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Walter Dew’s story of the Nichols murder in his 1938 book "I Caught Crippen" was that Charles Cross discovered a dead body "in the gateway to Essex Wharf". Cross supposedly noticed "something strange about the position of the woman’s head". He shook the woman but she did not stir. He then saw another man ("the second man") on the opposite side of the street "whose behaviour was certainly suspicious" and this man "seemed to seek to avoid the carman". Cross showed the man the body and the man felt the woman’s heart saying "I think she’s breathing". Dew then says, "The couple parted", with Cross promising to call a policeman. In the key passage for our purposes, he then says:
All this was afterwards told in evidence by the carman. It never had the corroboration of the other man. The police made repeated appeals for him to come forward, but he never did so.
Why did he remain silent? Was it guilty knowledge that caused him to ignore the appeals of the police?
Despite the many inaccuracies in Dew’s account, it is said by some that his story nevertheless reveals that the police were very suspicious of the second man, whom we now know to have been Robert Paul (although Dew apparently never knew this). Essentially, the point is that Dew is reflecting some kind of collective police memory or belief that the second man (Paul) was guilty of the murder.
The first problem is that Dew’s own memory of events is clearly not very good which can be seen from all the factual mistakes he makes - which can be clearly seen above. His book was published in 1938, some fifty years after the murder of Nichols. Furthermore, at the time, Walter Dew was a young constable in H Division. He had absolutely no role in the investigation of the murder of Mary Ann Nichols which was being conducted by J Division.
So what is it that Dew is remembering here? It is plain that there were never any "repeated appeals" for Robert Paul to come forward otherwise we would have a record of them in the press. Moreover, what chance is there of the police making themselves look complete fools by making a public appeal for a key witness to come forward who had already spoken to a newspaper journalist? They would have been a laughing stock.
Surely what Dew is remembering (if anything) is a message circulated around all the police stations after the LWN report which asked if any officer knew a man called Robert Paul who had reportedly been involved in the discovery of Nichols' body. Presumably one of the constable's whose beat went down Foster Street knew the man and this is how the police found Paul.
But Walter Dew would not have been informed of any subsequent developments regarding Paul. The evidence of Paul at the inquest - which was two weeks after the LWN article - was barely reported in many newspapers and a lot of newspapers did not carry a report of it at all. So it is perfectly possible that Dew never realised that the man the police had been seeking had been located, given evidence to the inquest and eliminated from the inquiry. So when he came to write his book some fifty years later, this vague and inaccurate recollection that he had of a loose end involving the second man was blown up out of all proportion and he felt able to write that this supposedly unknown man could have been the murderer.
What I suggest Dew’s memory plainly does not do is reflect a collective memory of the police force in 1888 that the second man had any kind of role in the murder.
All this was afterwards told in evidence by the carman. It never had the corroboration of the other man. The police made repeated appeals for him to come forward, but he never did so.
Why did he remain silent? Was it guilty knowledge that caused him to ignore the appeals of the police?
Despite the many inaccuracies in Dew’s account, it is said by some that his story nevertheless reveals that the police were very suspicious of the second man, whom we now know to have been Robert Paul (although Dew apparently never knew this). Essentially, the point is that Dew is reflecting some kind of collective police memory or belief that the second man (Paul) was guilty of the murder.
The first problem is that Dew’s own memory of events is clearly not very good which can be seen from all the factual mistakes he makes - which can be clearly seen above. His book was published in 1938, some fifty years after the murder of Nichols. Furthermore, at the time, Walter Dew was a young constable in H Division. He had absolutely no role in the investigation of the murder of Mary Ann Nichols which was being conducted by J Division.
So what is it that Dew is remembering here? It is plain that there were never any "repeated appeals" for Robert Paul to come forward otherwise we would have a record of them in the press. Moreover, what chance is there of the police making themselves look complete fools by making a public appeal for a key witness to come forward who had already spoken to a newspaper journalist? They would have been a laughing stock.
Surely what Dew is remembering (if anything) is a message circulated around all the police stations after the LWN report which asked if any officer knew a man called Robert Paul who had reportedly been involved in the discovery of Nichols' body. Presumably one of the constable's whose beat went down Foster Street knew the man and this is how the police found Paul.
But Walter Dew would not have been informed of any subsequent developments regarding Paul. The evidence of Paul at the inquest - which was two weeks after the LWN article - was barely reported in many newspapers and a lot of newspapers did not carry a report of it at all. So it is perfectly possible that Dew never realised that the man the police had been seeking had been located, given evidence to the inquest and eliminated from the inquiry. So when he came to write his book some fifty years later, this vague and inaccurate recollection that he had of a loose end involving the second man was blown up out of all proportion and he felt able to write that this supposedly unknown man could have been the murderer.
What I suggest Dew’s memory plainly does not do is reflect a collective memory of the police force in 1888 that the second man had any kind of role in the murder.
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