The Jack the Ripper Location Photographs: Dutfield's Yard and the Whitby Collection (13 page)

The information that came back from Ellen Engseth about the proliferation of Heinn products throughout the US by 1900 did make a link to Wisconsin appear to be a red herring. However, the staff at the Wisconsin Historical Society were only too happy to continue searching records from the few clues in the album to try and locate the photographer.

Those clues, nevertheless, could be quite telling. Firstly, the photographer herself appears in four of the images. She is only close enough to the camera in two of them to identify her features. What becomes clear very quickly is the fact that she was travelling alone. There are no family members in any of the images. No husband, no children. Being a woman of such considerable means, this would suggest she was either unmarried and from a moneyed family, or was a rich widow. Such independence was to prove helpful in removing a great deal of possible names.

The historian Chris Scott ran a check on an archive of passenger lists on my behalf, using various criteria. It had to give returns within the confines of unmarried women between the ages of 35 to 45 in 1900 whom had travelled on the
Lucania
from New York to the UK. 11 names came back, none of them in June and only two of them being listed as landing at Queenstown (one being an Irish woman landing on 11 May and the other a Miss Rayden, aged 40, a New Yorker almost certainly on the same date – this being the
Lucania’s
disembarkation point directly before it travelled on to Liverpool and then back to New York to collect the Thomas Cook passengers about to take Tour 22). Although these parameters need to be widened, this clearly shows the inefficiency of some online resources, or perhaps the lack of rigour shown in 1900. Of course, it may be that the traveller was married yet making the trip alone and that her age falls outside that range. Nevertheless, a total of 11 names in a year is most definitely a small fraction of what it should be.

Miss Van Neiukirk and Miss Blake at the colonnades at St Peter’s, Rome, from the album

Only two individuals are named in the album, both sadly by surname alone. Both are single women; a Miss Van Neiukirk (apparently quite young), and a Miss Blake. The pair are seen standing at the colonnades at St Peter’s in Rome, attired to ‘pay homage to the Pope’. This photograph appears on the page next to the clearest image of the photographer herself, marked ‘Myself, ditto’. This is a contradiction of the earlier statement in the album about ‘Christian Martyrs’ at Smithfield and would infer the photographer was a Catholic, unless she viewed the opportunity to see the Pope as one not to be missed, regardless of denomination. This is a distinct possibility as Miss Blake holds a rosary and Miss Van Neiukirk and the photographer do not. Miss Van Neiukirk is mentioned again as sharing a gondola in Venice with the photographer. It is unclear whether Miss Van Neiukirk and Miss Blake were travelling on the same Cook tour as the photographer, or if they simply met her in Italy. As the distance between Venice and Rome is about 250 miles, it is more likely that all three ladies were making the same extended Grand Tour. Sadly, neither of the women produce any results on the Ellis Island website for arrival into the US in September 1900.

Miss Van Neiukirk was to prove an enigma. Dee Anna Grimsrud at the Wisconsin Historical Society undertook some research and found that this was the original Dutch spelling of the name. A few early immigrants from the Netherlands had this spelling but this was usually changed to Van Niewkirk and eventually Anglicised to Van Newkirk. The early immigrants only show up in New York and New Jersey. It must also be considered, of course, that written records of that time – whether they are from the Census, passport applications or shipping lists – frequently record names inaccurately based on their phonetic sound. Of the possible Miss Van Newkirks found on Census returns, two were in New Jersey and six were in Baltimore, born between 1864 and 1878 and most likely sisters. Only one Miss Van Newkirk is listed on the Ellis Island manifests from 1900, that being a Blanch Van Newkirk born in Baltimore on 27 July 1873, giving an age of 27 at the time of the photograph in Rome. She may possibly be the Miss Van Neiukirk who took the trip, yet her arrival back into the US does not tally closely with the end of the European trip. US Census returns do not give the original Dutch spelling of the name for anyone who fits her description. However, there are no Miss Blakes on the Ellis Island manifests for 1900 that fit at all. Attempts to contact Van Newkirks in Baltimore today who have posted their details online in the course of their genealogical research elicited no replies.

When the touring party returned to the US they would have passed through Ellis Island on their way back home very briefly, even as US Citizens. As a result, the names should appear on the shipping manifests held at ellisisland.org. This is a fact that has been confirmed by several official sources. However, the fact that the exact date of return to the US and the ship on which the final trip from Naples was taken is unknown makes identification of the names on those manifests very difficult. There is also the small possibility that when the final journey was undertaken – given that the original trip was postponed by several days at short notice – the ship that was used took a different route and may have even involved a transfer of passengers at a port during the journey. Consequently, every ship landing at Ellis Island with a large amount of passengers over the space of several days has to remain a viable candidate.

The
Lucania
herself shows as docking at Ellis Island on 13 September 1900, within the timescale permitted by the excursion. Nevertheless, she would not have sailed from Naples at any time, serving only the Atlantic route. A list of the Saloon passengers on this service (leaving from Liverpool on 8 September 1900) was issued to the travellers and a copy of this is available online. The list of 365 names contains 25 women titled as ‘Miss’ with no one apparently travelling with them. There are a further 13 women titled as ‘Mrs’ making the voyage alone.

This list is held by the Gjenvick-Gjønvick Archives. The organisation holds approximately 1,000 passenger lists near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Curator Paul Gjenvick notes that the ‘Lucania’ list was only a souvenir given to Saloon passengers and really records nothing more than the names of individuals.

From the names mentioned on the Ellis Island shipping manifest for the ‘Lucania’, five are possible candidates for our photographer. Margaret McMurray (46), a widowed housekeeper of Pittsburgh having travelled from Newry (so thus unlikely), Margaret Simpson (48), a married woman travelling alone from Wisconsin (a possibility), Harriet Mildblood (49), a Philadelphian housewife, Emilie Noren (36), a housewife from Denver and Amanda Samuelson (41), another housewife living in Chicago who had spent 20 years in the US. None of these names actually appear on the souvenir list issued to prominent
Lucania
passengers, however. Indeed, right down the line it appears that no one named in an external source and consequently investigated appears on the Ellis Island manifests. Although US Citizens and most First Class passengers did not have to take the ferry to Ellis Island itself, they were nevertheless all recorded on the shipping lists and thus should appear when searched for.

Of all the ships docking at Ellis Island around that time, by far the most likely candidate for the return voyage (if the ship did indeed travel non-stop from Naples) was the
Kaiser Wilhelm II
, which had indeed just made a trip straight from Naples on 7 September 1900 and docked at Ellis Island on 20 September. This is a week later than the expected return date but the trip had also begun a week late.
The ship was built in 1889, was 450’ long, 9,000 tons in weight and could accommodate 1,200 passengers. Though smaller than the
Lucania
, she was nevertheless almost a match in the opulence afforded to its higher-ranking passengers. It was also owned by the North German Lloyd Company, a shipping line used frequently by Thomas Cook. The ship was renamed the SS
Hohenzollern
in 1901, was wrecked in Sardinia on 10 May 1908, refloated and scrapped in Italy.

The major issue with the
Kaiser Wilhelm II
Ellis Island manifest (if the assurances that ALL passengers – visitors, immigrants and Citizens alike – were recorded are correct) is that virtually every name on the list is a foreign immigrant and only one person could possibly be the photographer – a 49-year-old Miss Morgan. Even here, there is a problem as she is recorded as having sailed from Genoa on 6 September, the stop before Naples and the long trip back to the US.

There are four other ships listed at ellisisland.org as having arrived back into New York direct from Naples within the time period, and none of them are likely candidates. The
Spartan Prince
was an immigrant ship owned by the British Prince Line and it docked on 9 September. The
Archimede
manifest consists solely of Italians and docked on September 16, the same day as the
Bolivia
, with a manifest of a single Italian. The
Werra
arrived at Ellis Island three days before, having stopped at Genoa and Gibraltar en route but only containing four Italian passengers.

Ultimately, the only ship recorded on the Ellis Island manifests at the time of the return voyage holding numerous US Citizens is the
Lucania
. This can only mean one of three things; either the manifests are not complete and do not show all the names of returning passengers, the passengers transferred vessels mid-voyage, or the ship from Naples did not dock in New York at all. Until the answer to this question is known, no further progress can be made with this line of enquiry.

This leaves two further options; photographic identification and coverage of the known outbound journey on the
Lucania
on 2 June 1900. This would be a far less fruitful endeavour as, of course, those leaving the US would not be officially recorded. Nevertheless, options were becoming limited.

One major issue concerning the US Census returns for 1900 is that they began on 1 June and ended on 30 June. Although the touring party left the US a week late, they were still only in the country at the start of the Census and thus it is unlikely that any of them will appear on the 1900 return. Initially, this could present a problem but in the long-term may have a benefit; any individual showing on the 1890 and 1910 returns, but not the 1900 one, would be more likely to be the relevant individual.

Cutting from the New York Times of 2 June 1900
(Courtesy Dr Timothy Riordan)

The historian Dr Timothy Riordan found a small article in the New York Times of 2 June 1900, listing some of the more important travellers on board the
Lucania
. Of the 42 people listed, none of them match names on the ‘Kaiser Wilhelm II’ manifest but just one, obscure enough to warrant further investigation, matched a name on the souvenir
Lucania
list from Liverpool to New York that departed on 8 September. Recorded as just ‘Miss De Forest’ (no other people of that name listed) in the New York Times, there is a ‘Miss Julia B De Forest’ on the returning September list. Miss De Forest may have nothing to do with the Thomas Cook tour, although it is highly likely that she is the same woman mentioned in both the above sources. This is almost certainly the art historian and author responsible for
A Short History of Art
(1881) and, given that there are numerous paintings photographed in the closing images of the book, it may well suggest that she is the photographer. However, further research uncovered the difficulty that De Forest died in 1910 and the owner of the album was making notes in it as late as 1917.

This was not the first time that hopes were dashed. The owner’s entry in the album underneath the photograph of Mt Vesuvius mentions that she was writing ‘manuscripts’ on the train. This seemed a curious turn of phrase to use unless the writings were of a professional and artistic nature and could thus indicate that the photographer was also a known author.

There were a great many women authors working in the US in the late 1800s. Just one list alone of prominent writers of the time names 77 of them. From that list, 44 were dead by 1900. Of the remaining 33, 15 were too old by that date. This left 18 and, of them, nearly all were of the wrong ethnicity, were married or looked nothing like the photographer in online images. There was only one match, and that was the author Lizette Woodworth Reese. Reese was born in 1856, which would have made her 44 at the time of the 1900 trip to Europe. She was a poet from Baltimore (Baltimore, you will recall, having been a likely address of Miss Van Neiukirk) and was unmarried. She was also the first President of the Edgar Allen Poe Society (a possible nod to the photographer’s interest in the macabre). A monument in her memory still stands in the grounds of Lake Clifton High School in Baltimore. She died in 1935 and examples of her handwriting do look familiar to the less fluid writing of 1917 by the owner of the album. Most interestingly, a photograph of Reese in old age bore a remarkable similarity in many ways to the St Peter’s photograph of the tourist from 1900. By the time I came to lecture on the photograph at the Ripper Conference held in Knoxville, Tennessee in October 2008, I was fairly sure that Reese was the woman behind the Dutfield’s Yard photograph.