His 1888 music-hall sketches and the notes he scribbled on them place him in Gatti's on February 4th through March 24th; May 25th; June 4th through the 7th; July 8th, 30th, and 31st; and August 1st and 4th. Gatti's and other music halls Sickert visited in 1888, such as the Bedford, were by law supposed to end their performances and sales of liquor no later than half past midnight. If we assume that Sickert stayed until the entertainment ended, he would have been on London's streets on many early mornings. Then he could wander. Apparently Sickert didn't require much sleep.
Artist Marjorie Lilly recalled in her memoir of him that "he only seemed to relax in odd snatches of sleep during the day and was seldom in bed until after midnight, when he might get up again to wander about the streets until dawn." Lilly, who once shared a studio and a house with Sickert, observed that his habit was to wander after the music-hall performances. This peripatetic behavior, she added, continued throughout his life. Whenever "an idea tormented him" he would "thresh round the streets until dawn, lost in meditation."
Lilly knew Sickert well until his death in 1942, and many of the details in her book tell far more about her mentor and friend than she perhaps realized. Consistently, she refers to his wanderings, his nocturnal habits, his secrecy, and his well-known habit of having as many as three or four studios, their locations or purposes unknown. She also has numerous odd recollections of his preference for dark basements. "Huge, eerie, with winding passages and one black dungeon succeeding another like some horror story by Edgar Allan Poe," is how she describes them.
Sickert's private working life "took him to queer places where he improvised studios and workshops," art dealer Lillian Browse wrote a year after his death. As early as 1888, when he was frequenting the music halls, he obsessively rented secret rooms he could not afford. "I am taking new rooms," he would tell his friends. In 1911 he writes, "I have taken on a tiny, odd, sinister little home at? 45 a year close by here." The address was 60 Harrington Street NW, and apparently he planned to use the "little home" as a "studio."
Sickert would accumulate studios and then abandon them after a short while. It was well known among his acquaintances that these hidden rat holes were located on mean streets. His friend and fellow artist William Rothenstein, whom he met in 1889, wrote of Sickert's taste "for the dingy lodging-house atmosphere." Rothenstein said that Sickert was a "genius" at ferreting out the gloomiest and most off-putting rooms to work in, and this predilection was a source of bafflement to others. Rothenstein described Sickert as an "aristocrat by nature" who "had cultivated a strange taste for life below the stairs."
Denys Sutton wrote that "Sickert's restlessness was a dominating feature of his character." It was typical for him to always have "studios elsewhere, for at all times he cherished his freedom." Sutton says that Sickert often dined out alone, and that even after he married Ellen, he would go by himself to the music halls or get up in the middle of a dinner in his own home to head out to a performance. Then he would begin another one of his long walks home. Or perhaps go to one of his secret rooms, somehow meandering into the violent East End, walking the dark streets alone, a small parcel or a Gladstone bag in hand, presumably to hold his art supplies.
According to Sutton, during one of these ambles, Sickert was dressed in a loud checked suit and came upon several girls on Copenhagen Street, about a mile northwest of Shoreditch. The girls scattered in terror, screaming "Jack the Ripper! Jack the Ripper!" In a slightly different but more telling account, Sickert told his friends that it was he who called out, "Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper."
"I told her I was Jack the Ripper and I took my hat off," the Ripper wrote in a letter on November 19, 1888. Three days later the Ripper wrote a letter saying he was in Liverpool and "met a young woman in Scotland Road… I smiled at her and she calls out Jack the ripper. She dident know how right she was." About this same time, an article appeared in the Sunday Dispatch reporting that in Liverpool, an elderly woman was sitting in Shiel Park when a "respectable looking man, dressed in a black coat, light trousers, and a soft felt hat," pulled out a long thin knife. He said he planned to kill as many women in Liverpool as he could and send the ears of the first victim to the editor of the Liverpool newspaper.
Sickert made his sketches at Gatti's in an era when there were few inciting props available to psychopathic violent offenders. Today's rapist, pedophile, or murderer has plenty to choose from: photographs, audio-tapes, and videotapes of his victims being tortured or killed; and violent pornography found in magazines, movies, books, computer software, and on Internet sites. In 1888 there were few visual or audible aids available for a psychopath to fuel violent fantasies. Sickert's props would have been souvenirs or trophies from the victim, paintings and drawings, and the live entertainment of the theater and the music halls. He also could have made dry runs; the terrifying of the old woman in Liverpool could simply have been one of dozens or even hundreds.
Psychopathic killers often try out their modus operandi before going through the plan. Practice makes perfect, and the killer gets a thrill from the near-strike. The pulse picks up. Adrenaline surges. The killer will continue to go through the ritual, each time getting closer to actualizing the violence. Killers who mimic law enforcement officers have been known to install emergency grille lights or attach magnetic bubble lights to the roofs of their cars and pull over women drivers many times before actually going through with the abduction and murder.
Jack the Ripper very likely went through dry runs and other rituals before he killed. After a while, dry runs aren't just about practice and instant gratification. They fuel violent fantasies and may involve more than just stalking a victim, especially if the perpetrator is as creative as Walter Sickert. A number of strange events continued to occur in various parts of England. At approximately ten o'clock on the night of September 14th, in London, a man entered the Tower Subway and approached the caretaker. "Have you caught any of the Whitechapel murderers yet?" the man asked as he pulled out a foot-long knife that had a curved blade.
He then fled, yanking off "false whiskers" as he was pursued by the caretaker, who lost sight of him at Tooley Street. The description the caretaker gave the police was of a man five foot three with dark hair, a dark complexion, and a mustache. He was about thirty years old and was wearing a black suit that looked new, a light overcoat, and a dark cloth double-peaked cap.
"I have got a jolly lot of false whiskers amp; mustaches," the Ripper wrote on November 27th.
After the Tower Bridge was completed in 1894, the Tower Subway was closed to pedestrians and turned into a gas main, but in 1888 it was a hellish cast-iron tube seven feet in diameter and four hundred feet long. It began at the south side of Great Tower Hill at the Tower of London, ran under the Thames, and surfaced at Pickle Herring Stairs on the south bank of the river. If what the caretaker told police was accurate, he chased the man through the tunnel to Pickle Herring Stairs, which led to Pickle Herring Street, then to Vine Street, which intersected with Tooley Street. The Tower of London is about half a mile south of Whitechapel, and the subway was sufficiently unpleasant that it is unlikely many people or police used it to cross the river, especially if one were claustrophobic or fearful of traveling through a dirty, gloomy tube under water.
No doubt the police considered the man with the false whiskers a kook. I found no mention of this incident in any police reports. But this;'kook" was rational enough to pick a deserted, poorly lit place for the brazen display of his knife, and it is unlikely he viewed the caretaker as one who could physically overtake him. The man had every intention of causing a stir and no intention of being caught. Friday the 14th was also the day that Annie Chapman was buried.