Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888 (17 page)

That is the basic version set out by David according to the original family story, but over the years he has added new observations; for example, he believed that it was possibly his
grandmother, Eliza Mary, who had cut the large chunk from the shawl to be rid of the heavy bloodstains and that she may also have attempted to bleach out other smaller stains. He also remembers
seeing the shawl for the first time when he was about eight or nine years old and that it was kept in a large wooden sea chest with ‘waxed handles’ which was also used to
store the family’s ‘Sunday-best’ clothes, and which David still owns. One element of the story is more problematical: David states that Amos Simpson gained access to
the shawl because he was the first officer at the scene in Mitre Square and it has even been said that he discovered the body himself. This version of events has also surfaced in the media from
time to time. That he was the very first on the scene seems unlikely.

To remind us, the police reports state that, as we’ve seen, it was PC Edward Watkins who found Catherine Eddowes’ body that morning, and went for help to George Morris, the
nightwatchman at Kearley and Tonge. After Morris, an ex-Metropolitan police officer, raised the alarm a number of officers swiftly arrived at the scene, including PC James Harvey who had been near
the entrance to Mitre Square only five minutes earlier and PC Frederick Holland. Also alerted were City detectives Edward Marriott, Robert Outram and Daniel Halse who were standing at the bottom of
Houndsditch nearby.

As the word of another savage murder of a prostitute was spread along the police lines of communication, senior officers would have arrived at the scene and further police reinforcements would
have been sent from Bishopsgate and other City police stations to perform various duties. Owing to the loss of City police files on the Ripper case, it is impossible to know exactly how many
policemen would have been present at any one time, and it is likely that apart from those directly involved following the immediate discovery of the body, not all would have been recorded. In
effect, the fact that Amos Simpson’s name does not appear in any of the few surviving reports does not necessarily mean he was not there at some
point, even early on.
Catherine Eddowes’ body was removed from Mitre Square at 2.20 a.m. and according to the story passed down by his descendants, Amos Simpson accompanied it. But Simpson was a Metropolitan
police officer, so what was he doing on City police territory?

Amos Simpson was born in 1847 in Acton, Suffolk, the fourth child of eleven born to agricultural labourer John Simpson and his wife Mary. I found out from talking to his
descendant, David Melville-Hayes, that the malting house where Sally and I lived was only three villages away from Amos’s birth place. Amos was working with his father on a farm at Barrow
Hill by the time he was fourteen years old, but the desire to branch out and go to the big city must have been great, and he joined the Metropolitan police in 1868 aged twenty-one, where he was
first posted to Y Division (Holloway). In 1874 he married Jane Wilkins (who was born in 1848 in Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire) at the ancient Old St Pancras Church in London and together
they had two children, Ellen and Henry. Simpson was promoted to acting sergeant in 1881 and five years later transferred to N Division (Islington) where he was still based at the time of the Ripper
murders. Later in his police career, he moved to Cheshunt in Hertfordshire and served with the Hertfordshire Constabulary until his retirement, when it appears that he and Jane, with daughter Ellen
and her children, returned to the farm in Barrow Hill to continue the work of his father who had died in 1892. In the 1911 census, Amos is recorded as a Metropolitan police pensioner and retired
farm labourer, ably assisted in the running of the farm by the large Stearns family (his daughter’s family).

Amos Simpson was remembered as an upright and moral man by his family and was greatly respected in the community. The report of his death in the
Suffolk and Essex
Free Press
of 18 April 1917 said:

According to the family story attached to the shawl, on the night of Catherine Eddowes’ murder, Simpson was on ‘special duties’, when regular officers were
transferred temporarily to undertake specific responsibilities, such as protecting public offices and buildings, dockyards, military stations, as well as the premises of private individuals and
public companies. So although Simpson was based in N, or Islington Division, the execution of ‘special duties’ often meant moving from one police division to another and he could easily
have been in H Division’s territory, which comes very close to Mitre Square, within earshot of a police whistle. Another officer we know was in a similar situation was PC Alfred Long who
found the
fragment of Catherine Eddowes’ apron and the ‘Juwes’ graffiti on the wall of Wentworth Dwellings in Goulston Street on the morning of the double
event. PC Long was actually from A Division (Westminster) and was one of many officers who had been drafted into the Stepney H Division during the murders to increase manpower on the streets.

We know from surviving reports and accounts that officers did cross the City/East End boundary, a good example being City Detective Constable Daniel Halse, who was walking around Goulston
Street, Whitechapel (Met territory), not long before PC Long found the piece of Eddowes’ apron and the wall-writing there. It appears that during these difficult times, the borders between
the City and Metropolitan police areas were, by necessity, becoming fluid.

There is an alternative possibility for such surveillance work outside of the Ripper investigation; I had previously thought that Simpson’s presence near Mitre Square was because his
special duties were related to the hunt for the Ripper. However, when I spoke to David Melville-Hayes about this subject, he categorically stated that Amos Simpson had been there on the lookout for
Fenian terrorists. This was the family story, and he was sure it was true. The 1880s were a time of great political and social upheaval, particularly in the East End, where conditions had provoked
the masses of unemployed and chronically poor to, on occasion, rise up and cause great unrest and damage in the West End. Allied to this was the growth of Socialism as a valid political force, as
well as Anarchism, both of which had followings among the waves of eastern Europeans who had rapidly and recently made their homes in East London.

As well as this unrest, the rise of the Home Rule movement during the mid-1800s had led to an outbreak of terrorist acts
by the Fenians (a collective term for the Fenian
Brotherhood and Irish Republican Brotherhood) throughout the decade in protest at the United Kingdom’s governance of Ireland. The most extreme acts were committed by ‘Dynamitards’
who used explosives to create havoc, and significant damage was done to Clerkenwell Prison in 1867 when members of the Irish Republicans attempted to free one of their members who was being held
there on remand.

After a lull in attacks during the 1870s, the Fenians stepped up their campaign in the 1880s, targeting many important buildings such as major railway termini, Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar
Square. In 1885, two men, James Gilbert Cunningham and Harry Burton, were involved in attempts to bomb several railway stations in the capital: Victoria, Ludgate, Paddington and Charing Cross. Only
the bomb at Victoria went off but various errors in setting the device made it ineffective. On 24 January, a bomb went off at the Tower of London, even then a busy tourist attraction. Cunningham
was the man responsible, as Burton was attempting to do the same at the House of Commons at the time.

The Tower was within the jurisdiction of H Division and Frederick Abberline was on the case, and through some impressive detective work came to the conclusion that Cunningham was the culprit and
arrested him. Burton was soon also apprehended, and it interested me to note that, during the plot, Burton had been lodging at several East End addresses, including Prescott Street in Whitechapel
and 5 Mitre Square. As a result of these arrests, Abberline, who would be so important to the Ripper case a few years later, was awarded £20 and gained one of his many career commendations
for his efforts.

There may not be written evidence from the time that categorically proves the family story of how Simpson came into the possession of the shawl, but equally it cannot be
disproven and there appears to be no deliberate attempt at deception. Indeed, the story has pretty much stayed the same over the years and if we ignore the misreporting that Simpson
found
Eddowes’ body and stick to the story as it was passed down to Amos Simpson’s descendants, then his presence in and around Mitre Square on that fateful morning of 30 September 1888 is
not unreasonable and, in fact, not at all unlikely.

But before I track the later movements of the shawl, I want to mention two interesting references which suggest that knowledge of its existence goes back a lot further than
Paul Harrison’s tip-off from Chief Inspector Mick Wyatt in 1988. The first, and least important, one is a rather curious article about a Whitechapel Club’ in Chicago, and the story
dates from 1891.

The Whitechapel Club is interesting because it underlines how far the story of Jack the Ripper spread, and what a hold it had on people. The club was formed in 1889 by a small group of
journalists and lasted a mere five years. The core membership was made up of newspapermen, but also included artists, musicians, physicians and lawyers. Inside, the club resembled some kind of
Black Museum with decor including Indian blankets soaked with blood, nooses and knives that had been used in murders. Skulls, often for drinking out of, were everywhere. Their president was
supposedly Jack the Ripper himself, although of course he never attended and so all meetings were chaired by the vice-president. These meetings were usually ribald, drink-fuelled affairs, during
which members would tell
stories, jokes, poems or monologues amid a great deal of good-natured insults and heckling. References to the club often appeared in the Chicago
press, and one article, written by Bill Nye and published in the
Idaho Statesman
on 3 May 1891, made mention of an artefact from one of the Ripper murders in a supposed communiqué
from their never-present leader back in London:

It was obviously just another of the hoaxes club members played on each other, but the reference to a shawl, albeit from No. 3’ – one would assume it meant
Elizabeth Stride, the other half of the double event – was interesting nonetheless, even if the ‘plaid’ description was far from my silk shawl.

The second near-contemporary reference, and certainly a more intriguing one, was from an article in an American magazine called
The Collector: A Current Record of Art, Bibliography, and
Antiquarianism
, a specialist magazine that contained regular reports from London, Paris, Berlin and other places on collections and collectors. The article, published on
2 November 1892, was from their London correspondent and concerned a meeting he had had with a London collector who was not named.