Jack and the Grapestalk

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

This question is guaranteed to give Tom Wescott a fit of the screaming ab-dabs.

If Matthew Packer's 4th October story was not true, how can it be that on 1st October three people–Diemschitz, Kozebrodski and an agency newshound–were reported to have seen grapes in Stride's hand?

Regards,

Simon

[Tom_Wescott]

This was the title of my 2006 essay in Ripper Notes - 'Jack & The Grapestalk: The Berner Street Mystery'. In that essay I answered this very question.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Simon Wood]

Hi Tom,

Great minds think alike.

I don't have your 2006 essay, so could you please briefly explain?

Regards,

Simon

[Tom_Wescott]

I'd have to read the essay again. I don't remember off hand.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[caz]

Hi Simon, Tom,

I really don't see why it would be impossible for Liz to have been one of the people Packer saw that evening, unless he is presumed to have had no customers at all, or seen no living soul the whole time he was open for business.

All he said was that he had seen and heard nothing suspicious or unusual. What would have been remotely suspicious or unusual about serving a man with a female companion, if he had no reason to believe, until Le Grand came fishing, that they had any more to do with the murder than anyone else he had seen that day?

Love,

Caz
X

[Adam Went]

Maybe that's where Liz's sixpence went.
Let's also remember that, upon searching, there was a grape stalk found in the grate in the passageway to Dutfield's Yard.
But, like the GSG later that night, it's not really specific to anything.....

Cheers,
Adam.

[Debra A]

Hi All,

This question is guaranteed to give Tom Wescott a fit of the screaming ab-dabs.

If Matthew Packer's 4th October story was not true, how can it be that on 1st October three people–Diemschitz, Kozebrodski and an agency newshound–were reported to have seen grapes in Stride's hand?

Regards,

Simon

Hi Simon,
Good question, but if the story was true, and those three witnesses really did see grapes in Liz's hand, how come Dr Phillips specifically says at the inquest that he had not found any grapes in the hands of the deceased, and he did not believe that she had swallowed any either?
What had happened to those grapes?

[Simon Wood]

Hi Debra,

There's more to the Packer/Grapes story than meets the eye.

If Sergeant White's story of interviewing Packer on Sunday morning, and recording the details in the notebook given to him especially for the purpose, was true there would have been no need for Scotland Yard to later go into an internal cartwheeling damage limitation exercise following the Evening News article. Also, I don't believe the two detectives White encountered were Le Grand and Batchelor. PIs do not outrank police sergeants, yet White meekly allowed them to take Packer away. And nobody has yet explained how such a dubious character as Le Grand had an entree to the upper echelons at Scotland Yard.

And what was Abberline doing while all this was going on? Reportedly at Scotland Yard, he had to have been in Whitechapel at some point that day in order to co-sign [with Superintendent Arnold] White's H Division report of the affair.

The Evening News pointed out that Packer's story did much to harm the Metropolitan Police, but as far as the press and public were later concerned the cops themselves did nothing to rebut their apparent bungling of the affair.

Enter Doctors Phillips and Blackwell, recalled to the inquest following the Evening News story, to poo-poo the grapes reportedly seen by Diemschitz [though not mentioned by him on Day One of the inquest], Kozebrodski [not called to the inquest] and a news agency reporter.

As a final thought, Packer stated that he was taken to see Eddowes' body on 3rd October. Why was he not taken to see Stride's body until the following day?

It's all very odd and far from straightforward.

Regards,

Simon

[Debra A]

I agree the story is far from straightforward, Simon, but for different reasons to you.
I can't understand the need for the police and doctors to all be lying or covering something up in this situation when there may be a simpler reason for what happened, that being the prescence of a criminal, liar, blackmailer and confidence trickster getting involved in this part of the investigation.

Le Grand is reported by the Evening News to have sought out Packer as the first person to begin his investigations with, maybe because he had heard the rumours about grapes being seen in Liz's hand?

It wasn't the last time Le Grand would meddle into the investigations following Liz's murder either. I still find it odd that Sgt White and Thick were reported to have been in possession of a bloodstained shirt from the day after the double event [See Gavin Bromley's article on Mrs Keu'rs lodger,' Is there an echo'] and it had previously been thought police had managed to keep that information well under wraps until the story of the Batty Street lodger broke on the 15th October, until I found a report from the 9th October that said it was Grand and Batchelor who had been investigating a bloodstained shirt left with a laundress at Batty Street.

Let's not forget, Le Grand was not a private detective, he was a criminal who used the persona of a detective to commit crime, why would he behave like a detective in this scenario then?

Just some of my thoughts on the subject anyway.
...don't all shout at me at once

[Simon Wood]

Hi Debra,

Le Grand and Batchelor came late to the Batty Street party. If the Irish Times [17th] is to be believed the police, despite their earlier denial, were in possession of the bloodstained shirt on September 30th.

"A reporter to-day [16th?] elicited the fact that from the morning of the Berner street and Mitre square murders the police have had in their possession a shirt saturated with blood, and they are evidently convinced that it was left in a house in Batty street, by the assassin."

The more I learn, the less I understand.

Regards,

Simon

[Debra A]

Hi Simon,
Yes, Grand and Batchelor came late in terms of the finding of the bloodstained shirt at Batty Street if the reports that the police were in pssession of it from the morning following the double event are true.

What is interesting is that until the Echo of 15th October reported specifically that a bloodstained shirt had been left at Batty Street with a laundress, the police, if they had found the shirt and were investigating, had managed to keep that information under wraps for two weeks. Or so it was thought.
On 10th october, a report [dating from the 9th] appeared saying that Messrs Grand and Batchelor were investigating a bloodsatined shirt recently left with a Mrs kail, a laundress in Batty Street [all the elements of the story reported widely from the 15th onwards but 5 days before any of the others] and that they had passed the information on to police
Grand and Batchelor here being mentioned in the earliest known report of the shirt in Batty Street.
If the police were keeping this find a secret how did it get leaked to the press and Grand and Batchelor's name tied up in the investigation in this seemingly one, random, very early report?

I don't know if you caught my other post on the Casebook Examiner II thread about Grand using the name 'Grand and Co' on letterheads produced in court in 1889? In that snippet there's also a mention of Le Grand trying get a letter published in the Evening News, to bolster along his current blackmailing scam.[also mentioned in Tom's article] He seems to have been a good manipulator of the press when he wanted to be.

The more I learn the more I feel my head is going to explode!

[Simon Wood]

Hi Debra,

What a pair of exploding brainiacs we are.

Try adding this to the equation.

At the Old Bailey, 24th June 1889, George Lewis, a solicitor consulted during the Ripper case, stated that "I have seen Grandy [Le Grand] at my office, not in connection with this case [conspiracy], but as a private detective in connection with the Parnell case . . . it did not come to my knowledge that he had been employed by Mr. Soames, nor do I believe it—I do not know that he had been shadowing Pigott and Mr. Labouchere; I do not believe it . . ."

George Lewis, who had interviewed Pigott in the company of Parnell, did not say that Le Grand was not shadowing Pigott and Labouchere; merely that he did not care to believe it. But if Le Grand's story was true this puts him in company with the RIC, two of whose officers–Sergeants Fawcett and Gallagher–let Pigott to slip through their fingers, and Robert Anderson who, it was believed by the press and others at the time, connived to allow Pigott's escape. Anderson then despatched two of Littlechild's officers–Inspector Patrick Quinn and Sergeant Richard Owen–to arrest him in Spain.

Talk about six degrees of separation. We've still got a long way to go, but I'll bet you a tenner to a Snickers bar that, somehow, the JtR phenomenon was inextricably bound up in the political intricacies of the Special Commission, which makes for a very good reason why it's still a state secret almost 122 years after the event. And if certain people have their way, it will remain a secret.

Regards,

Simon

[Phil H]

Absolutely fascinating!!

So we have another potential "Irish/Fenian" connection.

Is the solicitor - George Lewis - the same as the one who was used by many in high society to deal with their cases. He came to my attention - if so - over the Daisy, Countess of Warwick letters (when Edward Prince of Wales tried to regain scandalous letters from Lewis and was rebuffed).

I have found this about Lewis, from "The English Country House Party" by Phyllida Barstow.

The man most often called in to handle the delicate business of papering over the cracks - reconciling offender and offended, keeping the matter out of court and preventing any hintof trouble reaching the Press - was a solicitor named George Lewis, who used to claim that his head was so full of secrets that he dared not keep a diary for fear of it falling into the wrong hands.

A skillful negotiator of great sense and discretion, lewis was adept at sorting out the tangled affairs of cuckolded noblemen and card-sharps alike...

Lewis is referred to as having been a house-party guest at Sandringham and was "very far from being in awe of his noble clients: he knew their weaknesses too well".

He was eventually knighted.

So, Lewis was well known for his discretion, and handled delicate matters.

Moving onto a slightly different tack, if Le Grand was shadowing people, it couldn't have been Le Grand that MJK was said to be frightened of, could it?

Phil
edited for spelling

[Phil H]

Also this from Wikipedia, to give dates and context:

Lewis was born at 10 Ely Place, Holborn in London and educated at University College, London.

In 1850 he was articled to his father, James Graham Lewis (1804-1869), founder of Lewis & Lewis, one of the best-known firms of solicitors in the city of London.

George was admitted in Hilary term in 1856, and was subsequently taken into partnership by his father and uncle. He first made his name in prosecuting the directors of the Overend and Gurney Bank, who had caused the disastrous panic of 1866, and for a time he devoted special attention to financial cases.

In criminal cases he drew public attention to himself by his cross-examination in the Bravo case in 1875, and from that time onward was connected with most criminal "causes célèbres," being conspicuous in the prosecution of fraudulent persons like Madame Rachel and Slade the medium.

Among other cases may be mentioned the Hatton Garden diamond robbery case; Belt versus Lawes; and the Royal Baccarat Scandal, in which the Prince of Wales was called as a witness; and he was selected by the Parnell Commission to conduct the case for Charles Stewart Parnell and the Irish party against The Times.

Lewis had by far the largest practise in financial cases of any lawyer in London, and was especially expert in libel cases, being retained by some of the chief newspapers. He showed himself especially skilful in exposing the practises of usurious money-lenders.

Lewis was knighted in 1893, and raised to the rank of baronet in 1902 as Lewis of Portland Place.

Lewis was married twice: 1st to Victorine Kann (1840 Frankfurt/Germany - 21 April 1865 London); 2nd to Elizabeth Eberstadt (27 October 1844 Mannheim/Germany - 4 September 1931 London),.

He died on 7 December 1911 at Portland Place in London.

End of Wiki quote.

The 1893 date for a knighthood is interesting if it could be shown it was a reward for being useful to the Government in some sensitive case.

I bolded above an interesting connection to Parnell. I wonder whether than was the case referred to in Simon's post?

Phil

[Simon Wood]

Hi Phil,

George Lewis worked the legal case for Parnell and also gave evidence at the Special Commission.

The case I referred to at the opening of my post can be found here -

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=def2-563-18890624&div=t18890624-563#highlight

Regards,

Simon