The riot was a benchmark for the establishment of new laws governing the conduct of police officials, a turning point in public opinion regarding unionist workers and unions, plus it forged the first labor laws with teeth. As a result, Illinois led the rest of the nation in this politically charged arena. The cost in human life was too great to ignore and a statue in a hidden cove outside a small police district was not enough for Ransom.
When he’d returned to his desk, coffee in hand, Ransom began cleaning away flyers and papers and files, only to discover an anonymous note printed in large letters, reading,
REMEMBER HAYMARKET
He took in the room. It could have been the sergeant who looked up at him, or Logan, or Behan, or any number of others. In a sense, Ransom’s crusade to keep the memory of that day alive and fresh in every foot soldier’s mind was perhaps sinking in with some of the lads. Still the prevailing winds kept saying, let the dead bury the dead.
Just then, coming through a doorway that led into the archives of dead cases and documents, came Gabrielle Tewes, Jane’s daughter, her eyes wide, coming straight for Alastair. “I’m so glad I found you on duty and what a shock!”
“That I’m on duty?”
“Well, no…I’m referring to what I’ve uncovered.”
“Which is?”
“A series of similar Vanishings in London, not five years ago.”
“Really? Let me have a look.”
Gabby spread the materials out for his perusal. She’d marked specific items from various police gazettes and reports.
“I had no idea you’d planned to continue working here.”
“And why not?”
“I guess it was an assumption you would rush back to Northwestern and continue your studies in medicine there.”
“A safe cozy plan indeed, one Mother wants for me. But, no. I love working with Dr. Fenger at Rush on my medical studies and on cases with Dr. Fenger. He put me to researching this one.”
“You should share this with your mother.”
“I may…when she settles into the notion that I am my own person and not a copy of her.”
“I see.” He really did not wish to get between mother and daughter on the issue, although it had been Alastair who had first encouraged her to pursue working with Christian Fenger in police medicine.
“Look, I have a meeting to get to,” she informed him. “I’ll leave this with you so you can get on the trail of this monster.”
“A meeting?”
“Yes, a meeting.”
“The drum-and-fife corps of ladies?”
“We are suffrage advocates and only want simple justice.”
“You’ll become a fine spokesperson for the cause.”
“Well, I am terrible at marching, so perhaps I will brave the podium someday. For now, I am content to stand with my sisters in this noble cause.”
“I wish you all the best.”
“Persistence is the key according to our leaders. Do you know we are petitioning the president as we speak? Thousands and thousands have signed.”
“Good luck, Gabby, but do be careful.”
“I have a key to a police phone box now, and should I need you, I can call.”
“Do not hesitate.”
She left with a bounce in her step. He smiled after her, a strange concern coming over him. A fleeting emotion of fear should anything befall Gabby.
Logan leaned forward in his chair and said, “You act the part of father quite well, old chap.”
“What’re you fellows doing here so late?”
Behan laughed and Alastair shrugged it off, his attention going to the reports that Gabby had unearthed. Slowly Behan, followed by Logan, moved in and stood over each of Inspector Ransom’s hefty shoulders.
The report he read in the London Police Gazette dated 1889 put forth yet another theory of the exact identity of Jack the Ripper, an American actor named Richard Mansfield, who’d terrified playgoers as Mr. Hyde, changing from Jekyll without makeup or leaving stage. The man sent ladies into a swoon and men running from the theater. But the story so riveting for these three Chicago cops was a tale of the Vanishings. It read in part:
As near as this detective has ascertained, the Vanishings began in 1881 and continued until this past year of 1891, when they abruptly ended. The case represents for me, personally, the strangest case of my career, and the most frustrating and heart-rending, as I was called into each inquest to view the most horrid sights of my career-the remains of the victims, each barely of age. They began in Ham, and records are scarce, but I have pieced together a clear trail that leads from East and West Ham to London’s East Side.
“Eerie, isn’t it?” asked Behan over Alastair’s right shoulder.
“Damned spooky, if you ask me,” agreed Logan at his left.
Both men were smaller than Alastair. Compactly built like a prize fighter was Ken Behan, whereas the other was rail-thin and gaunt, his eyes sunken, yet Jedidiah Logan had hands as large as griddles. Pale as December snow, Logan looked as if death might claim him at any time. He smoked without end the strongest cigars made. Others joked that one day at the morgue, when Logan dozed against a wall, Dr. Fenger took him for an upright corpse and began shouting orders at his men about maltreatment of the dead.
The three inspectors next skimmed an account of an eleven-year-old girl who went missing after going out to plow a row in a field for her mother. Her name was Eliza Carter, and she simply vanished out of that field. Her yellow dress was found days later on the East Ham football field. No one ever saw her again. The Chicago detectives read on from the account of the London investigator. The next paragraph read:
Charles Wagner, son of a West Ham butcher, vanished next, only a few weeks after the Carter girl. His body had been got at by animals, found seventy-five miles away at the bottom of a ravine at Ramsgate. The animals had got at him bad, tearing away all his face and much of his body. Oddly, neither the fall nor the drowning had caused death, according to the medical men. There was not one murderous abrasion or puncture mark that alone killed the boy but thirty-seven by count of the medical men.
Ransom stopped reading and said, “The work of multiple knifings? And as for cause of death…Fenger’s determined our man uses a cleaver and a number of blades, and it’s theorized there could be more than one madman doing the deed.”
“Really? More than one doing the stabbing?” asked Logan.
“And carving, perhaps. And cannibalizing, perhaps.”
Behan shivered at the idea.
Logan asked, “Rance, do you suspect one of these lunatic religious cults we’ve been seeing more and more of?”
“Maybe one begun in London, but moved to Chicago?” asked Behan.
“We’ve kicked over the thought, yes, of a cult sacrifice, but a London transport? No.”
“Do you for a moment think our killer…or, ahhh, killers…” began Behan, “that he could be one and the same as in England?”
“Long way to come to harvest children,” said Ransom, “especially when London’s got plenty of her own.”
“But then why not, Rance?” countered Logan. “Everyone else is coming to Chicago.”
“Creepy is what it is,” muttered Behan.
Ransom read on:
Next it was three girls in a row disappeared from West Ham all in January 1890. Only one of these dears was ever found, Amelia Jeffs, in West Ham Park. It’s surmised that Amelia made a getaway as there were signs of a struggle, and she had been bruised over the right eye and stabbed through stomach and ribs multiple times.