London Murders E-Book

David Long

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 242

Beschreibung

People love hearing about a grisly murder; gasping at the gory details, wondering about the motives, deducing who did it. This macabre fascination is nothing new. In the past racehorses, greyhounds and even a ship have been named after some of the most notorious murderers, and it doesn't look like our interest is waning any time soon. London Murders is a unique guidebook that explores the darker side of London's history, pinpointing the exact locations of the bloodiest, most intriguing and sinister murders. It describes in detail the events, the characters involved and the eventual fates of the perpetrators, which include playwrights and politicians, celebrities and spies, royalty, aristocrats and, of course, countless ordinary Joes. Featuring infamous names such as Crippen, Kray, Haigh, Christie and Ellis, whose terrible crimes shocked the world, London Murders matches crimes to locations as David Long walks the reader through the city's streets, whilst revealing their tragic and awful histories.

Leseprobe

David Long has been a writer and journalist for more than thirty years. He has regularly appeared in The Times, Sunday Times and Evening Standard, and writes for children as well as adults. Well received by reviewers and readers alike, his previous titles on the capital include London’s 100 Strangest Places, London’s 100 Most Extraordinary Buildings, London Underground and The Little Book of London (all The History Press). His books have been translated into more than twenty languages.

First published 2020

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© David Long, 2020

The right of David Long to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9581 8

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Map of the Murder Sites

Introduction

1   East of the City

2   The West End

3   On the River

4   Bloomsbury to Covent Garden

5   Kensington and Chelsea

6   North London

7   North-West London

8   South-East London

9   South-West London

10 West London

INTRODUCTION

People love a good murder. Graphically violent television dramas about killers have replaced public executions as popular entertainment, and the increasingly sophisticated science of forensics has gone a long way towards usurping traditional, old-fashioned sleuthing and inspired guesswork. But there is nothing new about our fascination with murderers – in the past racehorses, greyhounds and even a ship have been named after the most notorious – nor is there any sign that this is diminishing.

From the Ripper to Ronnie and Reggie Kray, we can always be relied upon to find the specific details shocking, and the fact that the victim is a complete stranger rarely does much to reduce our feelings of revulsion, fear or horror. There is also a definite, if macabre, thrill to be had from following the slow-motion unravelling of discovery, detection, confession and conviction – and a genuine frisson of excitement on passing an address made famous by its grisly past.

Murders happen all the time, of course, and only a minority of them have that special attribute needed to command our attention. When that happens, the media is skilled at playing its part in whipping up public interest and crime reporters have a long history of rearranging the facts where necessary in order to construct a more compelling narrative. As long ago as 1847, for example, several newspapers famously ran breathless accounts of the dignified courtroom composure of murderess Mary Ann Milner – despite her having been found hanging in her cell the previous day.

Even without this kind of encouragement, however, the urge to glimpse a killer in the flesh and see justice done has always been strong, and around this same time a German visitor planning a trip to London was told in all seriousness, ‘You wish to know where the people’s merry-makings are held? Go to Newgate on a hanging day … there you will find shouting, and joking, and junketting, from early dawn until the hangman has made his appearance and performed his office.’

On such occasions, great stands would be erected for spectators, and landlords of taverns fortunate enough to occupy sites overlooking the scaffold would charge a premium for their beer and brandy – well in excess of what Londoners would have stood for on an ordinary weekday – and spectators of both sexes, every age and literally all classes would have thronged the streets in the hope of witnessing an actual execution.

Today, we like to think we are more civilised than this, yet the attraction – enjoyment might not be too strong a word for it – has never really gone away. The decision to abandon public hangings was deeply unpopular; so too was the abolition of capital punishment in the 1960s, and lifelike waxworks of serial killers and other murderers have always numbered among Madame Tussaud’s most popular attractions.

Indeed, even now, many decades after their conviction and imprisonment or execution, London’s worst murderers find themselves as celebrated as any of the city’s more talented or public-spirited inhabitants. Names such as Crippen, Christie and Ellis are woven into the fabric of London’s cultural history alongside those of Whittington, Wren and Disraeli. Similarly, while most visitors to the capital still seek out the likes of St Paul’s, the Tower and Westminster Abbey, many others pore over books and maps looking to pinpoint such infamous addresses as 10 Rillington Place, 39 Hilldrop Crescent or Whitechapel’s notorious Blind Beggar.

1

EAST OF THE CITY

JOHN WILLIAMS

29 The Highway, E1 (1811)

Cannon Street Road/Cable Street crossroads, E1 (1811)

Cinnamon Street, E1 (1811)

The Ratcliffe Highway Murders

For years, convicted murderers were buried without ceremony beneath the prisons at which they died, and a total of 119 bodies – including those of Crippen and Christie – are believed to lie beneath the gardens at Pentonville, dating back to when London’s own Death Row moved there from Newgate in 1902. Occasionally, particular convicts are singled out for special treatment, although very rarely with the gruesome glee that seems to have attended the occasion in 1811 when the remains of John Williams were consigned to an especially bleak spot in East London.

Williams was widely believed to be the perpetrator of a series of bloody killings which came to be called the Ratcliffe Highway Murders. The first was committed at what is now No. 29 The Highway. The building itself is long gone, although a wealth of old warehouses and wharf buildings in the area still give some indication of how this area adjacent to the docks might have looked in the early nineteenth century.

In 1811, No. 29 was a hosiery business, the owner of which, 24-year-old Timothy Marr, lived on the premises with his wife and child. On the evening of 7 December, he asked the servant girl Margaret to go out for some oysters and on her return, she found the family dead. Together with an apprentice from the shop, all of them had had their throats cut and their heads staved in using a bloody ship’s hammer, or maul, which was recovered at the scene.

To avoid panic in the tight knot of the surrounding streets, the authorities quickly rustled up the offer of a £500 reward for the murderer’s capture – this at a time when the Governor of the Bank of England received just £400 annually. It was generous, but to no avail.

Exactly two weeks later at the King’s Arms Tavern, in what is now Glamis Road, the landlord John Williamson was similarly done to death, together with his wife, Elizabeth, and Bridget Harrington, who helped behind the bar. On this occasion, there was a witness – a lodger who managed to escape from a back bedroom by climbing down a sheet he had knotted to the window.

With the public clamouring for some affirmative action, the authorities were soon able to announce a number of arrests, though one of them – a seaman called John Williams, who was apprehended on 21 December in Cinnamon Street – aroused no particular interest. He had been seen drinking in the King’s Arms, and after being interviewed by magistrates at Shadwell, he was remanded in custody at Cold Bath Fields Prison in Clerkenwell. (The site is now occupied by the giant Mount Pleasant Sorting Office.)

The evidence against Williams was, to say the least, extremely slim, and 200 years later his guilt is by no means certain. He was found with a knife and was a fairly disreputable character, but neither of these would have marked him out from many residents in this part of London at this time in its history. He was also nothing like the description of the large man seen fleeing the scene by the Williamsons’ lodger, being of medium height, slight build and altogether rather less substantial.

The authorities were nevertheless content that they had caught their man, and were thus shocked to hear that Williams had been found hanging in his cell when he was due to answer some more questions on 27 December. Suicide was at this time an illegal act, and by taking matters into his own hands Williams had also denied the courts and the public the opportunity to see justice being done.

In the absence of a usefully cathartic trial, it was therefore decided to parade his corpse through Wapping and Shadwell, in part to reassure the local population that it had no more to fear, but also in some way to avenge the dead. A procession duly set off on New Year’s Eve, pausing for a few minutes at each crime scene and gradually attracting a crowd of more than 10,000 people who wished to enjoy the gruesome spectacle.

It had also been decided to give Williams a traditional suicide’s burial; that is, one outside consecrated ground with a stake driven through the heart and the body buried without ceremony at a crossroads. (This was done in order to prevent the spirit finding its way home to haunt any former associates.) The chosen spot for the interment was at the junction of Cannon Street Road and Cable Street – immediately adjacent, as it happens, to where, just a few weeks previously, the Marr family had been buried in the shadow of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s great church of St George’s in the East.

HENRY WAINWRIGHT

Vine Court, E1 (1875)

40 Tredegar Square, E1 (1875)

‘The Clearest and Most Convincing Evidence’

Living two lives simultaneously and at different addresses, 36-year-old Henry Wainwright was a successful commercial brush manufacturer, a respectable teetotal churchwarden living in tasteful comfort at No. 40 Tredegar Square and, by all accounts, a good father to his family. Unfortunately, had they but known it, Wainwright was also a serial philanderer who had fathered another two little girls who were living a mile and a half away and whose mother knew him as Percy King. He was not technically a bigamist, however, because although ‘Mrs King’ liked to be known as such, the two merely cohabited and she was in reality a hatmaker’s assistant called Harriet Lane.

On 11 September 1875, Miss Lane was pronounced dead. The precise nature of her injuries, though, was obscured for the time being by the fact that she had been cut up into ten sections and bundled into a couple of hastily wrapped parcels. A year earlier, these had been buried beneath what is now Vine Court, but at the time was the yard of Wainwright’s warehouse at No. 215 Whitechapel Road. Now renumbered No. 130, his business was conveniently located approximately halfway between his two otherwise unconnected lives, wives and families.

Wainwright’s extraordinary double life, and indeed Harriet’s murder, only came to light when a four-wheeled cab, or ‘growler’, called to carry the two parcels away from the warehouse the following year. Wainwright was having to move on, as financial troubles had forced him to surrender the lease on the premises. When the cabman arrived at the warehouse, one of the men working there was told to carry two foul-smelling parcels out to him. Poking around in one of them and finding what was clearly a human hand, the employee nevertheless did as he was told while deciding to follow the cab at a safe distance once his employer had climbed aboard.

Keeping out of sight, he followed the cab over London Bridge and all the way to an address near the Hop Exchange in Borough: only then was he able to alert a police constable to what he had found. Riding in the cab it was inevitable that the bearded, respectable and comfortably bourgeoise Wainwright should come under immediate suspicion, but his arrest must have proved profoundly shocking to his legitimate family and to those who moved in the same social, church and commercial circles.

It was soon revealed that the same money worries that had forced Wainwright’s move from the warehouse (without which the victim’s fate might still be unknown) had put pressure on his relationship with Harriet. Some months previously, he had moved her and the two girls into cheaper accommodation and reduced her allowance. Harriet took great exception to this and, being something of a drinker, when she voiced her objections rather too forcefully, ‘Percy’ had decided enough was enough.

After preparing a shallow grave behind the warehouse and procuring a gun, he had persuaded Harriet to visit the premises. On arrival she had been shot in the head, had her throat slit for good measure, and had been buried in the pit beneath a layer of disinfecting chloride of lime. With his brother’s help, Wainwright had then concocted a story to cover her sudden disappearance, making it look as though Harriet was planning a trip to Paris with a purely fictional ‘Mr Frieake’.

Incredibly, once in court, Wainwright had insisted that he had no idea what the parcels contained, and for a cash sum from a complete stranger he had simply agreed to store them for a while and later transport them across the river. The gun was shown to be his, however, and he had been caught in possession of the remains of his former lover. There was even a suggestion that he had attempted to bribe the policeman in Southwark rather than hand over the parcels. After being found guilty of the murder of Harriet Louisa Lane on what the judge called ‘the clearest and most convincing evidence’, Henry Wainwright was sentenced to be hanged on 21 December at Newgate Gaol.

The decision less than a decade earlier to stop executing criminals in public – the last in London had been that of the Fenian Michael Barrett on 26 May 1868 – might have led Wainwright to expect a dignified and private end. This was not to be, however, and the following day The Times was one of many newsapers to describe in detail the instrument of execution – ‘peculiar in construction and appearance; it being roofed over, lighted with lamps at each end, and having a deep pit, over which a chain and noose were suspended’ – as well as listing by name and rank the scores of city dignitaries who had shouldered their way into the yard at Newgate to see justice done by invitation of the Lord Mayor himself. Wainwright’s execution had become one of the sights of London.

JACK THE RIPPER

Durward Street, E1 (1888)

Mitre Square, EC3 (1888)

Gunthorpe Street, E1 (1888)

Jack’s Tracks Not so Easy to Follow

By far the most documented, yet still the most mysterious of capital killers, Jack was active for only a few months and his tally of five was awful but relatively modest. Yet no other serial killer has exercised quite such a hold on the British imagination nor garnered quite so many theories as to who was responsible, and how, precisely, he, she or they got away with it.

An internet search for the Ripper throws up literally millions of pages. New books, films, theories and even computer games on the subject are launched with metronomic regularity, and, nearly half a century after the last body was found, a successful wigmaker in Wardour Street was still advertising his business by claiming to have unwittingly provided Jack’s disguise all those years before.

Jack the Ripper walks take place every week of the year in the relevant quarter of East London. These guided walks are incredibly popular, despite the fact that while we know who the victims were – Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly – and may even have memorised the minutiae of their pitiful injuries, all the locations but one have disappeared in the process of building, bombing, burning and rebuilding that has characterised city life over the last century.

Running off the high street in Whitechapel, one side of Gunthorpe Street with its arched entrance and cobbled surface still gives a fair impression of late 1880s London; indeed, the murder there of Martha Tabram on 7 August 1888 – in what was then called George Yard – has, by some historians, been added to Jack’s tally. However, most research suggests we can only be sure about the five named on the previous page. Of these, the location of Mary Ann Nichols’ killing, three weeks later, is the only one to bear much resemblance to its likely appearance on 31 August 1888. Back then, Durward Street was called Buck’s Row, and the Board School is now apartments, but the small yard where the 41-year-old prostitute’s body was discovered by Charles Cross in the early hours of the morning has survived more or less intact.

The same cannot be said for 29 Hanbury Street, a slum torn down in the 1960s, where the disembowelled body of Annie Chapman was found by one of its seventeen residents on 8 September. No one had heard a thing in the night and this second death ignited a panic in the area, with talk of the ‘Whitechapel Murders’ reaching fever pitch on the 30th with the discovery of a third mutilated body.

Elizabeth Stride’s corpse was found on the site of what is now another school building in Henriques Street (then Berners Street), on the other side of Commercial Road. Less than an hour later, another gruesome discovery took Jack’s total to four, this time being made within the historic City boundary. The body of Catherine Eddowes was found in Mitre Square (a colourful flower bed now marks the spot) and with scores of City of London Police now joining in the hunt, Jack appeared to have taken the decision to lay low for a while.

Perhaps because of this, it was to be 9 November before the fifth and final murder was discovered not far away in Miller’s Court, the victim one Mary Jane Kelly. It was perhaps the worst of all, and was the only Ripper crime scene to be photographed; her mutilation was so complete as to render the corpse unrecognisable. The room itself – now lost beneath the City Corporation’s multistorey car park on White’s Row – was similarly so soaked in blood and gore that her landlord described the carnage as ‘more like the work of a devil than the work of a man’.

Adding to the mystique that already surrounded the case, the killings then stopped as suddenly as they had started. Police continued to find clues chalked up on the walls around Whitechapel – many of them hoaxes and often implicating local Jews or Freemasons. Another two murders were subsequently attributed to Jack, although both have since been discounted.

Thereafter, the only other ‘victim’ in all this seemed to be Metropolitan Commissioner Sir Charles Warren, whose inability to find the killer led to him being forced out of office by public opinion. Also, in a sense, the victims included many who were rumoured to be Jack at the time but had no opportunity to clear their names. These included Seweryn Antonowicz Kłosowski (see p. 163), Thomas Neill Cream (p. 160) and even Walter Sickert (p. 139), all of whose names keep popping into the frame but without a shred of anything one might realistically term as evidence.

EDGAR EDWARDS

The Oliver Twist, 90 Church Road, E10 (1902)

‘Now Get On With It, As Quick As You Like’

A couple of days before Christmas 1902, Edgar Edwards, who had a reputation as a shrewd if small-scale businessman, arranged to meet John Garland for a drink at his local on the corner of Church Road and Oliver Road. They were there to discuss a takeover of the latter’s grocery firm, and after visiting the premises of the business they returned to the pub before continuing their negotiations at No. 89, where the 44-year-old Edwards was then living.

Within minutes Edwards had launched a vicious attack on Garland, which the victim subsequently described to an Old Bailey jury as ‘absolutely unprovoked. He gave me a very severe blow, it almost knocked the senses out of me, and it was followed by a number of blows rained upon me while I was on the ground.’

Edwards soon found himself facing a charge of malicious wounding, but before this case could be heard he was under suspicion again. This time it was not for any violent altercation but rather after twice attempting to pass himself off under the name Darby. This was initially in connection with the purchase of another small business dealing in stationery and tobacconist’s supplies, and the second time while pawning some small valuables.

Police decided to investigate further, and a search of No. 89 revealed some more pawn tickets in the name of Darby and some business cards. The latter led officers across the river to Camberwell and No. 22 Wyndham Road, the premises of another grocery business which Edwards was also apparently interested in buying.

The owners were John and Beatrice Darby, but neither they nor their 10-week-old baby daughter were to be seen at the address. Instead, on the mantelpiece in the back parlour, detectives found a lead weight of the sort used to counterbalance sash windows. This was covered with a quantity of blood and matted hair and, looking up, they found more blood oozing through the floorboards above.

Back in Leyton on 30 December, a workman was brought in to dig up a section of garden. He quickly uncovered six sacks and a small bundle, which were examined by the local divisional police surgeon. In these, the splendidly named Dr Jekyll reported, were found:

… the dismembered bodies of a man and woman, the heads and limbs had been cut off. I also saw the body of a child, which was intact. The heads were quite recognisable, the cause of death was due to injury to the heads in the cases of the man and woman, and in the case of the child to strangulation.

Extensive fractures to the adults’ skulls and evidence of blows to the front and rear of their heads seemed to match the description of the type of furious onslaught inflicted on Garland. There seemed little, if any, doubt that Edgard Edwards was responsible and, having taken a liking to their business (after seeing an advertisement for it in the local press), he had decided to take their lives as well, thereby avoiding having to pay anything for the latter.

The following morning, he was duly charged with the wilful murder of William John Darby, Beatrice Darby and Ethel Beatrice, their child, on or about 29 November. This time he was taken into custody and remanded to Brixton Prison, with the case scheduled to be heard on 9 February.

Edwards refused to plead, so the court ordered a plea of not guilty to be entered for him, with the prisoner himself presumably hoping for a judgement that he was insane. However, this escape was denied by the prison medic James Scott. Although, rather oddly, he did feel the need to advise the court that having examined the prisoner, ‘the shape of his head is somewhat peculiar’. Though finding no evidence of insanity, Scott restricted his diagnosis to a description of Edwards as ‘mentally weak’.

Thereafter, with an abundance of evidence – some of it circumstantial, but plenty of it forensic – there seemed little question that Edwards would hang. Having shown himself to be both brutal and mercenary (court papers indicated that his rent on No. 89 was paid using the £7 raised by pawning a gold watch and a chain from Mr Darby), in the event he accepted his fate calmly. When a death sentence was passed, he told the court, ‘Now get on with it, as quick as you like.’

‘PETER THE PAINTER’

Cutler Street, E1 (1910)

Sidney Street, E1 (1910)

The Houndsditch Murders and the Siege of Sidney Street

On 16 December 1910, City of London Police were called to Houndsditch after neighbours heard what sounded like thieves attempting to break into the rear of a jeweller’s shop, apparently by tunnelling into the shop from Exchange Buildings in the cul-de-sac behind. Nine police, both uniformed and plain-clothed, responded to the call-out. Three were fatally wounded and another two injured when they knocked on the door and attempted to enter.

Clearly the police had expected nowhere near this level of resistance, probably assuming they were simply interrupting an ambitious, if ham-fisted, attempt at burglary. But, in fact, the two gunmen and up to eight accomplices were members of the Latvian anarchist group Liesma, or the Gardstein Gang. Desperately needing to raise funds for their political struggle against Russian rule, they had alighted on the shop of H.S. Harris in the mistaken belief that the vault contained items belonging to the tsar.

Following what is still the bloodiest single-day assault on serving British police officers, the gang attempted to escape through the back of the premises. Emerging into Cutler Street and carrying one of their number whom they had shot by mistake, the gang eventually holed up at No. 59 Grove Road in Mile End. The wounded man died.

Amidst rumours that the gang was led by a notorious revolutionary known only as ‘Peter the Painter’, the police mounted a search of the area that continued over several weeks. Their lucky break came on 3 January when a tip-off led police to another house, at No. 100 Sidney Street, in which two or three gang members were said to be hiding. This time, one might have assumed the authorities would take no chances, but once again an unarmed officer was sent to knock on the door and, once again, he was answered by a hail of bullets.

The officer survived with no more than a punctured lung and an injured foot but, faced with an unknown number of assailants and with the police inadequately armed with a variety of bulldog revolvers, shotguns and rifles fitted with .22 Morris-tube barrels, an order for reinforcements was sent to St John’s Wood barracks.

With a detachment of Scots Guards soon in attendance – and later the Home Secretary Winston Churchill, complete with top hat and cigar – what became known as the Siege of Sidney Street developed into a great public spectacle. Soon reporters were crowding into the area to get the story, and local householders were charging good money for a place on any rooftop with a reasonable view of the action.

Before long, soldiers, police and the gunmen were all trading fire. The question of tactics – as to who should get the honour of storming the building – was put on hold when smoke was observed pouring from the building. The fire brigade arrived but were told not to turn any hoses on the building, with Churchill perhaps being keen to flush out the gunmen like rats at stubble-burning time. In the end he relented, to save neighbouring properties, but only after the roof and upper floors of No. 100 had collapsed, thereby reducing the chance that anyone would be coming out alive.

Once the flames had died down, officers were able to enter the building but when they did so, only two bodies came to light: Fritz Svaars and William Sokolow. There was no sign of the mysterious Peter. The press lauded his ability yet again to somehow slip away unnoticed.

For months afterwards the newspapers traded stories of this elusive character: he had gone down with the Lusitania or had resurfaced in Moscow to lead the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The likelihood is that he never existed, and – much like the bullet rumoured to have creased Churchill’s top hat that day – Peter was merely a press invention designed to enhance what was already quite a story.

Remarkably, given the size of the gang involved, no one ever stood trial for the attempted burglary at No. 119 Houndsditch, nor for the three murders that resulted from it. And while the police on that day could be forgiven for walking into such an ambush, the subsequent siege taught them a useful lesson: namely that as a force they were woefully ill-equipped when it came to dealing with a new generation of well-armed and sometimes dangerously effective criminals.

In 2010, to mark the 100th anniversary of their deaths, and with the jewellery shop long gone, a plaque was unveiled on a wall in Cutler Street in commemoration of sergeants Robert Bentley and Charles Tucker and PC Walter Choat. More curiously, four years earlier, a Housing Trust block of flats in Sidney Street had been officially named Painter House after the elusive Peter – described on its commemorative plaque as an ‘anti-hero’ rather than a terrorist, armed robber and murderer – with ‘Siege House’ on the block next door …

THE KRAY TWINS

Blind Beggar, 337 Whitechapel Road, E1 (1966)

‘And There in Cold Blood Slay Another Human Being’