The second claim is that the postcard displayed foreknowledge of the Stride and Eddowes killings by referring to a "double event' in advance of Monday's press reports. Even if we suppose that the postcard was written on Sunday 30th, this contention is, quite frankly, absurd. Innumerable people knew of the murders on the Sunday and could have alluded to them in conversation or correspondence. Within hours of the discovery of the bodies the news was being circulated by word of mouth throughout the district. Even some editions of the Sunday papers managed to catch the story. 'Successive editions of the Sunday papers were getting a marvellous sale yesterday,' commented Monday morning's Daily News, 'and the contents were being devoured with the utmost eagerness.' The Telegraph described the state of 'almost frantic excitement' that prevailed throughout the East End on the fatal Sunday. 'Thousands of people visited both Mitre Square and Berner Street, and journals containing details of the crimes were bought up by crowds of men and women in Whitechapel, Stepney, and Spitalfields.'14 Curiously, despite the scrutiny to which the postmark has been subjected, no one seems to have pointed out that the card was posted in the Eastern district, where the double murder was common knowledge on Sunday as well as Monday. Pressmen swarmed around the murder sites throughout Sunday. Trawling for copy for next morning's papers, they, in particular, would have acquired a detailed knowledge of the crimes, a fact which, as we will see, might not be without significance.

Finally, it is regularly claimed that the postcard's statement that 'number one [Stride] squealed a bit' is proof of the killer's authorship because only the murderer could have known such a detail. This argument, of course, a.s.sumes that the information given about Stride was correct. We cannot be certain that it was. There were several witnesses in and about Dutfield's Yard at the time of the murder. Only one (Israel Schwartz) swore to hearing screams. Others, like Morris Eagle, Mrs Diemschutz and Mrs Mortimer, were close enough to the scene of the crime to hear cries but heard nothing. Perhaps Elizabeth did 'squeal a bit'. Perhaps her screams were drowned in the singing from the International Working Men's Club. But even if this were so it is the kind of detail a hoaxer could easily have invented and stood a good chance of getting right. It might also have been possible for the postcard writer, if he were a pressman, to have learned the detail from Schwartz. We know for certain that one journalist successfully tracked him down to his lodgings in Backchurch Lane, either on Sunday evening or Monday morning, and procured an interview from him. This interview was published too late to influence the postcard15 and, in any case, did not mention Elizabeth's screams, but since one newshound found Schwartz it was clearly possible for others to do so.

In short there is no reason to believe that the Jack the Ripper letter and postcard were anything more than hoaxes. This was Warren's view at the time. 'At present,' he told Lushington on 10 October 1888, 'I think the whole thing a hoax but we are bound to try and ascertain the writer in any case.' Many years later some detectives even insisted that they knew the ident.i.ty of the hoaxer. Anderson categorically a.s.serted in 1910 that the letter was the creation of an 'enterprising London journalist'. He was tempted, he added, to reveal his name, provided his publishers would accept responsibility in the event of a libel action, but demurred because 'no public benefit would result from such a course, and the traditions of my old department would suffer.' In annotating his copy of Anderson's book, Ex-Chief Inspector Swanson also maintained that 'head officers of CID' at Scotland Yard knew the ident.i.ty of the journalist.16 Unfortunately the claims of Anderson and Swanson are probably unjustified. I do not doubt that they had a specific name in mind. But Anderson's concern over a possible libel suit suggests that he knew very well that he could not substantiate his allegation at law and new evidence from the Metropolitan Police case papers casts further doubt upon it.

On 14 October 1896, eight years after the first letters, a fresh Jack the Ripper letter was received through the post at Commercial Street Police Station. 'Dear Boss,' it began, 'you will be surprised to find that this comes from yours as of old Jack the Ripper. Ha Ha. If my old friend Mr Warren is dead you can read it. You might remember me if you try and think a little. Ha Ha . . .' Much in the same vein followed, liberally sprinkled with words and phrases cribbed from the original communications but not in the same handwriting. The writer explained that he had just come back from abroad and was ready to resume his work, and he concluded with an enigmatic reference to the writing found in Goulston Street: '"The Jewes are people that are blamed for nothing." Ha Ha. have you heard this before.' It was signed 'yours truly, Jack the Ripper.'

One of many crude imitations of the original, the letter concerns us less than the police reaction to it. From Commercial Street it was forwarded to Scotland Yard. There, on 15 October, Melville Macnaghten, then Chief Constable, minuted the covering note: 'This is not, I think, the handwriting of our original correspondent but it is not a bad imitation. Will you get out the old letters & compare?'

Chief Inspector Henry Moore undertook the comparison. His report, dated 18 October, has not been published before: I beg to report having carefully perused all the old 'Jack the Ripper' letters and fail to find any similarity of handwriting in any of them, with the exception of the two well remembered communications which were sent to the 'Central News' Office; one a letter, dated 25th September 1888, and the other a postcard, bearing the postmark 1st October 1888 . . .

On comparing the handwriting of the present letter with [the] handwriting of that doc.u.ment, I find many similarities in the formation of letters. For instance the y's, t's, and w's are very much the same. Then there are several words which appear in both doc.u.ments; viz: Dear Boss; ha ha (although in the present letter the capital H is used instead of the small one); and in speaking of the murders he describes them as his 'work' or the last 'job'; and if I get a (or the) chance; then there are the words 'yours truly' and the Ripper (the latter on postcard) are very much alike. Besides there are the finger smears.

Considering the lapse of time, it would be interesting to know how the present writer was able to use the words 'The Jewes are people that are blamed for nothing'; as it will be remembered that they are practically the same words that were written in chalk, undoubtedly by the murderer, on the wall at Goulston St., Whitechapel, on the night of 30th September, 1888, after the murders of Mrs Stride and Mrs Eddows; and the word Jews was spelt on that occasion precisely as it is now.

Although these similarities strangely exist between the doc.u.ments, I am of opinion that the present writer is not the original correspondent who prepared the letters to the Central News; as if it had been I should have thought he would have again addressed it to the same Press Agency; and not to Commercial Street Police Station.

In conclusion I beg to observe that I do not attach any importance to this communication.

Swanson wrote a capital A in the margin against Moore's last sentence. Then he endorsed the report: 'In my opinion the handwritings are not the same. I agree as at A.'17 These doc.u.ments prove that, eight years after the original enquiry, the CID still did not know who had written the original Jack the Ripper letter and postcard. For had they possessed such information Moore's exercise would have been quite pointless. As late as 1914, furthermore, Sir Melville Macnaghten, freshly retired from ten years as the head of the CID, would only own to a suspicion as to the hoaxer: 'In this ghastly production I have always thought I could discern the stained forefinger of the journalist indeed, a year later, I had shrewd suspicions as to the actual author! But whoever did pen the gruesome stuff, it is certain to my mind that it was not the mad miscreant who had committed the murders.'18 In a.s.serting a conclusive identification of the hoaxer Anderson's memoirs went beyond the truth. This should caution us as to their worth as historical evidence. And later, when we come to consider Sir Robert's extraordinary claims in relation to one of the major murder suspects, we will need to read them with a generous pinch of salt.

Nevertheless, police intuition that the letter and postcard had been penned by an irresponsible journalist was probably correct. Telltale signs pointing to such a conclusion abound in the communications themselves. Although all question-marks and most apostrophes are omitted in the letter the overall impression it conveys is that it was the work of an educated man trying to appear less so. The handwriting and general layout are neat and careful. Capital letters and full stops are properly employed. And, despite the presence of words that would sorely have tested a semi-literate man19, there is not one spelling mistake. The fact that the communications were sent, not to Scotland Yard, but to the Central News, suggests, moreover, that the hoaxer knew exactly where to go in order to achieve maximum publicity for his creations. Lastly we come back to the postmarks. It may be significant that the letter was posted in the East Central district. For it embraced the Fleet Street/Farringdon Road area, where many of the main newspaper offices were situated. The postcard bore an Eastern district postmark and could easily have been written and mailed by a young reporter investigating the double murder. In 1966 a writer in Crime and Detection claimed that in 1931 an ex-Star reporter named Best confessed to him that he and a provincial colleague had written all the Jack the Ripper letters using a pen known as a 'Waverley Nib', deliberately battered to achieve an impression of semi-literacy and 'National School' training.20 Best's claim to have written all the letters is ridiculous. That he wrote some, to 'keep the business alive' as he said, is possible but a.s.sertions made so long after the event must be treated with extreme caution.

The 'From h.e.l.l' letter sent to George Lusk, backed by Openshaw's and Brown's findings on the kidney, has been accepted as authentic by most students of the Whitechapel murders. It could have been written by the killer. But the case is by no means conclusive.

In the first place the results of Openshaw's examination of the kidney on 18 October were obviously misreported. On average a woman's kidney is smaller and lighter than a man's but the difference is small and it would have been extremely difficult for him to have determined from a portion of kidney whether the organ had been extracted from a man or a woman.

Bright's Disease was originally thought to have been caused by overindulgence in 'ardent spirits' such as gin. However, the term 'ginny kidney', attributed to Openshaw, is now known to be meaningless since the kidneys are not injured by alcohol.

The first accounts of Openshaw's findings come to us through so many intermediaries that it would, indeed, be surprising if they were reliable. When directly interviewed by representatives of the press on 19 October the doctor repudiated almost every p.r.o.nouncement that had been attributed to him.21 He did reiterate his belief that the organ was part of a left human kidney. But that is about the only view we can confidently ascribe to him.

It is enough to set up an intriguing poser. The left kidney was cut out of Kate Eddowes' body in Mitre Square on 30 September. So was the kidney received by George Lusk sixteen days later, also a portion of a left human kidney, sent by the murderer? Or did someone else, learning from the inquest revelations of 4 October that Kate's left kidney was missing, perpetrate a disgusting hoax? Contemporary opinion was divided. Dr Saunders, the City's Public a.n.a.lyst, thought the Lusk kidney a practical joke, a 'student's antic'. Major Smith did not.

Let us consider the facts.

Openshaw decided that the postal kidney was part of a left human kidney, Brown that it was the kidney of a human adult. These claims are not unreasonable. As Nick Warren has recently explained, it should have been possible in 1888 for professional medical men to distinguish a human kidney from those of common domestic animals on morphological grounds. And since a kidney may shrink by up to 1 cm. in length between the ages of thirty and seventy, it may also have been possible for them to have determined whether the kidney had been taken from an adult. It should be noted, however, that kidneys afflicted by Bright's Disease, as this is said to have been, are pathologically contracted anyway.

Could the kidney have been sent by a medical student as a prank? Perhaps it could. But there is an important objection to this theory. Bodies delivered to hospitals for dissection were charged with preserving fluid (formalin). The organ received by Lusk had not been treated in this way. It had been preserved in spirit.

Major Smith mentions two circ.u.mstances which seem to link the postal kidney specifically with Kate's murder. The right renal artery is generally about three inches long, the left a little less but not shorter than two and a half inches. Now, Smith tells us that about two inches of left renal artery remained in Kate's body and that only about one inch was attached to the postal kidney. Moreover, according to Smith, the right kidney left in Kate's body had been found in an advanced stage of Bright's Disease and the left kidney sent to Lusk was in 'an exactly similar state'.

One hesitates to take Smith at his word. His book, written so long after the event, is inevitably unreliable. And a press statement by Dr Brown, discovered by Stewart Evans, casts real doubt upon his account of the kidney. In his statement Brown would not confirm that the postal kidney was part of a left kidney and contended that it had not been immersed in spirit for more than a week. Furthermore, he a.s.serted that no portion of renal artery adhered to the postal kidney because the organ had been 'trimmed up'.

If accurately reported this statement effectively refutes Smith. But therein lies the rub. Is it accurately reported? Contemporary newspapers are frequently as misleading as later police memoirs. And it is certainly possible to find press support for Smith. A Daily Telegraph report of 20 October 1888, for example, says: 'it is a.s.serted that only a small portion of the renal artery adheres to the kidney, while in the case of the Mitre Square victim a large portion of this artery adhered to the body.'

On the matter of Bright's Disease time has vindicated Smith. Dr Sedgwick Saunders, quoted by the Evening News in October 1888, flatly contradicts him in saying that 'the right kidney of the woman Eddowes was perfectly normal in its structure and healthy, and by parity of reasoning, you would not get much disease in the left.' But Dr Brown's recently discovered inquest deposition proves that Smith was right and Saunders wrong. Brown told the inquest that Kate's right kidney was 'pale, bloodless, with slight congestion of the base of the pyramids'. These symptoms, as Nick Warren points out, unquestionably do indicate Bright's Disease.22 In the end the evidence fails to persuade either way. The postal kidney could have been genuine. On the other hand we cannot prove that it had not been extracted from some other person recently autopsied. Experts continue to disagree and the jury is still out.

If the kidney really was Kate's the accompanying letter was written by her murderer. Yet, although the subject of several amusing exercises in graphology, it has inspired only one detailed study by a serious handwriting expert that by Thomas Mann, a charter member of the World a.s.sociation of Doc.u.ment Examiners.23 Mann's most important conclusion is that the author of the Lusk letter was a semi-literate person. The script exhibits a cramped style of writing vertical strokes are retraced, letters are crowded together, often very little s.p.a.ce separates one word from another. It is a product of finger movement rather than forearm or whole-arm movement. With finger movement letters are formed almost entirely by the action of the thumb and the first and second fingers. It is a method of writing that permits only slight lateral freedom and is characteristic of the semi-literate, of those who have not the a.s.sured command of the pen and easy arm motion of the practised penman. Other telltale signs indicate a semi-literate author. Numerous ink blots attest to someone little concerned with legibility and clarity and relatively unskilled in the use of his writing instrument. There is no punctuation. 'Kidne', occurring in the middle of a sentence, is capitalized while 'it', beginning the sentence 'it was very nise', is not. Separate ideas are run together ungrammatically. The sentence 'prasarved it for you' is incomplete. 'Catch me when you can' should probably be 'Catch me if you can.' And more than one seventh of the words in the letter are spelled incorrectly.

There are, admittedly, some indications of rudimentary learning. By no means all the spelling errors are phonetic. The words 'knif' and 'whil' prove that the writer had sufficient education to know of the silent k and h. And conversely, he could not phonetically have arrived at the correct spelling of a word like 'piece'. The setting out of the letter, too, suggests some formal training in writing because it generally follows the correct form as taught in copybooks of the period. Notwithstanding such indications, however, Mann does not believe that the writer was an educated person disguising his handwriting so as to appear semi-literate.

Disguised writing is necessarily slowly drawn. Only by writing so slowly that one is consciously in control of each stroke of the pen is it possible to prevent one's natural, idiosyncratic characteristics from appearing in the script. But, Mann tells us, such conscious attention to the process of writing is almost always detectable: 'The strokes of slowly drawn writing become tremulous in appearance; they lose the clean-cut edges of quickly written lines. Furthermore, a stroke normally produced by one quick motion may, in drawn writing, be composed of several distinct movement impulses i.e., minute changes of direction will be noticeable in a stroke which could appear firm if it were written with normal speed.' After a careful examination of the Lusk script, Mann believes that it was written more slowly than average handwriting. Difficulty in moving the pen is not surprising in finger movement and the generally heavy pressure exerted by the writer of the Lusk letter may also indicate a relatively slow speed. However, apart from a few exceptions (for example, in the tails of 'h.e.l.l' and 'nise'), the pen strokes do not, in Mann's judgement, exhibit the halting or hesitating quality characteristic of deliberate disguise. Occasionally, indeed, the writing displays evidence of having been so rapid that the ink track failed to register, as in the e of 'Kidne' and the L, u and s of 'Lusk' at the end of the letter. A disguised hand, finally, is almost certain to be inconsistent with itself in its features or qualities. This is not true of the Lusk script. Throughout it exhibits many subtle idiosyncrasies which are habitually repeated. Mann details no less than twenty-six of them. 'All elements considered,' he writes, 'the indices of speed and internal consistency in the script do not support the hypothesis of generally disguised handwriting; and, on the other hand, these indications do accord with the hypothesis of a semi-literate penman.'

So much for the handwriting. What about nationality and dialect? Well, it is certainly worthy of note, given the debate about whether the murderer was a foreigner or not, that the author of the Lusk letter was probably of British origin. The abbreviation 'Mr', written with the r raised above the line, is a peculiarity of English handwriting, and 'tother', used as a contraction of 'the other', was common to Scotland, Ireland, England and America. More specifically, the words 'prasarved' and 'Mishter' may reflect a c.o.c.kney dialect because William Matthews, in his study c.o.c.kney Past and Present, produces evidence to show that in c.o.c.kney speech 'er' was commonly p.r.o.nounced 'ar' as in 'clerk' until late in the 19th century and that 'sh' was widely subst.i.tuted for 's'. The possibility of an Irish author has already been mooted.24 The Lusk letter may have been written by the murderer, it may not. Given our present state of knowledge we can only keep an open mind on the subject.

Sue Iremonger, a member of the World a.s.sociation of Doc.u.ment Examiners, is at present engaged in a fresh study of the Ripper letters. She believes a communication of 6 October to be in the same hand as the 'Dear Boss' letter and does not think either of them could have been produced by Best's flattened Waverley nib. The results of her research will be fascinating. However, despite some published claims to the contrary25 it should be remembered that only the Lusk letter can be directly linked and that but tenuously to the murderer. For this reason comparisons between the handwriting in the Ripper correspondence and that of some suspect or other are almost invariably futile. Yet Ripperologists, eager to invest their fantasies with a veneer of credibility, will continue to make them. Besides which the idea of the Ripper brazenly taunting his enemies with insolent jibes and lines of sleazy doggerel is just too good for fictioneers to relinquish. At the beginning of its second century the myth of the murderer-scribe is probably too firmly entrenched in popular legend to be touched by anything written here. As Arthur Koestler, the wise Hungarian writer and essayist, understood only too well, 'nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.'

14.

In the Shadow of the Ripper.

'WE HEAR STARTLING NEWS of abounding sin in this great city. Oh G.o.d, put an end to this, and grant that we may hear no more of such deeds. Let Thy gospel permeate the city, and let not monsters in human shape escape Thee.'1 Such was the earnest prayer of Mr Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle on the morning of Sunday, 30 September 1888, only hours after the bodies of Liz Stride and Kate Eddowes had been found in the East End.

The news of the double killing was already sweeping through the metropolis. By eleven that same morning, one reporter tells us, it seemed 'as if the entire population of the East End was out of doors.'2 Both murder sites had been cordoned off by police but thousands of ghoulish sightseers choked the approaches to Mitre Square and congregated outside Dutfield's Yard. At one time Berner Street resembled a sea of heads from end to end. Windows overlooking the sites were thrown open and seats at them openly sold and eagerly sought. On the fringes of the crowds costermongers, selling edibles from bread and fish to fruit, sweets and nuts, and newsvendors, proclaiming the latest particulars, did spectacular trade. And because many East Enders were illiterate or unable to understand English fascinated audiences cl.u.s.tered round anyone fortunate enough to have procured a paper and willing to read aloud the news of the hour.

Mitre Square and Berner Street continued to attract crowds for several days. The same hysterical scenes that had been witnessed after Dark Annie's murder were re-enacted and, as the excitement subsided, the same terrors were re-awakened. In the East End, after dark, they emptied all but the most illuminated and populous thoroughfares. It is probable that, given the circ.u.mstances, some lodging house deputies allowed regular customers to stay even if they did not possess their doss money. But many women were, as was the custom, mercilessly turned out into the streets. Some of these fled westwards to better-lit quarters of the metropolis. Others sought shelter in the casual wards and both in the City and throughout the East End boards of guardians noted substantial increases in female admissions during the first two weeks in October. But even on the first few nights after the double murder, when the panic was at its height and temperatures plummeted to freezing, groups of these miserable and forlorn-looking creatures might still be seen in the darkness and cold, touting at street corners or under the glare of lamps, or huddling in doorways to screen their ill-clad bodies from the biting wind. Their plight was summed up by one of their number, rebuked after accosting a rescue officer near Sh.o.r.editch Church: 'Good heavens! What are we to do? At one o'clock last night Mother Morris came down into the kitchen, and she says, "Now then, you girls who haven't got your doss money out you go," and all of them as hadn't got enough was forced to turn out and go into the streets shuddering at every shadow, and expecting every minute to be murdered. What are we to do?' Some of these women, more spirited than their comrades, were determined to go down fighting. 'Afraid? No. I'm armed. Look here,' one told a reporter, pulling a knife out of her pocket. 'I'm not the only one armed. There's plenty more carry knives now.'3 A noticeable reduction in the number of prost.i.tutes out after dark was not the only effect of the murders. Respectable women, even men, began to shun the East End. There was a rumour that emigrants, en route for the West, were refusing to be located in Whitechapel. And traders complained of a loss of business. On 3 October Mr R. Rycroft told a meeting of the parish vestry of St Mary, Whitechapel, that trade had fallen off in the district by nearly 50 per cent during the past month. Presumably the problem was exacerbated in the middle of October when parts of the metropolis, including the East End, were enveloped in a dense, smoke-laden fog. About that time more than 200 Whitechapel traders, through Samuel Montagu, memorialized the Home Secretary for an increase in the number of police in the district. 'The universal feeling prevalent in our midst,' they declared, 'is that the Government no longer ensures the security of life and property in East London and that, in consequence, respectable people fear to go out shopping, thus depriving us of our means of livelihood.'4 This atmosphere of fear and suspicion was heightened by the antics of irresponsible simpletons who delighted in impersonating the Ripper by brandishing knives in the faces of defenceless women. There was a spate of such incidents in the aftermath of the double murder. One victim was Mrs Sewell, a cleaner, of 2 Pole Street, Stepney Green. On the night of 4 October, while walking to a temperance meeting at the Great a.s.sembly Hall in Mile End Road, she was scared by a man who came up behind her, suddenly and noiselessly, in dark Redman's Road. She turned round sharp and confronted him. 'Did I frighten you, missus?' he inquired. Of course he had, but striving to calm her pounding heart and control the tremor in her voice, Mrs Sewell a.s.sumed her boldest expression and told him that he had not. The man was tall and bearded. He wore a brown overcoat and a felt hat and was accompanied by a white dog. And he held something that glittered up against his sleeve. At this moment a young man came up and the bearded stranger made off, 'very quickly and silently . . . I could hardly hear his feet.' 'Did you see what he had, missus?' asked the young man. Mrs Sewell hadn't, so the young man told her. 'That was a knife,' he said, 'and the blade was a foot long.'5 Inevitably, perhaps, the terror claimed victims beyond the mutilated dead. On 17 September a young butcher named Hennell cut his own throat at the house of his parents, 76 Enfield Buildings, Ashford Street, in Hoxton. He had, it was said, 'repeatedly expressed the fear that they "were after him for the Whitechapel murder".' Sarah Goody, a forty-year-old needlewoman committed to an asylum by Thames Magistrates' Court a month later, was haunted by a similar delusion. In her fantasies she was being followed about London by murderers and these spectres of the imagination had so terrified her that she could neither eat nor sleep. On 10 October Mrs Sodeaux, the wife of a silk weaver, hanged herself from the stair banisters of No. 65 Hanbury Street, not far from the Chapman murder house. This poor woman had been depressed and, it was reported, had become 'greatly agitated' since the murders. Truly there seemed no end to the tragedies that autumn and the ripples of fear spread wide from Whitechapel. In Kilkeel, County Down, a certain Miss Milligan, just twenty-one years of age, died, supposedly from the effects of shock, a fortnight after a knife-wielding practical joker pounced out at her declaring himself to be Jack the Ripper.6 Such tragedies did nothing to deter entrepreneurs large and small from exploiting the commercial possibilities of the situation. Newspapers enjoyed ma.s.sive sales and broadsheets, some in verse and sung by hawkers to popular tunes, appeared in almost every street. The crowds of sightseers played host to swarms of parasites: omnibus and cab companies that shunted them about Whitechapel, costermongers who plied them with eatables, householders who rented them seats at windows overlooking the fatal spots, even the committee of the International Working Men's Club which charged them a small fee for admission to its premises. On 6 October a pavement artist attracted immense crowds in Whitechapel Road with his graphic delineations of the murders. And a Daily News correspondent, doing a round of the hiring fairs in the Midlands that month, found entertainments inspired by the atrocities at every one. A penny at one such bought three shies at a door with the object of bringing out Jack the Ripper or 'one of them from Whitechapel'. In the heart of the murder district there was profit in fear. One woman did a brisk trade in swordsticks. 'Here you are, now,' she would cry, carrying about an armful, 'sixpence for a swordstick. That's the sort to do for 'em!'

Overwhelmingly, though, East Enders united in sympathy for the slain. The educated and propertied cla.s.ses expressed it via the correspondence columns of the press, in renewed calls and schemes for social reform, the labouring and dest.i.tute poor by turning out en ma.s.se to honour their dead. 'Long Liz', far from her native Sweden, was quietly buried in a pauper's grave in East London Cemetery on Sat.u.r.day, 6 October. But on the following Monday the funeral of Kate Eddowes generated some of the excitement and emotion of a state occasion.

At about 1.30 p.m. the cortege left the mortuary in Golden Lane. First, in an open hea.r.s.e, Kate's body, ensconced in a handsome coffin of elm bearing a plate inscribed in letters of gold. Then, in a mourning coach, the chief mourners, all neatly attired in black. They included John Kelly and four of Kate's sisters Harriet, Emma, Eliza and Elizabeth. And bringing up the rear in a brougham, representatives of the national and local press. To all which one unconfirmed report added mention of a bevy of women, mostly dressed 'in a style not at all befitting the occasion' and riding in a large wagon. If they existed they were almost certainly Kate's old comrades from Flower and Dean Street, clothed in the only habiliments they had.

The crowds of spectators, swollen by workers taking their dinner-hour, were prodigious. In the vicinity of the mortuary they filled the windows and clambered about the roofs of adjoining buildings as well as choked the route of the procession. 'Never, perhaps, has Golden Lane and the precincts of the mortuary presented a more animated appearance,' noted the Observer. 'The footway was lined on either side of the road with persons who were packed in rows five deep, the front row extending into the roadway. Manifestations of sympathy were everywhere visible, many among the crowd uncovering their heads as the hea.r.s.e pa.s.sed.' With police clearing a way, the cortege rumbled slowly along Old, Great Eastern and Commercial Streets and turned into Whitechapel High Street. There, lining the route on both sides as far as St Mary's Church, was another dense crowd. The Observer again: 'The sympathy shown here was more marked than at any other point of the route, the majority of the women having no covering to their heads, whilst a number of rough-looking labouring men removed their caps as the body pa.s.sed.'

Shortly before 3.30 Kate's body reached its final resting place the City of London Cemetery at Ilford. Hundreds more people, many of the women carrying infants in their arms, gathered about the grave to see her buried. In the chapel and at the graveside the service was performed by the Rev T. Duns...o...b.., the cemetery chaplain. The City authorities, who owned the burial ground, remitted the usual fees and George Hawkes, vestryman and undertaker of St Luke's, paid the funeral expenses.7 The community united, too, in a cry for retribution, a cry quickly taken up by broadsheet hacks who vied with each other in devising suitable fates for the murderer: 'as anyone seen him, can you tell us where he is, If you meet him you must take away his knife, Then give him to the women, they'll spoil his pretty fiz, And I wouldn't give him twopence for his life.

Now at night when you're undressed and about to go to rest Just see that he ain't underneath the bed If he is you mustn't shout but politely drag him out And with your poker tap him on the head.

But before the Ripper could be punished he had to be caught. And the inquest proceedings provided few grounds for optimism that that was about to happen.

On 4 October the inquest into the death of Kate Eddowes commenced at the City Mortuary in Golden Lane before Samuel Frederick Langham, the City Coroner. It was adjourned to the 11th but Langham did not consider it necessary to prolong the inquiry further in the hope of procuring more evidence and at the end of the second day advised the jury to return their verdict and leave the matter in the hands of the police. Since Langham a.s.sured them that the medical evidence proved that only one man could have been implicated, the jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against some person unknown. Obviously the public were greatly disappointed in the result and the Daily News spoke for most when it complained: 'Practically the world knows nothing more of this crime than it did on the morning when it was first announced. We have some details about the victim, few or none about the murderer. The "person unknown" has every right to his designation.'8 Wynne Baxter, who opened the Stride inquest at the vestry hall of St George-in-the-East in Cable Street on 1 October, was a man of a very different stamp to Langham. As was his wont, his examination of the witnesses was nigh exhaustive, his summing-up meticulous. The inquiry was adjourned no less than four times. But it made no difference. Terminating the proceedings on 23 October, Baxter felt obliged to acknowledge his sorrow that the time of the court had not succeeded in unmasking the killer and his jury then returned the usual verdict of wilful murder by some person or persons unknown.

The failure of the police to catch the Ripper fuelled a fierce clamour for a government reward. Kate Eddowes had died in the City and on 1 October, upon the recommendation of Colonel Sir James Fraser, Commissioner of the City Police, the Lord Mayor authorized a reward of 500 for anyone who could provide information leading to the discovery and conviction of her murderer.9 Repeated attempts to persuade Henry Matthews to follow suit were spearheaded by the Mile End Vigilance Committee.

Hoping that the double murder had wrought a change of heart at the Home Office, Mr B. Harris, the committee secretary, wrote on 30 September requesting Matthews to reconsider their former application for a reward. Three days later the Home Office penned its reply: the Secretary of State saw no reason to alter his previous decision. Undaunted, the committee tried again on 7 October. This time George Lusk, the president, called not only for a substantial government reward but also for a free pardon to any accomplice who would inform against the killer. And he pointed out 'that the present series of murders is absolutely unique in the annals of crime, that the cunning, astuteness and determination of the murderer has. .h.i.therto been, and may possibly still continue to be, more than a match for Scotland Yard and the Old Jewry combined, and that all ordinary means of detection have failed.' It was all to no avail. Once again the offer of a reward was rejected outright. And although that of a pardon received strong support from Sir Charles Warren all the Home Office would promise was to keep the matter under review.10 Other bodies were similarly rebuffed. On 1 October Harry Marks, editor of the Financial News, sent Matthews a cheque for 300 on behalf of some of his readers, requesting him to offer the money in the name of the government for the discovery of the murderer. The cheque was promptly returned. Again, Sir Alfred Kirby, Colonel of the Tower Hamlets Battalion, Royal Engineers, offered 100 on behalf of his officers as well as the services of up to fifty members of his corps. Both gestures were politely declined.

Bewildered and exasperated by the Home Secretary's obduracy, private donors went where Matthews feared to tread and by 2 October it was being reported that 1,200 already awaited anyone who could put a name to the Ripper.11 The Mile End Vigilance Committee did more than lobby and collect subscriptions for a reward. Dissatisfied with the degree of protection afforded by the police, it inaugurated a system of amateur patrols. Picked men from the ranks of the unemployed patrolled the streets of the East End from shortly before midnight to between four and five the next morning. Each man was a.s.signed a particular beat, equipped with a police whistle, a stout stick and a pair of galoshes, and paid a modest wage by the committee. The committee met nightly at nine in an upstairs room of the Crown, Mile End Road, and when the house closed at 12.30 members themselves took to the streets to inspect and supplement the patrols. To advise them in the organization and supervision of all this amateur police work the committee hired the services of Grand & Batchelor, a private detective agency in the Strand.

To judge from news reports it was at midnight on Wednesday, 3 October, that the patrols of the Mile End Vigilance Committee first trooped into the streets. This committee largely consisted of small tradesmen. Its members included a builder, a cigar manufacturer, a tailor, a picture-frame maker, a licensed victualler and an actor. But soon its patrols were being reinforced by those of the Working Men's Vigilance Committee. Little is known about this organization. Apparently a child of the waterfront trade unions, it held meetings at the Three Nuns, Aldgate, and is said to have established fifty-seven patrols by 9 October.12 It was all beyond doubt a most praiseworthy effort. But was it productive of any good? Grand & Batchelor did the Whitechapel investigation no service when they unearthed the charlatan Matthew Packer. In one sense, too, vigilance committee patrols made life harder rather than easier for the regular police. For the constable on the beat was now confronted with more strange men on the streets at night than ever before and it must, at least in the early days of the patrols, have been a full-time job checking out their credentials. This was certainly Inspector Dew's view of the matter, and although his comments perhaps reflect the contempt of the professional for the amateur there is some support for it in contemporary news reports. Thus, a week after the double murder, the Daily News commented that 'in several instances some of the plain clothes [police] men who were strange to the neighbourhood were watched by members of the Vigilance Committee, while they in their turn came under the scrutiny of the detectives.'13 On the other hand the Mile End committee at least regularly pa.s.sed on information about suspicious characters and the state of the streets to the police and the increased surveillance of the district, to which the private patrols contributed, may well have acted upon the Ripper as a deterrent. It would be nearly six weeks before he struck again and then it would be in the squalid back room of a house, not on the open streets.

Inevitably the double murder lashed the press into fresh volleys of vituperation against the Metropolitan Police and its masters. Matthews' refusal to sanction a government reward was condemned on all sides. The Daily Telegraph, so representative of Conservative opinion, denounced the Home Secretary as a 'helpless, heedless, useless figure' while the radical Star accused him of 'philandering with pot-house Tories at Birmingham while G.o.d's poor are being slaughtered wholesale in London.' 'We do not ask what is the duty of the Home Secretary,' said the Pall Mall Gazette scathingly, 'because whatever it is he will not do it.' Criticism of the police, too, transcended political alignments. The Star predictably d.a.m.ned the entire force as 'rotten to the core.' But even Conservative journals castigated the CID. The Daily Telegraph fumed about the 'notorious and shameful shortcomings of the Detective Department, or rather of the botched-up makeshift which does duty for a Detective Department at Scotland Yard' and the East London Advertiser considered that there was 'no detective force in the proper sense of the word in London at all.'14. It was widely believed that under Warren the energies, resources and organization of the police had been subverted from the prevention and detection of crime to the politically motivated containment of outcast London. A huge placard, exhibited at a meeting of the unemployed in Hyde Park on 2 October, summed it all up: 'The Whitechapel Murders. Where are the Police? Looking after the Unemployed!'

Part of the trouble was that police secrecy made it impossible for press or public to judge how adequately the force was discharging its responsibilities. Sir Charles Warren, replying on 3 October to a plea from the Whitechapel District Board of Works for improved policing of the area, a.s.sured the board that 'every nerve' was being strained to detect the murderer. But, he added, 'you will agree with me that it is not desirable that I should enter into particulars as to what the police are doing in the matter. It is most important for good results that our proceedings should not be published.'15 Curiously, newspaper reporters often contrasted the silence and churlishness of Metropolitan officers with the courtesy and co-operation of their counterparts in the City. Yet both forces embraced the secrecy principle. Thus when Joseph Lawende was called before the Eddowes inquest on 11 October, his description of the suspect was suppressed at the express wish of Henry Crawford, City Solicitor, appearing on behalf of the City Police. In 1888 such tactics effectively blindfolded the press. Now, a century after the crimes, confidential Home Office and Metropolitan Police files have been opened and we can see that despite the ultimate failure of the Ripper hunt a great deal was done.

One of Warren's first actions after the double killing was to draft extra men into the district. These were transferred temporarily from duties in other divisions. One of them was Frederick Porter Wensley, then a uniformed constable of but nine months' standing in the Lambeth Division, later to rise to the rank of Chief Constable of CID. In his book, Detective Days, published more than forty years later, Wensley recalled his Whitechapel interlude: 'In common with hundreds of others I was drafted there and we patrolled the streets usually in pairs without any tangible result. We did, however, rather antic.i.p.ate a great commercial invention. To our clumsy regulation boots we nailed strips of rubber, usually bits of old bicycle tires, and so ensured some measure of silence when walking.'16 There were no policewomen in the Metropolitan Police before World War I. Back in 1888, therefore, it was commonly suggested in the press that detectives might successfully entrap the Ripper if they perambulated the streets dressed as women. At that time police recruits were all five feet seven inches in height or over so this idea would not have been as easy to implement as it sounded. Nevertheless, we know of at least one detective who did don female disguise. He was Detective Sergeant Robinson of G Division and his activities have come down to us because he became embroiled in a melee with a pair of pugnacious cab-washers in Phoenix Place, St Pancras.

Investigating a rumour that the Ripper was in the neighbourhood, Robinson proceeded to Phoenix Place where, between twelve and one on the morning of 9 October, he was with Detective-Sergeant Mather, one Henry Doncaster and several Italians, watching a man who 'was in company with a woman under circ.u.mstances of great suspicion'. Robinson was disguised in female clothing. At this point the watchers themselves came under the notice of William Jarvis and James Phillips, two cab-washers from a nearby cabyard, and they evidently concluded that the strangers were up to no good.

What happened next depends upon which party one believes. According to Robinson, the cab-washers accosted him in an intimidating manner.

'What are you messing about here for?' demanded Jarvis.

Robinson took off his woman's hat. 'I am a police officer,' he said.

'Oh, you are cats and dogs, are you?' replied Jarvis. And with that he threw a punch at the detective.

Then, when Robinson grasped him by the coat, Jarvis pulled a knife.

Jarvis and Phillips told a different story. By their account, they asked Robinson's party what they were doing near the cabs and Robinson told them to mind their own business and thrust Jarvis away by putting a fist against his chin.

Whatever the origins of the dispute, a fierce struggle ensued during which Robinson was stabbed over the left eye and on the bridge of the nose, Doncaster was stabbed in the face and had his jaw dislocated, and Jarvis was cracked across the head with Robinson's truncheon. Jarvis' cries for a.s.sistance 'Come on, George, cats and dogs!' brought several other men from the cabyard, armed with pitchforks and other implements. But they made no attempt to use their weapons and, after police reinforcements had come up, Jarvis and Phillips were taken into custody.

The combatants made a sorry sight when they came before Clerkenwell Police Court later in the day, the cab-washers accused of cutting and wounding Detective-Sergeant Robinson. Robinson appeared with surgical straps around his left eye, Doncaster and Jarvis with their heads bound in bloodstained bandages. Robinson contended that he had struck at the hand with which Jarvis had been holding his knife but had missed and struck his head. However, pressed by Mr Ricketts, the prisoners' solicitor, he conceded that after he had been stabbed he didn't care whether he hit Jarvis on the hand or the head. The prisoners were remanded for a week and then committed for trial and released on bail. At the end of the month they were tried at the Middles.e.x Sessions of the Peace for a.s.saulting police in the execution of their duty. Phillips was acquitted but Jarvis was convicted and sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment with hard labour.17 The influx into Whitechapel of plain clothes detectives, with or without women's clothes, must have presented something of a problem to patrolling constables. The night after the murders PC Ludwig, patrolling between Cannon Street Road and Back Church Lane, encountered a very strange figure indeed, its height and masculine stride ill-befitting its shabby raiment as a woman of the town.

'Stop!' cried the constable. 'You're a man, aren't you? I can see that you are.'

The figure confessed that it was.

'Are you one of us?' queried Ludwig.

No, the man explained, he was not a detective but a reporter who had disguised himself as a prost.i.tute the better to root out copy on the murders.

Ludwig eyed him dubiously and then conducted him to Leman Street Police Station. There, however, his story was verified and he was allowed to go.18 Although there was always a chance that the murderer might be taken red-handed attempting another crime, the drafting in of extra men was designed primarily as a short-term, preventative measure. Detection of the criminal required more offensive operations and, in the days immediately after the Stride murder, the Metropolitan Police conducted extensive inquiries and searches throughout Whitechapel.

One was the inevitable visitation of common lodging houses and over 2,000 lodgers were interviewed. By this stage, though, it was commonly believed that if the killer had resorted to such an establishment he would not have escaped notice and that it was more likely that he lived with relatives or in private lodgings. So, in order to solicit information from landlords and their tenants, some 80,000 handbills19 were printed and distributed in the area: POLICE NOTICE.

TO THE OCCUPIER.

On the mornings of Friday, 31st August, Sat.u.r.day 8th, and Sunday, 30th September, 1888, Women were murdered in or near Whitechapel, supposed by some one residing in the immediate neighbourhood. Should you know of any person to whom suspicion is attached, you are earnestly requested to communicate at once with the nearest Police Station.

Metropolitan Police Office, 30th September, 1888.

Critics doubted the efficacy of this bill, pointing out that it contained no promise of a reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer and that, printed in English, it was incomprehensible to large numbers of the immigrant population, a fact not without significance if it was held that the murderer was a foreigner being sheltered by compatriots.

But other searches were in hand too. Seventy-six butchers and slaughterers were visited by police and the characters of their employees inquired into. The Thames Police investigated sailors working aboard vessels in the docks or on the river. Inquiries were mounted into Asiatics living in London and into the reputed presence of Greek gipsies in the capital. The latter were cleared of suspicion when it was learned that they had not been in London at the times of the murders. Similarly, three cowboys attached to the American Exhibition were traced and satisfactorily accounted for their whereabouts at the critical times. If the newspapers are to be credited the net was cast wider still, taking in hospitals, workhouses, prisons and vacant buildings.20 Sir John Whittaker Ellis, a former Lord Mayor of London, wrote to Matthews on 3 October with an idea for a bolder initiative. He suggested that the police draw a half-mile cordon around the centre of Whitechapel and search every house within it. 'It is a strong thing to do,' he admitted, 'but I should think such occasion never before arose.' A better word than 'strong' would have been 'illegal' because the police had no authority to forcibly enter and search anyone's home without a warrant from a magistrate.

Warren baulked at the prospect. He felt that if the search failed to unearth the killer it was sure to be roundly condemned, and worried that such an unlawful step might succeed in uniting the Socialists to resist the operation, endangering the lives of his constables and exposing them, in the event of damage to property or injury to civilians, to dire legal consequences. Writing to Ruggles-Brise, Matthews' private secretary, on 4 October, Sir Charles declared himself 'quite prepared to take the responsibility of adopting the most drastic or arbitrary measures that the Secretary of State can name which would further the securing of the murderer, however illegal they may be, provided HM Government will support me.' But he doubted whether it was worth risking riot and loss of life in order 'to search for one murderer whose whereabouts is not known.' The next day Matthews replied with a more practicable alternative. Could not the police, he suggested, take all the houses in a given area 'which appear suspicious upon the best inquiry your detectives can make', search those for which the permission of the owners or occupiers could be procured and then apply to a magistrate for search warrants to enter the rest? The flaw in his plan, of course, was that since the police didn't know where the killer might be hiding they would have found it next to impossible to show plausible grounds for the granting of a warrant to search any particular house. That suggested by Matthews that it was possible 'the murderer may be there' could have been applied to almost any habitation in the metropolis! The Home Secretary did appreciate the difficulty. 'If search warrants are refused,' he wrote, 'you can only keep the houses under observation.'21 In the end it was decided to confine the search to those premises within a given area for which the consent of the occupier could be obtained and by 13 October the operation was under way. Embracing some of the worst slums of Whitechapel and Spitalfields, the area of the search was bounded by Lamb Street, Commercial Street, the Great Eastern Railway and Buxton Street on the north and Whitechapel Road on the south, by the City boundary on the west and Albert Street, Dunk Street, Chicksand Street and Great Garden Street on the east. There, for the best part of a week, plain clothes officers went from house to house, seeking admission to every room, looking under beds, peering into cupboards, inspecting knives, interviewing landlords and their lodgers. Mrs Andleman of 7 Spelman Street regaled the Star with her story of the search: I came home from work yesterday, and as soon as I opened the street door, two men came up and said, 'Do you live in this front room?' 'Yes,' I said. 'We want to have a look at it.' 'Who are you, and what do you want?' 'We are police officers, and we have come to look for the murderer.' 'Do you think I keep the murderer here, or do you suggest that I a.s.sociate with him?' I replied. They answered that it was their duty to inspect the rooms. I showed them into my room. They looked under the bed, and asked me to open the cupboards. I opened a small cupboard, where I keep plates and things. It is not more than two feet wide and about one in depth. They made an inspection of that also. 'Do you think,' I said, 'that it is possible for a man, or even a child, to be hidden in that small place?' They made no answer, and walked out. Then they went next door and inspected those premises.

Mrs Andleman obviously resented the intrusion and, in the East End, it would have been astonishing had there been no animosity shown towards the police. There must have been those who refused them entry. But Warren's fears of widespread obstruction happily proved unfounded. For such was the desire of the community to rid itself of the murderer that almost everywhere the police found occupiers more than happy to co-operate with them. Our evidence is virtually unanimous on this point. 'With few exceptions,' said Warren on the 17th, 'the inhabitants of all cla.s.ses and creeds have freely fallen in with the proposal, and have materially a.s.sisted the officers engaged in carrying it out.' Dr Anderson, the new head of CID, in a confidential minute written six days later, agreed: 'the public generally and especially the inhabitants of the East End have shown a marked desire to a.s.sist in every way, even at some sacrifice to themselves, as for example in permitting their houses to be searched.' And so did the press: 'The greatest good feeling prevails towards the police, and noticeably in the most squalid dwellings the police had no difficulty in getting information.'

The search was completed on 18 October. It did not unmask the murderer. Nor did its failure to do so demonstrate that he did not live in the area designated for the search. In a permissive undertaking such as this anyone who really had something to hide might easily have denied the police access to their property, and although Chief Inspector Swanson reported that the exceptions were not such as to warrant suspicion the CID had no means of being certain of that. Indeed, the police knew so little about their quarry that they might well have interviewed him without suspecting him in the least. However, if the search did something to appease the public's clamour for action it fulfilled what was arguably one of its main objectives.22 Unquestionably the most famous and misunderstood initiative of the Metropolitan Police was the experiment with bloodhounds. Misunderstood, because Ripperologists have foisted three tenacious myths upon the public: that the bloodhound trials were Warren's pet project, that they were discredited when the dogs got lost in a fog on Tooting Common, and that the fiasco made Sir Charles the laughing stock of London. Now the truth was very different. Warren undertook the experiment at the suggestion of the Home Office, and the Home Office simply responded to advice daily urged upon the police by public and press. The Tooting Common episode, so beloved of Ripperologists, was a complete fiction. And far from the trials heaping ridicule upon the Commissioner's head, they were generally welcomed by public and press and both continued to repose great faith in the hounds long after they had been returned to their owner. Indeed, some went so far as to attribute the Ripper's inactivity during October to the well-publicized presence of the dogs in London.

The suggestion that bloodhounds might be used to track the killer, first heard after the Hanbury Street murder, was at once raised again in the wake of the double event. On 1 October a Times editorial reminded its readers that in 1876 the murderer William Fish had been detected with the help of a bloodhound. Noticing this editorial, Percy Lindley, a breeder of bloodhounds at York Hill, Loughton, in Ess.e.x, wasted no time in writing to The Times to extol the virtues of the breed. 'As a breeder of bloodhounds, and knowing their power,' he said, 'I have little doubt that, had a hound been put upon the scent of the murderer while fresh, it might have done what the police have failed in.' Lindley suggested that a couple of trained dogs be kept at one of the police stations in Whitechapel, ready for immediate use in the event of another murder, and it was his letter that launched the Metropolitan Police experiment. For when it was printed in The Times on 2 October it was spotted by the Home Office and promptly transmitted by them to Sir Charles Warren.23 Wise after the event, Sir Melville Macnaghten and Ex-Chief Inspector Dew later wrote disparagingly of the experiment, but in 1888 even the experts were divided on the potential value of bloodhounds for police work in the East End. H. M. Mackusick of Merstham in Surrey, boasting the largest kennel of bloodhounds in existence, agreed with Percy Lindley and declared that 'ten well-trained bloodhounds would be of more use than a hundred constables in ferreting out criminals who have left no trace beyond the fact of their presence behind them.' Edwin Brough, a breeder from Wyndyate near Scarborough, was less hopeful. Brough admired the bloodhound. It could, he a.s.serted, hunt 'a lighter scent than any other hound, and when properly trained will stick to the line of the hunted man, although it may have been crossed by others.' But he doubted whether there were in England dogs sufficiently well trained to work in the crowded streets of Whitechapel. 'Unless laid on [the scent] at once,' he warned, 'the chances are that the hound might hit off the wrong trail.'24 Neither Warren nor Matthews was unaware of the problems. Indeed, in a letter to Percy Lindley, Warren queried how a dog could be expected to track the killer without a vestige of his clothing or trace of his blood, especially 'on a London pavement where people have been walking all the evening [and] there may be scores of scents almost as keen as those of the murderer.' But given the contradictory advice on offer their decision to attempt the experiment can only be commended. On 5 October Warren requested authority from the Home Secretary to expend 50 in the present financial year and 100 per annum thereafter in keeping trained bloodhounds in London. This would be irrespective of any 'expenses which may occur in the special use of bloodhounds at the present moment.' Matthews trod warily. He decided to sanction one payment of 50 only, to be spent on the use of dogs in the present emergency, but declined to commit himself to a permanent annual charge unless the venture could demonstrate that bloodhounds could be usefully employed in the metropolis without danger to the public.25 Warren had already made inquiries of several dog breeders. As a result, on Sat.u.r.day, 6 October, Edwin Brough arrived in London with Barnaby and Burgho, two of his finest animals.

At seven on Monday morning the trials began in Regent's Park. Although the ground was thickly coated in h.o.a.r frost the hounds performed well, successfully tracking a man who had been given a fifteen-minute start for nearly a mile. That night they were tried again, this time in Hyde Park. It was dark and the dogs were worked on a leash but once more they were successful in performing their allotted task. Next morning, 9 October, further trials were held in the presence of Sir Charles Warren. In all, half a dozen runs were made, the Commissioner himself acting the part of the hunted man on two occasions. Again the results were encouraging. In every instance the bloodhounds hunted complete strangers and occasionally the trail was deliberately crossed to deceive them. Whenever this happened the dogs were checked, but only temporarily, for one or other of them, casting around, invariably picked up the trail again. 'In consequence of the coldness of the scent,' reported the Central News, 'the hounds worked very slowly, but they demonstrated the possibility of tracking complete strangers on to whose trail they had been laid. The Chief Commissioner seemed pleased with the result of the trials, though he did not express any definite opinion on the subject to those present.' Warren's caution was justified. We are not told the venue of the third trial but it was, like the others, in one of the London parks. Therein lay the problem. For however impressively the dogs might work on gra.s.s and across country there could be no certainty that they could repeat their success in Whitechapel.26 Nevertheless, Sir Charles thought they were worth a try and instructions were issued that, in the event of another murder, the body must not be touched until the dogs had been put on the scent.

The Tooting Common episode, which is said to have discredited the whole experiment, is a myth. It sprang from a false news report of 19 October: 'It is stated that Sir Charles Warren's bloodhounds were out for practice at Tooting yesterday morning and were lost. Telegrams have been despatched to all the Metropolitan Police stations stating that, if seen anywhere, information is to be immediately sent to Scotland Yard.' The truth was less dramatic. On 18 October a sheep was killed on the common and local police wired to London for the loan of the dogs. Unfortunately neither animal was available. Burgho had already been returned to Scarborough. And Barnaby was out being practised by Mr Taunton, a friend of Edwin Brough, at Hemel Hempstead. Some comment that the hounds did not arrive in Tooting when sent for must have been made and noised abroad. This, blown up as only a journalist knows how, was the sole basis for the press story.27 However, at the end of the month the project did founder in misunderstandings between Warren and Brough. Warren was under the impression that Brough had public-spiritedly loaned his dogs to the CID free of charge. Which is why, when seeking finance from Matthews, he had included no estimate of the cost of 'the special use of bloodhounds at the present moment' in his application. Public-spirited Brough may have been. But he knew the value of his animals and antic.i.p.ated that the police would either purchase them or pay hire charges and insure them against accidents.

After the trials in the London parks Brough returned to Scarborough, leaving Barnaby and Burgho in the care of his friend, Mr Taunton of 8 Doughty Street, while negotiations