London's Shadows: The Dark Side of the Victorian City

London's Shadows

The Dark Side of the Victorian City

Drew Gray

Contents

Acknowledgements
vi

List of Illustrations
vii

1
Creating the `Myth' of Jack the Ripper
1

2 Murder and Mayhem in Victorian London: The Whitechapel Murders of 1888 in Context
21

3 East Meets West: The Contrasting Nature of Victorian London and the Mixed Community of the East End
55

4 Read All About It! Ripper News and Sensation in Victorian Society
95

5 The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: Poverty, Charity and the Fear of Revolution
117

6 City of Dreadful Delights: Vice, Prostitution and Victorian Society
145

7 Crime and the Criminal Class in Late Victorian London
167

8 Watching the Detectives: The Police and the Hunt for Jack the Ripper
209

9 London's Shadows: The Darker Side of the Victorian Capital
231

Notes
239

Bibliography
263

Index
273

Acknowledgements

This project has grown out of my work with third-year undergraduates at the University of Northampton and so I would like to express my thanks to the many students that have stimulated debates, argued about the identity of `Jack' and listened to my lectures over the past six years. I hope they enjoy this book. In particular I would like to thank Lucy, Rachael and Katie for enlivening the classes in 2009. As ever my colleagues at Northampton have all been very supportive while I have tried to complete this volume and find the time for my teaching duties - their understanding of my occasional lapses are most appreciated.

Aside from the welcome feedback from my editor, Michael Greenwood, I want to express my thanks to my mother, Diana Falkiner, who read my drafts and corrected many of my errors. Finally, and most of all, I would like to thank Jill Spencer for reading my work and helping me shape my ideas, but most importantly for letting me into her life and for believing in me at all times. This book is for her.

List of Illustrations

FIGURES

1 `The nemesis of neglect', Punch, September 1888 18

2 `Is he the Whitechapel murderer?' The Illustrated Police News, September 1888 39

3 `Useful Sunday literature for the masses' Punch, September 1849 98

4 `The latest murder, Moonshine, November 1890 105

5 `The Unemployed and the Police, Moonshine, October 1887 136

6 `The real starver of the poor - John Bull vainly endeavors to relieve the distress, Fun, November 1887 140

7 `Whitechapel, 1888; Punch, October 1888 173

8 `Military drill v. police duty', Funny Folks, September 1888 213

9 `The dynamite explosions in London, The Graphic, January 1885 219

10 `Blind-man's buff', Punch, September 1888 222

TABLES

7.1 Hearings at Thames Police Court, January 1887-December 1887 (Court Register 1) 176

7.2 The nature of assault prosecutions at the Thames Police Court by summons, January to December 1887 180

7.3 Trials at the Old Bailey, 1850-1899 186

7.4 Property offences at the Old Bailey, 1850-1899 186

7.5 Property offences at the Old Bailey, 1850-1899 by percentage occurrence 189

1

Creating the `Myth' of Jack the Ripper

In August of 1882 a well-meaning female member of the Victorian middle classes wrote a lengthy missive in a periodical magazine urging her sisters to help her and others in bringing reform and inspiration to the poor of East London. `If only more ladies would come forward and help, how much might be done!' she wrote.' Margaret Tillard compared the work she and other Victorian women were doing with the life of Christ noting that:

It is the personal contact, the personal sympathy, the personal interest, as if it were the touch of the Saviour, which is needed. It is not what you give, it is what you do for the poor, which really touches their feelings and binds them to you 2

By the 1880s the problems of London's poorest communities had been well documented and were to continue to be the subject of exposes, investigations, parliamentary committees and newspaper articles well into the next century. Margaret Tillard was just one of hundreds who felt compelled, for religious, political or moral reasons, to attempt to mitigate the worst excesses of poverty that blighted some parts of England's capital. London was the heart of empire and it was a damning indictment of the inequality of Victorian Britain that large areas of Europe's most populated city resembled the slums of Calcutta. Contemporary observers compared the denizens of the East End of London with the `savages' of the Pacific Islands or `darkest' Africa. For many middle-class Victorians this was a land that God had abandoned, an area ripe for missionary work and charity. Tillard's essay stresses the importance of contact with the people of the East End. She sees the role of her class in almost medieval terms. There is, she states, `even in these Radical days, a wonderful amount of old feudal feeling amongst us still'. Just as the rural poor looked up to their local squire or lord of the manor so the communities of the East End looked up to their middle-class saviours.

When they get to know you and your family, there is a pride in you and for you, and a feeling that what belongs to you belongs to them in some way. An instance of this came before me only the other day. At a concert that was given in an East End district, the people of a certain court would have it that `their lady's' voice was the best in the room.'

Margaret Tillard urges her readers not to simply resort to charitable giving: `there is a great deal of selfishness in our almsgiving; we give too often, not in the way best for the recipients, but as is the least trouble to ourselves' In this she was echoing the views of women such as Octavia Hill, the matriarch of the Charity Organization Society (COS) that had established the practice of home visiting in the second half of the nineteenth century. The COS was the forerunner of twentieth-century social work, but it was an organization steeped in Christian doctrine and paternalism. Tillard's wistful reference to feudalism reflects both the Victorian love affair with the middle ages and its rigid class system; a system that was beginning to come under strain but was not to unravel until after the First World War. Tillard and Hill did not envisage a society in which the working classes of the East End would become their equals, nor did they seem to believe that the poor were the victims of a desperately unequal economic system. They themselves were rich women who owed their own comfortable lives to the dowries provided by their parents or to the land and incomes of their husbands. Restricted by the governing principles of `separate spheres' (which decreed that women were only allowed a domestic role, not a public one) charity work was often the only `career' open to them.

Tillard, and other `ladies' like her wanted to bring the message of religious salvation to the homes of the working-class poor. She realized that sometimes this had to be done subtly: those that attempted to preach on the doorstep would often receive short shrift or worse from those living there. Some were almost beyond help - the feckless, the drunk, the criminal - but many others could be carefully steered towards the right path. This sort of missionary work must have brought great comfort to many people and it is easy to sneer at the women of the COS and other organizations from the distance of history, but in looking back at London in the late nineteenth century we are faced with the problem that often it is their voices that predominate. Octavia Hill, Helen Bosanquet and Beatrice Webb have all left behind their opinions about the poor. Charles Booth, Jack London and Henry Mayhew have likewise penned lengthy observations about the state of the poor and the reasons for their miserable lives. Newspaper editors and correspondents to the papers, middle-class and elite writers all, have bequeathed us a hoard of rhetoric and explanation for crime, poverty, vice and disease in the slums of Whitechapel. What we are missing in all of this is the voice of the people of East London themselves. Thus everything we read about the poor comes to us through a filter of middle class and often evangelist ideology. This does not mean we should ignore it but rather it requires that we try and understand that this is merely a partial view of the East End. What the poor themselves felt about the COS ladies who descended upon them is an interesting but unanswerable question.

The East End was the not worst nor the most criminal place to live in London in the 1880s, but it was representative for many Victorians of the depths to which humanity could sink when separated from a close relationship with God and Christian religion. When in 1888 an unknown individual began to brutally murder prostitutes under the noses of the police in the alleys and streets of Whitechapel, some believed that the area had finally reached its nadir of degradation. As a result of the murders, attention was refocused on the social problems facing the population of the East End and the cries that `something must be done' echoed in the press, parliament and even in the corridors of Windsor and Buckingham Palace. For some people it is the murders themselves that provide the fascination that has endured since then, but in this book I would like to consider the ways in which the killings affected attitudes towards the perceived problems of East London. In doing so I would like to keep in mind middle-class perceptions of poverty and personal responsibility along with both modern and contemporary attempts to manipulate the Ripper murders for political, cultural and social purposes.