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Lee diegremmee auivente illuetrent le mAtluMie. 1 2 3 4 5 6 I ( \ Vf 4i . <P^ CHRONICLES OP Crime and Criminals *•.■* , it- Remarkable Criminal Trials — Mysterious Murders — Wholesale Murders- Male and Female Poisoners — Forgery and Counterfeiting — Bank and Post Office Robberies — Swindlers — Highway Robbery and Railway Crimes — Daring Outlaws — Road Agents, Bushrangers and Brigands, Etc., Etc. No. 1. Full and Authentic Account of the Murder by Henry Wainwright^ of his Mistress Harriet Lane: AND AN EXTENDED ACCOUNT OF THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS BY THE INFAMOUS JACK THE RIPPER. BEAVER PUBLISHING COMPANY, TORONTO. li S: INTRODUCTION. •J* i/^ *i^ J* y^RIME is the transgression, by individuals, \m of laws made for the protection and good of the community. Every country, civil- ized and uncwilized, the whole world at large and in all ages has been cursed with crime from Cain the first rfiurderer to the last case reported in the daHv newspaper. For yjars this country has been flooded with literature professing to be ''CHRONICLES OF CRIiVi!Z" but in reality mere sensational products of the imagination, in plain words the crimes have been manufactured for the occasion. .1 In these volumes, however, the truth will be strictly adhered to, and every story given can be relied upon as strictly authentic, thus confirming the old maxim, that ** truth is stranger than fiction." An extended list of the subjects to be dealt with in future volumes will be found on page three of cover. ; '< W! % I AN ACCOUNT OF THE Murder of Harriet Lane AND ARREST, TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF HENRY WAINWRIGHT. In the East End of London, in a busy and populous region, the subject of our fiketcl. had done a large business as a brush- maker at !N^o. 215 Whiteehapel Eoad. Up to the time of his arrest nothing was known against his character and he was looked upon as an honest, upright and indus- \Tious citizen. The deed, for which he was tried, and afterwards executed, was very deliberately planned, and diabolically carried out,, but the precautions taken to insure concealment^ although elaborate, were unsuccessful, partly through his own carelessness, partly through the ill-luck that will often mar the best combinations. There was no sort of suspicion against Wainwright. Although a woman with whom he was on intimate terms had been missing for about a year, her disappearance had been ex- plained without the slightest suspicion that a dr^tardly murder had been done. Just at this time, September, 1895, Wainwright had taken new premises across the river at Southwark, he having met witli reverses in business, and bankruptcy, and it was when he sought the assistance of a fellow-workman, once in his own employ, to help him in a small job at his old premises, that the fact of foul play was first brought to light. ipplplplppffllpppjp^ WAINWRIGHT MURDER This man, Stokes by name, accompanied Wainwright to 215 Whitechapel Eoad and entered the workshop on the ground floor. The job for Stokes was to help carry out a couple of heavy parcels that lay on the floor, wrapped up in black American cloth and covered with strong rope, " Pick 'em up will you ?" said Wainwright. " Only just wait while I see if the land is clear. There's that magging old Johnston in the Court. I don't want to see him ! ! Stokes tried the parcels, but protested they were too heavy. Wainwright lent him a hand, and the pair carried them into the street, as f &r as the Church in the Whitechapel Koad. " Stop ! You hold on here while I hail a cab," said Wain- wright, and left Stokes alone with the parcels. Long afterwards,, just before Wainwright's execution, Stokes wrote him a curious letter, detailing his sensations while waiting by the Church. Something within him, iie declared, some mys- terous voice, some hidden but imperious impulse urged him to examine the parcels. He was not satisfied about them ! ! Wainwright had said they contained hair bristles for brush- making; had cautioned him not to drop them lest they should break. How could bristles break ? They gave off a strong smell. " A peculiar, offensive odor. Wainwright had said this was due to their having been so long under the straw. But bristles could never smell in this way. Again, another suspicious circumstance occurred to him, before leaving the workshop in Whitechapel Koad Wainwright had given him a spade, a hammer and chopper, and told him to sell them for what they would fetch. There was suspicious stuff on the chopper. A sticky sort of dirt which smelt badly. A shudder went through him. Was it blood ! ! i,-»-'*..'i •C-'^ # ' 1 so to of mwm^m^^mmwm .i:, #■ \i f, • l WAINWRIGHT MURDER As he stood there . irresolute and unhappy the voice kept con- stantly saying: " Open that parcel " ! ! " Open it, open it, open it " ! I He yielded, he could not help himself. He pulled all the wrappers aside and saw — A Human Head ! ! First the crop of light hair,, then the entire head. " It must be murder ! " Nothing less than cruel, bloody, murder " ! ! I This was Stokes' immediate conclusion, and he was so terrified by his shocking discovery that, so he said : " His Hair Stood on End and His Hat Fell Off " ! I After the first glimpse he could not resist making a closer scrutiny of the contents. He saw the head again, and more plainly ! A severed head I The short hair was much matted and encrusted with eart' ad dirt ! ! Nor was the head the only horror within the parcel ! Looking a little further he came upon — a human hand and Ihen a human arm ! ! ! Then Wainwright returned, bringing a cab. Quite without suspicion,, he told Stokes to put the parcels into the cab and got in himself, saying sharply to the driver: " Now, Cabby, to the Commercial Eoad ; all you know. And you, Stokes, I'll come round to your place to-night." Stokes had missed his chance ! He should have called for the police, and at once given Wain- wright into custody. When afterwards asked by the coroner why he did not do so,, he confessed he was afraid of Wainwright, who he knew to be a dangerous man. Now Stokes, still urged by the " small, still voice within,'* decided to pursue the cab. mmmmmmnmm^ '"^?.5:S^mi^' WAINWRIGHT MURDER He ran after it at full speed, and once gained a little as it stopped in Greenfield Street to pick up a woman who was waiting there. This woman, Alice Day, was afterwards arrested as an accomplice, but soon discharged, there being nothing to connect her with the crime. Again the cab drove on, Stokes growing more and more breath- less behind. Down Aldgate Street, then towards Fenchurck Street, on to Leadenhall Street, and there it branched off to London Bridge and crossed the river. Stokes was taken for a lunatic as he raced along. Two police- men whom he met only laughed at him derisively as he pointed to the cab ahead ana rasped : " That cab — there, ahead." " Stop it — ^murder — parcels — " "Twoparcels— ! ! !" He was now all but distanced ! But, once more the cab stopped ! At the Hop Exchange, in the Borough. Stokes got within ten yards of it. Here there were two more policemen, and their sense of duty was stronger than that of their colleagues before mentioned. When Stokes appealed to them they listened and were prepared to act. " See that man !" said Stokes. He pointed to Wainwright, who had alighted from the cab» and with one parcel had walked on some thirty or forty yards, in the direction of a shop still known as the Hen and Chickens. " See him ? Hurry after him !" " Stop him ! He's a murderer ! ! See what he does with it ! ! ! " Stokes had done his part; it was now for the police to act. One constable followed promptly ; the other took post and watched the cab. When Wainwright entered the Hen and Chickens the first constable came back and rejoined the second at the cab. . -IVl' ■itMi^s^i'il WAINWRIGHT MURDER Presently Wainwright returned smoking a cigar. He did not appeiir to notice the policeman, but, lifting out the second parcel walked off again to the Hen and Chickens. The constables were now at his heels, and one asked : "Do you live in there ?" " No I" " Have you possession of the premises ?" " I have, and you haven't," answered Wainwright with much effrontery. " What's in that parcel ?" " What have you done with the other ?" " You go into the house, mate, and see if it's there while I look at this," went on the policeman. " Don't touch it !" cried Wainwright. " Ask no questions. Let me alone. Let me go. I'll give £50 — £100 — ^£200, anything, and plank down the money at once — only let me go " ! ! ! To offer a policeman a bribe is perhaps the safest way to encourage his suspicion — ^Ybs,, the Murderer's Time had Comb. Within a few seconds the parcel was torn open ! And tho ghastly contents exposed I 1 Wainwright's arrest followed then and there, and the parcels were taken to the police station. On examination one was found to contain the trunk of a human body, and the other the remaining parts, the whole forming a ghastly spectacle and gruesome evidence of a cruel and dastardly murder. The remains were those of a female. Two bullet holes were found in the brain, and a third at the back of the head ! The throat had also been cut ! It was a severe wound, inflicted with great violence ! Meanwhile the search of Wainwright's Whitechapel premises had been actively prosecuted. With one of the keys taken from his pocket the back door was opened and the theatre of this crime entered. 8 WAINWRIGHT MURDER m. m At about twenty feet from the door it was at once seen that a part of the flooring had been takeij up and recently,, roughly and hastily replaced. The boards were speedily again removed. An open grave, but lately used, yawned beneath ! ! The earth was largely mixed with chloride of lime ! The murderer had made a fatal mistake ! He expected .thloride of lime to have quickly eaten up the evidence of his revolting crime, but it had just the contrary effect ! The dismembered parts were effectually preserved ! The murderer, by his stupidity and want of knowledge, had forged the chains of guilt around him, and had compassed his own destruction ! Various murderous implements were found on the spot. A new spade, recently used, an open pocket-knife, a chopper, or cleaver, on which was much sticky fleshy matter — undoubtedly congealed blood. In the corner just behind the back door, on removing the rub- bish, m'iny splotches of blood were found, and every evideiiee went to prove the certainty and enormity of a great crime. But who was the woman ? Who was the victim of this foul fiend ? A man named Taylor gave the first clue to the mystery. He thoi":!! the remains might be those of his sister-in-law, Harriet Lane. Sb'* had been missing about twelve months ! f^\ ^ . au been intimate with Wainwright I His description of her was minute and particular. The police without hesitation allowed him to view the remains. He at once identified them as those of Harriet Lane ! ! ! He also identified various articles of dress found in the grave and in the house. Harriet Lane had worn earrings, and two of these ornaments were picked out of the grate in the fire-place. She wore a wedding ring and keeper ! Both these were found in the grave ! I '♦■" ! ■•♦■ v; :■-■■- 4 i* % <; ^ WAINWRIGHT MURDER ♦• : ■■♦ V ^ /• « < "l A niimber of Harriet Lane's relatives soon gave corroborative testimony. Now to prove the connection between the murderer and his victim ! ! The chain of identity was compleie ! ! It was proved beyond doubt that Wainwright had been inti- mate with her for a long time, and that she left her last lodgings in Sydney Square, Mile End, with the avowed intention of going to live with " Wainwright at 215 Whitechapel Road." This was on 11th September, 1874 !*! She was never seen alive after that day ! ! !N"othing had been heard of her since. Although on good terms with her relatives, she had entirely disappeared. After a time Mrs. Taylor went to Wainwright and asked after her sister. He said he had given her money to go to the seaside for a holiday. Two months later she went again. Wainwright said Harriet had gone off with a gentleman who had come into a fortune. Old Lane,, her father, had also been to Wainwright, demanding his daughter, dead or alive. Wainwright put him off with another story ! He produced telegrams to prove his story ! But he read them out himself. All these were lies — in plain English, most damnable lies. The poor victim had long lain in her lonely grave ! ! The telegrams mentioned were proved to have been written by Wainwright's brother, Thomas, who was afterwards tried and sent to penal servitude as an accomplice of this cruel murder. The web was tightening ! Long before the trial it had been woven round Henry Wainwright. Justice was about to be done, and that right speedily ! There was proof that he bought a quantity of chloride of lime Wmt wSim lO WAINWRIGHT MURDER IM on 10th September, the night previous to the crime; also an axe and spade ! A man working in a shed next to "215 Whitechapel Road " could swear to hearing reports of pistol shots on the evening of 11th of September. Two shots were fired in rapid succession ! The few hairs found on the spade were found to correspond with those of the poor victim's head, and the atick^' matter found on the chopper or cleaver was blood, yes, human blood ! ! ! A strange story came out in the course of the investigation which also told against Wainwright, and is another evidence of the keen instinct,, or great sagacity of a dog. In October, 1874, while Wainwright still occupied " 215 Whitechapel Eoad " for business purposes, his manager owned a dog who was in a state of continued restlessness while in the workshop. He was for ever scratching at the boards of the flooring just above the place where the grave had been made. It was supposed the dog was after rats ! At last the dog disappeared. The manager and his wife went out one evening, leaving the dog with Wainwright, who, without doubt, made away with it I It was never seen again ! ! ! Wainwright when first arrested by the police showed great self-possession. There were no signs of apprehension about him; his features showed only a sort of half -awakened attention ; he occasionally bit his lips, and unconsciously rubbed one hand over the other. At his final arraignment his api:)earance had totally changed. He had grown Laggard and careworn, and was unmistakably anxious for the result. His trial commenced at the Old Bailey on the 22nd of Novem- ber, and was finished December 1st, 1875. His guilt was proved to the satisfaction of the court, and the jury hi no hesitation as to their verdict. ' .t* . J WAIN WRIGHT MURDER II They unanimously found him guilty, and Lord Chief Justice Cockburn sentenced him to be hanged December 22nd, on which date this miscreant met the fate he so richly deserved. Wainwright solemly declared that he was innocent. He used strong and remarkable language. " I will only say, standing as I do now upon the brink of eternity, that I swear I am not the murderer of the remains found in my possession." " I swear I have never fired a pistol shot in my life." " I swear also that I did not bury the mutilated remains, nor did I exhume them." He persisted in this denial almost to the last. Just before going to the scaffold he confessed he deserved his fate, but still he would not admit that he was to the fullest extent guilty of the murder. It was supposed at the time, and the impression has survived, that the crime was not his handiwork alone; that his brother Thomas, who stood with him in the dock, and who was sentenced as an accessory to seven years penal servitude, had taken an active part in the murder — had perhaps been the principal in committing the deed. One curious feature in the Wainwright case was the outward respectability of the accused. He was shown in the course of his trial to be a man of notor- ious immoral life, yet for years ho had posed as a prominent Christian, and member of many religious societies in the East End of London, and was popular in that district for his recitations and amateur performances, on their behalf, in the interest of religion. Thus perished one of the greatest scoundrels that ever existed and one who had long lived the life of a profound hypocrite. In this case, as we see, the murder was brought to light almost by chance and the guilty scoundrel punished: but many crimes are committed in the great cities of the world for which no one is ever brought to account, and they pass on as mysteries in the great field of crime. 12 WAINWRIGHT MURDER Many cases have happened where criminals have sought con- cealment of their victims' remains by biu'ial and other modes of disposal, and wonderful cases of the defeat of such attempts have transpired. Just here, perhaps, li will be interesting to note one or two most remarkable cases, not oi^ly in London, but in Paris and elsewhere. Many years ago in London two boys rowing a boat up the river Thames came upon a carpet bag lying caught upon one of the buttresses of Waterloo Bridge. The carpet bag was hanging just above the water ! It had been placed there over night, or some one from above had thrown the bag down and it had lodged on the buttress of the bridge. The boys got possession of it, thinking they had got a pyze ! It was locked and corded, the rope having been trailing in the water when first seen. The cord was cut,, the lock forced and contents of the bag laid bare ! These were the mutilated frag- ments of a human body ! ! They were chopped up into a num- ber of pieces ! The police were called, who took the find to the police station. On examination by a medical man it was found that the parts belonged, all of them, to the same body. There were twenty-three pieces in all ! Mostly bones with flesh adhering to them ! They had been sawn or chopped up into small pieces ! Without doubt the mutilation was done to destroy identifi- cation ! , The hands, feet, and head were missing ! There was nothing left that could well assist identification — no marks or peculiarities — nothing beyond the fact that the de- ceased was a dark and hairy man. Thert was, however, plainly visible a knife stab between the fourth and fifth ribs ! Undoubt- edly the cause of death, its direction plainly showing that it must have entered the heart. It was further proved that the remains had been partially 3 ;■ '•-'■ n ,1 ''j WAIN WRIGHT MURDER 13 .(• I >■:- k . - boiled, and subsequently salted or placed in brine. The clothes were those of a foreigner. They were much cut and torn, and were all more or less blood- stained ! Most of the blood stains were in the inside. The knife had penetrated clean through the clothes while on the body and into the heart. A reward of £300 was offered for the discovery of the mur- derer, but it was quite without effect. The crime was never brought home to anyone ! The police had reason to believe that the man murdered was a sailor belonging to some ship then lying in the Thames. Xothing that could lead to identification was forthcoming, and, failing this, the mystery was never solved. Another case in London known as the " Battersea Mystery " happened just prior to the Wainwright murder. A package containing human remains was found upon the mud banks of the Thames near Battersea Waterworks. It was pronounced by the doctors to be the mutilated trunk of a female, and to have been barely twelve hours in the water I More discoveries rapidly followed ! The lungs were found, one imder Old Battersea Bridge, the other near the Battersea Railway Pier ! These all corresponded, and were easily pieced together as parts of the same body. The head had been severed ! A sharp knife and saw had been used ! The face half of the head had floated down below Limehouse and was there picked up ! It was mutilated beyond all recognition ! ! Other fragments, Ijimbs, and parts of limbs, were found further do^^^l the river near the Albert Embankment, Botherhithe, Greenwich, and near Woolwich. The body was put together by a Dr. Haydon and pronounced that of a female. 14 WAINWRIGHT MURDER The face,, although much battered, bore the trace of a wound on the right temple. It had crushed in the skull and must have caused instantaneous death ! The body had evidently been cut up and, piece by piece, (thrown into the river. From that day to this, no one has been suspected, mucli less arrested, for this most undoubted crime, and it adds one more to the long list of Murder Mysteries. In April 1878, human remains were found in a bedroom of the Hotel Jeanson,, Paris, in the Kue Poliveau. Two legs and arms, a woman's, wrapped in black, glazed paper ? Other articles were with them, a black petticoat and three ehirts in red and blue stripes. The parcel was tied up with thread and old binding. These remains had been hidden in a cupboard, and lay there just a fortnight ! The fragments and articles were taken to the Morgue, and viewed day after day by the public. They were never identified, and the episode has long been forgotten ! One evening in September Madame Thierry, a respectable housewife in the Eue rJ.e la Chapelle, Paris, was seated at her doorway enjoying the cool evening when she observed a man on the other side of the street very oddly engaged. He was strewing the roadway with scraps of meat ! At the opening of a sewer he threw down a larger piece, which looked like a whole joint ! Her suspicions were aroused, rnd, seeking an acquaintance, they went together to report the circumstance to the Commissary of 'Police. Search was at once instituted. The result was the discovery of many fragments, all undoubt- edly human remains ! Enough nearly to form the body, the head alone oeing still wanting ! ! itaMMiiMlllfjMP W"yfl:^- WAINWRIGHT MURDER 15 id re 38 re le d se e ; e Now Madame Thierry came forward with a strange statement. She had dreamt of nothing but the strange incident and had be«i haunted perpetually with the shadowy resemblance of the man with some one she knew. It wac a police officer a former neighbor of hers in the Rue des Kosiers. " He lived next door," she said.. " A tall, stout man, a police sergeant, who, when in plain clothes, was uncommonly like the man I saw the other night." K^ow, it was remembered that a stout police officer named Prevost was attached to the division which included the Rue des Roisiers. Prevost was summoned from the police at the very moment he was discussing the recent discovery and was saying, " I would never allow myself to be caught, if I did it. If I killed a man I would disfigure him so that no one would identify him. I'd cut him up and get rid of him in such a waythat no one would find the pieces." He said, " to cover up. a crime was very easy," and truly, *' that many murders were never discovered." He was confronted with Madame Thierry, who at once identi- fied him ! Further enquiry brought to light the fact that Prevost was absent from duty the night Mrs. Thierry had seen the man dis- tributing the scraps of meat ! All his assurance left him then and he confessed the crime. His victim was a jeweller's traveller named Lenoble; and he killed him for a watch >^nd chain and some glittering baubles which Lenoble offered for sale. The head was the sole portion of the murdered man's remains that was still undiscovered. Prevost was pressed to say what he had done with it. After a pause he pointed silently to the fire-place ! The head had been stuffed up the chimney ! When it was dragged down it is said to have looked exactly ll!<ll»i|(l i6 WAINWRIGHT MURDER like a barber's block. The face was handsome ! The features were perfectly regular ! The complexion was as clear as wax ! To complete the resemblance the dark miistachois were care- fully trimmed, and the deep-toned chestnut hair was curled closely round the head. Prevost confessed he had intended to boil the head so as to render it quite unrecognizable, but his prompt arrest prevented this ! ! Extreme surprise was expressed by the police authorities at Prevost's confession. Till now he had borne an exemplary character. But now other suspicions were aroused. It was remembered that a woman with whom Prevost was intimate had disappeared soon after paying him a visit. By his confession it was proved Prevost murdered her ! ! The details of dismemberment arc much the same as in Lenoble's case. The fragments were distributed in the same way. The head, when severed from the body, was buried in the glacis of the old fortifications. Prevost obliterated the blood-stains made in the process of cutting up by pouring ink on them. There is no doubt that Prevost would have enjoyed absolute immunity over his first crime had he not been so easily led into a second. 1^0 doubt, but for the chance recognition of Madame Thierry, he would again have escaped scot free. By an inscrutable providence, however, he was detected and paid the penalty of his crime under the guillotine. Ir l^orwich, England, many years ago a murder was com- mitted which would have remained a mystery for ever unsolved but for the voluntary confession of the criminal. In the vear 1851 a tailor resided in ISTorwich, a man named WAINWRIGHT MURDER 17 Sheward, married to a woman older than himself, and they were somev/hat strained in their relations. In the month of June Mrs. Sheward disappeared. Sheward gave out that she had left him of her own accord — eloped to Londoii. This was not accepted as a final explanation by her relatives, yet no steps were taken against Sheward tor the reasons to be now set forth. Very soon after Mrs. Sheward's disappearance a quantity of human remains were found in a road leading to Lakenham,, now a suburb of Norwich. First a hand, and then a foot were found. ^ And on several succeeding days bones and fragments of flesh were picked up in the city, and near Norwich. A number of portions were found and it was presently possible to reconstitute the body for medical examination. The doctors gave their verdict without hesitation. It was the body of a young woman about 26 years of age. The grounds on which this decision was made were published long afterwards. A surgeon deposed that the " well-filled understructures of the skin, its delicacy, the neatness of the foot, that of a person not accustomed to toil or to wear coarse, heavy shoes, the clean, well- trimmed nails of both hands and feet," led him to fix her age between sixteen and twenty-six. Yet this same surgeon admitted at the assizes eighteen years afterwards that these appearances were not inconsistent with much greater age, fifty-four even, the age of Mrs. Sheward, in fact, at the time she was first missed. Had the medical evidence been more accurate at that early date the man Sheward would hardly have escaped stronger suspicion. It seems a little strange that a closer investigation was not made, seeing that the disappearance of Mrs. Sheward and the dis- covery of the remains were so nearly coincident in time. I^fei^^f xS WAINWRIGHT MURDER But Sheward was esteemed as a mild, inoffensive creature, and his explanation of bis wife's departure looked natural and plausible enougb. So tbe murderer was ]*dt witb bis guilt unbarrassed and un- molested, but no uoubt continually tormented by bis own con- ecience and reminded of bis crime. Only a couple of years after tbe deed bis wife came into some money and be was called upon to produce ber. It is easy to realize bis terror lest tbe old lame excuse of ber clopment sbould not be accepted by tbe relatives and oo-bene- fioiaries. Still be beld bis ground in Norwicb. By and bye be married again, but still pursued bis old trade. But it was observed be grew more and more depressed, that he took to drinking, that be talked of leaving Norwich for good, and at the last be went to London, and was led, by imperious im- pulse, to tbe very spot in Walworth where be had first made the acquaintance of bis murdered wife. Then his crime was so forcibly brought home to him that be resolved to take bis own life. " But tbe Almighty would not let him do it," so he told the authorities, for now be went and gave bipaself up to the authorities. Just eighteen years had elapsed since the crime ! At tbe time of bis surrender be had a razor in bis pocket, but had not dared to commit suicide. His confession was not at first credited ! He was thought to be deranged, but be persisted in his state- ments, indicted on bis own confession, which be afterwards withdrew. But he was found guilty and in due course executed. When in bis condemned cell he made a clean breast of his crime and described exactly what had occurred. There had been an altercation about money matters. Sheward had grown wild witb passion, and attacked her with a razor, which he ran into her throat. ^f .L\' A WAINWRIGHT MURDER 19 " She never spoke again," he said. *• I then threw an apron over her head and went out" That night he slept in the house. Next morning he commenced his horrible task I For several days he worked hard at his gruesome task of preparing for the disposal of the body ! His proceedings were akin to those of other murderers of his class, and he tried the various processes detailed in other cases. On the fifth day he had completed the dismemberment, and had almost entirely disposed of the remains by throwing them down the sewers, or burying them in the suburbs. He burnt all the clothes and bed linen, last of all " the long hair " — it was light auburn hair and plentiful. ''I cut it up with a pair of scissors into small pieces, and> they blew away as I walked along." The mutilation had been so complete that even the ring finger had been cut off. In this case we see another instance — of many — ^where medical evidence has been completely astray, yet the incontestable fact remains, that '' murder will out," and the cases are comparatively few where the murderer escapee detection and his just reward. m FULL AND AUTHENTIC ACCOUNT OF THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS. Vh}:. I Never in the record of criminal history were the police of any country called upon to unravel a mystery so complete as that which enshrouds the famous murders in Whitechapel, London. Nine victims have fallen under the skilful knife of an unknown fiend, and there remains not a particle of a clue on which to hang a hope of discovery of the murderer. Prom beginning to end the tragedies have been marked by many circumstances and mysterious details which fill all with horror and dismay. The clubman in his club, the lady in her boudoir, the house- fwife in her kitchen, the workgirl in the shop and factory, the whispering, gin-soaked public woman on the thoroughfare, alike were stirred by these dreadful tidings of heartless and bloody crime. The Government of Her Majesty was questioned about them in open Parliament. The Detectives of Scotland Yard put their heads together, plotted, schemed, devised, but all to no purpose. The ensanguined book of dastardly murder is a sealed book. One after the other the mutilated victims of this mysterious demon were picked up on the highways of a great city, but no one has seen the murderer, no one suspects who he is, and no one has found him. 32 THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS A great wave of nervous, feverish alarm and terror swept over the metropolis of Great Britain. In every case the unmistakable work of the same fiend was too painfully apparent to admit of a doubt that these murders in Whitechapel were wrought by one fell hand. Madman he probably was,, but with all his boldness he possessed a cruel cunning which allowed him to stalk abroad on the public streets, striking down his victims as he pleased, leaving not the faintest clue to his personality. "No conception can be formed of the motives of his horrible crimes, unless it is reasonable to suppose it was the work of a maniac. Did the fiend experiment on the corpses for anatomical purposes ? Did he seek revenge on the class of public women because of some injury he had himself received from one of them? Was he a madman — irresponsible, bloodthirsty, craving, super- natural excitements ? The^e are some of the questions that may resolve themselves w^en you have read a detailed account of these murders perpe- i;rated in one of the oldest, and, presumably, one of the most civilised cities of the modem world. The first of the Whitechapel murder series attracted little public attention. It was perpetrated on April 3rd, 1888. The victim was Emma Elizabeth Smith. As the policeman stooped over her, looked into her bloodless face, in the light of buUseye, gazed into her blear eyes, smelt her gin-soaked breath, examined her bloodstained clothes, he reported the case to headquarters. The officials did not bother much about it. Only a woman of the lowest class, they thought, murdered in a drunken brawl. What else can you expect in Whitechapel with its floating population of criminals and fallen women ? ^ <« THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 23 . The press commented a little on the incident; the clubman yawned after he read about it at his supper; the fine lady remarked it was shocking as she buttered her muffins at breakfast, and then the disagreeable subject was dismissed. Martha Turner was a poor hawker in Whitechapel. On Tuesday, August 7, 1888, this Martha Turner was found lying on her back, her clothing disarrayed, on the first floor land- ing of the buildings known as George Yard Buildings,, Commercial Street, Spitalfields, Whitechapel. ri iSifff .^■^' ^ Mi <?^ HER THROAT WAS CUT, HER BREASTS WERE AMPUTATED. Her throat was cut, her breasts were amputated and lay beside her, her legs were lacerated with knife gashes, and the blood stained the floor with clotted red. The day previous to the second murder had been what is known as " Bank Holiday " and it was late in the evening that day that the murder had been perpetrated. Martha Turner had evidently met her fate by the same hand that struck down Emma Elizabeth Smith. The same mutilation of the same parts was visible. 24 THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS The same rapid work was traceable in the assassin's onslaught. As nearly as the police could determine, both women had been seized suddenly, unexpectedly by a powerful arm from behind, and their throats cut swiftly by the rapid stroke of a razor-edged knife. Such was the force of the murderer's death blow and such the keenness of his devilish weapon that the head was almost severed from the body, hung loose, and the knife had left its imprint upon the bone at the back of the neck. But more remarkable than the ghastly work at the throat was the discovery that the woman had received no less than thirty-nine distinct deep and clear cut stabs upon various parts of her body. From these wounds the blood had poured forth,, saturating her clothes and covering the steps on which she lay with a slippery coating of coagulated blood. Examination of the body revealed the same horrible, indescrib- able mutilation of the uterus that had marked the first murder. The underclothing of coarse material had been thrown roughly up over the victim's head and a jagged wound crossed the bowels, laying bare the intestines. Below this a portion of the woman's body had been cut out with the nicety and skill of a surgeon's knife, leaving only a blood-oozing and quivering aperture. The organ had been removed as in the case of the first murder. Horror seized the police authorities on seeing this sight. Several friends of the victim were arrested and held by the coroner. But little was found that cast light on the crime. At the inquest, Mary Ann Connelly, known in Whitechapel as " Pearly Poll," was a witness, vho was expected to give valu- able information. Inspector Reid asked that she might be cautioned prior to being sworn, and the coroner complied with his request. " I am a single woman," testified " Pearly Poll." " I've been lodging in a lodging house in Dorset Street. I've gained my livelihood on the streets. I've known the murdered woman for (« «- < f * >« THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 25 tf «■ " ^ "■ < » * Hi four or five months. We called her * Emma.' The last time I saw her alive was on * Bank Holiday/ at the corner of George Yard> Whitechapel. We went to a public house together and parted at 11.45. We were accompanied by two soldiers, one a private and one a corporal. I don't know to what regiment they belonged, but they had white bands around their caps. I don't remember whether the corporal had side arms or not. We picked up with the soldiers together and entered several public houses. We drank in each of the houses. When we separated, ' Emma ' went away with the private. They went up to George Yard and I and my fellow went to Angel Alley. Before I went away from my fellow I had a quarrel, and he hit me with a stick. I didn't hear * Emma ' have a quarrel. I never saw her alive again. * Emma ' wasn't given to drink. I tried to pick out the two men who were with us. I tried at Wellington Barracks. The men were paraded before me; but though I saw two men something like those who were with us on the night of the murder, I couldn't be sure. I left my fellow, the corporal, at five or ten minutes past 12 that morning and afterwards went along Commercial Street towards Whitechapel. I didn't hear no screams. I didn't hear of the murder till Tuesday." " Pearly Poll " was the only witness who could give any news at all about Martha Turner, and that news, as you see, was scant enough. The authorities were baffled. The public was beginning to be aroused. Scarcely had aristocratic West End of London recovered from the second murder in low-life East End when the city and the world were cast into new spasms by the flash of news that a third crime had been committed in the cursed, crime-stained precincts of Whitechapel. Everybody asked: "Whois'it?" And the answer came swifter than death: " Another woman !" .,« *i«<i»aw»»>-' ^^^Ti ^' 36 THE WHITECHAPEIv MURDERS This time it was Mary Ann NichoUs, aged forty-two, a woman of the lowest class. She had heen killed and mutilated. Her body was found in the street in Buck's Kow, Whitechapel, in the early morning of Friday, August 31. Mary Ann NichoUs had evidently not been killed on the spot where her body lay dead. She had evidently been killed at another spot and dragged to where she lay. There was little blood around the corpse Buck's Row is a short street, half occupied by factories, half by dwelling houses. Half down this street is the house of Mrs. Green. N'ext to this house is a large stable yard, whose wide, closed gateway is next to the house. In front of the gateway, Mary Ann Nicholls was found. The brutality of the murder is beyond conception and beyond description. The throat was cut in two gashes, the instrument of crime having been a sharp one, but used in a most ferocious and reckless wav. There was a gash under the left ear, reaching nearly to the centre of the throat. Along half its length, however, it was accompanied by another one, which reached around under the other ear, making a wide and horrible hole and nearly severing the head from the l>ody. No murder was ever more ferociously or more brutally done. The knife, which must Iiave been a large and sharp one, was jabbed into the deceased at the lower pari of the abdomen, and then drawn upward twice. A sickening sight, truly, such as unmanned the most hardened official. Constable O'Neill, who discovered the lifeless body, im- mediately rapped at the house of Mrs. Green. " Have you heard any unusual noise ?" he asked, wiping the perspiration from his brow. W/ i »" THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 27 Then he pointed out the body. Mrs. Green ahnost fainted when she saw the ghastly spectacle. Constable O'Keill put his hand on the woman'3 shoulder and repeated the question. ICrs. Green, as though demented, shook her head in the negative. Then Constable O'Neill questioned the son and daughter of Mrs. Green. "We have heard no outcry," said they. " The night was unusually quiet," said Mrs. Green, finally. " I should have heard a noise, if there had been any, for I have trouble with my heart, and am a very light sleeper." Then Constable O'Neill questioned Mr. Perkins, an opposite neighbor to the Greens' but he also denied having heard a noise in the still air of night. Severrl people, however, remembered strange sounds. " I was awakened Friday morning," testified Mrs. Perkins, a neighbor, " by my little girl, who said some one was trying to get into the house. I listened and heard screams. They were in a woman's voice,, and though frightened, were faintlike, as would be natural if she was running. She was screaming, * Murder I Police I Murder ! ' She seemed to be all alone. I think I would have heard the steps if anybody had been running after her, unless he were running on tip-toe." The detectives of Scotland Yard, thoroughly aroused by this third murder, at once searched everywhere in the vicinity, in the hope of discovering some clue. None was found. Everything pointed to the fact that the murder was committed at some distance from where the boiT lav. There were drops of blood all along the sidewalks. But there was a mystery even here. The police were puzzled by the fact that there were blood stains on both sides of the street. Amid a gaping, terror-stricken crowd, the blood-clotted body of Mary Ann Nichols was lifted on a stretcher and conveyed to the idte 1U^l^. ■•■•UMriaMM .;:3(4'».4^ 28 THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS deach house. A cordon of police had to keep the crowd back. It took some time to identify her positively. The clothing wore a workhouse stamp. A comb and a piece of looking glass were found in one of the pockets. Finally four women identified her, said they knew her by the name of " Polly." " We have lived with her at 18 Thrawl Street, Spitalfields," said they. "We lived there in a room. We paid four pence a night." On the night of the murder, it appears Mary Ann Nichols, alias " Polly," was turned out of this house because she hadn't money to pay for her lodgings. She was then a little the worse for drink and said, as she was turned away: " I'll soon get my ' doss ' money. See what a jolly bonnet I've got now !" The lodging house people only knew her as " Polly," but later a woman from Lambeth Workhouse identified her as Mary Ann Nichols. The deceased woman had been an inmate of the workhouse and left it to take a situation as a servant, but after a short time she absconded with £3 of her employer's money. Prom that time forth she was an outcast. The police theory was at that time that a sort of " high rip " gang existed in the neighborhood, which, blackmailing women of the " unfortunate " class, takes vengeance on those who do not fird money for them. They base that surmise on the fact that within twelve months two other women have been murdered in the district by almost similar means — one as recently as the 6th of August last — and left in the gutter of the street in the early ho?irs of the morning. At the coroner's inquest no testimony was adduced that tended to cast any light on the horrible mystery. The deceased woman's husband, who is a printer's machinist, THE WHiTECHAiEL MURDERS 39 » testified that he had lived apart from his wife for over eii^ht years, and the last time he saw her alive was three years ago. His wife had left him of her own accord,, and her drinking habits had led her into a dissolute life. A week after the killing of Mary Ann IN'icholls, another fallen woman — ^Annie Chapman, aged forty-five — ^was found killed and hacked like the rest, this making the fourth murder. Her body was discovered in Buck's Kow, Whitechapel. John Davies, living on top floor of 29 Hanbury Street, stumbled across it on the morning of Friday, August 31, and yelled for the police. At a spot a very few hundred yards from where the mangled body of the poor woman NichoUs was found just a week before lay this body of another woman, mutilated and horribly disfigured. She was found at 5.30 on Sunday morning, lying in the back yard of IN'o. 20 Hanbury Street,, Spitalfields, a house occupied by Mr. Richardson, a packing-case maker. As late as 5 o'clock on Saturday morning, it is said, the woman was drinking in a public house near at hand, called the Ten Bells. I^ear the body was discovered a rough piece of iron sharpened like a knife. The wounds upon the poor woman were more fear- ful than those found upon the body of the woman Nichols, who was buried on Thursday. The throat was cut in a most horrible manner, and the stomach terribly mutilated. The bowels were ripped open. The intestines hung out. The place was a pool of blood. While Davies cried for the police Mrs. Richardson, an old lady sleeping on the first floor front, was aroused by her grandson, Charles Cooksley, who looked out of one of the back windows and screamed that there was a dead body in the corner. Mrs. Richardson's description makes this murder even more horrible than any of its predecessors. The victim was lying on her back,, with her legs outstretched. Her throat was cut from ear to ear. Her clothes were pushed up 30 THE WHITECHAPEI. MURDERS above her waist and her legs bare. The abdomen was exposed, the woman having been ripped up from groin to breast-bone, as in the preceding cases. Not only this, but the viscera had been pulled out and scattered in all directions, the heart and liver being placed behind her head and the remainder along her side. No more horrible sight ever met a human eye, for she was covered with blood and lying in a pool of it. The throat was cut open in a fearful manner — so deep, in fact, that the murderer, evidently thinking that he had severed the head from the body, tied a handkerchief round it so as to keep it on. There was no blood on the clothes. Hanbury Street is a long street which runs from Baker's Row to Commercial Street. It consists partly of shops and partly of private houses. In the house in question, in the front room on the ground floor,, Mr. Harderman carries on the business of a seller of catsmeat. At the back of the premises are those of Mr. Richardson, who is a packing- case maker. The other occupants of the house are lodgers. One of the lodgers, named Robert Thompson, who is a carman, went out of the house at 3.30 in the morning, but heard no noise. Two girls, who also live in the house, were talking in the passage until 12.30 with young men, and it is believed that they were the last occupants of the house to retire to rest. It seems that the crime was committed soon after 5. At that hour the woman and the man, who in all probability was her murderer, were seen drinking together in the Bells, Brick Lane. But though the murder was committed at this late hour, the murderer — acting, as in the other case, silently and steathily — managed to make his escape. On the wall near where the body was found, there was, accord- ing to one reporter, discovered written in chalk: FIVE: 15 MORE AND THEN I GIVE MYSELF UP. Jace^ the Ripper. 'y<^.> THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 31 # Davies, the lodger, who discovered the body,, immediately com- mimicated with the police at the Commercial Street station, and Inspector Chandler and several constables arrived on the scene in a short time, when they found the woman in the condition described. An excited crowd gathered in front of Mrs. Richard- son's house, and also around the mortuary in Old Montague Street, to which place the body was quickly removed. Several persons who were lodging in the house, and who were seen in the vicinity when the body was found, were taken to the Conmiercial Street station and closely examined, especially the women last with the deceased. Inquiries led to the discovery that the woman was known by several names. Her real name was Annie Chapman, but she had latterly passed as Annie Sievy,, and rejoiced in the nickname of " Dark Annie." Her age was about forty-five. She was 6 feet high, had fair, brown, wavy hair, blue eyes, and, like Mary Ann Nicholls, had two teeth missing. One peculiarity of her features was a large, flat kind of nose. Her clothing was old and dirty, and nothing was found in her pockets except part of envelope bearing the seal of the Sussex Eegiment Eor the last nine months she had been sleeping at a lodging- house, 35 Dorset Street, Spitalfields, and she was there as recently as 2 o'clock on Saturday morning eating some potatoes. She had not, however, the money to pay for her bed, and at 2 o'clock she left with the remark to the keeper of the place : " I'll soon be back again ; I' J soon get the money for my doss," almost the very words Mary Ann Nicholls used to the companion ehe met in Whitechapel Road, at 2.30 on the morning of her death. A companion identified her soon after she had been taken to the mortuary as " Dark Annie," and as she came from the mortuary gate, bitterly crying, said between her tears: " I knowed her ; I kissed her poor, cold face." The large,, flat kind of nose of the deceased was so striking a peculiarity that the police hop^d to be able to fully trace the movements of the deceased by means of it. The clothing of the i^ ■'^ I m 32 THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS dead woman, like that of most of her class who ply their trade in this quarter of London, was old and dirty. In the dress of the dead w^oman two farthings were found, so brightly polished as to lead to the belief that they were intended to be passed as half-sovereigns, and it is probable that they were given to her by the murderer as an inducement for her to accompany him. Late on Saturday, after the deceased had been formally identi- fied as Annie Sievy, a witness came forward and stated that her real name was Annie Chapman. She came from Windsor and had friends residing at Vauxhall. She had been married, her husband being an army pensioner, who had allowed her lOvshillings a week, but he died a twelvemonth ago, and the pension ceasing,, she be- cam i one of the hideous women infesting Whitechapel. She lived for a time with a sieve-maker in Dorset Street, and was known to her acquaintances as " Annie Sievy," a nickname derived from her paramour's trade. Mrs. Fiddymont, wife of the j^roprietor of the Prince Albert public house, better known as the " Clean House," at the corner of Brushfield and Stewart Streets, half a mile from the scene of the mui'der, told the police that at 7 o'clock on Saturday morning she was standing in the bar talking with another woman, a friend, in the first compartment. Suddenly came into the middle compartment a man whose rough appearance frightened her. He had a brown stiff hat,, a dark coat and no waistcoat. He came in with his hat down ovtir his eyes, and with his face partly concealed, asked for a half pint of ale. She drew the ale, and meanwhile looked at him through the mirror at the back of the bar. As soon as he saw tlie woman in the other compartment watch- ing him he turned his back, and ffot the partition between himself and her. The thing that struck Mrs. Fiddymont particularly was the fact that there were blood spots on the back of his right hand. This, taken in connection with his appearance, caused her uneasiness. She also noticed that his shirt was torn. As soon as THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 33 in he had drank the ale, which he swallowed at a gulp, he went out. Her friend went out also to watch the man. Her friend was Mary Chappell, who lives at No. 28 Stewart Street, near by. Her story corroborates Mrs. Fiddymont's. When (the man came in the expression of his eyes caught her attention, his look was so startling and terrifying. It frightened Mrs. Fiddy- mont so that she requested her to stay. He wore a light blue check shirt, which was torn badly — into rags, in fact — on the right shoulder. There was a narrow streak of blood under his right ear, parallel with the edge of his shirt. There was also dried blood between the fingers of his hand. When he went out she slipped out the other door and watched him as he went toward Bishopsgate Street. She called Josehp Taylor's attention to him, and he followed him. Taylor is a builder, at No. 22 Stewart Street, and said that as soon as his attention was attracted to the man he followed him. He walked rapidly and came alongside of him, but did not speak to him. The man was rather thin, about 5 feet 8 inches high and apparently between forty and fifty years of age. He had a shabby- genteel look, pepper-and-salt trowsers, which fitted badly,, and dark coat. When Taylor came alongside of him, the man glanced at him, and Taylor's description of the look was, " His eyes were as wild as a hawk's." Was this man with the sharp eye also the man with the sharp knife ? Was he the Whitechapel murderer ? Time, perhaps, will tell. " Jack, the Ripper," had got to be a thing of flesh and blood in the households of England. The man of Whitechapel inspired the fear once inspired by Guy Fawkes. Mothers hushed their unruly children by saying: 34 THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 1 " Be quiet, or * Jack, the Ripper,* will come." The police were still at work. The officials of Scotland Yard were more than usually busy. A cordon of constables surrounded Whitechapel. Bloodhounds were called into use, and sniffed the dirty pavements. The women of the quarter did without food and drink — dared not venture into the streets. Every man they saw seemed to them the demon. Every man loomed up as " Jack, the Ripper," the fiend who would be satisfied with no less than fifteen victims. It was on Sunday. September 23 — a calm, quiet, autumnal day of rest. The churches and cathedrals of England were full of devout worshippers. Suddenly there flashed across the wires that a murder had been committed at Gateshead, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, in the North of England. Again a feeling of apprehension seized all classes. A young woman — disembowelled, mangled, mutilated, unrecog- nizable — ^lay cold in death on the roadside. Who did the dastardly deed ? Everything pointed to the conclusion that this murder at Gateshead was the fell stroke of " Jack, the Ripper," of White- chapel, his fifth murder. The epidemic of fear in London now became more horrible than before. The most callous elegants of the West End now became thoroughly alarmed. But " Jack, the Ripper " merely grinned with fiendish glee, Rnd kept from the sleuthhounds of the public. THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 35 He hadn't killed his fifteen yet. On the night of September 30 the streets of London were echoing with shrieks of murder. Two more unfortunate women had been added to the list of the butchered in Whitechapel, being the sixth and seventh victims. Elizabeth Stride, nicknamed " Hippy Lip Anny," forty years of age, was found murdered in Berners Street at 1 o'clock in the morning. Her throat was cut, but there was no slashing of the remains. The body was warm when found, and the murderer had evi- dently been frightened away. Now, fifteen minutes after the discovery of the dead body of " Hippy Lip Annie " the mutilated body of another victim — a degraded woman of the Whitechapel district, named Catharine Eddowes — was found in the north-west corner of Mitre Square. The older portion of London abounds with these cul-de-sacs, inaccessable to wagons, and to be reached only by footpaths through private property. A stranger in London would never think of entering one of them, but the old Londoner knows them well as convenient short cuts. There are two street lamps in Mitre Square, and they were burning brightly at 1 o'clock this morning. A large tea house in the square hires a private watchman, and. he was on duty last night, with lights blazing from five windows. He is a veteran policeman, and looks like a wide-awake,, trustworthy man. Less than two hundred feet from the tea house are three or four dwelling houses, with bedroom windows facing the square, and at least twenty people sleeping in them. The policeman on the beat goes through the square every fifteen minutes throughout the night, searching corners with a dark lantern and rousing out homeless people who fall asleep on the area railings. The policeman who was on the beat at 1 o'clock this morning was a stalwart, honest- looking fellow. . -■^'SsCr-S'S;!'., 36 THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS At 1.30 this morning he passed through the square, searching all corners with his lantern and stopping for at least half a minute in one particular corner right under the bedroom windows of a dwelling-house. Everything was silent and dark, except the windows of the tea-house, where the watchman was awake, reading. Fifteen minutes afterward the policeman passed the same corner again. This time he found a woman stretched dead upon the pavement in a pool of blood, her throat cut,, her nose torn from the face, the clothes thrown back over llie body, the abdomen gashed into pieces and the intestines wrenched from the stomach. The policeman started. He ran over to the tea-house and hammered on the door. . '• What's the matter ?" shouted the watchman. " For God's sake," said the policeman, " come out and assist me ! Another woman has been ripped open." Not a sound had the watchman heard. The slumbers of the people in the dwelling-houses had not been disturbed. Within fifteen minutes a merciless murder had been committed, and the murderer had disappeared in the darkness without the slightest clue for the police to follow. It was a horrible sight. Every sweep of the assassin's knife had been made to tell. It was a woman about forty-five years old, poorly nourished, shabbily dressed, undoubtedly an unfortunate who picked up a living on the streets. In this case no organs were missing, as in the bodies of the women previously murdered. The cuts on the stomach were almost in the shape of the letter T, the upward cut stretch: ng from the uterus to the breast and the cross- cut slanting from the lower part of the left ribs to the right hip. The '^oed must have been done witha heavy knife, and by some one skilled in the use of it — no jagged hacking, but clean cuts, scientifically made. Several doctors arrived and examined the body. They found a prodigious quantity of blood, which had flowed chiefly from ¥3^€^'* THS WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 37 the throat, but the murderer had so carefully avoided it that not a single footmark could be traced. The body was removed to the mortuary, -where a careful post-mortem examination took place. There was a tattoo mark of a figure " 4 " on the won^an's left forearm. Throngs of noisy men, dissolute women and squalid children surrounded the localities where the murders were committed and the places where the bodies await the coroner. They struggled and fought with each other to gain admittance to the dead-house and the police had to use brute force to drive them back. It was a panic of fear and frenzy that those who witnessed will never forget. Early in the day people were allowed in the dead-house to see 'the woman found on Berner Street and to try and identify her. As soon as she was identified, the doors were closed to all except persons having business there. Those living in the neighborhood who did get a chance to approach the corpse paraded the streets all day with bloodstains of the victim on their fingers and described the appearance of the body over and over again to all the people who would listen to them. London was now thoroughly alarmed. Sir Charles Warren issued a proclamation. The Lord Mayor offered a big reward for the capti^re of the murderer. Even the swell in the Wefit End stopped sucking the end of his cane and showed considerable animation over the horrorr ^/...i, took place with such startling successive rapidity. Everybody felt that the condition of the lost women in London ought to be investigated. ^i^^L^mamJ^ ,.,>;:■■■■*•. *Ut :•*».«» j.,l«i»«i«Wl«W»,^«,»Sii!A»!fJiMlU8»iaiIWI(Ii h»hB 11 llii.i ,T -^.->a ..--,, gr:^t-.-,«r..ry|^JU^^<^^ 3« THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS EVERVBODY FELT THERE WAS MUCH ROTTENNESS IN THE EXISTING STATE OF AFFAIRS. Everybody felt there was much rottenness in the existing state of things. Is it a wonder there are so many degraded women in London ? If West End is full of iniquity and injustice can you marvel at dissipation and debauch in East End ? London was soon stirred by another sensation. On October 2, 1888, the highly decomposed remains of a woman were found on the site of the projected Metropolitan Opera House on the Thames Embankment. The spot is near Charing Cross, three miles west of White- chapel. But the state of the body, the gashes, the mutilations, the cuts, the holes in the flesh, proved plainly that the murderer was the old fiend ; that this was his eighth victim. ■i' •)■.; state Ion ? aryel of a )pera /'kite- cuts, IS the THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 39 He had evidently attacked his victim from behind, cut her throat from ear to ear, dug his ?aiife into her breasts. Then he had raised her poor, dishevelled clothing, slit the body right and left, and left the intestines exposed in a clotted pool of blood. There had evidently been a hard fight. Spots of gore were spattered all over the pavement. But the victim, in spite of her struggles, had succumbed to the hellish adroitness and diabolical strength of her foul assailant. N There she lay in the moonlight — stiff, stark dead. And the murderer escaped. Newsboys hawked about the dreadful news. London at its breakfast read of a new tragedy. The calls for the resignation of Sir Charles Warren, Chief ol Metropolitan Police, already loud grow louder. Old men told the story of crimes in the olden times. Terrible as this eighth murder was, Whitechapel had been the scene of mysterious murders before. Close upon eighty years since it, and, indeed, the whole country, was startled by the perpetration of a series of most revolt- ing murders, the scene being Ratcliffe Highway. The malefactor, whoever he was — for it was never definitely decided,, although there was a case of strong circumstantial evidence, almost amount- ing to certainty, against an Irish sailor named Williams or Murphy — did not, in these instances, seek out and mark down unfortunate women of the lowest class, but looked for his victims in the persons of respectable tradespeople and their families, slaughtered without mercy every human being within the four walls, sparing not even the defenceless, innocent babe in the cradle. The two distinct crimes, in which seven lives were taken, occurred within the space of a fortnight. The first,, the murder n ^j& itt il ;,<'jvv«M.,iSiii»aa-i»?.ajajjtaaK-3i.TfMiMtt'."'i>MWiT^ ■i* ' Jl**« tl fpiiW* y 40 THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS of the whole household of the Marrs, at Xo. 29 Ratcliffe Highway, soon after midnight of Saturday, December 8, 1811, and the eecond, a similar massacre of the Williamsons, at No. 81 New Gravel Lane, Eatcliffe Highway, between eleven and twelve o'clock on the night of the 19th of the same month. In the first case four persons in all were the victims of the outrage. They were Mr. and Mrs. Marr, each of whom were under twenty-five years of age, their infant, four months old, and James Gohen, the apprentice, fourteen years of age. The servant- girl would doubtless have shared the same fate but that she had been sent out on an errand, and on her return, having been absent less than twenty minutes, she found the house in darkness, and subsequently the bodies were discovered lying in various parts of the ground floor and upon the staircase. Three persons perished in the second case. They were Mr. and Mrs. Williamson, the landlord and landlady of the King's Arms, and their maid-servant, who was found in like manner at the bottom front of the house. A delirium and panic seized Londoners in general, and those living in the East End especially,, as had seldom or never been known before. People barricaded their doors and windows as if in momentary expectation of a seige, and there were some who even died of fright as they heard their shutters or doors tried by persons who, at the worst, were probably meditating nothing more serious than burglary. Nor was the alarm confined to the metropolis. A notion had somehow got abroad that the murderer, whoever he was, had left London, and a state of the wildest terror prevailed all over the country. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and those were fine times for locksmiths, iron- mongers, carpenters and the like. Everybody was having new shutters, doors, bolts, bars and locks. Indeed, the door-ohain, which upon old doors is so often of tremendous strength and weight, owes its origin to the prevailing alarm which existed. For many months afterward he would be in truth a bold, and, his « \ » THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 41 neighbors would say, a rash man who answered a knock at the door or a ring at the bell before peering cautiously through the slit which the chain permitted. Even the caricaturists of the day, ready enough as a rule to seize hold of anything which excited the public mind, seemeu to have been too frightened to make capital out of the murders, and the political cartoons which introduced hammers and razors, the instruments with which the crimes were committed, are but one or two. , Then,^ as now, in this particular district, the shopkeepers were in the habit of keeping open until midnight, and later on Satur- day, and Mr. Marr, who is described as a " man mercer," or a hosier, as the modern term has it, at a few minutes before twelve, his shop being still open,, gave his servant, Margaret Jewell, a £1 note, instructing her to pay the baker's bill and to bring in some oysters, which was no doubt a Saturday night, or Sunday morning, to be more accurate, treat after the labors of the week. Margaret went to the Baker's, and, finding it shut,, leturned past the shop, which was yet open, and her master was still behind the counter. She then went to get the oysters; but, finding the Iphop shut up also, returned, after an absence of twenty minutes in all, finding the shop closed and everything in darkness. Upon knocking she was unable to gain admittance. Presently a watchman passed on the other side of the street with a person in charge, and soon after another watchman came up,, calling the hour of one, who told her to move on. She explained who she was, and the watchman knocked and rang, and then was joined by a neighbor, who got in through the back and opened the door, when they together entered the house. This was the girl's evidence at the inquest, and at this point she fainted away. , A sorry spectacle met their gaze as soon as a light could be pro- cured. There lay the apprentice upon his face on the staircase with a great hole in his skull where his brains had been knocked out, and with such force had this been done, that portions thereof were bespattered over the walls and ceiling. Mrs. Marr was next tiiAkkiiiJi 11)1 It If ' -— ^" 42 THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS found lying on the floor,, near the street door, quite dead, her head wounded in a like terrible manner, and Mr. Marr's body without any sign of life, was discovered behind the counter with exactly similar injuries. The only other occupant of the house, an infant four months* old, whose innocence had not been suflBcient to pro- Stect it, was in its cradle, with its throat cut from ear to ear: its head lay almost severed from its body. !N'othing was missing from the house, although there were £152 in the cash-box, and the ill-fated Marr had nearly £5 in his pockets. The assassin, whoever he was, had disappeared, leaving behind him a large shipwright mallet, which was covered in blood, weigh- ing two or three pounds, with a handle three feet long, a i.pping chisel eighteen inches long, and a wooden mallet about four inches square, with a handle eighteen inches in length. Mr. Murry, the neighbor, stated that at about ten mmutes past twelve he heard a noise in Marr's house like the pushing of a chair,, and the watchman said that soon after twelve he had called out that the window was unfastened, and had been answered from within. " We know it." The girl gave evidence that while she was waiting she heard a child cry, and then someone came downstairs. Prints of blood-stained footsteps of at least two persons were, it was said, discovered in the rear of the premises, and several people were taken up on suspicion, but were discharged. The churchwardens of the parish offered a reward of £50, and this was supplemented by £20 from the Thames Police Office, but nothing came of it. Whilst London was ringing with the news, the terror which already existed was heightened by the intelligence of a crime which was equally barbarous and almost equally inexplicable. The unfortunate sufferers by the first outrage were buried in the presence of a large number of people on the Sunday following, and on the Thursday after, the twelfth night from their death. i> itSSSfei^M \ f THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 43 * \ I) the entire household of Williamson's, with one exception, was slaughtered, as already stated. On that night, between eleven and twelve, the passers-by in New Gravel Lane were alarmed by a cry of " Murder !" whidi came from a man, clothed in nothing but his shirt, who was hang- ing by the sheets of his bed — ^which he had knotted together — from a second floor window at No. 81 in that thoroughfare. He contrived to reach the ground, and then told those who had hurried up on hearing his cry of " Murder !" that murderers were in the house, slaughtering every one within. A couple of men thereupon burst open the door, when they found the mistress and maid-servant lying by the kitchen fire with their throats cut from ear to ear. In the cellar was the master of the house also, with his head nearly severed from his body, and one of his legs broken. The grandchild of the murdered man, a little girl, was happily found alive, but there were evidences that the murderer had entered the room, doubtless with the intention of slaying it also, for he was eventually shown pretty clearly to have been the Marr murderer, and, no doubt,, his fiendish instincts were equally strong on each occasion. The noise of the breaking door and the persons entering the house, however, prevented his carrying his diabolical purpose into effect. Rushing upstairs, the crowd found the door of a room locked. As they burst it open they heard the crash of glass. The murderer had sprung through the wind». \V, and in the fog which prevailed was lost to sight. Then the man in the shirt found an opportunity to speak. It appeared that he was a lodger in the house, and had gone to bed, but was awoke by a cry of " We shall be murdered !" Ou' of bed he sprang, and,, looking over the stairs, saw through the window of the taproom a powerful, well-made man, six feet high, dressed in drab, shaggy bearskin coat, stooping over the body of Mrs. Williamson, rifling her pockets. Then upon his terrified ears came '•■' I Mmmmh iSM 44 THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS the sounds of the sighs of a person in the agonies of death. Frightened half out of his life, he ran to the top of the house, but could not find the trapdoor whereby to escape. Then he crept back to his room and escaped, as stated, through the window. Rewards were now offered amounting to £1,500, and a great number of persons were taken up on suspicion. Amongst them was a John Williams or Murphy — for he went by either name — an Irish sailor, lodging at the Pear Tree public-house, not far off. The wallet which had been left behind was marked with the initials J. P., and a wallet so marked was missing from ^ tool- chest -ivhich had been felt at the Pear Tree by John Petersen, a ship's carpenter. Mr. Vermilee, the landlord, who was at the time of the murders in Newgate for debt, was shown the wallet. Murphy's washer- woman stated that there was blood on a shirt and on some stock- ings he had sent to her. More than one person had seen him near "Williamson's house on the night of the murder,, and others proved that he was well acquainted with both Marr and Williamson. Then, with that fatal stupidity that so often characterizes the guilty. Murphy, when told on Friday morning of the miirder, and, being yet in bed, replied, surlily, " I know it." In his dreams, Itoo,, he had muttered words siifficient to implicate him, and so he was apprehended on the same day and committed for trial on the Saturday, a strong escort being provided to guard him on his way to Coldbath Fields Prison. Nor was the caution ill-judged. All along the route he was attended by a howling, roaring mob, anxious to tear him limb from limb, and hurl his quivering flash to the four winds. Escort and prisoner were only too thankful to get safely to the prison. Murphy managed, however, to cheat the hangman, and two days after Christmas his lifeless body was discovered hanging by his handkerchief from the iron grating of his cell. In accordance » THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 45 with the barbarous custom of the period the suicide was buried in the dead of night at four cross roads, with a stake driven through his body. K^ot many months ago Messrs. Aird & Lucas' workmen, in digging a trench for the purpose of laying a main for the Commercial Gas Company at a point where the Cannon Street Road and Cable Street, in St. George's-in-the-East, intersect one another, discovered a skeleton, supposed to be that of Murphy, with a stake driven through it, and some portions of a chain were lying close to the bones. The death of Murphy did not do much toward allaying the public panic. A general notion prevailed that he had been assisted by accomplices, and two of his friends, named Allbrass and Hart, were apprehended; but after several examinations, they were discharged. The excitement took a long time to subside, but eventually the occurrences faded out of recollection, and now, vdth the exception of the journals of the period, there is nothing yto keep alive their memory but the innocent door-chain, with which not one in a hundred of the modern jerry-built villas is furnished. Such IS the yam that old people in London tell young people of famous murders in Whitechapel. Meanwhile, though the old mystery was solved, the new is as deep and dire an enigma as ever. Dorset Street is one of the narrowest, dirtiest little alleys of all those that go to make up the labyrinth known as the East End of London. To get there a cabman had to ask questions — a rare thing — while his passengers on the journey loses all idea of location, and wonders whether the cab horse's head or tail is pointing toward the north. Until to-day only a few out of many million landowners knew that Dorset Street in the East End existed, but they know it now, and will, with all other Englishmen, talk about it for weeks. 46 THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS On the day of the Lord Mayor's Show,, November d, all inter- est was taken from that senseless pageant by ragged boys struggling through the crowds with bundles of newspapers, and yelling that another horrible Whitechapel murder had occurred in Dorset Street. You have read about these Whitechapel murders, and you know how the cutting up of seme wretched woman is a happening which the average Britisher has come to look for as one of the regular incidents of metropolitan life. It has got to such a point that those murders can almost be written up after the methodical fashion which characterizes the minutes of scme school-board meeting. Each time a miserable creature belonging to the most degraded class of women is mutilated in a most inconceivably horrible fashion; the murderer has disappeared; the police do nothing but observe secrecy; the general public theorizes as to whether the murderer is mad or sane, short or tall, English or foreign, etc. ; the Whitechapel women shiver in bunches, wonder- ing whose turn will come next, and after a while the terror in the East End and the curiosity in the West End subside together until a fresh murder renews them. The last and ninth Whitechapel murder was not committed in Dorset Street, properly speaking. Out of Dorset Street there opens an arched passage low and narrow. A big man walking through it would bend his head and turn sideways to keep his shoulders from rubbing against the dirty bricks. At the end of the passage is a high court, not ten feet broad and thirty long, thickly whitewashed all round,, for sanitary rea- sons, to a height of ten feet. That is Miller Court. Misery is written all over the place — the worst kind of London misery — such as those who have lived their lives in America can have no idea of. ♦ ♦ I I THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 47 The first door at the end, on the right of the passage, opens into a tiny damp room on a level with the pavement. The landlord of this and neighboring rooms is a John Mc- Carthy, who keeps a little shop on Dorset Street, on the side of the passage. About a year ago he rented it to a woman who looked about thirty. She was popular among the females of the neighbor- hood, who shared her beer generously, as I have been tearfully informed, and went imder the title of Mary Jane McCarthy. Her landlord knew that she had another name, Kelly, but her friends had not heard of it. .> It seems there had been a Mr. Kelly, whom Mary Jane had married in the manner which is considered satisfactory in White- chapel. They had not gone to the expense of a license, but pub- lished the fact of matrimon^ by living in one small room, and sharing joy and sorrow and drunkenness there together. Mary Jane took up her residence in the little room in Miller Court when Kelly went away. Since then her life had been that of all the women around her ; her drunkenness and the number of strange men she brought to her little room being the gauges by which her sisters in wretchedness measured her prosperity. On November 8 she went out as usual, and was seen at various times up to half past 11 drinking at various low beer shops in Commercial Street. In those resorts she was known, not as 'N' iry Jane, her own name, but as "Fair Emma," a title bestowed in complimentary allusion to her appearance. At last, just before midnight,, she went home with some man who appears to have dissuaded her from making a good-night visit, as was her custom, at the drinking place nearest her room. No description whatever can be obtained of this man. 'iieit' -Siitaj "h 48 THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS Right opposite the passage leading to Mary Jane's room is a big and very pretentious lodging-house, where the charge is four- pence. Some gentlemen congregated about the door at midnight are sure they saw a man and a woman, the latter being Mary Jane, stop to laugh at a poster on one side of the passage, which offers a hundred pounds reward for the whitechapel murderer. The man must have enjoyed the joke, for he himself was the Whitechapel murderer beyond all doubt. This picture from real life of a murderer reading an advertised reward for his capture with the woman he is about to butcher, is not a usual one. A great deal of speculation will be done as to whether he was a cold-blooded monster trembling at his own danger as he read, or a madman,, defiant of everything and with difficulty restraining his impulse to kill at once. The men who saw him can onlv sav that he did not look remarkable. i ~^{\'--^^? TME MURDKKER ATTACKS HIS VICTIM. At 10 o'clock in the morning, just as the Lord Mayor was climbing into his golden carriage, three horrified policemen, who had first looked in through Mary Jane's window and then drunk ^L.^j£^flD(^i^.l' . THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 49 big glasses of brandy to steady themselves, were breaking in her door with a pickaxe. The Whitechapel murderer had done his work with more horrible thoroughness than ever before. The miserable woman's body was literally scattered all over her little room. A description of such butchery is unpleasant to write, but is necessary to understand London's state of terror and to form an opinion as to this remarkable murder. Almost every conceivable mutilation had been practised on the bod v. ft' McCarthy, the shopkeeper and landlord, had seen the body first. He had gone, as he had daily for a long time past, to ask for several weeks' arrears of rent, amounting in all to thirty shillings. Though not an imaginative man,, McCarthy at once expressed the conviction that a devil, and not a man, had been at work. This, by the way, is a new theory in regard to the murderer's identity. The woman's nose was cut off and her face gashed. She had been completely disembowelled, at had all the mur- derer's former victims, and all the intestines had been placed upon a little table which, with a chair and the bed, constituted all the furniture in the room. Both the woman's breasts had been removed and placed also on the table. Large portions of the thighs had been cut away, and the head was almost completely severed from the body. One leg was almcdc completely cut off. The mutilation was so frightful that more than an hour was spent by the doctors in endeavoring to reconstruct the woman's body from the pieces, so as to place it in a coffin and have it photo- graphed. 'S^j-'izm iikm^sMfmmomii^^-fj^xsuiiim Wi¥^' ■*.. || ii I i ]Hi,' ii f' | l i '^ri ji y'j ■ --nirr -J-'^ • - nrrrrntfrffl ■ fiiiiiiiiTi i riinfTimn i > « i mhi i i. . i i "y^^^^fHiRtg" " 50 THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS ^~«r THE MURDERER FINISHES HIS WORK. On the 8th of November^ at midnight, Dorset Street and all the neighborhood was swarming with such a degraded White- chapel throng as have been already described in these columns. Those with any money were getting drunk very fast. The drunkenness of the poor of London is amazing. Many sober women, and all the drunken ones, were crying from terror, while the men lounged about, singing or fighting and chaflSng the women, according to their ideas of humor. Gallantry is not rampant among these Whitechapel men. The police were doing nothing of importance. The poor woman's fragments, put together as skillfully as possible, were lying in the Houndsditch mortuary in a scratched and dirty shell of a coflBn often used before. ^«^^^ H-, !>'■ iW^ THE WHITECHAPKL MURDERS 51 all lite- ans. ring and ' as shed The mortuary is in a graveyard back of tiie gloomy old Houndsdltch Church, and not a pleasant spot late at night. While the body was being carried from the scene of the murder thousands crowded as near as the police would allow, and gazed with Kfted caps and pitying faces at the latest victim. The police did nothing but push the crowd about and be officious — this to such an extent that even those whose duty led them to the place found it necessary to place frequent softening half-crowns in policemen's palms. The most interesting individual in Miller Court was a woman who had known the dead woman. Mary Jane's pal, she called herself. Her room was directly opposite the murdered woman's and its H\ agitated proprietor stood in the doorway urging a young girl with straggling wisps of red hair,, who had started for beer, not to be gone a minute. She assured a reporter that she would be glad to talk to him while Kate was away, just to forget the horrors. This woman spoke well of the dead. Her name was Mary, and she had not always been on peaceable terms with the murdered Mary Jane. Though quarrelsome, Mary Jane was pretty before she was cut up, she said, and she was only twenty-four, not thirty, as she looked: but she would fight, and did not care what sort of a place she lived in. Mary's was about as big as a horse car. Sleeping and cooking were both done in it. On a clothes line stretched across it a night dress was drying. There was a bed one foot above the floor, a stool and a nondescript piece of furniture to hold things. There was milk in a saucer on the floor, showing that vile air and worse drainage had brought the kitten down without the help of hunger. When the girl with the red hair came back the woman who had been a friend of Mary Jane drank in a few minutes a quart of beer,, relating at the same time many incidents in the lives of her- self and her dead friend. i>s«.;;$*^teiasik*iyi8E^^ w^^J.V 52 THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS At last, with a flood of drunken tears, she declared that she would never dare go out on the streets again to earn a living, observed somewhat inconsistently that lightning never struck Itwice in the same place, meaning that the murderer would never come back to Miller Court, made the red-haired girl swear an oath to stay all night, and went asleep on the bed with her head the wrong way up. Those who think they have a working plan for reforming society should take a careful look through Whitechapel and see the things they have got to reform. The girl with the red hair did not think it wonderful that no one had heard any sound of the murder. Some one was always drunk and yelling in Miller Court, and she rightly guessed that a woman being beaten would make as much noise as one cut up, so that the murder would not be noticed. For her part she was sure to imagine murder in every direction now. She had a strong mind, however, had not had any beer,, and did not cry. She knew positively that Mary Jane was alive at one o'clock, for at that hour she had heard her singing " Sweet Violets " to whoever was in her room. This fact and the name of the tune has been solemnly entered in the police account of the case. It is useless to theorize any further concerning the murderer. He proved himself a man of wonderfully cool nerve or most utter recklessness. There is little prospect of anything resulting from the English detectives' efforts. London has resigned itself to wait till the murderer shall betray himself. The question faces us, who was the man who committed these harrowing murders ? Many explanations have been given. " A suicidal maniac," says one. Wki-iiA^i^ii^*!- THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 53 "A crank afflicted with insane desire for notoriety," says another. n A man who has been injured in some mysterious way by a woman of the unfortunate class, and who thus wreaks his vengeance." One of the most palpable explanations given as to the identity of the murderer was that advanced by John Paul Bocock, in the ^ew York "World," ascribing the murders to iN'icholas Vassili, a Russian,, who committed a series of murders in Paris some years ago, and who, according to the journalist, now repeats his fell work in London. Here is the story of iN'assili's crimes. Even if he should not prove to be the Whitechapel murderer, the story is interesting: !N'o stronger story of love, crime, fanaticism and mania has ever been told. The ferocious stamp of a savage realism marks the history of Nicholas Vassili from the first as that of a man unfettered from human restriction, a law, a creed, a passion unto himself. He was born in 1847, at Tiraspol,, in the Province of Cherson. At that time a religious reform was just beginning to stir from the timeworn ruts of their creed, the peasantry and middle classes of Southern Russia. Nicholas grew up to feel its influence to the depth of his strange nature. He grew up to be a tall, stern youth, broad- shouldered, strong beyond the common power of his peers, dark- eyed, pale-faced. His family were well to do ; he did not have to work, but studied, pondered, and became before his majority an ascetic in body as in mind. At the beginning of the year 1872,, the Russian Church made a vigorous effort to repress the spread of this fanatical asceticism in Cherson, of which Vassili was now a leading exponent, and which seemed to be running havoc among the peasantry and m mmm ■MlMM f<i9>>*miM^«i^ «BS5MsJJ^^«asSjifi*;;> ^^^^j^^H T^^'/!^-~**"-Y'7:.'.' 3I;,f*' 54 THE WHITECHAPEI. MURDERS 11 middle classes. The sect of v^hich he was the rising apostle was that of " The Shorn." When the Kussian patriarchs began to persecute them, some of the Shorn were for a resort to arms. Others weni into volun- tary exile, and among the latter was Nicholas Vassili. He was now twenty-five years of age and a notable-looking man in any assemblage. He had been well educated at Taraspol and at the University at Odessa, and he had inherited from his parents an income sufficient to his own frugal needs. So fierce h::d been his denunciations of the oppressors of the Shorn, so virdictive his personal ascetism, that he had already come to be recognized as the young leader of this peculiar sect of the proscribed. Through him was crystallized and commanded for rigid dis- cipline and observance of the main dogma, the cardinal principle of the creed, of the Shorn, which was the total abnegation of all fleshly (especially all sexual) pleasures. To this creed he deemed it his duty to convert the world. He gladly went into banishment, since it gave him an opportunity to make proselytes. The strength of his zeal had eaten up his human affiliations — ^he was no longer able to agree with even his fellow-sectmen. He went to Paris, and made himself known through letters of introduction to several members of the Russian colony there. He did not desire new friends among them, but the opportunity through them of becoming acquainted with the city, with the people and with the cocottes. He had already devoted himself to the salvation of " les ames perdues." He was now " Der Seelen- vetter." In a month or two his new Russian friends saw him no more. He could now find his wav about alone. He took bachelor lodgings in the Ruv3 Moufetarde. Here his tall, lean, brawny form, his pale, waxy face, his burning black eyes, soon attracted attention. He got to be known as an enigma. ^it^mi^M»^?tk<'i( .-Si o5rTrcpFW,.^i^^^ wif^' "iTWfi, *!?;•:?'';■ „«-i'^^" ^ i'.,- ■.•■■•:.-".5J THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 55 Amid piles of books he worked away all day, and when night came went out into the streets to wander about until dawn. His liew mission was big within him,, but he had not yet revealed it. Often his concierge would find him in the morning bent over his study-table, where she had left him the evening before. By and by people began to talk of the " Saviour of the Lost Souls." He would be seen in the bright light of a cafe entrance, be- neath the street lamps in the slums, at the edge of a dim cul de sao — ^wherever the " nymphes du pave " congregated or could be found by painstaking search — pleading with them, weeping over them, exhorting them to repent, lead a new life, save their souls and join the sect of the Sliorn. From entreaty he passed to malediction, and he would, in strange burning words and with uncouth gestures, draw pictures of the perdition to which they were hastening,, and from which Up begged them to permit him to save them. Where they showed a sincere interest in his words, an(d promised to try to reform, he gave them money from his own purse. But his hopes for their reformation were uniformly disappointed. A few nights would elapse, and the same painted faces and mocking eyes he had pleaded with and, he thought, partially re- formed would present themselves to him under the gaslight and laugh at " the handsome gutter-preacher." Whether they had cried or fled frightened, or only laughed at his earnest exortations, the result was the same. He was unable to reform them. He next made the acquaintance of a young lacy who worked in a lace-making establishment. Finally he realized that he, the leader of the Shorn, had fallen in love ! 'J ^iii 56 THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS Then he tried to reconcile faith with passion,, and besought Madeleine to become of his sect, to renounce the world and live for the conversion of her fellow-sinners. She might even l^ecome his wife, in a spiritual sense only, and live and work wit him. She demurred. He coaxed; then he threatened, and carried his point. But no woman was ever won by threats. And half ashamed of his own violence, Nicholas kept away from Madeleine for three days. He had never kissed her. Only a hand-clasp had sanctified the betrothal. The fourth day he went to the apartment he had engaged for her in the Rue Serrurier. The door was locked. When he had knocked violently, Mme. Guidard, half frightened,, opened her own door and asked him what was the matter. " I don't know — I — where is Madeleine ?" was all he could stammer out. His face was frightfully distorted with a terrible presentiment " Madeleine went away," Mme. Guidard replied, " the day you were last here. She said you and she had got a home of your own. Did she deceive me ?" Nicholas said nothing to this, but demanded that the apart- ment be opened. " You see," went on Mme. Guidard, " she only removed a part of her wardrobe. She said you would come and take the remainder away for her." Vassili fell into a chair ard groaned. Leaping up like a madman, he forced upen the little desk he had given Madeleine, and ransacking its drawers, finally found what he had suspected, a note in Madeleine's handwriting, ad- dressed to himself. «'• •♦ • « «. 4 «V THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 57 ^ A:% *■ l,.» « ' 4 ^ ^ He stuffed her other letters into his pockets and sat down and read out to Mme. Guidard Madeleine's last words, which made a fiend of him: ^ "I thank you a thousand times for all your kindness. I respect but cannot love you. I am grateful, but why should I sacrifice all my life to my gratitude ? That which brought us together separates us. You saved me, but you ought not to ask me as a reward. I cannot reconcile your roles of gutter preacher and lover. Forgive me and forget me I" From that tinie on Nicholas gave up his proselyting and devoted his nights to a search for Madeleine. His dagger in his bosom warmed his heart and promised him revenge for her scorn. The only woman he had ever loved could not betray him with impunity. After eight weeks he found her where he had first seen her, in the Rue Richelieu. Without a word, he stabbed her in the back. She fell at his feet with a scream. He rushed off mumbling: " She is saved forever ; she is sure of heaven ; she can sin no more now !" Then the gutter preacher disappeared, and the Parisian police looked for him in vain. A few days afterwards a cocotte was found in a quiet street of the Faubourg St. Germain, stabbed from behind, dead and mutilated. Three days later another was found wallowing in blood,, with the same wounds, in the Quartier Mouffetarde. Tremedous excitement followed the discovery. In a week another was found hacked and slaughtered in the same way. mUmmMwsa^iaui 58 THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS Th^r money, purse, jewels, etc., were intact in all cases. A panic such as that now in Whitechapel followed among the fallen women of Paris. Nicholas, as he afterwards confessed, killed £ve of them in fourteen days. One night in the Arrondissement of the Pantheon a dark figure crept up behind a young girl, stabbed her and started to fly. As she fell she turned and shrieked out, so that the police heard her: « Nicholas Vassili !" Then she died in Nicholas' arms, for he, too, had recognized her too late. He was seized, dragged to prison, and tried for murder. His lawyer got him a fifteen years' sentence on the ground of ii^oanity. He confessed his murders to the jury, and told them of his mission on earth. He regretted that he had not killed Madeleine when he first stabbed her, and when he left her, as he supposed, dying at his feet. The bloody monster was released from the asylum in Tiraspol on January 1, 1888. He was on his way to London when last seen in January. The Whitechapel murders began in April, 1888. Meanwhile "Jack, the Ripper" still lurks undiscovered. After the ninth murder he sent out the following letter : " Deab Boss : It is no good for you to look for me in London, because I am not there. Don't trouble yourself about me till I return, which will not be very long. I like the work too well to leave it long. Oh, that was such a jolly job, the last one. I had ^ i,:, '*" I ^' •- - .<^i.'^..::. ■-■■'•■|ith(W'ihl(r[ ,Vi""#?-<^ (/:■■ •^\ 9' ^ THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS 59 plenty of time to do it properly. Ha ! Ha ! The next lot I mean to do with a vengeance — to cut off their heads and arma. You think it is a man with a black moustache. Ha I Ha ! Ha ! When I hhve done another you can catch me. So good-bye, dear boss, till I return. Yours, " Jack the Rippeb." If he were the creature of a romance on the stage, the one immortalized by Stevenson as " Dr. Jackyl and Mr. Hyde," the murderer of Whitechapel could not play his double game to more diabolical effect. THE END. t.«jua!«^i«i»ia<nfai.A.tJttlii :.»■■ U'' M' ^N *'; >iiiilit»Aiiiiilitl)irii, .;_4iijfe -te^;.^?.;i.^;. -4^*- " \ % 1^. I, ^ ■ nUifitfTiiitiM&ifmi r/ mX \ »f« ?^^w^5i^^» t ^^^W^^^^^W^^^^^^^^^^^T^^^^^^^^^P^^^^^^^^l Chronicles of Crime NOW READY= No» 1* — Pull and authentic account of the Murder by Herity Wainwright, of his mistress Harriet Lane ; and an ex- tended account of the Whitechapel Murders by the infamous Jack the Ripper. In the Press: No. 2» — VOIRBO, the French Human Monster and Murderer — Trial and Execution of Mr. and Mrs. Manning for the Murder of Patrick O'Connor. Other Numbers to follow comprising: I ife and Career of Madame Brinvilliers, Wholesale Poisoner. Trial and Execution of Zwanzigrer, the Arsenic Fiend. Story of Jegado and Aubertin, a Family of Poisoners. The Great Bullion Robbery on London and South Eastern Railway. Over ;{J 100,000 in gold stolen. Romantic Life and Great Forgreries of William Roupell, an English Member of Parliament. The Road Hill Mystery, Murder of F. Saville Kent. Gigantic Crystal Palace Frauds, Loss over $500,000. Murder of Mr* Brlg'g'S on North London Railway and Trial and Execu- tion of Franz Muller. Remarkable Career of Harry Benson, Prince of Swindlers, who implicated the Head Officers of the English Detective Department. History of Troppman, Wholesale Murderer. Life of Henry DeTourville, Systematic Swindler and Wife Murderer. Great Forgeries on Bank of Bngland, by the Bldwell Brothers, loss of Over Half a Million Dollars. Life, Crimes and Conyiction of Lydia Sherman, (the Modern Lucretia Borgia) for Poisoning Three Husbands and Eight of her Children. Life, Trial and Execution of Edward H. Ruloff, Perpetrator of Eight Murders, numerous Burglaries and other crimes. And other exciting, startling and sensational crimes, ect. BEAVER PUBUSHING COMPANY, TORONTO. i 41 -,* '■■U Vi