Robert Sagar

[Rob Clack]

I always wonder if there is a kernal of truth in Macnaghten's City P.C. There are several stories of a police officer seeing someone leaving a murder scene. I wonder if Macnaghten was right but just got the basics (like a lot of his information) about what sort of policeman he was wrong. Anyway that's just guess work.

Rob

[Robert]

The last lines are very puzzling - he felt sure they knew the man...eventually they got him incarcerated.

[Casebook Wiki Editor]

Here is another interesting article which appeared soon after Robert Sagar's retirement, in The Mercury (London) of 14 January 1905. Many thanks to Lynn Cates for his assistance in finding this.

Thanks to both you gents for this. Much appreciated!

Chris, did you ever get a chance to dig into possible Sagar descendants ? It is an unusual surname here in NYC, and I imagine might be the same across the pond.

[Chris]

The last lines are very puzzling - he felt sure they knew the man...eventually they got him incarcerated.

It does read a bit strangely, but I suppose it means that they felt sure they knew the identity of the murderer, and got their suspect incarcerated.

That seems consistent with the 1905 City Press article ("suspicion fell upon a man, who, without doubt, was the murderer. Identification being impossible, he could not be charged. He was, however, placed in a lunatic asylum, and the series of atrocities came to an end") and the 1924 Brighton and Hove Herald article ("It was Mr Sagar's view that the murders were committed by an insane man employed at Butcher's Row, Aldgate, who was subsequently placed by his friends in a private asylum").

The odd thing is that the concluding part of the article is so similar to the one from the Seattle Daily Times posted above, but instead of saying anything about an asylum that one finishes up with "It is believed that he made his way to Australia and there died. "The police are satisfied as to the identity of the man," remarked the inspector, "but what became of him we don't know.""!

[Chris]

Chris, did you ever get a chance to dig into possible Sagar descendants ? It is an unusual surname here in NYC, and I imagine might be the same across the pond.

Yes, I did manage to trace and contact two grandsons of Robert Sagar's eldest son Robert Henry, both of whom replied to my letters, but unfortunately they knew little of his career, and certainly weren't aware of any memoirs having been passed down in the family.

[Casebook Wiki Editor]

Yes, I did manage to trace and contact two grandsons of Robert Sagar's eldest son Robert Henry, both of whom replied to my letters, but unfortunately they knew little of his career, and certainly weren't aware of any memoirs having been passed down in the family.

A pity, but thank you for the effort.

[robhouse]

I always wonder if there is a kernal of truth in Macnaghten's City P.C. There are several stories of a police officer seeing someone leaving a murder scene. I wonder if Macnaghten was right but just got the basics (like a lot of his information) about what sort of policeman he was wrong. Anyway that's just guess work.

Rob

I wonder the same thing Rob.

[Chris]

I think there was obviously a story current in the force relating to a City policeman having seen someone near Mitre Square.

As with the similar report from the Seattle Daily Times posted earlier in the thread, I'm struck by the similarity between Sagar's version and Sir Basil Thomson's muddled account from The Story of Scotland Yard (1935):
"One [suspect] was a Polish Jew reported by police constable Thompson, the one police officer who caught sight of the man in Mitre Court ... A young officer named Thompson was patrolling Chambers Street when a man came running out of Swallow Gardens towards him. ... Thompson turned into Swallow Gardens and almost stumbled over the mutilated body of Frances Coles." (http://forum.casebook.org/showpost.p...5&postcount=11 ) In fact, Thompson didn't see anyone, but he did hear retreating footsteps and he did use his whistle to summon assistance, as in both versions of Sagar's story.

Sir Basil Thomson's source for the Swallow Gardens part of the story was apparently Frederick Wensley, who four years earlier had written in Forty Years of Scotland Yard:
"Thompson was patrolling Chambers Street when a man came running out of Swallow Gardens towards him. As soon as he perceived the officer he turned tail, made off at speed in the opposite direction, and was in a few seconds lost to view.
Thompson moved into Swallow Gardens and on turning the corner came across the body of a murdered woman - Frances Coles - mutilated in much the same fashion as the victims of the Ripper."

http://www.casebook.org/ripper_media/rps.wensley.html

One other small point of contact is that Benjamin Leeson also gave an account of the incident in Lost London: The Memoirs of an East End Detective (1934) (in which he correctly says that P.C. Thompson saw no one) according to which "The constable was wearing rubber heels that night and had approached the spot absolutely noiselessly ..." - like the officers in the Mercury version of Sagar's story.

http://www.casebook.org/ripper_media/rps.lostlondon.html

I wonder whether Thompson's discovery of Coles was the origin of the "City PC" story, or whether it just got mixed up with it as time went on.

[Chris]

I checked the article in the Daily News that was the source of the one in the Mercury posted above. It appeared on Monday January 9, and differs significantly only in the opening sentences (which the Mercury evidently edited slightly to make the story seem a bit more recent). The Daily News article begins:

After 24 years' service in the City of London Police Mr. Robert Sagar, Detective-Inspector at Old Jewry, has retired. Last Wednesday he bade farewell to his colleagues, and to-day he leaves the comfortable quarters in Rose-alley, Bishopsgate, which he has occupied for so long. The ex-detective is still a young man as men go, and his absence from the scene of his former activities is already keenly regretted.

"I am a Lancashire man by birth," he told a representative of "The Daily News" on Saturday, ...

[Chris]

Like the Mercury, the Daily News reads "A police officer met a well-known man of Jewish appearance coming out of the court near the square ..." The related article in the Seattle Daily Times (presumably based ultimately on a different interview with Sagar) has "well-dressed".

I still think "known" is probably just an error for "dressed." It may just be possible, though, that there's a connection here with the suspect mentioned in a report from the North-Eastern Daily Gazette of September 1889, who is said to have "created some stir during the last murders under circumstances which I need not say anything about."

http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=10901

[Chris]

I am still intrigued by Sagar's mention of "King's Block in the model dwellings in Stoney Lane" in these reports.

I found some details of these Artizans' Dwellings in online sources.

City of London, Artizans' Dwellings
Artizan Street, Gravel Lane.
These dwellings are on the east side of Artizan Street, between Artizan Street and Middlesex Street, and are erected in several blocks, distinguished by different names : King's Block, Queen's Block, Princes Block, etc.
Commenced in 1884.
They occupy the site of numerous small courts and alleys : Angel Court (Stoney Lane), Coaks Buildings, George Court, Petticoat Square, Nightingale Place, Wood Green Court.
[Henry A Harben, A Dictionary of London (1918)]

The buildings erected under the Artisans' and Labourers' Act are situated on a site in Stoney Lane, Middlesex Street, which was cleared between 1877-1879. The site covers 79,198ft., or nearly two acres, and five separate blocks of dwellings have been erected, at a total cost of £201,415. Each of the blocks is five storeys high, counting the ground floor, and altogether they contain 241 tenements. Under two of the blocks are 20 shops, with 34 rooms at the rear, and this brings the total number of habitable rooms, exclusive of the shops, up to 535. The rents are as follows : — Large shop, with one room, 28/- per week ; shop, with two rooms, 25/-; small shop, with one room, 16/- ; shop and basement, 13/-; small shop and basement, 10/-; three-room tenements, 8/6 to 9/- per week ; two-room tenements, from 6/- to 7/6 per week; and one-room tenements, 4/- per week. Rentals in 1905 amounted to £5,930, against an expenditure of £5,410, including £2,933 interest on loan. There was thus a balance of £223 in favour of the account.
[Alderman W. Thompson, Housing Up-To-Date (Companion Volume to the Housing Handbook), p. 81 (1907).
Online at http://www.archive.org/details/housinguptodatec00thom]

And also a couple of photos, on the City of London's Collage website:

http://collage.cityoflondon.gov.uk/

[Chris]

I assume that these two photos are (1) looking north-east up Harrow Alley and (2) north-east up Stoney Lane, both taken from just south-west of the junctions with Artizan Street.

Here is an excerpt from the 1894 ordnance survey map showing these buildings in relation to the Wentworth Model Dwellings in Goulston Street. I assume that the five blocks are the ones I've outlined in red:



For fans of "Then and Now" comparisons, here are corresponding pictures from Google StreetView:

[Chris]

In the 1891 census, the five blocks appear in this order:
North Block, Princes Block, Queens Block, Kings Block, South Block.

So ("if my conjections be correct") King's Block, singled out by Sagar, would have been the one on the north side of Stoney Lane.

[Rob Clack]

Hi Chris,

Here's the 1887 Goad Map showing the Artizans Dwellings.



And a photo of them (one end anyway) from the Corner of Cutler Street and Harrow Place



Rob

[Chris]

Hi Chris,
Here's the 1887 Goad Map showing the Artizans Dwellings.

Thanks - that's brilliant.

Fortunately my conjections were more or less right - though Alderman Thompson was evidently way out in what he said about 20 shops in two of the blocks.

I suppose the likeliest explanation is that Sagar simply confused two fairly close blocks of model dwellings. But one can't help hankering after the alternative explanation that King's Block was somehow significant in the City CID's suspicions about the murders ...