Kansas Physician Confirms Howard Report

[Mayerling]

Hammond and the "odd deaths" list from the Dreyfus Affair

I have only heard of the death of Major Hubert Henri as an odd demise connected with the 1894 French treason scandal, although the death of President Felix Faure is of some interest (of a prurient type).

Henri, on the counter-espionage staff, was responsible for creating the forged "Bordereau" used to frame Dreyfus, and later began forging other material as well. But in 1898 the scandal was beginning to come apart, and Henri's forgeries became known. Although I don't like anti-Semites myself (being Jewish) I have always felt a little sorry for the Major. His personal racism aside, Henri actually thought he was acting in the best interest of France and that the heads of the General Staff (who apparently quietly knew what he was doing) let him make a public confession to the newly appointed Minister of War with two of the generals in attendance). Instead of making some plea to be gentle with Henri, the generals washed their hands of him.
The new Minister of War had the Major taken to a prison cell for further questioning and for future trial (the Minister believed Henri was part of a far larger conspiracy - of German spies in the military, but one that included Dreyfus (whom the Minister felt the German paid traitors were leaving as the sole traitor in the event). Henri was taken to the prison, and had a bad night of it (jailors said they heard him crying). The next day or so he was found having signed a written confession and having been hanged. Officially it was reported as a suicide, though Dreyfus' supporters (like Reinach) felt it was too coincidental. Rumors that Major Henri was murdered in prison by his co-forging conspirators have lasted (actually) to the present day. The famous novelist and pro-Nazi collaborator Louis-Fernand Celine mentions the death of Henri in his autobiographical novel "North" and says, slyly, "or was he helped?" to add his two cents into the story.

As for Felix Faure (d. 1899, officially in the Elysee Palace in Paris), the official cause of death was either heart attack or attack of apoplexy. But word soon spread (which in this case is apparently true) that he had been struck down while "in the saddle" in bed with his mistress. This was unfortunate (and a little comic - a similar type of end occurred for the likes of Attila the Hun on his honeymoon to a far younger new wife, actor John Garfield while under pressures from the Hollywood blacklist in 1951, and former Governor and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller in 1983. In the latter situation, the revelation of Rocky's death were worsened when they were revealed on the day of his funeral at St. John the Devine's Cathedral in Manhattan: his friend, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger - who did not know the actual circumstances said at one point in his eulogy, "I wish I had gone like Rocky", meaning quickly, not meaning enjoying himself).

What made the Faure situation really bad did not become known in 1899 but a decade later in 1909, when the mistress, Madame Margarite Steinheil, the wife of a society painter, survived an attack in her home that left her husband and mother dead from the "burglars". The investigation of the Surete concentrated it's attention on Madame Steinheil instead of her story, and she ended up the chief suspect and defendant in a trial in 1911. She was acquitted. However, the earlier death of Faure was recalled, and many suspected Steinheil did something (aside from giving vast satisfaction and happiness to a far older man) to le President.

Later there was a death in the Dreyfus Case that remains a mystery. In 1902 Emile Zola was asphyxiated by a defective chimney flue in his home while at work on a new novel. Zola died but his wife barely survived the build-up of carbon monoxide gas. Later it was claimed that the chimney sweep who cleaned and repaired the flue boasted he stuffed it so that such an accident could befall Zola, whose essay in 1896 "J'Accuse" reopened public attention to the innocence of Dreyfus.

Jeff

[TradeName]

Thanks, Jeff.

Here's part of an article by Vance Thompson listing a "prefect Barreme" among those with connections to Dreyfus case who died under suspicious circumstances. I can't find anything about the prefect Laurenceau said to have survived a railway journey only to die a hotel.

Success Magazine, March, 1907, Pages 157-159, 209-210

The Dreyfus Affair Part 3
by Vance Thompson

Page 158

[...]

“Always the dead!" [Joseph ] Reinach cried bitterly; “whenever we find a forgery, a crime, always it is set to the account of a dead man!"

And he drew up a list, horrible in its eloquence, of the dead who strewed the dark path of this monstrous case of crime and cruelty and infamy. Yet there had fallen so many of the enemies of truth and justice, that he might have called them the Expiatory Dead.

Three I have told you of——that poor wretch, Lemercier-Picard, “found dead” in his room in the Rue de Sevres; Henry “found dead,” with a closed razor near by; Félix Faure “found dead,” and smuggled into his palace.

There were many others. Captain d'Attel, who claimed to have heard Dreyfus avow his guilt to Lebrun-Renault the day of his degradation, was “found dead” in a railway train, his corpse blue and already on the way to decomposition, though his journey had lasted but an hour. This pretended confession, which Dreyfus never made, D'Attel confided to his friend Chaulin-Serviniere, a member of the Chamber of Deputies; now the deputy took train one day to visit his home; an hour later he was “found dead" on the railway tracks between two stations. And Rocher, of the prison guards, who also claimed to have heard Dreyfus say; "I am guilty, but I am not the only one!” died, and to this day no one knows where or how. It was as though Eternal Truth had reached down and slain this lie wherever it lifted its evil head.

The prefect Barreme was summoned to Paris by his governmental chief; he was “found dead” in his compartment when the train arrived at the Gare St. Lazare. Laurenceau, prefect of the North, was called to Paris to give evidence regarding the spy system on the German frontier; there was no accident on the journey; the next day he was “found dead” in his room at the Hotel Terminus.

And so I might continue this lugubrious list. Lorimier, one of Henry's most tireless agents of forgery and crime, was “found dead”—hanged in a lonely barn; another, Guenée, was “found dead” on the floor of his room in Paris.

[...]

----end

There's a thread here discussing another article by Vance Thompson: Leather Apron - an account of his invention. Here's another bit from the article discussed in that thread.

Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, Volume 62, August, 1898, Pages 283-288

The Police Reporter
by Vance Thompson


Page 287

There is one other incident of the police reporter's work that might find a place here, but it is not easy to write out,—-at all events, for one who knew well the reporter who figured in it.

He was a slight, lissome chap of six feet, with a soft brown beard and moustache. He had a gentle, slow smile that touched one like the bubbling laugh of a baby. And yet he was iron-muscled and steel-nerved, and withal one of the shrewdest reporters who ever set out to dog down crime or villany. The newspaper for which he was working ascertained that Hammond was in Seattle. Now, Hammond, be it understood, was the man who in the days of the Cleveland Street scandal in London was paid to "keep out of the way," for he had in his possession facts and letters incriminating all the soiled peerage of England. The letters he had in his possession he offered to sell to this reporter, who journeyed up into the Northwest to see him. It was a long and tedious negotiation. There was hobnobbing with this man and that; there were days of hard work and nights of harder dissipation. At last the reporter had secured all the letters,—-enough of them, at all events, to furnish forth an article of international importance for his paper. Then he was killed. How?

Not even we who loved him and worked side by side with him know.

But his dead body was tossed by the wind and wave, bandied from the shore to the shoals, bruised by the rocks and swollen by the sun. Well, that was the end of a police reporter.

---end

I'll use this as an excuse to post some stuff about Hammond's time in Seattle.

The Philadelphia Record, March 6, 1890, Page 1

NO QUESTIONS AT HIS HOUSE

The Former Keeper of That Scandalous London Resort Speaks Out

Seattle, Wash., March 5.--Charles
Hammond, keeper of the Cleveland
House, London, with which the famous
Cleveland street scandal was connected,
has just been interviewed here. Hammond
is now running a saloon in Seattle,
in a respectable part of the town, but his
neighbors think it will bear close watching.

Hammond denied that he ever received
any assistance from the British Government
while in Belgium, or was aided in
any way, by consulate or legation in
Brussels, to leave that country.
"Nobody," he continued, "ever molested me
in Belgium. I would like also to deny the
charges against me, made broadcast in
the English and American papers. It
has not only injured me financially, but
has preyed on my health. I was in poor
health in London, and was nearly blind.

"Gentlemen who lived at my house on
Cleveland street were at full liberty to do
whatever that liked, and had their own
latch-keys. I never inquired of my
boarders their names or their business. I
have just about made up my mind to go
back to England and testify myself.

"I am a descendant of French royalty,
and am related to the late Emperor of
France. It is time I denied some of the
slanders against me, and I hope what I
have told you will be largely circulated in
my native country."

Hammond said he had other statements
more startling in effect, which he will
confess in a short time.

----end

Sacramento Daily Record-Union, December 17, 1890, Page 1, Col 4

CHARGED WIIH LARCENY.

Charles R Hammond on Trial for the Theft of a Sealskin Sacque.

Seattle (Wash.), December 16th..-—Charles R.
Hammond, who became notorious through his
connection with the Cleveland-Street scandal in
London, was on trial to-day on a charge of
grand larceny, for stealing a sealskin sacque
and gold watch from a woman who was drinking
in his saloon here.

Less than a year ago J.R.Todhunter attempted
to get Hammond into British territory, there
being a large reward offered for him in
England, but he failed.

In September last, Todhunter engaged
himself as a barkeeper for Hammond, and during
this time it is said he worked up the present
case against him, and that it is a case of
malicious prosecution.

Oa the stand to-day Hammond admitted living
at No. 19 Cleveland street, London, but
refused to state his business. He stated that a
large sum of money had been offered him to
give information exposing English nobility, but
he will never disclose the secret.

----end

The Morning Call. (San Francisco), December 18, 1890, Page 8, Column 2

HAMMOND CONVICTED.
He Claims to Be ihe Victim of a Conspiracy of British Officials

Seattle, Dec. 17.—-Charles R. Hammond
of Cleveland - street (Loudon) fame was
to-day convicted in the Superior
Court of grand larceny. Recent developments
in the case indicate that
Hammond is the victim of a conspiracy, of
which Alexander Todhunter is at the head.
Todliunter is supposed to be an English detective,
and failing to get Hammond on
British soil, charged him with stealing
a sealskin sack from Mrs. Augusta Simons.
Hammond claims that there is $250,000
at his disposal on deposit at the Bank of
California and other banks, having been
placed there by wealthy Englishmen as
hush-money. Hammond has been in Seattle
more than a year and has abundant
means. He refuses to talk, but
admits having threatened to return
to London. He says parties there are trying
to prevent his return, and in order to do
so had Todhunter to trump up a charge
against him. He expects to get a new trial
and says he will return to London and take
the consequence, but refuses to betray the
men who patronized his Cleveland-street
house.

----end

Sacramento Daily Record-Union, December 29, 1890, Page 1, Column 4

SENSATIONAL DEVELOPMEMTS.

New Light Thrown on the Trial of Hammond for Grand Larceny.

Seattle, December 27th.—-Sensational
developments in the Charles R. Hammond
grand larceny case were brought out in the
motion for a new trial in the Circuit Court
to-day. Hammond was convicted of stealing
a sealskin sacque and a gold watch belonging
to Mrs. Simons. To-day an affidavit
of ex-policeman Hanna was filed in Court
in which Hanna states that Mrs. Simons
called on him to search the house of a woman
named Bohannon, whom she charged
with stealing her sacque and watch.

Another affidavit was filed in which a
lodging-bouse keeper named Beadle swears
that Simons, the husband of the woman
who swore that Hammond had stolen her
things, had been treating some of the
Jurors in the Hammond case to drinks during
the trial. It is claimed that the whole
case is a conspiracy to get Hammond out
of the way.

Tbe man who worked up the case, and
figured as prosecuting witness, is suspected
of being an English detective in the employ
of patrons of Hammond's Cleveland-street
house in London, sent here to rid
the country of Hammond.

---end

Sacramento Daily Record-Union, January 08, 1891, Page 1, Column 6

HAMMOND'S PATRONS.

Light on the Celebrated Cleveland-Street, London, Scandal.

Seattle, January 7th.—-John Ames, aged 19,
who was an inmate of Charles R. Hammond's
notorious Cleveland street house, in London,
and who escaped with Hammond to this country,
to-day made a statement concerning the
notorious place, and swore to its truth before
James A. Hillyer, a Notary Public, in the presence
of several witnesses.

Hammond is under sentence of two years in
the Penitentiary ior grand larceny, and the boy,
who has heretofore been afraid to tell the
story, because of Hammond's threats of pesonal [sic]
violence, now tells it voluntarily.

Young Ames was secretary for Hammond,
and says he wrote many letters last year to
English nobleman, demanding hush money.
His sworn statement, in part, is as follows: "ln
June. 1888, the Conway boy, nineteen years of
age, told me of the existence of the house kept
by Hammond on Cleveland street, London, and
induced me to go there with him. As life was
an easy one aud money was plenty, I remained
there until June, I889, at which time the discovery
of the nature of the house caused Hammond
and myself to leave London. The house,
I was told by Hammond, had been running between
three or four years and during the year
I was there about twenty men visited the house
regularly. Many of these were introduced into
the house under false names, and the names of
some were never known either to Hammond or
myself. Seven of the men I became personally
acquainted with, and their names were the
Earl of Euston, Lord Arthur somerset, Robert
Jorvoice, the Queen s officer. Dr. Maitland,
Percy Stafford, the capitalist, Hugh Waglin, the
banker, and Captain Barbey, of the army."

----end

St. Paul Daily Globe, March 07, 1891, Page 1, Column 1

Hot After Hammond

An English Detective on the Cleveland Street Man's Trail

Compromising Letters Affecting Nobility the Objects Sought

Portland, Or., March 6.- — For some
time past public curiosity here has
been excited over probable developments
in the Hammond case. An English
detective named Partridge, who is
in the employ of persons alleging to
have been blackmailed by Hammond,
has been on this coast looking up
certain parties claimed to be accomplices
of Hammond. It was recently published
in a Seattle paper that Partridge
had been located in Oakland, Cal., and
an interview published to the effect
that confederates have possession of
certain compromising letters which
he (Partridge) was detailed to secure at
any price and at all hazards. Partridge
followed his man to Australia, thence
back to California, and finally located
him there, it is supposed. A dicker was
made and a compromise effected
wherein the blackmailers were paid
several thousand dollars for the letters
in question. a number of which were from
noted persons in England. While at
San Francisco, Partridge met a man
named Tyrrel, who introduced himself
and stated he had been sent out from
London to aid Partridge. He produced
a photograph of a letter,by which means
he said he identified him, and presented
credentials and testimonials, and by
these gained his confidence. Partridge
explained to Tyrrel how matters stood,
saying the affair had been compromised,
but still he had hopes of getting a
cinch on Hammond and his gang.
While at Sacramento, or some Central
California city, these papers, which were
kept locked up in a tin box and zealously
guarded, mysteriously disappeared one
night along with the "slippery" Tyrrel,
who was the only person who knew
what the box contained. Partridge was
in a hole., and in bad shape. He came
North and notified a Tacoma detective
agency, who have acted in cahoots from
the start of his fix. A party answering
to the description of Tyrtel was seen to
leave Tacoma on March 4 for Portland.
The Tacoma officer arrived here this
morning in pursuit. So far, he has not
found any clue of his man. The above
facts were secured from him, as a
reporter knew some of the few facts in the
case, recognizing him. confronted him
with them and got the story. He said
that Partridge still lives in fear of the
American press, and emphatically
instructed him to keep the matter from
being given further publicity, saying
that American papers had already aired
the case too much.

---end

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 16, 1891, Page 5, Column 3

CHARLES HAMMOND'S TROUBLES.
He Denies the Authenticity of a Dispatch

The following dispatch concerning Charles K.
Hammond, of Cleveland street, London, notoriety,
was received by the Chicago Tribune from
Portland a few days ago:

[... Partridge story]

Hammond was seen by a POST-INTELLIGENCER
reporter yesterday at the county Jail. He read
the above clipping over carefully and then said:
"There is no truth in this, whatever." Then
he hesitated a moment and said, "I have no
letters hid in a tin box. I have no letters where
anyone can get them. Judging from the reading
of that item I make up my mind that it was
sent out from Seattle. I believe that it originated
with a man who is now in this town, and
who is partly to blame for my imprisonment."

"Who is this man?"

"I do not care about mentioning any names
until I am clear of my present trouble. I have
had offers to sell letters which have been
reported to be in my possession, but I have none
that I care to part with. A detective who
claimed to be from San Francisco called to see
me not long ago, and said he wished to work up
my case. I was afraid of him and would have
nothing to do with him. I have been deceived
by every one I trusted, and will put my trust in
no one hereafter.

Hammond complained bitterly of his imprisonment,
and said that the attorney whom he
had engaged had done nothing for him, to speak
of, but had fleeced him of all he had and then
cast aside, He claimed that many people
thought he had lots of money, and wishing to
get some of it they had schemed to get him in
prison, and once they succeeded, every man's
hand was against him. Continuing his
complaint, he aaid:

"I am as innocent of the crime for which I am
held and have been sentenced, as a new-born
babe. I am a victim of numerous enemies. I
am not perfect; I have my faults, so has everyone.
but that is no reason why people should
frown on me unjustly because I am down.

"My money is now gone. At the time of my
arrest I waa doing a good business-—making as
much $6O a week. Now I am destitute and
my family is without means. Up to a week ago
I kept them, but between my attorneys, of whom
I have had many, and the expenses of my
family, I have nothing left and the county must
take care of my wife and child. My wife lay on
a bed of sickness all last week. Yesterday she
recovered sufficiently to get up, and she came
down to see me. She is afflicted with heart
disease and can do nothing for herself, and what
can my boy of 13 years do for her?

"I am not a petty thief. I have my faults, but
I never stole anything in all my life. I believe
some one is tampering with my mail, for I am
receiving no more letters. All I can say is that
I am in sore straits."

----end

The Morning Call (San Francisco), May 18, 1891, Page 1, Column 8

SAYS HE IS INNOCENT.

A Letter Which May Prove That Hammond Is Not Guilty.

Seattle, May 17.— Charles R. Hammond
of Cleveland-street (London) notoriety, who
is in jail here, serving a term of
two years for grand larceny, wrote
a letter to-day which, if the facts
are as set forth by him, indicates
that be is innocent, and that the charge of
grand larceny was trumped up by English
detectives to get him out of the way in order
to prevent disclosures of doings at Hammond's
house in London. Hammond wrote
the letter to Beck, who is serving
a sentence in the penitentiary, but it was
intercepted by the jailer. Beck told another
prisoner while in jail at Snohomish that he
committed the larceny for which Hammond
was convicted. In his letter Hammond
makes an earnest appeal to Beck to speak
out and reveal such facts concerning the
case as he is in possession of.

----end


St. Paul Daily Globe, February 08, 1892, Page 6, Column 2

Hammond Is Released

Seattle, Wash., Feb. 7.—-Charles R.
Hammond, of Cleveland street, London,
notoriety, who has been in jail here on
a charge of grand larceny for over a
year, has been pardoned by Gov. Ferry.
Hammond was sentenced in December,
1890, to two years in the penitentiary.
Since then it has been proven tha the [sic; that he]
was not guilty and that the charge was
a trumped-up one.

----end

[Mayerling]

The murder of M. Poinsot in 1860 in the railway carriage had incredible widespread affects mostly due to accident or rumor.

In England, William Thackeray wrote in his "Roundabout Papers" an essay alluding to the murder of Poinsot (without mentioning the name) in 1862, suggesting that such a murder could happen in England. In 1864 Mr. Thomas Briggs, a bank manager, was killed in a robbery on a railway train, most likely by a German named Franz Muller, who left his hat in the carriage of the train that the killing occurred in, and took Briggs' hat. Muller, a tailor, later altered Briggs' hat to fit himself, but it was a clue in his eventual arrest. He fled by boat to the U.S. but was extradited back and stood trial in London, and was convicted and hanged. The hat he redesigned became popular as a "Muller Cut-Down", and Winston Churchill used to wear one.

When the killer was being sought by the police, there was interest in the possibility that Jud, the Alsatian German sought in the Poinsot mystery was the killer of Briggs. But this turned out to be a false trail.

However in France it led to a series of events that some called (probably erroneously) "the Thunderhead Murders". Poinsot's probable murder by Jud was considered due to German (read Prussian) espionage activity in Alsace Lorraine and France that Poinsot may have been involved in investigating. Now this was in 1860. But for most of the early 1860s the Second Empire of Napoleon III was involved in Italian politics, Mexican Politics (supporting the ill-fated Emperor Maximillian and his tragic wife Carlotta against Mexican President Benito Juarez) and trying to get Britain to jointly force the U.S. government of Abraham Lincoln to recognize the Confederacy. After 1866 these were no longer that important - the South had been defeated, the French had pulled out of Mexico and Italy. But in 1867 Maximillian was executed by Juarez, and Carlotta had gone insane. Napoleon III's reputation was collapsing, and his ham-handed involvement in trying to blackmail Bismarck into helping him annex Luxemburg for not getting involved in assisting Austria in the Seven Weeks War of 1866 blew up in his face. He began trying to recoup by a series of reforms of the regime's government under Liberal French statesman Emile Oliver in 1869.

That year a massive homicide case hit France when a family (the Kincks) from Alsace Lorraine were exterminated bit by bit by a killer named Jean Baptiste Troppman. Troppman, also from Alsace Lorraine, planned to kill them and assume through forged and real documents title to Jean Kinck's extensive property and wealth in Alsace. However, he was captured after the discovery of the bodies of Madame Kinck and her six younger children in a clover field in Pantin outside Paris, followed by the discovery of the bodies of Jean Kinck and his eldest son a few weeks later. Troppman was put on trial - it was the major trial of 1869. His defense was to vaguely hint that he was involved with other unknown men in the crimes, but it was not for financial gain but for "noble motives". Many believed this - feeling he was part of the same espionage network that Jud had been involved in within Alsace-Lorraine, probably spying for Bismarck. Troppman was convicted and went to his execution never elaborating beyond vague generalities what he meant (most people, like William Bolitho in "Murder For Profit" and Roger L. Williams believe Troppman was simply lying). But earlier that year another murder case, that of Pierre Voirbo, involved a police spy agent of the Bonapartist regime killing an acquaintance for his money, and skillfully deflecting the Surete for weeks into looking the wrong way - so that the public felt a lack of trust in Napoleon III's regime. It did not help matters that while awaiting his trial, somebody sent Voibo some bread that contained a knife, that he used to cut his own throat. Many felt the police had been responsible for this, although the police made considerable efforts to find who sent the bread. Troppman's case became the second "Thunderhead Murder". Voirbo's was linked in the public mind.

Just before the beginning of the Franco - Prussian War of 1870-71, Pierre Bonaparte (a raffish cousin of the Emperor) shot and killed a man named Victor Noir, supposedly a news reporter, but actually a muscle man for the anti-regime newsman Henri Rochefort. Rochefort had written a nasty article about Pierre Bonaparte, and was at the latter's house with Noir when Bonaparte shot Noir - there is a strong possibility that Noir (something of a physical bully) may have caused the situation by slapping Bonaparte. Bonaparte got a prison sentence, and the public felt that the Emperor's influence protected his cousin. The poor showing in the war against the Germans led to the final collapse of the Second Empire, but for many the events of the three criminal cases (four if you include Voirbo) led to a general feeling of dissatisfaction with the regime and helped in the collapse.

See:

Richard Altick, Victorian Studies in Scarlet (Norton, 1970) - "The Murder Thackeray Foretold"

Kate Colquhoun, Murder in the First-Class Carriage: The First Victorian Railway Killing" (New York: Overlook Press, 2011) [A thorough account of the Muller Case, and it mentions the brief investigation by Scotland Yard into Jud's possible connection.]

Roger L. Williams, Manners and Murders in the World of Louis-Napoleon (Seattle and London, University of Washington Press, 1975) - Chapter 4: "The Thunderhead Murders", p. 102-150. Williams debunks the connection, like Bolitho before him, feeling that Troppman was simply lying for effect. I should add that other writers on the Troppman case do feel he may have had some help in killing Madame Kinck and her younger children, but this does not translate to an espionage background.

Jeff

[TradeName]

Thanks, Jeff. Robert Anderson worked for Harcourt at the Home Office, but I don't know that they ever collaborated on religious issues.

A picture of Kensit at a 1898 protest.

The Review of Reviews, Volume 29, June, 1904, Pages 636-637

A Great Protestant Society




An item about Zola's visit to London in 1893 mentions that he visited the scene of the JtR murders.

The Spectator, Volume 71, October 7, 1893, Page 450

M. Zola left England on Monday. The newspaper reporters, of course, swarmed round him like flies to get his impressions of London. Apparently, the chief thing that struck him was that there exists in London a magnificent field for the realistic novelist,—-a virgin dunghill into which no one has yet taken the trouble to put a pitchfork. "From what I know of your literature," said M. Zola, "it seems to me that a gigantic human document has been willingly neglected in neglecting London in the novel;" and he went on to regret the English unwillingness "to touch social cancers." M. Zola, however, tried to set a good example, and visited with interest the scene of the "Jack the Ripper" murders. M. Zola showed real discernment in fixing upon the Thames as the true genius loci,-—or, as he characteristically preferred to call it, "the stomach of London." Unquestionably, that great "street of ships," with its "Cyclopean" bridges, to which M. Zola was always harking back, is one of the most impressive things the world has to show. Though M. Zola hardly feels sufficiently documentè as yet to write about London, he may possibly return and live in a quiet hotel, and take notes at leisure. When Paris hears of M. Zola's reception, it will be more convinced than ever that we are the strangest and least logical people on earth. We imprison the translator of "Nana," and treat the author as if he were one of the benefactors of the human species.

---end

Émile Zola, Novelist and Reformer: An Account of His Life & Work (London: Bodley Head, 1904), Pages 304-305
by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

[...] Meantime Zola had written his novel, "La Bête Humaine," which was suggested in part, undoubtedly, by "Jack the Ripper" and the theory of "homicidal mania," and in part by the mysterious death of a certain French prefect, named Barrême, who had been found assassinated in a railway carriage. We know that Zola had contemplated a book on the railway world for several years, but had been at a loss how to utilize such a subject in fiction. The Barrême affair extricated him from his difficulty, and was clearly indicated as one of his sources of inspiration in the "puff preliminary" which "La Vie Populaire" printed before beginning to publish the story in November, 1889: "The principal episode of "La Bête Humaine,'"said this announcement, "is a murder in a railway train; and there are so many points of similarity between the terrible scene depicted by Zola and the mysterious death of Prefect Barrême, that one may well inquire if the novelist, with an intuition superior to that of the police, has not supplied the most probable explanation of that dark affair."

----end

The Monomaniac (La Bête Humaine) (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1901), link
by Émile Zola, translated by Edward Vizetelly


The Spectator, Volume 59, January 16, 1886, Page 71

Paris is in a panic. M. Barreme, Prefect of the Eure, has been found murdered ou a railway, ten miles from Paris. He had evidently been stunned by a blow from a life-preserver, then shot in the head with a small revolver, the bullet being found in the brain, and then flung out on the line. The murderer is believed to have got out of the train at Mantes, where a man, known to have spoken to M. Barreme on the Paris platform, was seen to descend from the wrong side. He has not, however, been found. The police fancy that the murder was committed by a member of a gang of card-sharpers whom M. Barreme had hunted down; but that is not antecedentally probable. Card-sharpers look for gain, and there is no gain in murder. It is more probable that the crime was instigated by a private revenge, or by a determination to seize incriminating papers. There is evidence of a struggle, and a statement, not yet quite verified, as to the disappearance of a pocket-book. The affair has created just alarm; but it should be remembered that murders on railways have usually been punished. The scene selected greatly limits the area of inquiry, and therefore concentrates the attention of inquirers.


January 23, 1886, Pages 111-112

THE FRENCH RAILWAY MURDER

[...]

It is evident that M. Barreme's murder was premeditated. His assailant was doubly armed, with a life-preserver and small revolver intended to make no noise, an equipment most unlikely to be carried for any purpose of self-defence. People, however nervous, hate to be loaded with heavy weapons. It is evident, too, that the murderer knew the line, had studied where to throw the body, and had made up his mind fully before he entered the carriage, his attack having commenced almost the moment after the train had thoroughly cleared the Paris station. Six minutes did not elapse between the clearing of the station and the next stoppage of the train; and in that interval the murderer had struck his blow, fired his shot, and effected the throwing-out of the dead body,—-the latter, if, as appears, the door was not opened, a great effort of physical strength. The leaving of the money behind points to the same conclusion. No murderer for gain would leave twenty-five pounds upon his victim, even if he were afraid of taking the watch,—-which, however, as no one could see it till he pawned it, he would not have been afraid of. The crime was premeditated, and was not committed for money; and if not committed for that end, what was its motive? We should say, with the French police, almost certainly revenge, and probably revenge of a particular kind. Jealousy, though a constant cause of murder, usually requires provocation, and is seldom the origin of such a crime committed in cold blood, more especially in a country and in a class of society in which a man who had given cause for jealousy conld not avoid a duel. M. Barreme, moreover, seems to have been a respectable man, an official of mark, wholly absorbed in his duties and his ambitions, in furtherance of which his short visit to Paris had been made. He could hardly, from the position of his Department, have discovered a Secret Society, and his friends have no idea that his "removal" could be advantageous to any one, though the police are said to have a notion that some of his wife's family may, for pecuniary reasons, have desired his death. That is possible, but most unlikely; men hunting for family heritages rarely taking such risky steps. They poison, but do not use bludgeons. There remains revenge, which, though an uncommon motive in England, where hatred stops short of murder, and men do not fight duels-—that practice always helps to exaggerate the evil but instinctive notion that revenge may be a duty--is by no means so uncommon on the Continent. A considerable proportion of the murders reported thence are murders of revenge, and an active Prefect may have given, in the course of his business, the most deadly offence. We do not mean to criminals. Colonel Chesterton, after an experience of thirty years, declares, in his book on prisons, that convicts, unless perchance innocent, are rarely malignant against the agents of the law, whom they regard as men doing, and doing fairly, the busiaess they live by, and whom they do not, therefore, expect to favour them. The murderer, moreover, in this ca&e was no convict, but a rather impressive person of late middle age, who struck the porter who stopped him when he got out at Mantes on the wrong side of the carriage as quite above suspicion. The deadly offence given by the Prefect—-who, it must be added, has little to do with criminals—-was probably the dismissal, or report which had caused the dismissal, of some minor official. Such a dismissal in France is considered a deadly blow, destructive at once of character, income, and prospects; and its subject might very well be a brooding man, who imagined, as so many people do, that he was the victim of a personal dislike, and in his rage and disappointment, and, perhaps, suffering, would decide on a full revenge. He would know the line, would know the Prefect's habits, would be able to enter the carriage without exciting his suspicions, and would act with the half-insane decision and fearlessness of the actual murderer, who, though he obviously wished not to be caught, and laid down the only relic of the Prefect not thrown out—-a railway rug—-in a by-street of Mantes, still used his return ticket to go back to Paris. He took no money, of course,—-that would have spoiled his reveuge; and if the anonymous letter published in Paris was really received, and was not a hoax, we should say he wrote it. It would be just like a man fired with revenge, for wrong he was powerless to redress—-the wrong, of course, need not have been real-—to be dissatisfied until he had told the world why his victim died. His animosity would be stimulated to that by the public pity for the man he hated. If we controlled the police of the Eure, and wished to vindicate justice we should search first of all among such older officials of the Department as had been dismissed during M. Barreme's regime, and might have attributed to him the termination of their careers, with any subsequent misfortunes.

----end

Martin Kanes wrote in his book, Zola's La Bête Humaine: A Study in Literary Creation (University of California, 1962), that in addition to the Barreme case Zola was also inspired by the similar 1860 murder of M. Poinsot.

Annual Register, Volume 102 (London: J & F.H. Rivington, 1861), Pages 181-184
edited by Edmund Burke

EXTRAORDINARY MURDER IN a RAILWAY CARRIAGE IN FRANCE.--Since the introduction of railways into France, more than one person has been found by the guards dead in a carriage, under circumstances which left it doubtful whether the deceased had perished by his own hand, or was the victim of violence. These affairs, however, made very little sensation, until—-according to the recipe of the rev. canon Smith, for bringing railway directors to their senses, that a bishop should be killed or burnt alive—-a judge of high distinction was found in a first-class carriage murdered and plundered. The circumstances were such as to deserve the attention of railway officials, even on this side of the channel. M. Poinsot, a magistrate of high reputation, and President of one of the Chambers of the Imperial Court, left Paris on Saturday, the 1st of this month, for his estate at Chaource, about twenty miles from Troyes. On the Wednesday evening following, he desired to return to Paris, and took a first-class ticket by the night-train of the Strasburg Railway at the Troyes station. From Troyes to Paris the distance is a little over 100 miles, and the train was due at the metropolitan terminus at about 5 A.M. It arrived there in its ordinary course, but when the ticket-collector opened the door of the carriage in which M. Poinsot had been seated he found only a corpse, stretched on the floor between the seats, and weltering in its blood.

An examination of the body showed that it had been pierced by two pistol-shots, both in the head; and that a third shot also had been fired at the heart, but repelled by the clothing. The skull, again, had been terribly fractured; and with such violence had the instrument of attack, whether hammer or life-preserver, been wielded, that the brains of the victim were scattered all around. It was a most cruel and bloody murder, yet not a trace of the assassin beyond his dreadful work remained in the carriage. The ticket which M. Poinsot had taken at Troyes was found torn up and scattered in fragments about the compartment. A snuffbox and a neck wrapper were also found in the carriage; but the former of these articles certainly, and the latter probably, belonged to the deceased himself. The murderer had decamped with his weapons and his plunder, leaving no clue, unless it might be in the neckerchief, for the guidance of the police. Among the articles which M. Poinsot probably had with him, were a travelling rug and bag, a gardening book, a gold watch and chain, and a portmonnaie. These were missing, and their re-appearance will probably prove the only clue to the detection of the murderer.

The manner and time at which the assassin escaped have been discovered more exactly than could have been anticipated. The last station on the line before reaching Paris is Noisy-le-Sec, distant about five miles from the capital, and about as many miles before Noisy comes Nogent-sur-Marne. The train did not stop at either of those stations, but slackened speed in order to take in mail-bags. Between these two stations, a man was seen, both by some third-class passengers and by the wife of one of the linedkeepers, to jump from the train, and footmarks have been since discovered on the side of the rails and down the slope of the embankment at the spot described. Here, therefore, beyond doubt— that is to say, within ten miles of Paris—-the murderer made his cscape; and as a lady in the train heard cries near Noisy, it is probable that the crime was perpetrated near that place.

Some of M. Poinsot’s friends suspect that he may have made an enemy by some judicial decision, and that vengeance was thus taken for the offence. On the other hand, the watch and purse of the deceased were carried away, as also a railway rug. This might have been done for the purpose of giving the case the aspect of a robbery. Nevertheless, there were circumstances which would have attracted the attention of a thief towards M. Poinsot. He had gone into the country to receive his rents, and might be supposed to be bringing money back with him. He had a large leathern bag strapped over his shoulder, as Frenchmen carry such appendages, and it was apparently well filled. As it happened, indeed, the contents were not valuable. They were simply such records as a man would naturally carry to and fro between his residence in town and his house in the country. The unfortunate gentleman had got with him, besides his Parfait Jardinier—-his Loudon, as we should say,—-plans of his buildings, sketches of improvements in prospect, and receipts for moneys.

The circumstances surrounding the deed were exceptional, but nevertheless, such as are possible at any time. It seems that when the deceased took his seat at Troyes the compartment was empty, and the train left that station with M. Poinsot alone in the carriage. Afterwards other passengers, including perhaps the murderer, got in; but it appears to have been observed that at the last station where the train stopped before Noisy there were two passengers in the compartment, and two only--M. Poinsot and his murderer.

It was the weariest hour of the morning, and most of the passengers would be asleep; and it is a remarkable circumstance, that although the cries of the victim were heard the pistol-shots escaped notice. In order to escape, the assassin had to leap from a carrigae-door on to the line, though the train was moving at a good pace, and though he had encumbered himself with a heavy rug. He did hurt himself by the jump, but not so seriously as to be prevented from limping away and carrying with him all clue to his track.

The police appear to have had a suspicion of the murderer, recognizing in the description an escaped forcat named Judd, who, about two months before was suspected of having committed a somewhat similar crime. A Russian gentleman was found lying on the line between Paris and Mulhausen, mortally injured. It could not be ascertained whether he had fallen from the train through accident or violence; but a bag, containing Russian and French notes and coin, his property, was missing. In a carriage one of the cushions was found turned upside down and stained with blood, and a broken knife beneath it. Some time afterwards, Judd being arrested for another crime, there was found on him Russian coins and notes, and French money, to a large value. He made his escape from his cell, and had not since been heard of.

M. Poinsot commenced life as simple clerk to an avoué at Barsur-Aube. He afterwards became advocate, and pleaded before the Civil Tribunal of Troyes. Among his clients at that place were the family of M. Casimir Périer. M. Poinsot was 30 years in the magistracy. After having been Procureur du Roi at Troyes, he was appointed, in 1833, substitute at the Civil Tribunal of the Seine. He was afterwards named substitute of the Procurenr-General of Paris, and, on the 14th of April, 1847. was nominated Advocate-General of the same court. He was dismissed on the 29th of February, 1848 (after the Revolution), but on the 2nd of May of that year was appointed a judge of the Court of Appeal of Paris. On the 6th of April, 1857, he was named President of one of the Chambers of the Imperial Court. The funeral of the late M. Poinsot took place at the Church of St. Louis d'Antin.

----end

The Law Times, January 12, 1861, Pages 120-121

THE MURDER of M. POINSOT.-—The Union Bourguignonne gives the following details of the presumed murder of M. Poinsot:—-“Jud, who has lately acquired a celebrity equal to that of the most renowned malefactors, passed through Dijon in the early part of last month. When, on the 12th Sept. last, he murdered in a carriage on the railway from Befort to Mulhausen the Russian doctor Heppi, he was under sentence to twenty years' hard labour. On the 3rd Nov. he travelled in a second-class carriage on the line from Marseilles to Paris with a young civil engineer named Montalti, who was returning from Constantina, and on the following day they stopped together at Dijon, at the Hôtel du Cote-d'Or, kept by M. Gillet. “Beware of your fellow-traveller,” said M. Gillet to M. Montalti, “for he is without money; I have lent him 20f.” In the evening, when the engineer came in, he found that his double-barrelled gun, his shooting licence, a pistol mounted with ivory, and a powder flask had been carried off. His travelling companion, Jud, had disappeared. The police were informed of the theft, and his description was forwarded to Paris. On the 28th Nov. this dangerous malefactor was arrested and locked up, but he succeeded in making his escape, and fled across the country, as has been already stated, after knocking down three gendarmes who attempted to stop him. At the moment of his arrest he had in his possession some Russian bank-notes and a double-barrelled gun, which was doubtless that which he had stolen at Dijon. It was a week after this escape that the murder of M. Poinsot took place.”

----end

Cincinnati Daily Press, January 02, 1861, Page 1

Mysterious Assassinations Analogous to the Late Railway Murder in France.

Some months back, a strange case having
some analogy to the murder of M. Poinsot,
occurred on the Paris Mulhausen Railway. A
gentleman was found lying senseless on the
ine between Zillisheim and Illfurth, near
Belfort, and he turned out to be a Russian
military doctor, named Heppi. Whether he
attempted suicide, or whether an attempt
was made to murder him, or whether, when
half asleep, he had stepped out of the carriage
in the belief that the train had reached a
station, has never been satisfactorily ascertained,
and as he could not speak French, no
explanation was got from him.

On the one band, the injuries he had
received were such. as might have been
occasioned by his jumping or falling from the
carriage; and, on the other hand, in the
vehicle, one of the cushions, stained with blood,
was turned upside down, and a broken knife
was found beneath It. But, whatever were
the facts of the case, it was said that a bag,
in which were a number of Russian bank
notes and Russian and French coin, was
stolen from the gentleman. In spite of all
inquiries made, the affair continued enveloped
in mystery.

A few days back, however, an event occurred
which seems likely to throw light on
it. The gendarmes of Forette, in the Haut-Rhin,
arrested one Jud, a deserter from the
Third Squadron of tha Baggage-train, who
is under sentence of twenty years' hard labor
for some crime, and on searching the man,
thirteen Russian bank-notes, the value of
which was not known by the officers, were
found ; also, some Russian coin, and upward
of £350 in French money; also a sporting
license in the name of Jud, of Paris.

This man was placed in the lockup and
chained ; but in the night he succeeded in
removing his fetters. Two turnkeys, hearing
a noise, went to his cell, but he knocked
them both down, and, rushing out, fastened
the door on them. Another turnkey seized
him, but after a desperate struggle he broke
from him, got away, and has not since been
found. To this strange story, the Gazette
des Tribunaux adds, that in addition to the
Russian notes and money, the man was
in possession of papers belonging to Dr.
Heppi.

As a singular pendant to the melancholy
affair of M. Poinsot, the Piedmontese journals
mention that in a railway carriage, on
the line from Turin to Genoa, a man was a
few days ago found dead from a pistol-shot,
but whether fired by himself or by a
murderer is not known. None of the passengers
by the train had heard the report.

----end

Cincinnati Daily Press, February 05, 1861, Page 1

The late Railway Murder in France—-Arrest of the Supposed Assassin of Judge Poinsot.

A Paris correspondent writes as follows;
One of the German journals, the Elberfield
Gazette. states that the military deserter,
Charles Jud, the supposed assassin of the
unfortunate Judge Poinsot, has been arrested,
at the town of Ludwigsshafen, and is now in
prison, awaiting the claim of the French
government. A Paris police functionary
has gone to Germany, armed with a
photograph of Jud, to aid in identifying the
prisoner. A minute description of Jud's person
was published, throughout France, immediately
after the judicial inquest had established
(as it did thoroughly) that he is the
author of M. Poinsot's murder, as also of a
previous attempt to assassinate a surgeon of
the Russian army, under the same circumstances,
and on the same line of railway.

Among other items of his description, is
the existence of a scar over one of Jud's
eyes, and this mark has already led to the
arrest of half a dozen innocent persons, in
different parts of France. In the interest of
justice, it Is to be hoped that the real culprit
is this time in custody. If so, we shall soon
witness one of the most remarkable criminal
trials of modern times. Enough evidence
has already been accumulated against Jud
to hang (or rather guillotine) half a dozen
men, and the fellow is known to be one of
the most dangerous miscreants wno ever
disgraced humanity.

In America, it is a common practice for
the illustrated papers to publish portraits of
notorious scoundrels; but in France this
mode in catering to a morbid and degrading
taste is strictly prohibited by law. it is,
however, suggested that if the man arrested
in Germany sbould not he the veritable Jud,
the illustrated journals, five in number, with
a united weekly circulation of nearly 200,000
copies, shall be exceptionably authorized
to psblish an engraving of the outlaw, as a
means ot aiding in bis apprehension.

---end

Martin Kanes says that Jud was never captured, and that "[m]uch later, in 1883, the historian Nauroy maintained that Poinsot had seduced the daughter of one of his tenants and had been murdered by his victim's brother."

OTOH, a British journalist, R. H. Sherard, who knew Zola, wrote in 1903 that Jud was responsible for both the Poinsot and Barreme murders.

The Indianapolis Journal, August 16, 1903, Part 3, Page 4

TRUE STORIES OF CRIMES AND CRIMINALS
by R. H. SHERARD

[...]

One would like to have the pleasure of
reading a similar book with the man Jud
for its hero. Jud had a specialty of murdering
people in trains. His first crime was
committed in 1860, when he murdered a
judge named Poinsot in a first-class
carriage. Many mysterious railway murders
have since been attributed to him. down to
that of M. Barreme, prefect of the Eure
department, which was committed in 1886.
But he always managed to keep out of the
hands of the police.

[...]

----end

Some of Sherard's works:

Emile Zola: A Biographical and Critical Study (London: Chatto & Windus, 1893), link
by Robert Harborough Sherard



Twenty Years in Paris: Being Some Recollections of a Literary Life (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1905), link
by Robert Harborough Sherard



Oscar Wilde: The Story of an Unhappy Friendship (London: Greening & Co., 1905), link
by Robert Harborough Sherard


The Life of Oscar Wilde (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1906), link
by Robert Harborough Sherard, Lady Wilde

[Mayerling]

Kensit and Ritualism

The following come from Wikipedia.

John Kensit was originally a Roman Catholic and supporter of "Ritualism" but he converted to Protestantism and became a foe to the "Oxford Movement" of John Henry, Cardinal Newman, and how it seemed to affect the Church of England. He was not alone in this fanatical opposition to "Ritualism" (which he felt was pulling England and Scotland towards Catholicism). Gladstone's second-in-command in the Liberal Party in the House of Commons was Sir William Henry Harcourt (d. 1904), who also felt there was an extreme danger to the safety of British Anglicanism and Protestantism in general. Kensit took it a step further, by insisting that Gladstone's support of Parnell's Home Rule was the first step in making the British Isles over as a Catholic enclave.

The Wikipedia article on Harcourt mentions that after Gladstone's final retirement from politics in 1894, Harcourt remained leader in the House of Commons (and got a major reform in death duties on large landed estates and million-pound estates in Britain). But the Prime Minister was Lord Rosebery, who was leader in the House of Lords. Rosebery and Harcourt did not get along because Harcourt thought Gladstone should have made him the Prime Minister. Reading between the lines, Gladstone probably did not want Harcourt to have the post because of his fanaticism on the religious question (which Rosebery did not share).

Ironically Harcourt, when he retired from politics in 1904 (the year of his own death) had inherited title to his own family estate, and found he had the very expensive problems his own tax reforms of 1894 created.

Kensit was dead by then. He was outspoken in his dislike of Irish Catholics and Home Rulers. In October 1902 he was giving a bigoted speech in Manchester, when at the conclusion an Irish laborer hit him in the head with a weapon. Kensit was rushed to a hospital, and the wound was dressed, but blood poisoning developed. He died in November 1902, and the laborer was prosecuted for homicide - but I believe he was acquitted.

Harcourt's son Louis happened to be a highly regarded Liberal politician too. Louis "Lou-Lou" Harcourt actually was Colonial Secretary from 1910 to 1915. However, he had a reputation of sexual predatory actions against young women and young men (one of the young women was the daughter of Lord Esher). In 1923 one of the young men decided to press charges against "Lou-Lou". He committed suicide. A scandalously bad end for the son of such a moralist.

Jeff

[TradeName]

One member of the NVA (mentioned above) wrote a life of Molesworth.

Life of the Right. Hon. Sir William Molesworth, Bart., M.P., F.R.S. (London: Macmillan, 1901), link
by Millicent Garrett Fawcett (Dame)



In 1889, Labouchere in Truth twitted the NVA for not going after a religious publisher and then learned that the publisher was the distributor for the NVA's Vigilance Record.


Truth, Volume 26, August 15, 1889, Page 292

Where is the Vigilance Committee? During the last two or three weeks hawkers have been parading London with truckloads of an abominable publication called "The High Church Confessional." From a cursory view of one of the numerous copies with which I have been favoured, I should say that a more obscene work was never publicly offered for sale, and this filthy poison is being sold up and down the streets, under the very noses of the police, at the price of twopence. The publisher is one Kensit, of the “City Protestant Book Depôt,” 18, Paternoster-row, who boasts that he has sold 225,000 copies. It is nothing less than a public scandal that this Kensit and his associates should be at large, while Mr. Vizetelly is in gaol; for if what the latter has done be a crime, the crime is certainly infinitely worse when committed under the cloak of religion and morality.

August 29, 1889, Pages 381-382

RELIGIOUS OBSCENITY

In TRUTH of the 13th [sic] inst. I referred to the public sale by hawkers in the streets of London of a publication called "The High Church Confessional," issued by Mr. John Kensit of Paternoster-row. Correspondents had sent me copies of this work, and invited an expression of my opinion of it in the public interest, which I gave.

I have since received the following letter:--


SIR,—-My attention has been called to a most unwarranted attack, both upon myself as a publisher, and a pamphlet which is having a large sale and most effectually opening the eyes of Englishmen to the truth of the abominations of the Confessional. What the result of your remarks will be I cannot at present estimate; and, pending advice from my legal adviser, I am not in a position to judge. In the meantime, I ask you to give somewhat more than a cursory look at the pamphlet, and I claim in your next issue some further explanation or apology for your error.

Trusting you will see your way to act in this manner, and save any further action—-Yours, JOHN KENSIT.

I enclose some others of my pamphlets.


In fairness to Mr. Kensit, and at some violence to my own taste, I have made a further study of the publication in question. I regret to say that the result is to fully confirm my previous opinion. In addition to that, I have looked into some others of Mr. Kensit's pamphlets, including one which he did not send me, and which, in my judgment, deserves an even stronger censure than that which I passed upon “The High Church Confessional.” I am, therefore, unable to offer Mr. Kensit the apology he suggests.

As an alternative to an apology, however, I am asked for an “explanation.” Now, Mr. Kensit has consulted, or is about to consult, a legal adviser, who will, no doubt, be able to give him all necessary information respecting the laws against obscene literature and their bearing upon his own publications. I scarcely see, therefore, why I should be asked to explain either Mr. Kensit's position as a publisher, or mine as a public journalist criticising him. In view, however, of any possible “further action,” such as Mr. Kensit hints at, I will explain the situation as it presents itself to me.

A well-known publisher and literary man has just been sent to prison for publishing translations of the works of an eminent French novelist. They were not, in my judgment, immoral works. They did not, that is to say, set forth vice in an attractive or fascinating light—-quite the contrary, I should say. But they were most unquestionably indecent or obscene—-that is to say, they treated, without reticence or disguise, of subjects which people with healthy minds or cleanly tastes do not discuss or write about publicly. The publisher in question was prosecuted. I do not approve of the prosecution. I recognise the necessity of suppressing public indecency, whether in behaviour, or in language, or in print. But I look on it as a matter of police, not of morals, and I question the expediency of the police assuming a censorship over productions which have a bona-fide claim to be considered works of literature or art, as opposed to publications which cannot pretend to any other than an obscene motive. I do not so much complain of the law, which cannot easily draw delicate distinctions of this kind, as of the indiscretion and inconsistency of the busybodies who set the law in motion in this particular case. However, that is neither here nor there. The publisher was prosecuted, and his publications being unquestionably indecent in the sense I have above indicated, he was sentenced to a heavy term of imprisonment.

Now, I take Mr. Kensit's publication, “The High Church Confessional." I find in it page after page of the most loathsome indecency and obscenity, that is to say, the detailed discussion of subjects unfit for public discussion—-not merely of subjects which mere conventional delicacy enjoins silence about, but of vice and depravity in their foulest and most disgusting phases. What pleas, then, can Mr. Kensit urge why he and his publication should not be dealt with precisely in the same way as Mr. Vizetelly and his?

I can see only two, and both are obviously insufficient. Mr. Kensit may say, in the first place, that the passages to which I refer are merely quotation. The most offensive of them are, as a matter of fact, a verbatim reproduction of the foulest portions of a notorious ecclesiastical handbook called “The Priest in Absolution,” which, however, it is only fair to say, was never actually published, but merely printed for private circulation. Now, obviously such reproduction cannot be permitted unless the law is to become a dead letter. A second publisher cannot be allowed to republish in a quotation what the original publisher could be imprisoned for issuing, or any Holywell-street garbage monger might with impunity bring out an account of the Vizetelly case to-morrow, and “quote” all the most objectionable passages from Zola in an appendix. The first plea, then, is worthless. I imagine that Mr. Kensit will take refuge with more confidence in the second defence open to him—-that he publishes the book with a religious purpose and a good motive. But what is this worth? Granted that Mr. Kensit's motives are beyond reproach—-that he has not the remotest thought of the 225,000 twopences which have come in from the sale of his pamphlet—-was anything said about Mr. Vizetelly's motive, or those of M. Zola? I have no doubt that the latter gentleman could show without difficulty that his writings are dictated by no other motive than that of exposing social evils, unmasking vice, and strengthening the hands of the moralist and social reformer. But that would not avail him in a court of law. Looking at the matter from any point of view, it does not alter the police offence--the offence against public decency. And the moralists--the Vigilance Committee, let us say--would have an equally cogent answer. They would reply, "The motive is immaterial. The good which you will do is remote and problematical; the evil, on the other hand, is immediate and certain. Your writings are devoured by hundreds of boys and girls, or young men and young women, on whom they produce no other effect than sensual gratification and demoralisation of mind and body. You ought, therefore, to be suppressed in the interests of public virtue.” That is the argument used against Zola and Vizetelly, and it applies every bit as strongly to Kensit. I may say, indeed, that it applies with tenfold more force, for, while Vizetelly's indecency was offered to the public in the form of a French novel, bearing the significant name of Zola on the cover, and was sold at a substantial price; Kensit's production is hawked about the streets at the price of twopence, and offered to boys and girls, young and old, wise and ignorant, in the specious guise of a religious publication.

I have granted, so far, the blamelessness of Mr. Kensit's motive. But were it worth while, I should be disposed to offer one or two strong reflections upon that point. As it is, I cannot forbear pointing out that in a preface to what he very candidly calls “this dreadful book,” the publisher himself avows his object to be that of defeating “the Ritualistic traitors in the Protestant Church.” His entire catalogue of “Protestant Works” shows no higher object. This Protestant publisher, therefore, comes before the public far less as a religious teacher with a great moral lesson to enforce than as one whose first object is to vilify fellow Christians of a different persuasion, or to frighten away the sheep from an opposition flock. And it must be borne in mind that the licence which he claims in the pursuit of this amiable object must be equally conceded to the party whom he assails, and who will doubtless have as little difficulty in finding the right sort of dirt to fling back. The question, then, is not one of religion or of morals, but simply whether we are to allow rival divines to descend into the streets, there to bandy filthy epithets or pelt one another with garbage, to the annoyance and defilement of every decent bystander.

For these reasons I adhere to all that I have previously said about Mr. Kensit, and I once more call upon the Vigilance Committee to exercise against him the same vigilance which they displayed with so little reason or judgment against Mr. Vizetelly. Should they be disposed to do so, I should recommend them not to confine their attention to “The High Church Confessional,” but to make a study of Mr. Kensit's publications generally, and particularly of one, the name of which I shall be happy to furnish for that, but for no other, purpose. I know nothing of Mr. Kensit apart from these books. Neither have I any ill-will to the religious sect which he represents, nor any sympathy with the practices which he is desirous of suppressing. I simply assert that the public sale of certain of his books is unquestionably an outrage on public decency, and that the indiscriminate dissemination of such literature in the guise of religion must necessarily be injurious to public morals. And it is on these grounds that I contend that the law should be put in force against Mr. Kensit in the same way as against any other purveyor of obscene and pernicious publications.

September 5, 1889, Pages 421-422

IS THE VIGILANCE ASSOCIATION VIGLANT?

I have received, with mingled surprise and gratification, the following letter respecting Mr. Kensit, of Paternoster-row, and his publications:—-

National Vigilance Association, 267, Strand, London, W.C. (Near the Law Courts), August 31st, 1889.

To the Editor of TRUTH,

DEAR SIR,—-Our attention has been called to the article in this week's TRUTH entitled "Religious Obscenity." In one part of the article you call upon us to exercise the same vigilance towards Mr. Kensit as we have done towards Mr. Vizetelly. I shall be glad, therefore, if you will kindly forward me the title of the book you refer to as being even more obscene and pernicious in its character than the “High Church Confessional.”—-I am, yours very truly,
WM. ALEX. COOTE.

I have, as I intimated my willingness to do, forwarded to Mr. Coote the title of the work to which he refers in his last sentence. At the same time, I hope that this request is not to be taken as implying that “The High Church Confessional” itself does not afford sufficient materials for the exercise of the Vigialnces Association's vigilance. But now for the cause of my surprise at Mr. Coote's letter. I had previously, among numerous other communications on this subject, received the following:--

SIR,--I am glad that you have called attention to the class of publication issued by Mr. John Kensit. As a member of the National Vigilance Association I should like to inform you that the Secretary's attention was called, some time since, to one of these works and his opinion asked, but no answer has yet been received.

It may interest you to know that Mr. Kensit is , as the enclosed will show, the wholesale agent for the "Vigilance Record," the organ of the N. V. A.! Can this account for the Society's inaction in the matter--Your obedient servant, VIGILANS.

This is the enclosure which my correspondent referes to:--

THE VIGILANCE RECORD

Price One Penny, or 1s. 6d. per annum, post free.

Published by W.A. COOTE, at the Office of the National Vigilance Association, 267, Strand, W.C.

May be had wholesale of JOHN KENSIT, Publisher,18,Paternoster-row, E.C.


An edifying disclosure, certainly! Mr. John Kensit, the purveyor of obscene religious literature, is, it appears from this, himself the wholesale agent for the official organ of the National Vigilance Association. The Protestant publishing depôt in Paternoster-row seems, in short, to be a sort of literary chemist's shop, where the poison is kept on one shelf and the antidote on the next. The attention of Mr. William Alexander Coote, in his official capacity, was “some time ago.” directed to one of Kensit's publications, without, up to the present time, any result whatever. It certainly seems to me an incomprehensible state of things that the officers of a body with the pretentious title of the National Vigilance Association should require a stimulus from without to open their vigilant eyes to the character of the business carried on by their own publisher. It is, too, equally incomprehensible that, when their eyes have been opened, their “vigilance” should fail to translate itself into action. And, finally, it is not a little surprising that, after all this, the Secretary should write to me as if he had been all this time entirely in the dark. However, Vigilance is now, let us hope, wide awake, and fully equipped. Let us see whether she is ready to cast the beam out of her own eye.

September 12, 1889, Pages 454-455

I rejoice to find that the Bishop of Chichester has fallen into line with me in my recent attack on “Religious Obscenity.” One Dr. Fulton—-an American divine, if I mistake not—-has delivered a lecture at Brighton which would appear, from the Bishop of Chichester's rebuke to one of his clergy who was present, to have been not only obscene but blasphemous. Now this Fulton is (unless there are two professors of religious obscenity answering to this name) the author of one of the most filthy and disgusting works in Mr. John Kensit's abominable collection. The Bishop of Chichester appears surprised that the Rev. J. G. Gregory should have allowed Fulton's observations to pass without protest. To my mind it is even more astonishing that a clergyman of the English Church, knowing, as he must have known, something of Fulton's character and writings, should have appeared at the same meeting with him.

-----------------------

But now another word about the National Vigilance Association. Will it be believed that it was actually this very book of Dr. Fulton's—-the filthy publication to which I have referred above—-to which the attention of this association was ineffectually called some time ago by one of their own subscribers, as mentioned in my article on this subject last week? It is now a fortnight since I called their attention to the subject, and a week since Mr. Coote wrote to me for information which it seems that he had already had for a long time in his possession. In the meantime, I am told that barrow-loads of one of the most obscene of Kensit's publications are still on sale in Fleet-street, and I see the statement in a journal calling itself The Christian that my attack “is giving a strong impetus to the sale of the pamphlet.” Had the Vigilance Association chosen, this trade could have been stopped for good a week ago. Why do they not choose?

------------------------

Just as I am going to press I have received the following interesting letter:-—

SIR,--Your personal attack upon me and my business is assuming such a position that I feel convinced you must be led on by some other influence than the one you are so loud in proclaiming, viz., the suppression of vice. You are certainly carrying out the old adage “No case, abuse the client.” By this time most of your readers have secured copies of my exposure of the abominable and dreadful High Church Confessional, and many have written thanking me for my noble effort and sympathising with me in the abuse, or worse, I have sustained at your hands. Your mentioning some other book, in fact all my books, has led to a most delightful inquiry by many, who never before took any interest in the subject of Priestism, which is once again trying to subjugate the minds and consciences of Englishmen. The title of your paper is TRUTH, I would that you carried out that title, and published the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the ruth. Sir, if the statements abominable and filthy, as you say they are, be true, why not apply your pen to an awakening of our fellow countrymen to the danger they are in by allowing their wives and daughters—-yes, and empty-headed sons—-to be bamboozled by this cursed system? As a well-informed Englishman, you must know that this is no question of sectarianism, but a matter of liberty of conscience and freedom unknown whenever Popery or its bastard child get the upper hand. If the Priest in Absolution had the power, your organ of TRUTH would soon be gagged, and the press generally muzzled. May I ask if you are aware that the Priest in Absolution is still in possession of the so-called Holy Cross Society, and that it is the manuel (sic) used for training our dear curates to hear confessions? Trusting you will insert this in your next issue,—Yours, JOHN KENSIT.

-------------------------

Mr. Kensit's previous letter to me took the form of a request for an explanation or an apology, pending the result of a reference to his solicitor, which he had either made or was about to make. I gave him my explanation, and refused an apology. He now changes his tone, and favours me with the above mixture of abuse and cant. I presume that he has thought better of his application to his solicitor, or that the result of his application has been to satisfy him of what I told him before—-viz., that his filthy publications are an offence against the law and against public decency, and that if he had his deserts he would now be serving a term of imprisonment.

-------------------------

That the sale of his books has increased owing to my notice of them is a misfortune which cannot be helped. I am aware that to publicly describe a certain book as obscene or immoral must have the immediate result of sending hundreds of degraded individuals in quest of it—-whether the book is to be found in Paternoster-row or Holywell-street. But that a publisher should have the audacity to boast, as Kensit does, of this result having actually followed, is a greater stretch of impudence than I was prepared for, and affords, I think, a striking indication of the true value of the religious pretext which is put forward in justification of the offence. However, the Vigilance Association have now Kensit's own admission that he is doing a roaring trade solely as the result of his having been publicly denounced as a purveyor of obscenity. They can have, after that, no excuse for doubt as to the nature of this trade, nor for hesitation in discharging the duty for which they profess to have associated themselves.

September 26, 1889, Pages 552-553

A FEW WORDS WITH THE VIGILANCE ASSOCIATION.

The time has come when the ladies and gentlemen calling themselves the National Vigilance Association may be peremptorily called upon for some answer to the challenge addressed to them in TRUTH of the 29th ultimo and the two weeks following. I am entitled to say, in view of the communications on the subject which have reached me from all parts of the kingdom and all sorts and conditions of men, that the article on “Religious Obscenity,” which I published on the first of those dates, has awakened a very widespread interest. The Vigilance Association have officially acknowledged that the subject concerns them by writing to me through their secretary for further information. I have given them that information (though it was already in their possession); but, although three weeks have since elapsed, no action of any kind has been taken. In the meantime the scandal has continued unabated. More than that, the offender--himself, be it remembered, officially connected with the Vigilance Association—-has written an impudent letter publicly congratulating himself on the fact that, by denouncing him as a purveyor of obscenity, I have given a. profitable stimulus to his abominable trade. I say, without hesitation, that the attitude of the Vigilance Association under these circumstances is one for which the public has some right to an explanation from a body arrogating to itself the high-sounding title of a “National” Association “for the Repression of Criminal Vice and Public Immorality.”

The question which immediately suggests itself to anyone searching for such an explanation is, Who are or what is the National Vigilance Association? One of the first letters which I received on the subject was something to the following effect:--


You may as well spare yourself the trouble of invoking the National Vigilance Association against this nuisance. That body is a purely sectarian organisation, composed of rabid Evangelicals and demented No Popery fanatics. Their sympathies are sure to be with the man Kensit; in fact, I shall be surprised if you do not find that some of them are actively instigating him in what they doubtless consider a sort of Holy War upon the “Scarlet Lady.”


I am, however, rejoiced to find that, so far as the personnel of the Vigilance Association is concerned, there is not a shadow of foundation for this suggestion. In order to test it, I have procured a prospectus of the Association; and the following selection of a few of the more conspicuous names, out of the 120 or so on the General Council, will, I think, satisfy the most sceptical as to the catholicity of the society's constitution and the bona fides of its motives. Certainly, if these names represent a “sectarian organisation,” I have had the good luck to discover the most comprehensive sect in all history:—-

The Bishop of Durham, Rev. Dr. Adler,
The Bishop of Southwell, Mr. Bramwell Booth,
Cardinal Manning, Mrs. Josephine Butler,
The Earl of Meath, Mr. B. F. C. Costelloe,
Sir Arthur Blackwood, Mrs. Henry Fawcett,
Right Hon. J. Stansfeld, M.P., Mr. Mark Knowles,
Professor Stuart, M.P., Mr. George Russell,
and
Mr. W. T. Stead.

Now let me ask these ladies and gentlemen, jointly and severally, on what ground they are prepared to justify their conduct in not merely conniving at Mr. John Kensit's trade, but in taking the man himself under their corporate patronage? Here we have a select quorum of moralists who have taken upon themselves to say what literature is or is not fit for their fellow-citizens to read. In pursuance of that laudable mission they have stopped the public sale of the works of the most popular French writer of the day, and they have succeeded in sending the publisher of those works to gaol for three months. They boast, further, of having attempted to prohibit the circulation of an acknowledged classic like the “Decameron” of Boccaccio, and they are (it must be presumed) equally prepared to set the law in motion against such native writers as the poet Chaucer or the Restoration dramatists. I ask, then, these ladies and gentlemen what apology they can offer for the fact that from the premises of their own official publisher there are now being issued some of the most filthy and demoralising productions that ever left the press—-and that long after the officials of the Association have had their attention called to the fact by some of their own subscribers?

Do the Vigilance Association doubt the accuracy of my description of the works in question? I am reluctant to give Kensit a further advertisement by discussing his publications in detail, but this is a matter in which plain-speaking is the first consideration. Conspicuous among the material of which Kensit's wares are compounded is the notorious “Maria Monk.” The work of Dr. Fulton's to which I referred a fortnight ago is simply a réchauffé of the most tasty passages in that filthy production, thinly disguised at the most outrageous points by a suggestive use of asterisks and “turned metal-rules,” a concession to decency worth about as much as the occasional use of drapery upon his subjects by the artist in obscene photography. But more than this; Kensit is also selling, at the price of one shilling, an unexpurgated edition of the same delectable work, either under its original name or under an improved title, which can only have been adopted for the purpose of attracting the connoisseur in pornography. To the clerical portion of the Vigilance Association the character of this book must be perfectly familiar. I offer no opinion on the authenticity of its pretended revelations, the truth or falsity of which is absolutely immaterial. I simply appeal to the Council of the Vigilance Association, as experts upon this question, to say whether in their judgment the promiscuous dissemination of a book of this nature in a cheap form must not be necessarily and wholly pernicious. Let me ask Cardinal Manning whether he regards “Maria Monk” as entitled to the character and privileges of a religious publication? Let me put the same question to the Bishop of Durham a man of broad and independent views; to the Bishop of Southwell, a schoolmaster of wide experience; to Canon Scott-Holland, whose name figures conspicuously among the subscribers to the Vigilance Association; or to Dr. Adler, whose opinion on this question all parties must accept as free from even the suspicion of theological animus. Or again, let me ask the opinion of any of these divines upon another work of Kensit's, to which I have already referred. What moral purpose do they consider can be served by extracting from the “Priest in Absolution” passage after passage of descriptive writing full of the foulest suggestion, and hawking them about the streets at the price of twopence? By Kensit's own confession, hundreds of thousands of this abomination have been sold at this price. I ask the professed guardians of public morality to look at the clerks and errand-boys and shop-girls who are devouring this filth in the guise of religion, and to say from whom they are in most danger—-from the Scarlet Lady of Rome or “the Protestant Publisher ” of Paternoster-row.

If it were necessary to discuss the motive, I have already said, in dealing with this subject, that even at the best the religious pretext for such offences is worthless. The motives under which Kensit shelters himself are not religious, but solely sectarian. These books make no pretence to a higher purpose than that of defaming the professors of a rival religious persuasion; and if unrestricted licence in the use of such weapons is allowed to one sect, it must be equally allowed to all. All the records of criminal vice and all the resources of prurient imagination must be left at the service of the author and publisher who merely profess to libel a particular form of religion. A new charter must be granted to Holywell-street. In my judgment, however, it is utterly unnecessary to use this argument. The religious pretext for these publications is a flimsy and untenable pretence—-or, at least, the motive is as much commercial as religious; and I appeal to the candid judgment of the Vigilance Association, or any decent minded person, in support of that view.

Only one word more. I disclaim most emphatically any feeling of hostility towards the National Vigilance Association. I have their annual report before me; and though I consider that in certain of their proceedings they have shown a lamentable excess of zeal and deficiency of discretion, I cordially recognize the invaluable character of much of the work which they are doing. I not only recognise it, but, as regards a very great deal of it, I humbly desire to avow myself a fellow-labourer in the same field. Again and again, in the pages of TRUTH, attention has been drawn to immoral traffic in pretended works of literature and art by the professional corrupters of youth; and, wherever the columns of this journal can be of any service in “the repression of criminal vice and public immorality” they have always been open for that purpose. It is for that reason that I have drawn public attention to Kensit and his works; and it is for this reason that I again call on the Vigilance Association to perform their obvious duty towards him.

---end

A capusle review of one of Kensit's publications.

The Literary World, Volume 37, January 6, 1887, Page 19

Scylla or Charybdis. Which? Gladstone or Salisbury? By Lord R. Montagu. This pamphlet cannot be taken seriously. It is written from the ultra-Protestant point of view, and propounds the astonishing theory that both Mr. Gladstone and Lord Salisbury—-the latter of whom is incidentally described as a topsy-turvy Balaam—-are conspiring with Romanists to separate Ireland, and make it an autonomous Roman Catholic State, and a snug home for an expelled and expatriated Pope. (John Kensit, City Protestant Book Depot. 1s.)

---end


Scylla Or Charybdis; Which? Gladstone Or Salisbury? (London: John Kensit, 1887), link
by Lord Robert Montagu


A Vizetelly edition of Zola.

Piping Hot!: (Pot-bouille.) A Realistic Novel (London: Vizetelly & Co., 1887), link
by Émile Zola, George Moore

[Mayerling]

At the moment all I can say is that they were a self-righteous bunch of hypocrites. If Stead was a member of their councils, he was notorious (despite his "Maiden Tribute" series against child prostitution) for liking to kiss and slightly fondle women visitors or women who saw him on news business in the course of a work day. Yet he was an honored member. One wonders about the others.

Jeff

[TradeName]

Thanks, Jeff.

According to Henry Murray, if he may be trusted, Robert Buchanan rose to the defense of Vizetelly and Zola in 1889.

Robert Buchanan: A Critical Appreciation, and Other Essays (London: Phiip Wellby, 1901), link
by Henry Murray

Pages 14-15

But, when any great principle was at stake, no man was less hidebound by preconceptions than Buchanan. Much as he loved, and fiercely as he defended, certain minor dogmas, he would forego their interests where major interests were concerned, as he proved by his warm defence of Emile Zola, long before that great writer—-and greater Man—-had won the suffrage of every honest man alive by his splendidly heroic defence and rescue of the unfortunate Dreyfus, and when he was at the very nadir of English public opinion.

Everybody will remember how, in 1889, the veteran publicist and historian, Mr. Henry Vizetelly, was condemned, through the action of a clique of pestilent busybodies known as the 'National Vigilance Association,' to a term of imprisonment for publishing translations of Zola's novels. The Press for the most part applauded the foolish and tyrannical proceeding, and Buchanan was the one English man of letters of any weight or position who resented the barefaced outrage on literature and liberty. He addressed an open letter, in the form of a pamphlet, to Mr. Henry Matthews, then Home Secretary, praying, in the interests of justice and humanity, for Mr. Vizetelly's release. English officialism could, of course, take no note of so irregular a plea, however well supported by logic and eloquence; but 'On Descending into Hell' (the pamphlet in question) deserves to take its place by Milton's 'Areopagitica' and John Mill's 'Essay on Liberty' as an irrefutable argument on the side of freedom of thought and expression. Had Shakespeare or Victor Hugo been the insulted author instead of the writer of'Pot-Bouille' and 'La Terre,' this 'speech for the defence' could not have been conducted with closer reasoning or more generous fervour. 'I affirm,' wrote Buchanan, 'that Emile Zola was bound to be printed, translated, read. Little as I sympathise with his views of life, greatly as I loathe his pictures of human vice and depravity, I have learned much from him, and others may learn much; and had I been unable to read French, these translations would have been to me an intellectual help and boon. I like to have the Devil's case thoroughly stated, because I know it refutes itself As an artist, Zola is unjustifiable; as a moralist, he is answerable; but as a free man, a man of letters, he can decline to accept the fiat of a criminal tribunal.' [...]

---end

Buchanan's pamphlet.

On Descending Into Hell: A Letter Addressed to the Right Hon. Henry Matthews, Q. C., Home Secretary (London: George Redway, 1889), link
by Robert Williams Buchanan


Report of the International Council of Women (D.C., 1888), Volume 1, Pages 289-291
By International Council of Women

mention of Mormon


National Vigilance Association,
267 Strand, London, W. C, March, 1888.

To the Women's Congress, Washington, U. S. A.

Ladies: The National Vigilance Association desire to offer you their congratulations on the important Congress which you have this year assembled. They recognize the teaching of history that the position of women is the touchstone of civilization, and trust the outcome of your labors will be to give great impulse to the many movements for the elevation of women, on both sides of the Atlantic.

This association was formed nearly three years ago, and has for its principal object the protection of the virtue of young girls from force and fraud. It also suppresses houses of ill-fame, checks the fraudulent export and import of girls, watches registry offices and generally gives gratuitous advice and assistance to all comers within the scope of its objects. The work of its Organizing, Legal, Parliamentary, Rescue and Preventive, Literature, Foreign Traffic, and Finance Sub-Committees, needs no detailing here.

Such being its general scope, the association commends its work to the attention of the Congress as one specially engaging to women. It seeks the relief of large numbers of young women from a practical slavery, into which they are betrayed by persons who take shameful advantage of their inexperience, and only too often use an actual force worthy only of savage and barbarous countries.

In particular, the Rescue and Preventive, and the Foreign Traffic Sub-Committees of the Association desire to bring before the Congress several special topics on which interchange of thought and concerted action between American and English societies seem desirable, and with that view submit separate memoranda which are appended.

Signed on behalf of the National Vigilance Association,

Percy William Bunting, Chairman of Executive Committee.

NATIONAL VIGILANCE ASSOCIATION.

We desire to express our warm sympathy with the members of the Women's International Council, about to meet in Washington, in their various and earnest efforts to promote the amelioration of the condition of women. We feel that by intercommunication of the two nations, much mutual assistance can be given.

For some time past we have been seriously considering the condition of children in theaters, pantomimes, and music halls. We are informed that English children are every year taken to America and other countries, in traveling companies, to perform in the great towns, and that their moral surroundings are fraught with the gravest peril. We understand that it is contrary to the law of the United States that children of very tender years, should be thus employed. But owing to the short time that the companies remain in each locality, and to the cumbrous nature of legal institutions, these companies have made their harvest and are off, before any proceedings can be taken. We should be glad to rouse the attention of the Council to this subject.

We believe that already much care is taken by the emigration authorities as to the safety of girls arriving at the ports, but that there is still a large amount of leakage. This, perhaps, is not wholly avoidable, but still we think that too much care can not be taken, to ensure that these newly-arriving emigrants, who might be so profitable as servants, and in other capacities, to those in whose country they come to reside, should not, on first coming, fall into such evil hands as shall make them forever afterward worthless to society, and probably a heavy pecuniary burden on it. The case of Mormon girls and women is a serious one. They go over, unobserved, from our country as ordinary emigrants, but are really in the hands of those who, under various pretexts, get them away to Utah. Some inquiry having been made on the arrival of suspected parties in New York, we understand they now go by another route, so that detection is difficult.

We should be glad to know if there is any aim in the various States to raise to uniformity the age of protection of young girls. We understand that it ranges from twelve to twenty-one in the different States. We should like to know the opinion of the Congress as to the age to which it should be raised. We in England are anxious that it should be raised to at least eighteen. By our act of 1885 it was raised to sixteen.

We should like to know what regulations are in force in the United States, as to the provision of female police officers for the supervision of the women arrested and temporarily confined in police cells. At present in this country, although no male warders, etc., are allowed on the female side of our prisons, no similar precaution is observed in police cells, where men only are employed. We are endeavoring to get this altered, and we should be very glad to be in possession of the experience of other countries on the subject.

Finally, we should be glad to know the views of the Council on the question of the occupation of girls rescued from a life of vice; what their opinion is as to homes, and the length of time to be spent there; also, whether they think the greater freedom of girls in all classes in America tends to a higher tone of morality or to its relaxation.

Signed on behalf of the Preventive and Rescue Sub-Committee,

Millicent Garret Fawcett. Annette Bear, National Vigilance Association.

The Foreign Traffic Sub-Committee is using its best powers to prevent young women being induced by fraud to go abroad into houses of ill-fame, or into occupations of evil character, or which would lead to their ruin. The main labors of this committee have been directed to the continent of Europe, but they take this opportunity of laying before the women of America this important matter, and of asking whether they will co-operate with this Association, in securing proper supervision in immigrant vessels on the ocean, and in preventing those who trade in the vice of others in the United States, either from importing women by fraud from abroad, or in getting hold of them at the immigration depots in New York and elsewhere.

Signed on behalf of the committee for the Suppression of Foreign Traffic,

Elizabeth S. Lidgett.

---end



Manual of Vigilance Law (London: National Vigilance Association, 1888), link
by Wyndham Anstis Bewes


Pernicious literature: Debate in the House of Commons (London: National Vigilance Association, 1889), link
by National Vigilance Association (Great Britain), Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons


A link to another verison of the Henry Murray article, with some textual variations ("butchers" for "hunters"; "united in a ship's butcher" for "untried ...")

Montreal Daily Witness, July 19, 1889, Page 8

The Whitechapel Murders
Arrest of the Supposed Fiend

Theories Regarding the Murderer

[Mayerling]

Fascinating column. Now that I see that Buchanan was into work with British theatre (probably a stage director), it explains his vitriolic comments about William Archer's advanced ideas.

Interesting new name added - George Moore (1852 to 1933) who is one of Ireland's greatest novelists, and the one called the first modern novelist. He is best recalled for the 1894 novel (still in print) "Esther Waters" about a servant girl who is made pregnant by a footman, and then deserted by him.
Moore was deeply influenced by the "Naturalism" school of Emile Zola, and he got into serious problems in the 1880 as his fiction was too realistic for the lending libraries (such as W.H. Smith) for them to circulate of sell his works. His publisher was Henry Vizatelly, who also was fascinated by modern French realism and pushed Zola and his school. In 1888 a bunch of self-proclaimed purists called the National Vigilance Committee, had Vizatelly arrested for obscene libel (meaning he was publishing what they felt were impure, dirty books). In particular "La Terre" ("The Earth") by Zola. In September 1888 Vizatelly's trial came up. Moore wrote a letter to the public suggesting that instead of a 12 man regular jury Vizatelly should have his case decided by a three man panel of well read individuals. Vizatelly was found guilty an fined 100 pounds. In the following year Vizatelly republished all of Zola's novels, and was brought to trial again. Except now he was found guilty, fined 200 pounds, and sentenced to three months in prison.

Interestingly enough, this group of self-righteous censors had created their group in August 1885, after the publications of the "Modern Tribute of Babylon" series in the Pall Mall Gazette by W. T. Stead. Stead was a member of the National Vigilance Association's councils.

All of this information was from information in Wikipedia articles on Moore, Vizatelly, and the National Vigilance Association.

Jeff

[TradeName]

I may have found a version of the article that Henry Murray mentioned in his memoir, and it appears that he was incorrect when he said Labouchere jokingly confessed to being JtR.

The Salt Lake Herald, July 19, 1889, Page 1, Column 1

London's Puzzle

Views of Leading Englishmen On Jack the Ripper

[Special to THE HERALD--Examiner Dispatch]

LONDON July 18 [By special cable to the New York Herald.]--Mr Robert
Buchanan while engaged at a rehearsal at the Haymarket theatre said: "I do not
think Jack the Ripper committed the murder; it seems to lack the atrocious skill
displayed by him; there is none of the really distinctive handiwork of the original
fiend. He is probably an imitator, some weak-brained creature rendered crazy by
gloating over the details of the horrible affairs of last year. Of course that is very
loose guess work, but the evidence at present is so slight."


Mr. Buchanan had not heard the latest details when he spoke.

Mr. George Moore was engaged in correcting the manuscript of his forthcoming
novel. He thought the murderer to be Jack. Could he imagine a motive? "Very
easily. I have made up a theory almost from the first and 1 still believe in it. The
absence of the motives which generally lie at the root of a murder is very remarkable.
for these crimes are not committed for gain; that at least is certain. They are not, I
think, committed out of revenge. My theory is that they are the work of some weak-brained
zealot of the purity class. Perhaps this unspeakable wretch thinks that by
creating a panic among the poor women of the class he preys on, he may frighten them
from their profession. It is an insane idea, of course, but a conceivable one. He is the
loathsome outcome of the puritanism of the day. That is my idea."

Dr Wells, the author of "Fatal Physic," thought that the murderer was Jack; he
could not believe there were two such hunters.

The novelist James Payn had no theory. To have a theory in such a case was a
policeman's duty.

"It is obvious," said Mr Walter Besant, "that he is a criminal of a low class. That,
I think, is proved by the status of his victims. It is also obvious that he has at least
a rough and ready knowledge of anatomy; also he would seem to be a bird of passage.
It's hardly conceivable that with that horrible lust of blood constantly torturing him
and spurring him on to commit fresh outrages, he would have remained in London
so long without it mastering him. Here, then, we have three considerations: lowness
of class, knowledge of anatomy and nomadic life. These traits would be untried [?]
in a ship's butcher. Not many ships carry live cattle for slaughter nowadays,
and the great lines are all provided with ice rooms: but there are still to be found
ships without these conveniences. I have made a voyage around the Cape in a ship
on which we slaughtered our cattle for the table.

"A doctor who is a friend of mine made a suggestion at the time when Jack the
Ripper was busy in Whitechapel last year that in a certain class of disorders which
sometimes turns to homicide, the mania for it is especially directed against women, and
it might be worth while to make inquiries at the hospitals as to whether any man
with symptoms of such a disorder was discharged at about that date."

Mr Henry Labouchere said: "It does not seem possible to form a theory which will
hold water. I have seen and heard a score but never one without a hole in it. In fact
most of them were all holes.

"As to whether Jack the Ripper is one person or more; well, even that is doubtful.
I should say that he lives or they live at a distance from Whitechapel. The man
must have some hiding place in which to conceal his clothes which can hardly
escape the stains of blood. In that district everybody would see such stains, and be so
on the qui vive that he could not have found such secresy [sic] as was needful.

"Is he mad? Well, no. I should say he was conspicuously sane. I have seen
something of mad people and they all talk; they can't keep a secret. Of course this
man has very particular reasons for keeping his tongue between his teeth. If he
were caught, a Whitechapel mob would make short work of him. But still his
silence speaks for his sanity.

"Then again he is clever enough to laugh at the police though, that doesn't
take any great amount of genius. The police have bungled the affair terribly, but
I don't see anything apart from the individual points of the case which incline me
to think the man is insane, or why a murderer, even such a murderer, need be mad.
It is a taste like any other. The fellow committed the first murder, perhaps, if he
only knew it, from some personal motive. He was not caught, the taste developed,
and he went on."

[Mayerling]

Thank you for posting that stuffy commentary by Robert Buchanan regarding the Ripper and modern culture. He associates the Ripper's activities and choice of victims among the most "depraved" of society's women with Emile Zola's school of "naturalism" and the similar view of the brothers Goncourt and their criticism. As for Archer, he is referring to William Archer the critic, who was trying to push the theater going public in Britain to appreciate the realism of Ibsen and Strindberg as opposed to the sentimentality and melodrama of native drama, Archer's cause was soon abetted by that ablest of British dramatists George Bernard Shaw, with some assistance from Arthur Wing Pinero and Henry Arthur Jones. Buchanan apparently believed in putting women on imaginary pedestals.

But his opinion must have been known to have attracted that reporter's attention so as to be sought out as one of the interviewees. So must have been Labouchere's actual opinion, which he decided not to tell.

Jeff

[TradeName]

Thanks, Jeff, you reminded me that I have in my notes an analysis of JtR from a grouchy rant written by Robert Buchanan.


The Eclectic Magazine: Foreign Literature, Volume 49; Volume 112, May, 1889, Pages 663-675

The Modern Young Man as Critic
by Robert Buchanan

Pages 672-673

One word, before I proceed, on a point suggested by the growth in art of that diabolic love of the Horrible which is to be found among the class of realists so much admired by Mr. Archer and his friends. To those who imagine, as I do, that the world has been growing too cruel and cynical to exist in any sort or moral comfort, there is more than mere social significance in the occurrence of such hideous catastrophes as Whitechapel murders and other epidemics of murder and mutilation; for they show at least that our social philosophy of nescience has reached a cataclysm. and that the world, in its despair, may be driven back at last to some saner and diviner creed. The lurid and ever-vanishing apparition known in the newspapers as "Jack the Ripper" is to our lower social life what Schopenhauer is to philosophy, what Zola and his tribe are to literature, and what Van Beers is to art: the diabolic adumbration of a disease which is slowly but surely destroying moral sentiment, and threatening to corrupt human nature altogether. “Jack the Ripper," indeed, is a factor to be reckoned with everywhere nowadays. and it behoves us, therefore, to study him carefully. To begin with, he is an instructed, not a merely ignorant, person. He is acquainted with at least the superficialities of science. His contempt for human nature, his delight in the abominable. his calm and calculating though savage cruelty, his selection of his victims from among the socially helpless and morally corrupt, his devilish ingenuity. his supernatural pitilessness, are all indications by which we may know him as typical, whether in literature or in the slums, in art or among the lanes of Whitechapel. Most characteristic of all is his irreverence for the human form divine, and his cynical contempt for the weaker sex. As the unknown murderer of the East End, he desecrates and mutilates his poor street-walking victims. As Zola or De Goncourt, he seizes a living woman, and vivisects her nerve by nerve, for our instruction or our amusement. To him and to his class there are no sanctities, physical or moral or social; no mysteries, human or superhuman. He believes that life is cankered through and through. And as he is, let it be clearly understood, so is the typical, the average, pessimist of the present moment. Everywhere in society we are confronted with the instructed person for whom there are no gods, no holy of holies, no purity, and above all, no feminine ideals. Contemporaneous with modern pessimism has arisen the cruel disdain of Woman, the disbelief in that divine Ewigweibliche, or Eternal Feminine, which of old created heroes, lovers, and believers; and this disdain and unbelief, this cruel and brutal scorn, descends with the violence of horror on the unfortunate and the feeble. on the class called "fallen," which in nobler times supplied to humanity, to literature, and to art. the piteous type of the Magdalen. To understand the revolution in human sentiment which has taken place even within the generation, contrast poor Mimi once more with even Madame Bovary! With the decay of masculine faith and chivalry, with the belief that women are essentially corrupt and fit subjects for mere vivisection, has come a corresponding decline in the feminine character itself; for just as pure and beautiful women made men chivalrous and noble, so did the chivalry and nobility of men keep women safe, in the prerogative of their beauty and their purity.

---end

[Mayerling]

Thanks for the additional information, Jeff.


An anecdote about Labouchere and JtR:

A Stepson of Fortune; The Memories, Confessions, and Opinions of Henry Murray (New York: Baker & Taylor, 1910), link

Pages 155-156

[John] Reid, knowing that I had more or less acquaintance
with a fair number of British celebrities,
developed a habit of sending me out to collect
opinions regarding any interesting "mystery" of
the day. That lurid and ever-vanishing nightmare
of criminality, "Jack the Ripper," was then pervading
the Whitechapel district, and I inspected
his last victim, lying on the slab of the mortuary.
Reid suggested that I should go forth and interview
any celebrities I could find regarding the identity
of the criminal. I called on Walter Besant, Robert
Buchanan, James Payn, and Henry Labouchere.
I was—-or flattered myself that I was-—a bit of a
favourite with Mr. Labouchere, whom I had interviewed
on similarly curious themes on several other
occasions. He received me with the query, "Well,
young man, what's the imbecility this time?" "I
have come," I said, " to ask you if you have any
theory regarding the identity of 'Jack the Ripper'?"
"Well," he said, rolling the eternal cigarette in his
mouth--I never saw him without the cigarette,
except on one occasion, when I caught a glimpse
of him in his place in the House of Commons-—"I
don't know that I've formed any theory. But
I suppose you'd like one?" I replied that I should
be greatly obliged if he could evolve one for the
occasion." Then," said he, "I'll tell you what.
Say it's me. Lots of people will believe it, and I
promise you I won't contradict it." The New York
Herald issued a special placard next day, bearing
the inscription, "Identity of Jack the Ripper-—
Astounding Confession!" And for once, at least,
the public read the Herald

---end

Well, now we know. We may consider case closed and to close down this and similar web sites. It was Labouchere!

The illustration you submitted is a good one of the immediate aftermath. There is an illustration of Prince's actual stabbing attack that I have seen.

By the way I was looking at the list of celebrities Murray interviewed besides Labouchere. Walter Besant was a prominent writer and social reformer, who had been critical of the response of Warren and the police during the Trafalgar Square riots in 1887. Buchanan (I believe - I'm on shaky ground here) was a poet of that period. Payn was a novelist, now chiefly remembered for a feud he had with Sir Richard Burton regarding their rival translations of "The Arabian Nights". Payn's was admired for being more felicious in his use of language and more proper for Victorian households. Burton's of course (which is the one everyone remembers) was more accurate in descriptions of sexual and non-sexual customs (notes were included).

Jeff

[TradeName]

Thanks for the additional information, Jeff.

I found a sketch of the aftermath of the attack on Terriss from 1907.

The Scrap Book, Volume 4, July, 1907, Page 40

Unrehearsed Stage Tragedies

by Acton Davies






One of the Parnell forgeries that Labouchere compared to the "Dear Boss" letter.

Parnellism and Crime (London: George Edward Wright, 1887), link





An anecdote about Labouchere and JtR:

A Stepson of Fortune; The Memories, Confessions, and Opinions of Henry Murray (New York: Baker & Taylor, 1910), link

Pages 155-156

[John] Reid, knowing that I had more or less acquaintance
with a fair number of British celebrities,
developed a habit of sending me out to collect
opinions regarding any interesting "mystery" of
the day. That lurid and ever-vanishing nightmare
of criminality, "Jack the Ripper," was then pervading
the Whitechapel district, and I inspected
his last victim, lying on the slab of the mortuary.
Reid suggested that I should go forth and interview
any celebrities I could find regarding the identity
of the criminal. I called on Walter Besant, Robert
Buchanan, James Payn, and Henry Labouchere.
I was—-or flattered myself that I was-—a bit of a
favourite with Mr. Labouchere, whom I had interviewed
on similarly curious themes on several other
occasions. He received me with the query, "Well,
young man, what's the imbecility this time?" "I
have come," I said, " to ask you if you have any
theory regarding the identity of 'Jack the Ripper'?"
"Well," he said, rolling the eternal cigarette in his
mouth--I never saw him without the cigarette,
except on one occasion, when I caught a glimpse
of him in his place in the House of Commons-—"I
don't know that I've formed any theory. But
I suppose you'd like one?" I replied that I should
be greatly obliged if he could evolve one for the
occasion." Then," said he, "I'll tell you what.
Say it's me. Lots of people will believe it, and I
promise you I won't contradict it." The New York
Herald issued a special placard next day, bearing
the inscription, "Identity of Jack the Ripper-—
Astounding Confession!" And for once, at least,
the public read the Herald

---end

[Mayerling]

More on the Molesworths, and a connection between them and the Norways

This is from Boase's "Modern English Biography" (originally published about 1900). It's found in most good reference libraries. It contains hundreds of biographical squibs in detail about men and women who died between 1851 and 1900 in the British Isles, and also refers to hundreds of others who died before them. It is published in six volumes, three of which are addendum.

The first two are from volume 2. The pages are divided into two large columns that are numbered at the top.

Col. 916:

MOLESWORTH, Sir William, 8 Baronet (eldest son of sir Arscott Ourry Molesworth, 7 Baronet 1788 - 1823). b. Upper Brook st., London, 23 May 1810; entered at Trin. coll. Camb., expelled for challenge to his tutor to fight a duel; finished his education at univ. of Edinb., M.P. East Cornwall 1832 - 7l projected the London Review April 1835, which he transferred to J.S. Mill 1837; on the first committee at the Reform club 1836; obtained a parliamentary committee to inquire into the system of transportation in 1837 and wrote the report; M.P. Leeds 1837 - 41; M.P. Southwark 1845 to death; sheriff of Cornwall 1842; P.C. 28 Dec. 1852; first comm. of the board of works 5 Jany. 1833 to 2 July 1855; colonial secretary 21 July 1855 to death; F.R.S. 26 Nov. 1835; edited The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury 11 vols (1839 - 45) also Hobbes's Latin works 5 vols 1839 - 45, which cost him 6,000 pounds. d. 87 Eaton place, London 22 Oct. 1855. bur. Kensal Green cemet. 27 Oct. "The philosophical radicals of 1832 comprising the life of Sir W. Molesworth, etc. By Mrs. Grote (1866); Bate's Maclise portrait gallery (1883) 416 - 19, portrait, I.L.N. xviii 341, 342 (portrait, xxvii, 489, 490 (1855) portrait.

NOTE: - Je ,/ Ki;u 1944 Andalusia, only daughter of James Bruce Carstairs of county Kinrosa. She had m. (1) Tamle West of Mathon Lodge, Wormite, who d. 13 April 1839. She made her debut as a singer at Drury Lane as Diane Vernon in Rob Roy 5 Oct. 1827 under the stage name of Andalusia Grant. Her last appearance was as Hyman in 'As you like it' at Drury Lane in 1841. She entertained literary men and others in London and Pencarrow in Cornwall for many years. d. 87 Eaton Place, London 16 May 1888.

["I.L.N." means "Illustrated London News", and "Mrs. Grote" was the widow of Sir George Grote, the historian of ancient Greece - who was a fellow radical of 1832 with Sir William and John Stuart Mill, and a close friend.]

MOLESWORTH, William Nassau (eld. son of John Edward Nassau Molesworth 1790 - 1877). b. Millbrook near Southampton 8 Nov. 1816; ed. at King's sch. Canterbury and St. John's and Pembroke colleges, Cambridge; B.A. 1839, M.A. 1842; LLD Glasgow 1883; C of Rochdale 1839-41l P.C. t St. Andrew's Ch. Ancots, Manchester, 1841 - 4; V. of St. Clement, Spotland near Rochdale 1841-89; hon. canon of Manchester cath. 1881; author

[col. 917]

of Secular education an important element of religious education 1857, Essay on the French alliance 1860, Plain lectures on astronomy 1862; Prize essay on the great importance of an improved system of education for the upper and middle classes 1867; The history of England from 1830. 3 vols 1871-3, 5th thousand 1874; History of the church of England from 1660, 1882; edited with his father Common Sense 1842-3. d. Rochdale 19 Dec. 1890. b. Spotland. Biography, vi. 82 - 4 (1881); I.L.N. 3 Jany. 1891. p. 4 portrait.

[I believe this is the Rev. Molesworth that the Lightfoot brothers may have originally planned to rob when they came upon Mr. Norway.]

Boase: Vol. 5

Col. 1182

NORWAY, William King (son of William Norway, merchant, Wadebridge 1774 - 1819). b. court place, Eloshayle, Cornwall 25 Sept. 1799; educ, from 1811, King's scholer 1813, Soliciter at Wadebridge, Cornwall 1822 - 31; private sec. to Sir William Molesworth, bart; sec. to Reform club, Pall Mall, London July 1852; author of A lecture on total abstinence from intoxicating drink 1842. d. suddenly in his room at the Reform club 31 Jany 1857. bur. Kensal Green 5 Feb.

[He was the brother of both Edmund and Nevil Norway, as the father of Nevil is given by Baring - Gould to be William Norway, merchant, who died in 1819. But it seems he became Sir William's personal secretary, and thus another link between the Molesworth and Norway families. And another possible way for Sir William to have heard of the odd dream or to question it. It is also rather curious that for all their interest in the strange dream neither Baring - Gould nor Conan Doyle learned of this connection. They probably did not think to check for possible connections between the two families.]

Jeff