Ripperologist 106

RIPPEROLOGIST MAGAZINE
Issue 106, September 2009

QUOTE FOR SEPTEMBER:
"The Giants create drama with every at-bat. It's a wild-swinging group whose approach to hitting sometimes
seems to be the same as Jack the Ripper's approach to dating."
Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle, August 13, 2009
We would like to acknowledge the valuable assistance given by

Features the following people in the production of this issue of
Ripperologist: Simon Ovens — Thank you!
Editorial
The Role of the Media:
Christopher T George The views, conclusions and opinions expressed in signed
articles, essays, letters and other items published in
Henry Jackson Wells Dam Ripperologist are those of the authors and do not necessarily
Part 1. Scandal in California, Murder in London’s East End reflect the views, conclusions and opinions of Ripperologist or
its editors. The views, conclusions and opinions expressed in
Paul Begg and Christopher T George take a closer look at the journalist who may
unsigned articles, essays, news reports, reviews and other
have been the inventor of both ‘Leather Apron’ and the ‘Dear Boss’ Letter items published in Ripperologist are the responsibility of
Ripperologist and its editorial team.
For Kicks
We occasionally use material we believe has been placed
Was the Ripper a serial sexual murderer? in the public domain. It is not always possible to identify and
Jon Rees
contact the copyright holder; if you claim ownership of some-
Smoke and Mirrors thing we have published we will be pleased to make a prop-
er acknowledgement.
Simon D Wood explores Tumblety’s flight from England and the police officers who
The contents of Ripperologist No. 106 September 2009, includ-
allegedly pursued him. ing the compilation of all materials and the unsigned articles,
essays, news reports, reviews and other items are copyright ©
Sifting the Druitt Archives
2009 Ripperologist. The authors of signed articles, essays, let-
Andrew J Spallek gives us a glimpse into the treasures stored at the West Sussex ters, news reports, reviews and other items retain the copyright
Record Office in Chichester of their respective contributions. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No
part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
A Tribute to Maggie Bird system, transmitted or otherwise circulated in any form or by
Ripperologist says farewell to Maggie Bird, who passed away last month. any means, including digital, electronic, printed, mechani-
cal, photocopying, recording or any other, without the prior
permission in writing of Ripperologist. The unauthorised
reproduction or circulation of this publication or any part
Regulars thereof, whether for monetary gain or not, is strictly pro-
hibited and may constitute copyright infringement as defined in
domestic laws and international agreements and give rise to
I Beg to Report
civil liability and criminal prosecution.
Ripping Yarns
In our new look ‘Ripping Yarns’ we review The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper:
Edmund Reid — Victorian Detective, Nicholas Connell and Stewart P. Evans; Murder
Most Foul: The Road Hill House Mystery of 1860, Paul Chambers; Death Ride From
Fenchurch Street and other Victorian Railway Murders, Arthur and Mary Sellwood;
Jonathan Wild: Conman and Cutpurse, John Van Der Kiste; Dillinger’s Wild Ride: The
Year That Made America’s Public Enemy Number one, Elliot J. Gorn.
We also take a look at Don Souden’s bookshelf, and appraise a Ripperology classic The
Lodger by Stewart P Evans and Paul Gainey.
RIPPEROLOGIST MAGAZINE
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Editorial
The Role of the Media:
Malicious Meddling or ‘Just Helping the Story Along’?
By Christopher T. George
In 1897, nine years after the Whitechapel murders, Britain celebrated Queen Victoria’s
Diamond Jubilee. The British Empire had survived the scourge of the East End murderer, even
if the killer left some five ‘unfortunates’ slain and mutilated in his wake. The Daily Mail, a
newspaper characterised by Jeroen Deploige and Gita Deneckereas in their book, Mystifying the
Monarch (Amsterdam University Press, 2006), as a ‘blend of human interest stories and jingo-
ism’, launched a campaign to make certain the Royal anniversarial landmark would not go
uncelebrated. ‘To be sure,’ the authors pointed out, ‘such newspaper-meddling was no longer
new in the 1890s.’ [Emphasis added.]
In his recent book, Jack the Ripper, author Andrew Cook claimed that during the Autumn of Terror of 1888 the
new London evening newspaper The Star exaggerated the story of ‘Leather Apron’ to boost its readership, and that
likewise the the newspaper sent the ‘Dear Boss’ letter and ‘Saucy Jack’ postcard to the Central News Agency to fur-
ther whip up public interest in the murders. Cook’s suspect for doing those things was reporter Frederick Best, who
Cook claims worked for The Star at the time of the crimes.
However, another possibility with arguably better credentials Queen Victoria on her Diamond Jubilee in 1897
than Best is American-born Harry Dam, who provably worked

for The Star at the time of the crimes as well as served as a
London correspondent for American newspapers during the
same period.
Indeed, Henry J W Dam was a controversial figure even
before he landed on the shores of Blighty and sought work
with T P O’Connor’s Star. In early 1887, he had hastily exit-
ed from his home state of California after a scandal in the
office of Governor George Stoneman, where Harry worked as
Executive Secretary and supposedly sold pardons to convict-
ed criminals. In this issue of the Rip, Paul Begg and I explore
the candidacy of Harry Dam as a possible media ‘meddler’ in
the East End crimes, in ‘Henry Jackson Wells Dam (1856-
1906). Part 1. Scandal in California, Murder in London’s East
End.’
Today, the reputation of the media, be it broadcast or
print, has probably never been lower, with tabloid journalism
and celebrity and gossip stories rampant. So in a way it’s hard
to visualise a time when print journalism was ‘new’ to a
Ripperologist 106 September 2009 1

newly educated reading public, back in 1888, with the appearance of new newspapers such as The Star ready to
quench the public’s thirst.
Those were exciting times but hardly naive times. The scurrilous stories that appeared about Harry Dam, partic-
ularly in the American press, unrestrained by British libel laws, making all types of accusations about his time in the
California governor’s office, as well as about whatever role he had in ‘hyping’ the Whitechapel murders, would sug-
gest that people and the media were not all that different back then.
They were gossipy times, and Harry Dam wrote gossip for the New York Times before he turned up in London,
writing stories about the elite in New York State’s watering places. Which makes it tempting to think that once in
London he might have been adept at making copy over the gossip about a Jewish working man known to the women
of Whitechapel as ‘Leather Apron’.
So the question remains, what role did the press have in the Whitechapel murders? We might not be able to reach
a ready answer to the exact extent of press involvement, but it seems evident that the press played a not negligi-
ble part in the story.
The power of the media. Left, jingoistic imagery in the Daily Mail at
the time of the Boer War, 1900. Right, a more jaded view of imperial-
ism from the socialist journal Justice in 1907.

Henry Jackson Wells Dam
(1856-1906)
Part 1. Scandal in California, Murder in London’s East End

By Paul Begg and Christopher T George
The name of American journalist and writer Harry Dam has to date received only passing
mention in the literature on the Whitechapel murders. Dam’s career as a journalist with the
London evening newspaper, The Star, is discussed in a now obscure book called Some Piquant
People by a one-time celebrated but now largely forgotten London journalist named Lincoln
Springfield. In the course of a brief account of the coverage of the Jack the Ripper murders by
The Star, a newspaper for which both he and Dam worked, Springfield alleged that Dam, who
had newly arrived in London, had ‘worked up’ the story of Leather Apron. It was and is unclear
whether he meant that Dam invented the story of Leather Apron or whether he based it on
some information Dam picked up on the streets of Whitechapel, but either way, to date, the
allegation has been given very little attention
Harry Dam (1856–1906): journalist, dramatist, and inventor of both
by students of the Ripper crimes. ‘Leather Apron’ and ‘Dear Boss’?
In his 2009 book, Jack the Ripper, Andrew Cook claimed
that T P O’Connor, the editor of The Star, which began
publishing in January 1888, had invented the idea of a
lone killer as early as the murder of Mary Ann Nichols on
31 August 1888, and certainly no later than the murder
of Annie Chapman just over a week later, recognising
that this could be turned into a circulation booster for his
newspaper. Cook alleged that The Star wildly exaggerated
the story of Leather Apron and in due course the newspa-
per sent the ‘Dear Boss’ letter and ‘Saucy Jack’ postcard
to the Central News Agency to further boost the story.
Cook’s book attributed most of this campaign to a penny-
a-line journalist named Frederick Best, who Cook main-
tains worked for The Star at the time of the crimes.
Nowhere in Cook’s book is Harry Dam mentioned and
insofar as one can tell from Cook’s responses in a podcast
interview with Jonathan Menges, it would appear that he
knew nothing about Harry Dam.
Dam, it seems, is all but completely forgotten, a name
mentioned in passing by the almost equally obscure jour-

nalist Lincoln Springfield, yet research reveals that the man behind the name was quite an individual, rarely far from
controversy, who rubbed shoulders with some of the greatest names in politics, science, and the theatre in the decades
either side of 1900, and an individual who, moreover, appears to have played a key role in the newspaper coverage of
the crimes in London of 1888, and who possibly may have even ‘meddled’ in the case by fabricating ‘evidence’.
Family Background
Henry Jackson Wells Dam was born on 27 April 1856 in San Francisco, California, one of five children born to
Alphonso Dam (1826–1902) and Lucy Ellen Dam (nee Beck) (1827–1907). He had three brothers and a sister, although,
consistent with the high infant mortality of the day, three siblings died within a year of being born: Adelia Florence
Dam (1853–1854), George Elwin Dam (1855–1855) and Phillip S Dam (1859–1860). His younger brother, Cleveland
Lincoln Dam (26 October 1864 – 6 November 1916), survived to enjoy an eminent career of his own, becoming a
lawyer and civic figure in Oakland, California, being Secretary to the Board of Public Works. He also merited an entry
in a local history of the day, The Bay of San Francisco1.
Harry’s father, Alphonso Dam, was born in Enfield, Maine, on 27 July 1826. He arrived in San Francisco in 1849
and became involved in mining, which he pursued for about twelve years in California and Nevada, and in which he
retained an interest until his death. He also appears to have had interests in real estate, some newspapers record-
ing the sale of lots of land by Alphonso and
his wife2.
In the entry for his brother Cleveland
Lincoln Dam in The Bay of San Francisco,
mention is made of Henry J W Dam:
The only living child of Mr and Mrs

Alphonso Dam besides the subject of this
sketch is Henry J.W., born in San Francisco,
April 27, 1856. He received a superior educa-
tion, entering the University of California in
1871, and graduated from that institution in
the class of 1875. He then embraced the
career of journalist, first in the office of the
Chronicle, and was afterward connected
Section from The Bay of San Francisco (1892) on Harry's brother, Cleveland Lincoln Dam.
with some others of the San Francisco
papers. In 1883 he was appointed Executive
Secretary of Governor Stoneman, and at the close of his administration, in January, 1887, he went to New York city,
where he worked one season as a writer for the Times of that city, making a specialty of descriptions of Eastern
watering places and summer resorts, his work in that line attracting considerable attention and favorable notice.
In the fall of 1887, he went to London as correspondent of the same paper; and in 1890 was Paris correspondent of
the New York Herald. In 1891 he is again in London, where a play written by him and produced at the Vaudeville
theater, has added to his fame as a versatile and capable writer.
1 The Bay of San Francisco: The Metropolis of the Pacific Coast and its suburban cities: A History. 2 vols. Chicago: Lewis Publishing
Company, 1892.
2 See The San Francisco Call, 27 May 1899, for example.

As this biographical sketch observes, Dam received a good education at the University of California at Berkeley,
from which he graduated in 1875 with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in Agriculture. During his time at Berkeley he
served from 1873–1874 as the first editor of the Blue and Gold magazine, a record of the college year published by
the Associated Students. He continued his fledgling journalistic career by working for the San Francisco Chronicle
and other local city newspapers.
Even at this early stage in his journalistic career, Harry Dam displayed the chutzpah he would similarly show later
by managing to grab an interview with General Ulysses S Grant (1822–1885). Grant was the commanding general of the
Union Army during the Civil War and served two terms in office as 18th President of the United States (1869–1877). After
leaving the presidency, he took a world trip for two years and it was rumoured that he planned to win the Republican
nomination for a third term. Journalists thus were extremely anxious to obtain an intimation from him of whether or not
the rumours were accurate. When Grant returned from his trip aboard the City of Tokio, Dam managed to get on board:
[Dam] made a sudden dash for Grant as soon as he got aboard the Tokio, but the general parried all attempts
to obtain a political interview. He was quite willing to talk about the deficiency of good cigars in Europe, and to
impart the news that Mrs Grant had limited him to three cigars a day, but he would not speak of a third term. The
dashing newspaperman then sought Mrs Grant, saying that there were thousands of men and women in the United
States who would be delighted if the general should be the next President. Mrs Grant was fully equal to the occa-
sion. In the most cordial manner she replied: “I think in Switzerland we saw the finest scenery3.”
Despite this early journalistic success, Dam’s next major

Mary Stoneman, wife of Governor George Stoneman. job was to work for four years in the California governor’s
office, serving as Executive Secretary to Governor George
Stoneman4. Numerous news stories chronicle his activities
during this period, including a visit to Stockton Insane
Asylum5, where he met an inmate who asserted that he was
the Biblical Adam and was Dam’s father6. Dam’s distinctive
surname was also to afford the pressmen much jocularity:
It has often been said, says the Oakland Inquirer, that

Governor Stoneman is very dependent upon his private
Secretary, Harry Dam, and since he was inveigled into call-
ing the extra session, the Governor has taken new ways of
showing his fondness. He does nothing but go around and
mutter Harry’s last name for hours at a time7.
During his time with Stoneman, Dam’s name would never

be far from scandal, including being linked with Stoneman’s
young and vivacious wife, Mary, and with accusations that he
sold pardons to prisoners, including murderers.
3 The San Francisco Call, 25 January 1907.
4 Daily Evening Bulletin, 6 January 1883. An account of the inaugu-

ration of Stoneman can be found in the Daily Evening Bulletin, 10
December 1883.
5 Sacramento Daily Record, 25 May 1883.
6 Los Angeles Daily Times, 1 June 1883.

George Stoneman (1822–1894), was born in
Busti, New York. He graduated with high honours
from West Point in 1846 and fought in both the
Mexican and Civil Wars before taking up ranch-
ing in California and entering public life, serving
on several commissions: the California
Transportation Commission (1876), the Federal
Indian Commission (1878) and the Railroad
Commission (1879), which served California’s
Third District. On 10 January 1883, Stoneman
was inaugurated as the State of California’s 15th
Governor. He served as Governor until 8 January
1887, when he retired from public service,
under the same cloud that continued over Harry
Dam for the rest of his life: the pardons scandal.
In addition, a fire, allegedly the work of politi-
cal opponents, destroyed his ranch and, because
there was no insurance, Stoneman was left
financially in a poor state. His marriage also
ended when he claimed his wife had had an
affair, which she strenuously denied. She was
considerably younger than Stoneman, vivacious,
and active socially, but the victim of gossip, the
scuttlebutt of the day alleging, ‘She was linked
to the governor’s private secretary, Harry Dam,
George Stoneman, American Civil War general
and in 1892 she was named as a co-respondent and 15th Governor of California, 1883–1887.
in a sensational divorce case against Judge A.E.

Bronson. . . 8.’ In any case, Stoneman separated from his wife and in failing health moved to live with his sister in
Buffalo, New York, where he died from a stroke on 4 September 1894. He was buried at Lakewood, New York. None
of his children attended his funeral.
As Governor of California, Stoneman was most notoriously a supporter of prison reform and staunchly believed
in rehabilitating prisoners through parole—so much so that in the last few weeks of his term Stoneman controver-
sially granted 260 pardons and commuted 146 prison sentences. Dam would be embroiled in the controversy even
more than would Stoneman, specifically being accused of pardon brokering, a charge that would dog him for the rest
of his life.
7 San Jose Mercury News, 14 August 1885.
8 See Ben Fuller Fordney, George Stoneman: A Biography of the Union General. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Co., 2007.

Stoneman’s term as Governor ended at the beginning of 1887 and so, too, did Dam’s position as his Executive
Secretary. Dam got a job instead on the New York World. He left California by train on Monday, 17 January 18879, but
by the end of the year rumours were beginning to circulate: ‘The air is full of charges against H.J.W. Dam, late clerk
to Governor Stoneman, to the effect that he ran a pardon brokerage business and extorted money, or attempted to
do so, from applicants for pardons,’ reported the Sacramento Daily Record. It was alleged that Stoneman had left
blank pardons to be filled in for convicts whose cases had been heard and whose pardon the Governor has resolved
upon, and that Dam had then used these to sell pardons. ‘The presumption of innocence must prevail in Dam’s favor
until he is heard from; but it must be confessed that the stories told by reputable witnesses of alleged attempted
extortion on his part in connection with the pardoning of convicts, are very damaging to the ex-clerk,’ said the news-
paper.
Governor Stoneman’s actions seem as extraordinary as they do scandalous. The Daily Evening Bulletin rather
wordily observing that the list of pardons granted could only lead to two conclusions, either ‘the courts are inflict-
ing punishments entirely disproportionate to the offences in which convictions have been reached, or that Governor
Stoneman, by an exercise of executive clemency which can be neither defined nor measured, has been turning the
punishment of crime into a mockery10.’
Some newspapers did not doubt Dam’s guilt. The Sacramento Bee raged:
[Dam] undoubtedly deserves all the denunciation heaped upon his devoted head. A man who would make cash
the price of a man’s freedom, who had fallen so low that he had become the most degraded of professional black-
mailers, certainly deserves no consideration at the hands of any honest man. The crime with which Dam is charged,
and of which he is probably guilty, is a most despicable one. . . . It is stated and substantiated that the Governor
once absolutely refused to issue a pardon to a certain criminal, and that Harry Dam subsequently issued it, being
paid $250. . . .
The newspaper went on to suggest that Governor Stoneman was involved, at least insofar as he must have known
what Dam was doing and not taken action against him, or, if not involved, that he was incompetent11.
This appears to have been the case of Henry Bolte whose solicitors, Siebe Brothers and Plageman, had sought a
pardon from Governor Stoneman and been ‘peremptorily refused’, Stoneman having ‘refused to sign the pardon
under any circumstances’. According to later claims by James R Rogers, who for eighteen years had some connec-
tion with the San Francisco detective department and was now working for Siebe Brothers and Plagemen, he was
contacted by Dam on the evening of the day Stoneman had refused the pardon, who said that Bolte would be
released from Folsom Prison the day after, 31 December 1886, and asking for $250. Both Rogers and Plageman
refused to pay the money. Rogers claimed that he had documents which proved his claims12.
In August 1888, an ex-convict writing about the pardon brokering scandal wrote that it was ‘a fact that the sale
of pardons was negotiated by the dozen’ and that an investigation ‘would have unearthed a mass of corruption suf-
ficient to contaminate the vilest slums on earth.’ He claimed that J D Silvarra, who brutally murdered his wife and
whose death sentence was commuted to life, purchased a pardon for $1,000; that John S Gray paid $1,500; that
9 Sacramento Daily Record-Union, 19 January 1887.
10 Daily Evening Bulletin, 25 November 1887.
11 Quoted by the Daily Republican, 29 November 1887. Also Los Angeles Times, 29 November 1887.
12 Los Angeles Times, 2 December 1887.

someone called Smith paid $600; and that a Chinaman won
$140 in a tan game and bought his pardon with that13.
From wintery New York, Dam issued a denial: ‘Harry Dam
denies that he ever engaged in pardon brokerage. Somebody
has told a Dam lie,’ reported the Sacramento Daily Record-
Union14, relishing the play on Harry’s surname once again.
Others expressed doubts. J J Tobin, who was Private
Secretary of Governor Stoneman for a part of the time Harry
Dam was Executive Secretary, said:
It was a notorious fact that Harry Dam was, during his

entire term of office, in a chronic state of impecuniosity, and
at no time during my acquaintance with him was he in an easy
condition financially. Hackmen, tailors and duns of every imag-
inable description were constantly in hot pursuit of the young
fellow, and it is absurd to suppose that if Dam was receiving
October 1886 letter from Harry Dam published in a large sums of money in an illegal manner, he would not have
newspaper about a pardon from the governor.
relieved himself from some of these annoyances at least15.
Tobin pointed out that Dam had no appreciation of the value of money and that his salary of $200 per month was
insufficient to satisfy his love for wine, women and song.
Dam issued another unequivocal denial, saying
Governor Stoneman’s plan with reference to pardons was simply this: he turned the entire business over to the
State Prison Directors. Every man recommended by them was pardoned, without exception, unless there was a
protest. The result was that a recommendation was equivalent to a pardon. All that I had to do was, at the Governor’s
direction, to send the papers back and forth, and make out a pardon when ordered. The facts were universally known
that a recommendation meant a pardon unless there was a protest. Governor Stoneman stated this again and again.
Dam denied that he had ever accepted money for a pardon and in fact claimed that he had turned money down,
claiming that when he left the job he did so ‘three degrees poorer than a church mouse16.’
But the allegations refused to go away, new California Governor Robert Waterman (1826–1891) being reported as
saying that ‘he considered the evidence of pardon-selling very strong against Harry Dam and intimated that if a com-
plaint were made by someone, he would issue a requisition to New York and have Dam brought home to answer the
charges against him17.’
It is perhaps ironic that in 1887 Dam published an article called ‘Practical Penology’.
13 Sacramento Daily Record-Union, 4 August 1888.
14 Sacramento Daily Record-Union, 26 November 1887.
15 Reported in the San Francisco Examiner and quoted in the Sacramento Daily Record-Union, 20 November 1887.
16 Sacramento Daily Record-Union, 2 December 1887.
17 Daily Evening Bulletin, 6 December 1887.

1887—Mizpah
Dam had been collaborating with a compositor on the Herald named Frederick J Eustis (1851–1912) on what was
described as a ‘Turkish-American satirical comic opera’ called Mizpah which was given a single run-through matinee
performance at the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. The tickets sold extraordinarily well, and it was antic-
ipated that the play would ‘prove the greatest success seen in Philadelphia for many a day18’, and, indeed, ‘prob-
ably the largest and most brilliant audience ever present at a matinee performance’ was present to see it—the show
being ‘received in an enthusiastic manner by what might be termed a critical audience19.’
Staged by Frank A Burr, a Philadelphia journalist who had set up a comic opera company called the Mizpah Opera
Company, the show transferred straight to the famous Hooley’s Theatre in Chicago, but here it nosedived. It had
promise, said the New York Times and ‘in better hands it might easily be shaped into something of value and given
a successful career’, but as it was it had ‘an idea of merit bunglingly worked out’ and was ‘pretty close to a flat fail-
ure at Hooley’s—a theatre where flat failures are seldom found20.’ Pretty soon the ‘flat failure’ turned into a night-
mare as the seats remained unsold. By early January the veteran theatre manager Richard M Hooley (1822–1893) was
suing Burr and his backer, a Connecticut capitalist named John B Wallace, for $2,000. Apparently Burr and Wallace
had guaranteed that the takings would exceed $2,100 a week, which they had failed to do. To add to the problems,
leading cast members refused to perform when their salaries weren’t paid and members of the chorus were pressed
into service as principals21. Poor Fred Eustis, who
Old Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, where
Mizpah enjoyed a good reception at a matinee as composer of the opera and leader of the
orchestra, must have been feeling the failure
more keenly than most, ‘faced the frigid few in
the audience. . . picked up the baton and brave-
ly began the overture22. Burr blamed his backer
and denied that there had been a cast rebellion,
claiming that the star had been taken seriously
ill. However, if that was the case then the illness
was rife among the principals but left the chorus
untouched. In any case the rebellion was short
lived and the cast resumed their roles.
Attendances did not improve and it was reported
that hardly fifty people turned up to see the
show. Within days it was announced that the
intended move to Cleveland had been abandoned
and that the company had disbanded, most of
18 Daily Inter-Ocean (Chicago), 19 December 1886.
19 Philadelphia Inquirer, 22 December 1886.
20 New York Times, 3 January 1887.
21 New York Times, 7 January 1887.
22 Daily Inter-Ocean (Chicago), 7 January 1887

those involved accepting the train fare to head back East. In due course the baggage, scenery and stage properties
were sold off at auction, the whole lot being knocked down to a dealer in theatrical costumes named J E Jackson
for $47523.
Dam must have escaped most of the ordeal suffered by Eustis, who at the time was going through a divorce from
his wife, an actress and former chorus girl named Ida Bell. In late December 1886, Eustis had made newspaper copy
by announcing his intention of suing a ‘prominent comedian’, Henry E Dixie (1859–1943), for $20,000 damages for
alienating his wife24, who was part of Dixie’s company, with whom she had come to London in May 1886 with Adonis,
a burlesque which had proved immensely popular in America and would open at the Gaiety in London on 30 May,
receiving fairly good reviews.
By January 1887, Dixie and his troop were back in the United States and appearing at the Chestnut Street Theatre,
Philadelphia, where ironically the disastrous Mispah enjoyed its rip-roaringly successful matinee. Eustis went to
Philadelphia and spent the day drinking before going to the theatre in an attempt to have words with his wife. He
went to the stage door, but when his wife refused to accompany him to the hotel where he was staying he became
abusive and said, ‘Then I’ll make you,’ and reached for his back pocket, but several people intervened and Ida
returned back inside the theatre. Eustis then went round to the front of the theatre, where a man named Henry J
Rice refused to allow him entry. Eustis at first said that he would behave like a gentleman, but a struggle ensued
during which Rice felt a revolver that Eustis was carrying and summoned a policeman named Nicholson who arrest-
ed him. On being searched at the station house a loaded revolver was found in his pocket. One newspaper reported
that on the way to the station Eustis had said, ‘I would have killed my wife, but now I wouldn’t touch a hair of her
head.’ In due course, Eustis appeared in court, but pleaded that he did not intend to harm his wife and Miss Bell
expressed the belief that she did not think he intended to do her any injury. He was released on his own recogni-
sance25,26. The Chicago Times quietly observed, ‘A man that can voluntarily write “Mizpah” is capable of anything.
He should be locked up where he can do no more shooting, and, above all, write no more “Mizpah’s”’, and the
Philadelphia Inquirer, with similar sentiments in mind, wrote, ‘Pity that the composer of Mizpah did not think of
shooting that operatic failure before it went on the stage27’.
Fred J Eustis rose above this early theatrical disaster and his messy, drunken idiocy over his marriage, and went
on to prosper in show business. He would enjoy a string of Broadway successes, beginning with Mother Goose in 1899
(which starred an actress unbelievably named Marie Celeste as Little Bo-Peep) for which he wrote the music with
Frederick Gage. In 1899–1900 he directed The Ameer, which was produced by Kirk La Shelle, who would appear later
in Harry Dam’s story, wrote the music for Little Red Riding Hood in 1900, and was musical director for Miss Simplicity
in 1902 and The Tenderfoot in 1904. In 1911, the year before his death, he was reportedly conducting a thirty-piece
orchestra at an extraordinary cabaret show at the Terrace Garden on the East Side where for a couple of dollars you
could dine, see the show and have a taxi to take you home28!
23 New York Times, 8 January 1887; Daily Inter-Ocean (Chicago), 8 January, 11 January 1887; Philadelphia Inquirer, 23 April 1887.
24 Daily News (San Jose), 10 December 1886.
25 New York Times, Boston Daily Advertiser, 13 January 1887; Macon Telegraph, 16 January 1887.
26 Boston Daily Advertiser, 13 January 1887.
27 Quoted in The Daily Picayune, 18 January 1887; Philadelphia Inquirer, 14 January 1887.
28 New York Times, 12 June 1911.

As the storm broke around Eustis’s head that January of 1887, Harry Jackson Wells Dam boarded a train in
California and headed for New York. He seems to have settled into New York journalism quite well and was a founder
member of the Stylus Club, an outgrowth of an association of newspapermen who had for some time been meeting
and dining once a month29.
The Star
If things were not looking too good for H J W Dam at the beginning of 1887, his first professional theatrical offer-
ing being a disaster and the arrest of his writing partner for attempting to shoot his wife being reported in papers
across the country, they were beginning to look decidedly worse by December when Governor Waterman began drop-
ping hints that Dam might be forcibly taken back to California to answer questions. All things considered, Dam may
have thought it a wise career move to follow other American writers and head for London. His departure, however,
seems to have been a hasty one and it would seem that office gossip at the Star had no doubt that Dam was fleeing
the breaking scandal in California. Writing nearly thirty years later, in 1924, the distinguished British journalist
Lincoln Springfield (c.1866-1850) recalled in his autobiography that Dam’s departure had been a hasty one:
The office legend about Dam was that he had hitherto been private secretary to the Governor of California, and
had amassed thousands of dollars by the illicit sale of pardons to murderers, felons, and other unfortunates whose
lives or freedom were in the keeping of the Governor as the controller of the States prisons. At all events, Dam had
arrived hastily and quietly from the States, had joined us on The Star. . . 30.
Dam, it seems, was also the London representative of other newspapers, including the New York Times, for which
he was paid £4 a week, and afterwards for the London edition of the New York Herald31.
The new London evening newspaper, The Star, was founded by T P O'Connor (1848–1929) and launched on 17
January 1888. It was distinguished by its radicalism and as inaugurating what would be called the ‘new’ journalism.
O’Connor was born in Ireland and had been a journalist there. He had come
T P O’Connor, MP, in 1909. In 1887, he founded the to London in 1867 and worked for the Daily Telegraph. He afterwards became
London evening newspaper, The Star, and the inau-
gural issue appeared on 17 January 1888. London correspondent for the New York Herald (as would Harry Dam). He had
family ties with the United States, having married Elizabeth Paschal, the
daughter of George Washington Paschal, a judge of the Supreme Court of Texas.
An Irish Nationalist, he was elected a Member of Parliament in 1880 for
Liverpool Scotland district and remained one until his death. The Star was the
first of several newspapers he founded, the others were the Weekly Sun (1891),
the Sun (1893), and M.A.P. (Mainly About People), P.T.O. (Please Turn Over) and
the extremely popular T.P.’s Weekly (1902). O’Connor wrote about his experi-
ences with The Star in his autobiography, Memoirs of an Old Parliamentarian,
published in 1929, the year of this death. According to the Dictionary of National
Biography, differences arose between him and the proprietor, and O’Connor was
bought out reportedly for £15,000, subject to the condition that ‘he should not
start another London newspaper for three years.’
29 New York Times, 19 September 1887.
30 Lincoln Springfield, Some Piquant People. London: T Fisher Unwin, 1924.
31 Milwaukee Sentinel, 23 April 1893.

The Star became a very successful newspaper. T P O’Connor attributed
its initial success to its coverage of the Jack the Ripper murders and the
journalistic sense of his sub-editor, Ernest Parke. While O’Connor was the
nominal editor of The Star, the actual day-to-day work was carried out
by Parke. The Irishman described Parke as ‘a young, flossy-haired man,
with a keen face, a lithe and agile body, a tremendous flair for news, and
capable of twenty-four hours work, if necessary, in a single day32.’
According to O’Connor: ‘He might be trusted to work up any sensational
news of the day, and he helped, with “Jack the Ripper”, to make gigan-
tic circulations hitherto unparalleled in evening journalism.’
O’Connor also wrote:
For a while there was an unfortunate Pole, who, for some reason or
other, was known among his associates as “Leather Apron” and who for
days figured at the top of the interesting personalities of the period.
Until in the end there seemed to be an accumulation of evidence that in
him the assassin was at last to be found.
My paper was one of the many which had printed all the evidence that
seemed to point to “Leather Apron” as the murderer, but soon afterwards
the poor devil was able to prove incontestably his innocence. A dexterous
expedient adopted by my then chief sub-editor (still a distinguished figure in
newspaper life) saved us from what might have been a ruinous action for Ernest Parke, editor of The Star in 1888.
(Courtesy of Simon Wood.)
libel. We got off, I remember, with fifty pounds—it might have cost us five
hundred or five thousand!
Writing in 1924, journalist Lincoln Springfield also referred to the libel action brought against The Star by John
Pizer and claimed that the Leather Apron story was the creation of Harry Dam. The accusation was levelled at Dam
by others and prima facie it seems unquestionably the case that it was widely believed. What is uncertain is whether
he invented it from whole cloth or not: was there really a man nicknamed Leather Apron who terrorised the
Whitechapel prostitutes, or, as one newspaper suggested, was Leather Apron a largely fictional character, wildly
exaggerated with dramatic flair and based on no more than a ‘wild looking’ man wearing a leather apron who had
recently turned up in Whitechapel and was thought to be an escaped lunatic, or did Leather Apron, the terror of
Whitechapel prostitutes, exist entirely in Harry Dam’s mind?
Leather Apron, The Star, and Harry Dam
The story of Leather Apron is rather complex, relying in the main on press reports after the name had appeared
in the newspapers, so we can’t be certain that the name had a currency on the streets prior to its first appearance
in print. The name Leather Apron was first mentioned in passing in The Star on 4 September 1888 but scattered ref-
erences in various newspapers suggest that the name may have had a currency on the streets prior to 4 September,
suggesting that Dam may not have invented it.
Briefly, the story is that on Sunday, 2 September 1888, a man was accosted by one or more women in the street.
32 T P O’Connor, The Memoirs of an Old Parliamentarian, vol II. London: Ernest Benn, 1929, p. 256-7.

He was addressed as Leather Apron and accused of being the Whitechapel murderer. For a while this man was in the
custody of two policemen, both identified in the press, and the incident was also referred to in a press interview
given by Sgt Thicke. Furthermore, John Pizer, who in due course was arrested as Leather Apron, possibly spoke of
this incident as relating to himself. This raises the thorny question of whether John Pizer really was the Leather
Apron who terrorised the prostitutes, or was simply unfortunate enough to bear the same nickname.
Pizer had a cast iron alibi for when the murders were committed and he was released by the police, but there
is nothing in the official records or the known press reports to say whether or not he was the terrorising Leather
Apron. Once he had been released the press tended to treat him as a man without a stain on his character, and the
authorities took the opportunity of an inquest to publicly exonerate him. He also sued The Star and the Daily
Telegraph for libel, claiming that they had accused him of being the Whitechapel murderer, and when the Star
manoeuvred itself out of the mess with a nominal payment it considered itself very lucky. Furthermore, writing years
later, neither T P O’Connor nor Lincoln Springfield suggest that Pizer, though not the murderer, was nevertheless the
man of whom the Whitechapel prostitutes had expressed fear. Would all of this have happened if John Pizer had
indeed been the prostitutes’ terror?
And if John Pizer was not Leather Apron then the silent-footed terror was presumably still ‘out there’, still a
prime suspect, so why did interest in him apparently wane? And that is a question which returns us to the allega-
tions that Harry Dam invented or worked up the story.
Although the first known mention of Leather Apron appeared in The Star on 4 September 1888, it said no more
than that Leather Apron hadn’t recently been seen in his customary haunts:
With regard to the man who goes by the sobriquet of “Leather Apron,” he has not, it is stated, been seen in
the neighbourhood much for the past few nights, but this may mean nothing, as the women street wanderers
declare that he is known as well in certain quarters of the West End as he is in Whitechapel33.
This scant mention in The Star on 4 September conforms pretty much with what appears in the official reports.
In a weekly report to Scotland Yard dated 7 September 1888, W Davis, the Acting Superintendent of H Division,
reported that ‘A man named “Pizer” alias “Leather Apron” has been in the habit of ill-using prostitutes in various
parts of the Metropolis for some time past, and careful inquiries have been made to trace him, but without success.
There is no evidence against him at present34.’ Later newspaper reports state that before Sgt Thicke arrested Pizer
he had for some days been looking for him but that the suspect had not been in any of his usual haunts.
However, the New York Times on 4 September carried a very lurid article which was dated the day previously (3
September) bylined from their own correspondent, who as far as we know was at that time none other than Harry Dam:
Whitechapel has a murder mystery which transcends anything known in the annals of the horrible. It is Poe’s
“Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Mystery of Marie Roget” rolled into one real story. It is nothing less than a
midnight murderer, whose step is noiseless, whose strike is deadly, and whose cunning is so great that it leaves no
trace whatever of his work and o clue to his identity. He has just slaughtered his third victim, and all the women in
Whitechapel are terrified, while the stupidest detectives in the civilized world stand aghast and say they have no clue.
When the murder of Mary Ann Nichols, who was cut into ribbons last Friday night, was investigated it became
evident that the murder was the work of the same hand that committed the two preceding ones. All three were
33 The Star, 4 September 1888.
34 MEPO 3/140, f.238

moneyless women of the lowest class. All were killed in the street
between 1 and 3 o’clock in the morning, and all were mutilated in
the same fiendish and peculiar way. The coincidence was so great
as to strike even the detectives, and they are now looking for the
one man whom they believe to be guilty of all three crimes.
This man is called “Leather Apron” and nobody knows him by
any other name. He is in character half way between Dickens’s
Quilp and Poe’s Baboon. He is short, stunted, and thick set. He has
small, wicked black eyes and is half crazy. He is always hanging
about the deep shadows that fill the intricate network of the
courts, passages, and alleyways in Whitechapel. He does not walk,
but always moves on a sharp, queer run and never makes any noise
with his feet. In addition to the three women he is believed to
have murdered he has scared a hundred more of them nearly to
death. Every street-walker in Whitechapel has her own story to
tell of him. He lives by robbing them late at night and has kicked,
cuffed, or knocked down two score of them in the last two years.
His usual lodging place is a four-penny lodging house in a poverty-
stricken thieves’ alley off Brick-lane. He has left there now, how-
ever, and nobody knows where he is.
He is suspected of having done the three murders from the fact A contemporary artist’s doodle of John Pizer
that he has frequently drawn a knife on women, accompanied by
the same threats which have been carried out on the dead women. The story of Mrs. Colwell, who heard the
screams of the woman as she was being murdered, is to the effect that she was clearly running away from some-
body who was murdering her, and yet she could hear no other footsteps. The blood stains on the sidewalk indicat-
ed the same thing—that the murderer, whoever he was, was noiseless in his pursuit, and this quality points direct-
ly to “Leather Apron.” He is a slipper maker by trade, and gets his nickname from the fact that he always wears a
leather apron and is never seen without it. One peculiar feature of the case is that none of the police or detec-
tives appear to know him, he always kept out of their sight, and they are now gleaning information concerning him
from women he has assailed35.
This story was widely circulated in the United States and was repeated in newspapers such as the Atchison Daily
Globe and the Austin Statesman and pretty much the same story about the noiseless killer was repeated in The Star
on 5 September. On that same day, however, The Echo poured cold water on the whole idea, telling a story which
acquires no small significance in light of the later claims that Harry Dam was responsible for the Leather Apron story:
A very funny incident occurred in connection with the latest Whitechapel murder yesterday. An American jour-
nalist, anxious to distinguish himself in his paper, sent another scribe hailing from the other side of the Atlantic
down into Whitechapel to interview the natives on the subject of the murder, and get their ideas. They gave him
35 New York Times, 4 September 1888.

them, which were to the effect that they believed the murder had been committed by a “wild looking man, wear-
ing a leather apron,” who had been seen about in Whitechapel lately, and was believed to be an escaped lunatic.
Filled with this splendid idea, the young man made some “beautiful copy,” which his chief telegraphed off to New
York forthwith, only to learn, a very little while afterwards, that his assistant had been thoroughly well hoaxed,
and that the real murderer is, if not actually known to the police, believed to be within very easy reach of a war-
rant—and quite sane36.
If this account is true then the whole story about Leather Apron is based on a ‘wild looking man’, possibly insane,
maybe an escaped lunatic, who wore a leather apron and had been seen wandering the streets. He wasn’t called
Leather Apron, he didn’t threaten anyone with a knife, and he wasn’t the terror of the local prostitutes.
On 12 September, it was reported that Pizer had told a representative of the Press Association that he intended
to bring a legal action:
I shall see if I cannot legally proceed against those who have made statements about me. The charges made
against me have quite broken my spirits, and I am afraid I shall have to place myself under medical treatment for
some time37.
Sgt Thicke had been making inquiries for John Pizer without success, but eventually he received a tip off that
Pizer was in hiding in his home at 22 Mulberry Street. At 9.00am on 10 September 1888 Thicke and another police-
man went to the house and arrested Pizer without any difficulty whatsoever. Pizer asked what he was wanted for
and in an interview given after his release he said:
The sergeant said to me, ‘You are the man whom the women call “Leather Apron.”‘ This, however, I denied. I
do not acknowledge (said Piser to the reporter) that name at all, and I have not recently worn a leather apron.”
Were you not surprised (the reporter at once asked) when he said you were known as ‘Leather Apron’?”
“Yes. I was not aware that I was known by that name. None of my neighbours have ever called me by it38.”
Pizer further asserted, “I am” (proceeded Piser with considerable fervour) “quite innocent of the charge that
has been brought against me in connection with the murder in Hanbury-street. My character will bear the strictest
investigation. I can get references both from men of my own religion and from ‘Gentiles,’ for whom I have
worked39.”
By 26 September, American newspapers were reporting that John Pizer, who they mistakenly called ‘Isaac Piser’, had
commenced lawsuits against the Daily Telegraph and Mr. T.P. O’Connor of the Evening Star, claiming heavy dam-
ages from them for having publicly accused him of those murders at a time when he was confined to his house by
illness. It is stated that he has likewise commences proceedings against a New York newspaper on the same
grounds40.
36 The Echo, 5 September 1888.
37 The Star, 12 September 1888.
38 The Echo, 12 September 1888.
39 East London Advertiser, 13 October 1888.
40 Galveston Daily News, 26 September 1888; Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco), 1 October 1888; Daily Inter-Ocean (Chicago), 14
October 1888.

That Pizer was receiving substantial sums of money through
his libel actions was declared untrue by the East London
Advertiser but it is interesting that it would appear that he
was suing more than the newspapers we know about:
The story that “Leather Apron,” alias Mr. Piser, is getting

large sums from his libel actions is untrue. More than one of
them has been compromised, and for moderate amounts. Two
or three of them, however, are still outstanding. The report
that he has already received £5,000 is preposterously wide of
the mark. £500 would, I should say, be a serious exaggera-
tion41.
In 1898, Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine published an arti-

cle by the New York literary critic, novelist and poet Vance
Thompson (1863–1925) that discussed the press of New York
and London:
In New York and London there is none of the loyalty to one

paper that sends the police reporter far afield in dangerous
ways. The “bureau system” runs rampant; that is, there is a
system whereby the newspapers farm out the gathering of
police news to different agencies. In New York there are two
of these of importance; in London each police court is con-
trolled by one man, who has the right that time gives to fur-
nish stenographic reports. To be sure, there is plenty of “out-
side work” — one must be pardoned for using the slang, catch-
penny phrases of journalism — for the night police reporter on
any London paper, even as there is on any American journal.
That is, “something big” comes up, and the editor of the
paper pays no attention to the “flimsy-factories,” the agen-
Vance Thompson (1863–1925)
cies that grind out the ordinary grist of petty police news, but
calls upon one of his trusty reporters.
And here again I find it pleasant to look back upon an idiot who was reporting for one of the London papers in
‘88 and ‘89. The editor of the paper was an Irish member of Parliament.
There had been two or three murders, — ghastly murders, where women were done to death. One night, for
instance, —- and this was the first, — there was a woman slain in St. George’s Square, East, and there were thirty-
three stabs in her body; then another woman was killed off the Mile-End Road; and a third in Hanbury Square: all
of these down in the wretched ruins of Whitechapel.
41 East London Advertiser, 13 October 1888.

Then there began to be a deal of excitement
in the newspaper offices. Another murder came;
a poor degraded bit of femininity was slashed to
death in one of the black, blind courts off Mile-
End Road; then another was cut to pieces in
Mitre Square, near Aldgate, in the old city of
London. So the newspapers were aroused —
even the London editors; and be it said, with
proper respect, that it takes an earthquake of
news to arouse a London editor. Thereupon all
the journalists in London who could “write a
wee bit” were sent out to do the Whitechapel
murders. And one of these reporters was an
idiot with an eye-glass, — he had degenerated
to the eye-glass again, — and the plump editor
ordered him to go to Whitechapel and discov-
er and describe “Jack the Ripper.”
The young reporter led his eye-glass down
the stairs and found himself in Fleet Street. He Section from Vance Thompson's article on the alleged origins of Leather Apron that
did not know how to set about the business, so appeared in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, 1898.
he strolled into Mitre Court, which is off Fleet

Street, and there he found a tavern that is known as The Mitre. In other days Burke and Garrick and Reynolds and
Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith, in a peach-blossom coat, and Boswell, in green velvet smalls, gathered there and drank
Oporto.
And there, in The Mitre, the idiot met a man who wrote the opera of “Billee Taylor,” once famous in these parts.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“The Whitechapel murders,” said the reporter.
“Descriptive?”
“Yes, a general descriptive story.”
“Why don’t you read up De Quincey?”
“What — Leathern-Apron?”
“To be sure: it is excellent stuff,” said Stephens.
Then the young man - who had read his De Quincey — sat down and wrote up a description of the wicked man
who had done to death the wicked women of Whitechapel. He used as prototype the curious creature of De Quincey,
the leathern-aproned Jew with the knife in his belt and the white face blurred with black eyebrows. There was
something startlingly realistic about the picture. Then the idiot went down and interviewed the periwinkle-men
and apple-women of Mile-End Road. Of course they had seen Leathern-Apron slinking about the streets, with his
knife whisking in his hand42.
42 No mention of a leather-aproned Jew of this description has so far been found in Thomas De Quincey’s writings. Dr Julian North of
the University of Leicester, an authority on the works of De Quincey, indicated to Christopher T George in an email that she was unable to
pinpoint in the writer’s works the reference to ‘Leathern-Apron’ as described by Vance Thompson; email from Dr Julian North to Christopher
T George, 6 September 2008. On the other hand, the reference may be to De Quincey’s short story ‘The Avenger’ (curiously enough, also
the name given by Marie Belloc Lowndes to her murderer in The Lodger). In De Quincey’s ‘The Avenger’, a series of motiveless murders take
place in a German city. The murderer, who lives in the panic-stricken community, is eventually revealed by accident and proves to be a Jew
who had committed the crimes in revenge for ill-treatment in former years at the hands of the inhabitants of the place.

So it was a good story, and the young man turned it in to the office. But there was one odd end to it: the day
after the story was printed the police began to look for Leathern-Apron. By some whimsical mischance they found
a poor innocent Hebrew who answered the description: he was a butcher down in Besis Court, and he lay in jail for
two weeks, and - well, “Billee Taylor” was responsible for it43.
Whilst this anecdote contains many errors, as anecdotes are wont to do, it is clearly a reference to an American
journalist working for The Star, the editor of which was the Irish MP, T P O’Connor. The story also corresponds rea-
sonably well with that reported in The Echo of 5 September about a young American journalist being gulled by the
women in Whitechapel. In Thompson’s account, however, the idea of Leather Apron was indicated to the journalist
by the author of Billee Taylor, a play by Henry Pottinger Stephens (1851–1903). Stephens, a former Daily Telegraph
journalist, was the author of several popular burlesques, and thus was someone to whom Dam, the budding play-
wright with the failed Mitzvah under his belt, might have been drawn. Presumably he would have enjoyed sitting
down with the man who wrote the libretto for Billee Taylor.
On the other hand, Vance Thompson doesn’t accurately describe Harry Dam. He indicates that the journalist had
attended a German university, travelled through Italy and Paris, had written unpublished verses and dramas, and
been a newspaperman in Chicago, none of which appears to match Harry Dam’s resumé. The pressman in addition
was a very dandified dresser: he wore a ‘long-caped top-coat, outrageously red and yellow; on his feet were patent-
leather boots with yellow silk “spats;” he had terra-cotta gloves and a very fine walking-stick and a very tall silk
hat’, and he wore a ‘useless’ eye-glass. The image we have of Harry Dam that has come down to us, apparently done
by an artist at the time of his success as librettist for the West End musical hit The Shop Girl (1894), shows a natty-
looking man with pince-nez glasses. Is it possible that he wore a monocle when he covered the Whitechapel mur-
ders for The Star? But why use a ‘useless’ monocle for mere effect when his eyesight was such that he clearly need-
ed glasses later? These colourful tales need to be scrutinized closely rather than accepted at face value.
Writing in 1924 in his autobiography Some Piquant People, the eminent journalist Lincoln Springfield wrote that
following Harry Dam’s involvement in the pardon brokering scandal and Dam’s sudden arrival in London laboring as
Springfield himself did as a reporter for The Star:
. . .Dam had arrived hastily and quietly from the States, had joined us on The Star, and had, like the rest of us, been
put upon the job of solving the mystery of the Whitechapel murders. But Dam, a free-born American, was not, as were
the rest of us, cowed by the English libel laws, and he created a sensation by developing a theory of the authorship
of these grisly crimes. They were, he proceeded to demonstrate, the work of a miscreant known as “Leather Apron,”
and so known in consequence of the attire he wore at his everyday trade of tanning, or slipper-making, or whatever it
was. Day after day Dam gave the public all the thrills it wanted along these lines. But unfortunately there actually was
in existence a man known to the nobility and gentry of the Mile End Road as “Leather Apron,” and he was an honest,
hard-working fellow, as innocent of the series of Whitechapel murders, or any one of them, as you or I.
Here was a pretty kettle of fish! Whatever was this colossal blunder going to cost The Star in damages for libel?
Ernest Parke was in charge of the paper, and, if there be to-day a tinge of grey about his auburn locks —what the
comedians call a little icing on the top—we must attribute the beginning of that discoloration to the dismay occa-
sioned by this awful situation. He was, however, a man of action. Minions were hurried down to Whitechapel,
“Leather Apron” was secured, be was brought to Stonecutter Street, and he was reasoned with sweetly, before he
could get the opportunity of consulting a lawyer, or, shall I say? before a lawyer could get the chance of indicating
to him what wealth beyond the dreams of avarice might be his by the simple process of issuing a writ for libel. And
43 Vance Thompson, ‘The Police Reporter,’ Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, Vol LXII, July-Dec 1898, p. 283-8.

while “Leather Apron” was thus cozened, a small pile of
golden sovereigns was arrayed within his vision, and jin-
gled within his hearing; with the result that he took away
with him £10 in gold, and left behind him, in considera-
tion thereof, a stamped receipt for the amount in full
settlement of any claims be might have against the paper
in respect of the deplorable theory of the ingenious but
misguided Harry Dam. The Star has, since those days, had
to pay various sums to aggrieved litigants for undeserved
notoriety thrust upon them, and in some cases the dam-
ages have been unfairly awarded against the paper: but
in averaging their libel liabilities, the directors of the
paper must always have looked back with satisfaction to
a transaction in which they unjustly accused a blameless
citizen of seven or eight bloody murders, and got out of
the mess for £10, being little more than a pound a mur-
der44.
The Jack the Ripper Letters
The earliest known connection between Harry Dam and

the authorship of the so-called ‘Jack the Ripper’ letters—
generally taken to be a reference to the ‘Dear Boss’ letter
and ‘Saucy Jacky’ postcard—is in an article by Dr H A Monroe
that appeared in the New York Age of 8 November 1890
about a trip to Whitechapel, in which he concluded
Few people in London believe in the genuineness of

the “Jack the Ripper” letters. They were simply the
invention of some sensational fool or else a newspaper
“fake.” In fact there is a strong suspicion that a New
York World reporter might have been exercising his pecu-
liar home talent, just to try its effect upon our British
cousins45.
We might infer that the reporter to whom Dr Monroe Rev H A Monroe, DD

alludes was Harry Dam because we know that Dam got a
job with the New York World after he left California following the end of Stoneman’s term of office as Governor of
the state.
Next there is a very strange and possibly truncated report from the San Francisco Examiner of 2 December 1890 which
touches upon both the California pardons scandal and Dam’s role in covering the Whitechapel murders:
44 Springfield, Some Piquant People.
45 H A Monroe, ‘A Pastor’s Summer Abroad: Dr Monroe Goes Slumming in the Modern Babylon’, New York Age, 8 November 1890. This is
an interesting article in its own right as its author appears to be Rev Henry Monroe, DD, the black pastor of St Mark’s Methodist Episcopal
Church in New York City (an established church serving the African-American community, which by 1889 was located on Fifty-third Street).

DAM’S DEADLY WORK
His Executive Clemency’s Great London Scoop
HOW HE NAMED A LONDON BOGIE
The Illustrious Achievement of a San Francisco Journalist,

who is in unhappy Exile—Some of the particulars
The circumstances of Harry Dam’s departure from San Francisco in the dawn of 1887 are familiar to his friends,
and also to those who did not hold him in esteem. His sojourn in New York and his success on the Times as a writer
of watering-place gossip have lured a number of brilliant journalists to Calypso’s shores.
In London he became correspondent of the New York Times at a stipend of £4 a week. He did his work well, but
he was hungry. One cannot drink the newest champagne in London on that, and it cost more to hang on the out-
skirts of Pimlico than the money will cover.
HE BUYS AN ORCHID
One day he accompanied two of his new found friends to Warren & Cralke’s, in Jermyn Street.
The two friends selected a rare orchid as a boutonniere.
Harry Dam followed suit, but selected one that was a little rarer.
“A guinea, please, sir.”
And Mr Dam realised that all flowers are not “born in the spring, tra la,” and that life is frequently real and earnest.
Then he hired himself to The Star, a newspaper edited by T.P. O’Connor, an old New York Herald Irishman, an
afterward a Member of Parliament. The Star had been successful up to a certain point, but it was scarcely a year
old; there was a prejudice against it because it was Irish, and because it followed the American fashion of endeav-
oring to give its readers the news.
Mr Dam’s affair with The Star has been hinted at occasionally, but is now made known through a letter just
received in this [?] from a writer in London.
Dam possessed the American reporter’s instinct for news, and he witnessed with disgust the feeble efforts of
the London brethren. Here was a subject which would make the fortune of a New York World or Herald. He brood-
ed over it and haunted Scotland Yard. There he found the police too much occupied with the movements of “sus-
pects” and dynamiters to think of Whitechapel more than a week46.
Presently there came a fourth assassination-September 8, 1888, and this was more than the American reporter’s
nature could stand.
On the 25th September, 1888, the police authorities were thrown into a fearful flurry by the receipt of a let-
ter signed “Jack the Ripper”. The letter is herewith given.
The London police kept the letter dark, because they were in the dark: at least they managed to keep the let-
ter dark for two hours.
46 The charge that the police were overly concerned with dynamite plots had been made at the time of the crimes by the Pall Mall
Gazette, 8 September 1888, which stated: ‘The Criminal Investigation Department under Mr Monro was so pre-occupied in tracking out the
men suspected of mediating political crimes that the ordinary vulgar assassin has a free field in which to indulge his propensities.’

THE “STAR” HAD A SCOOP
Then an extra Star was shouted from Queen Victoria Street to Holland House. A facsimile of the letter signed
“Jack the Ripper” appeared on its front page, and edition after edition went flying across London bridge to
Southwark, and through the Borough, and down the Old Kent Road to Greenwich. From the Strand it flew through
Bloomsbury and past the Euston Road, and out to Hampstead and away to the other end of nowhere.
Suddenly from a circulation of 30,000 copies the Star went to ten times that or more. The other London papers
shuddered and went solemnly in a deputation to Scotland Yard. Sir Charles Warren protested as solemnly that he
had concealed the letter in his thickest safe, but admitted that there must be a leak in the Police Department which
he couldn’t account for. The deputation went back to its luxurious editorial palaces, and that night Cunningham
Graham arose in the House and hinted that Sir Charles Warren was a careless person.
Next day everybody bought the Star to see what it had to say about “Jack the Ripper”. It said a lot, and quite
enough to whet the appetite of a gore-loving public.
THEN CAME A POSTAL CARD
September 28th the police authorities at Scotland Yard received a postal card. The postman who delivered it was
as white as a ghost, and, as the Pall Mall Gazette said several days later, “nearly fainted from extreme emotion.”
The postal card he delivered was smeared with blood. A facsimile of it is probably familiar to EXAMINER readers.
There was a panic in police headquarters47.
The story contains a number of factual errors, not the least being that The Star did not scoop its competitors by
publishing the Dear Boss letter. In fact, The Star did not publish the letter at all and was almost unique among the
newspapers in pooh-poohing the idea that the correspondence was anything more than a hoax. Additionally, Sir
Charles Warren and Scotland Yard did not keep the correspondence under wraps, but were responsible for making it
public. The other thing we might note about the article is that the writer does not explicitly state that Harry Dam
was responsible for the correspondence, although that is the heavy implication.
Refutation was swift:
AN IDLE STORY
That of Harry Dam Being the author of

The “Jack the Ripper” Letters
Special to the Bulletin
CHICAGO, Dec. 4. — A special from San Francisco was published this morning saying that while Harry Dam, a
New York and San Francisco journalist, ws at work on the London Star he concocted the “Jack the Ripper” letters
which created such a sensation in London in connection with the Whitechapel murders. In reply to the inquiry as to
the truth of the story, T.P. O’Cpnnor, M.P., who was editor of the Star at the time, says he never heard of the story
before and doesn’t believe a word of it48.
47 Francisco Examiner, 2 December 1890. This story was perhaps in some measure prompted by a bursting back into flame of the always-
smouldering pardon brokering scandal with the news that the new Governor Waterman intended to end his term in office with a ‘wholesale
prison delivery’ as theorised in the Fresno Weekly Republican, 21 November 1890.
48 Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco), 4 December 1890; Los Angeles Times and Woodland Democrat, 5 December 1890.

But the accusations refused to go away, even at the time when Harry Dam’s play, Diamond Deane, was staged in
March 1891 some newspapers dug the dirt about Dam’s past:
Harry Dam’s “Diamond Dean”

[Special to THE HERALD-Examiner Cable.]
London, March 19.— Harry Dam, who was private secretary of Governor Stoneman of California, and who was
accused of selling pardons, is once more before the public. It will be recollected that while he was on T.P.
O’Connor’s Star the first Jack the Ripper stories first saw the light. Harry was accused of “faking” sensations to
help increase the circulation of the newspaper. Now Dam comes to the front as a playwright. . . 49.
Could it be that Harry Dam’s possible authorship of the Jack the Ripper letters was confused with his creation
(or promotion) of the Leather Apron theory? Certainly The Star appears to have been the origin of and main pusher
of the Leather Apron story, whereas it pretty much dismissed ‘Dear Boss’ as a hoax. Lincoln Springfield, who was
there at the time and was presumably speaking from personal knowledge, attributed the Leather Apron story to
Harry Dam.
In the next installment: ‘Henry Jackson Wells Dam (1856-1906): Part 2. Marriage, Theatrical Success, and Death
in Cuba’.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Simon Wood and Dr Julian North for their help with this article.
49 Salt Lake Herald, 20 March 1891.
Christopher T. George has served as an editor for Ripperologist since 2002 and has been a contributor to
the magazine for the last decade. A past editor of the U.S. Ripper magazine, Ripper Notes, he helped organ-
ize the first American Jack the Ripper convention in Park Ridge, New Jersey, in April 2000.
By profession, Chris is a medical editor in Washington, D.C., and he lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with his
wife Donna and two cats.
Paul Begg had a career background in newspapers, television and publishing before becoming a freelance
writer in 1979. He was formerly the Executive Editor and is a sometime cotributor to Ripperologist and is
author of Jack the Ripper: The Uncensored Facts, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, and Jack the Ripper
the Facts, and is co-author of The Jack the Ripper A to Z.
He lives in Kent where he runs a 15th century pub and restaurant — actually all the work is done by his
wife, Judy, and daughter, Sioban, and two Jack Russells.

For Kicks:
Was the Ripper a serial sexual murderer?
By Jon Rees
Serial sexual murderers are depraved predators who kill for sexual pleasure, inflict pain and
torture in order to reach orgasm. Who, then, are these ferocious creatures? What drives them
to commit these horrors? And, finally, was Jack the Ripper one of them? In this second article
in my series that analyses the psychology of evil and the Whitechapel murders I shall examine
the idea of serial murder, attempt to answer the above questions and discuss if Jack the
Ripper’s murders had a sexual motive.
To kill for one’s own sexual pleasure is an horrific act, and murder and mutilation for sex-
ual kicks is undoubtedly evil. But why does it happen? Is it that common? And are the people
who commit it monsters among us, or are they indistinguishable from your relatives, friends,
and neighbours? And was the Ripper (often considered to be the first modern serial killer) a sex-
ual serial killer?
First, it is important to realise that not all serial killings have a sexual motive — I suggest sexual serial killing is
a distinct sub-set in a large group of possible motivations. Secondly, the experts cannot agree on whether the Ripper
killings were sexually motivated. Psychiatrists, psychologists and criminologists always like to use Jack the Ripper as
an example in their work, but do not agree on whether his acts had a sexual motivation or not. Clearly it is difficult
using 120-year-old evidence, which is also not always from primary sources, to establish a motive for these murders.
To truly know Jack he would need to have been extensively interviewed by a modern day expert. Nevertheless, I
shall attempt to ascertain if the Ripper was a serial sexual murderer.
I suggest that sexual serial killers commit their crimes for one reason only: to obtain maximal orgasm, which they
cannot achieve through any other means. They kill recreationally, and it is the kill that is usually the focus of the
sexual pleasure, though sometimes torture, mutilation or necrophilia also serves this purpose. While most murders
are committed for a purpose that it is relatively easy for the average, psychologically well-balanced person to under-
stand — jealousy, revenge or money — this is not the case for serial murder, and is certainly not the case for sexual
serial murder. We cannot understand them because their acts seem so far removed from normal human behaviour
and motivation. Jack the Ripper mutilated his victims’ bodies post mortem, and stole their organs. There is no way
that these degradations could have aided in the murder, so why would the Ripper have chosen to spend valuable
escape time doing this. A sexual motive is the most obvious solution. I believe that Jack the Ripper mutilated his vic-
tims’ bodies, faces and organs as an act of sexual degradation, helping him to achieve orgasm and act out his twist-
ed sexual fantasies. For those who suggest a medical reason for the Ripper stealing organs, why would he then feel

the need to commit further mutilations? It does not make
sense!
Their prey is just an object or plaything, completely at
the mercy of their sadistic sexual desires and fantasies.
Their victims are the weak and vulnerable, and often their
victims do not resemble each other physically, though they
may share common traits. The Ripper murdered the lowest
of the low. Prostitutes desperate for money, often under the
influence of alcohol. Most of his victims were the same age,
the exception being Mary Kelly, but sexual serial killers are
opportunists, Mary Kelly’s youth and apparent beauty repre-
sents a change among the victims that was not deliberate
but happened because she was in the wrong place at the
wrong time, like most victims of sexual serial murderers.
Such killers are well known to leave a characteristic sig-
nature. It is through this that murders in a series can be
linked together. As we know, Jack the Ripper had a charac-
teristic signature. He would cut his victims’ throats and
mutilate their abdomens (with increasing ferocity). This is
why many people discount Martha Tabram as a Ripper vic-
Liz Stride — Ripper victim without the characteristic signature?
tim, and why Elizabeth Stride’s inclusion on the canonical
list has been questioned in recent years.
How to identify a serial sexual murderer
Although there is no definitive way to identify such killers before they commit their crimes, research into their
backgrounds has found many striking similarities.
Serial sexual killers will usually begin to kill in their mid- to late-20s, but the age can range between early 20s
and mid-30s. While the killers’ actions may appear to dictate otherwise to the casual observer, they do not sudden-
ly become psychotic and start killing; they are firmly connected with reality and aware of their actions at all times.
It is during childhood that they first begin to develop symptoms of their violent disorder. Their childhood play is joy-
less and aggressive. At an early age they become loners, and prefer fantasy to reality. Their sexual fantasies begin
in mid-adolescence (usually 10 to 15 years before they begin killing), and these fantasies will be a combination of
sexuality, violence and hatred. They commit rebellious acts and are difficult to control. They will commit many acts
of petty (and sometimes more serious) crime — indulging in lying, stealing, playing with fire and cruelty to animals
and other children.
Though they come from varied backgrounds, there are some features that can be quite common (but by no means
occur in all instances). They may be victims of physical or sexual abuse, be illegitimate/adopted, be the children of
prostitutes or have over-protective, controlling mothers. Despite all this and their deep resentment and hatred, no
particular childhood trauma has ever been found to explain the actions of a serial sexual murderer.
Their petty criminal behaviour will escalate and become more serious as they progress into adulthood, beginning
with assault and violence, and gradually committing crimes such as arson, abduction, rape, non-sexual murder and
then finally committing their first sadistic sexual or necrophilic murder.

The why?
How can a person gain pleasure from an act that most of us find deplorable? The thought of someone gaining sexu-
al arousal from taking a life is revolting to a well-adjusted person, so how can they feel pleasure from this heinous act?
In the literature, the serial sexual murderer is described as a sadistic sexual psychopath. They will deliver suf-
fering upon a living victim and gain sexual pleasure from it. The sexual and aggressive urges are linked together in
childhood, unable to achieve one without the other; they feel sexually dominant through the act of sadism. And, if
they want the dominance to extend into death, they may also engage in necrophilia.
I discussed psychopathia at some length in my previous article, noting that not all psychopaths are killers and
not all killers are psychopaths. In the same vein, not all sadists are killers (some may be sexually satisfied by engag-
ing in masochistic acts with a consenting partner) and not all necrophiles are murderers (preferring instead to dig
up corpses, or seek employment somewhere with easy access to them). It is through this lethal combination of sex-
uality, sadism (or necrophilia) and psychopathia that the serial sexual killer is born.
They will often be sexually dysfunctional, perhaps suffering impotence during normal sexual acts. They will often
be unable to maintain mature, consensual sexual relationships. Through fulfilling their violent sexual fantasies, they
are able to achieve the orgasm they cannot reach during normal sexual acts. Their sexual acts will often be regres-
sive, sadistic parodies of normal sexual acts.
All of us have sexual fantasies, mostly based upon mutual sexual satisfaction. This is not true for the serial sex-
ual murderer; their fantasies will have themes of power, dominance and exploitation. In these fantasies the subject
will be degraded and humiliated and the fantasist will gain enjoyment from imagining his partner suffering.
Eventually these fantasies will become too powerful to control. The fantasist will be unable to be satisfied by them
alone and they will move on to killing for the first time. They will feel empowered and the fantasies will be fuelled
by the act of the murder and will become more elaborate and more extreme.
Was Jack the Ripper a serial sexual murderer?
We have seen that the Ripper does fit in quite well with certain aspects of the profile (if you will forgive the
word) of the serial sexual murderer. He had his characteristic signature, his victims were the weak and vulnerable,
his crimes became more elaborate over time, he took the organs of his victims and mutilated their bodies post
mortem. But there are also some contradictions. Jack was a fast worker — he disabled his victims and killed them
instantly, not in a slow sadistic manner. He only mutilated post mortem, and there is no evidence he had sex with
any of his victims — before or after death. Can this be explained by the characteristics we have seen of the serial
sexual killer?
It can be worked around: Not all serial sexual killers engage in the same acts. Jack killed in public places and
only had a limited amount of time. Slowly killing his victims would not have been practical. It was only after their
death that he had the chance to perform the aim of the killing, his mutilations.
Does the organ stealing fit into the category of serial sexual murderer? Yes, several other killers of this type took
their victim’s organs and ate them (just as the Ripper possibly did), Edmund Kemper and Jeffrey Dahmer being the
two most notable. Of the latter, from the reasons he gave after his arrest for doing this, Dahmer gave explanations
similar to primitive cannibalistic merger fantasies or an aberrational twist on the human desire to bond with others.
And, like the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer does not fit the classic profile of the serial sexual murderer, but there can be
no doubt he is one.
Perhaps the model is not perfect, psychologists and criminologists are constantly adapting and their knowledge
growing and in years to come we will have a better understanding of this breed of killer. And perhaps this is why the
Ripper does not fit exactly the profile of the serial sexual murderer — because he is the same, only different at the
same time.

A similarity?
In the 1980s the FBI conducted a study of serial sexual murderers on death row
in the USA. Many of those interviewed fit the traditional “profile” of the serial
sexual murderer, but out of those that did not one in particular stands out.In the
book written about the study, Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives, Robert
Ressler writes of a serial sexual murderer whose crimes seem very similar to Jack
the Ripper’s a century earlier.
The murderer in question slept in a bed with his mother and aunt when, at
age five, his aunt (who was pregnant at the time) suffered a severe haemorrhage
and miscarried, losing lots of blood in the bed, bedroom and bathroom. At around
the same time his grandmother also underwent a hysterectomy. These events trig-
gered a morbid fascination with blood and organs (both his own and female). He
began to link rage and sexual frustration, experiencing penetration fantasies (he
once was motivated to stab his girlfriend almost on impulse after she teased him
sexually). This penetration fantasy was also carried out in his murders when he
disembowelled his victims. Though it is difficult to be sure from the way the book
is structured, it is likely this murderer is the same as the one later described by
Ressler as thus: “In one case, there were no obvious signs of sex-
ual assault; however, the disembowelment of the victim was
later found to have sexual meaning for the killer1.”
The Darkness inside our own minds
Finally, we shall examine if anyone is capable of committing

such atrocities and if all of us could snap and become a monster.
The quotes are taken from Robert Simon’s Bad men do what
good men dream.
“But for the genetic and parental luck of the draw, might you
or I have become a serial killer? Yet as a practising psychiatrist, I
have been greatly impressed by patients who have been dealt a
very difficult, not impossible, hand by life. Nevertheless, these
people have assumed full responsibility and have led productive
and meaningful lives. A patient with a severe manic-depressive
illness, who was married and ran a successful business once told
me, ‘Doc, it’s not the cards you’re dealt, it’s how you play them.’
Becoming a serial killer, to some extent at least, is exercising a
Ed Kemper and Jeffrey Dahmer — cannibals choice2.”
So do we have that choice? Are all of us capable of doing great
evil? Of killing for our own perverted pleasure? Are you capable of that? You’d probably say no.
“Perhaps Heraclitus had it right when he stated that character is destiny. The serial sexual killer’s character is
one so firmly formed that it fashions his destiny. We who live with a few of these killers in our midst can only hope
that our destinies do not cross. But we cannot escape our human destiny. There is a bit of the sadist, the psychopath,
1 Bad men do what good men dream, Robert Simon MD, American Psychiatric Publishing Inc, 2008
2 ibid.

the killer in all of us. The basic difference is that the charac-
ter-driven destiny of bad men is to consciously do what good
men are destined to unconsciously dream3.”
Nature alone cannot explain the evil that men do. Nurture
alone cannot explain it. A combination of the two must be
why people can commit evil acts that make us retch in dis-
gust. But then they’re fixed in their destiny, determined by
the luck of the draw. Fate is inevitable. Free will does not
exist for the evil among us.
Unfortunately, as we can see from other conclusions drawn
from the evidence we have, the science of offender profiling is
still so new it may be decades or even centuries before we can
ever really know the truth — if it can be known at all. Because
of this, there are those who would say it is a pointless science
not worth studying, but the same argument could be given for
medicine, chemistry, physics and many other sciences which
have been developed and perfected over the centuries. They Former FBI Agent Robert Ressler – expert on serial killers
have all grown from infancy, and we can hope that the social
sciences and offender profiling will do the same, and that one day we shall know the truth about what causes others
to commit awful acts.
As we have seen, categorising Jack the Ripper as a serial sexual murderer is very difficult without knowing his
identity, history and motives. From the evidence we have been given, he does not fit the typical profile of a sexual
serial murder (from his crimes alone) but there are others who also do not fit the profile, so without knowing the
Ripper’s motives we can never truly discount him. This makes me believe that it is still possible for him to have been
a sexual serial killer.
Sources:
Robert I Simon M.D. — Bad men do what good men dream: A Forensic Psychiatrist illuminates the darker side of
human behaviour.
David Canter — Criminal Shadows
Robert K Ressler, Ann W Burgess, John E Douglas — Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives
David Putwain and Aidan Sammons — Psychology and Crime
David Canter — Criminal Psychology
3 ‘Becoming Part 1’, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Season 2
Jon Rees is a student from Swansea, Wales. He is studying Criminology and Psychology at
Swansea University.
After graduating he hopes to start a Masters in Forensic Psychology. He is a regular poster and
moderator on JTRForums.com, and in his spare time is a Scout Leader.

Smoke and Mirrors:
Francis Tumblety,
The Times and the Parnell Commission
By Simon D Wood
‘I wish to state emphatically that in recent years the Police have succeeded only by strain-
ing the law, or, in plain English, by doing utterly unlawful things . . .’
Metropolitan Police Memorandum initialled by Dr Robert Anderson, 13 December 1898: HO45/10254/X36450, sub. 77.
At some time after 16 November 1888, Francis Tumblety, an Irish-American pimple-banishing quack doctor bailed
in the sum of £300 on four counts of gross indecency — a contemporary legal term for homosexual conduct — fled
England for France. On 24 November, under the assumed name ‘Frank Townsend’, he boarded the steamship La
Bretagne bound for New York at the port of Le Havre. Nothing about him appeared in the British press. The first any-
one knew about his arrest was when a spate of stories sprang up in the American press. Here are two examples:
New York Times, 19 November 1888
‘The Dr. Tumblety who was arrested in London a few days ago on suspicion of complicity in the Whitechapel
murders, and who when proved innocent of that charge was held for trial in the Central Criminal Court under the
special law covering the offences disclosed in the late “Modern Babylon” scandal1, will be remembered by any num-
ber of Brooklynites and New-Yorkers as Dr. Blackburn, the Indian herb doctor.’
Le Bretagne
The New York Times had more to say about the
Indian herb doctor arrested in London. On 4
December 1888, it reported:
1 ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’ was a series of

newspaper articles on child prostitution by editor William T
Stead which appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette during July
1885. ‘The Maiden Tribute’ led to the passing of the Criminal
Law Amendment Act of 1885, which raised the age of consent
for girls from 13 to 16. The final version of the Act also con-
tained the controversial Section 11, also known as the
Labouchere amendment, which criminalized male homosexual-
ity. This Section read:
‘Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or is
a party to the commission of, or procures, or attempts to pro-
cure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross
indecency shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and being convict-
ed shall be liable at the discretion of the Court to be impris-
oned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without
hard labour.’
The Labouchere Amendment was the basis for the indict-
ment and prosecution of Oscar Wilde in 1895. He was found
guilty of gross indecency and sentenced to two years’ hard
labour, the maximum sentence allowed for the charge.

‘“Dr.” Francis Tumblety, who left his bondsmen in London in
the lurch, arrived by La Bretagne of the Transatlantic Line Sunday.
Chief Inspector Byrnes had no charge whatever against him, but he
had him followed so as to secure his temporary address, and will
keep him in view as a matter of ordinary police precaution. Mr.
Byrnes does not believe that he will have to interfere with
Tumblety for anything he may have done in Europe, and laughs at
the suggestion that he was the Whitechapel murderer or his abet-
tor or accomplice.’
It is hard to ascertain how the American press got hold of the

story about Tumblety’s arrest in connection with the Whitechapel
murders. While there is documentary evidence of his four gross inde-
cency offences, there is nothing to link him with the crimes of “Jack
the Ripper”. Furthermore, those same American press reports were
unanimous in declaring that he had been found innocent of any par-
ticipation in the Whitechapel murders. Despite this, a body of opin-
ion persists which contends that Tumblety must remain a Ripper sus-
pect, mainly because Scotland Yard detectives were sent to America
to track him down. But is this true?
The first British newspaper to suggest that Scotland Yard detec-
tives had gone to America in search of the Ripper was the Pall Mall
Gazette. On 31 December 1888, the Gazette said:
‘Inspector Andrews, of Scotland Yard, has arrived in New York Inspector Walter Simon Andrews
from Montreal. It is generally believed that he has received orders

from England to commence his search in this city for the Whitechapel murderer . . .
‘The supposed inaction of the Whitechapel murderer for a considerable period and the fact that a man suspect-
ed of knowing a good deal about this series of crimes left England for this side of the Atlantic three weeks ago, has,
says the Telegraph correspondent, produced the impression that Jack the Ripper is in that country.’
The Gazette did not name any names: not Tumblety’s, not anybody else’s. Nor would any serving police officer
name Tumblety in connection with the Whitechapel murders, or in any other context, for many years.
In his 1928 book Masters of Crime, Guy Bertie Harris Logan, an English journalist and crime writer who was 19
years old at the time of the Whitechapel murders, wrote:
‘The murders ceased, I think, with the Millers Court one, and I am the more disposed to this view because, though
the fact was kept a close secret at the time, I know that one of Scotland Yard’s best men, Inspector Andrews, was sent
specially to America in December 1888 in search of the Whitechapel fiend on the strength of important information,
the nature of which was never disclosed. Nothing, however, came of it, and the Inspector’s mission was a failure.’
Logan was certainly right about one thing: Inspector Walter Simon Andrews travelled to America in December
1888. It could not be really said, however, that he was sent especially in search of the Ripper, since his original mis-
sion was to deliver a prisoner to the Canadian authorities. His journey was covered extensively in the American press.

New York Times, 29 November 1888
‘TORONTO, Nov 28—Roland Gideon Israel Barnett, the cel-

ebrated financial “fakir,” bucket-shop speculator &c., of
New-York, Toronto, London, and various other places, leaves
London, England, tomorrow, in charge of an English detec-
tive, for this city.’
Inspector Andrews and Roland Gideon Israel Barnett sailed
from Liverpool aboard the SS Sarnia on 29 November 1888.
They arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 9 December 1888, and
went on by train to Toronto, where they arrived on 11
December. In Toronto, Inspector Andrews handed over Barnett
formally to the Canadian authorities. The American press duly
reported on Andrews’s discharge of his duties.
New York Times, 12 December 1888
‘TORONTO, Dec. 11—Roland Gideon Israel Barnett, the

crooked financial man of London, England, and New York, and
the man who played a prominent part, as it is alleged, in
wrecking the Central Bank of this city over a year ago, arrived
in Toronto this morning, having been brought from England,
whither he had escaped from New York, by a Scotland Yard
detective.’
Inspector Andrews wasn’t the only Scotland Yard detec-

tive in North America at the time. Other British policemen had
Chief Superintendent John Shore
crossed the Atlantic earlier, ostensibly in pursuit of quite dif-
ferent objectives. The American press was well informed in this respect.
Chicago Daily Tribune, 16 December 1888
SCOTLAND YARD DETECTIVES SAID TO BE AT WORK IN THIS COUNTRY
‘NEW YORK, Dec. 15—[Special.]—Several Scotland Yard detectives are in this country looking up evidence for the
Times suit against Parnell2. Fred Jarvis of Scotland Yard has been in this country and he is now at Kansas City. It
was known in New York Friday last [7 December] that Chief Inspector Shore, Superintendent of the Criminal
Investigation Department of the Metropolitan Police, arrived and proceeded without loss of time to Kansas City.
There he was to meet with the representative of the Pinkertons3 and with Fred Jarvis . . .’
2 Charles Stewart Parnell (1846 – 1891) was an Irish nationalist political leader, member of the British Parliament and founder and leader
of the Irish Parliamentary Party. In March 1887 The Times accused Parnell of support for the murder of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Lord
Frederick Cavendish, and the Permanent Under-Secretary, Thomas Henry Burke, in Phoenix Park, Dublin, on 6 May 1882, and published let-
ters that suggested Parnell was complicit in the murders. A Special Commission of Enquiry was created in August 1888 at Parnell’s request
to investigate The Times’s allegations. In February 1889 the Commission established that the letters were in fact a forgery by Richard
Piggott, an anti-Parnellite journalist. The Commission’s report published in February 1890 cleared Parnell of these accusations. Parnell then
took The Times to court and the newspaper paid him £5,000 damages in an out-of-court settlement.
3 The Pinkerton National Detective Agency, usually shortened to the Pinkertons, was a private American security guard and detective
agency established by Allan Pinkerton in 1850. On the death of Allan Pinkerton in 1884, his sons Robert A and William A Pinkerton took
over the management of the agency.

But let’s return to Inspector Andrews. In a letter to the head of the Metropolitan Police’s Criminal Investigation
Department, Dr Robert Anderson, Toronto Chief Constable Henry J Grasett told him: ‘Inspector Andrews left
[Toronto] on 18th inst. en route for London’. But the Inspector’s mission in North America was not completed. The
American press had something to say in this respect.
Buffalo Morning Express, 20 December 1888
IMPORTANT CLEWS
A SCOTLAND YARD DETECTIVE’S DOUBLE MISSION
Working Up the Parnell Case in America
Special to the Buffalo Express
‘TORONTO DEC. 19—It seems that Inspector Andrews of Scotland Yard who brought the much-wanted Roland
Gideon Israel Barnett to this country for trial in connection with the wrecking of the Central Bank, has been killing
two birds with one stone.
‘Inspector Andrews left last night for Europe.
Charles Stewart Parnell
Before his departure he stated to an interviewer
that since he had been in Toronto he had
obtained some important clews in the Parnell
case, facts that he did not dream had existed, but
he refused to discuss the mysterious things he
had discovered. It is well known that the inspec-
tor paid several mysterious visits to parties in
this city whom he called friends, but even the
Toronto detectives would not divulge these
friends’ names. Several evenings were spent in
this kind of work, and it is to be presumed that
Scotland Yard has an agent in this city.
‘But Inspector Andrews is not the only officer
of Scotland Yard at present on a similar mission.
Inspector Fred Jarvis, a bosom friend of his, and
also Chief Inspector Shore of the same depart-
ment are in the United States hunting evidence.
It is said that for over three years three of
Pinkerton’s most expert men have been at work
on the Irish national societies. One of these men
is the celebrated McParland who broke up the
Molly Maguires4.’
4 The Molly Maguires were members of a secret Irish

organisation active in the coal mines of Pennsylvania,
United States, in the 19th century. The Pinkerton
Detective Agency, hired to deal with the ‘Mollies’,
assigned agent James McParland to go undercover and
infiltrate the miners’ organisation. In 1876, McParland’s
testimony helped to send ten men to the gallows and led
to the dissolution of the organisation.

The ‘Scotland Yard’ agent in Toronto may have been Joseph T Kirby, who was not, in fact, a Scotland Yard agent
but a private detective from Montreal hired by The Times to gather evidence against Parnell.
From Toronto, Andrews travelled to Montreal, duly dogged by the press:
Galveston Daily News, 22 December 1888
‘NEW YORK, December 21—[Special]—The World’s Montreal special says: Inspector Andrews of Scotland Yard
arrived here today from Toronto and left to-night for New York . . . He refused to answer any questions regarding
his mission, but said that there were twenty-eight detectives, two clerks and one inspector employed on the
Whitechapel murder cases, and that the police were without a jot of evidence upon which to arrest anybody . . .
It was announced at police headquarters today that Andrews has a commission in connection with two other
Scotland Yard men to find the murderer in America . . .”’
But was Andrews really after the Whitechapel murderer? A report in a New York newspaper gave a totally differ-
ent account of his mission, ostensibly based on statements by Andrews himself.
New York Herald, 23 December 1888
INSPECTOR ANDREWS TALKS.

Alleged Indiscretion of an English Detective with Regard to His Doings.
[BY TELEGRAPH TO THE HERALD.]
‘Montreal, Que., Dec. 22, 1888.—Prominent Irish nationalists of this city are much excited over an avowal of
Inspector Andrews, of Scotland Yard, who brought Roland Gideon Israel Barnett, the wrecker of the Central Bank,
of Toronto, that he has also occupied his time, both here and in Toronto, in working up evidence for the London
Times with the object of associating the Parnellite party with outrages and murders in Ireland.
‘Ever since his arrival in the country and his subsequent lengthy stay in Toronto rumors have been current to
the effect that he was one of many men in the employ of the British government, arrayed against the representa-
tives of the Irish people in the search for the least evidence that will seemingly injure the Parnellites, but until
now Andrews has flatly denied it.
HE ACKNOWLEDGES HIS MISSION.
‘This morning, however, on the eve of his departure for home the emissary of Scotland Yard admitted that he
could not deny the charge, and practically acknowledged that that was his mission. He had, however, to admit that
he had not been very successful, many of the men whom he had interviewed declining to become informers on their
trusted leaders. Some evidence of an unimportant character may have been gathered, but it is the general belief
here that it will not affect the proceedings before the Parnellite Commission to any material extent. Mr. Andrews
distinctly said he had not been looking after Fenians and Invincibles, confining his attention to members of the
National League, especially recent arrivals from Ireland, though he had had communications with the English police
agents in the United States and from this latter source he hoped much5.
5 The Fenians, both the Fenian Brotherhood and Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), were organisations dedicated to the establishment
of an independent Irish Republic in the 19th and early 20th century. The Irish National Invincibles, usually known as ‘the Invincibles’ were
a radical splinter group of the IRB established in Dublin in December 1881 under the direction of Patrick Joseph Sheridan. Its avowed aim
was to assassinate Irish government officials who aided English attempts at coercion. On 6 May 1882, members of the Invincibles commit-
ted the Phoenix Park murders. The Irish National League (INL) was a nationalist political party founded in October 1882 by Charles Stewart
Parnell .

Phoenix Park, Dublin, B. & R's "Camera" Series No. 592— British Manufacture. Courtesy of Gail Hapke and Scribal Terror.
A STARTLING REVELATION.
‘Though he could not divulge the secrets of his profession, he could say that there was an organized detective
system in behalf of the British government in both Canada and the United States, and that if the names of these
detectives were made public Irishmen all over the world would receive a shock that would cause a sensation beside
which the Phoenix Park tragedies would pale into insignificance.
‘These men were in the inner circles, in many cases occupied high positions in Irish societies, and every impor-
tant move was instantly reported to the London authorities by either a secret cable cipher or by mail. Many of these
men received annual allowances from the British government, but in all cases the payments were made through
some private persons so as to avoid suspicion and detection.
‘The chiefs of this detective service were Fred Jarvis and Chief Inspector Shore, and he had had a conference
with them at Niagara which he hoped would be fruitful. Other members of this British service were employed by
the Pinkertons, while still others occupied high positions in mercantile life.
INFORMATION FROM THE UNITED STATES.
‘Andrews further said that the greater portion of the Times evidence has been secured in the United States,
and he hinted that they had secured some correspondence between the Irish leaders in Britain and the extremists
on this side of the Atlantic.
‘Irish Leaguers here are very indignant at these statements, and unhesitatingly denounce them as the fabrica-
tions of a seeker after notoriety. Henry J. Cloran, President of the National League, declared that Andrews’ avowals
were nothing new to him. Long before he left London the leading Irishmen here were notified that he was coming,
and ever since Andrews landed at Halifax he had been watched by men in his own business, so that his every move
was known. They feared nothing from Andrews’ mission, for he had not been able to persuade even one poor wretch
to offer to perjure himself and curse his country; this notwithstanding the fact that several Leaguers offered to go to
London and tell what they knew on payment of a lump sum, which would have been handed over to the Parnell fund.

‘IRISH CANADIANS NOT ALARMED.
‘Already several cases of this kind have occurred, and in this way the Times has helped to pay Parnell’s expenses.
Members of the League in Canada did not care if Scotland Yard sent all its officers wandering through the country. It
would create no alarm if it was learned that English detectives had been in the habit of attending their meetings.
‘Judging by the experience of the Times with some of its witnesses, Inspector Andrews was so dubious of the
material offered to him that he concluded to make his return journey alone. Immigrants recently from Ireland could
probably tell many strange things, but their evidence might not be of a character suited to the purpose of the
Times.’
Andrews next travelled from Montreal to New York. This time the British press had something to say:
Pall Mall Gazette, 31 December 1888
THE SEARCH FOR THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERER

DETECTIVES ON THE OUTLOOK IN NEW YORK
‘Inspector Andrews of Scotland Yard has arrived in New York from Montreal. It is generally believed that he has
received orders from England to commence his search in this city for the Whitechapel murderer. Mr Andrews is
reported to have said that there are half a dozen English detectives, two clerks, and one inspector employed in
America in the same chase . . . The supposed inaction of the Whitechapel murderer for a considerable period and
the fact that a man suspected of knowing a good deal about this series of crimes left England for this side of the
Atlantic three weeks ago, has, says the Telegraph correspondent, produced the impression that Jack the Ripper is
in that country.’
Virtually the same report appeared in the Thanet Advertiser on 5 January 1889. The Advertiser, however, added
a few highly significant lines:
‘The Irish American Nationalists suggest that the inspector is not in search of the Whitechapel murderer, but is
hunting up evidence for the Parnell Commission.’
According to the foregoing newspaper reports, Andrews’s journey from Toronto to Montreal took four days. It is
safe to speculate that during this time he stopped at Niagara on the American — Canadian border for a ‘conference’
with Inspector Frederick Jarvis and Chief Superintendent John Shore of Scotland Yard, whom he called ‘the chiefs’
of ‘an organized detective system on behalf of the British government in both Canada and the United States’.
We must ask ourselves why Andrews went from Toronto to New York via Montreal, which involved a 330-mile-long
rail journey, a full day of travel at the time, in the opposite direction. Furthermore, Andrews was reported to be in
Montreal ‘on the eve of his departure for home’, which suggests he was en route for Halifax, Nova Scotia. If he had
bought a return steamship ticket, could he have boarded the SS Sarnia in time for its return voyage to Liverpool?
The Dominion Line steamship Sarnia plied between Liverpool, Halifax and Portland, Maine. It sailed from Portland
on Thursday 20 December, arriving at Halifax on Saturday 22 December and departing the same day. It arrived at
Moville, north-west Ireland, at 9.00 pm on Sunday 30 December and landed mail before proceeding with its journey
at 10.20 pm. It reached Liverpool on Tuesday 1 January 1889. If Andrews had returned to England on the SS Sarnia,
he would have been somewhere on the Irish Sea on 31 December 1888, at the time the Pall Mall Gazette was report-
ing his arrival in New York.

We are further told that Andrews left Montreal for
New York on the night of 21 December 1888. The rail
distance between the two cities is 387 miles and he
should have arrived to his destination in fourteen
hours. Yet his presence in New York was reported
only ten days later, on 31 December. Why did his
journey take nine days when the railway trip took
just fourteen hours? Where was he in the meantime?
What business could possibly have been more urgent
than his orders from England to hunt down the
Whitechapel murderer?
Several months later, on 21 March 1889, veteran
Irish Member Timothy Michael Healy, who would go
on to be the first governor-general of the Irish Free
State, asked in the House of Commons ‘if Inspector
Andrews … [had] visited America since the passing of
the Special (Parnell) Commission Act [August 1888];
and if his business there was connected with the
charges and allegations made before the ...
Commission.’ The Home Secretary, Henry Matthews,
replied that the answer to the first paragraph was in
the affirmative; to the second in the negative. But
Healy did not give up so easily. ‘Will the right hon.
Gentleman,’ he asked, ‘state whether Inspector
Andrews saw Le Caron?’ Matthews replied that he
was not aware whether Andrews did or not see Le
Caron.’
Thomas Billis Beach, alias Henri Le Caron
It should not come as a surprise that Matthews did
not know the answer. The spy and informer Thomas
Billis Beach, also known as Henri Le Caron, had given evidence at the Special Commission in February 1889. He was
Anderson’s asset and operated under his exclusive control. It is intriguing to think that Andrews and Beach could have
secretly met in Beach’s apartment at 177 La Salle Avenue, Chicago. It is known, however, that they did not. In late
1888 Beach’s father lay dying at the family home in Colchester, Essex. On 8 December, the day before Andrews
arrived in Canada, Beach sailed from New York aboard the SS Umbria bound for Liverpool.
On 21 March 1889, The Times published a letter from Anderson concerning the matter of Le Caron giving evidence
at the Special Commission. Anderson, responded to assertions that he had acted outside the sphere of his official
position as Assistant Commissioner of Police — not a matter for open discussion in a newspaper. Anderson stated:
‘I am prepared to substantiate on oath, the fact asserted by Mr Matthews that neither the “Assistant
Commissioner of Police” nor the department which he controls has given help to The Times in the presentation of
their case before the Commission.’

The next day, Healy asked Matthews whether
Inspector Andrews, who Matthews admitted had
been sent out to America since the Act forming the
Commission was passed, was the confidential person
who had helped The Times with the American part of
the case at the suggestion of Anderson. Matthews
replied: ‘The question with respect to Mr. Andrews
does not in any way arise out of the question on the
Paper. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will put it down’
— thus deftly ducking Healy’s query.
What Inspector Andrews was doing during the nine
days elapsed between his departure from Montreal and
his arrival in New York was a closely-guarded secret.
Even the press trail went cold. This is odd, for if the
American newspapers had thought Andrews was on the
trail of Jack the Ripper they would have dogged his
every step. Despite the press hoopla which had herald-
ed Tumblety’s arrival in New York on 2 December 1888,
no American newspaper reported Andrews’s arrival in
the city or explored the correlation between Tumblety
and Andrews’s search for the Ripper.
In fact, there is no hard evidence that Andrews
went from Montreal to New York, and even less that
he went in pursuit of Tumblety. But let’s assume he
actually arrived in New York on 22 - 23 December
1888. What would he have learnt there? If he had
Sir Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary contacted Inspector Byrnes, he would have been told
that on 5 December Tumblety had given New York’s
Finest the slip and was currently nowhere to be found. If he had contacted New York detective Michael Powers
instead, the twenty-year veteran of the 8th Precinct would have told him that he thought the Ripper was still in
Whitechapel. Let’s see what Powers had told the local press:
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 9 December 1888
‘Mark my words, sir, we have not yet heard the last of this ultra morbid misogynist, this demon incarnate, whose
unholy delight is to dye his hands in the blood of his foully murdered victims. He has a nature which Moloch might
have envied, and in my opinion is not one to rest content with a paltry half dozen offerings. Before long his hell-
ish hands will again find work to do. Soon will the death groan of another unfortunate punctuate the stillness of
some Whitechapel purlieu, and next morning palsy-stricken London will cry, “Where are the police?’”’
The most probable explanation for the complete absence of post-Montreal American press coverage of Andrews’s
pursuit of the Whitechapel murderer is that Andrews did not go to New York at all. If he did, it was on some other,
secret, business, or to board a transatlantic liner bound for England.
Furthermore the reason for Andrews’s meeting with Shore and Jarvis at Niagara is unclear. The following press
report may throw some light on it:

Utica Daily Press, 26 December 1888
Hunting for Witnesses Against Parnell
Lincoln, Nebraska, [Tuesday] December 25th—It is reported that British detectives were in Lincoln seeking testi-
mony favorable to the London Times in the Parnell-Times trial. A correspondent made enquiries of John P. Sutton,
Secretary of the Irish National League of America, concerning the presence of such detectives here and their object
in coming. Mr Sutton said,
“There are no English detectives in the city now, but four or five passed through, east bound, on Friday or
Saturday last [21/22 December]. I do not know where they came from. Yes, they are real English detectives—
Scotland Yard men. These men are hunting up a number of scalawags throughout this country who have been pos-
ing as Irish revolutionists, but who are themselves discredited characters among those who are honestly opposed
to constitutional agitation as a remedy for Irish grievances. P. J. Sheridan, of Montevista, had occasion to deny the
rumour that he was about to appear as a Times witness. No man conversant with the present agitation for Irish leg-
islative rights has the smallest doubt of Mr Sheridan’s honour and integrity. He has no detrimental evidence to give,
and if he had, England has not money enough to purchase it. For years past the English government has had its spies
in all the large centers of Irish population. They have been here in Lincoln to our positive knowledge, and it is a
strong commentary on the strictly constitutional methods of the League, that the men have been unable to connect
the present movement with anything that, under American or English common law, could be deemed unlawful.”’
Just over two weeks later a variation of this story broke in an American newspaper, complete with numerous tran-
scriptions of letters and telegrams between Kirby, the private investigator from Montreal, and someone identified
only as J.C.S. Let’s see what it said:
Buffalo Courier, 13 January 1889

BADLY HOAXED
A Scotland Yard Detective Fooled by a Black Rock Mechanic,
All the Way From England in Search of Evidence
With Which to Smirch Parnell and Help the London ‘Times’ Out of a Hole.
‘ . . . during the past month Buffalo has been haunted by a Scotland Yard detective, who registered as J.T. Kerby
[sic], though in the correspondence he appears also under the assumed name of “Cris [sic] Thomas”.
‘His mission was to secure evidence to establish the authenticity of the letters in possession of the London Times,
implicating Charles Stewart Parnell with the murders which occurred in Phoenix Park some years ago.’
The upshot of the story was that the whole thing was a hoax in which, between August and December 1888, Kirby
was steadily milked of $500 of The Times’s money.
Superintendent Shore’s perambulations after leaving New York City, Kansas City and Niagara cannot yet be traced. We
are on slightly firmer ground, however, with Inspector Jarvis. Could he have been the Scotland Yard detective sent to
America in pursuit of the Whitechapel murderer? Jarvis was the ideal man for the job. He had spent two years doing secret
service work in New York, where he married Fanny, a local girl. Jarvis’s son, Walter Byron, was born in New York in 1872.
By 1881 the family had moved to London, and can be found in the Census living at 44 Edithna Street, Lambeth.
Jarvis arrived in New York In November 1888 armed with 44 warrants. He had ostensibly come to America to extra-
dite Thomas Barton, who was wanted in England for forging London and Northwestern Railway Company stock cer-
tificates. Their arrival was widely covered in the press. Some newspapers reported the basic facts of his journey;
some, the wildest rumours.

William A Pinkerton In his office at the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The large portrait on the opposite wall shows his father,
Allan Pinkerton, the founder of the Agency.
New York Evening Telegram, 23 January 1889
FORGER BARTON CAUGHT

Tracked To This Country By an English Detective
PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 23.—
‘Frederick Jarvis, a detective inspector of Scotland Yard, London, England, whose appearance in New York some
time ago gave rise to the story that he had come over to collect evidence against Mr. Parnell in the suit against the
London Times, has been on the trail of the fugitive [Barton] almost from the day he absconded. The vigilant detec-
tive followed several clews, leading him through British America, Manitoba, Canada and ending in this city. . .
[Jarvis] did not know Barton, but after his arrest the officer introduced himself, and informed the prisoner that he
had charge of the execution of forty-four warrants charging him with forgery. Barton replied: “That is quite right”.
‘Edward Plant, of No. 64 Vincent Street, Macclesfield, England, who had been brought over to identify the fugi-
tive, recognized Barton as a man with whom he had played as a boy, and whom he had known intimately up to the
time of the flight.’

Robert A and William A Pinkerton
Galveston Daily News, 17 January 1889
‘The [New York] Herald says: On the 11th December last the Herald astonished the Irish nationalists in America
by the publication of an article about the movements of London detectives. Some months before the date men-
tioned Fred Jervis [sic], a well known Scotland Yard man, arrived in America, and made no great secret of the fact
that he was here in the interest of the London Times to ferret out information about the movements of Irish-
American conspirators, and particularly those of dynamiters.
‘Chief Inspector Shore, superintendent of the criminal investigation department of the London metropolitan
police, also came out with the same intention—to try to connect the Parnellites with the crimes charged. Shore
went to Kansas City to meet Jarvis and the representatives of Pinkerton. Three of the Pinkerton men have been for
years at work on the Irish national secret societies. One of them, it seems, communicated direct with Scotland Yard,
and Manager Bangs of this city admitted it to an Irish nationalist, who caught him in a trap . . .
After the arrival of Shore and Jervis [sic] was known it was discovered that Inspector Andrews of Scotland Yard
was in Toronto and Montreal, also on the same errand . . .’
And another newspaper reported the very wildest rumours:
Daily Inter Ocean, 17 January 1889
‘Friends of Ireland . . . were excited today over the report of a plot between English detectives, now in this
country in the interest of the London Times, and some hot-headed advocates of the cause, to blow up an English
passenger steamer in New York harbour . . .’
The Pinkertons were quick to respond.

‘Daily Inter Ocean, 18 January 1889
‘William Pinkerton stated: “It has also been published throughout the country that Superintendent John Shore,
of the Criminal Investigation Department in London, was in this country in connection with the Parnell case, as also
was Chief Inspector Jarvis and Inspector Andrews of the detective department of Scotland Yard, and that they with
members of Pinkerton’s agency were working on the same case.
“Mr. William A. Pinkerton states most emphatically that their agency is not now and never has been in the serv-
ice of the London Times in connection with the Parnell case, and that all these stories are sensational and absurd.
Superintendent Shore of Scotland Yard has not been in America in the past four of five years. Inspector Andrews of
Scotland Yard brought a bank defaulter from London, England, to Toronto, and turned him over to the authorities
and returned to England inside of a week.
“About six weeks ago the Pinkerton agency were advised from Scotland Yard to look for a man named Thomas
Barton, charged with forgery to the amount of about $125,000 on the London and Northwestern Railroad, in
England. About six weeks ago Chief Inspector Jarvis, of London, arrived in this country . . .
“Mr. Jarvis is the only English inspector that Mr. William A. Pinkerton knows of who has been in the United States
recently in connection with any business, and whose headquarters is at Scotland Yard.”’
Other newspapers followed suit:
New York Times, 22 January 1889
FROM SCOTLAND YARD
‘ST. PAUL, Minn., Jan. 21.—The Scotland Yard detective, Jarvis, who was reported in a dispatch recently to be
working up evidence in the London Times’s case against Mr. Parnell, was in St. Paul a short time ago. His business
in America has nothing to do with the London Times or Mr. Parnell. He was in this country looking for Thomas
Barton, charged with forgeries on the London and Northwestern Railway to the amount of $125,000. Six weeks ago
the Pinkerton Agency was advised from Scotland Yard to look out for Barton, who was known to have crossed the
Atlantic, shortly after Chief Jarvis arrived in New York.
‘As it was known that Barton had friends and connections in Manitoba, Jarvis started at once for the Northwest.
He remained in Chicago one day and in St. Paul one day on his way to Winnipeg. While here he made himself known
to Chief of Police [John] Clark and Chief of Detectives John O’Connor, and was entertained by them.
‘While Jarvis was in Winnipeg working on a false lead Barton was apprehended and arrested in Philadelphia by R.
J. Linden, Superintendent of the Pinkerton Agency of Philadelphia. In returning from Winnipeg, Inspector Jarvis, know-
ing that Barton had been arrested, stopped over in St. Paul three days, being the guest of the local police officials.’
Atchison Daily Champion, Wednesday 23 January 1889
‘Philadelphia, Jan. 22—Captain Linden, of Pinkerton’s Detective Agency, with Frederick Jarvis, a detective inspec-
tor of Scotland Yard, London, England, arrested in this city last night Thos. Barton, of Macclesfield, England . . .
‘The London & Northwestern Railway Company instituted the search for him [Barton] and bear all the expenses
of the prosecution. Detective Jarvis is the one about whom there has been rumours of dynamite explosion plans,
and who has been talked of as having been sent here by the London Times to secure evidence.’

The Philadelphia Enquirer, Wednesday 23 January 1889
CHASED FOR THREE YEARS

AN ENGLISH FORGER ARRESTED HERE BY A LONDON DETECTIVE
‘. . . the man was arrested in this city late Monday night by Captain Linden of Pinkerton’s Agency and Detective
Inspector Frederick Jarvis of Scotland Yard, London, England, and was given a hearing yesterday before Magistrate
Durham . . .’
New York Times, Wednesday 23 January 1889
AN ENGLISH FORGER CAUGHT

TRACED BY SCOTLAND YARD DETECTIVES TO PHILADELPHIA
‘The capture in Philadelphia of Thomas Barton, an Englishman charged with forgery to the extent of $100,000,
was reported yesterday by the Pinkertons. Barton was, up to 1886, they say, a silk weaver in Macclesfield, Cheshire,
England. He was a co-Trustee with his mother, under his father’s will, and on account of this office had possession
of scrip certificated of stock of the London and Northwestern Railway Company. He was thus easily able to forge
his mother’s name to the various deeds of transfer of the stock, and so dispose of the securities to his own profit.
The present cash value of the stock is put at £20,000.
‘In July, 1886, Barton came to this country, and in the following March his wife and his two sons sailed for Halifax,
en route for Montreal. Inspector Fred Jarvis of Scotland Yard, London, came here in November, 1888, to trace Barton
and secure his arrest. For this work he secured the aid of Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency.
‘It was found that Barton had lived for some time at 426 Poplar Street, Philadelphia, under the name of Henry
Cave, but when the detectives visited the house he had been gone for several months. He had, however, left his bag-
gage behind. Soon after a letter came to his landlady at 426 Poplar Street, saying that he was about to leave
Philadelphia. His wife was, after a long hunt, found near Brandon City, Manitoba. Jarvis, going there, secured infor-
mation which enabled him to arrest Barton yesterday at a boarding house known as the “Bradford Arms” at
Germantown, Penn. In this he was aided by Superintendent R. J. Linden of the Pinkertons. The prisoner seems to
have little money. He has been working as a weaver in this country. He is held for extradition.’
While it is odd that a reporter from St. Paul, Minnesota, got the story a day before the Philadelphia Enquirer did,
it is even odder that The Times had broken the story nine days earlier. In effect, on 14 January 1889 The Times had
reported:
‘Philadelphia, 12th January—Thomas Barton, alias Cave, of Macclesfield, England, has been arrested here . . .
This arrest was effected through the skill of Inspector Jarvis, of Scotland Yard, who came out for the purpose. The
prisoner is held in custody pending an application for his extradition.’
From the preceding accounts it is not clear who actually arrested Barton, but closer scrutiny reveals that Jarvis
was not involved and that it was all the work of the Pinkertons. This is borne out by The Times, which on 19 April
1889 reported Barton’s appearance at Bow Street Magistrates Court, London, and quoted Jarvis as saying that he
‘went to the United States and found the prisoner in custody at Philadelphia’.
On 18 January 1889, the Daily Inter Ocean reported William Pinkerton as saying:
‘As Barton was known to have a number of friends in Manitoba, Inspector Jarvis came direct through to Chicago,
remained one day, and then went to the British Northwest, awaiting the extradition of Thomas Barton to England.’
If nothing else, William A Pinkerton’s story confirms that Barton was arrested on 12 January and not 21 January,

as widely reported in the American press, and suggests that there
must have been a good reason why the story was squashed for nine
days.
Furthermore, the Pinkertons’ discovery and arrest of Barton in
Philadelphia means that they must have employed the services of
‘Edward Plant, of No. 64 Vincent Street, Macclesfield, England,
who had been brought over to identify the fugitive’, as reported by
the New York Evening Telegram on 23 January 1889. But Jarvis was
in Canada at the time of the arrest. How could he have ever hoped
to locate Barton without Plant’s assistance? All in all, Barton
appears to have been nothing but a convenient cover for Jarvis’s
true business in America.
In the meantime, the press continued to report that Scotland
Yard detectives and the Pinkertons were gathering evidence against
Parnell in America and the Pinkertons continued to deny it.
New York Tribune, 26 January 1889
THE PINKERTONS NOT IN IT

NOT WORKING AGAINST PARNELL
DENYING REPORTS THAT THEY ARE SEEKING FOR EVIDENCE IN HIS TRIAL
Allan Pinkerton, the founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency ‘The statement is published periodically in certain New York
newspapers that detectives from Scotland Yard, with the assis-
tance of the Pinkertons, are searching for evidence in the Parnell trial . . .
‘The published statements were so positive that a Tribune reporter asked George D. Bangs, the New York super-
intendent of the Pinkerton agency, if there was any foundation for them. He replied concisely: ‘So far as this agency
is concerned, the story printed in The Herald is made out of whole cloth. I know that Chief Inspector Shore is not
here, and that he has not been here. Inspector Jarvis is here, but I know that he is engaged in a criminal case in
no way connected with the Irish matter.’
‘Mr Bangs said that Robert A Pinkerton, who is at present in Chicago, attempted to answer a similar report print-
ed in The World in December. He sent to The World the following letter, which has never been published.
“New York, December 27, 1888

“To the Editor of the World:
“Sir: In the issue of your paper for Sunday, December 23, I notice an article headed “Irish eyes followed him; a
detective’s hunt in Canada for evidence for the Parnell Commission,” and a special dispatch to The World from
Montreal, dated December 22, to the effect that for three months detectives from Scotland Yard, London, have
been visiting cities in Canada and the United States collecting evidence for the benefit of The London Times in its
suit against Mr Parnell, and that Chief Inspector Shore, Superintendent of Criminal Investigation Department, all
of Scotland Yard, were working in this country on the above matter, with the assistance of the “Pinkertons”.’
“The article goes on to say that for several years Pinkerton’s detectives have been working among Irish secret
societies in Kansas City, St Louis, Lincoln, Neb., and Chicago. I wish positively to contradict the statements above

referred to. So far as they refer to this agency there is not a
particle of truth in them. The Pinkertons’ National Detective
Agency has never obtained a particle of evidence against Mr
Parnell, and has never been requested to hunt up such evi-
dence by either The London Times or the British Government.
“I know of my own knowledge that Superintendent John
Shore is at present time in England. The Mr McParland
referred to in the articles as one of our detectives looking up
evidence is not and has not been doing so, but is located as
superintendent at our branch office in Denver, Col., and has
been there constantly for nearly a year. I do not know the
whereabouts of Inspector Frederick Jarvis.
“ROBERT A PINKERTON
“General Superintendent Eastern Division”
On 26 January 1889 the New York Tribune added:
‘Two days after the publication, the following letter was

sent to The Herald, but like the previous one it has not been
printed:
‘To the Editor of the Herald
‘Sir: My attention has been called to an article on Page 3

in your issue of the 16th inst, headed “Devilish Schemes”, in
which it is stated that Inspector Jarvis and Chief Inspector
Shore, superintendent of the Criminal Investigation
Department of the great Scotland Yard, London, were in
America in the interest of The London Times to ferret out
information about the movements of Irish-American conspira-
tors; that Messrs Shore and Jarvis met representatives of the
Pinkerton Agent James McParland
Pinkertons in Kansas City, that three of the Pinkerton men had
been at work for years in the Irish national secret societies, one of whom communicated directly with Scotland Yard,
and that Manager Bangs, of this city, admitted it to an Irish Nationalist who caught him in a trap.
‘I wish positively to contradict the statements above referred to, and if an Irish Nationalist or any one else has
stated that Mr Bangs made such an admission he has stated what is not true. The Pinkertons’ national detective
agency has never obtained a particle of evidence against Mr Parnell, and has never been requested to hunt up such
evidence by either The London Times or the British Government.
‘I know of my own knowledge that Superintendent Shore has not been in this country for a number of years.
Inspector Frederick Jarvis is here in connection with a criminal matter which has no relation whatever to Irish
affairs, and neither he nor Mr Shore has met any representatives of this agency in Kansas City. The recent visit of
my brother Willie and myself to Kansas City and Denver was our yearly business trip to our offices in those cities.
Inspector Andrews is unknown to us.
‘ROBERT A PINKERTON
‘General Superintendent Eastern Division

The New York Tribune concluded:
‘The recent arrest in Philadelphia of Thomas

Barton, an English forger, explained the purpose of
Inspector Jarvis’s visit. It made a fitting sequel to
the stories about the collection of evidence against
Parnell in this country.’
Robert A Pinkerton made two curious remarks in
his letters to the press: the first, that ‘Inspector
Andrews is unknown to us’, when Andrews was cer-
tainly known to his brother, William Pinkerton; the
second, that ‘I do not know the whereabouts of
Inspector Frederick Jarvis’, when William Pinkerton
knew very well where Andrews was. (See the state-
ment by William Pinkerton in the Daily Inter Ocean of
18 January 1889, which is quoted above).
After January 1889 press interest in Tumblety
faded away, but the story of Jarvis, Shore and
Andrews was far from over.
On 24 June 1889, Healy asked Matthews at the
Commons on what business was Jarvis in New York
and how long was he away from London. Matthews
replied that Jarvis had gone to New York in November
1888 and that his business was the extradition of Henry Labouchere MP.
Thomas Barton, whom he had brought back to Britain

on 9 April 1889. ‘How was it took Jarvis four months to do this?’ asked Healy. ‘I have given the Hon. Member all the
information I have,’ replied Matthews.
Matthews was stalling. Either he was remarkably ill-informed, or did not want his parliamentary colleagues to
know that Barton’s extradition had been badly bungled. It had been based on outmoded documents from an Act of
Congress in 1882 and was accordingly considered by Commissioner Henry R Edmunds of Philadelphia to be defective.
A new form of certificate had been agreed in 1883 between the United States and the British Foreign Office in
London. The extradition process was delayed while the British government gathered acceptable evidence. During
this time Barton was in an American prison.
Central to the story about Andrews, Shore and Jarvis whipping up evidence in support of The Times’s case against
Parnell was Patrick Joseph Sheridan, a wool-farmer of Montevista, Del Norte, Colorado, and former head of the Irish
Invincibles. Between October 1888 and May 1889, Kirby, the Montreal detective hired by The Times, tried to bribe
Sheridan to give evidence at the Special Commission in London to the effect that Parnell had expressed support for
the 1882 Phoenix Park murders. According to reports, Kirby offered Sheridan between £ 20,000 and £ 50,000 for his
testimony. But Sheridan played Kirby like a dupe, resisting his blandishments until it was too late to give evidence,
and keeping all along a notarized record of events.
It was a story which refused to lie down. Henry Labouchere, the London-born MP for Northampton, was a radical
politician, theatre owner, writer and publisher of the weekly journal Truth — which was often sued for libel.
Labouchere had many Irish friends at home and abroad, and was kept remarkably well-informed about Scotland Yard’s

antics. On 11 March 1890, he spoke at the Commons about the revelations recently made by an Irish MP, Timothy
Harrington. ‘Certain telegrams,’ said Labouchere, ‘were read from Mr. Soames to his agent in America respecting a
visit to Sheridan. It must be remembered that at the time Kirby was sent to Sheridan the Times considered Sheridan
to be a murderer—one of the basest and vilest of men. Those telegrams, however, proved that the Times sought, by
means of a huge bribe, to induce Sheridan to produce certain documents and to swear to their genuineness.
Fortunately, Sheridan was not the sort of man the Times thought him to be. He was a more honest man than had
been believed, and Sheridan simply played with the Times, and gave them rope enough to hang themselves with.’
Labouchere offered to explain what the connection of the Government with those telegrams was. ‘The telegrams,’
he said, ‘showed that in the middle of November, 1888, Kirby was with Sheridan tempting him. Early in December Kirby
had left Sheridan and had gone to Colorado. On December 24 Kirby returned to England to discuss matters with Mr.
Soames. In the middle of December it happened to come to my knowledge that the Times were endeavouring to get
hold of Sheridan.’
‘I had a little pardonable curiosity,’ Labouchere went on, ‘as to what was taking place, and, as I had the advan-
tage of knowing a good many gentlemen in America, I telegraphed to one of them, in order to see whether he would
be good enough to observe what was taking place. My friend immediately started for the West, and at Kansas City
he came up with two of Pinkerton’s men and a man named Jarvis, who was a constable employed by the British
Government. Pinkerton’s agency is a great agency in America, and the Government employed Pinkerton’s men to do
some of their work. I gathered that there was an interview at Kansas between Jarvis and Shaw, another British con-
stable who had been sent out to see Jarvis. Afterwards Jarvis went on and his friend followed him, running him down
at Del Norte, which is within a few miles of Sheridan’s ranch.’
Now Labouchere dropped his bomb: ‘I am prepared,’ he said, ‘to prove by any amount of evidence that Jarvis,
who was a British constable, did go to Del Norte on the 20th or 25th of December. What does this prove? It proves
conclusively that the Government were aiding and abetting in this intrigue to get hold of Sheridan . . .’
To conclude, Labouchere asked the Attorney General ‘whether it was not the fact that after it came to the knowl-
edge of the Times that they would have to make out their case they made it known to Her Majesty’s Government
that they would not be able to go on with the case unless the Government gave them aid; and that the Government
did thereupon agree to give them aid, or the thing would have broken down; and that this was the reason why agents
were sent to Ireland and detectives employed in America and elsewhere to do the dirty work of the Times.’
On 17 March 1890, the debate was resumed. Irish MP William Ellison-Macartney, a future Governor of Tasmania
and Western Australia, asked Matthews ‘whether there are two constables, named Jarvis and Shaw, in the employ-
ment of the British Government; and, if so, of what force are they members; whether it is the fact that they were
employed by the Times for the purpose of procuring evidence or the attendance of Sheridan or other witnesses
before the Special Commission; whether, if so employed, they were at Kansas City during the month of December,
1888; and whether they, or either of them, were at any time in communication with Sheridan?’ Matthews replied
that Jarvis and Shaw were inspectors in the Metropolitan Police Force and that it was not the fact that they were
employed at any time, directly or indirectly, by or for The Times, in procuring evidence or the attendance of any
witnesses. He concluded: ‘The answer to my Hon. Friend’s remaining questions is in the negative.’
A letter to The Times followed on 20 March 1890:
‘ . . . On the 11th inst., in the House of Commons, Mr Labouchere made a speech in which he attempted to show

that the Government were “aiding and abetting” in an
“intrigue” with The Times “to get hold of Sheridan”. . .
‘A pretty story, very circumstantial, and appar-
ently, as Mr Labouchere says, “conclusive”. But there
is a sequel. On Monday last the Home Secretary was
questioned in the House. Jarvis and Shaw, he said, were
inspectors in the Metropolitan police force, but “it is
not the fact that they were employed at any time,
directly or indirectly, by or for The Times, in procuring
evidence or the attendance of any witnesses”.
‘From all this it is clear that the entire story,
including the presence of Jarvis at Kansas in
December 1888 . . . is a fabrication, presumably on
the part of Mr Labouchere’s “friend” . . .
‘Your obedient servant,

CURIOUS
London, March 19’
The identity of “Curious” was never revealed. But

I detect behind that pseudonym none other than
Anderson, the person who had sent Jarvis to America
in November 1888. Who else would have had that
degree of interest in the matter? Who else would have
had that degree of knowledge of the question? And
who else had such an axe to grind?
On 24 March 1890, Labouchere asked Matthews in
Irish Member William Ellison-Macartney the House whether Jarvis was an Inspector in the
employment of the Criminal Investigation Department,
and was then in London; whether he was in the employment of the Department in December 1888; whether in that
month of 1888 he was at Del Norte, Colorado, a town close by the ranch of Patrick Sheridan; and, if so, what was the
object of his mission there; and whether, if Matthews did not personally know if Jarvis was at Del Norte in December
1888, and why he went there, he would cause inquiry to be made of Jarvis? Matthews replied that the answer to the
first two questions was in the affirmative and added that he was informed that Jarvis was never at any time at or
near Del Norte, Colorado. But Labouchere wanted to know whether Matthews had asked whether Inspector Jarvis
was then now in London and whether the information was derived from him. Matthews answered that he had derived
his information from the head of the CID.
Once again ‘Curious’ entered the fray. On 27 March 1890, The Times ran the following letter:
MR LABOUCHERE AND INSPECTOR JARVIS
‘Sir,—Mr Labouchere has not made much progress with the proofs of his story about Inspector Jarvis. Last night
he endeavoured to extract some confirmation of it from Mr Matthews, but signally failed. Permit me to recall the
facts. On the 11th inst. Mr Labouchere charged the Government and The Times with being concerned together in a
discreditable intrigue to procure evidence in America incriminating the Irish members. He based this charge upon
the presence of Inspector Jarvis of the Metropolitan Police in the neighbourhood of P J Sheridan’s residence in

Kansas at the end of the year 1888, and he described the officer’s suspicious movements with great fullness of
detail. A “friend” of his had tracked Inspector Jarvis at his request, and he was “prepared to prove by any amount
of evidence” that Jarvis was “within a few miles of Sheridan’s ranch” on the 20th or 25th December 1888.
‘Last night, for the second time, and in reply to Mr Labouchere’s own inquiry, the Home Secretary positively
asserted that Inspector Jarvis “was never at any time at or near” the spot to which Mr Labouchere’s friend had
tracked him, and where his presence could be proved by “any amount of evidence” at Mr Labouchere’s command.
‘Once more I ask, what is Mr Labouchere going to do? I will not again dwell upon the singular characteristics of
that inflexible conscience by which, as he explained to Parliament the other day, his political conduct is governed;
I will only point out that, if he now allows the matter to drop, he will necessarily place himself in this inconven-
ient position, that in future no statement of his on political matters, however positive or circumstantial, need be
regarded by plain, unsophisticated men as worthy of attention or requiring an answer.
‘Your obedient servant,

CURIOUS
London, March 25th
But Labouchere pressed on undeterred. On 28 March, he asked Matthews whether he would inquire from Jarvis
whether he was, in November or December of 1888, at Kansas City with two persons named Pinkerton, who have a
private detective agency in the United States; whether he went with the two Pinkertons to Pueblo, Colorado, and
whether he went himself to Del Norte, which is close to the ranch belonging to Patrick Sheridan; whether his pres-
ence in Del Norte was in any way connected with the vicinity of the ranch to that town; and whether the Pinkertons’
agency is employed by Her Majesty’s Government. Matthews reiterated that Jarvis had never been at or near Kansas
City, or Del Norte, Colorado. ‘The story of this officer’s mission to Colorado,’ he added, ‘is an absolute fabrication.
I make this statement on the information of Jarvis’s superior officer, who, of course, has taken proper means to sat-
isfy himself of the facts.’
Labouchere’s allegations were protected by parliamentary privilege, which allows Members to speak in Parliament
without fear of legal action on the grounds of slander. But when he published his allegations in his weekly journal
Truth on 3 and 17 April 1890 he ceased to be protected by parliamentary privilege and laid himself open to charges
of libel. Obviously, he wouldn’t have made this move if he hadn’t been absolutely certain of the truth of his allega-
tions. This time it was Metropolitan Police Commissioner James Monro who wrote to The Times. His letter was pub-
lished on 19 April 1890.
TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD
‘Sir,—My attention has been directed to a statement in this week’s issue of Truth, which is a repetition of asser-
tions made in the issue of the same periodical of the 3rd instant, to the effect that in November or December 1888,
an officer of the Metropolitan Police—Inspector Jarvis—was at Kansas City, and at Del Norte, a village in the State
of Colorado, United States of America, employed under the orders of Government in aiding The Times to procure
the evidence of P J Sheridan.
‘As Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, responsible for and cognizant of the movements of the officers
of the force under my orders, I think it right to give to the statements and assertions above referred to the most
unqualified denial. Such statements and assertions are absolutely untrue. Since I became Assistant Commissioner
of Police in 1884 until now, neither Inspector Jarvis nor any other officer of the Metropolitan Police has been at
any time within many hundred miles of either Kansas or Colorado, nor has any officer of the force been in America

assisting The Times, directly or indirectly, in connexion with their case before the Special Commission.
‘I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

‘J MONRO, the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis
‘4 Whitehall-place, SW., April 18.’
Monro’s letter was followed in The Times on 26 April 1890 by another letter also critical of the article in Truth.
The Times [Letters], 26 April 1890
P J SHERIDAN AND THE SPECIAL COMMISSION
‘Sir,—My attention has been drawn to a paragraph which appeared in last week’s issue of Truth, during my
absence from town. It refers to the Attorney General’s speech in the House of Commons, when he mentioned my
name in reference to P J Sheridan. As various constructions seem to have been put as to in what capacity and on
whose behalf I went to America, I may as well explain the fact that on 27th April 1889, Mr Soames wrote to Mr. St.
John Wontner saying he wanted to meet with a solicitor or experienced common law managing clerk, with a head
on his shoulders, and possessed of tact and judgment, who would undertake an important mission abroad for him,
to which Mr. Wontner replied as follows:
“St Paul’s Chambers, Ludgate Hill, EC, April 29th 1889,
“Dear Sir,—The bearer, Mr Birch, has been with us for some years as a managing clerk, and has had considerable
experience in getting up difficult cases requiring careful and discreet inquiries. We have always found him very use-
ful, and he seems to be the sort of man you want. You can better judge after discussing the matter with him, and
if he suits you may have his services for the time, though we shall be very sorry to be without him.
“Yours truly,
“St. John Wontner.
“Joseph Soames Esq., 58 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, WC.”
‘After this correspondence, the matter, so far as Messrs. Wontner were concerned ended; in fact, up to the pres-
ent time they are completely ignorant of any of the details of my movements.
‘I went to America on my own responsibility as agent for Mr Soames, solicitor to The Times. My instructions were
to see Sheridan, test his evidence which he had already offered to give, and see how far it was corroborated, which
I did. Truth seems to doubt this, and states that I was “a sort of detective”, and that I was “endeavouring to get
Sheridan to give evidence for The Times in consideration of a high bribe”. Such statements are absolutely untrue,
and I think it only right to give them the most emphatic denial.
‘Yours &c., JOSEPH ITHELL BIRCH

‘10 New Inn, April 25’
A heavy fog of denial hung in the air. The Government was against a public hearing. On 2 May 1890, Godfrey
Lushington, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office, remarked in a memorandum:
‘ . . . if there have been any questionable proceedings on the part of the Government or Police Agents, these
might come to light in the course of the trial with damaging consequences.’
Yet the following month the unwanted public hearing appeared unavoidable. As usual, the American press was
well informed. The Galveston Daily News, a newspaper from Galveston, Texas, reported on 26 May 1890:

‘A Scotland Yard detective named Jarvis, well known in
New York, has brought action against Mr Labouchere for
having refused to withdraw the allegation that Jarvis was
engaged by the Times in the abortive negotiations with
Sheridan at Del Norte. There is no doubt that Jarvis was so
employed. He was on leave, which was specially given him
to undertake the work.
‘The action has been brought at the instance of his supe-
riors merely to intimidate Labouchere, but Labouchere
intends to defend it, having irrefutable evidence. Spicy dis-
closures are anticipated.’
In the meantime, new and unexpected events were tak-

ing place.
The Times, 13 June 1890
RESIGNATION OF MR MONRO
‘It was announced yesterday in Parliament by the Home

Secretary that Mr James Monro CB has resigned the appoint-
ment of Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, and that
his resignation has been accepted. Mr Monro, who had been
previously head of the Detective Department, was appoint-
ed Commissioner by Mr Matthews on Sir Charles Warren’s
James Monro, Metropolitan Police Commissioner resignation at the close of 1888. We understand that Mr
Monro has taken this step on account of differences of opin-
ion between himself and Mr Matthews in connexion with the question of superannuation and with other matters
affecting gravely the welfare of the police force.’
On 20 June, during the discussion of the Police Salary Estimates for the year ending on 31 March 1891, Labouchere
noted that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s salary was £1,500 a year, and added that It might be wise, see-
ing the position that official held, the duties he had to discharge, and the large force of men he had to command,
to grant a larger salary. He then said:
‘But I have heard that Mr. Monro received £1,000 a year from the Secret Service Fund… As I understand, Mr.
Anderson did receive a considerable sum from that source for looking after detective business in America in regard
to Irishmen, but this has been discontinued since he became Assistant Commissioner, and the duties have since been
undertaken and the money received by Mr. Monro.’ To conclude, Labouchere said: ‘This is most objectionable, if cor-
rect, and we ought to know exactly what the salary of the Commissioner is.’
Matthews replied that Monro received nothing but what appeared on the Estimates and added that he had an
Indian pension. Labouchere then asked who was now at the head of this detective business in America. Told that his
question did not relate to the subject under discussion, he asked whether any of the Assistant Commissioners
received anything from the Secret Service money. Matthews replied that no person down on the Estimates for a
salary received anything in addition to that salary.

But Labouchere was relentless. ‘I should like
to know,’ he continued, ‘the relations of the
police of Scotland Yard with the police and others
in America.’ He stated that William R Hoare, the
British Consul in New York, had had communica-
tions from Britain in regard to police matters,
that he had taken up a position as a sort of head
of the Detective Department in the United States
and that that business had been handed over to
the Vice Consul, Edmond Eraser. Told that his
questions were not relevant to the subject under
discussion, Labouchere dropped that point. But
he still had a more personal concern. He wanted
to know how Jarvis, whose salary would have
been only about £200 per annum, could afford to
bring a costly libel action against him for saying
he was at a certain place at a certain time in
America.
‘I want to know from the Home Secretary,’ he

asked, ‘whether Jarvis is to pay for this or the
police? I do not object to the police paying; but if
I win my case, and Jarvis cannot pay, I want to Timothy Michael Healy, Justin McCarthy and
Thomas Sexton, by Harry Furniss
know whether the Home Secretary, or someone in
his Department, will pay the expenses. I do not know whether or not Jarvis has been put forward without any money
against me; but I know that the action may cost me £1,000 or £2,000, and I want to know, if I win my case, to whom
I am to look for my expenses. If Jarvis is being supplied with funds by the police I think the Home Secretary will
admit that if I win I ought to have my expenses from those who are supplying him. As Jarvis’s salary is included in
this Estimate, this is the time to raise the question.’
Matthews replied that Jarvis’s salary was not included in the Estimates. Labouchere in turn insisted that it was.
He sat down after that statement, but the debate did not come to an end. Later in the day, Matthews stated that
Jarvis had not been paid one penny out of the sum allotted for special duties, nor had the sum of £1,000, or any sum
whatever, been paid to Monro. Crusty Irish member Timothy Healy would not take Matthews’s statement sitting
down.
‘I asked,’ said Healy, ‘how it was that this man Jarvis was enabled to pay this visit to Colorado, and how it was
that a certain journal in this country had a man placed at its disposition, when it was pretended that he was on his
holiday. When this man got to New York he was detached from that place by the Consul there and sent to Colorado.
It is all very well to say that this man gets nothing under this Vote, but we are entitled to complain of the system
whereby officers can be employed in this manner. What was the man doing in America? Can it be pretended that an
ordinary policeman could take a holiday in New York—a man who has only a salary of some 25s. a week? If this Vote
is the only Vote in the Estimates for this purpose, it is singular that the expenses of police officers in occult and
extraordinary duties can be screened and that the House can have no check upon them. It is an undoubted fact that

this man went to America in the service of The Times, and yet it seems there is no means of checking the amount
of money paid. If it was necessary to send this man away would his expenses be paid out of the Secret Service Fund
and not out of this Vote? This is an attempt to blind Parliament.’
Healy emphasised that there were two grounds of complaint: that Jarvis had been detached in the service of
The Times, and that Monro had compelled Jarvis, ‘this unfortunate man’, by a threat of dismissal to bring the libel
action against Labouchere. Now that Monro was gone, Healy supposed that Jarvis would drop this action, because
he would not be very much interested in the dignity of Monro or the maintenance of the truth of his letter to The
Times. Jarvis had had to back up Monro and the Home Secretary and was compelled to make a statement to the
effect that he was never in America at all, or at all events, only in New York for a short time.
To conclude, Healy said:
‘I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary has the same idea of the truth of Mr. Monro
that he had, or whether he will receive that statement with some discount now that Mr. Monro has been compelled
to resign.’
Healy implied that Matthews had made his statement to the House on Monro’s authority, but had not probed the
matter thoroughly. He suggested that Matthews should ask Monro’s replacement [Colonel Sir Edward Bradford] to
inquire from Jarvis whether he had gone to Del Norte – in other words, ‘further West than Mr. Monro informed the
Home Secretary’. Will the Home Secretary’, asked Healy then, ‘say distinctly whether Jarvis went to America on
Scotland Yard business or for a holiday?’
Matthews began to show a certain annoyance at Healy's questioning. ‘I have over and over again stated to the
House that Jarvis did not go to Del Norte, Colorado,’ he said. ‘What is the use of asking me what fund he was paid
from?’ But Healy went on relentlessly. ‘Did he go to New York?’ he asked. ‘He was not paid out of this fund, and he
did not go to Colorado,’ reiterated Matthews. ‘I do not know why Jarvis went to Now York. I should think he went
on public business. The suggestion that he went on his holidays is a pure joke. It is as incorrect a statement as the
rest of his version of this affair.’
But Healy was undeterred by Matthews’s obvious exasperation. ‘The right hon. Gentleman has affected a very
fine anger,’ he said, ‘but I can assure him that, so far as I am concerned, I am completely indifferent to it.’ Healey
added that Matthews said he did not know what Jarvis went to New York for; but ought to know. ‘He knew the Police
Vote was coming on,’ went on Healy, ‘and ought to have known that this question would arise. It will be raised again
and again until the right hon. Gentleman finds out where Jarvis went to.’ To conclude, Healy asked Matthews
whether he would put to Monro’s successor the question addressed to himself as to the visit of Jarvis to Colorado.
At that point, Labouchere spoke against the continuation of the discussion. He recalled that Jarvis had brought
an action that was before a Court of Law. If a man brought an action he should have an opportunity of thrashing the
question out in Court and it was hardly fair to Jarvis to prejudice the case by discussing it in Parliament.
Yet Labouchere asked Matthews whether Jarvis was bringing the action with his own money, or using the taxpay-
ers’ money. Labouchere had no objection to the Government giving Jarvis money, but protested against Jarvis being
put forward in the case. He assumed that he would get a verdict and that that verdict would carry costs. ‘Well,’
concluded Labouchere, ‘I do not want the Government to give Jarvis money with which to bring an action against
me, and then when I get my costs to be told that Jarvis has no money. It is only fair that if the Government provide
Jarvis with money to bring the action, they should pay me my costs.’ Matthews reiterated that Jarvis would bring
the action at his own risk and cost.

But Healy was not appeased. ‘The fact that an action has been brought against the hon. Member for Northampton
[Labouchere] is no reason why information should be withheld from us,' he said. He added that the Irish Members
were entitled to have the information requested, irrespective of any action against a newspaper proprietor, and reit-
erated that, in his opinion, Jarvis had been sent to America to do the Times’s business. On that note, the debate
returned to the question of police salaries.
Labouchere didn’t have to wait much longer for his libel suit.
Rocky Mountain News, 17 July 1890

Special Cablegram to the News.
‘LONDON, July 16.—Papers will be served on Henry Labouchere in a couple of days in a suit for $10,000 brought
against him by Inspector Jarvis of Scotland Yard. Labouchere stated in Truth that the visit of Jarvis to the United
States last year was in the interest of the London Times, and with the view of inducing Sheridan of Phoenix Park
notoriety to play the traitor to the Irish cause and return to go on the witness stand in behalf of the Times.
Labouchere has persistently refused to retract the allegation and, claiming that he has abundant evidence to prove
all he has said, proposes to fight the case in the courts. If the case comes to trial it will create a sensation in Irish
circles on both sides of the Atlantic, and bring to light some hitherto undeveloped facts concerning the methods
pursued by the Times to secure evidence, true or false, against Parnell and his associates.’
But Jarvis’s libel action was eventually settled out of court. At the eleventh hour, on 23 October 1890, the very
eve of the court case, Labouchere announced in Truth, his weekly journal, that he had ‘just ascertained beyond all
doubt’ that the whole story was, as Mr Matthews and Mr Monro had declared, absolutely false in every particular. ‘I
unreservedly withdraw my original statement and offer my apologies to Inspector Jarvis.’ he added and followed up
with a rather pathetic and wholly unconvincing explanation in a letter published in The Times on 23 December 1890:
‘. . . I heard that The Times was endeavouring to induce Sheridan to come forward as a witness before the
Royal Commission. On this I telegraphed to some friends in America, who were Home Rulers, to find out what was
doing. On receipt of my telegram they set out for Del Norte, in the vicinity of which place Sheridan was residing.
At Kansas City they received information which led them to conclude that two persons connected with the police
agency that was employed by The Times had been there, and that they had with them a third person who, from the
description given, they thought was Inspector Jarvis. This third person, they were informed, had left by train for
Del Norte . . .’
‘Jarvis brought an action against me for libel. I caused full enquiry to be made in America, and I came to the
conclusion that it was probable my American friends had been misled. I might have estopped the action by plead-
ing that there was no libel in what I had said, for the Government had employed policemen to aid The Times to
look after witnesses in England and in Ireland (vide Report of Evidence taken before the Commission) . . .
‘My solicitors, therefore, put themselves into communication with his solicitors, and I agreed to publish a retrac-
tion of my allegation, to pay his costs, and to give him £100 . . .
‘Your obedient servant, H LABOUCHERE

5, Old Palace Yard, Dec. 20’
There is little doubt in my mind that Labouchere was manoeuvred into a retraction. The Times’s case before the
Special Commission had failed ignominiously and the British Government was in no mood for further humiliation.
What political concessions Labouchere won are unknown. We can only guess at the nature of the quid pro quo. With
the Special Commission all wrapped up, Parnell vindicated — only to be eventually destroyed by his personal indis-

cretions with Mrs O’Shea — and Labouchere’s libel action
settled out of court, the matter of what Inspector Jarvis
may or may not have been doing in America in the five
months between November 1888 and April 1889 held no
more interest.
Nor did the shady roles of Superintendent Shore6 and
Inspector Andrews.
Shore died on 14 March 1898 from ‘a complication of dis-
eases’ at the age of 59. The Milwaukee Sentinel said on 15
March that he ‘was frequently sent to the United States to
bring back absconding criminals,’ and the Oswego Daily
Palladium added on 25 March that on retiring in May 1896
he had become ‘Pinkerton’s London agent’. On 26 August
1899, almost ten years to the day since his retirement,
Andrews committed suicide by hanging at the age of 52.
Two months later, in October 1899, Jarvis died of apoplexy
at the age of 49, slightly over two years after his retirement
in September 1897. On Jarvis’s death the New York Times
reported that ‘He often visited the United States on extra-
dition cases, and was a private detective for A.T. Stewart [a
New York multi-millionaire retail dry goods entrepreneur]
for seven years.’ How Jarvis reconciled this with his twen-
ty-seven year career in the Metropolitan Police is unknown.
With the three ex-Scotland Yard detectives now dead,
the matter appeared forgotten. But in 1906 Sir Robert
Anderson published Sidelights on the Home Rule Movement.
I quote from it:
Robert Anderson, head of the Criminal Investigation Department
‘. . . there are people still who credit Mr Labouchere’s
statements that I sent police officers across the Atlantic to tout for evidence against the Parnellites. The allega-
tion was unequivocally denied by the Secretary of State in Parliament, and by the Chief Commissioner of Police in
a letter to the Times; but, giving the lie to both Mr Matthews and Mr Monro, Mr Labouchere repeated it still more
definitely in the House of Commons.
‘I was naturally indignant, and I determined to bring him to book. But I could take no action on words spoken
in Parliament. The course I adopted, therefore, was to give the facts to the editor of the World; and, as I expect-
ed, “Edmund” drew “Henry” in the “par” columns of Truth. Mr Labouchere declared in his paper that he was fully
prepared to prove that Inspector Jarvis of my department had been to a town named Del Norte to interview the
Land Leaguer Sheridan in the interests of The Times.
6 In the foregoing press reports and Hansard transcriptions John Shore is variously described as Inspector, Chief Inspector, Superintendent
and occasionally Constable. For the record, John Shore was a Superintendent at the time of these events. He had been promoted from Chief
Inspector in 1886 at the same time as Chief Superintendent Adolphus Frederick Williamson was promoted to Chief Constable. See also
Dickens’s Dictionary of London 1888, Old House Books, Devon, 1993.

‘This was exactly what I wanted. Inspector Jarvis had, in fact, been in America at the time indicated. But to
have undertaken a mission outside the duty I had entrusted to him was a grave breach of discipline. So I directed
his superintendent to bring him before me “on the report;” and the charge having been preferred, I adjourned the
case to give the incriminated officer an opportunity to clear himself.’
At the time nobody was under any illusions about Jarvis’s presence in Colorado. He also appears to have taken
the flak for Andrews and Shore, for no criticisms were levelled at their extracurricular activities in America and
Canada. And, since Jarvis and his superior, Superintendent Shore, were scheming together in America, the idea that
Jarvis was vindicated through some sort of internal disciplinary procedure beggars belief. In my view, this is anoth-
er instance of the smug, self-righteous Anderson at his dissembling best.
Anderson continued.
‘In due time Mr Wontner [Jarvis’s solicitor] called on me to say that, on Jarvis’s instructions, he had commenced
an action against Mr Labouchere, and that Messrs Lewis and Lewis now wished to compromise it: would I be con-
tent if the defendant paid all costs, and allowed judgment to be entered against him? “Certainly not,” I replied;
“the matter before me is the conduct of an officer of my department, and if the case is settled out of court, the
settlement must be on terms that will veto all suspicion of collusion.” The matter ended by Mr Labouchere paying
the costs, plus $100 for damages, and inserting an apology in Truth.’
‘Apart from the Le Caron disclosures I had nothing to do with the Times case.’
On this last point history would soon prove otherwise. Home Office correspondence and Anderson’s own writ-
ings suggest that he had a hand in arranging the extraditions of Roland Gideon Israel Barnett and Thomas Barton,
both of which he subsequently used for his own political agenda. A further example of Anderson’s audacity and guile
is the fact that his covert operation was not funded from the public purse. The Canadian Government paid Barnett’s
extradition expenses and the London & Northwestern Railway Company did likewise for Barton’s. Who funded Shore’s
trip is not known.
A question must be asked at this point. Why would the man in charge of the allegedly under-funded Whitechapel
murders investigation, cost-conscious Anderson, go to the trouble and expense of diverting Andrews from Montreal
to New York to hunt Jack the Ripper when a British detective was already on the spot? When Tumblety arrived in
New York on 2 December 1888, 49-year-old retired Superintendent James J Thomson and his wife Martha were
booked under the name Johnstone at the Gilsey House Hotel at Broadway and 29th Street. The Gilsey House was
described in Moses King’s Handbook of New York City, 1893, as catering for ‘very wealthy and extremely particular’
travellers.
Thomson was the private agent mentioned in the House of Commons debate on 6 June 1890. His conduit to
Anderson and The Times was William R. Hoare, the British Consul in New York who had sent Inspector Jarvis to Kansas
and Colorado. The Thomsons had been charged by Anderson on behalf of The Times to negotiate with General Francis
Millen, an Irish soldier of fortune who had been named by Monro before a Commons select committee as the head
of the ‘Jubilee Plot’ to assassinate Queen Victoria7. It was hoped that Millen would give evidence for The Times
before the Special Commission. The Times must have had deep pockets, for the Thomsons had been at the Gilsey
House, all expenses paid, since 21 November, and were still in residence in April 1889.
7 See Campbell, Christy: Fenian Fire: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria, Harper Collins, London, 2002.

The notion that a Scotland Yard detective was sent to America to track down Tumblety is indeed nothing more than
Whitehall disinformation which, through constant repetition, has hardened into ‘fact’. There is no evidence to support
it. The Metropolitan Police had far more urgent business in the United States. Shore was not on the trail of the Ripper.
After a brief meeting with William R. Hoare, the British Consul, he made straight for Kansas City to meet Fred Jarvis."
But it was not a coincidence that Tumblety fled to America in a blaze of carefully crafted publicity after being
anointed as a Ripper suspect. Just as Barton and Barnett had furnished pretexts for Jarvis and Andrews’s evidence-
hunting expeditions to America, Tumblety’s new-found notoriety and dash for America via France furnished Shore
with a similar pretext. It cannot have been by pure chance that he arrived in New York just four days later. Tumblety
was again put to good use at the end of December 1888. This time the ‘Ripper’’s presence in New York was brought
into play to obscure the true nature of Andrews’s post-Montreal business in Anderson’s transatlantic escapade.
Tumblety resurfaced in Brooklyn in mid-January 1889. In an interview with the New York World, he detailed the
circumstances of his arrest as a Ripper suspect — though not of his arrest for gross indecency. He then slipped back
into obscurity. In his 1893 book, A Sketch of the Life of Dr Francis Tumblety, he did not mention the incident. His
short-lived role as ‘Jack the Ripper’ had been forgotten.
Yet there is a coda to Tumblety’s story. At the time of the Whitechapel murders, Chief Inspector John George
Littlechild was the head of Section ‘D’, a secret arm of the Metropolitan Police which dealt with political crime. On
23 September 1913, Littlechild, now long retired, addressed a letter to George R Sims, a journalist who, under the
nom de plume Dagonet, penned many Ripper-related articles. In this letter, Littlechild wrote:
‘ . . . amongst the suspects, and to my mind a very likely one, was a Dr. T . . . He was an American quack named
Tumblety and was at one time a frequent visitor to London and on these occasions constantly brought under the
notice of police, there being a large dossier concerning him at Scotland Yard . . . Tumblety was arrested at the time
of the murders in connection with unnatural offences and charged at Marlborough Street, remanded on bail,
jumped his bail, and got away to Boulogne. He shortly left Boulogne and was never heard of afterwards. It was
believed he committed suicide but certain it is that from this time the “Ripper” murders came to an end8.’
The letter has been used as evidence that Tumblety was a Ripper suspect. But is it? While the letter is histori-
cally important as the only mention of Tumblety by a Metropolitan Police officer in active service in 1888, Littlechild
was wrong about Tumblety’s going to Boulogne, wrong about his never being heard of again and wrong about his hav-
ing committed suicide. Could these errors be explained away by age or failing memory? This is unlikely when, twen-
ty-five years after the event, sixty-six-year-old Littlechild’s memory was perfect on the details of Tumblety’s arrest
for unnatural offences, his appearance at Marlborough Street, remand on bail and subsequent bail-jumping to
France. Why his memory failed him at this particular juncture is anyone’s guess, but in the complete absence of any
other evidence in support of Tumblety’s Ripper candidacy Littlechild’s suspicions should be treated with the utmost
caution.
Sims, for one, did not buy Littlechild’s suspect. His money stayed on Montague Druitt. Four years later, in 1917,
Sims repeated his assertion that Jack the Ripper had drowned himself. ‘His body,’ he wrote, ‘was found in the
Thames after it had been in the river for nearly a month.’
From the foregoing it is clear that Scotland Yard had no real interest in Tumblety either as a homosexual bail
8 In February 1993, Stewart P Evans bought from antiquarian dealer Eric Barton four letters addressed to George R Sims. One of them
was the Littlechild letter naming Francis Tumblety as a Ripper suspect. The story of Evans’s purchase of the letter has been told in The
Lodger: The Arrest and Escape of Jack the Ripper, Century, London, 1995, authored by Evans and Paul Gainey.

jumper — a non-extraditable offence — or Jack the Ripper
suspect — an eminently extraditable offence. Like Thomas
Barton’s, Tumblety’s presence in America was used as a
device to mask the true purport of Jarvis, Shore and
Andrews’s mission.
It is ironic to note that if Francis Tumblety had not
jumped bail in November 1888 he would have been prose-
cuted under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act
1885, also known as the Labouchere Amendment.
Small wonder that he did as he was told and fled the
country.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As always, asante sana to my editor Eduardo Zinna, a

steady mind in an unsteady world. My thanks also to Wolf
Vanderlinden, whose Inspector Andrews articles in Ripper
Notes first sparked my interest in this murky episode. And
always keeping in mind that none of us can do this alone, I
especially want to thank researcher extraordinaire Debra
Arif, without whose generosity this article could never have
been written. Thank you.
Chief Inspector John George Littlechild
Simon's first foray into the subject of Jack the Ripper was in 1976 when he wrote a rebuttal of Stephen Knight's
The Final Solution. Simon knew he was onto something and had struck a nerve, for in a letter to a friend
Stephen Knight wrote, " . . . I have been unable to do any more about the work of Mr. Simon D. Wood, other
than throwing some poisoned meat to his dog and shooting his mother." Simon and his wife Susan moved to
California from Wales five years ago—not for personal protection, but to be with their daughter and grand-
daughters.

Sifting The Druitt Archives
Andrew J. Spallek
At the West Sussex Record Office in Chichester there resides a large archive relating to the
extended family of Ripper suspect Montague John Druitt. This material, consisting largely of let-
ters and memorabilia, was compiled by Robert’s daughter Gertrude (Montague’s cousin) over many
years, and relates primarily to the family of Montague’s uncle, Dr Robert Druitt of Kensington.
In addition to fascinating correspondence, one can find such interesting items as fragments of dried leaves that
fell from the casket of Prince Albert Victor, and a lock of Gertrude Druitt’s hair. Both of these I have personally han-
dled, having spent two full days inspecting the archives.
The first day was spent primarily familiarizing myself with its contents. On the second day I was able to delve
more deeply into the contents. Although they do not point directly to the perpetrator of these horrendous crimes,
the items at Chichester do give valuable glimpses into the life of Scotland Yard Chief Constable Sir Melville
Macnaghten’s preferred suspect.
The only letter by Montague Druitt contained in these archives is one written to his Uncle Robert concerning the
visit of two other of his daughters, Emily and Katherine, to the Druitt home at Wimborne Minster in September 1876,
and Montague’s efforts at tutoring the girls in Latin. This letter has been published elsewhere and its contents are well
known, but it was interesting to find additional correspondence in the archives relating to this visit, showing that it
was not just the two girls who came to visit the Druitts at their home, Westfield House, but much of Robert’s family.
Combing through the archives was very fruitful in other ways. Reading through correspondence of the critical
period, I came across a letter written on 9 May 1888 by Montague’s mother, Ann Druitt, to her sister-in-law Isabella
Druitt, Robert’s widow.
Ann suffered from serious mental illness and at this time was in a downward mental spiral that would culminate
in her death in 1890 at Manor House Asylum in Chiswick. Or so we thought. The letter from Ann to Isabella is quite
cogent, indicating that Ann was by no means yet the raving lunatic she would become. Her illness had either not
progressed to that point or the nature of it may have been intermittent. An excerpt:
Thank you for your letter of yesterday. I am very glad to hear such good news of Lionel your son. I am (undeci-
pherable) very pleased he has settled down with such good prospects of success, also that he has financed(? unclear)
a (undecipherable) to take care of him(?). I am hoping to pay Georgie a visit shortly(?) the weather at present is
not very encouraging to (undecipherable) one to leave (undecipherable) it has been blowing and raining here from
(undecipherable) days & yesterday we had a regular downpour.1
1 This and all such excerpts are from the Druitt MSS at the West Sussex Record Office.

Linden Gardens — Photograph, Andy Spallek
The letter goes on to discuss Queen Victoria’s visit to Berlin in April and other current events. It is by no means
the letter of a madwoman.
Perhaps the most interesting find was a letter written by Gertrude Druitt to her mother Isabella on 13 June 1887.
The letter contains an offhand remark that “Aunt William” is “to go to Linden Gardens.” “Aunt William” is clearly
Ann Druitt, the widow of Montague’s father, William Druitt. The reference to “Linden Gardens” is thought provok-
ing. Isabella Druitt lived at 8 Strathmore Gardens, Kensington. Prior to my finding this letter, the only Linden Gardens
I knew was in nearby Bayswater, a stone’s throw from Strathmore Gardens. Coincidently, this Linden Gardens is
where Assistant Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir Robert Anderson lived. I was puzzled at the thought that Ann would
stay so near Isabella’s home on a visit to London. Why would she not simply stay with her sister-in-law in their large
home at Strathmore Gardens? Then I made a startling discovery. There is also a “Linden Gardens” in Chiswick, and
it is but a few minutes’ walk from the location of the private asylum run by Thomas Tuke and his son, where Ann
Druitt’s life would end in 1890. My heart raced at this find! We had not known Ann Druitt to be in the Tukes’ care
until 1889. Now there is a strong indication that Ann may have been treated by the Tukes as early as 1887, giving
her son Montague reason to make his final Chiswick jaunt before launching himself into the Thames, his body to be
recovered at nearby Thornycroft’s Wharf on 31 December 1888.
Ann Druitt had apparently been committed to Brook House asylum in Upper Clapton, North London, earlier in
1888. However, the aforementioned 9 May 1888 letter from Ann to Isabella indicates it is written from Westfield

The stretch of the River Thames where Druitt's body was recovered. Photograph, Andy Spallek
House, the Druitt home at Wimborne. She was released on leave from Brook House in August 1888 and was subse-
quently treated by a Dr Gasquet in Brighton, probably for her diabetes2. Where she was during the time of the
Whitechapel murders is not precisely known. The mention of Linden Gardens indicates the possibility that Ann Druitt
may have been treated by the Tukes in 1887 and could possibly even have been under their care during the period
of the Whitechapel murders.
Montague Druitt was a schoolmaster in addition to serving as a barrister. He resided at George Valentine’s school
in Blackheath, where he was on staff. In a note left behind at his Blackheath residence, Druitt lamented, “Since
Friday I felt I was going to be like mother, and the best thing for me was to die3.” Such a statement indicates that
Druitt was concerned about his own mental heath and dreaded what the future might bring. If Ann Druitt was indeed
being treated at Chiswick in December 1888, it is quite plausible that Montague embarked on a journey to take leave
of his mother in person before ending his own life. Even if Ann was not currently at Chiswick at the time of her son’s
suicide, Montague may still have had a reason for journeying there. If indeed Ann was treated at Chiswick in 1887,
2 Private correspondence with researcher David Andersen.
3 Acton, Chiswick, and Turnham Green Gazette, January 5, 1889. It must be remembered that this in not an exact quote of the letter
nor is it certain that the letter was genuine. It was merely “produced” by Montague’s brother William Harvey Druitt at the coroner’s inquest.

Montague may have desired to consult with her physician(s) regarding his own mental condition. We may finally have
an explanation as to why Druitt chose Chiswick at which to end his life.
Researcher and Chiswick native David Andersen indicates that Tuke apparently utilized local residences apart
from his asylum as treatment facilities for certain patients. Lady Harriet Mordaunt, who accused the Prince of Wales
of fathering her child, was treated by the Tukes at Chestnut Lodge in Chiswick4. Kelly’s Directory for 1889-90 lists a
“Robert Podmore, surgeon” at no. 7 Linden Gardens. This is the only medical person so identified at Linden Gardens.
Tantalizingly, no. 1 Bolton Gardens was occupied by Ashwood House. This was the residence of Dr. Leonard Bramah
Diplock, son of Thomas Bramah Diplock, the coroner who presided at Montague’s inquest. Bolton Gardens, which no
longer exists, was immediately adjacent to Linden Gardens.
If indeed Linden Gardens, Chiswick, was the intended destination for Montague Druitt as he made his final rail
journey on 1 December 1888, we are presented with the dilemma of why he purchased a rail ticket from Charing
Cross to Hammersmith rather than Chiswick5. The nearest station to Linden Gardens would not be Hammersmith,
but rather Turnham Green. However, there was an omnibus running between Hammersmith station and Turnham
Green, which would probably have passed very near Linden Gardens as it travelled along the High Road. The serv-
ice was every 15 minutes and the fare was 2d. Perhaps Druitt opted for this routing or perhaps he merely fancied a
pleasant walk along Chiswick Mall on his way to see Ann or her doctor, even if it was not the most direct route.
Ann Druitt’s mental illness seemed to escalate following the death of her husband in 1885. In the archives is a
letter dated 27 September 1885 from Ann’s daughter Georgiana (“Georgie”) to Isabella informing her of Williams
death:
My Dear Aunt,
You will be terribly grieved & shocked at the sad news I have to tell you. Our dear father passed away very sud-
denly this morning. He was quite usual and getting up when a severe heart attack came on. We were sent for &
(undecipherable) great pain which lasted about ½ an hour. He was quite conscious & told us what to do, but just
as Dr. Batterbury came into the room he turned over and passed away. He said we had done all we could have done.
We had brandy, hot (undecipherable), etc. He said it was caused by a cot of blood forming just like Aunt Jane. It is
so terribly sudden. We can hardly realize(?) it. Poor mother seems quite stunned. Arthur has fetched Willie & wrote
to Uncle(?) from Bmouth. I am not sure where you are at S?? (Strathmore?) or with him. I know how you will feel
for us all. We have indeed lost a good father6.
An interesting exchange of correspondence exists between Isabella and one Rev. Vosper Thomas, registrar at
Wimborne Minster, during the Autumn of 1888. Isabella desired to donate an altar cross to the church in memory of
her late brother-in-law, William. After a lengthy and somewhat heated exchange in which the church Board of
Governors asked for particular details on the cross which Isabella for some reason refused to give, the gift was for-
4 Private correspondence with David Andersen.
5 The second half of this return ticket dated Dec. 1 was found on Druitt’s body. There were actually three Hammersmith stations. The
one Druitt at which Druitt would have alighted is that on the Metropolitan District Railway, today’s District Line of the London Underground.
This is not to be confused with the Hammersmith & Chiswick station which was relatively near Tuke’s asylum as that station did not have
service from Charing Cross.
6 “Aunt Jane” is Jane Druitt, William’s sister who died unmarried in 1880. “Arthur” is Montague’s younger brother, Arthur Druitt. “Willie”
is older brother William Harvey Druitt. The Bournemouth uncle must be James Druitt, Sr.

The Lamb Tap, Chiswick. Coroner Thomas Bramah Diplock conducted the inquest into Montague Druitt's death at this pub in January
1889. The shadow in the foreground is that of St. Nicholas, the parish church at Chiswick. Photograph — Andy Spallek.
mally declined in a letter dated 3 December 1888. The date is of interest as it is the date often given as the last day
Montague Druitt was seen alive7. Whether his suicide had anything to do with the rejection of the memorial to his
father is not known.
Also in the archives is an interesting letter which almost escaped my attention. Written from Cooma, Australia
on 27 February 1889 by Thomas Druitt to Isabella, it mentions the death of Montague:
We have the sad news about poor Montague. It came first from Christchurch & I saw the particulars in the Dorset
County Chronicle afterwards.
Thomas Druitt was a brother to Montague’s father, William. A clergyman, he emigrated to Australia where he
became a bishop. I almost missed this letter because the name “Montague” was written so poorly. I only caught it
because the significance of the date and the occurrence of a word beginning with an upper-case “M” drew my atten-
tion to it. This illustrates the extreme care with which the researcher must proceed while sifting any archives.
As a final note, allow me simply to say that there are other interesting “finds” in the archives. Correspondence
between Gertrude and East End stonemason Jabez Druitt links these families at the very time of the Whitechapel
murders. This is significant in that Jabez had a daughter by the name of Emily, who had indirect ties to the Earl of
Crawford. Researcher Stephen Ryder has discovered a letter from Crawford to Sir Robert Anderson regarding an
7 I tend to believe Druitt actually committed suicide the night of 1-2 December .

unnamed woman who believed she was related to Jack the Ripper. Could this woman be Emily Druitt? A newspaper
clipping in the archives also provides evidence that John Henry Lonsdale was well acquainted with the Druitt fami-
ly, and particularly Rev. Charles Druitt, Montague’s cousin8. Lonsdale was Montague’s neighbor at Blackheath, and as
a barrister had law offices in the same London buildings as Druitt, King’s Bench Walk. Having become a clergyman
in 1887, Lonsdale’s first assignment was as curate at the Druitt home parish of Wimborne Minster. Lonsdale was also
a classmate at Eton of Sir Melville Macnaghten. It is possible that he was an informant and potential source of
Macnaghten’s “private information” regarding the Druitt family’s suspicions of Montague9.
Much more time should be spent in these archives. Every letter should be combed for fragments of information
regarding Montague Druitt. It is quite possible that additional clues to his movements during the time of the
Whitechapel murders may be found as well as further information regarding his mental and emotional state. Sifting
these archives is a rather arduous task due to the sheer volume of material, particularly correspondence. The legi-
bility of many of these handwritten letters is a further challenge, making the search a rather exhausting ordeal.
However, when one is rewarded with an occasional gem such as a letter from Ann Druitt, or a glimpse into the
Autumn of 1888, the task seems rather less arduous. Montague Druitt is an enigma. He is a classic Victorian gentle-
man barrister, schoolmaster and sportsman — the prototypical Dr Jekyll. Perhaps in these archives one day we shall
discover a Mr. Hyde.
8 An article from the Salisbury and Winchester Journal and General Advertiser of 14 May 1887 details the burglary of Lonsdale’s Wimborne
home at a time when Rev. Charles Druitt was a house guest.
9 In his Scotland Yard memorandum, Macnaghten wrote, “from private information I have little doubt that [Druitt’s] own family believed
him to have been the murderer.”
Andrew J. Spallek has been studying the Whitechapel murders since their centenary in
1988.Originally from Chicago, he now resides in St. Louis, Missouri where he is an ordained
Lutheran pastor. He is also frequent visitor to England. Concentrating on suspect Montague Druitt
for the past three years, Spallek counts among his research accomplishments the identification
of Henry Richard Farquharson of Dorset as the Member of Parliament who in 1891 suspected
Druitt of being Jack the Ripper and now also the publication of the early Druitt photographs pub-
lished for the first time

Linden
Gardens
Tuke's
Manor House
Asylum
The
Lamb
Tap
Thornycroft’s
Wharf
1908 Atlas Map of London, showing the relative positions of Thornycroft’s Wharf, Linden Gardens and Tuke’s Manor House Asylum.
The station shown here, near Tuke’s Manor House Asylum, is not the one that Druitt used as it did not have a service from Charing Cross.
Margaret Edwards Bird
John and Maggie Bird enjoy the post-banquet entertainment at the

Bournemouth Ripper Conference in 2001.
In the last issue of Ripperologist we reported on the death of Maggie Bird.

We are grateful to Superintendent Simon Ovens of the Metropolitan Police, who delivered the following
eulogy at her funeral at Surrey and Sussex Crematorium on 30 July 2009, for permission to publish it here.
Maggie Bird touched all of our lives. She was a woman full of energy, full of love and full of friendship.
A woman who was passionate about life, passionate about her interests, and passionate about her family and
friends.
Sixty years ago Maggie came into this world by herself. Sixty years later she fills this place with people and
with love.
And wouldn’t she have loved to see us all. We would have been smiled at, we would have been hugged, with-
in seconds we would have been laughing together and in my case before long she would have been stuffing food
down me because she would have known I hadn’t eaten!
That was Maggie. When you became Maggie’s friend it lasted a lifetime. And what a life it was, lived with
her own brand of joie de vivre and her infectious energy and drive.
Margaret Edwards Bird was born on 13 July 1949 in Barry in The Vale of Glamorgan, the only child of Peggy
and Emrys. Though known universally to all of us as Maggie, when in Wales it was strictly Margaret!
Maggie’s Dad’s job as a Mental Health Nurse kept them moving about and the young Maggie lived in Malvern
in Worcestershire, Farnham in Hampshire and Stockport in Cheshire. Through all of this she remained proudly
Welsh with a reoccurrence of the Welsh accent when speaking to anyone in the Home Country.
Maggie always maintained she had some Welsh magic in her, with the odd premonition to boot. She called
herself ‘The Welsh Witch’!
Apparently, some of the frostiest moments at home with John were when Wales were playing England at
Rugby — particularly if Wales won, which meant Maggie dancing around the room saying nasty things about the
English in Welsh! Indeed it was Maggie’s pronounced idea of Heaven to be stranded on a desert island with the
Pontypool Rugby Team front row!

Whilst at school, Maggie struck up a penpal friendship with a girl called Susie in the United States of America.
Maggie and Susie maintained that relationship to the day Maggie died. Maggie was so good at that type of thing.
One day at the age of sixteen Maggie announced to her mother that she was off to the Police Station. “What
on earth had she done wrong?” her mother asked. “Nothing,” Maggie assured her. She was to sign up as a Police
Cadet.
So on 24 January 1966, at this very young age, Maggie became a member of the Stockport Borough Police
Force and thus began her life long association with Policing.
In due course Maggie became a Woman Police Constable in the West Mercia Constabulary, working at Little
Combiton.
Maggie met and married a fellow police officer, Roger Barker, and settled down to what would no doubt
have been an outstanding police career. Sadly, a nasty injury whilst arresting a prisoner put a stop to things and
she was medically retired in 1973.
Things did not work out with Roger and following their divorce Maggie headed for the bright lights of London
and found herself, in 1977, holding what she used to call ‘The keys of Paradise for all young men,’ as she
worked in the office of St Bartholomew’s Hospital Nurses Home and held the keys to the front and back door!
Being the shy retiring type, Maggie didn’t get out much, but one night found herself summoned by her flat-
mate, Joanna, to a party. Maggie had not wanted to go, but late into the night Joanna had telephoned to say
she had drunk too much, needed to be seen home, and that Maggie was just the person to do it.
For Maggie a friend in need meant immediate mobilisation, and she arrived at the party to find Joanna dancing
on the tables. Sensing things might take a bit longer than at first anticipated, she sat herself down outside the pub.
At that moment a certain young John Bird, who was working nearby and had been ordered to the party by
his boss despite also not wanting to go, came wandering along.
He clapped eyes on Maggie, knew when he saw a good thing, and promptly asked her out to dinner there
and then.
John fell head-over-heels for Maggie, which was all very well but for the fact he was at the time due to go
off to Australia to marry someone else! Still John had made his mind up. He decided to still go to Australia to
break the news in person, and assured Maggie that he would be back.
Maggie, I think it’s fair to say, treated this promise with a certain degree of scepticism and expected never
to see this young man again. But John kept to his word, went to Australia, broke the news and sent a postcard
to Maggie to the effect that he was still single.
Her PA back in London later told John that Maggie danced around her desk singing when the postcard arrived.
John and Maggie were married on 3 July 1981 at Finsbury Registry Office, beginning 28 years of truly wonderful
marriage. Now, I have to say that things might not have gone so well if it hadn’t been for Maggie’s forgiving nature.
You see, the reception was to be held at their flat nearby. So nearby that John saw no reason to waste
money on a Wedding Car. The happy couple emerged from the ceremony to torrential rain and had to run all
the way back to the flat. I bet Maggie was so pleased!
Anyone who knows John and Maggie will know they were a devoted couple. In each other they found their
true soulmate. John says the secret was respecting each others’ different interests, being comfortable in pur-
suing them and always being there to support each other in them.
Their son George came along on 11 November 1981 to complete the family.
Clearly Maggie’s stature was known even then, because the day George was born HRH Princess Alexandra
visited the hospital. She attended Maggie’s ward, graciously peered into George’s cot and held his little hand,
at which point George promptly threw up on her.
Above all things, above all her achievements, Maggie was most proud of George.
Shortly before Maggie died, George and his girlfriend Laura announced their engagement to get married. So
she knew what was to be. I know just how proud she was and what a huge comfort to her the news was.

Maggie joined the Metropolitan Police Civil staff on 17
April 1979, beginning her career at Islington Police Station.
Here she made friends that were to last for the rest of her
life and some of whom are here today.
In 1993 Maggie moved into the Archives Branch, forging
friendships right across the organisation and beginning her
interest in — and amazing appetite for — Police History.
What she didn’t know about the history of the Metropolitan
Police wasn’t worth knowing. She was a recognised expert in her
field and was forever lecturing on the subject to just about
every group you could think of.
That was how I first met Maggie. About 15 years ago I wan-
dered into her office at Wellington House in search of some
facts on some Victorian policeman. She was her usual helpful
self. I kept going back for different bits of information and
our friendship blossomed. We just clicked. We shared the
passion for police history and we shared the same sense of
humour.
Our telephone conversations would invariably start with long quotations from the old radio show Round the
Horn where she would be Fiona, played by Dame Celia Molestrangler and I would be Charles played by the age-
ing juvenile Binkie Huckaback. They were a pair of lovestruck, dated cinema idols engaging in stilted, extraor-
dinarily polite dialogues, in scenes that were parodies of Noël Coward’s style.
We would eventually get onto the business of the call, but spend the rest of the day giggling. After a cou-
ple of years of knowing Maggie she officially made me her honorary little brother and I have been known to her
as ‘Little B’ ever since! And she became the big sister figure I had never had.
2005 saw Maggie get what she called ‘the best job in the world’ when she was appointed to be the curator
of the Metropolitan Police Historic Collection. It was here she really came into her own.
She transformed what had become a disorganised hoard into a well-structured and well-ordered collection.
It was by no means an easy ordeal though, and she was often to be found up to her armpits in muck and bul-
lets... sometimes quite literally!
Sagas abound of the things she found down there, with one of the most troublesome being some hundred-
odd crates of redundant police truncheons. I mean, what do you do with 1,500 offensive weapons! Maggie and
I struggled long and hard over that one I can tell you!
It was Maggie’s overwhelming ambition, something she felt so very strongly about, to have the collection
on view to the public and she worked over many years to try to achieve this. It is a huge testament to her mem-
ory that only last month the first such exhibition was opened by the Commissioner [of the Met] at Empress State
Building in Brompton. Maggie proudly showed the Commissioner around and was, I can tell you, a very proud
little Curator!
Maggie appeared on the TV news to show off her creation. This was not her first TV appearance I might add.
She appeared in the TV genealogical programme Who Do You Think You Are, in which she got to break the news
to Jeremy Irons that his policeman ancestor was a bit of a black sheep! Maggie was rather taken with the dash-
ing Irons, but I don’t think she thought he was a patch on you, John!
Maggie was secretary of the Police History Society, a job she originally took on for three years. Can I say
that 7 years later she was still organising them!
She was an Associate Samaritan, tirelessly supporting John in his outstanding efforts for that awesome organ-
isation. Maggie would turn up at the training sessions John organised to make the tea. Being Maggie she would

get to chat to the trainees and was the usual hit. John says that the trainees rarely remembered a word he’d
taught them, but they all remembered Maggie!
Maggie was Vice Chairman of the Metropolitan Police History Society, taking on the role when I became
Chairman. She was the most tremendous support to me in our efforts to broaden the Society, and the increase
in membership and change in the feel of the Society are very much down to her. She was the life and soul of
every meeting. It will be very different without her.
Being with Maggie made you feel like a giggly teenager again. She had three favourite and very silly jokes
involving The Mayor of Dudley, a baby Polar bear and three rabbits called foot, foot foot and foot foot foot. Not
all in the same joke I hasten to add, and no doubt you would have heard them.
Maggie did however have her more eccentric side. We don’t like to talk about it, but she was a long-term
member of The Cliff Richard Fan Club. She also purported an interesting theory that Jack the Ripper was a
woman and gave detailed talks explaining her theory, waving a dagger in her black gloved hand at the men in
the front row, to prove her point that only a woman could have done such things! Loving her as much as we
did, we humoured her of course.
There is no doubt that her very happiest times were those with her beloved family. The Route 66 trip, the
annual trip to Port Merion, and perhaps some of the happiest memories, at their holiday home in Brittany. As
ever, Maggie was a hit with the locals. John remembers one night early on in their visits when they were invit-
ed to celebrate the birthday of the neighbour’s grandpa. Homemade very strong brew flowed, and Maggie was
last seen standing on a chair singing a funeral song in Welsh at the old chap, a song she didn’t even know she
knew.
She was overnight success with her fellow Celts and set the seal on a long and happy association with that
part of France.
New Year’s Eve, however, was a night to stay in with John and jigsaw puzzles. They took turns to cook the
dinner.
She hated the heat and she loved the rain... that’s the Welsh for you!
It was Maggie’s 60th birthday on 13 July, just a few days ago. Craig Haslam and I visited her and John at
their home and we were able to share a couple of giggle-filled hours. She had lots of visitors that day.
But time was not on Maggie’s side. She died peacefully four days later on 17 July 2009 at the East Surrey
Hospital in Redhill.
We will remember Maggie for her warmth, her honesty, her love and her sense of humour.
We will remember her for her lasting friendships.
We will remember her as a proud and senior member of the Metropolitan Police Force, and we are proud
to mark that by the presence of the Force Flag on her coffin today and the escort provided for her last trip by
the Special Escort Group.
The song that follows this eulogy, during which John wants us to raise the roof with our singing, was played
to Maggie by John at, he tells me, moments of great inebriation and moments of great sentimentality.
The first line tells us “I wandered today to the hills Maggie, to watch the scene below.”
So as you sing think of Maggie wandering to the hills, think of her style and passion, think of the way she
threw her head back with laughter and think of the great way she always made you feel.
Think of those awful jokes she used to tell and her gift with accents, and think of that sympathetic ear she
offered when ever you needed it.
Think of Maggie the way she was.
And Maggie, as you watch this scene, from wherever you are, look at all of us and realise what a difference
you made to this world, realise just how much you were loved and realise just how much you will be missed.

All the news that’s fit to print...
I Beg to Report
MODEL’S DISFIGURED BODY FOUND IN SUITCASE—SUSPECT HANGS HIMSELF.

Pretty blond swimsuit model Jasmine Fiore, 28, and her husband Ryan Jenkins,
32, a TV reality show contestant, were seemingly living the California dream
until everything went haywire this August, and Ms Fiore ended up dead, appar-
ently killed by Jenkins in a jealous rage. Ms Fiore’s body turned up stuffed in a
suitcase in a trash dumpster while Jenkins, the prime suspect in her murder,
hanged himself days later after fleeing to his native Canada.
The suitcase containing Ms Fiore’s body was found in Buena Park, about 30
kilometres southeast of Los Angeles. Los Angeles police said that she had been
strangled and her body mutilated to prevent identification: her teeth had been
removed and her fingers cut off. Investigators identified the body by the serial
numbers on her breast implants—one of the steps she had taken to improve her
career chances if not her sex life as well. Jasmine Fiore
A warrant was issued for Jenkins’s arrest on 20 August. Buena Park Police Lt Gary Worrall stated at the time that
the suspect, a native of Alberta, Canada, had apparently fled the state. It was thought that he drove 1,000 miles to
Washington state and then caught a boat to a peninsula on the border, where he walked into Canada.
The suspect was found hanged in an apparent successful suicide in a room at the Thunderbird Motel in Hope,
British Columbia, on 23 August.
Prior to his wife’s murder, Jenkins had been appearing as a contestant on the VH1 reality show ‘Megan Wants a
Millionaire,’ in which a woman tries to land a wealthy husband. A producer for the show revealed to CNN’s Larry King
that Jenkins had been a finalist in the show but any final episodes featuring Jenkins will not now air.
The voluptuous Ms Fiore recently moved to Los Angeles from Las Vegas, where the couple had married. Besides
having appeared nude in Playboy, she was recently featured in an ad for controversial ‘shock jock’ Howard Stern’s
radio show.
Jenkins reported Ms Fiore missing after he took her to a weekend poker party in San Diego. The couple report-
edly had shared a tempestuous relationship and it is thought Jenkins may have killed her after he found out that she
had been seeing an old boyfriend. California prosecutors said in a statement, ‘The victim had been badly beaten,
all of her fingers had been cut off, and all of her teeth had been forcibly removed.’
In the aftermath of Jenkins’s death, Farrah Emami, spokeswoman for the Orange County, California, district
attorney’s office, told reporters: ‘Based on the information we have, we believe that Mr. Jenkins is solely responsi-
ble for the murder of Jasmine Fiore. In light of the fact that he has been found dead, obviously the case against him
will be dismissed.’ She added, however, that the Buena Park police will continue to investigate whether anyone
assisted Jenkins in his flight from US authorities.

‘Ryan Jenkins, suspect in murder of model Jasmine
Fiore, found dead in B.C. hotel’
By Ian Austin and Cheryl Chan, Calgary Herald,
Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 24 August 2009
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Ryan+Jenkin
s+suspect+murder+model+Jasmine+Fiore+found+
dead+hotel/1922375/story.html
‘Model’s Body Found Stuffed in Suitcase’

Associated Press, from Buena Park, California, USA,
18 August 2009
http://news.aol.com/article/swimsuit-model-jas-
mine-fiores-body-found/628758
‘’TV Contestant Wanted in Model’s Murder’

By Gillian Flaccus, Associated Press
The Thunderbird Motel in Hope, B.C., where fugitive murder suspect Ryan
http://news.aol.com/article/tv-contestant-wanted-
Jenkins was found hanged in an apparent suicide on Aug. 23, 2009. in-models-murder/633402?icid=sphere_newsaol_inpage
‘Mutilated Playboy model Jasmine Fiore identified by her breast implants’

Daily Telegraph, London, UK, 21 August 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6070404/Mutilated-Playboy-model-Jasmine-
Fiore-identified-by-her-breast-implants.html
ISRAELI MAN ACCUSED OF KILLING AND DISMEMBERING GIRLFRIEND AND DAUGHTER. Friends of a troubled man who
is accused of killing and carving up the bodies of his girlfriend and her daughter have expressed shock at the news.
Police say Eli Fahima, 59, from Bat Yam was arrested by police in Haifa on 16 August for the alleged murder and dis-
memberment of Beatrice Rodov, 62, of Ramat Gan, and her daughter Denise, 36. Police theorise that Fahima killed
Mrs Rodov and her daughter following an argument with the mother ‘over money.’
On 12 August, Mrs Rodov’s mutilated body was discovered in a town garbage bin that had been set alight. Two
days later, a person strolling by the Alexander River north of Netanya was shocked to notice a human leg floating in
the stream. The leg belonged to Denise Rodov. Police say both corpses had been decapitated and several limbs were
missing.
Police tracked down Fahima in northern Israel by tracing the signal of a cellphone that he had stolen from the mur-
der victim’s apartment. The suspect Fahima had also
taken a car that had belonged to Mrs Rodov. Police searching the Alexander River
On 24 August, Fahima appeared in Ramle Magistrate’s

Court for a remand hearing, where he immediately began
protesting that he was framed. He was ordered removed from
the court, before being returned. His attorney, Oren
Shpekman, said his client denied all charges. The lawyer
added that police had no solid basis linking Fahima to the mur-
ders.
The suspect, by trade a welder originally from Kiryat
Shmona, is divorced and has four children. Attorney
Shpekman stated that people who know Fahima are
shocked by his arrest. He said, ‘He is known to his

friends as “Almonds Eli,” because he would visit friends
at their offices and hand out almonds.” The lawyer
added, ‘Everyone who knows him knows he is a nice,
sociable guy. This [police case against Fahima] does not
fit.’
Media, however, reported that the suspected murderer
had a troubled past and possible consequent psychological
difficulties caused by a traumatic terrorist incident thirty-
five years ago. In 1974, Fahima’s sister and her three chil-
dren were murdered in a terrorist attack in Kiryat Shmona.
The incident occurred when three gunmen from the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General
Command infiltrated from Lebanon and embarked on a
massacre in an apartment building, shooting dead 18 peo-
Eli Fahima ple. In recent years, Fahima has been implicated in a
string of thefts and property crimes.
‘Man killed girlfriend, her daughter’, by Yaakov Lappin

The Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem, Israel, 20 August 2009
http://scrafen.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/2009-08-20-1504-man-killed-dismembered-girlfriend-and-her-daughter/
‘Second dismembered body found in river’, by Yaakov Lappin

The Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem, Israel, 14 August 2009, updated 16 August
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1249418607222
MORE MURDER AND MAYHEM IN ISRAEL. Israeli media were busy throughout August covering a series of bloody
murders. On 14 August, the day a second dismembered body was discovered in the Alexander River, the corpse of a
handcuffed man was found in an empty structure near Rishon Lezion. The next night, a middle-aged family man was
the victim of gang violence on a Tel Aviv beach. These incidents followed an evident hate crime two weeks earlier
when a gunman shot dead two people at a gay and lesbian centre in Tel Aviv. To date, no one has been arrested in
the shooting, which also left eleven people wounded.
Police Inspector-General David Cohen said, ‘We are looking at a series of incidents which have different circum-
stances and backgrounds. Police are working day and night in extended shifts to beef up our presence, while our
investigators are working long hours.’
The incident of gang violence left a 59-year-old man dead, and ten suspects have been arrested. The victim,
Leonard ‘Arik’ Karp, had been sitting on a bench on the beachfront promenade with his wife and 25-year-old daugh-
ter when a group of intoxicated or drugged Arab young men and women came by. After a violent altercation during
which his wife and daughter managed to escape, Mr Karp was allegedly beaten to death or drowned. (Some Israeli
reports of the incident use the word ‘lynched’ but it does not appear any actual hanging took place.) The suspects,
reportedly ranging in age from 17 to 21, are from Jaljulya, east of Hod Hasharon.
The suspects allegedly made a comment to the victim as they walked past and Mr Karp apparently made a remark
in response. The argument became violent, with the youths allegedly physically assaulting the family. Mr Karp’s wife
and daughter managed to excape to telephone the police. When they returned to the beach, Mr Karp was missing.
Some hours later, his corpse discovered near the beach.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was briefed on the recent murders by Public Security Minister Yitzhak

Aharonovitch. A statement released by the Prime Minister said he was shocked and worried by the murders.
In an interview on Army Radio, Netanyahu said that in light of the recent killings, the government would ‘strength-
en urban policing’. He said, ‘Personal safety is not just against terrorists but against the domestic terror of crime, as
well.’
‘7 TA beach lynch suspects remanded’, by Yaakov Lappin

The Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem, Israel, 15 August 2009, updated 16 August
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418609681&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
‘Tel Aviv Beach Beating Rocks Israel’

Reuters News Service reporting from Tel Aviv, Israel, 16 August 2009
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLG210208
REMINDER OF ELEPHANT MAN AUCTIONED ON EBAY. In an ebay auction sale to benefit victims of Proteus Syndrome,
the disease that caused the severe deformations to Joseph Merrick, the so-called Elephant Man, a decorative stone
from the Leicester theatre where Merrick made his first stage appearance has been sold for £122.
The online auction was set up by The Friends of Joseph Merrick to raise cash for research into the extremely rare
disfiguring disease from which he suffered. Merrick was born in 1862 in the slums of Lee Street in Leicester’s city
centre not far from the site of the Gaiety theatre in Wharf Street. He made his first appearance in a freak show at
the theatre in 1884. The Gaiety was demolished in March to make way for a new block of flats.
Housing developers Launch Padz announced in April that they would call the apartment building ‘Merrick House’
Joseph Merrick in memory of the city’s famous former resident. Parts of the
Gaiety Theatre, built in 1862 and also known as the
Hippodrome during its time as a theatre, were saved, including
120 stone roses. The developer has said these elements will be
incorporated into the housing project, which is expected to be
completed in 2011. The material is being held at the company’s
yard in Payne Street, Leicester. A commemorative plaque ded-
icated to Merrick was recently unveiled on the flats, as report-
ed here in the Rip.
Local historian Roy Townsend, age 69, said: ‘Obviously I
would have preferred the original building to still be there.’ Mr
Townsend added, ‘The house where [Merrick] was born is on
the site of what is now Lee Circle car park and there’s nothing
else around which is linked to him.’
‘Elephant Man stone sold on web’

This Is Leicestershire website, Leicestershire, UK, 17 August
2009
http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/news/Elephant-Man-
stone-sold-web/article-1257680-detail/article.html

MACHIAVELLIAN TV PRESENTER—OR HOW TO GET
AHEAD IN MODERN MEDIA. Brazilian police have
accused a TV presenter of being involved in organ-
ised drug trafficking and of ordering killings to get rid
of rivals and boost ratings. Is this the latest in reali-
ty show entertainment? Now we know why we don’t
watch much TV any more.
TV host Wallace Souza happens also to be a state
legislator and thus can easily impute political
motives being behind any allegations lodged against
him. He has complained that the charges are an
attempt by rivals to smear him and claims there is no
evidence to back the allegations.
However, the police say they have evidence that
Mr Souza ordered killings in the state of Amazonas
and that he then alerted TV crews to get the camera- Wallace Souza
men to the scene first. In that way he got a ‘double

killing’ as it were, or more bang for his buck, to use another metaphor, by knocking off a competitor and getting to
be first on the scene to cover the story. And we thought the media at the time of the Ripper murders were bad! As
for Souza’s TV show, it was dropped late last year when police began their inquiry into his alleged crimes.
‘Brazil TV host “ordered killings”’

BBC News, London, UK, 12 August 2009
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8196564.stm
AH, DEAR BOSS!—OR MORE ON OUR FAVORITE CASE IN THEATRICAL FORM. Here’s the blurb for this rather colour-
ful and way-out sounding Canadian stage show, the script for which is available for purchase:
A murder mystery and a romantic horror story for three actors and thirty puppets, Dear Boss is an imagined
investigation of the Ripper Murders. Charles Fort—a famous researcher of such phenomena as spontaneous combus-
tion, raining fish and frogs, ghosts and flying saucers—picks his way through the madness and mayhem of
Whitechapel in the autumn of 1888 to find answers to one of history’s most notorious riddles. Softcover, 107 pp.
$15.95.
If anybody happens to see a production or else to read the script, let us know what you think. We are depend-
ing on you so don’t let us down.
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.theatrebooks.com/images_d/dear_boss.jpg&imgrefurl=htt
p://www.theatrebooks.com/theatre/canadian_plays/index.html&usg=__eVfbHPlsOk_BnFEO2rzGcYvEAVQ=&h=123&
w=80&sz=5&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=puvqtJYt-fwijM:&tbnh=89&tbnw=58&prev=/images%3Fq%3Djack%2Bripper%2Bpu
ppet%2Bplay%2Bdear%2Bboss%2Beric%2Bwoolfe%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4GGLJ_enES281ES281

HISTORIC ENGLISH CRIMINAL TRIALS TO GO ONLINE. The genealogical website Ancestry.co.uk, in cooperation with
Britain’s National Archives, has made available to subscribers of their site transcripts of millions of criminal trials in
England and Wales from the late 1700’s through the 19th century, including the trial of Jack the Ripper suspect Dr
Thomas Neill Cream and Roderick McLean, who attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle with a
pistol in 1882.
Ancestry.co.uk said on 3 August that it is publishing 1.4 million documents on trials, verdicts and sentences includ-
ing executions handed down to criminals in England and Wales. The website claimed the collection was a ‘world first’
and it would seem to offer a detailed picture of a legal system and the criminal world previously only glimpsed by
the general public in the pages of Charles Dickens in such works as Great Expectations and Oliver Twist.
In those dark days of British criminal history, almost one in 10 people accused of a crime were either transport-
ed overseas, usually to a British colony, most notoriously of course Australia (or, before, Britain lost them, the
American colonies), or sentenced to death. Crimes that carried the death penalty included stealing anything worth
Trial at the Old Bailey as drawn by Thomas Rowlandson and Augustus Pugin for Ackermann's Microcosm of London (1808-11).
more than five shillings (equivalent to £30 today or 35
euros), theft of livestock, poaching of rabbits and cut-
ting down trees.
Included in the database are 900,000 sentences of
imprisonment and 97,000 transportations. Hanging was
bad enough but transportation could be a living hell.
Two examples of transportation are afforded by the
cases of Ferdinando Shakespeare, aged 23, and Joseph
Bloomer, aged 22, nailors, tried at Worcester Court
Assizes in March 1838. The men were indicted for
breaking into the shop of William Cox, at Cradley, in
the Parish of Halesowen and stealing bacon, cheese and
other articles. Both were sentenced to 10 years trans-
portation to Australia. See http://freepages.genealo-
gy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~shakespeare/criminal/con-
victs/ferdinando.htm.
Another grisly aspect of crime and punishment of the
day is that during the 18th century and for much of the
19th century, executions were a public spectacle. People
flocked to see hangings—the wealthy would even hire
the balconies of houses and pubs to get a better view.
Among the colorful trials in the collection are those
of ‘Jack’ suspect Dr Cream, who was sentenced to
death in 1892 for poisoning prostitutes; Isaac “Ikey”
Solomon, whom many consider to be the inspiration for A ship bound for Australia laden with convicted criminals
sentenced to transportation.
Dickens’ Fagan; and highwayman George Lyon, whose
pistol once failed when he attempted to rob a coach in the rain having allowed his gunpowder to get wet..
Ancestry.co.uk managing director, Olivier Van Calster, stated: ‘This collection will be of great use to social his-
torians as they contain a variety of in-depth information about crime and criminals in England and Wales during a
period of great poverty, change, and ultimately, reform.’
‘Historic criminal trials go online’

Yahoo News, UK, 3 August 2009
http://uk.news.yahoo..com/18/20090803/tuk-historic-criminal-trials-go-online-a7ad41d.html
‘Details of 18th and 19th century trials go online’

By the Press Association, The Guardian, London, UK, 3 August 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/03/trial-details-online-ancestry-website
WHAT MAKES PSYCHOPATHS TICK? A veritable garish rogues gallery of criminals have fascinated us over the years:
real-life killers such as Jack the Ripper or Charlie Manson, the hippie mastermind behind the Tate-LaBianca murders
of the summer of 1969, or else fictional murderers and mutilators such as Dr Hannibal Lecter, played with creepy
relish by Anthony Hopkins in the film version of Thomas Harris’s novel Silence of the Lambs.
We all wonder if something happened in the life of an individual to produce psychopathic tendencies, or was it a
hardwired characteristic that lay dormant, awaiting an environment stimulus to explode and begin a cascade of terror?

Professor Declan Murphy and colleagues Dr Michael Craig and Dr Marco
Catani from the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London have been
studying brain scans of psychopaths. The three British researchers believe they
may have found an answer: they discovered differences in the brain which may
provide a biological explanation for psychopathy. The results of their study
have been published in the paper, ‘Altered connections on the road to psy-
chopathy’, published in Molecular Psychiatry. See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.
gov/sites/entrez
The research investigated the brain biology of psychopaths with convictions
that included attempted murder, manslaughter, multiple rape with strangula-
tion and false imprisonment.
The scientists wrote: ‘Psychopathy is strongly associated with serious crim-
inal behaviour (for example, rape and murder) and recidivism. However, the
biological basis of psychopathy remains poorly understood. Earlier studies sug-
gested that dysfunction of the amygdala and/or orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) [the
region which deals with decision making] may underpin psychopathy. Nobody,
however, has ever studied the white matter connections (such as
the uncinate fasciculus (UF)) linking these structures in psy-
chopaths. Therefore, we used in vivo diffusion tensor mag-
netic resonance imaging (DT-MRI) tractography to analyse the
microstructural integrity of the UF in psychopaths. . . with
convictions that included attempted murder, manslaughter,
multiple rape with strangulation and false imprisonment.’
The investigators found a significant reduction in the integri-
ty of the small particles that make up the structure of the ‘UF’ of
psychopaths, compared to control groups of people with the same
age and IQ. Also, the degree of abnormality was significantly related
Charles Manson and fictitious Hannibal
Lecter — is there a biological explanation to the degree of psychopathy. These results suggest that psychopaths have biological dif-
for psychopathy?
ferences in the brain which may help to explain their offending behaviors.
Dr Craig explained that ‘if replicated by larger studies the significance of these findings cannot be underestimated.
The suggestion of a clear structural deficit in the brains of psychopaths has profound implications for clinicians, research
scientists and the criminal justice system.’
Dr Craig added: ‘This study is part of an ongoing program of research into the biological basis of criminal psy-
chopathy. It highlights that exciting developments in brain imaging such as DT-MRI now offer neuroscientists the
potential to move towards a more coherent understanding of the possible brain networks that underlie psychopathy,
and potentially towards treatments for this mental disorder.’
‘The Anatomy of a Psychopath’, by Rick Nauert, PhD, Senior News Editor, psychcentral.com
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D., 5 August 2009
http://psychcentral.com/news/2009/08/05/the-anatomy-of-a-psychopath/7559.html

DEATH OF THE LAST TOMMY. Ripperologist was saddened to hear of the death
on 25 July of the last British World War I soldier. In some ways the end of the
‘Great War’ in 1918 seems closer than 1888, but it really isn’t as the years recede
and the world of Queen Victoria and Jack the Ripper, her son Edward VII and
grandson George V, General Haig, and the Kaiser Wilhelm disappears into the
shadows. So, fittingly, Henry John ‘Harry’ Patch, 111, known as ‘The Last
Tommy’, and who stipulated that he did not want a state funeral, was honoured
at a service at Wells Cathedral, Somerset on 6 August.
Crowds lined the streets as the veteran’s cortege left the Fletcher House care
home in Somerset, where he had lived for 13 years. Carers and fellow residents
formed a guard of honour for the World War I private outside the home to watch
the hearse make its way to the Cathedral where members of the Royal British
Legion bearing standards formed a second guard as bells sounded.
Hundreds of well-wishers surrounded the cathedral under grey skies and
threatening rain to pay tribute to the last survivor of one of the greatest and
bloodiest wars the world has ever known. The week before, people queued out-
side the cathedral for several hours to get one of the 1,050 tickets to the funer-
al which were allocated to the public.
Rain began as Private Harry Patch’s simple, flag-draped coffin, with its single
Henry John ‘Harry’ Patch
circular wreath of red roses approached the doors of the cathedral’s imposing
honeystone West Front. The casket was carried by soldiers of the 1st Battalion
‘The Rifles’, of which the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry—Mr Patch’s regiment—became a part. Also in attendance
were two soldiers each of the armed forces of Belgium, France and Germany to help escort the coffin, a reflection
of Mr Patch’s desire for reconciliation with old adversaries.
As typical with war veterans, Mr Patch, a plumber by profession, for the majority of his long life refused to speak
of his experiences. It was only in the last decade that Mr Patch was persuaded to speak of Passchendaele and the
infamous bloody Ypres Salient of 22 September 1917. There, three of Mr Patch’s close friends were blown to bits in
front of him and more than 70,000 British troops perished.
‘Harry Patch: the Last Tommy’

By Elizabeth Grice, The Telegraph, London, UK, 22 August 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/5984219/Harry-Patch-the-Last-Tommy.html
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090806/tuk-crowds-pay-tribute-to-last-tommy-6323e80.html
WOTCHER! COCKNEY-TALKING ATMs IN THE EAST END. Just in time for next month’s London Jack the Ripper
Convention, two cash dispensing machines that will chat to you in the famous Cockney ‘rhyming slang’ have been
installed in the city’s East End. Sure to amuse—and maybe—confuse visitors from abroad if not from elsewhere in the
British Isles!
It’s your choice as the customer whether to have your prompts and options displayed in rhyming slang, or the
‘Cockney lingo’ as it were, just like in some machines you can choose a foreign language. At the least while you are
withdrawing your ‘Crosby, Stills and Nash’ [cash] you can be having fun! What would Jack the Ripper have made of
it???? Ha ha, wouldn’t you like to know?
One Cockney-talking ATM is located right in the middle of Ripper territory, on Commercial Street in Spitalfields,
by the corner of Wentworth Street and Fashion Street. The other machine is in Bow several miles further east at

Roman Road Market, at the junction of Grove Road and St Stephen’s Road, south of Victoria Park. By the way, accord-
ing to tradition, a true Cockney must be born within earshot of the sound of the bells of St. Mary-le-Bow. Although—
confusing for foreigners!—St. Mary-le-Bow is not actually in Bow in East London: the historic church is in the City of
London, off Cheapside.
Bank Machine, which owns 2,500 ATMs around the United Kingdom, has set up a total five cash dispensers that
offer customers the option either to request cash in English or else in Cockney. The other three cash points, besides
the couple in the East End, can be found in Chingford, Walthamstow and Barnet. The Cockney language option will
be available for 3 months and ATMs featuring the rhyming slang are free to use, although most of the company’s cash
machines charge a £1.50 fee.
Managing director Ron Delnevo said: ‘Whilst we expect some residents will visit the machine to just have a butch-
er’s [short for “butcher’s hook” or “look”], most will be genuinely pleased as this is the first time a financial serv-
ices provider will have recognised the Cockney language in such a manner.’
The Guardian’s news blog commented, ‘anyone who claims there are more than a brass band full of pure-bred
cockneys in trendy Spitalfields is having a giraffe [laugh]. [The ATM company’s] laudable aim is to keep dialects alive
in Britain.’ The blog said: ‘If the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang cash machines are a success, the company hopes to follow
them up with Brummie, Geordie, Scouse and Scots ATMs.’
The ATMs displaying prompts in Cockney

‘Cockney rhyming slang at East End cash machines’
By Else Kvist
East London Advertiser, London, UK, 24 August 2009
http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/content/towerhamlets/advertiser/news/story.aspx?brand=ELAOnline&cat-
egory=news&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newsela&itemid=WeED24%20Aug%202009%2017%3A26%3A56%3A937
‘Cockney cash machines: are you ‘avin a giraffe?’

The Guardian News Blog, London, UK, 25 August 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2009/aug/25/cockney-cash-machines
Loretta Lay Books

Over 200 Jack the Ripper and associated titles on the website
Baron/Shone Sickert Paintings, hbdw £75
Barry (John Brooks) The Michaelmas Girls, hb/dw £25
Beadle (William) Jack the Ripper: Anatomy of a Myth, new, hb/dw, signed £12
Beadle (William) Jack the Ripper Unmasked, new, hb/dw, signed £15
Cook (Andrew) Jack the Ripper, new, hb/dw, signed £18
Eddleston (John J.) Jack the Ripper An Encyclopedia, h/b £50
Edwards (Ivor J.) Jack the Ripper's Black Magic Rituals, softcover, 1st edn. signed £20
Evans/Rumbelow Jack the Ripper Scotland Yard Investigates, new, hb/dw, signed labels £20
MAIL ORDER ONLY Fox (Richard) The History of the Whitechapel Murders, softcover, Facsimile edn. £20
24 Grampian Gardens, Griffiths (Major Arthur) Mysteries of Police and Crime (Special Edn.) 3 vols. h/b £85
London NW2 1JG Hinton (Bob) From Hell.... new ,p/back, signed, label £15
Tel 020 8455 3069 Hudson (Sam'l E.) Compiled by: "Leather Apron" or the Horrors of Whitechapel London, 1888, Facsimile edn. £20
www.laybooks.com Jones (Christopher) The Maybrick A to Z, new, softcover, signed £15
Logan (Guy B.H.) Masters of Crime (includes the 'Ripper' murders) h/b £125
lorettalay@hotmail.com
Muusmann (Carl) Hvem Var Jack the Ripper? p/back, insc. by Adam Wood to Wilf Gregg £60
Odell (Robin) Jack the Ripper in Fact & Fiction, hb/dw, inscribed by Robin Odell to Wilf Gregg £70
Palmer (Scott) Jack the Ripper. A Reference Guide h/b £25
Raper (Michell) Who Was Jack the Ripper? limited edn. booklet, numbered 94/100 £75
Russo (Stan) The Jack the Ripper Suspects, hb £30
Smithkey III (John) Jack the Ripper. The Inquest of the Final Victim Mary Kelly, softcover £30
Wolff (Camille) Compiled by: Who Was Jack the Ripper? hb/dw, reprint, with 16 signatures some labels £130

Ripping Yarns
Reviews
The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper:
Edmund Reid — Victorian Detective
Nicholas Connell and Stewart P. Evans
Stroud,Gloucestershire: Amberley Publishing, 2009
www.amberley-books.com
Softcover, 191 pages, illus; notes; biblio; index.
originally published as The Man Who Hunted Jack the Ripper: Edmund Reid and
the Police Perspective. Cambridge: Rupert Books, 2000
ISBN 978-1-84868-260-3
£14.99
This was something of an innovative book when first published, few people
having attempted to write a biography of a Victorian policeman since Belton
Cobb wrote Critical Years At The Yard back in 1956. And nobody has really taken
up the challenge since, although Nick Connell once more ventured into that field
with a biography of Walter Dew.
To be honest, though, this book isn’t really a biography of Inspector Reid at
all. Reid didn’t leave behind a lot of private papers and personal letters to be
plundered for insights into his character, personality, and motivations. So, one is
left with little more than a recounting of the details of the cases with which he
was involved, and even here we only have a handful—and those are rather rapid-
ly discussed. And even then it’s the Ripper investigation which grabs more than the lion’s share of attention.
The authors perhaps made as much use of the information available to them as they could and tell in some detail
his years of retirement in Kent when he was a genial, albeit somewhat eccentric character with a house he called a
ranch and a garden shed he called a hotel and from which he sold lemonade and postcards.
But there is so much that the book mentions with frustrating brevity. For example, Reid was an amateur balloon-
ist, described in one newspaper report as ‘the most daring balloonist of the early eighties’. In the 1870s he para-
chuted out of a balloon at a height of 1,000 feet and later he made a record ascent in the balIoon Queen of the

Meadow, in commemoration of which he received in 1883 a gold medal.
But Evans and Connell tell us no more than this, yet surely more infor-
mation of these record-breaking achievements must exist.
Similarly, Reid was used as the real-life foundation of a fictional
detective created by the writer Charles Gibbon and named Sgt. Dier
(Reid’s name spelt backwards), but apart from a description of Dier,
which probably fits Reid, and a paragraph of biographical detail about
Gibbon, we are told nothing of this interesting friendship between a
famous novelist and real-life detective. One wants to know more: who
was Charles Gibbon? How well regarded was he in his day? How well
regarded is he today? What was Sgt Dier like as a character? In what books
did he appear? What is his place, along with Sgt Cuff in Wilkie Collins’ The
Moonstone, in the history of the development of early detective stories?
One begins to get more of a feel for Reid’s personality in his retire-
ment years, mainly because he engaged in some correspondence in the
newspapers about the Ripper and assorted other subjects. The former
indicates a remarkable failure of memory or a surprising ignorance of the
case, such as his claim that the murderer did not take away any body
parts. The Ripper did take body parts away, of course, and that’s a fact
one would not anticipate that Reid would have forgotten.
Edmund Reid Again there isn’t much here to give dimension to Reid. As said, he was
active in his local community, a prominent member of a largely charita-
ble organisation called the Order of Druids, and briefly the landlord of a pub, which he left quite quickly and for
unknown reasons. The authors speculate that it was because of his wife’s worsening insanity, which eventually
required the professional care that came with being committed to an asylum.
Overall, Reid emerges as a little more three-dimensional than a cardboard cut-out, but not that much more. One
assumes that this isn’t so much a deficiency in the authors’ research — goodness knows they brought a lot of new
material to light, so woe betide anyone who criticises them for that — as the information not being available or eas-
ily locatable.
Aside from the need to have fleshed Reid out more, maybe by looking more closely at the cases which defined
his career, this book is otherwise a vehicle for a series of three or four page chapters summarising the Whitechapel
murders, whenever possible the emphasis being on Reid’s perspective.
The book sometimes reads like a balance sheet, one fact driven home after another, with no lightness. We’re
told, for example, that Reid was born in Beer Cart Lane, Canterbury, but there’s no colour, as one might have got if
that curiously named thoroughfare — which still exists — had been described. The book is therefore on the dry side
here and there. In places it is arid — the authors’ gallop through the first 42 years of Reid’s life in about nine pages,
so you can see what we mean!
In short, then, this book is showing its age. That said, it is one of the must-have Ripper books, and if you are
lucky enough to have one of the collectable Rupert Books editions and don’t think you’ll invest in this new one, think
again. The Rupert Books edition had 24 illustrations, this new edition has 41, including a photograph of P.C. William
Pennett, who discovered the Pinchin Street torso, which we haven’t seen before!

Real or Fake: Studies in Authentication
Joe Nickell
Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2009
www.kentuckypress.com
Hardcover, 239 pages, illus; references; index.
ISBN: 976-0-8131-2534-3
£29.95
There is money to be made from historical documents, photographs and arte-

facts, so there is a real incentive for unscrupulous people to dummy up every-
thing from autographs through historical manuscripts to relics from the Titanic.
This means, of course, that there is a need for people like Joe Nickell, who is
an expert in determining whether something is authentic or not.
Just how you go about authenticating things — as well as the stories behind
those things — is what this fascinating tour through the multi-disciplined world
of winkling out the genuine from the fake is all about.
Nickell was one of the team put together by Kenneth Rendell back in 1993
at the behest of the publishers Time-Warner to authenticate the so-called
Maybrick diary. The Rendell team determined that the diary was a fake and
Time-Warner pulled out of the publishing deal. Robert Smith and Shirley
Harrison, respectively the publisher and author of the book about the diary,
fought back, in particular questioning Rendell’s acceptance that Maybrick’s will
was in fact signed by him. Nickell’s account of the diary debate takes precious
little account of their arguments and the overall feeling is that Nickell really
hasn’t moved on from the day Rendell penned his report.
This probably doesn’t matter much as the conclusions of the Rendell team have held centre stage for the past
fifteen years and the consensus is that the diary is a fake. This said, one or two things do make one question just
how receptive Nickell really is to evidence and arguments that run counter to what he wants to believe is the truth.
For example, Nickell tells us that Mike Barrett confessed that he had faked the diary and rather boastfully claims
that Barrett’s ‘methodology had been just as I had deduced’.
Nickell then almost in passing mentions that Barrett subsequently withdrew his confession, but sweeps along to
discuss something else. He doesn’t actually say that Barrett’s retraction was a pile of bull’s excrement, but that is
clearly what he thinks, and the incautious reader will come away from Nickell’s chapter with the firm conviction that
Barrett’s confession put a full stop to the question of the diary’s authenticity. Yet there are many people who have
met Barrett, who have seen him in action, or who know anything about him, who seriously question that he faked the
diary or could have faked it. Barrett’s confession might be as flat and worthless as an After Eight mint packet.
Similarly, Nickell briefly mentions how at his request Melvin Harris was provided with some samples of diary ink.
Harris had the samples tested and, says Nickell, ‘confirmed the presence of a modern preservative’. He then casu-
ally mentions that tests performed elsewhere didn’t find the preservative. Since that second test was conducted at
world-renowned labs at Leeds University and was defended by the people who conducted it, one would have thought
that it merited comment.
As said, whilst neither actually materially alters the ultimate conclusion reached by the Rendell team, sweeping
past these points as if they were as utterly unimportant as a piece of wastepaper blowing in the breeze cannot help
but make one wonder just how open-minded Joe Nickell really is.
These reservations aside, Nickell’s book is entertaining reading, albeit at nearly £30 a tad on the expensive side.
Aside from the Maybrick diary he discusses an assortment of cases such as a novel purporting to be by an American

slave, a page from Lincoln’s lost Gettysburg Address, a notebook containing writings purporting to be by Billy the Kid
and Pat Garrett.
In part two of the book Nickell discusses faked photographs, including a photo supposed to be of Emily Dickinson,
another supposed to be of Abraham Lincoln and a third of a man supposed to have been a double for Lee Harvey
Oswald and to have been responsible for assassinating President Kennedy.
Part three looks at the authentication of artefacts. The objects that come under Nickell’s gaze include a musket
that supposedly belonged to Jefferson Davis and debris from the Titanic.
Overall, Joe Nickell’s book makes interesting and entertaining reading.
Murder Most Foul: The Road Hill House Mystery of 1860

Paul Chambers
Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2009
www.thehistorypress.co.uk
Hardcover, 222 pages, illus; biblio; notes and sources; index.
976-0-7524-4873-2
£20.00
The Road Hill House mystery is an absorbing true crime murder mys-
tery and has been the subject of some excellent books, starting with John
Rhodes’ The Case of Constance Kent (1929), Yseult Bridges’ Saint — With
Red Hands (1954), Bernard Taylor’s Cruelly Murdered (1979), and, of
course, Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Wicher (2008), which
won the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize For Non-Fiction (which is Britain’s
biggest prize for non-fiction and worth a cool £30,000!)
Murder Most Foul hasn’t anything of the literary quality of
Summerscale’s book, which isn’t to say that Paul Chambers’ hasn’t pro-
duced a page-turner because he has, and his book is as meticulously
researched. It just lacks the literary pretence of wrapping up a factual
account as detective fiction
The Road Hill House case is an absolute classic: Francis Saville Kent,
the four-year old son of a factory inspector, was found stabbed and with
his throat cut in the privy at the family’s Georgian country house, Road
Hill House.
Scotland Yard were called in and the case was investigated by Inspector Jonathan Whicher, one of the Yard’s
first detectives, who became the model for Sgt Cuff in Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone.
Constance Kent confessed to the crime, but almost from the first her confession was doubted and numerous
problems with the sequence of events she described were raised by the various commentators. John Rhodes and
Bridges implied that the confession was concocted and that Constance was innocent; Taylor suggested that
Constance committed the murder but that the police investigation was obstructed by her father to hide his affair
with the housekeeper; and Summerscale argued that Constance did it, although suggesting that she may have had
the assistance of her brother William (as pointed out in a book way back in 1992, this was the conclusion Whicher
was strongly inclined to accept).
Paul Chambers reviews all the evidence and theories to come to his own conclusion, which is that…
Well, that would be telling!
It’s a pity that Chambers was somewhat pre-empted by the appearance of Summerscale’s book, as it is an emi-
nently intelligent and readable reassessment of one of the classic real-life ‘whodunnits’.

Death Ride From Fenchurch Street and other
Victorian Railway Murders
Arthur and Mary Sellwood
Stroud, Gloucestershire: Amberley, 2009
softcover, 157pp, illus,; biblio.; index.
Originally published as Victorian Railway Murders, Newton Abbot: David
and Charles, 1979
978-1-84868-495-9
£12.99
This engagingly written book looks at the four murders that occurred
on Britain’s railways from the inception of passenger carrying through to
the start of the 20th Century.
If one has a criticism of the book it is that more than three-quarters
is given over to the famous cases of Muller and Mapleton. It is from the
first of these that the book takes the new title bestowed upon it by
Amberley Books, Franz Muller having murdered Thomas Briggs in 1864
aboard the 9.45pm train from Fenchurch Street Station in London. It was
the first murder aboard a train, although there had been robberies and
somewhat serious assaults prior to that time.
In those days, and pretty much until the 20th Century, trains in Britain
had been divided into carriages which could hold about six people. There
were no corridors and no emergency cord to summon assistance. The mur-
der of Mr Gold therefore highlighted the growing concerns about railway safety.
The second railway murder has a particular interest because it involved Donald Sutherland Swanson, who in due
course would have overall charge of the Ripper investigation.
In 1881, on the 2.00pm express from London Bridge to Brighton, Isaac Gold was murdered by Percy Lefroy
Mapleton. A description and drawing of Mapleton was published in The Daily Telegraph, the first time this had been
done, and in due course Inspector Donald Swanson, accompanied by Inspector Jarvis and PC Hopkins, went to 32
Smith Street, Stepney, where Mapleton was calmly arrested.
The third case is particularly interesting because the murderer was never caught — or at least was never brought
to justice. In February 1897 Elizabeth Ann Camp was horribly battered to death in a second-class railway carriage,
her body being discovered when the train arrived at Waterloo Station.
Miss Camp, who was aged 27 and was a barmaid at the Good Intent Tavern in East Street, Walworth, which we believe
still exists as a pub, was returning from Hounslow, where she had visited a married sister. The police investigation, which
on the face of it seems to have been bungled, produced numerous suspects but no evidence against anyone.
The authors’ claim that Elizabeth had been terrified by the newspaper accounts of the Jack the Ripper murders,
and it is ironic that she should have been killed in what would appear to have been a similar outburst of ferocity as
the Ripper’s victims.
We do not know what the authority is for the claim that Ms Camp was terrified by stories of the Ripper, but her
murder was certainly linked with the Ripper. The magazine Judy noted in a short article in 1897 ‘a wave of hideous
crime’ which is thought to be sweeping the country, that ‘The Camp case has gone with the Whitechapel Murders,
the Great Coram Street case and numberless others, into the limbo of unsolved mysteries.’
Arthur and Mary Sellwood’s book was originally published in 1979, so perhaps back then they did not know that
the murder of Ms Camp might not have been as great a mystery as it is commonly thought. In November 1898 the

Report of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police sug-
gested that the police knew the identity of the murderer and
implied that he had been drinking in a public house where he
could have been taken red-handed had it not been for the
tardiness of the South Western Railway police.
The railway police were indignant at this slur upon their
reputation!
The final case is the extraordinary story of a gentleman
farmer named William Pearson, who was murdered by George
Henry Parker in 1901. The story as told by the Sellwoods gains
its interest from the somewhat bizarre behaviour of the mur-
derer and the courage of a witness, Mrs Rhoda King.
Overall, a highly enjoyable and well-written book, the
only real criticism being that it was written thirty years ago
and has not been updated to take account of later research.
Jonathan Wild: Conman and Cutpurse

John Van Der Kiste
Stroud, Gloucestershire: Amberley Books, 2009
softcover, 95 pages, illus; biblio;.
Contemporary newspaper sketch of the arrest of Percy Lefroy Mapleton 978-1-84868-219-1
£12.99
We’ve reviewed several of John Van Der Kiste’s books in the past, such as Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz, Edward VII’s
Children, and Sons Servants and Statesmen. In tackling the subject of the thief-taker Jonathan Wild, Van Der Kiste has
moved time periods as well as publishers, going to Amberley from Sutton.
This fairly thin softcover book seems heavily overpriced at £12.99, but the meagre 90 pages is probably com-
pensated for by the somewhat small print.
Jonathan Wild set himself up as a public benefactor. In the days when such polic-
ing as existed was poor and largely ineffectual, Wild arranged to recover stolen prop-
erty and restore it to its rightful owner. He did this as a public service, any payment
he received being only a gift. Criminals who betrayed him or otherwise disobeyed his
orders or strayed onto his turf, generally did so only in ignorance or desperation, for
he had absolutely no compunction about turning them over to the authorities.
Among his associates and in some ways a criminal figure as famous as himself, if
not more so, was Jack Shepherd, who achieved considerable notoriety following his
daring escapes from Newgate prison. Shepherd was born in White’s Row, Spitalfields.
Overall, Jonathan Wilde: Conman and Cutpurse isn’t as comprehensive as Gerald
Howson’s Thief-Taker General: The Rise and Fall of Jonathan Wilde (1970), but a new
look at Wild is probably overdue and Van Der Kiste’s is as good an introduction to the
life and career of Wild and the villains with whom he associated as one is likely to
get.

Dillinger’s Wild Ride: The Year That Made America’s Public
Enemy Number One
Elliot J. Gorn
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009
hardcover, 268, illus; acknowledgements; notes, index.
978-0-19-30483-1
£16.99
For those to whom Jack the Ripper is nothing more than a crime puz-
zle to mull over from the comfort of an armchair on a winter’s evening,
the mystery of his identity is something to theorise about with friends over
a pint or to debate on an internet message board, the question of why
we’re fascinated by the murder of five or thereabouts down and out pros-
titutes over 120 years ago probably doesn’t matter a whole lot. But the
question of why certain individuals are remembered by history while oth-
ers, often more deserving, are forgotten is an interesting byway to explore.
Nearly three-quarters of a century ago John Dillinger died on the
pavement a short distance from the Biograph cinema in Chicago, gunned
down by FBI agents. Others had robbed more banks than Dillinger and had
shot more people and Dillinger may not have even been the brains of his
gang (an honour some have attributed to Harry Pierpont), yet Dillinger
was seized by popular culture and elevated above all the rest.
As Gorn says, Dillinger’s life and story has been the subject of motion
pictures, radio programmes, television dramas and documentaries; he
has been the subject of novels, short stories and poems; there are two
museums dedicated to John Dillinger and several websites, and his name
has been adopted by singers and bands like rapper Daz Dillinger and the punk band Dillinger Escape Plan.
Much the same can be said about Jack the Ripper. He, too, entered popular culture, and up to a point compar-
isons can be drawn with John Dillinger, helping to flesh out what the appeal may be.
But the real appeal of this book, of course, is the story it tells — the story of the year during which Dillinger criss-
crossed the American heartland, robbing banks, shooting people, and making daring escapes which humiliated the
fledgling FBI and its head, J. Edgar Hoover.
And that’s a story which has been told numerous times before, and will no doubt continue to be retold in the
future. Gorn is aware of those who have gone before him — John Tolland, Ellen Poulsen, Brian Burrough, Clare Bond
Potter, Dary Matera, William Helmer Rick Mattix, William Cromie, Joe Pinkston, and so on and on — but, as he points
out, each of these writers have looked at Dillinger from a particular vantage; Burrough puts Dillinger in the context
of the 1930s crime wave, Tolland attempts a psychological profile, Poulsen looks at the Dillinger gang from the point
of view of its women affiliates.
Gorn takes a slightly different approach. He tells the story of that tumultuous last year of John Dillinger’s life,
from his robbery of the New Carlisle National Bank in June 1933, one month after his release from the Indiana State
Penitentiary, to July 1934 when he was shot and killed, but, as Gorn puts it in the preface, ‘I seek to explain how
the Dillinger story was created, interpreted, and reworked, how Americans felt about his exploits, and how we have
come to remember him.’
Gorn succeeds admirably and Dillinger’s Wild Ride is compulsive reading from the first page, even though the
story has been told many times already. This book was unashamedly published to coincide with the release of the
movie Public Enemies (reviewed in Ripperologist last month), but as one would imagine coming from Oxford
University Press, this isn’t the typical bandwagon jumper we’re accustomed to find accompanying centenaries or
anniversaries or movie releases.

A Ripperologist’s Bookshelf
In the hot seat this month … Don Souden

What is your favorite non-fiction book of all time?
I would have to say Perjury: the Hiss-Chambers Case by Alan Weinstein. For whatever rea-
son, I find myself re-reading it every year—the pages are quite dog-eared. A close second,
though, would be David Hackett Fischer’s Paul Revere’s Ride, a masterly—and gripping—
examination of the events at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. And, full disclosure and
all that, I knew Fischer when I was in Boston and read one of his earlier books in manuscript.
What is your favorite fiction book of all time?
Oh dear, why not make it easy and ask for my favorite food? Still, I would give the honors
to The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. A grand evocation of the American Dream, a cau-
tionary tale about love in all its bittersweet glory and the last few lines will be forever in Reading has not gotten any
easier for Don.
my memory: “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year
recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster,
stretch out our arms farther . . . And one fine morning — So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back cease-
lessly into the past.” [Ellipses in original.]
Who is your favorite author?
I suppose, since I’m not sworn and under threat of perjury, I shouldn’t say myself (that’s a joke—I think). Trouble is,
I generally get hooked on one author after another. Still, for a lifetime of enjoyment I would have to say Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle and his grand gift to the world, Sherlock Holmes. Among modern
authors, my favorite of the moment is Ian Rankin, creator of the Edinburgh police
stories about John Rebus.
Do you remember your first Jack the Ripper book?
The Complete Jack the Ripper by Donald Rumbelow. I was a graduate history
student at the time and while I’d read magazine articles and references else-
where to the Ripper, Rumbelow made me realize that the historical method
could be applied to the Ripper crimes. This was important because I soon
moved on to Farson, McCormick and Cullen. On a sad note, I once lent those
three books to an erstwhile affection and she threw the books away because
they were “too scary.” [See comment above on The Great Gatsby.}
What is your favorite Jack the Ripper book?
There are three or four of particular merit, but I think I would go with
The Jack the Ripper A to Z by Begg, Fido and Skinner. It sits by my com-
puter and whenever a question comes up I reach for it first. As a result,
my paperback copy is quite in tatters and most of the photo pages
gone. By now it is dated, which is why I look forward eagerly to the
new edition, but until then it still remains the court of first resort.

What was the last book you read?
Murder in Spokane by Mark Fuhrman, which details the hunt for a serial killer of pros-
titutes in the late 1990s. I originally grabbed it because my sister and family are in
the process of moving to Spokane. As it is, though, Fuhrman makes many cogent
comments about serial- killer investigations. Moreover, the Met and City forces are
seen to have been more enlightened in 1888 than their Spokane counterparts 110
years later.
What book in your collection do you consider a ‘prize gem’ for

whatever reason?
An 1832 edition of Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English

Language that I picked up for 50 cents as an eleven-year-old at a book sale.
And no, it was not new at the time. Webster’s was first published in 1828,
so it is hardly a first edition, but it is close enough in time to retain the
original’s flavor and it is great fun to compare meanings and usage from
177 years ago.
What book, any category, do you find yourself coming back to?
Without a doubt the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer’s A Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. It is great bedtime
reading. Do a few pages a night and, like me, by the time you finish you will be ready to start over. It is just chock
full of interesting facts and observations. Just be sure to get Brewer’s original and not the updated version that pur-
ports to be more accurate but is altogether less charming.
Have you ever given up on a book before reading it completely?
Yes, and one was The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper, who evidently thrilled several generations of 19th
Century youngsters but left me bitterly disappointed after just three chapters. One book I did finish, as it was a bit
of an obligation to a friend in high school, but which I continue to look upon with
utter disdain is the incredibly over-hyped Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.
Obviously, its appeal has been to self-indulgent, self-absorbed dilettantes who
never knew the true angst of teenage alienation.
Was there a book from childhood or your teens that really

changed your life?
“Yes,” says Don with a big grin, “it was The Crooked Arrow by Franklin W.
Dixon.” The book was one of the Hardy Boys adventures and was an eighth
birthday party present from Avery Hunt, perhaps my first “girlfriend” (what
ever happened to her?) Anyway, while I really can’t ever remember not read-
ing, until then it was always a means to an end. That is, either newspaper
sports pages, books on playing sports, ones about birds (I was quite the
youthful birder) or just how to do anything. But the Hardy Boys (and all the
other series books from Henty and Frank Merriwell to the near-present)
taught me reading was also wonderful fun and a great escape.

Classics
Welcome to ‘Ripper Classics’, a new feature looking back on major
Ripper titles of the past and their impact on the field.
The Book
The Lodger: The Arrest and Escape of Jack the Ripper
(US title Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer)
by Stewart P. Evans and Paul Gainey
Century: London (1995) (forward by Nick Warren)
Cast back your mind to 1995 when the Maybrick Diary was still gain-
ing much of the attention in Ripper World. The Diary dominated so much
so that authors Evans and Gainey were as good as forced to state in their
introduction that “much of our research has been overshadowed by the
undoubtedly forged Diary of Jack the Ripper,...the whole Maybrick
debate has done no favours to serious Ripper researchers.”
Their book, however, revealed a new suspect based on new documen-
tary evidence. There might have been a collective intake of breath among
Ripperologists at the revelations, but the book turned out to be thorough-
ly researched and based on a document that has now been verified as
authentic. This book is important because it was the first to put forth ‘Dr’
Francis Tumblety both as a potential Jack the Ripper and as a contempo-
rary police suspect. It did so by publishing and analysing a letter written by
a Scotland Yard detective to a journalist. Not bad for a first-time book.
Stewart P Evans, known as a collector of true-crime books and associat-
ed items, was approached—via Camille Wolf—by dealer Eric Barton with an
item that he thought would be of interest. Barton’s instinct proved to be correct when this find turned out to be a let-
ter casting light on a contemporary police suspect whose name was little known in modern Ripperology until this point.
This document came from the collection of George R. Sims, a journalist, and had long been in Barton’s possession.
On receiving the letter, which he had purchased for his collection, Evans was astounded by its contents and imme-
diately saw that it was a major new piece of information. As Evans later explained:
On receipt of the letter I immediately recognised the name J.G. Littlechild as the ex-head of Scotland Yard’s
Special Branch, 1883-1893, and was amazed to see that he named a police suspect I had never heard of and that he
named the journalists who Scotland Yard’s senior officers believed were responsible for the original ‘Jack the
Ripper’ correspondence. I also realised that it was significant that Littlechild had not heard of a ‘Dr D’ (undoubt-
edly Druitt) in connection with the Whitechapel murders and that he stated that ‘Anderson only “thought he knew”
the identity of the Ripper1.
1 http://www.casebook.org/authors/interviews/int-spe.html accessed 3/8/09

Evans had discovered the importance of the Littlechild letter and together with Paul Gainey researched the con-
tents of that letter and identified Littlechild’s suspect as ‘Dr’ Francis Tumblety, quack American doctor. Tumblety
was an American who had been arrested near the time of the final murder and had later fled Britain for America,
their research uncovered the fact he had been pursued across the Atlantic and named in the American newspapers
of the day as a Ripper suspect.
The authors also identified Tumblety as being possibly the lodger who was suspected by his landlady after being
seen covered in blood and then vanishing, the so-called ‘Batty Street lodger’. The Littlechild letter was later exam-
ined by forensic paper and document experts and its authenticity confirmed. Today, the authors maintain all they
have done is bring into focus a contemporary police suspect and that he is not their suspect but, rather, Littlechild’s.
How the book is regarded today
Casebook: Jack the Ripper states that the ‘discovery of Tumbelty as a suspect may be the
single greatest Ripper discovery of the 1990s’2.
Casebook also states that ‘The news of this new suspect was indeed one of the most cel-
ebrated discoveries of the past decade, and many top-named researchers admit that
Tumblety’s case is one of the most persuasive to have emerged in recent years3‘.
Tumblety researcher Timothy Riordan stated:
Until the publication of the Littlechild letter by Stewart P. Evans and Paul Gainey, Dr
Francis Tumbelty was almost completely forgotten by modern readers and historians.
Throughout most of the 20th century, he shows up occasionally as an obscure footnote to the
Lincoln assassination or as the subject of an article on early abortion prosecutions4.
It is fair to say that this book has suffered as a consequence of a lot of new informa-
tion coming to light since it was written, most notably by Wolf Vanderlinden and
Ripperologist contributors Carman Cumming, Scott Nelson and Timothy Riordan, much of
which has shaken the pillars on which the book’s central thesis is based. But The Lodger
made public the Littlechild letter, which in turn gave us Francis Tumblety as a suspect
and Thomas Bulling as the possible author of the “Dear Boss” letter. The book also
drew attention to hitherto largely ignored stories such as the Batty Street lodger. And
irrespective of Tumblety’s merits as a suspect, it introduced us to an extraordinary
and eccentric character whose life and activities spanned the second half of the 19th
century and who will soon be the subject of his own biography by Timothy Riordan.
It falls to few books in our field to have inspired so much. Little wonder that The
Lodger is considered a classic!
Ripperologist 57 and 63, just a couple
of the issues carrying updates on
Francis Tumblety.
2 http://www.casebook.org/ripper_media/book_reviews/non-fiction/lodgebk.html accessed 27/7/09

3 http://www.casebook.org/suspects/tumblety.html accessed 3/8/09
4 Ripperologist 92 (June 2008) 'The Nine Lives of Tumblety’

Editions
Originally published in August 1995 as The Lodger: The Arrest and Escape
of Jack the Ripper by Century, London — UK hardback edition.
Subsequent editions
July 1996 as Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer by Arrows
Books, London — UK paperback edition.
October 1996 as Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer by
Kodansha New York — hardback edition.
December 1998 as Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer
by Kodansha New York — US paperback edition.
A documentary was also filmed to accompany the book and
broadcast on Channel Four in the UK in 1996.
Author biography
Stewart P. Evans wrote his first Jack the Ripper book

with the release of this title. Subsequent releases
include The Man who Hunted Jack the Ripper (with Nicholas Connell),
which has subsequently been updated and a new edition released, Jack the Ripper
Letters from Hell and the Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook (with Keith Skinner) Jack the Ripper
Scotland Yard Investigates (with Don Rumbelow) and Executioner about hangman James Berry. Mr Evans is a retired
Suffolk police officer and is considered by many to be among the foremost experts on the subject of Jack the Ripper.
He has been interested in the case since the 1950s. He helped out when his now wife Rosie set up the first two UK
Jack the Ripper Conferences. Over the years he has made numerous appearances on TV and radio on the subject of
Jack the Ripper. His collection of Ripper-related items and documents is considered to be second to none by many
people in the field.
Paul Gainey is a journalist hailing from the outskirts of Bristol. He began his career by working as a journalist
for regional papers. He joined the Suffolk Police Force in 1991 as a Press Officer. It was there that he met Evans and
agreed to help him write and research this book. This is Gainey’s only Ripper release.
Trivia5
t Originally it was planned that Martin Fido would be the co-author but this fell through.
t At the time (1995) the advance paid by the publisher for The Lodger was the largest advance ever paid for a
Ripper book.
t It took 10 months to write (due to the authors being on a deadline).
t Stewart Evans was still a serving police officer when he wrote the book (whilst Gainey was a member of the
Constabulary as its Press Officer) and the authors had to obtain the Chief Constable’s permission to write the book.
5 Information in this section provided by Stewart Evans — private correspondence 2/8/09

t Paul Gainey made a research trip to the U.S.A. to obtain material for the book while Stewart Evans was simul-
taneously transcribing all the official records for the factual content.
t The book received huge publicity and the authors appeared on British and U.S. national television as well as in
all the leading newspapers.
t Johnny Depp bought a copy of the book in Murder One in Charing Cross Road in 1995.
t It sold 15,500 copies in first edition hardback, 15,000 copies in paperback in Britain as well as being published
in the U.S.A. in hardback and paperback by Kodansha.
t Many years ago Paul Gainey returned to his native Bristol area to live and work but took part in ‘The Trial of
Jack the Ripper’ TV programme.
Book’s opening line
There are murder cases which are remembered throughout the generations, some because they remain unsolved,
some because they are particularly gruesome, and others because they involved people who were already famous
for other reasons.
Book’s closing lines:

It is a dream of many researchers and historians to put a name to Jack the Ripper. We believe we have.
http://www.casebook.org/authors/interviews/int-spe.html accessed 3/8/09

http://www.casebook.org/ripper_media/book_reviews/non-fiction/lodgebk.html accessed 27/7/09
http://www.casebook.org/suspects/tumblety.html accessed 3/8/09
Ripperologist 92 (June 2008) ‘The Nine Lives of Tumblety’
Information in this section provided by Stewart Evans — private correspondence 2/8/09
Got something to say?

Got comments on a feature in this issue?
Or found new information?
Please send your comments

to contact@ripperologist.biz

Lend us a monkey: 73 Commercial Street, home of the cockney cash machine. Photograph — Adam Wood.

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RIPPEROLOGIST MAGAZINE

Issue 106, September 2009

Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle, August 13, 2009

We would like to acknowledge the valuable assistance given by

Editorial Team Consultants Advertising

than Best is American-born Harry Dam, who provably worked

Ripperologist 106 September 2009 1

Ripperologist 106 September 2009 2

Part 1. Scandal in California, Murder in London’s East End

Ripperologist 106 September 2009 3

The only living child of Mr and Mrs

2 See The San Francisco Call, 27 May 1899, for example.

Ripperologist 106 September 2009 4

Despite this early journalistic success, Dam’s next major

It has often been said, says the Oakland Inquirer, that

During his time with Stoneman, Dam’s name would never

3 The San Francisco Call, 25 January 1907.

4 Daily Evening Bulletin, 6 January 1883. An account of the inaugu-

5 Sacramento Daily Record, 25 May 1883.

6 Los Angeles Daily Times, 1 June 1883.

Ripperologist 106 September 2009 5

in a sensational divorce case against Judge A.E.

7 San Jose Mercury News, 14 August 1885.

Ripperologist 106 September 2009 6

9 Sacramento Daily Record-Union, 19 January 1887.

10 Daily Evening Bulletin, 25 November 1887.

12 Los Angeles Times, 2 December 1887.

Ripperologist 106 September 2009 7

It was a notorious fact that Harry Dam was, during his

13 Sacramento Daily Record-Union, 4 August 1888.

14 Sacramento Daily Record-Union, 26 November 1887.

16 Sacramento Daily Record-Union, 2 December 1887.

17 Daily Evening Bulletin, 6 December 1887.

Ripperologist 106 September 2009 8

18 Daily Inter-Ocean (Chicago), 19 December 1886.

19 Philadelphia Inquirer, 22 December 1886.

20 New York Times, 3 January 1887.

21 New York Times, 7 January 1887.

22 Daily Inter-Ocean (Chicago), 7 January 1887

Ripperologist 106 September 2009 9

24 Daily News (San Jose), 10 December 1886.

26 Boston Daily Advertiser, 13 January 1887.

28 New York Times, 12 June 1911.

Ripperologist 106 September 2009 10

29 New York Times, 19 September 1887.

30 Lincoln Springfield, Some Piquant People. London: T Fisher Unwin, 1924.

31 Milwaukee Sentinel, 23 April 1893.

Ripperologist 106 September 2009 11

O’Connor also wrote:

Leather Apron, The Star, and Harry Dam

Ripperologist 106 September 2009 12

33 The Star, 4 September 1888.

34 MEPO 3/140, f.238

Ripperologist 106 September 2009 13

35 New York Times, 4 September 1888.

Ripperologist 106 September 2009 14

36 The Echo, 5 September 1888.

37 The Star, 12 September 1888.

38 The Echo, 12 September 1888.

39 East London Advertiser, 13 October 1888.

Ripperologist 106 September 2009 15

The story that “Leather Apron,” alias Mr. Piser, is getting

In 1898, Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine published an arti-

In New York and London there is none of the loyalty to one