New information/research?

[Aethelwulf]

It seems that most threads discuss the same old questions over and over again without much if any progress being made.

Is there any new information/research that you could realistically undertake to move the arguments about victims, suspects, witnesses etc on?

From my point of view, I think some newspaper archive research could be undertaken around locations and dates of Bury's known whereabouts prior to late 87/88. I think of interest could be the time he was living and convicted as a vagrant in Dewsbury. Two of the things we know about Bury are that he used at least one prostitute in spring 1888 and he was sleeping with a knife under his pillow. The FBI profile suggests that JtR would have carried a knife at all times, 'to be ready', similar to Bury's pillow keepsake. If he had this paranoia when he was living as a vagrant, and undoubtedly using prostitutes, could there have been some attacks? Not full on ripper attacks, but perhaps similar to Annie Millwood or Ada Wilson (looking for money). Not that this would prove much, but it would be interesting to see if nasty happenings tended to follow Bury around.

The other aspect I'm curious about is that an investigate journalist has obtained Bury's DNA. I wonder if he has something in mind for this (but don't mention the S word!)?

[Kattrup]

Hi Aethelwulf

I think there’s lots of material out there that can be unearthed and that will contribute to our knowledge about the case in its societal context.

I do not think that any more central files will be located that will drastically change how we understand the events. The central police reports have been preserve and published.

Most people here are online investigators, using data from sources as they come online. But there’s a heap of material that will not be digitized any time in the near future. So one needs to get to an actual archive and start digging. That often means having to be in London.
But there are opportunities locally, I believe - one could start with one’s local archive, check out what kind of records local police have from that time or what the papers wrote about the case. Perhaps some witnesses have a connection to one’s local area and so info about their background could be researched.
I’m situated in Denmark, so I’ve a habit of researching any Danish connections, others elsewhere could do the same.
It was often reported I believe that the police would send reports of the murders to foreign police forces when a murder occurred that might be similar to a ripper murder. If that is true (I consider it unlikely), those reports would still reside in German, French, Dutch archives etc and could potentially reveal important details.
Similarly for local British archives; letters from london about various suspects would have been sent to local law enforcement.

Such material will not digitized soon, so going in person (or paying someone to go in person) is the only way.
So I’m confident we’ll eventually find MJK, I’m equally confident she won’t help us find JtR

[Abby Normal]

It seems that most threads discuss the same old questions over and over again without much if any progress being made.

Is there any new information/research that you could realistically undertake to move the arguments about victims, suspects, witnesses etc on?

From my point of view, I think some newspaper archive research could be undertaken around locations and dates of Bury's known whereabouts prior to late 87/88. I think of interest could be the time he was living and convicted as a vagrant in Dewsbury. Two of the things we know about Bury are that he used at least one prostitute in spring 1888 and he was sleeping with a knife under his pillow. The FBI profile suggests that JtR would have carried a knife at all times, 'to be ready', similar to Bury's pillow keepsake. If he had this paranoia when he was living as a vagrant, and undoubtedly using prostitutes, could there have been some attacks? Not full on ripper attacks, but perhaps similar to Annie Millwood or Ada Wilson (looking for money). Not that this would prove much, but it would be interesting to see if nasty happenings tended to follow Bury around.

The other aspect I'm curious about is that an investigate journalist has obtained Bury's DNA. I wonder if he has something in mind for this (but don't mention the S word!)?

h wulf
i agree with kattrup. i think there is still more to be found. enough to solve the case? probably not but enough to shed more light and add more possible evidence against suspects. and yes your idea re bury would be interesting. ive always found him to be one of the least week victims.

the conundrum we have is that the police suspects, like bury, koz druitt tumblety and chapman have no direct physical links to the case, with just possibly koz(the id) and the "witness" suspects like lech, hutch richardson etc. have no police suspicion!!! so yes more digging can only help shed more light.

[Abby Normal]

h wulf
i agree with kattrup. i think there is still more to be found. enough to solve the case? probably not but enough to shed more light and add more possible evidence against suspects. and yes your idea re bury would be interesting. ive always found him to be one of the least week victims.

the conundrum we have is that the police suspects, like bury, koz druitt tumblety and chapman have no direct physical links to the case, with just possibly koz(the id) and the "witness" suspects like lech, hutch richardson etc. have no police suspicion!!! so yes more digging can only help shed more light.

of course that should have read least weak suspects!!

[barnflatwyngarde]

It seems that most threads discuss the same old questions over and over again without much if any progress being made.

Is there any new information/research that you could realistically undertake to move the arguments about victims, suspects, witnesses etc on?

From my point of view, I think some newspaper archive research could be undertaken around locations and dates of Bury's known whereabouts prior to late 87/88. I think of interest could be the time he was living and convicted as a vagrant in Dewsbury. Two of the things we know about Bury are that he used at least one prostitute in spring 1888 and he was sleeping with a knife under his pillow. The FBI profile suggests that JtR would have carried a knife at all times, 'to be ready', similar to Bury's pillow keepsake. If he had this paranoia when he was living as a vagrant, and undoubtedly using prostitutes, could there have been some attacks? Not full on ripper attacks, but perhaps similar to Annie Millwood or Ada Wilson (looking for money). Not that this would prove much, but it would be interesting to see if nasty happenings tended to follow Bury around.

The other aspect I'm curious about is that an investigate journalist has obtained Bury's DNA. I wonder if he has something in mind for this (but don't mention the S word!)?

I've often thought that a trawl through death notices for messrs Tonkin, Mumford and Britton, who were working in the horse slaughter yard close to where Polly Nichols was killed might be fruitful.

Polly's murder has an opportunistic look to it, particularly in the fact that she was killed close to occupied houses, rather than further up Buck's Row.

I think that the killings may well have stopped because the killer himself had died, so if one of the men who worked at the slaughterers died within a short period of Mary Jane's murder, it would at the very least, be worthy of further investigation.

Bear in the mind that all three were horse slaughterers, so all would be blood spattered, while at the same time the fact that they were blood spattered would not be treated with suspicion.

Also, they were in the habit of nipping out for a beer while at work.

Just a thought!

[drstrange169]

>>I've often thought that a trawl through death notices for messrs Tonkin, Mumford and Britton<<

Poster Gary Barnett knows just about everything about the slaughters, most of it's been posted here and Forums.

[barnflatwyngarde]

>>I've often thought that a trawl through death notices for messrs Tonkin, Mumford and Britton<<

Poster Gary Barnett knows just about everything about the slaughters, most of it's been posted here and Forums.

Thanks Dr, I'll search them out.

Much appreciated.

[jmenges]

From Gary Barnett (who will be rejoining us soon)

In the early 1870s the Tomkins family were living in Belle Isle, Islington, an area described as ‘the chief seat of the London horse slaughterers’ by Charles Booth. This was before the establishment of the firm of Harrison, Barber and HT’s dad, William Tomkins, was working for John Harrison, the father of the man who would go on to create Harrison, Barber in 1886.

Harrison had got into the horse slaughtering game almost by accident, buying a share in the business of the legendary Jack Atcheler after Atcheler’s death. He and his fellow investors soon realised the business was not as profitable as they had been led to believe, at least not without constant oversight of its day to day running, for the simple reason that their employees were in the habit of helping themselves to their employers stock when no one was looking.

On one occasion Harrison turned up unexpectedly at the yard and saw William Tomkins acting suspiciously near a pile of horse dung. When he investigated, he discovered a sack full of horse (some accounts say cow) fat concealed in the dung heap. Tomkins was confronted and admitted the theft and revealed that it wasn’t the first time he had stolen from his employer. He was convicted of theft and sent to the Clerkenwell House of Correction for a few months.

The next we hear of the family they are living in Newton Heath, near Manchester where they remained until 1887/8. William and his two older sons, Henry and Thomas, were all horse slaughterers. There was a younger son, Robert, but I’ve seen no evidence that he was ever a knacker. Henry had just one child, a son, who died in infancy.

In 1886, the firm of Harrison, Barber was established by merging the seven then existing London horse slaughtering entities into one. The law at the time prohibited the creation of any new horse slaughtering businesses in the London Metropolitan are, so the new firm had an effective monopoly on the trade. At the time, London was the largest city in the world, so it was probably true that Harrison, Barber was the largest firm of horse slaughterers on the planet.

John Harrison seems to have been the brains behind the merger, his was the largest of the 7 yards, and judging by the name of the firm alone, Alfred Barber of Whitechapel must also have played a prominent part in it. In most cases, Alfred Barber being a case in point, the previous owners of the individual yards, having received cash and a share in the new company, stayed on to manage their local businesses.

There was one notable exception to that - John Harrison. He seems to have bailed out of the business shortly after HB was formed. After initially investing in a lead mine in Cumbria - a rather unsuccessful venture - he took over a famous coaching inn , The White Horse, in Ipswich, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Whether Harrison’s absence had anything to do with it or not, the Tomkins family returned to London in 1887/8. One of Thomas Tomkins’ children was christened in Manchester on 9th November, 1887 (note the date) and there is evidence that the family were in Whitechapel by April, 1888.

A couple of weeks after the death of Emma Smith, William Tomkins was discovered in an alcoholic coma ‘near’ ( I suspect it may have been ‘in’) HB’s Winthrop Street yard by one of his sons. He didn’t recover. You’ll remember that Smith claimed to have been attacked by a group of men, one who she estimated was no older than 19. Robert Thomas was aged 18 at the time.

Everyone knows about HT’s involvement in the Nichols case. Why he, the new kid on the block, was the one chosen to give evidence at her inquest is a bit of a mystery. And his behaviour in the witness box was odd, to say the least.

Thomas Tomkins son (whose name escapes me) the one christened on 9th November the previous year became ill and was taken into the London hospital ( Whitechapel) over the weekend of the double event. He died on the Monday, his mother was present at the death. Whether Thomas was at his son’s bedside while certain events were taking place in Berner Street and Mitre Square is not known.

Another of Thomas’s children died in London the following year, and in February, 1891, a week or so before the murder of Francis Coles Henry Tomkins died. Within a year or so, the remaining Tomkins clan had returned to Manchester.

I won’t bore you with the details, but I’m pretty sure that my ancestors, who were working as slaughtermen in Belle Isle in the 1860s/70s would have known the Tomkins family. They certainly had a mutual acquaintance, a very dodgy knacker named Nicholas Shippy/Shippey. But that’s another story, one which brings in a Wolverhampton connection …

GB

[barnflatwyngarde]

From Gary Barnett (who will be rejoining us soon)

In the early 1870s the Tomkins family were living in Belle Isle, Islington, an area described as ‘the chief seat of the London horse slaughterers’ by Charles Booth. This was before the establishment of the firm of Harrison, Barber and HT’s dad, William Tomkins, was working for John Harrison, the father of the man who would go on to create Harrison, Barber in 1886.

Harrison had got into the horse slaughtering game almost by accident, buying a share in the business of the legendary Jack Atcheler after Atcheler’s death. He and his fellow investors soon realised the business was not as profitable as they had been led to believe, at least not without constant oversight of its day to day running, for the simple reason that their employees were in the habit of helping themselves to their employers stock when no one was looking.

On one occasion Harrison turned up unexpectedly at the yard and saw William Tomkins acting suspiciously near a pile of horse dung. When he investigated, he discovered a sack full of horse (some accounts say cow) fat concealed in the dung heap. Tomkins was confronted and admitted the theft and revealed that it wasn’t the first time he had stolen from his employer. He was convicted of theft and sent to the Clerkenwell House of Correction for a few months.

The next we hear of the family they are living in Newton Heath, near Manchester where they remained until 1887/8. William and his two older sons, Henry and Thomas, were all horse slaughterers. There was a younger son, Robert, but I’ve seen no evidence that he was ever a knacker. Henry had just one child, a son, who died in infancy.

In 1886, the firm of Harrison, Barber was established by merging the seven then existing London horse slaughtering entities into one. The law at the time prohibited the creation of any new horse slaughtering businesses in the London Metropolitan are, so the new firm had an effective monopoly on the trade. At the time, London was the largest city in the world, so it was probably true that Harrison, Barber was the largest firm of horse slaughterers on the planet.

John Harrison seems to have been the brains behind the merger, his was the largest of the 7 yards, and judging by the name of the firm alone, Alfred Barber of Whitechapel must also have played a prominent part in it. In most cases, Alfred Barber being a case in point, the previous owners of the individual yards, having received cash and a share in the new company, stayed on to manage their local businesses.

There was one notable exception to that - John Harrison. He seems to have bailed out of the business shortly after HB was formed. After initially investing in a lead mine in Cumbria - a rather unsuccessful venture - he took over a famous coaching inn , The White Horse, in Ipswich, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Whether Harrison’s absence had anything to do with it or not, the Tomkins family returned to London in 1887/8. One of Thomas Tomkins’ children was christened in Manchester on 9th November, 1887 (note the date) and there is evidence that the family were in Whitechapel by April, 1888.

A couple of weeks after the death of Emma Smith, William Tomkins was discovered in an alcoholic coma ‘near’ ( I suspect it may have been ‘in’) HB’s Winthrop Street yard by one of his sons. He didn’t recover. You’ll remember that Smith claimed to have been attacked by a group of men, one who she estimated was no older than 19. Robert Thomas was aged 18 at the time.

Everyone knows about HT’s involvement in the Nichols case. Why he, the new kid on the block, was the one chosen to give evidence at her inquest is a bit of a mystery. And his behaviour in the witness box was odd, to say the least.

Thomas Tomkins son (whose name escapes me) the one christened on 9th November the previous year became ill and was taken into the London hospital ( Whitechapel) over the weekend of the double event. He died on the Monday, his mother was present at the death. Whether Thomas was at his son’s bedside while certain events were taking place in Berner Street and Mitre Square is not known.

Another of Thomas’s children died in London the following year, and in February, 1891, a week or so before the murder of Francis Coles Henry Tomkins died. Within a year or so, the remaining Tomkins clan had returned to Manchester.

I won’t bore you with the details, but I’m pretty sure that my ancestors, who were working as slaughtermen in Belle Isle in the 1860s/70s would have known the Tomkins family. They certainly had a mutual acquaintance, a very dodgy knacker named Nicholas Shippy/Shippey. But that’s another story, one which brings in a Wolverhampton connection …

GB

Thanks for this Moderator.
I'll dig into these interesting horse slaughterers.

[MrBarnett]

Thanks for this Moderator.
I'll dig into these interesting horse slaughterers.

Here’s a little more detail from the Harrison, Barber thread over on JTRForums. It’s a long, rather rambling thread, but there’s a lot of interesting stuff on it (IMO anyway).


Tomkins Summary

To sum up:

Three brothers were born near Maiden Lane, Islington, a notoriously polluted area which was the chief seat of the London knackers. They were:

Henry William Tomkins, b. 1859
Thomas Enoch Tomkins, b. 1861
Robert Dancer Tomkins, b. 1870

Their parents had both been born in Maiden Lane, which formed the western boundary of the area known as Belle Isle. William Tomkins was a manure maker turned horse slaughterer, Sarah Carvell the daughter of a grease maker.

For most of their time in Belle Isle, the boys lived in Pleasant Grove, a very unpleasant road running East from Maiden Lane. It was home to numerous horse slaughterers and other noxious trades and was at the epicentre of what the press dubbed 'the Belle Isle Nuisance' on account of its polluted atmosphere.

At some time between the 1871 census (Pleasant Grove) and the birth of the boys' sister Charlotte in 1873 (Newton Heath) the family moved to Manchester, where they remained for the next fifteen or so years. They lived at various addresses in Newton Heath and Miles Platting. Newton Heath was also notorious for its 'nuisances' .

At the time, the industrial cities of north west England - Manchester in particular - were in the grip of the 'scuttling' craze, large-scale gang warfare between rival groups of youths. The scuttlers armed themselves with anything they could lay their hands on - knives, clubs, iron bars and even, on occasion, swordsticks. There is no evidence that the Tomkins boys were ever directly involved, but they were of an age when the swagger of the scuttlers must surely have made an impression on them.

While in Manchester, Henry married Eliza Petrie and Thomas married Mary Green. In April, 1888 Robert managed to impregnate Mary's sister Alice, three years his senior. The resulting child, Frederick, was born out of wedlock. Robert's name did not appear on the birth certificate and he did not marry Alice until January, 1890.

The family, or part of it, had returned to London (Whitechapel) by 1888. The slaughter yards of Belle Isle were by then part of the Harrison, Barber conglomerate which also owned the yard in Winthrop Street.

In April of that year, three weeks after the murder of Emma Smith, William Tomkins was found dead (or rather in an alcoholic coma from which he didn't recover) in Winthrop Street. The one press report that exists says he was discovered by his son, William. This must be an error as William did not have a son of that name. The address on his death certificate was Northampton Street, which was a few minutes walk from Winthrop Street.

On 3rd September, 1888, Henry Tomkins appeared at the inquest into the death of Polly Nichols. He gave his address as 12, Coventry Street, a short distance from Winthrop Street and the site of a railway arch out of which Harrison, Barber sold horseflesh. In my opinion, Henry ran rings around the coroner and the jury, refusing to give a straight answer on whether women frequented the yard at night and insisting that he and Charles Britten had been no further than Woods Buildings during their break. He was also adamant that there were two members of the public present in Bucks Row when he arrived. After trying unsuccessfully to shift him on this point, the Coroner, Wynne Baxter, threw in the towel saying he didn't understand Tomkins' slaughterhouse language. James Mumford and Charles Britten who, according to Mumford, were also due to give evidence, don't appear to have been called to testify.

Henry and his two Winthrop Street colleagues, Mumford and Britten, were interviewed separately by the police about their activities on the night of Nichols' death and apparently gave detailed and corroborating statements. However, three days after the event Mumford was unable to remember how many horses they had killed that night, which calls into question how detailed their statements actually were.

The local populace had their suspicions about the slaughtermen, describing them as 'queer characters' and chalking 'This is where the murder was done' on the yard gates. Various contemporary press reports also proposed a 'slaughterman theory' of the murders.

Thomas Tomkins' son Ellis, born in Manchester in October, 1887 and Christened there on 9th November, 1887, was admitted to the London Hospital, Whitechapel on the 28th September, 1888. He died there on 1st October. This was the weekend of the double event. The address given on his death certificate was 26, Lisbon Street, Bethnal Green, very close to Northampton and Coventry Streets and just minutes away from the Winthrop Street yard. The immediate aftermath of Ellis's death coincided with the October hiatus in the Ripper's activities. They recommenced on the 9th November, the first anniversary of Ellis's Christening.

Henry Tomkins died on 10th February, 1891, three days before the murder of Frances Coles. His address was still 12, Coventry Street.

The 1891 census (taken on the 5th April) shows Thomas, his wife Mary and son Christopher living in one room at 12, Coventry Street. Henry's wife, Eliza, was living in another room in the same house. Thomas appeared on the 1892 electoral register (compiled late 1891) at the same address. Robert had made an honest women of Alice Green and was living with her in Manchester.

Thomas had returned to Manchester by October 1893, when his son Thomas was born. The fact that he does not appear on the London electoral register after 1892 suggests he returned to the North West between September, 1891 and December, 1892.

In November, 1896 Thomas's wife Mary died. He remarried within a matter of weeks.

Thomas died in Failsworth, Lancashire in 1920.

In 1896, a Robert Tomkins of Oldham Road was involved in an altercation with another man and was stabbed in the face. In 1915, aged 45, Robert volunteered for the army. Apart from going AWOL a few times and earning himself various field punishments, his military career was unremarkable.

The 1911 census gives Robert's occupation as a 'Hewer' (coal miner). The census form was most likely completed by Robert himself. If so, he had what might well be described as a 'round schoolboy hand'. He also had a habit of mispelling simple words - 'Joeth' instead of Joseph for example, and ‘Mancther’ rather than Manchester.

Robert died in Prestwich, Manchester in 1922.

[MrBarnett]

It’s a while since I gave the ‘Boys from Belle Isle’ much thought. I had them pegged as possible suspects at one point, but I made contact with a descendant of Thomas Tomkins and the idea lost its lustre.

[MrBarnett]

This seems somewhat topical for the Covid age. Charles Bretton’s father ran the Black Bull Inn in Fyfield in rural Essex. In 1863, when Charles was 4, there was an outbreak of diphtheria in the parish and three of his siblings, aged 2, 3 and 6 died as a result.

You’ll notice that one of his siblings had Mumford as a second name. That’s because his mother was a Mumford. And one of Alfred Barber’s sisters married a Mumford. All very cosy. Very Essex.

[drstrange169]

I noticed, Gary, you commented on this web page (http://thevictorianist.blogspot.com/...elle-isle.html) , any idea where the article was from?

[MrBarnett]

I noticed, Gary, you commented on this web page (http://thevictorianist.blogspot.com/...elle-isle.html) , any idea where the article was from?

I believe it was written by James Greenwood. I’m a bit rusty on this stuff. I’ll see if I can find it.

[MrBarnett]

Here you are, Dusty:

https://www.victorianlondon.org/publications4/strange.htm