordained Congregationalist minister who in a letter to the Daily News on 8 April 1884 said that he was solely responsible for selecting the facts, arranging them, coming up with the startling subject headings and the winning t.i.tle, and for physically writing the pamphlet. Mearns firmly denied Preston's claim, saying that he had conceived the idea, that he and others had researched the content, that Preston had written no more than a first draft according to close instructions, often at dictation and always after close consultation, and that he, Mearns, had edited and revised the script. In fairness, Mearns probably has the greater claim to the intellectual property, though Preston, the penman whose melodramatic style seeps out despite Mearns' editing, was no doubt responsible for many of the features that created the Bitter Cry sensation.

24. Mearns was forced to explain that he didn't mean 'very frequent' when he said 'common'. He said, 'You do meet with it and frequently meet with it, but not very frequently'.

25. Wohl, Anthony S. (1970) The Bitter Cry of Outcast London with leading articles from the Pall Mall Gazette of October 1883 and articles by Lord Salisbury, Joseph Chamberlain and Forster Crozier. London: Leicester University Press, p.17.

26. Schults, Raymond L. (1972) Crusader In Babylon: W.T. Stead and the Pall Mall Gazette. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, p.50.

27. Woods, R. (1892) English Social Movements. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, p.173.

28. The Times, 26 November 1883.

29. The Lancet, 15 December 1883, p.1050.

30. Longford, Elizabeth (1964) Victoria R.I. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London: Abacus, 2000, pp.5045.

31. James Adderley was the head of the Oxford House Mission, established in the East End soon after Toynbee Hall.

32. Adderley, James (1916) In Slums and Society. London: Dutton, pp.1617.

33. Palmer, Alan (2000) The East End: Four Centuries of London Life. London: John Murray, p.94.

34. Carruthers, Rev. C. (1883) The Root of the Matter, or the Only Cure for the Bitter Cry of Outcast London and Other Similar Evils of the Present Day. London, p.11.

35. Wohl, Anthony S. op. cit., p.23.

36. Webb, Beatrice (1926) My Apprentices.h.i.+p. London: Longmans, Green and Co. London: Penguin, 1939; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979, p.219.

37. Barnett, Henrietta Octavia (1918) Canon Barnett: His Life, Work and Friends. London: John Murray, p.68.

38. Palmer, Alan, op. cit., p.82.

39. Cecil, Lady Gwendolen (192132) Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury. London: Hodder and Stoughton. vol. iii, p.77.

40. Wohl, Anthony S., op. cit., p.33.

41. Greenwood, James (1883) In Strange Company. London, p.158; Tower Hamlets Independent, 19 November 1881.

42. Report of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, 1870, p.34.

43. The Fourth Report of the Commissioners . . . [for] improving the Metropolis, 23 April 1845, p.7, acknowledged that Commercial Road was built to achieve 'the destruction of a neighbourhood inhabited by persons addicted to vices and immorality of the worst description'.

44. Whitechapel Board of Guardians, Minutes, 25 January 1876.

45. Quoted in White, Jerry (1980) Rothschild Buildings: Life In An East End Tenement Block 18871920. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.

46. White, Jerry, op. cit.

47. Daily Telegraph, 16 November 1888.

48. East London Advertiser, 2 January 1892.

Chapter Four.

Martha Tabram.

On Bank Holiday Monday, 6 August 1888 Martha Tabram1 also sometimes known as 'Emma' and also as Martha Turner after the surname of the second man with whom she co-habited after her drinking caused her separation from her first husband, Henry Tabram and Mary Ann Connolly, a tall, masculine-looking woman nicknamed 'Pearly Poll', entered a pub with a corporal and a private. They moved on to a pub called the White Swan in Whitechapel Road and separated at about 11.45pm, Tabram going off with the private.

The Bank Holiday slipped away into Tuesday 7 August. At 1.40am Joseph Mahony returned with his wife Elizabeth to the flat they occupied in a tenement block in George Yard called George Yard Buildings, which was 'inhabited by people of the poorest description'.2 George Yard was a narrow street connecting Wentworth Street at the north end and Whitechapel High Street to the south, from where it was entered through a covered archway next to a pub called The White Hart. George Yard Buildings, which were commonly referred to as Model Dwellings, had been built about 13 years earlier, the venture of a local philanthropist named Crowther, and had been visited a couple of years later by Princess Alice.3 George Street itself was described as 'one of the most dangerous streets in the locality, and that street, together with others, has for years been a regular rendezvous and hiding place for deserters'.4 About five minutes later Mrs. Mahony left their accommodation to purchase some supper from a chandler's shop in Thrawl Street. It didn't take her long and within ten minutes she was back. She noticed nothing suspicious, although she said that the stairs were unlit and the staircase was very wide, so that it was possible that a body could have been there and been unnoticed by her. At 3.30am a young man in his early twenties named Alfred George Crow went up the same stairs as Mrs. Mahony and saw a body on the first floor landing, but the area being a very poor one, people often slept anywhere that offered shelter and he had regularly seen people sleeping on the landing, so he thought nothing about it. It was not until 4.50am that John Saunders Reeves left his room and began his descent of the stairs. On the first floor landing he saw the same 'sleeping' figure, but in the early dawn light he saw that it was laying on its back in a pool of blood. Reeves ran for a policeman, returning a short while later with PC Thomas Barrett, who immediately sent him off to fetch Dr. Timothy Killeen from his home at 68 Brick Lane. Killeen examined the body and determined that Martha Tabram had died at about 3.30am the time at which Alfred Crow had returned home. Martha Tabram had been stabbed 39 times, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, stomach, abdomen and v.a.g.i.n.a having been the target of the killer's frenzied attack with what appeared to have been an ordinary penknife. One wound, which had penetrated the sternum, could have been made with a dagger or sword bayonet. Death, according to Dr. Killeen, was due to haemorrhage and loss of blood.

The murder, it seems, had been committed in total silence. The superintendent of the dwellings, Francis Hewitt, and his wife occupied a room which, as he measured for a journalist, was exactly 12 feet from the murder scene. 'And we never heard a cry', remarked Mr. Hewitt. Mrs. Hewitt claimed that early in the evening she did hear a single cry of 'Murder!'. It echoed through the building, but did not emanate from there. 'But', explained Mr. and Mrs. Hewitt, in a breath, 'the district round there is rather rough, and cries of "Murder!" are of frequent, if not nightly, occurrence in the district'.5 The body was removed to the mortuary on a police ambulance and was photographed. The photograph is still extant and shows a pleasant if slightly podgy face with a slight double chin and swept back hair that was dark in colour. Martha Tabram was only 5ft 3in tall.

The police investigation, supervised by Detective Inspector Edmund Reid, was focused on the soldier with whom Tabram had left the White Swan. PC Barrett, who had been brought to the body by John Reeves, said that at 2.00am he had seen a Grenadier guardsman loitering in Wentworth Street near the junction with George Yard. He had spoken with the man, who explained that he 'was waiting for a mate who had gone with a girl'. PC Barrett was able to provide a good description of the man and Inspector Reid organised an ident.i.ty parade. All the Grenadier guardsmen with leave on 6 August were lined up and Inspector Reid instructed PC Barrett to walk along the line and, if the man he had seen was there, to touch him. Barrett did so and touched a private soldier. He returned to Reid, who asked him to repeat the process and this time Barrett touched a different man. The first man, Barrett explained, had been wearing medals but the man he had seen had not been. The second man, who was named John Leary, was released when he was able to show that he had spent his leave in the pubs of Brixton with another soldier.

On 9 August Mary Ann Connolly appeared at the Commercial Street Police Station and recited her activities with Martha on the night of the murder. Arrangements were made for her to attend an ident.i.ty parade the following day at the Tower of London, but Connolly didn't turn up. Instead and for reasons never really clarified, at least in the extant records she had gone to stay with her cousin near Drury Lane. Eventually tracked down by Sergeant Caunter, who had the nickname 'Tommy Roundhead', she promised to be at the Tower for another parade, which took place on 13 August. She looked at the Grenadier guards a.s.sembled there and when asked if she recognised the men she 'placed her arms akimbo, glanced at the men with the air of an inspecting officer, and shook her head. This indication of a negative was not sufficient. "Can you identify anyone?" she was asked. "Pearly Poll" exclaimed, with a good deal of feminine emphasis, "He ain't here"'.6 Poll then explained that the men she and Martha Tabram had been with had white bands around their caps. This meant they were Coldstream and not Grenadier guards. Two days later the Coldstream guardsmen on leave on 6 August were paraded before Pearly Poll at Wellington Barracks. Without hesitation she picked out two privates, George and Skipper, one of whom had three good conduct stripes which Poll thought made him a corporal. Both had solid alibis.

Meanwhile the newspapers had been reporting the case with a verbosity typical of a time when it was customary not to use a single word when a great many would do. The East London Observer remarked that, 'Another fearful murder has been committed under circ.u.mstances which, it is to be feared, are too mysterious to admit of a hope that the avenging hand of justice will overtake the villain or villains concerned in the murderous outrage'.7 Many people visited George Yard Buildings to view the murder scene, where it was reported, 'there is still a large surface of the stone flags crimson stained. It is at the spot where the blood oozed from the poor creature's heart'.8 The inquest into the death of Martha Tabram had opened at the Working Lads' Inst.i.tute in Whitechapel Road, near the present Whitechapel underground station. There, in the Alexandra Room, a lecture room and library, the deputy coroner of the South Eastern Division of Middles.e.x, George Collier, presided over the proceedings in some magnificence, seated beneath a painting by Louis Fleischmann of the Princess of Wales and surrounded by what was described as a profusion of other portraits of the royal family and of landscape pictures around the walls of the room. To Mr. Collier's left sat the jurymen, a Mr. Geary their elected foreman, and to his right were Dr. Killeen, Sergeant Green and Inspector Reid. The latter was described as 'a smart looking man, dressed in blue serge, who, without taking so much as a note, seemed to be absorbing all the material points'.9 In front of the coroner was a woman who had identified the deceased as Martha Turner (the name by which Tabram was also known). She had a baby in her arms and was accompanied by a woman who was apparently the witness's mother. Several witnesses testified to the finding of the body and when an unusually animated Mr. Collier concluded the proceedings for the day, adjourning the inquiry for a fortnight, he observed that the case was 'one of the most terrible cases that anyone can possibly imagine. The man must have been a perfect savage to have attacked the woman in that way'.

When the inquest resumed on Thursday 23 August, there was a small crowd gathered outside the Working Lads' Inst.i.tute, but no public were allowed inside. The witnesses included Henry Samuel Tabram and William Turner.10 In describing these men the press intentionally or otherwise reflected the 'before and after' aspects of Martha Tabram's life: the former, in the shape of Henry Tabram, who was described as a short, well-dressed foreman packer in a furniture warehouse; and the latter, represented by William Turner, who was described as a short, slovenly dressed street hawker, somewhat dirty in appearance. The greatest interest was reserved for Mary Ann Connelly. Inspector Reid requested that she be cautioned and deputy coroner Collier patiently explained that she need not answer any question, but what she did say would be taken down and could be used in evidence against her. When sworn in, the 'big woman' stated 'in a husky low voice'11 that she had for the past two months lived at Crossingham's Lodging House, in Dorset Street (where the Ripper's second canonical victim lived and opposite where the last canonical victim was murdered). She repeated the details of the identification parade, but nothing new was forthcoming. After a brief summing up, 'the jury's foreman, Mr. F.W. Hunt, stood up and said they found a unanimous verdict that the deceased had been feloniously and wilfully murdered by some person or persons unknown, but the jury wished to add a rider to the effect that they thought it was a wrong thing to allow the pa.s.sages of these model lodging-houses to remain unlighted at night time. This verdict was then accepted by the coroner, the jurymen were dismissed, and the proceedings terminated'.12 The police came in for immediate criticism. The Eastern Post reported with meaningful nod-and-wink inverted commas: 'A considerable amount of mystery surrounds the whole affair, which the police have entirely failed to unravel, and the evidence they have been able to obtain has been very meagre indeed. No arrest has been made, and it would seem that as usual the "clever" detective officers have been relying upon some of the same miserable cla.s.s of the wretched victim to "give them the clue"'.13 As far as Walter Dew was concerned, the criticism 'was grossly unfair'. He went on to explain that, It would be impossible to recount here all that was done, the hundreds of inquiries that were made, the scores of statements taken and the long, long hours put in by us all. No clue was turned down as too trivial for investigation.

We all had heartbreaking experiences, several times I got on to something which looked like a clue, followed it up day and night, only to find in the end it led nowhere.14 But this criticism of the police was merely a warning shot. The main salvo had yet to come. It would be far worse.

Whether or not Martha Tabram was murdered by Jack the Ripper is now debated, but it was undeniably accepted by the majority of investigators at the time15 and although Martha Tabram hadn't been disembowelled or mutilated, a cut in the abdomen 3 inches long and 1 inch deep may have been an attempt at 'ripping' and the frenzy of the attack took it well beyond the league of 'normal' murder. The coroner concluded that the murder of Martha Tabram 'was one of the most horrible crimes that had been committed for certainly some time past. The details were very revolting . . . and the person who had inflicted the injuries could have been nothing less than a fiend'.16 Young constable Dew, looking back with the benefit of perhaps more than just a modic.u.m of hindsight, recalled that 'Already I had formed the view that we were up against the greatest police problem of the century. A third heinous crime shortly afterwards proved how right this theory was'.17

Notes.

1. She was born Martha White, the daughter of Charles White and his wife on 10 May 1849, the youngest of their five children.

2. East London Observer, 11 August 1888.

3. Princess Alice Maud Mary (184378), the second daughter of Queen Victoria; she died from diptheria.

4. East London Advertiser, 18 August 1888.

5. Weekly Herald, 17 August 1888.

6. Weekly Herald, 17 August 1888.

7. East London Observer, 11 August 1888.

8. Weekly Herald, 17 August 1888.

9. East London Observer, 11 August 1888.

10. Not William Turner Carpenter, as reported in some newspapers (see Eastern Post, 25 August 1888), the mistake being a misreading of William Turner, carpenter.

11. East London Advertiser, 25 August 1888.

12. East London Advertiser, 25 August 1888.

13. Eastern Post, 25 August 1888.

14. Dew, Walter (1938) I Caught Crippen: Memoirs of Ex-Chief Inspector Walter Dew CID. London: Blackie and Son, pp.101, 103.

15. Inspector Abberline told a journalist that poisoner George Chapman, who Abberline for a while at least believed to have been the Ripper, 'occupied a lodging in George-yard, Whitechapel-road, where the first murder was committed' (Pall Mall Gazette, 24 March 1903). Sir Robert Anderson stated in his autobiography that the night before he took charge of the CID from James Monro 'the second of the crimes known as the Whitechapel murders was committed . . .' (Anderson, Sir Robert (1910) The Lighter Side of My Official Life. London: Hodder and Stoughton, p.135). Walter Dew wrote, 'Whatever may be said about the death of Emma Smith there can be no doubt that the August Bank Holiday murder, which took place in George Yard Buildings, less than a hundred yards from the spot where the first victim died, was the handiwork of the dread Ripper' (Dew, op. cit., p.97).

16. East London Advertiser, 25 August 1888.

17. Dew, op. cit., p.104.

Chapter Five.

Flounder and Fumble, and 'Catch whom you Can!'

One of the reasons why the Whitechapel murders are remembered today is because they focused attention on the deficiencies and inadequacies of the police. The police, already the subject of considerable press criticism, particularly from the liberal and radical press, were widely believed to be incompetent, inefficient, interfered with and dominated by a Commissioner more interested in polished boots and buckles and enforcing military discipline, particularly, and inappropriately, on the detective force. Police investigation of the Whitechapel crimes was very soon under close scrutiny, particularly from W.T. Stead and the crusading Pall Mall Gazette. E.G. Jenkinson, a civil servant who had been appointed a.s.sistant Under Secretary at Dublin Castle with a special responsibility for crime and the police, thus working closely with Scotland Yard, complained of 'just about everything from the dinginess of Scotland Yard's premises to corruption (drunkenness and immoral living) in its higher ranks'.2 The failure of the police to bring the culprit to justice or come anywhere near to identifying him3 naturally, if unfairly, added weight to the criticisms.

Crucial to any understanding of the crimes in a historical context is a broad general knowledge of the policemen involved and the view they had of the case overall. Chief Inspector John Littlechild who headed the 'Secret Department' (subsequently the Special Branch) from 1883 until his retirement in 18934 wrote in his memoirs: Apart from the dynamite conspiracies, and explosions, and the Whitechapel murders, perhaps no matter has been regarded of such great importance at Scotland Yard as the discovery of the Great Turf Frauds of 1876.5 This pa.s.sing reference to the Whitechapel murders provides a singular insight into the importance of the crimes. There is no question that the wave of terrorist Fenian6 bombings in London were extremely serious crimes, but they also embarra.s.singly focused considerable press and public attention on the competence of the police and were thus given a double importance. The Great Turf Frauds better ill.u.s.trate the distinction. This was one of the names given to an elaborate but otherwise unremarkable con trick in which people were encouraged to gamble on horse races that never took place. It was not an especially heinous or dramatic crime, but the men running the con, Harry Benson and William Kerr, always seemed to be one step ahead of the police and were proving very difficult to catch. Eventually it was shown that the four senior officers of the Detective Department Inspector John Meiklejohn, Chief Inspector Clarke, Chief Inspector Druscovitch and Chief Inspector Palmer were in the pay of Benson and Kerr or had by other means been duped or blackmailed into doing their bidding.7 The resulting court case and scandal rocked Scotland Yard to its very core and the result was a thorough reorganisation of the Detective Department and a change in name to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). As a crime the Turf Frauds were relatively insignificant, but as a scandal its effect was hugely influential. When the context of the Fenian bombings and the Great Turf Frauds is understood, the Whitechapel crimes can be seen as being listed because they too exposed the police to public scrutiny and widespread criticism. Indeed, what is remarkable and little realised is that the Whitechapel murders very nearly brought about the collapse of the government, effectively drove the final nail into the coffin of the Home Secretary's political career and were instrumental in bringing an end to the tenure of office of the Commissioner of Police.8 Public confidence in the police had been severely shaken by a number of events in the first half of the 1880s and not the least by the official response to demonstrations by the unemployed. These incidents are discussed in greater depth in a later chapter, but the first incident, known as 'Black Monday' 6 February 1886 was a fiasco in which a faction broke away from an a.s.sembly of unemployed people in Trafalgar Square and 'rioted' in Pall Mall, St. James's and Oxford Street, whilst police reserves were sent in the confusion to 'the Mall' instead of Pall Mall and were completely useless. Colonel Sir Edmund Henderson, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police since 1869, was the scapegoat and resigned following severe censure by the Home Secretary, Hugh Childers9 'never a figure of great popularity or charm'10 to whom Prime Minister Gladstone seemed peculiarly attached. Childers then sent a telegraph inviting Sir Charles Warren to accept the post of Commissioner.

Sir Charles Warren was a remarkable man to whom fate certainly dealt two cruel cards. The first was his appointment as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, which severely tarnished his reputation; the second was his position of authority in the battle of Spion Kop a ma.s.sacre of British troops on 24 January 1900 during the Boer War which turned the tarnish black. In both cases the fault wasn't altogether Warren's, although in the case of the latter, whilst it is impossible to absolve him of responsibility11 and he has been described as 'arguably the most incompetent British commander of the whole Second Boer War of 18991902'12 officers at the time were critical of the overall commander, General Sir Redvers Buller.13 So strong is the long-held view that Warren was a lousy Commissioner14 that it is difficult to buck the trend. However, history has dealt unfairly with Warren who was the right man for the right job at the wrong time and was surrounded by the wrong people. He faced a press intolerant of misjudgement and in some cases actually seeking the blood of officials. n.o.body could have emerged unscathed and hardly anyone did, except, perhaps, Sir Robert Anderson.

Warren was born on 7 February 1840 in Bangor, North Wales, the fifth of six children born to Major General Charles Warren, and was educated in Shrops.h.i.+re, Cheltenham College, Sandhurst and at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. In 1857 he was commissioned and served with the Royal Engineers. From 1859 to 1865 he was employed on the Gibraltar survey, and in the latter year became a.s.sistant instructor in surveying at the school of military engineering at Chatham. In 1867, as a Captain, he was selected for special service in Palestine and on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund undertook a reconnaissance of Philistia, the Jordan valley and Gilead, and also excavated extensively in Jerusalem, shedding considerable light on the topography of ancient Jerusalem and the archaeology of the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sherif. He published three books on these experiences, The Recovery of Jerusalem (1871), Underground Jerusalem (1874) and The Temple or the Tomb (1880). Ill health forced him to return to England, where from 1871 to 1872 he held command at Dover and from 1872 to 1876 held an appointment at the school of gunnery at s...o...b..ryness.

In 1876 he was sent out to South Africa as a special commissioner to survey the boundary between the Orange Free State and Griqualand West, which he completed in 1877, receiving the CMG as reward for his efforts. From 1877 to 1878 he commanded the Diamond Fields Horse during the Kafir War and saw action, being severely wounded at Perie Bush. He was mentioned in dispatches three times, received the medal and clasp and was promoted to lieutenant colonel. He was afterwards appointed special commissioner to investigate native questions in Bechua.n.a.land, and in 1879 became administrator and commander-in-chief of Griqualand West. Returning to England in 1880 he spent the next four years as chief instructor in surveying at the school of military engineering at Chatham, but was sent to Egypt for special duty under the Admiralty. The orientalist Edward Henry Palmer had been sent on a secret-service mission in June 1882, but had vanished during the night of 1011 August. Warren, accompanied by Lieutenants Haynes and Burton, R.E., were sent out to find Palmer and his party. Following a minute and intricate inquiry, they discovered that the party had been ambushed and driven about a mile to the Wady Sudr. Forced to stand in a row on the edge of a gully with a 60 feet fall before them, they were shot by the Arabs, Palmer falling with the first shot. The murderers were tracked down, caught and following a trial, executed. The fragmentary remains of Palmer and two of his team, Flag lieutenant Harold Charrington and Captain William John Gill, were brought home and buried in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral on 6 April 1883. For this sterling work and example of detective prowess, Warren received the KCMG medal, bronze star and third cla.s.s Medjidie, and in 1883 he was created a knight of justice of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. Back in England, in 1885 he sought an entry into politics by standing as the Liberal candidate for the Hallam Division of Sheffield, and was narrowly defeated by the Conservative candidate C.B. Stuart-Wortley. In January 1886 he was posted to Sudan to take command of a garrison on the Red Sea port of Suakim, but his stay there was short-lived and he was recalled to serve as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

Warren would rejoin the army on leaving the police and take command of troops in Singapore. In 1895 he returned to England to the command of the Thames district, where he took responsibility for the important but routine completion of the Thames defence schemes. At the outbreak of war in South Africa, Warren was given the command of the fifth division and sailed for the Cape. He was promoted to lieutenant general in 1897, and with the fifth division joined Sir Redvers Buller in Natal on 21 December 1899, finding himself in command of the disastrous a.s.sault on a hill called Spion Kop. Later, however, he forced a crossing of the Tugela River and won Pieters Hill, paving the way for the relief of Ladysmith. Warren returned to England in August 1900, was promoted to general in 1904 and colonel commandant of the Royal Engineers in 1905. He retired the following year.

Warren was a very keen freemason and Founding Master of Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076, in 1884. After his retirement he took a keen interest in the Church Lads' Brigade and was a pioneering Scoutmaster in the movement founded by his boyhood friend and military colleague Lord Baden-Powell in 1908, running the 1st Ramsgate 'Sir Charles Warren's Own' Boy Scout Troop. During this time he wrote extensively on religious questions, produced a volume of reminiscences called On the Veldt in the Seventies and devoted a great deal of time to Masonic research. He died at Weston-super-Mare on 21 January 1927, leaving two sons and two daughters, his wife having predeceased him.

At first Warren's appointment was greeted with satisfaction: Childers knew quite well what sort of man was needed as Police Chief at this juncture, and, turning aside more than 400 candidates for the post, he deliberately appointed Warren. Parliament, the public and the press formed a consensus of opinion which was, almost unanimously, strongly in favour of the appointment . . . The Pall Mall Gazette . . . expressed the hope 'that having selected as Colonel Henderson's successor the man who of all others left to us is the most like General Gordon15 in conviction, in temper, and in impatience of being meddled with, Mr. Childers will avoid the fatal precedent of the Soudan, allow his Chief Commissioner a free hand, and back him up like a man who sets to work to make a clean sweep of the Augean stable of Scotland Yard'.16 Warren's skills were right for the job, as The Times observed: In many essential respects, Sir Charles Warren is precisely the man whom sensible Londoners would have chosen to preside over the Police Force of the Metropolis. Though he is in the prime of life (he is only forty-six), there are few officials in Her Majesty's service who have had more varied experience. He is at once a man of science and a man of action; and for nearly twenty years he has been engaged in work of the kind most likely to develop the administrative faculties.17 The Pall Mall Gazette was happy; Warren lacked 'gaiety of spirit and genial humour' and had a 'deep religious conviction' and stern views on prost.i.tution and drink.

What all this meant was that it was generally believed that the police lacked proper discipline and needed a firm hand on the tiller. Warren was selected and was generally thought to be an excellent choice for the job, but as the Pall Mall Gazette observed, Warren worked best without interference. And for a while Childers did give Warren a free hand, but Gladstone's government was not long for power and on 7 June 1886 it was defeated in an election. Lord Salisbury returned to the premiers.h.i.+p, appointing Henry Matthews (later Lord Llandaff) Home Secretary.

Matthews was born in 1826 in Ceylon, where his father was a puisne judge. He was educated at the University of Paris and London University and called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, where he enjoyed a successful practice and was a skilled cross-examiner who played a part in some notable trials, the best known today probably being Lyon v. Home (1868), an action brought against a spiritualist; the Tichborne case (1869); and most famously Crawford v. Crawford and Dilke (1886), which brought about the political downfall of Sir Charles Dilke.

Matthews entered politics in 1868, but lost his seat in 1874 and did not find a const.i.tuency until 1886 when, as a protege of the self-destructive Lord Randolph Churchill, who leant his substantial popular support to Matthews' campaign, he stood for and won the marginal seat of East Birmingham. However, having Churchill's patronage was a double-edged sword, as he was not particularly popular. When Lord Salisbury made Churchill Leader of the House and Chancellor of the Exchequer, it was an appointment opposed by Queen Victoria who described Churchill as 'so mad and odd'. Lord Salisbury himself, when appointing Churchill in 1886, likened him to the Mahdi, who 'pretends to be mad and is very sane in reality'.18 Perhaps unsurprisingly Churchill has been advanced as a Ripper suspect.19 Churchill was also disliked by a variety of Conservative politicians, a few of whom had objected to being called 'Marshalls and Snelgroves' by Lord Randolph, who was referring to the staid and perhaps dowdy London department store. Others were victims of his 'offensive and often pointless rudeness'.20 Making enemies did not help Lord Randoph's political career and at the end of 1886, when he tendered his resignation, apparently as a card in a political reshuffle and without any expectation that it would be accepted, Lord Salisbury 'not a man to resist the suicide of a nuisance' accepted it. Eight years later Lord Randolph Churchill was dead. 'He was the chief mourner at his own protracted funeral', said Lord Salisbury's successor as Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery the final a.n.a.lysis of his short-lived political career being that it consisted of a lot of noise and of little achievement.

It may have been at Churchill's request that Lord Salisbury appointed Matthews, a relatively new and inexperienced political newcomer, as Home Secretary, the first Roman Catholic to serve in the Cabinet since the reign of James II. Apparently Queen Victoria urged Salisbury to appoint Matthews. Her reaction, on being told of his religion, is recorded by the Dublin Review: '"What of that?" snapped the old Queen, who disliked the Liberal party more than she did the Pope'.21 Whoever's idea it was, in retrospect it was a serious mistake. Matthews was witty, charming, generous, played 'a prominent part in the festivities of the bar mess' and possessed a fine legal brain. However, notwithstanding the praise of people like Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, who considered Matthews the best home secretary he had known,22 Matthews managed to be unpopular with all political persuasions, with the press and with the people. As A.J. Balfour put it, he was 'the member of the Govt. whom everyone wishes to turn out!'23, his 'Minesterial career was a complete failure'24 and 'He did more, perhaps, to render the government unpopular than any other minister'.25 As Home Secretary he was unlucky to have not only the Ripper case to deal with, which did much to bring about his delayed but ultimate downfall, but also those of Lipski (1887), Miss Ca.s.s (1887), Mrs. Maybrick (1889)26 and the Davies brothers (1890).27 Interestingly, in the case of Miss Ca.s.s a vote for adjournment was carried against the government and Matthews tendered his resignation, which Lord Salisbury refused to accept. The reason was that Matthews was fortunate to have won a marginal seat which Salisbury's government could not afford to put at risk. Resignation and outright dismissal for incompetence were therefore impossible (and in any event incompetence could not be admitted), and quiet removal would have generated all sorts of speculation and rumours and created the problem of with whom Matthews could have been replaced. Lord Salisbury entertained reservations about both leading contenders, Lord Knutsford, who was 'so amiable, he would hang n.o.body', and Michael Hicks Beach, who 'on the other hand, would make a very good Home Secretary, and would hang everybody'.28 So it was that for the time being Matthews whose political star had never really risen and had, if anything, sunk well below the horizon after the 'b.l.o.o.d.y Sunday' riots and who, as a Churchillite, had a precarious political future had to stay in office. The Ripper crimes didn't force the Home Secretary's resignation but they did effectively lower Henry Matthews' political coffin into the ground and shovel soil onto the lid.

Lord Salisbury had already concluded that Matthews was not the right man to be Home Secretary, but his perceived mismanagement of the Ripper reinforced that conclusion, especially when the Queen wrote to Salisbury on 28 October 1888, after three more women had been murdered, to complain that the Home Secretary's 'general want of sympathy with the feelings of the people are doing the Government harm'.29 Salisbury admitted that Matthews had not been a success, telling her, 'There is an innocence of the ways of the world which no one could have expected to find in a criminal lawyer of sixty',30 and expressed his desperation in his flirtation with the idea of promoting Matthews to a Lord Justice of Appeal and s.h.i.+fting C.T. Ritchie into the Home Office. As relieved as Queen Victoria would no doubt have been to see Matthews' departure, she dissuaded Lord Salisbury on the not unreasonable grounds that Matthews was blatantly unqualified for the position. It was therefore thought by all the big political players of the day Salisbury, Goschen, Smith and Balfour that Matthews should stay in situ until the general election. He could then be quietly shuffled off with a t.i.tle in appreciation of services rendered. As Viscount Llandaff he thereafter played little part in public life. He travelled always a great pa.s.sion of his but never visited America because, he said, he did not understand it,31 and he died, after suffering for several years with rheumatism, in 1913.32 Warren was a man who believed himself to have full and complete authority over the police, and Matthews was a man who possessed full and complete authority over the police and insisted on exercising it. Relations between the two men predictably hit very choppy waters and by the end of 1888 would reach such implacability that Warren resigned. Opinion is divided as to who was responsible. The general judgement of history is that, 'Warren was a man noted for his tactlessness and peppery temper; there was a stiff pride about Sir Charles too which made it difficult for him to act in a subordinate capacity . . .'33 Other voices lay the blame elsewhere. Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, Private Secretary to four Home Secretaries, including Matthews, sympathised with Warren, saying that Matthews was 'quite incapable of dealing with men; he was a regular Gallio in his att.i.tude to Warren's complaints. Later on he quarrelled with Bradford, and if you couldn't get on with Bradford you could get on with n.o.body'.34 Sir Robert Anderson likewise laid the blame with the Home Office; however, he clearly and firmly placed the responsibility at the doorstep of G.o.dfrey Lus.h.i.+ngton,35 with whom he used to play lawn tennis, and whose personality he described as an irritant 'blister' when a 'plaister' was needed. Anderson was probably correct.36 The reality seems to be that Warren believed, probably rightly, that he had been appointed by Hugh Childers to reorganise a demoralised police force and had been given a free hand in how he achieved it. Matthews evidently understood the situation differently or did not agree with the arrangement, began to impose his authority over Warren, and Warren objected. The result was hostility.

Warren also came into conflict with the a.s.sistant Commissioner CID, James Monro, who had succeeded Sir Howard Vincent in 1884 when the latter had embarked on a long and successful political career as Conservative MP for Central Sheffield. Sir Robert Anderson, who shared Monro's committed millenniarist religious beliefs and was a close personal friend until something damaged their relations.h.i.+p irreparably shortly before Monro resigned in 1890, observed that Monro's 'appointment marked an epoch in Police administration in London; but the good which ought to have resulted from it was largely hindered by the bickerings which, after a time, began between him and the Chief Commissioner. And those bickerings were aggravated by Sir Charles Warren's relations with the Home Office'.

Born in 1838 in Edinburgh, the son of a solicitor, James Monro, who suffered infantile paralysis that left him lame, entered the Bengal Civil Service in 1857, starting as an a.s.sistant Magistrate and finis.h.i.+ng as Commissioner of the Presidency Division. Blessed 'with the instinct of a born detective . . . his name became a word of terror to the subtlest native conspirators'37 and when by chance he happened to be in London he applied for the vacant position of a.s.sistant Commissioner CID. To his surprise he was appointed. He would resign as a.s.sistant Commissioner in 1888, but was retained as an advisor to the Home Office until succeeding Sir Charles Warren as Commissioner. His relations.h.i.+p with Matthews was equally difficult as his predecessor's and they disagreed especially over the same issue of police pensions which had caused the final clash between Warren and Matthews. In 1890 he tendered his resignation and returned to India where he founded the Ranaghat Medical Mission. He retired to Cheltenham in 1905 and died in 1920.

Warren's 'bickerings' with Monro reflected an irreconcilable difference of opinion about the purpose of police work and the relative responsibilities of the uniformed and detective police. This difference of opinion might not have prevented the two men from working together in harmony, but unfortunately Monro had a second function, running the 'Secret Department', for which he was not answerable to Warren and did not have to consult him. Monro therefore embodied Warren's resentments about not having complete responsibility for the force. Furthermore, with regard to Warren's feelings, Monro seems to have acted with an extraordinary lack of tact.

Monro also came into conflict with a man named Edward Jenkinson who was working for the Home Office in their anti-Fenian activities. According to Monro's unpublished memoirs, When I joined the Met. Police, I found that there was a kind of Central Bureau of Intelligence . . . At the Home Office Mr. E.G. Jenkinson was the Head of this department. His business was to collect all information from many countries, especially America, regarding the dynamiters, and to give to the various police forces concerned any information which concerned people under their jurisdiction, so that any necessary police action might be taken by them. Mr. Jenkinson's functions were entirely those of an intelligence department; he was not a member of any police force; he had no police authority anywhere; all that he had to do was to keep the police generally acquainted with any information which, from his various agents, he acquired, suggesting any course of action which he might think desirable. But the responsibility for police action, taken or not taken, lay of course with the police forces concerned, and not with Mr Jenkinson . . .38 This was clearly a blueprint for disaster. Childers had hired Sir Charles Warren and given him a free hand to reorganise the police force, and Jenkinson had been hired and given an equally free hand to counter Fenian terrorists. Both were not left alone to get on with their respective job and in several ways this would impact on the Ripper investigation.