William Grant Grainger and censorship

[Chris]

Kebbell was quick to respond, on 20 April:


"JACK THE RIPPER."
____________

A REPLY TO DR. FORBES WINSLOW
____________

To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE.

SIR,-Taking for granted all Dr. Forbes Winslow has said in to-night's "Pall Mall Gazette," he, according to his own account, "frightened away" the man he concluded was the murderer. Not much use in this, so often the result of untrained interference.

The reflections on the police are undeserved. The police never refuse intelligent assistance, but obviously cannot have any masters outside the force.

The man Dr. Winslow mentions was well known. He was a religious maniac of a very dangerous type, but had nothing to do with the murders. His whereabouts were on each occasion accounted for, and at the time of one of the murders he was out of the country.

Dr. Winslow can congratulate himself that while he did nothing to assist the police, he failed to send them off on a false scent.-Yours truly,

GEORGE KEBBELL.

57, Gracechurch-street, E.C., April 19.

[Chris]

On 19 April Forbes Winslow intervened:


"JACK THE RIPPER."
______________

DOCTOR AND THE POLICE.
______________

Dr. Forbes Winslow writes :-

With regard to the remarks which have appeared in your issue on the above matter, I desire to challenge the facts communicated to your interviewer. Jack the Ripper has never been captured. Some time ago I thought that certain murders committed on the Continent might be traced to him, but I have come to the conclusion that this was not the case. If any one can speak authoritatively on this subject I feel I can.

The last murder of the Ripper series was perpetrated on July 17, 1889, the victim being Alice Mackenzie. On August 30 of that year I obtained a clue which I worked up to such a state of accuracy that I was enabled to trace the criminal after each of his previous murders. I found out the addresses of the various lodgings he had occupied on the night of each of his murders.

I also had feathers and some pieces of ribbon from the hats of women which he had left in the various lodgings, and which were handed over to me by the lodging-house keepers, and a pair of Canadian rubber snow-shoes covered with dried human blood. The latter he had left behind at one of the lodgings in his rapid departure after committing one of his crimes.

I have an exact description of the man in my possession. I knew his haunts, his ways of living and his habits. He was a religious homicidal monomaniac. Every Sunday morning he was to be seen on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral. I took the police into my confidence. I offered to catch the man provided they would render me the assistance I asked, but the red-tapeism surrounding Scotland Yard prevented their doing so. I was told by them that my clue was a very good one, but as a public body they could not help a private individual in his investigations.

I warned them of what I should do, and, receiving no help, I published my clue in the London edition of the "New York Herald." From that time to the present day no more Jack the Ripper murders have been committed. Though I did not actually capture the man, my intervention and action frightened him away.

I have in my possession the actual letter sent me by Jack the Ripper in the same writing as that which Sir Robert Anderson alludes to as being found under the arches, and which the police rubbed off. When in New York at a subsequent period I was highly complimented by the judicial bench on the lucidity of my clue and the way I had worked out the same.

It was a keen disappointment to me that the police did not act in co-operation with me. I cannot, however, allow the statement to be made that he was ever captured. What became of him after I had frightened him away remains a mystery which will never be fathomed.

[Chris]

Kebbell's letter was accompanied by a brief report of an interview with a representative of the paper:


MR. GEO. KEBBELL INTERVIEWED.
___________

MURDERER'S EXTRAORDINARY KNIFE

"Have you no doubt at all of the identity of the murderer?" a representative of the "Pall Mall Gazette" asked Mr. George Kebbell this morning in an interview on the subject of his letter.

"Absolutely none," he declared, speaking with the conviction of a man who has long made up his mind on the point and whose faith nothing can shake.

"Only just think," he went on to say, "this man was caught in the very act in an alley in Spitalfields. And what is most pertinent is that after he was arrested there were no more Whitechapel murders.

"I must not tell you, of course, what I know as his solicitor. I can only deal with facts that were common knowledge."
It was thoroughly recognised at the time that the police had got the man at last.

"The man was a madman, and it transpired during the trial that not long before the Whitechapel murders commenced he had been discharged from a lunatic asylum.

"What caused the police to suspect him in the first place was his habit of frequenting the lowest public-houses in the East-end with a most extraordinary knife. Women who saw it said they had never seen such a knife before. Certainly no such knife as this was ever made in this country. It was supposed that possibly it might have been some surgical instrument used in America. It has a peculiar twist in it.

"The police, who were watching him, saw him cut an apple with the knife in a public-house.It was with this very knife that he was mutilating the woman when the police pounced on him.

[Chris]

Here is George Kebbell's initial letter to the Pall Mall Gazette, published on the front page of that organ on Saturday 16 April 1910:


"JACK THE RIPPER."
___________

IDENTITY OF THE MURDERER
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DIED IN PRISON.
___________

To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE.

SIR,-Seeing the means at his disposal for ensuring accuracy, it is remarkable Sir Robert Anderson should have fallen into a blunder concerning the identity of Jack the Ripper. The latter was not a Jew, but an Irishman, educated for the medical profession, and, for reasons, disowned by his relatives.

Just prior to the Whitechapel murders he had been getting his living as a fireman on a cattle boat, and having been suspected and watched by the police, was arrested in the very act of mutilating a woman, who, as by a miracle, recovered, and, looking like a ghost, gave evidence at his trial.

The writer defended the man before the magistrate, but at the Central Criminal Court he was unrepresented. He was sentenced to ten years' penal servitude, and died, I believe, in prison.-Yours truly,

GEORGE KEBBELL.

57, Gracechurch-street, E.C., April 15.

[Chris]

It's very nice to have this on boards.

By popular demand, I shall continue the saga with the duel between George Kebbell and Forbes Winslow fought in the columns of the Pall Mall Gazette in April 1910. No great revelations - and obviously Kebbell is not a very accurate source of information on William Grant - but an interesting example of the Edwardian equivalent of a Casebook discussion ...

[DVV]

Thanks Chris,
it's very nice to have this on boards.
The story seems rather muddled... I wonder why Kebble did not properly defend WGG (there was room for manoeuvre) and instead, thought him to be JtR.

Amitiés,
David

[Chris]

Here's a report from the Times, 27 February 1895, which gives a rather fuller account of Grant's crime:

WILLIAM GRANT, 35, ship's fireman, was charged on remand with feloniously wounding Alice Graham by stabbing her. Superintendent Dodd, H Division, attended for the police. The prosecutrix was now able to attend the court and give evidence. She said she had no knowledge of the prisoner until last Saturday fortnight. She met him then about 10 o'clock at night, but had seen him in a publichouse in the Tenter-grounds earlier. He was then treating women. When they met at 10 o'clock he spoke first, and then they went to a publichouse, and from there to two others in turn. It was then closing time (midnight), and they went towards a lodging-house in White's-row, Spitalfields. On the way he got into a disturbance with three young men and took off his coat to fight them. A constable came up and the men went away. Then the prisoner seemed to "turn funny," and said he would not go with her to the lodging-house. A constable came up as she was helping him on with his coat and, catching hold of her, sent her one way and the prisoner the other. The constable, she said, used her "very cruel," threw her down, and "made her in a dreadful state." He drove her away towards Commercial-street, but she saw the prisoner on the other side of the way, and when she could she went over to him and told him how she felt. They were then near M'Carthy's lodging-house. The prisoner afterwards pulled her into an entry and threw her down. She struggled and resisted, and he cut her. She did not see the knife, but she felt it inside her. At first she thought she was only scratched, but by the time she had got up and walked a little she found the blood flowing and presently sank down. Then she got a "swimming," and scarcely remembered any more till she was at the station. From there, after being seen by the divisional surgeon, Dr. Phillips, she was taken to the hospital, and had been there ever since. Mr. Hubert Rutter, house-surgeon of the London Hospital, deposed to the nature of the injury, which was an internal wound - serious, but not dangerous. The woman, when admitted, had somewhat collapsed from loss of blood. The witness added that a pocket-knife produced, which had a sharp-pointed blade, would cause the wound. The prisoner was remanded.

[DVV]

So many thanks, Chris,
just read the letter supposedly sent by WGG to Forbes (the hooligans theory!)...
Could not believe my eyes...
So interesting, genuine or not!

Amitiés,
David

[Chris]

Forbes Winslow gives an account of his involvement with Grant in "Recollections of Forty Years", also written in 1910, whose text is available on this site:

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

[DVV]

Merci beaucoup mon cher,
Amitiés,
David

[Chris]

where is Kebbel's statement to be found?

Apparently it was in a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette (15 April 1910), to which Forbes Winslow responded (19 April 1910). That information was posted by Wolf Vanderlinden in 2003. I assume more information has been published - somewhere - on Grant than I'm aware of.

Kebbel's letter was referred to in the "Mentor" column in the Jewish Chronicle, 22 April 1910, as follows:

It will be remembered that the statement made by Sir Robert Anderson, in the course of a series of articles contributed to Blackwood's, to the effect that "Jack the Ripper" was a Jew, was referred to by the present writer in this column. My chief object in calling attention to Sir Robert Anderson's assertion was to contest his placing upon our community the double ignominy of producing a monster like "Jack the Ripper" and the further statement that he would have been brought to trial but for the fact that the only person who knew him was himself a Jew, and refused because of race-kinship to give evidence of identification. I pointed out the utter ridiculousness of the latter statement under the circumstances, and I ventured to doubt the accuracy of Sir Robert's belief as to "Jack the Ripper" being a Jew. I did this from abundance of internal evidence and the paucity of external evidence. Now I see that Mr. George Kebble has written to the papers to say that Sir Robert was mistaken; that a man believed to be "Jack the Ripper" was caught red-handed, tried and sentenced, and that he was not a Jew. With one thing and another, Sir Robert's articles appear to have got him into hot water.

[DVV]

In 1910 his lawyer, Kebbel, claimed Grainger had died and was JTR


Chris Lowe

Hi Chris and all,
where is Kebbel's statement to be found?
Thanks,
Amitiés,
David

[DVV]

I agree, Chris,
the fact that the PMG article (7 May 1895) prudently states: "But obviously identification after so cursory a glance, and after the lapse of so long an interval, could not be reliable", strongly indicates that the story is not a journalist's invention.
"So lapse an interval" might also explain why no police officials (involved in the ripper's chase in 1888) have expressed opinions "in favour" of WGG.
Some of them were no more active, some others had already expressed their own theory, and perhaps in 1895 some others were not eager to talk about the matter, who was a complete failure for the Yard.

Amitiés,
DVV

[Chris]

There are no police records of Grant's attempted identification as well. Maybe he didn't pan out very well as a suspect.

Fair enough, but as far as I know there are no police records of Grant being investigated at all in relation to the Ripper murders. I don't know whether any of the information in the report has been verified, but it seems unlikely to have been invented, so I assume it's correct that the police did go to considerable lengths to trace Grant's movements.

The thing is that apart from this article, we wouldn't have any plausible indication that the police considered Grant seriously as a suspect. I can't help wondering how many other police suspects there were that we just don't know about - and just how long the police went on investigating people in this way.

[Scott Nelson]

There are no police records of Grant's attempted identification as well. Maybe he didn't pan out very well as a suspect.