1891 Ripper Collector, His Collection, and Purported Victim's Shawl

[Archaic]

Hi everyone.

I found an interesting article regarding an early Jack the Ripper collector in an 1891 magazine devoted to art and antiques collecting, so thought I'd share it. The magazine is called 'The Collector: A Current Record of Art, Bibliography, and Antiquarianism'. It's an American specialty magazine which contains regular reports from London, Paris, Berlin, etc., on collections, collectors, and exhibits as well as collecting trends, auctions, and markets. The articles focus upon such subjects as rare book collections, Old Master paintings, antique china, auction results, museum bequests, etc., so I was rather surprised to find an article about a Jack the Ripper collection.

This article was contained within the magazine's London report. The collector himself is described, though in keeping with the magazine's usual privacy standards he is not identified by name. The article specifically mentions a 'shawl' purported to belong to one of the victims, as well as grisly packages of bloody dirt said to have been taken from the actual Ripper crime scenes.

Though it may just be a tale, due to the serious nature of this particular journal I give the report more credence than if it had appeared elsewhere.
(Of course there's no way to ascertain whether the items within the collection were genuinely connected to the Whitechapel murders, or if their owner merely believed they were.)

I'm curious as to whether any of you have heard of this particular collector and his collection before?

Best regards,
Archaic

[Nemo]

Very interesting

Thanks for posting it Archaic

I haven't heard of this man before

It might be possible to identify him from the description given of the location of his offices

There were offers to buy Kelly's bed and the like so who knows what this guy may have been able to purchase

[Robert]

Hi Bunny

It just sounds too coincidental that the collector would be sitting there at the next table.

[Stephen Thomas]

Aha, the first Ripperologist .

Excluding Sickert,of course.

Nice find, Archaic. Never saw that before

[Graham]

As good a bit of Victorian fiction as I've ever read. Worth noting that 'The Cheese' referred to in the article is actually 'The Old Cheshire Cheese' in Fleet Street, a hang-out of Dr Johnson and Boswell amongst other literary luminaries, and because of its obvious location a watering-hole for gents of the press, i.e., storytellers.

I recall that within the last 20 years a shawl purporting to have belonged to Catherine Eddowes was being touted around. Details are probably on these boards, if I could be bothered to look.

[Jason]

I can see this becoming a thread of a 1000 pages.............wonderful find.

[jason_c]

Does he mention a Diary?

[Garry Wroe]

I recall that within the last 20 years a shawl purporting to have belonged to Catherine Eddowes was being touted around. Details are probably on these boards, if I could be bothered to look.

That would be the Cornwell 'investigation', Graham. You know, the one in which John Grieve supposedly located the Eddowes shawl and had it forensically tested. The complete absence of any DNA trace proved conclusively that Sickert was Jack the Ripper.

[Archaic]

Hi guys. Glad you like the article.

Hi Robert. I thought about the chances of such a 'coincidence' too. But I have to say that the tone of the magazine is incredibly unsensational, and I haven't been able to find any other articles that appear to be the least bit spurious. In fact, many of the articles are downright dull even for an antiques enthusiast such as myself- collections of rusty hinges or of 4,000 malacca canes aren't exactly my idea of excitement.

While it's certainly possible that this story was "enhanced" for publication, I don't see much reason to doubt that an old man was collecting Ripper-related items in the immediate aftermath of the murders, that others viewed him as rather eccentric, and that they viewed his collection as rather disgusting.

Seeing as the collector is described as a "childless widower", I have visions of his eventual heirs reading the labels on his pebbles, rags, and packages of bloody dirt and simply chucking the whole lot out in disgust.


Sigh...
Archaic

[Archaic]

Hi Graham. I was wondering if ‘The Cheese’ might be a favorite with newsmen, so thanks for mentioning that fact.

On the one hand I can see where it would be the natural abode of “storytellers”… but on the other hand, a dedicated collector of early Ripperana would be smart to hang out there in the hope of picking up a hot tip.

I know hundreds of collectors, and they tend to be a very dedicated and resourceful lot. In those sepia-tinted days before Ebay, a watering-hole frequented by London journalists seems like a pretty strategic location to me.

I suppose the other option was to hang out at an East End "curiosity shop", but from my personal experience I know that die-hard collectors hate to pay retail.

Cheers,
Archaic

[Robert]

Yes, it's very curious. If the landlady's charwoman really felt she had one of the victims' shawls, and she wasn't just trying to cheat the collector, then probably the charwoman was a friend of one of the victims. I'm not too sure that this collector had been buying the genuine article as far as the rags were concerned, since it was the envelope that was singled out for the mention of blood. I don't suppose these women had many spare clothes, so unless the rags were washed before they were given to him, the apparent absence of blood on the rags is a bit suspicious.

[The Grave Maurice]

Bunny, you find such good stuff. Thanks.

I'm leaning toward the view that this was simply a journalistic page-filler, although I suppose we can't be sure. The bags of dirt trouble me. As I recall, the only possible site of dirt in any of the WMs was, maybe, the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street.

[Supe]

Graham,

As good a bit of Victorian fiction as I've ever read.

If it really were all a bit of fiction it wasn't very good, was it? I mean, a few piece of old clothing and a tiny bit of blood-stained earth in an envelope as the prize artifacts of the greatest fiend of the century hardly create a frisson of fear in the weakest of "old women" of either sex. Either the author was quite devoid of imagination or there may be some truth to the tale.

In any case, an interesting find Bunny.

Don.

[Archaic]

re: "Bloody Dirt"

Hi Ken. Thanks very much.

I agree with all of you that there's no telling whether any of the stuff within this man's collection was actually the real article, be it the rags or the packets of bloody dirt.
But even if one item were spurious it's doesn't necessarily follow that all of them were, does it?

There were so many people looking to make a buck- or a penny- from the Ripper crimes, I would imagine that any number of purported "victim's shawls" were sold. Bloody dirt probably had a smaller market, but then again it didn't cost the seller anything to collect it. I'm not sure how much dirt would be found at the various Whitechapel crime scenes, but in the absence of convenient water-hoses one of the old methods for cleaning up blood and gore was to sprinkle a quantity of dirt or sand on it, let that substance absorb the extra liquid, then sweep the mess up with brooms. As one might imagine, this method wasn't very effective at getting all the blood up, and blood-stained residue would almost certainly have remained stuck between the paving stones or the floorboards.

This reminds me of an example from history: in 1918 when the Bolsheviks shot the Tsar's family in a cellar in Ekaterinburg they did their best to cover up the crime by setting soldiers to work scrubbing the blood from the crime scene with buckets of sand. Bolshevik government propagandists claimed that only the Tsar had been shot, while the women and children were removed to a "safe place". But White Russian investigators were able to tear up the floorboards and discover blood-stained sand in its cracks, quickly establishing that a great quantity of blood had been spilled. This in turn indicated that a larger number of people had been shot than the Bolsheviks would admit to, and investigators concluded that the entire household had probably been executed. Packets of this blood-stained sand were even preserved as "relics" of the Imperial Family.

My point is that even if there was an effort to clean up the blood from the Whitechapel murders, it's possible that some was overlooked. I believe the police undertook clean-up operations in Buck's Row and Mitre Square once their crime scene investigations were completed, but I don't know if that was their standard policy. Apparently a very poor clean-up job was conducted at Miller's Court.

Perhaps this indicates that the police made a greater effort to clean up the public streets vs. cleaning up private property? If so, Hanbury Street and Miller's Court would have been the likeliest sources for souvenir packets of "bloody dirt".

Of course the buyer of such souvenirs couldn't tell if it was merely animal blood sprinkled upon dirt that had been obtained elsewhere, but I'm not a bit surprised if some enterprising soul might have marketed such a commodity. Too bad the article doesn't mention whether the collector scraped up his own blood-spattered dirt right at the crime scene. His excitement over his 'artifact' suggests to me that he might have.

Best regards,
Archaic

PS: Just saw your post, Soup. Thanks. And that's a good point. After all, he didn't claim to have Mary Kelly's corset, did he?

[Phil Carter]

Hello Bunny,

Nice press cutting. Thanks for showing it.

One or two points of course is that a bit of pig's blood on some cloth or another wouldn't have been hard to come by, and how many of the victims were actually wearing a "shawl"? Like GM, I wonder about the "dirt" thing too.

Sounds like a con-trick to me. An attention, perhaps money making scheme thing...perhaps I am being sceptical.

Nice article though.

kindly

Phil