The Chapman murder and Charles Lechmere

[MrBarnett]

Hi,

Do we know enough about Lechmere to be able to say he was a punctilious form filler?

MrB

[MrBarnett]

Hi,

The vast majority of the population then as now registered their childrens’ births, filled out census forms and electoral register forms and ensured that their children attend school regularly. It would have been against the law not to do so.

All this shows to me is that Lechmere was a conformist. As does his casual use of his respectable policeman stepfather’s name. And the fact that he reverted to Lechmere when filling out official forms again smacks of someone wary of doing anything illicit. Don’t forget, this is the guy who found a dead (or dying) woman in the street and his main concern was that he shouldn’t be late for work.

And we are supposed to believe that this is the man who had the arrogance and sense of invulnerability to murder several woman just yards away from potential civilian captors and on known police beats. And then he is supposed to have rushed off to work drenched in blood and carrying human organs?

Sounds like two very different personalities to me.

MrB.

[Lechmere]

Mr B

Charles Lechmere moved address six times and never missed an entry in the electoral register. That is quite unusual.
All eleven of his children did not just have their birth registered, they were all christened.
His children were not just registered to attend school, when they moved address they changed school but did not miss a day’s schooling.
His life is very well documented. There is not a single gap in the records.
I would suggest that for his class and in that period this was unusual.
I would also suggest that it was unusual for a carman to be frugal enough to be able to run a grocer business and diversify in that direction when he gave up his carman role.

However I don’t think a conformist abandons a woman who he thinks may be unconscious after having been ravished. I don’t think a conformist would be more concerned (allegedly) about getting to work on time.
I don’t think a conformist would avoid coming forward for several days in such a well-publicised case.
It is interesting to wonder whether Lechmere would have come forward at all if he had not bumped into PC Mizen when in company with Paul, and then had Paul not gone running to the press.
More significantly it is a slightly odd to suggest that Lechmere’s conformism was exemplified by: ‘his casual use of his respectable policeman stepfather’s name’.
A conformist would surely use his real name?
If he was writing his name on a raffle ticket stub for a fundraiser for the Police Benevolent Fund, then giving the name of his policeman step father might be understandable. But this was a very serious murder investigation where he had delayed in coming forward.
What sort of conformist gives a different name to that which he used in every other registered encounter with authority?
Then we have his appearance at the inquest. Surely a conformist would turn up in his best bib and tucker?
Lechmere turned up in his work clothes – complete with apron. Why wear the apron?

[Ginger]

he left a similar cash sum in his will to the estate of Donald Swanson.

Indeed? He left a bequest to Chief Inspector Swanson's estate? Did he say why?

[Damaso Marte]

Many evil things have been done by people who are nonetheless extremely meticulous (you all know which European country I'm thinking of...), and if Crossmere's excellent record-creating shows unusual meticulousness this does not, to me, imply that he is not also a serial killer.

[Scott Nelson]

Yes, it's going rather well to this point, isn't it Ed?

[Lechmere]

To clarify.

The value of Charles Lechmere's estate was similar in value to the estate of Donald Swanson.

To me the preciseness of Lechmere is an indication of a controlled nature. I would suggest there are hints that he felt powerless - dominated by a controlling and powerful mother (who looked after one of his daughter's and who was striking enough to claim three husbands) yet this mother was subservient to men who were not his father.
The murders started almost immediately after he moved away from the area where his mother lived - when he escaped her apron strings.

I think the murders are about control - showing he had ultimate control over those women's lives.
I think control - being in control - was important to the killer and I can see from what we know of Lechmere's life, evidence that supports the possibility that these influences were at play.

In case anyone says these factors would affect thousands of others - the combination is unique to Lechmere.
It does not prove that he was guilty nor that he was a psychopath but in building a case against him these details are interesting.

[Lechmere]

Scott
I'm never sure whether or not you are having a laugh.

[lynn cates]

sex

Hello Edward.

"The irony of Kosminski as the culprit is that his leading advocates have to make the case that he wasn't so mad in 1888 and it came on later, when his madness is the key thing the police mentioned with respect to his potential guilt."

Well, perhaps his madness was less important than his attitude towards prostitutes (of which we have no direct record); and, above ALL, his sexual proclivities.

In my mind, THAT is the one thing that ties Kosminski to Druittt and Tumblety--the investigators were looking for someone with sexual tendencies beyond the norm.

Cheers.
LC

[MrBarnett]

Hi Lechmere/Damaso,

My point was not that Lechmere’s form-filling ruled him out as a serial killer, but to question why you would think it was an argument in favour of his being so. Having done a lot of family research in the Victorian East End I can assure you that filling out such forms was not unusual.

You mustn’t confuse Lechmere with the indigents and ‘unfortunates’ that we are often researching in this subject. Moving six times in a lifetime is nothing - your average doss house or tenement liver, doing a moonlight flit every time the rent was due would be able to count their residences in the dozens. And if the system of electoral registration was the same then as it is now, then the form would have dropped on his doormat every few years and when opened would clearly state that it was a criminal offence not to complete it. You don’t have to have a serial killers mentality to write and sign your name a handful of times in your life
.
As for school attendance, gender roles being what they were in the LVP, I would imagine it was Mrs Lechmere who was the punctilious one. If Lechmere left for work in the wee hours, he was not the one who packed the kids off to school.

Then we get to come to the name. My wife’s parents split when she was very young. Some time later her mother remarried Mr Y. Mr Y never formally adopted the children from the first marriage to Mr X and they never changed their names by deed poll. Mr and Mrs Y then had two more children. As the children grew up they all thought of themselves as the Y family. When I met my wife she introduced herself as Miss Y – everyone knew her as Miss Y. I knew the father I met was her stepfather, but it wasn’t until we had to fill out the marriage certificate that I discovered that legally she was Miss X. I can’t be certain because the situation never arose, but I think it is quite possible that if she had witnessed a crime she might well have given the name Y on the spur of the moment. That is quite different from sitting down to fill out an official form. Nothing sinister about that I would argue. (Still, just to be on the safe side I think I’ll volunteer to carve the turkey this afternoon!)

Lechmere seems a very respectable, probably religious man with a steady job who was eventually able to start his own business. I don’t argue that this precludes him from being a serial killer, just that there is nothing remotely suspicious that we know about the man. Yes he was the first on the scene and didn't want to hang around, but beyond that he seems to have been a paragon of a Victorian working man. We should be pinning a medal on him not the Whitechapel murders.

I remain to be convinced.

Anyway, I'm off to count the carving knives.

Merry Christmas

MrB

[Wickerman]

Many evil things have been done by people who are nonetheless extremely meticulous (you all know which European country I'm thinking of...), and if Crossmere's excellent record-creating shows unusual meticulousness this does not, to me, imply that he is not also a serial killer.

Being meticulous (if that be the case), should only influence the type of killer he was, not whether he was a killer or not.
No doubt OCD existed then among the population much as it does today.

[Lechmere]

Wickerman
I personally wouldn’t use the term meticulous to describe Charles Lechmere.

Lynn
As you say we have no record as to Kosminski’s attitude towards prostitutes – any more than we know Charles Lechmere’s attitude towards prostitutes.

I agree that so far as the police were concerned, a common denominator between Kosminski, Druitt and Tumblety was some form of what they regarded as sexual madness. I have a strong suspicion that in all three cases it was homosexuality.

Mr B

Charles Lechmere didn’t move six times in his life – he moved six times when he could have been on the electoral register – in twenty years.
It seems to me unlikely that his move would always have neatly coincided with the form dropping on his doormat. Logically he would have been pro-active in getting his name on the list.
With the electoral register – until recently – when you entered your details your name tended to stay put on the list unless you took action to have it removed or you moved and gave an alternative address.
I wasn’t comparing him to a lodging house dweller or prostitute

As for his childrens’ schooling, his wife was illiterate and the parent’s name in the records is his, so I suspect he took the lead role. Also men tended to be more masters in their houses then. We don’t know however and can only guess.

The example you gave of your wife’s use of surnames is not comparable.
The step father Thomas Cross was long dead.
We have 100 plus instances of Charles Lechmere calling himself Lechmere and never Cross, in many different circumstances – apart from when he turned up at a police station with respect to the Nichols murder.
The sheer quantity of recorded instances of Charles Lechmere is in itself remarkable for such a nobody.

[MrBarnett]

Hi Lechmere,

I still don't see anything 'anal' in someone who leads a fairly stable life - i.e. long term employment and residence - filling out forms that were a legal requirement of every citizen. I know you weren't explicitly comparing Lechmere to one of the great unwashed from Dorset Street or Flower and Dean, but I just don't understand why you are surprised that a respectable Eastender who held down a job for several decades and ended up with his own small business should be easily traceable in the official records. It doesn't surprise me at all that we can't find much about Mary Kelly in the records, but from what we know of Lechmere I would be amazed if he wasn't easily traceable throughout his life.

Incidentally, I've just noticed a rather odd thing about Lechmere’s census returns for 1881/91.

Children’s places of birth given in 1881 while living in St. George in the East:
Elizabeth, Thomas, George and James all recorded as born in Mile End New Town.

Then in 1891, while living in Doveton Street, Mile End Old Town:
Elizabeth again shown as born in Mile End, but Thomas, George and James are all shown as born in St George in the East.

Is there an explanation for this?

As head of the household it was the legal responsibility of Charles to personally provide this information. However, it appears he made an error on one or other of the returns. Unless of course he failed to complete the form himself and let his illiterate wife deal with the official in the doorstep (quite normal in the east End, I would imagine). Either way, it seems we we are not looking at someone who is anally diligent, just a normal bloke doing his best to comply with the law of the land. It doesn’t do anything for Lechmere’s candidacy as JTR to spin serial killing tendencies from normal form filling. I agree he is an interesting subject for further research, and I don’t write him off as Nichols’ killer at least, but in my opinion the ‘overly punctilious’ argument just gets in the way of any consideration of his involvement.

MrB

[Lechmere]

Mr B
You put a lot of emphasis on legal requirements.
Lechmere should really have come forward as a witness sooner but didn’t.
He then gave an incorrect name to the police.
It’s not that Lechmere was traceable in various records – as I hope I have shown it is that he is very consistent appearance.
The Overseers of the Poor –whose task it was to maintain the electoral register – made their door to door enquiries in April and May each year.
You actually raise an interesting point about his children being listed in 1881 as being born in Mile End New Town – I will look into that further.

[Scott Nelson]

This thread isn't going the way I imagined it would. Did Cross and Paul meet on other mornings after the Nichols murder on their way to work? Could six or seven days be enough to establish an incentive in Cross' mind to implicate Paul fir another murder he was about to commit? If so, when or did did Cross go to the police about Paul?