Complete History of Jack the Ripper (38 page)
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Authors: Philip Sudgen
PC Smith was a good witness. As a policeman on duty he was probably more observant than most and although a relatively young man (twenty-six) had notched up more than five years’ experience in the force. The testimony of the second witness, Israel Schwartz, is possibly of even greater significance. Alone of the witnesses called forth by this terrible series of crimes, Schwartz may actually have seen a murder taking place. More than that, with its possible implication of two men, his evidence cautions us against embracing too readily the conventional wisdom that the killings were the work of a lone psychopath.
Schwartz volunteered his information at Leman Street Police Station on the evening of Sunday, 30 September. No copy of the original statement has survived. Its substance, however, has been preserved for us in Chief Inspector Swanson’s synthesis of the Stride evidence, written on 19 October:
12.45 a.m. 30th. Israel Schwartz of 22 Helen [i.e. Ellen] Street, Backchurch Lane, stated that at that hour on turning into Berner St from Commercial Road & had got as far as the gateway where the murder was committed he saw a man stop & speak to a woman, who was standing in the gateway. The man tried to pull the woman into the street, but he turned her round &
threw her down on the footway & the woman screamed three times, but not very loudly. On crossing to the opposite side of the street, he saw a second man standing lighting his pipe. The man who threw the woman down called out apparently to the man on the opposite side of the road ‘Lipski’ & then Schwartz walked away, but finding that he was followed by the second man he ran as far as the railway arch but the man did not follow so far.Schwartz cannot say whether the two men were together or known to each other. Upon being taken to the Mortuary Schwartz identified the body as that of the woman he had seen & he thus describes the first man who threw the woman down: – age about 30, height 5 ft. 5 in., complexion fair, hair dark, small brown moustache, full face, broad shouldered; dress, dark jacket & trousers, black cap with peak, had nothing in his hands.
Second man, age 35, height 5 ft. 11 in., complexion fresh, hair light brown, moustache brown; dress, dark overcoat, old black hard felt hat wide brim, had a clay pipe in his hand.
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The police obviously took Schwartz seriously. They circulated his description of the first man on the front page of
The Police Gazette
on 19 October. And Swanson, as he tells us in his summary report on the Stride murder, even preferred Schwartz’s testimony to that of PC Smith, if only because his sighting was closer to the time of the murder: ‘If Schwartz is to be believed, and the police report of his statement casts no doubt upon it, it follows if they [Smith and Schwartz] are describing different men that the man Schwartz saw & described is the more probable of the two to be the murderer, for a quarter of an hour afterwards the body is found murdered.’ Why, then, did the police not produce Schwartz as a witness at the inquest? Unfortunately we have no information that can answer that question. A possible explanation is that, as in the case of the writing in Goulston Street, they deliberately suppressed his evidence because it seemed to implicate the Jews, but there are others. Perhaps they considered his testimony so important that they wished to keep the details secret. Perhaps Schwartz, for reasons best known to himself, did not want to appear. Did he, like Pearly Poll, absent himself from his lodgings? Or, quite simply, did he fall ill? We can speculate, but we do not know.
If the police hoped to enshroud Schwartz in secrecy their intentions were almost immediately thwarted by one of the
Star
’s newshounds. On 1 October, just one day after the murder, this paper put out its own version of the story:
Information which may be important was given to the Leman Street police late yesterday afternoon by an Hungarian concerning this murder. This foreigner was well dressed, and had the appearance of being in the theatrical line. He could not speak a word of English, but came to the police station accompanied by a friend, who acted as an interpreter. He gave his name and address, but the police have not disclosed them.
A
Star
man, however, got wind of his call, and ran him to earth in Backchurch Lane. The reporter’s Hungarian was quite as imperfect as the foreigner’s English, but an interpreter was at hand, and the man’s story was retold just as he had given it to the police. It is, in fact, to the effect that he saw the whole thing.It seems that he had gone out for the day, and his wife had expected to move, during his absence, from their lodgings in Berner Street to others in Backchurch Lane. When he came homewards about a quarter before one he first walked down Berner Street to see if his wife had moved. As he turned the corner from Commercial Road he noticed some distance in front of him a man walking as if partially intoxicated. He walked on behind him, and presently he noticed a woman standing in the entrance to the alley way where the body was afterwards found. The half-tipsy man halted and spoke to her. The Hungarian saw him put his hand on her shoulder and push her back into the passage, but, feeling rather timid of getting mixed up in quarrels, he crossed to the other side of the street. Before he had gone many yards, however, he heard the sound of a quarrel, and turned back to learn what was the matter, but just as he stepped from the kerb a second man came out of the doorway of the public house a few doors off, and shouting out some sort of warning to the man who was with the woman, rushed forward as if to attack the intruder. The Hungarian states positively that he saw a knife in this second man’s hand, but he waited to see no more. He fled incontinently, to his new lodgings.
He described the man with the woman as about 30 years of age, rather stoutly built, and wearing a brown moustache. He was dressed respectably in dark clothes and felt hat. The man who came at him with a knife he also describes, but not in detail. He says he
was taller than the other, but not so stout, and that his moustaches were red. Both men seem to belong to the same grade of society.The police have arrested one man answering the description the Hungarian furnishes. This prisoner has not been charged, but is held for inquiries to be made. The truth of the man’s statement is not wholly accepted.’
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House-to-house inquiries in the neighbourhood of Berner Street produced two other witnesses – William Marshall and James Brown. The sightings of these witnesses, unlike those by Smith and Schwartz, were neither mentioned by Swanson in his summary report nor published in the
Police Gazette
. Clearly the Yard did not accord them the same importance. But both men made depositions at the inquest and we have no reason to doubt their honesty.
William Marshall lived at 64 Berner Street and worked as a labourer in an indigo warehouse. At about 11.45 on Saturday night, loafing in his doorway, he saw a man and a woman standing talking quietly on the pavement, ‘opposite No. 58 [Berner Street], between Fairclough Street and Boyd Street.’ This was three doors to the north of Marshall’s house. Marshall saw the man kissing the woman and overheard a snatch of their conversation. The man said: ‘You would say anything but your prayers.’ The woman laughed. They stood there for about ten minutes and then began to walk unhurriedly in Marshall’s direction, passing him and continuing southwards towards Ellen Street. Neither of them appeared to be the worse for drink.
Marshall did not think that the woman was wearing a flower in her coat. The next day, however, he was taken to the mortuary and identified the deceased as the woman he had seen. At the inquest on 5 October Mr Baxter, the coroner, pressed him hard for a description of the man:
BAXTER: ‘Did you notice how he was dressed?’
MARSHALL: ‘In a black cutaway coat and dark trousers.’
BAXTER: ‘Was he young or old?’
MARSHALL: ‘Middle-aged he seemed to be.’
BAXTER: ‘Was he wearing a hat?’
MARSHALL: ‘No, a cap.’
BAXTER: ‘What sort of a cap?’
MARSHALL: ‘A round cap, with a small peak. It was something like what a sailor would wear.’
BAXTER: ‘What height was he?’
MARSHALL: ‘About 5 ft. 6 in.’
BAXTER: ‘Was he thin or stout?’
MARSHALL: ‘Rather stout.’
BAXTER: ‘Did he look well dressed?’
MARSHALL: ‘Decently dressed.’
BAXTER: ‘What class of man did he appear to be?’
MARSHALL: ‘I should say he was in business, and did nothing like hard [meaning manual] work.’
BAXTER: ‘Not like a dock labourer?’
MARSHALL: ‘No.’
BAXTER: ‘Nor a sailor?’
MARSHALL: ‘No.’
BAXTER: ‘Nor a butcher?’
MARSHALL: ‘No.’
BAXTER: ‘A clerk?’
MARSHALL: ‘He had more the appearance of a clerk.’
BAXTER: ‘Is that the best suggestion you can make?’
MARSHALL: ‘It is.’
BAXTER: ‘You did not see his face. Had he any whiskers?’
MARSHALL: ‘I cannot say. I do not think he had.’
BAXTER: ‘Was he wearing gloves?’
MARSHALL: ‘No.’
BAXTER: ‘Was he carrying a stick or umbrella in his hands?’
MARSHALL: ‘He had nothing in his hands that I am aware of.’
BAXTER: ‘Different people talk in a different tone and in a different way. Did his voice give you the idea of a clerk?’
MARSHALL: ‘Yes, he was mild speaking.’
BAXTER: ‘Did he speak like an educated man?’
MARSHALL: ‘I thought so.’
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Marshall’s evidence is intriguing because the man he described was similar in appearance to those seen by PC Smith and Israel Schwartz. All three witnesses could easily have observed the same man. The value of the labourer’s testimony, unfortunately, was reduced by his failure to get a good look at the man’s face. Where the couple were first standing, by No. 58, it was too dark for Marshall to see the man’s face distinctly. The nearest gas lamp, he explained, was ‘at the corner, about twenty feet off.’ Later, when the two set out in the direction of Ellen Street, they were walking towards Marshall and into the ambit of a lamp at the corner of
Boyd Street. But they walked in the middle of the road and, as they passed Marshall, the man was looking towards the woman: ‘he [the man] was looking towards the woman, and had his arm round her neck.’ Unquestionably the main objection to Marshall’s evidence as far as the police were concerned, however, was the time of his sighting. It took place at about 11.45, one hour and fifteen minutes before the murder was discovered, and although Marshall’s man might indeed have been the killer a prostitute like Elizabeth Stride could have accosted, or have been accosted by, several men in the ensuing hour.
The testimony of James Brown, a dock labourer, of 35 Fairclough Street, is more problematical. At about 12.45 on Sunday morning Brown was returning from a chandler’s shop at the junction of Fairclough and Berner Streets to his home when he saw a man and a woman standing at the corner of the board school. The woman was facing the man and standing with her back to the wall. The man was bending over her, his arm resting on the wall above her head. As he passed them Brown heard the woman say: ‘Not tonight, some other night.’ The man’s height was about five feet seven inches and he was wearing a dark overcoat, so long that it nearly came down to his heels. Brown did not think that either of the two were drunk.
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It will be noted that the Schwartz and Brown sightings were supposed to have occurred at the same time – 12.45 a.m. This means that one of the witnesses must have been mistaken in the time or that they had observed different people. The question of times will be considered later. Here it is enough to say that one if not both of the witnesses could certainly have been in error. Brown’s timing, for example, does not seem to have been much more than intelligent guesswork. He arrived home that night at 12.10 a.m. and not long after that went to the chandler’s to get something for his supper. He thought that he was there about three or four minutes but, as he admitted at the inquest, ‘I did not look at any clock at the chandler’s shop.’ On his way home with his victuals he saw the couple by the school. And home again, he had nearly finished his supper when terrified cries of ‘Murder!’ and ‘Police!’ from the street first alerted him to the tragedy. It was Diemschutz and Kozebrodski pounding eastwards along Fairclough Street in futile quest of a policeman. Brown said that this had occurred about fifteen minutes after he had got back from the shop.
A mistake of minutes on the part of just one witness would
reconcile the statements of Schwartz and Brown on that score. But Brown’s descriptions of the man and woman he saw raise grave doubts as to whether he can have been talking about the same people observed by William Marshall, PC Smith or Israel Schwartz.
Brown saw Elizabeth Stride’s body at the mortuary. He was ‘almost certain’, he told the inquest, that this was the same woman he had seen by the school. One wonders. Elizabeth had been wearing dark clothes on the night of her death – a black jacket trimmed with black fur, a black skirt and a black crape bonnet. The only splash of colour about her had been that solitary red rose and maidenhair fern, prominently displayed on the breast of her jacket. PC Smith had seen them there at 12.35. But ten minutes later Brown missed these obvious items. ‘Did you notice any flower in her dress?’ queried the coroner. ‘No,’ replied Brown. And later he added: ‘I saw nothing light in colour about either of them.’