A telegram was sent to all divisions, asking police to keep this "sharp look out, but at the same time to keep the information quiet. Writer in sending the letter no doubt considers it a great joke at the expense of the police." On October 18, 1896, a chief inspector wrote in a Central Officer's Special Report that he had compared the recent letter with old Jack the Ripper letters and "failed to find any similarity of handwriting in any of them, with the exception of the two well remembered communications which were sent to the 'Central News' Office; one a letter, dated 25th Sept./88 and the other a post-card, bearing the postmark 1st Oct./88."
What is so blatantly inconsistent in the chief inspector's report is that he first says there are no similarities between the recent letter and the earlier Ripper letters, but then he goes on to cite similarities: "I find many similarities in the formation of letters. For instance the y's, t's and w's are very much the same. Then there are several words which appear in both documents." But in conclusion, the chief inspector decides, "I beg to observe that I do not attach any importance to this communication." CID Superintendent Donald Swanson agreed. "In my opinion," he jotted at the end of the inspector's report, "the handwritings are not the same… I beg that the letter may be put with other similar letters. Its circulation is to be regretted."
The letter of 1896 was given no credibility by police and was not published in the newspapers. The Ripper was banished, exorcised. He no longer existed. Maybe he never had existed, but was just some fiend who killed a few prostitutes, and all of those letters were from crackpots. Ironically, Jack the Ripper became a "Mr. Nobody" again, at least to the police, for whom it was most convenient to live in denial.
It has often been asked - and I expect the question will always be asked - if Sickert committed other murders in addition to the ones believed to have been committed by Jack the Ripper. Serial killers don't suddenly start and stop. The Ripper was no exception, and as is true of other serial killers, he did not restrict his murders to one location, especially a heavily patrolled area where there were thousands of anxious citizens looking for him. It would have been incredibly risky to write letters laying claim to every murder he committed, and I don't think the Ripper did. Sickert thrived on the publicity, on the game. But first and foremost was his need to kill and not be caught.
Eleven months after the Ripper letter of 1896, twenty-year-old Emma Johnson disappeared on the early evening of Wednesday, September 15th, while walking home near Windsor, about twenty miles west of London. The next day, two women picking blackberries close to Maidenhead Road discovered two muddy petticoats, a bloody chemise, and a black coat in a ditch under shrubbery.
On Friday, September 17th, the Berkshire police were notified of Emma's disappearance and organized a search. The clothing was identified as Emma's, and Sunday, in the same field where the women had been picking berries, a laborer found a skirt, a bodice, a collar, and a pair of cuffs in a ditch. On the banks of a stagnant inlet of the Thames, Emma's mother discovered a pair of her daughter's stays. Near these were the imprint of a woman's boot and scrape marks in the dirt apparently made by someone dragging a heavy object toward the murky inlet.
Police dragged the stagnant water, and fifteen feet offshore a muddy, slimy, naked body emerged. It was identified by the Johnsons as their daughter. A doctor examined Emma's body at the family home, and it was his conclusion that she was grabbed by the right arm and received a blow to the head to render her insensible before the killer cut her throat. At some point, her clothing was removed. Then the killer dragged her body to the inlet and shoved or threw it into the water. Maidenhead Road was a well-known spot for romantic couples to frequent at night.
There was no suspect and the murder was never solved. There is no evidence it was committed by Walter Sickert. I do not know where he was in September of 1897, although he was not with Ellen. The couple had separated the year before and were still friendly and occasionally traveled together, but Ellen was in France when Emma Johnson was murdered and had not been in Sickert's company for months. Eighteen ninety-seven was a particularly stressful year for Sickert. An article he had written for the Saturday Review the previous year had precipitated artist Joseph Pennell's suing him for libel.
Sickert had publicly and foolishly claimed that Pennell's prints made by transfer lithography were not true lithography. Whistler used the same lithographic process - as did Sickert - and the Master appeared as a witness in Pennell's case. In an October 1896 letter to Ellen from her sister Janie, Whistler was quoted as saying that he believed Sickert's arrow was really aimed at him, not Pennell. Sickert had a "treacherous side to his character," Whistler told Janie. "Walter will do anything, throw anyone over for the object of the moment." Sickert lost the lawsuit, but perhaps the greater sting had already come - when Whistler testified from the witness stand that his former pupil was an unimportant and irresponsible man.
In 1897, Sickert's relationship with Whistler finally came to an end. Sickert was poor. He was publicly humiliated. His marriage was ending. He had resigned from the New English Art Club. The fall seemed to be a prime time for the Ripper's crimes. It was the time of year when five-year-old Sickert endured his terrible surgery in London. Mid-September was when Ellen decided she wanted a divorce, and it was also the time of year when Sickert usually returned to London from his beloved Dieppe.
Chapter Twenty-two. Barren Fields And Slag-Heaps
At the mortuary on Golden Lane, Catherine Eddows's naked body-was hung up by a nail on the wall, rather much like a painting.
One by one the male jurors and the coroner, Samuel Frederick Lang-ham, Esquire, filed in to look at her. John Kelly and Catherine's sister had to look at her, too. On October 4, 1888, the jurors returned what was becoming a familiar verdict to the press and the public: "Wilful murder by some person unknown." The public outcry was broaching hysteria. Two women had been slaughtered within an hour of each other, and the police still had no clue.
Letters from the public warned that "the condition of the lowest classes is most fraught with danger to all other classes." Londoners in better neighborhoods were beginning to fear for their lives. Perhaps they ought to raise a fund for the poor to "offer them a chance to forsake their evil lives." An "agency" should be formed. Letters to The Times suggested that if the upper class could clean up the lower class, there would be no more of this violence.
Overpopulation and the class system, few people seemed to realize, created problems that could not be remedied by tearing down slums or forming "agencies." The advocacy of birth control was considered blasphemous, and certain types of people were trash and would always be trash. Social problems certainly existed. But London's class problems were not why prostitutes were dying at the Ripper's hands. Psychopathic murder is not a social disease. People who lived in the East End knew that, even if they didn't know the word "psychopath." The streets of the East End were deserted at night, and scores of plainclothes detectives lurked in the shadows, waiting for the first suspicious male to appear, their disguises and demeanor fooling no one. Some police began wearing rubber-soled boots. So did reporters. It was a wonder people didn't terrify each other as they quietly crossed paths in the dark, waiting for the Ripper.
No one knew he had committed yet another murder - this one weeks earlier and never really attributed to him. On Tuesday, October 2nd - two days after the murders of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddows - a decomposing female torso was discovered in the foundations of Scotland Yard's new headquarters, which was under construction on the Embankment near Whitehall.