JTR related Evening Post Editorials

[David Orsam]

Also

4 October 1888

Sir Charles Warren says that statistics show that London, in comparison to its population, is the safest city in the world to live in. This is one of the Chief Commissioner’s delicate touches of satire. At the present the safety seems to be, not for the public, but for the criminal who escapes detection. If statistics do bear out Sir Charles Warren’s statement, it does not at all follow that the efficiency of the police arrangements are the cause which has produced that effect. The police force in the metropolitan area is simply inadequate – in point of numbers – to deal with the scattered forces of crime over 700 square miles. The total number of constables is about 14,000, of whom probably not more than one third can be on duty at one time. Every single constable, therefore, has to keep watch and ward over about a thousand persons. In the City the police force is more adequate to the demands made upon its resources, especially during the night time. Sir Charles Warren himself, as we have pointed out above, insists upon the weakness of the force under his command. Here, then, is the spot upon which the reformer may at once put his finger. The numbers of the police should be increased. In minor details also its efficiency might well be improved. Night constables should be provided with noiseless boots, the beats might be so varied that criminals would not know when to expect the return of the constable, and a system of electric communication with the stations for the purpose of alarm, etc, might be organized, as well as other common sense measures in the same direction. Moreover, the silly method of requiring a fixed standard of height for detectives should be abolished. Women could be made use of for detective purposes, and in many other ways a really business-like man could effect improvement in the force. Sir Charles Warren has asked for suggestions; the above are a few.

[David Orsam]

12 October 1888

“Wilful murder against some person unknown.” This is the verdict upon the fifth of the victims of the Whitechapel fiend, and it is likely to be the verdict on the sixth, and for all our police seem to accomplish, upon as many more bodies that may be found in our streets. “Some persons unknown” is a description that fits with exactitude the perpetrator of the deeds. He has been seen by two or three people – the woman who passed him in Hanbury-street and the man who turned out of the Imperial Club in Duke-street, and saw him with a woman at the corner of Church-passage. But not one, we question, would be able to recognise him. He is absolutely unknown, and the thought of it may well strike society with fear.

[David Orsam]

Also

12 October 1888

It is a pity that not one of the jury at the Aldgate inquest yesterday had the smartness to ask either Detective Halse, of the City police, or Constable Long, of the Metropolitan, who was the officer who gave the instructions that the chalk handwriting on the wall of Goulston-street should be rubbed out. The press thought of it, as they naturally would, because, perhaps, the press are more accustomed to sift facts and fasten responsibility upon persons that juries are in public matters. A suggestion that the question should be asked was handed from the press to the City Solicitor, who deprecatingly said that he could not go into that. Why not? It is said that Sir Charles Warren is himself responsible for the obliteration of the writing. If so, the public should know it. Somebody is responsible, and, whoever he is, he has demonstrated beyond question his gross incompetence. Mark the circumstances in which the writing was found. Constable Long had heard a murder had just been committed in the City, and about an hour after the discovery of the Aldgate tragedy, he found a portion of a woman’s apron wet with blood. On the black facia of the wall above where the apron was placed there was written in chalk a sentence which it is fair to assume – indeed, it is impossible to assume otherwise – was the work of the murderer. The constable who discovered it appears to have done everything he could. He promptly searched the area and staircases, left a man in charge of his beat, with instructions to watch the premises, and went to report at the station. There his responsibility ended. The excuse given for washing off the writing was that it would cause a riot or outbreak among or against the Jews. Fudge! The Jews are a peaceable community in the East-end, and if the police could not prevent or quell any disturbance what are they paid for? It would have been easy to hide that writing, easier still to guard it until it was photographed. By washing it out before the City police had time to photograph it, the Metropolitan police threw away the most important clue the criminal has yet left behind him. Such crass stupidity and capacity for the doing wrong thing at the wrong moment are unexampled even in the annals of Sir Charles Warren’s reign at Scotland Yard.

[Mayerling]

Query about the Evening Post Editorials

David, is there anything you have noticed saying who is writing all these editorials on the Whitechapel Murders in the Evening Post (obviously somebody on the Editorial staff, but whom - if it is said).

Jeff

[David Orsam]

Hi Jeff, no names (or initials) are ever given for any of the editorials.

[GUT]

Thanks for all the hard work David.

[David Orsam]

16 October 1888

“The handwriting on the wall” in Goulston-street, Whitechapel, was sponged off by the police. Of that there is not the slightest doubt, as a witness at the inquest on Catherine Eddowes, a City police-constable named Halse, gave evidence that he protested against its being rubbed out by the Metropolitan police until it had been photographed. A morning paper – of course not intentionally – has mis-reported this, and made it appear that the City police were responsible for this grave error of judgment. Such is not the case. The Metropolitan police, and they alone, acting under high authority, rubbed out the writing, and the City police were unable to interfere as Goulston-street is out of their jurisdiction.

[David Orsam]

18 October 1888

Sir Charles Warren is climbing down. This morning he publishes a “General Order” to the inhabitants of Whitechapel in which he makes a big meal of humble pie. Just fancy: “I, Sir Charles Warren,” who knows no law but his own caprice, lying prone before the people of the East-end, and thanking them in his own sweet name and person, for their “marked desire to aid the police in the pursuit of the author of the recent crimes!” “Pursuit of an author” is delicious – as a phrase in an “official notification”. We were under the impression until the issue of this precious manifesto from Scotland Yard that the police have no more idea of the “author” of the murders than the babe unborn, which is so often cited to attest the innocence of criminals in courts of justice. As to the “pursuit”, it has certainly been very active and unceasing, with the net result of bagging a score or two of “wrong men.” It really is very touching to read that “Sir Charles Warren feels that some acknowledgment is due on all sides for the cordial co-operation of the inhabitants, and he is much gratified that the police officers have carried out so delicate a duty” – he refers to the house-to-house inspection though the nominative is a long way off – “with the marked goodwill of all those with whom they have come to contact.” The First Commissioner, you see, comes out very majestically in the third person singular. There is a sort of “bless-you my children” ring about the notification which is only paralleled in pathos by the submission of the gallant person to the bloodhound test. But a despot always has some good moments, and when Sir Charles Warren subsides into gratitude to the public the said public would fall short of its obvious duty if it failed to reciprocate the emotion. Sir Charles, as a soldier, seems to believe in the efficacy of a “General Order.” The inhabitants of Whitehall should in return furnish him with another military rescript. “A General Idea,” which he might be instructed to apply to the management of the Metropolitan police force.

[David Orsam]

19 October 1888

Evil communications corrupt good manners. The bloodhounds who so successfully sniffed out Sir Charles Warren in Hyde Park went all astray yesterday in practice at Tooting Common. In the few days that they have been associated with the Criminal Investigation Department they seem to have lost the scent, so far keeping up the recent reputation of the force. It is difficult to diagnose the operations of the dogs in this matter of the London murders, but if they tracked Sir Charles so easily the other day is there not prima facie evidence that the First Commissioner “knows something about it?” The “General Order” that information of the lost hounds is to be given at Scotland Yard looks as if Sir Charles intended to “give himself up.” He has gone to the dogs; will the dogs return to their – well their Commissioner?

[David Orsam]

20 October 1888

A point in connection with the use of bloodhounds in Whitechapel is drawn attention to in Land and Water, which, whilst in will not have escaped the attention of many, does not appear to have been in print before. It is, that if the object of Sir Charles Warren is to find the murderer, he did unwisely to take the Press into his confidence and scare the man with the ominous ideas which still attach to the name and work of the bloodhound, instead of quietly setting to work some keepers with their night dogs; but that, if on the contrary the object is to prevent further crime, one useless bloodhound, with all the halo of the story-book around him will create more scare than all the night dogs in London. The writer, as may be gathered from this, has not a great opinion of the present utility of the bloodhound, on the ground that nothing deteriorates more quickly from one generation to another than the noses of uncared for animals. Since sheep stealing has gone out of fashion their use has been abandoned, and for all practical purposes they are not half as useful now as a watchman’s dog. Again, alluding to the present police order that if any other murder is committed the body is not to be removed, the writer says, “This argues that that the police authorities do not understand this business. The order should be that the body should not be touched, for if it is, the dogs used will probably run to ground the last person who touched it.” In the interests of the individual, the police ought to look to this.

[Natasha]

Hi David

I wonder if you could help me find out more about the following case:

THE SUPPOSED MUTILATION OF A WOMAN

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=8550&page=2

I can't find anything else about this case

[David Orsam]

Hi Natasha - there won't be anything about it in the Evening Post which only existed between 1887 and 1889.

[David Orsam]

10 November 1888

Sir Charles Warren and his myrmidons believe in not displaying their ignorance. As long as they say nothing about the Whitechapel murders there is, of course, an element of doubt as to whether they may not know something. The only thing which discounts this surmise is that if they know anything they do nothing in the desired direction. The army of newspaper reporters who invade the murder area find the police dumb as the lampposts. Of all the details of this latest crime not one was supplied by the police. How far this was appreciated by the public, who have a right to reliable information, is best known to themselves. Matters have assumed definite shape this morning, but last night the varying accounts in the evening papers were, to put it mildly, very bewildering. If the police wanted nothing known, the evening papers served their turn, for the more one read the less certain everything became; and the man who diligently read every evening paper must have felt that he really knew nothing at all. Apart from an editorial point of view, this is very questionable policy. Publicity is the best detective after all. Publicity caught Lefroy, and far more often than the unaided efforts of the police has sent murderers to the gallows. Sir Charles Warren ought to think of this seriously.

[David Orsam]

Also

10 November 1888

Lost, stolen or strayed; a couple of bloodhounds. In the words of the Dutchman “Oh where, and oh where, are dose leetle dogs gone; where, oh where, can they be.” This bloodhound business is really hideously grotesque. It has toyed with the best feelings of humanity, and fooled the sympathies of suffering thousands to whom each fresh tragedy is so much added agony of terror and mental misery. Can it be humanly – or caninely, rather – possible for a couple of bloodhounds to be aimlessly scouring the country, like four footed twin tramps. Pet dogs, we know, disappear, and a well-bred collie will occasionally be lost to sight; but a couple of bloodhounds! Dogs that everyone shrinks from, that children stand appalled at, that the whole canine race shrink away from. And then the turning of the tragedy into roaring farce. The man-hunters held in the leash awaiting the next crime! Time goes on. They are taken on a trial trip. They disappear. The murderer leaves his lair, laughs in his sleeve as he perpetrates his crime with added hideousness of detail, laughs at the fearful joke he is aiding in. He walks away, puts his thumb to his nose, and elongates his fingers as he strolls placidly along the street, chuckling to think of Sir Charles Warren and his dogs. And perhaps he stops at a newsvendor’s shop and sees the current number of Scraps, with Sir Charles Warren depicted as trailing a couple of red herrings, and laughs again. The whole thing is monstrous.

[David Orsam]

12 November 1888

“Crowner’s quest law” about which the EVENING POST had a great deal to say some months ago, is responsible for a decidedly unsavoury squabble over the corpse of the unfortunate woman murdered in Dorset-street on Lord Mayor’s Day. At first sight it seemed very curious that whereas in the Hanbury-street case the body was removed to Old Montague-street, and the inquest held by Wynne Baxter, in this case, where the murder was committed nearer to Whitechapel than Hanbury-street, the body was taken to Shoreditch, and the inquest held by Dr. Macdonald. The explanation is that there is a sort of flotsam and jetsam distinction between the two cases. A dead body found in the open air has to be removed by the police; one found in a building has to be taken charge of by the coroner’s officers. In the Hanbury-street case the police took their grim burden to the nearest mortuary – Old Montague-street – thus bringing it within the jurisdiction of Mr. Baxter, though the murder was committed in Mr. Macdonald’s district. When the coroner’s officer came into play he could not take the body to the same place, or he would have lost his hold upon it, so he took it to Shoreditch and kept it in Mr. Macdonald’s district. This would not have mattered much. On the turn-about principle Mr. Baxter was quite willing that such should be the case. But now comes the vital question, “Who is to pay the piper.” If this woman has to have a pauper’s burial – as seems very likely – the relieving officers will have to object to the ratepayers of Shoreditch paying for the burial of a woman murdered in another district. The only way out of the difficulty will be, it is said, to remove the body back to Whitechapel, have a second inquest, and so palm the cost on the Whitechapel people. It is certainly a very unpleasant state of affairs.