The Buckle Street Butchers

[Bridewell]

A few years ago, when I was beginning to get seriously interested in this subject and showing rather more interest in the ‘Dear Boss’ letter than I do now, I read an obituary in the Daily Telegraph which was accompanied by a picture of David Berkowitz, better (and more notoriously) known as The Son of Sam. The report concerned the death of Ed Zigo, the New York City Police detective who had been Berkowitz’s arresting officer. Between 1976 and 1977 Berkowitz carried out a series of attacks on young people, which resulted in the deaths of six and serious injury to many more. One of the features of the ‘Son of Sam’ killings, as they became known, was that Berkowitz wrote taunting letters to the authorities and to a journalist by the name of Jimmy Breslin who worked for the New York Daily News. His reason for doing so was (he claimed) that he had been inspired to do so by Jack the Ripper. Berkowitz signed various different names to his letters including ‘Duke of Death’, ‘Mr Monster’, ’44 Killer’, ‘Chubby Behemoth’ and, of course most infamously, ‘Son of Sam’. One letter to Breslin had ‘The Wicked King Wicker’ appended to it. This title completely bemused the recipient, as well as the police to whom he forwarded it.
Some weeks after this letter was received Detective Zigo backed his instincts and followed up a report of a young man having been seen to remove and tear up a parking ticket placed on his car, close to one of the murder scenes. This line of enquiry led to Berkowitz, the car’s owner, but it was only when Zigo and a colleague took a wrong turn en route to Berkowitz’s address that the significance of the ‘Wicked King Wicker’ soubriquet became apparent. Although Berkowitz lived at 25, Pine Street in the Yonkers district of New York, the officers had inadvertently turned onto the adjacent Wicker Street – at which point they knew they were going after the right man.
I found Berkowitz’s claim to have written his letters after reading a book about Jack the Ripper interesting. Berkowitz was not a Ripper-style murderer but he was, nevertheless, a serial-killer who, rightly or wrongly, seems to have viewed the Whitechapel Murderer as a kindred spirit. After reading the Ed Zigo obituary it struck me (then) that, if Berkowitz had used Jack the Ripper as some kind of perverse inspiration, he might have taken the idea of giving the authorities a clue as to his address from something he thought he had identified in one of the letters supposedly written by that individual. This led me back to the ‘Dear Boss’. According to the AA route finder there are twelve Buckle Streets in Great Britain. Nine are in the Evesham area, a tenth in Sale, Greater Manchester and an eleventh in Peterborough. The twelfth is situated about 100 yards south of Whitechapel High Street and runs parallel to it. As a result of all this, I researched the family of two butcher brothers who, on the 1881 census, are recorded as living at 3, Buckle Street.

[Bridewell]

The two men concerned are John Wallace and Joseph William Haines. the census indicates that they were 'brothers-in-law'. This is incorrect; they were half brothers, sharing the same mother, but with different fathers. Frances (Fanny) Haines was born in 1820 in the small village of Tivetshall, Norfolk, the daughter of Robert and Elizabeth Mullanger. I know nothing of her childhood but, at some time around 1835, she formed a relationship with Cornelius Wallace, a shoemaker ten years older than herself. She may have been married to him but I have found no record of such an event. By 1841 she was living, with Cornelius, on Great Moulton Street in Depwade and the couple had three children at that time, William, Robert and Cornelius, aged four, three and two years respectively. A fourth son, the John with whom Joseph Haines was living in 1881, was born in 1843 in the same village. In the last quarter of 1846 Cornelius senior died, leaving Fanny with four children under ten. She took the only practical option open to her and moved in with her widowed mother, Elizabeth. The family, now with no adult male members, was living in Gissing in 1851 although Robert, who would have been aged 13, is no longer listed.

About five years later Fanny formed a relationship with another man, William Haines, a railway plat layer. Again I can find no record of a marriage. A daughter, Charlotte, was born in 1858 and Joseph early in 1860 at Capel St. Mary in Suffolk. anny and her family were on their way to the capital.

(More follows - feel free to move on if you're bored!)

[Bridewell]

Before the end of 1860 William Haines died, by which time the family had reached Southwark. On the 1861 census return Fanny is shown as living in Shoreditch with her widowed mother and her two youngest children, Charlote and 1 year old Joseph. Sixteen yea old John Wallace is shown as living in the same area, but as a servant to a Susan Dickson who seems to have been an aunt.
On 24th July 1864 John Wallace married a Margaret Skinner, by which time he was living in Bethnal Green and working as a butcher, a trade he pursued for the remainder of his life. John and Margaret went on to have a total of seven children, two sons and five daughters. The Wallaces lived on Gloster Street, Shoreditch until sometime after December 1872, and before June of 1875 at which time the baptism record of their fourth child, Margaret Jane, indicates that they had moved to 3, Buckle Street, Whitechapel. John Wallace was widowed in the late summer of 1882 and later, on 11th October 1886, married his sister-in-law, Helen Skinner. There were no children of this second marriage, possibly because John himself was in failing health. The couple, and those of John's children who were still of tender age, remained at 3, Buckle Street for the last years of his life. He died at that address on 27th December 1890 of acute bronchitis and asthenia. he was forty-five years of age. I feel sure that he remained close to his younger half-brother because, in 1897, Joseph signed as a witness at his niece's wedding; he may wel have given the bride away.

[Bridewell]

Joseph William Haines

Joseph Haines remained with his mother, Fanny who was forming a new relationship. This time, on 17th September 1865 at Tottenham, there was a wedding. The groom, also widowed, was an illiterate labourer by the name of Robert Leighton who signed the marriage register with a cross. Five year old Joseph, who can have had little, if any, recollection of his father, adopted (probably reluctantly because he later changed it back) the surname of his new stepfather. Six years later, in 1871, eleven year old Joseph is recorded as living, still in the Tottenham area, with his mother, his stepfather (now working as a gravedigger) and a stepbrother six years older than himself. I have not been able to determine when he moved in with his half brother John on Buckle Street, but it was probably around 1874 as that would be the time at which would expect him to commence his apprenticeship. It seems likely tht Joseph lived on Buckle Street for around eight years because, on 12th February 1882 he married a girl by the name of Ellen Mary Ann Ruffles at St John's Church in Fulham. On this occasion both bride and groom are recorded as living at 47, Cromer Road, about 7 miles from Whitechapel. John Wallace was present and signed the register as a witness, so it is quie likely that he was Joseph's best man.

[Bridewell]

We are told that the police made systematic enquiries at all slaughterhouses and butchers in the Whitechapel area during the course of the murder investigations, not only of current employees, but also of anyone who had left such employment in the recent past. This may not have been enough to include Joseph William Haines who, sometime after his 1888 wedding and before the 1891 census, changed his occupation. In 1891 Joseph was living, with Ellen, at 1, Coombs Street, two miles from Whitechapel and was working as a carman. This census, taken less than three years after the murders, is the only occasion when his age is recorded incorrectly, reading '35' when he was actually four years younger. He lived on in the local area until New Years Eve 1912 when he died at 41b, Grand Parade, Green Lanes, Tottenham. His death certificate records his occupation as 'Distiller's Carman'. The cause of death was 'cirrhosis of the liver, heart disease, tubercle and dropsy'. This suggests that he may have been alcoholic, perhaps not surprising given the business of his employer and the gruelling hours of duty undertaken by carmen in that era.

Joseph William Haines has handwriting remarkably similar to that in the 'Dear Boss', but that is meaningless as the style was typical of the Board School which he is likely to have attended. There is no evidence whatever to link this man to the Whitechapel Murders but a possibly alcoholic distillery carman is the kind of 'local unknown' from among whose number the killer may have emerged.