Weekly Herald
October 5th, 1888
LONDON'S HORRORS.
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The fiendish work of the man or men to whose account must be credited
the six or seven recent brutal murders and mutilations that have put London,
and Whitechapel especially, into a white terror, still goes on, and at
the moment of writing the hand of justice seems as far as ever from paralysing
the onward course of the record of atrocious brutality.
These murders have drawn men's minds with peculiar intensity to a consideration
of the conditions under which so many people exist not only in the East
End of the huge metropolis, but in al the large towns of the country. The
horrible dens of vice and crime that blot the fair face of our most thriving
communities, are whatever else may be said of them, crying impeachments
of the indifference and carelessness with which those in responsible positions,
both governmental and social, look upon their less fortunate fellowmen.
It would be wrong to say that these particular crimes are to be attributed
to general social causes, for if there is one thing more than another proven
to the hilt by the experience of history it is this, that human nature
even under the most favourable conditions, from time to time gives evidence
of the depravity and viciousness of which it is capable.
To say that poverty is the author of vice, would mean that where wealth
and pleny abound, there is little or no vice. Unfortunately this is not
so. We find among the very poor, honesty, virtue and heroic self-sacrifice
in a great degree. It is true, too, that certain classes of crime abound
among our poor, but have we not rich and well-to-do who are immoral and
vicious just as we have some among them who are noble and good?
Crime and evil-doing are confined to no particular class of society.
Our poor will compare favourably in this respect with the rich. It is,
therefore, idle to declaim against poverty as the root of all evil. Are
we not told that gold is also its root? As a matter of fact
wealth produces one class of crime, poverty another, just as wealth gives
men an opportunity of practising certain virtues, and poverty calls for
certain other virtues.
Many remedies are proposed to meet the evils that afflict our poor districts.
What we want is not Acts of Parliament to compel men to do right--at best
they can only provide for the punishment of those who do wrong, and in
this way they may effect some good but we require a more thorough appreciation
of the command "Do unto others as you would have others do to you." That's
where the great social want of the time is.
The East End of London with its slums, its rookeries, its gin-palaces,
its crowded population living in poverty, and not knowing where its to-morrow's
dinner will come from, has claims of the most pressing kind on the West
End, where idleness and luxury are the temptations that assail virtue and
charity, where in the gilded saloons, at the gaudy parties, in the ball
room and the theatre are wasted in empty show or worse, that wealth which
is entrusted to those who have it for the dispensation of mercy, for feeding
the hungry, clothing the naked and spreading truth where error holds sway.
The nostrums of the politician or the demagogue only touch the fringe
of the subject. By all means let us prevent by good laws social injustice,
let us keep the hands of the grabber off the throat of the poor, let us
put it out of the power of a few men to grind the face of the many. Monopolies
and hereditary rights that enable men to take what is not theirs under
sanction of law, must be swept away. But when we have upset one order of
things and established another, we shall still be at the mercy of those
who have the disposal of the good things in the new order. We find that
democrats can grind and pilfer just as aristocrats can. The sweater in
the West End employs his hands, who again employ others, and sweat them
even worse. In Ireland, the middleman takes a big farm and lets it out
to his neighbours at 100 per cent profit on his outlay. The farmer extracts
from his "cottar" or labourer a rack-rent for his cabin or his
half acre plot, greater than that demanded by some London company. The
foreman grumbles at the harshness of his employer, and to those beneath
himself he is, possibly, a most savage task-master.
These things all show that it is in men themselves that we must seek
for the root of so much evil, not in laws or socialabuses. What are these
but the outcome of the efforts of legislators, feeble at the best to legislate
for good, and incapable of so legislating as to eradicate evil.
Would we reform society then we must begin with those who constitute
it. The slums of London and other cities are not to be wiped out by a stroke
of a pen. Dismantle ten square miles of dilapidated houses, and you only
drive the inmates to another district, perhaps to crowd them together still
more.
What all our slums want is more practical charity, more good example,
more brotherly tenderness to their inmates from those who live in the gilded
mansion, and more knowledge of God and His truths. Religion alone can save
the denizens of the slums from their own evil passions, just as religion
alone can save the king on the throne or the noblest and wealthiest of
the world. That is as certain as that to-morrow's sun will rise. Meantime
the life-blood of six or seven victims to the insanity or deviltry of some
villain, cries to heaven for vengeance. No fewer than five of them were
women separated from their husbands, leading lives of sin in the modern
Babylon. Drink in most cases seems to have been at the bottom of the quarrels
and separations. Here is something for the social reformer to ponder over.
It is not recorded that any of these women were driven to follow their
sad calling by want or poverty, at the beginning. Married, in one case
at least to a well-to-do husband, drink led to separation, and the rest
followed; the want and cold, the gin-palace, murder, mutilation, the coroner's
inquest and the pauper's grave.
Fathers and mothers, husbands and wives have a lesson here that should
sink deep into their hearts. There is but one way to make good men and
women, and that is to train them as children. Impress upon them the responsibilities
of life, particularly of that state of life which they enter when they
join hands in wedlock. If marriage is not indeed to be a failure, there
must be God's grace with it and a determination to bear and forbear. If
that does not exist th eills are sure to follow, appal us by their very
contemplation. Among the many reflections that arise from a perusal of
the facts of these murders and the histories of the victims, no one is
more important than this.
THE NEWCASTLE MURDER.
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WADDLE ARRESTED AT YETHOLM.
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William Waddle, the man suspected of the murder of the woman Savage
at Birtley, near Gateshead, recently, was apprehended at Yetholm, near
Kelso, on Monday morning. For some time past rumours have been current
that the alleged murderer had been seen in the Border district, and these
would now seem to have been only too well founded. The circumstances of
the arrest are briefly as follows:--On Monday morning Mr William Stenhouse,
wool dealer, Yetholm, while proceeding in the direction of Halterbarn,
a short distance south-east from the village, came upon a man whom he thought
answered the published description of the Birtley murderer. He asked the
man if he was in search of harvest work, and receiving an affirmative answer,
Mr Stenhouse said it was no use seeking such employment amongst the hills,
and that if he accompanied him back to Yetholm, he would find him work.
The man agreed, and in the course of further conversation the prisoner
said he belonged to Coldstream, and named some people and a hotel he knew
there but as none of them were known to Mr Stenhouse, who was familiar
with the place and the people, his suspicions were further confirmed. Mr.
Stenhouse then asked the man if his name was William Waddle. Hesitating,
he said, "No, my name is William Tweddle." To the
question, "When did you leave Birtley?" he answered, "On
Sunday," presumably the day after the murder. Asked if he knew
a woman named Savage, he answered "That is my wife." Now
assured that the prisoner was the culprit, Mr Stenhouse took him direct
to the police station at Yetholm. He there charged him with the crime,
and the prisoner heard the indictment without perturbation. H (sic)
offered no resistence. As Constable Thompson at Yetholm was absent on duty
in connexion with the search for the prisoner, Waddle was put into the
cell by Mr Stenhouse, who awaited the officer's return. Thereafter Inspector
Harrison at Gateshead was telegraphed. It is reported that since his apprehension
prisoner has made a voluntary confession of having perpetrated the revolting
crime with which he is charged. People who have seen the man allege that
he seems a simpleton, and has a slatternly gait.
FRESH LONDON HORRORS.
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TWO MORE WOMEN MURDERED.
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The sensation of horror and fear inspired by the awful crime committed
in Hanbury Street, Whitechapel, on the morning of the 8th of September
had begun to subside, people had ceased suspecting their neighbours, and
the population of the East of London was fast settling down to its normal
condition of dogged industry and apathetic misery when the popular dismay
and terror were revived and intensified by the discovery of the two murders
committed in one night, and to all appearances the work of one fiendish
hand. For a while people would not credit the appaling news, but ample
confirmation was quickly forthcoming. The wretched and abandoned frequenters
of the streets fled in terror to their miserable shelters, and by half-past
two not a woman was to be seen throughout the densely populated district.
Unhappily, the circumstances connected with the murders committed on
Saturday night or early on Sunday morning do not differ meterially (sic)
from those which the previous crimes in the locality, except, perhaps,
that the Mitre Square crime was perpetrated with brutal ferocity and reckless
daring and rapidity exceeded that exhibited by the fiend who despatched
and mutilated poor Annie Chapman in the gloomy back yard in Hanbury Street
on the 8th of September.
THE MITRE SQUARE CRIME.
Mitre Square is a sort of huge yard about 120 feet square, and there
are three entrances to it, the principal being from Mitre Street; which
is broad enough to accomodate two vehicles abreast. There is also a short,
covered court, about 20 yards long, leading into St. James's Place, another
square, popularly known as the "Orange Market," in the centre
of which is a public convenience, a street fire station consisting simply
of a waggon on wheels, and also a permanent street fire station in course
of erection.
At a quarter to two o'clock on Sunday morning, City Constablel Watkins,
881, was on his beat, and as he passed through Mitre Square he saw a body
lying in the south-west corner. He had passed through the square about
fifteen minutes previously, and he is certain that then there was no body
there. The corpse was that of a woman, and it was lying on its back on
the footway, with the head towards a boarding and the feet to the carriage
way. The head was inclined on the right side, and both the arms were extended
outwards. The left leg was extended straight out, and the right leg was
bent away from the body. After the first shock of the discovery, the constable
stooped down and felt the body, which he found to be quite warm. Blood
was all around and on the body, but it had not congealed. Watkins immediately
ran across to George James Norris, a night watchman in the employ of Messrs
Kearly, and sent him to Dr. Sequeira, at 34 Jewry Street, and then proceeded
to call up Constable Pearce, who as stated lives in one of the houses in
the square itself. The constables then returned to the south-west corner,
and throwing the light of their lanterns fully upon it, found to their
horror that the woman's throat was cut from ear to ear and half way round
the head. The clothes had been raised up to the chest and, more horrible
still, the body had been completely ripped up from the pelvis right up
to the chest, the flaps of flesh being turned back, reevaling the intestines.
In addition to these fearful injuries, a portion of the right ear was also
cut off, and the nose was slashed half way through. The face was also slashed
and cut about in the most brutal fashion, and a portion of the intestines
had also been placed on the neck.
THE BERNER STREET MURDER.
The scene of the second murder is Berner Street, Commercial Road on
the St George's-in-the-East side and within about two hundred yards of
Buck's Row or Hanbury Street, where the last two murders took place. About
five minutes to one o'clock on Sunday morning a youth, about twenty years
of age, named Joseph Koster, was accosted by a little boy, who came running
up to him as he was passing, on the opposite side, 40 Berner Street, used
by the International Socialist Club, and told him that a woman was
lying in the gateway next to the club with her throat cut. Koster immediately
ran across the road, and saw a woman lying on her side in the gateway leading
into Dutfield's stabling and van premises. The gate, which is a large wooden
one, was partly opened, and the woman was lying partly in the street. He
immediately rouses the neighbours, and, by the aid of a candle, it was
seen that the woman's throat was cut open very nearly from one ear to another,
and her lips were drawn up as if she had suffered sharp pain. She was dressed
in black, and appeared to be in mourning. She wore a black bonnet, elastic-sided
boots, and dark stockings. In her breast was a small bouquet of flowers,
and in her left hand she held a small packet of scented cachous. Constable
Lamb, 252 East Division, soon afterwards appeared, and, with the assistance
of two other constables, had the body, which was quite warm when found,
removed to 40 Berner Street, where it was placed in a back room. To
all appearances the woman seems to have been treated like the former victims,
carried out and laid openly in the street. The case, in fact, resembles
in many points the Bucks Row tragedy. The victim appears to have been about
23 years of age and it is not thought that she belonged to the locality
in which she was found. The wound must have been inflicted with a very
sharp instrument, no trace of which has yet been found, as it is very deep,
and she was lying in a pool of blood, with which her clothes were saturated.
The news of the tragedy spread with great rapidity, and a large number
of detectives from Scotland Yard, together with superintendents and inspectors
of police, were soon on the spot. All those who were near the place at
the time were detained, taken into the house, and closely examined as to
the discovery, but nothing has yet been obtained which can afford a clue
to the murder; and the police, having nothing whatever to go on, seem completely
at their wits end. She is described as being of a dark complexion and rather
slim, and about 4 feet 10 in height. Her hair is dark and wavy, with a
large fringe in front, and the features somewhat delicate and refined.
Dr Blackhall and his assistant both examined the corpse, and declared that
the woman must have been murdered, as she could not have taken her own
life. Dr Philips, who examined the woman in Hanbury Street, was Street,
(sic) was also called in, and made an examination of the woman;
but he has been asked to keep the result secret at present.
ANOTHER GHASTLY DISCOVERY
IN LONDON.
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A MUTILATED BODY AT WESTMINSTER.
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About twenty minutes past three o'clock on Tuesday afternoon Frederick
Wildborn, a carpenter employed by Messrs J. Grover and Sons, builders of
Pimlico, who are the contractors for the new Metropolitan Police headquarters
on the Thames Embankment, was working on the foundation, when he came across
a neatly done up parcel in one of the cellars. It was opened, and the body
of a woman, very much decomposed, was found carefully wrapped in a piece
of what is supposed to be a black petticoat. The trunk was without head,
arms, or legs, and presented a horrible spectacle. Dr Bond, the divisional
surgeon, and several other medical gentlemen were communicated with, and
from what can be ascertained the conclusion has been arrived at by them
that these remains are those of a woman whose arms have recently been discovered
in different parts of the metropolis. Dr Nevill, who examined the arm of
a woman found a few weeks ago in the Thames, off Ebury Bridge, said on
that occasion that he did not think that it had been skilfully taken from
the body. This fact would appear to favour the theory that that arm, together
with the one found in the grounds of the Blind Asylum in the Lambeth Road
last week belong to the trunk discovered on Tuesday, for it is stated that
the limbs appear to have been taken from it in anything but a skilful manner.
The building which is in course of erection is the new police depot
for London. The builders have been working on the site for some time now,
but have only just completed the foundation. It was originally the site
for the National Opera House, and extends from the Thames Embankment through
Cannon Row, Parliament Street, at the back of St Stephen's Club and the
Westminster Bridge Station on the District Railway. The prevailing opinion
is that to place the body where it was found the person conveying it must
have scaled the 8 ft. boarding which encloses the works, and, carefully
avoiding the watchmen who do duty by night, must have dropped it where
it was found. The body could not have been where it was found above two
or three days, because men are frequently passing the spot. One of the
workmen says that it was not there last Friday, because they had occasion
to do something at that very spot. It is thought that the person who put
the bundle there could not very well have got into the enclosure from the
Embankment side, as not only would the risk of detection be very great,
but he would stand a good chance of breaking his neck. The parcel must
have been got in from the Cannon Row side, a very dark and lonely spot,
although within twenty yards of the main thoroughfare. The body is pronounced
by medical men to have been that of a remarkably fine young woman. The
lower portion from the ribs has been removed. The post-mortem examination
was held this morning, and the result will be made known at the inquest.
