JTR related Evening Post Editorials

[David Orsam]

There are a number of interesting editorials in the London Evening Post throughout the period of the Whitechapel Murders which I assume have never before seen the light of day. I thought it would make sense to post them all in one thread. I will update this thread regularly, hopefully daily, with further editorials as they are transcribed. Here are two from the same day (i.e. the day after the murder of Nichols):

1 September 1888

It seems pretty clear that Mr. Hyde has broken loose in Whitechapel. Can it be that Mr. Stevenson’s ghoul has a prototype in actual life?

1 September 1888

The police force of London is on its trial. Until the perpetrators of the latest diabolical murder in Whitechapel are swinging beneath the scaffold the force will rest under a responsibility which, unfulfilled, will seriously lower it in public estimation. The police have on their hands a number of tasks unperformed. There is the murder of a woman in broad daylight in a shop in North London, there is the murder of the Marylebone dressmaker, the murder of the unfortunate who was found hacked to death a few weeks back on the landing of an East-end lodging house, and now there is this culminating horror. It has been suggested that a lunatic is at large in the East-end, but this theory does not bear examination. No lunatic was ever yet so methodically mad. What is more probable is that there exists in the East-end a gang of hellish ruffians who blackmail the wretched women of the streets and enforce their demands at the point of the knife. They must be tracked out. Every circumstance of this latest crime tends to force the conclusion that a number of people hold its terrible secret. The police must justify themselves; they must be judged, like everybody else, by results; they stand or fall not only by what they do, but by what they fail to do; and if they fail to discover the perpetrators of the murders that have smeared the London streets with blood, first in one neighbourhood and then in another, following each other with awful rapidity, then they must be pronounced incompetent. Judgment will go by default. Dissensions have been rife in Scotland Yard; discord has ruled among the controlling authorities of the force, the resignation of Mr. Munro is ominous; and the very fact that Sir Charles Warren is contemptuously nicknamed by his subordinates as “Colonel Why?” is significant of evil. For justice’s sake, for the sake of the safety of our streets, for the sake of the districts that are becoming more notorious then ever Alsatia was, let us hear no more of these quarrels and frictions of Scotland Yard. They must cease. If Sir Charles Warren cannot silence them Sir Charles Warren must go. There must be a clearing out of the failures in the force. Less than this will not satisfy the public. If the monsters of the Whitechapel murder do not dangle at the end of the hangman’s rope the fact will be put down to police incompetence traceable to dissensions in the controlling office. And we are not sure that the public would be wrong in doing so. Far be it for us to render the task of the police force more difficult than it already is, but the force must be warned that by results alone it will be judged.

[Mayerling]

There are a number of interesting editorials in the London Evening Post throughout the period of the Whitechapel Murders which I assume have never before seen the light of day. I thought it would make sense to post them all in one thread. I will update this thread regularly, hopefully daily, with further editorials as they are transcribed:



1 September 1888

The police force of London is on its trial. Until the perpetrators of the latest diabolical murder in Whitechapel are swinging beneath the scaffold the force will rest under a responsibility which, unfulfilled, will seriously lower it in public estimation. The police have on their hands a number of tasks unperformed. There is the murder of the Marylebone dressmaker.

Hi David,

I put this down on another thread (about unsolved London Murders) recently. The dressmaker that is mentioned was Miss Lucy Clark, aged 49, living at 86 George Street, Portman Square, and murdered back on 23 January 1888. A few years back I actually looked into this homicide (which is close to Baker Street, of all places) and the police suspected and briefly held the two nephews of the lady, but released them.

Jeff

[David Orsam]

Thanks Jeff - and to complement your post, the "murder of a woman in broad daylight in a shop in North London" referred to was a reference to the supposed murder by poisoning of Annie Mary French in a shop in Walthamstow. A chemist's assistant, William Barber, was charged with her murder and sent for trial at the Old Bailey but a grand jury ignored the bill against him.

[David Orsam]

5 September 1888

If Sir Charles Warren is to resign, or to be resigned from, his post at Scotland Yard, why not send him to Egypt to open up the trade route into the Soudan? He is just the sort of man for the task. He knows the Soudan well, and he has the happy faculty of confidence of native tribes. The manner in which he fulfilled his duties as Governor-General of the Red Sea littoral in 1886 was such as to win for him general commendation. Europeans who have served in the Soudan, and who know how badly the British Government has bungled and blundered in its dealings with the Soudan population, say that Sir Charles Warren ranked next to Gordon in pacificatory capacity. Sir Charles Warren has done a vast amount of invaluable work for his country. In his administrative and military career in South Africa he worked with signal success. His restoration of tranquillity to Bechuanaland in 1884-5 was effected under circumstances requiring great skill and tact and was accomplished without the shredding of a drop of blood. It was from his appointment as Governor-General at Huakim that he was recalled to take up the duties of Chief Commissioner of Metropolitan Police. The militarism of his training seems to have been against his success in that capacity. Qualities that are essential for the pacification of inferior races do not comprise all that are required of the chief of Scotland Yard. Sir Charles Warren is pre-eminently one of those men whose services the country cannot afford to lose, but it is becoming pretty clear, from the friction in Scotland Yard, and between Scotland Yard and the Home Office, that in his present employment his abilities are not turned to the best possible account.

[David Orsam]

11 September 1888

The coroner at the “Whitechapel” inquest yesterday was evidently not unaffected by the prevailing excitement. Thus, he was displeased with the police for not having ready, to assist one of the witnesses, a plan of the locality in which the tragedy took place, and when an inspector promised that this should be done by the next sitting of the court he remarked then that it might be too late. It is really difficult to see how a plan of the neighbouring streets would help the inquiry, especially as so far no evidence has been given which raises the question of the route by which the murderer came, or that by which he fled. Again, the man who first made the horrible discovery deposed that he immediately communicated it to some workmen standing in the street who “came and looked at the sight.” The coroner insisted repeatedly that these men must be found, and seemed to attach the highest importance to their being produced by the police. Their evidence cannot possibly do any harm, but it is not at all apparent what light the coroner thinks they can throw on the mystery. The most they can prove is the finding of the body, and of this there is ample testimony already. Finally, the coroner was angry with the same witness for the remark that he had to go to work himself, after having given information at the nearest police-station, remarking “(emphatically) that your work is of no importance compared with this inquiry.” This is, of course, true but probably the witness’s work has a secondary importance for himself which he could not overlook, and there is really no reason why he should not attend to it – if his nerves permitted him – after he had done all he could to assist the officers of justice. No doubt the coroner is anxious to come to some substantive conclusion, but fussiness about quite subsidiary details will not help the investigation of the main issue. The truth probably is that the witnesses available in his court can do little; it is a policeman’s case, and only by scouring the neighbourhood, as the police are doing, can they hope to find their man. It would be a pity if a respectable official were to set the example of the morbid curiosity as to the smallest details of a notorious murderer which is usually associated with the lowest of the lower orders.

[MacGuffin]

5 September 1888

If Sir Charles Warren is to resign, or to be resigned from, his post at Scotland Yard, why not send him to Egypt to open up the trade route into the Soudan? He is just the sort of man for the task. He knows the Soudan well, and he has the happy faculty of confidence of native tribes. The manner in which he fulfilled his duties as Governor-General of the Red Sea littoral in 1886 was such as to win for him general commendation. Europeans who have served in the Soudan, and who know how badly the British Government has bungled and blundered in its dealings with the Soudan population, say that Sir Charles Warren ranked next to Gordon in pacificatory capacity. Sir Charles Warren has done a vast amount of invaluable work for his country. In his administrative and military career in South Africa he worked with signal success. His restoration of tranquillity to Bechuanaland in 1884-5 was effected under circumstances requiring great skill and tact and was accomplished without the shredding of a drop of blood. It was from his appointment as Governor-General at Huakim that he was recalled to take up the duties of Chief Commissioner of Metropolitan Police. The militarism of his training seems to have been against his success in that capacity. Qualities that are essential for the pacification of inferior races do not comprise all that are required of the chief of Scotland Yard. Sir Charles Warren is pre-eminently one of those men whose services the country cannot afford to lose, but it is becoming pretty clear, from the friction in Scotland Yard, and between Scotland Yard and the Home Office, that in his present employment his abilities are not turned to the best possible account.

The classic Victorian mindset and world view of racial inferiority still makes me cringe. Sadly, there are many in the world who still share these beliefs.

Thanks David, for posting these articles, as they provide a somewhat clearer glimpse of the political and urban unrest of the era.

[Rosella]

1888 was only a few years after the Seige of Khartoum, wasn't it, and the death of that archetypical Imperial hero, Sir Charles Gordon. The Mahdi Muhammed Ahmed had taken over the rule of the Sudan and the British wanted it back.

[David Orsam]

24 September 1888

“Wilful murder by some person or persons unknown.” So said the coroner’s jury of the Buck’s-row murder on the conclusion of their labours on Saturday. They could say no more; they could say no less. That a woman had been barbarously murdered was the only fact in evidence before them. Beyond this all was conjecture that was not the mere romancing of fanciful imaginations. Why the murder was committed remains as much a problem as ever, though there has been a plethora of suggestions, good, bad, and indifferent. Perhaps the most extraordinary is that of the Coroner himself. Mr. Wynne Baxter’s theory that the murderer is some morbidly minded individual with a craving for a certain portion of the internal anatomy of a woman; that the murders were committed for the purpose of obtaining this; and that his being disturbed in the previous cases accounted for his not having earlier secured his object. It is ingenious. But even if this theory is calculated to allay excitement by suggesting that the murderer will now rest contented, it is hardly one to carry conviction. The horrible story from the north this morning is against this suggestion, and about that we say a word elsewhere.

[David Orsam]

21 September 1888

The Photographic News is angry with Dr. Phillips, the divisional surgeon who gave evidence at the recent inquest on the body of the last victim of the Whitechapel murderer, for not having called in the photographic art in the work of detection. Our specialist contemporary agrees that photographs of the eyes of the murdered woman would have been useless, but “there can be no doubt whatever that a series of photographs of the body and of the mutilations ought to have been taken, and in the face of these it would have been far more difficult to conceal essential facts.” When the police are at their wits’ end to get a clue there is no harm in heaping up suggestions, but it is difficult to see how any amount of photographs of the dead body would help the cause of justice. That “even now,” our contemporary hopes, “the camera will be brought into requisition,” must be attributed to its natural enthusiasm for arts.

[David Orsam]

Wrong chronological order for those two, never mind.

[David Orsam]

27 September 1888

There is a sickening monotony about the topic of the Whitechapel murders, but perhaps it is worth noting that a hypothesis which the coroner propounded in his summing-up at the inquest yesterday is the only one which explains all the facts. It is that the series of murders were committed in order to obtain specimens of certain human organs for a museum. Given the existence of a physiologist or a pathologist whose hobby for collecting such things had developed into a morbid mania, much is made clear. The anatomical skill which has been displayed throughout, the uniform mutilation, the total concealment of the hideous spoils, and the certainty that the murderer is possessed of certain means of getting about and lying perdu at his pleasure without attracting suspicion, all point in this direction. And be it noted that the taste for forming a cabinet of curiosities such as we have supposed is, in itself, perfectly legitimate. Many distinguished scientists possess such a private museum, and there are, of course, many public ones of the sort. It is only necessary to suppose that a scientific passion has degenerated on one point into a fierce, unbridled mania which has over-mastered the reason, and it is agreed on all hands that a theory of mania of some kind can alone account for the quadruple tragedy. The suggestion that “some abandoned wretch” has been suborned by, or lent himself to, the peculiar desire of the owner of such a museum is improbable, because it would imply either that two persons were simultaneously the victims of the same savage frenzy, or that the sane man was guilty of the almost unparalleled iniquity of abetting the insane one in his career of bloodshed. We may take it for granted that there are not two people in the secret of the Whitechapel murders.

[David Orsam]

1 October 1888

Two more murders in Whitechapel, and both within a short distance of the scenes of the previous crimes, in the very heart of the district which the police are supposed to be watching most closely! Encouraged by the immunity which the police have allowed him to enjoy, the murderer – for there is no longer much doubt that these hideous butcheries are the work of the same cruel hand – carries on his bloody business, and, for all that the authorities seem able to do to prevent him, may continue it indefinitely. A half-dozen murders in as many weeks seemed to have utterly failed to waken the Scotland Yard officials from their normal lethargy. They have “clues” of course, they always have; they are “scouring the country” – equally of course they always do. They have reason to believe that they are “on the track” and there they are likely to remain. True, they have not had much encouragement at Whitehall. Mr. Home Secretary Matthews seems to be not much more troubled about the slaughtering in the streets of half-a-dozen women than he would be about the shooting of as many mad dogs. He has been asked to offer a reward of one hundred pounds for the discovery of the murderer. But he has refused; why waste one hundred pounds in such a way? The victims of the Whitechapel ghoul are only women, women of the poor, too, and not the best of their class. What difference can it make – to the Right Hon. Henry Matthews, at any rate – if a few of them, more or less, despatched by the assassin’s knife to the Potter’s Field? But that which fails to arouse the police or their chief at the Home Office has not failed to arouse the inhabitants of Whitechapel, among whom a state of positive panic exists. Every woman in the district goes in fear of her life; every man trembles for the safety of his women-folk. All confidence in the police has been shattered, and dismay and despair reign among the denizens of the East-end. Had these murders happened in Mayfair, they ask themselves, would Sir Charles Warren and Mr. Matthews have dealt with them as they have? Would Mr. Matthews have refused to offer a reward for the discovery of the murderer then? Perhaps not. Since the police are impotent to protect the lives of the people of Whitechapel, it will now become necessary for those people to organise and protect themselves. Whitechapel wants a Vigilance Committee to do what Sir Charles Warren and Scotland Yard have failed to do, and what Mr. Matthews does not think it necessary to even try to do. Towards the funds of such a Vigilance Committee THE EVENING POST will contribute fifty guineas, and the publishers will receive contributions for the same object. Let us see if public opinion does not hold life as sacred in Whitechapel as it is in the West-end!

[David Orsam]

There were two more relevant editorials that day:

1 October 1888

The series of murders, when it included four victims, was appalling enough to exhaust the abhorrence of the whole country, and we are afraid we must add, of the civilised world, and now that the number is raised to six the popular state of feeling can hardly be said to be intensified. That feeling is one of utter stupefaction; the language of execration has given place to that tone of apathetic despair which, in the face of overpowering catastrophes, finds vent in such ejaculations as What next? or How long is this state of things to last? Within the memory of living men no such curse has ever fallen on a district. Wholesale calamities there have been, or, in foreign lands, convulsions of nature, spreading havoc far and wide, but for a large district, teeming with population to be haunted, and to be reduced to a helpless state of panic and terror, by a midnight assassin who laughs at every effort to check him, has been reserved for the heart of the metropolis of the most enlightened and religious country on the face of the globe. The mental prostration into which we hear from time to time that some backward continental town has been thrown by the descent of a band of brigands on the district is a sense of security compared with that condition of mind which residents at the East-end are now experiencing. As for the outcast class from which all the victims have hitherto been taken, and indescribable quaking is upon them. That their life is normally one of abject, hopeless misery is one of the common places of our modern society; but in this section of this great city it seems as if the death that awaits them is more horrible still. But in the prevailing uncertainty and chaos of doubts and suspicions there is not the faintest guarantee that the uniformity which has hitherto prevailed in the class which the Whitechapel monster has marked out for slaughter will be maintained. At a time like the present limitations and modifications drop out of people’s minds, and nothing is present thereto but the broad fact that there exists in their midst a being with an absolute thirst for blood. They may be forgiven for not reasoning too coolly in such circumstances, and for taking thought of their own safety. Looking forward beyond the confused present to a time when these atrocities shall be an awful reminiscence, it may be hoped that when the community chiefly concerned puts its house in order, it will do so thoroughly that peace will never again be disturbed in so ruthless a fashion.

1 October 1888

The detective aspect of the case call for a word or two. It may be doubted whether such a gigantic experiment in crime has ever been carried on with such infinitesimal traces being left of the perpetrator. Of his personality there is absolutely no clue, and there is nothing but the slightest indication upon which to found even a guess. The much talked of mutilations are one peculiarity of his method, his utter invincibility to the police is another, and the chosen time of his carnage, viz, Friday or Saturday night, a third. This first of these marks has given rise to what is known as the museum theory , which was first publicly propounded by the coroner at the last inquest, and which was put into a much more likely shape in these columns. It will be too familiar to our readers to need any further comment. But a press agency this morning gives currency to a remarkable story. It states that a letter, which we reprint in another column, was delivered at its office last Thursday, signed by “Jack the Ripper,” a signature which was thoroughly in keeping with the exultant chuckle of the butcherly work which the writer declared to be his. If the letter is a hoax, the writer may congratulate himself on the possession of a natural unstrained style suitable to a fiend. But it will be seen that a prophetic hint conveyed in this loathsome epistle has been since acted on, and that either accidentally or by design the latest victim – the writer announced another to follow – bears traces of having been made to carry out the hideous whim of the assassin. At any rate, it has been thought worth while to lay the document before the authorities at Scotland Yard. But the real problem lies in the enigma why the criminal always escapes, why he is never suspected by the police even when he is net bent on his ghastly errand, or why, we may almost say, practically nobody is suspected. The uniformity of the days and hours of the slaughter may be a mere coincidence but, it is at least worthy of note; it is the business of the detective department of our police to make the most of it. They have a hard task before them it is true, but the recompense is proportionately great, and in the idea of a recompense must be included the prevention of an eternal stigma being affixed to them and their organisation.

[David Orsam]

3 October 1888

WHERE is Mr. Matthews? Nobody knows. And yet it is singular that a letter in which the editor of the Financial Times sent him a cheque for £300 was answered by return of post. Mr Matthews will not offer a reward for the apprehension of the Whitechapel monster. It is about time that his chief in the Cabinet took the matter out of the Home Secretary’s hands, and offered a reward on behalf of the Government. Mr. Matthews objects to such a course “on principle.” The former member for Dungarvan joined the Home Rule party “on principle.” It was also “on principle” that he deserted that party and became a Conservative candidate for Birmingham. It was “on principle” that he refused an inquiry into the Cass case, and “on principle” that he afterwards granted it. “On principle” he also reinstated Endicott. Truly,

A merciful Providence has fashioned him hollow
In order he might his principles swallow

It would be a curious Nemesis on the exclusion of Lord Randolph Churchill from the Ministry if the man whom he pitchforked into office two years ago were to prove the political Jonah who is to wreck the Government. Social questions have ever proved more potent in the overthrow of Ministries than party politics. There is a storm brewing in London. The thunder of the populace is growling, deep if subdued, and any moment the cloud may burst and the bolt may fall. If it does it will be due altogether to the obstinacy and stupidity of Mr. Matthews, who refuses to listen to the ominous rumblings of the coming tempest. Lord Salisbury should look to it, and at once.

[David Orsam]

4 October 1888

Sir Charles Warren in his letter to the Chairman of the Whitechapel Board of Works, speaks the public very fair, but this will hardly console them for the fact that his myrmidons have failed to catch the arch-assassin. On the whole, he puts the case for the police temperately and moderately. What is at the bottom of the whole matter in that there are not enough policemen in London. Sir Charles Warren points out that the Metropolitan Police Force have no reserve to draw upon, and strengthening their garrison at Whitechapel or another point means weakening it somewhere else. Now, unless the latter place, when the demand is made on its resources, is overmanned – which we know is never the case – its safety is diminished in proportion as that of the centre of disturbance is increased. And this relation holds true not only of districts so far apart as, let us say Whitehall and Whitechapel, but of any two spots close together. While a cordon was drawn around Mitre-square last Sunday morning the Aldgate post-office round the corner was broken into and robbed. So many men were wanted at the scene of one of the murders that apparently nobody was left to look after the post-office, which would probably have fared better with a constable on his normal beat. There is, therefore, some point in Sir Charles Warren’s remark that “the whole of the police work of the metropolis has to be done as usual while the extra work is going on, and that at such a time as this extra precautions have to be taken to prevent the commission of other classes of crime being facilitated through the attention of the police being diverted to one special place and object.” The “extra work” referred to here means an increase of the hours of duty, longer hours and harder work for the man machine; the individual policeman has to be more vigilant and wakeful on a less quantity of sleep. Such is the inevitable result of having a civil force whose members are rigidly fixed, as was demonstrated by the wearying and harassing burdens cast upon the metropolitan force at the time of the dynamite scare and the Trafalgar-square riots – burdens, we may add, most cheerfully borne. Under such circumstances, is it not surprising that the “extra work” is sometimes done badly, but that it should be done at all. It is no more possible that now than it ever has been to force a quart into a pint pot. But Sir Charles Warren rather damages his own case by an unfortunate incidental remark. “The prevention of murder directly,” he says, “cannot be effected by any strength of the police force,” so that, according to this, the present moment, at any rate, is not the time to enforce his news upon the public mind. If Sir Charles Warren means that no public force, of whatever size, can ever extinguish the crime of murder or any other form of crime, of course he is right; but if he means to deny that if he had more of his men all over the tainted area last Saturday night there would have been an increased chance of capturing the assassin, or possibly no murders at all, the idea is absurd. Such an argument refutes his own complaint of the want of a Reserve. For the rest, there are only one or two points in his long epistle which call out for comment. His appeal to the Board of Works of the district to do all in its power “to dissuade the unfortunate woman about Whitechapel from going into lonely places etc,” is a curious instance of ignorance in high places of the habits of the people. What has the Board of Works to do with unfortunate women? Its officials do not come into contact with them, and they have no authority over them. The suggestion should have been addressed to the Commissioner’s own men. Then there is a remark about the imperfect lighting of Whitechapel, which is undoubtedly true, but is rather tardy on the part of the head of the Metropolitan police. Then follows a formal assurance “that every nerve has been strained to detect the criminal or criminals, and to render more difficult further atrocities.” That is to say, we have done our duty. Granted, yet we cannot but ask, where are the results? Such a remark has the true dull ring of officialism about it, and in the following there is an echo of the same note. “It is most important for good results that our proceedings should not be published, and the very fact that you may be unaware of what the Detective Department is doing” [why did Sir Charles not add ‘and the Home Office’?] “is only the stronger proof that it is doing its work with secrecy and efficiency.” Most ingenious paradox! Because, not although, we see nothing of the methods and results of our human bloodhounds, therefore they are working at their best. No doubt concealment may often be necessary to the plans of the police, but when their chief appeals at this moment to public confidence he must remember that concealment may hide incapacity as well as valuable information. Above and beyond all the talk remains the grim fact that, at this writing, the murderer still plies his trade with impunity.