S3 – 7: House to House

now rang bitterly in his own ears. So he rode to Hyde Park in the dim morning hours to supervise a new method that had not yet been tried by the police in Whitechapel, although the reading public had been clamoring for it. He arrived at Hyde Parks Albert Gates and climbed down off his horse to greet a circle of waiting men. There was a constable to assist the commissioner, as well as a police surgeon, a veterinarian, a journalist, a kennel keeper, a dog breeder, and most important of all,

two bloodhounds trained to hunt men. For the past day, the breeder and kennel keeper had been running the dogs through Regent's Park, testing their ability to hunt in the city raised in the countryside. They arrived on Saturday, and since then they had been taking their bearings. The first trial had gone well, and now they were determined to prove to the Commissioner that with their help they could

catch the killer. A flurry of letters from the beginning of October between Warren and the Home Office makes it clear that both the Home Secretary and Warren himself knew how desperate a move disappeared. I found that there is a difficulty in suddenly bringing bloodhounds into a town, Warren had written, when they have not been trained for use in the streets, owing to the confusion of sense, they should be constantly practiced in the streets if they are to be of any use. For his part, the Home

Secretary was open to the idea. He did though feel a simmering dread that it could go very, very wrong. Every precaution should be observed in their use, he wrote to Warren. If an accident happened from the dogs attacking an incorrect person, there would be a great outcry. That message got through to Charles Warren loud and clear, but so did the already growing outcry that it was a necessary next step that the hounds would work. Warren wanted

to see it with his own eyes. As he greeted the waiting circle, he told them that he himself would be the quarry. The dogs sniffed his boots, and then he was off, heading northwest across the park. The morning was misty, and soon enough he passed out of sight of the group. In another moments, the kennel keeper dropped the leads and waved his hat with a whoop. The dogs rushed forward. Many hunting hounds were trained to give voice as they followed a scent, but these dogs moved

forward in perfect silence. The bloodhounds weren't the only things chasing Warren. His past was also nipping at his heels. You see, two years earlier, in eight six, about of rabies had swept through the city. For Warren. It had been secondary to beating back the London poor demanding work or bread, but he had it nord it completely. In fact, he dealt with it in his signature style with a crackdown. Warren had his Metropolitan Police sweep through the city and

sees any stray dogs they could find. He also enforced the musseling laws that Londoners had grown accustomed to ignoring. It earned him the nickname Muzzler in Chief for a while before the police violence of Bloody Sunday made him hated for more significant issues. Nothing put the hounds office scent, though They struggled through the do and balked once or twice where other pedestrians had crossed Warren's path, but they always caught it again. They trailed the Commissioner closely, and

eventually he was caught. The same was true for their second trial with another man. One of the dogs lost the scent of their quarry as his trail entered the growing crowd of londoner's criss crossing the park, but the second dog hunted him down by the end of the morning. Warren was convinced not that the dogs could help in solving any open cases. Any traces of the man who killed Liz Stride, for instance, would be long gone, but

Warren ordered the dogs to be kenneled in Whitechapel. He was determined that if the killer were to strike again, they would have every resource at their disposal. The irony wasn't lost on London journalists that the Commissioner who had muzzled the dogs of London was now trying to use

those dogs to solve a crime. But the journalist who had witnessed the trial didn't have any of that criticism, only hope in what might come next, And that hope made it into the papers that the murderers cunning will not avail him against the sure hounds that will be laid on his track, and soon, they claimed, London would

ring with the news of his capture. It was one of the few hopeful voices in a storm of confusion and righteous anger at the police of London who had failed for months to catch a killer who seemed to be slaughtering with impunity. But as you might guess, those hopes were false. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky. We can hardly blame Warren for calling in the dogs. But what was the smooth lawn of West London's Hyde Park compared to the streets and yards of the East End.

Warren was clearly casting around for help. After all, in the past weeks since the two women had been murdered, nothing had been pinned down when it comes to making sense of the Whitechapel murders. Every scrap of evidence and testimony has been examined and debated countless times. The events of September when Liz Stride and Katherine ETOs died are some of the most contentious. There are so many things that happened that night, and at one point or another,

most of those details have been called into question. In the years since eighty eight. Historians and investigators have questioned whether the same man killed Liz Stride and Katherine ETOs. After all, if it was the White Chapel murderer who had killed Liz, why was the only cut across her throat while Catherine was attacked the way Annie Chapman had been. Who was the man Israel Schwartz said was smoking a pipe when he saw someone attack Liz Stride in Dutfield Yard.

Did any of the eyewitnesses that night see the real killer? Couldn't have been the man Joseph Lavendaz saw outside the synagogue with the peaked cap and the red neckerchief Israel Schwartz said the attacker he saw was dressed in a dark jacket and trousers with a black peaked cap. And what about the man Mrs Mortimer saw carrying his shiny

black bag down Burner Street. Added to all of that, Donald Swanson was confronted with the reports from various constables around Whitechapel that night, piecing together the descriptions of all the people they had seen and encountered, and matching them to the timeline of the murders. And then there's the

question of the fabric. Did it match Catherine's clothing? But with that short trip between Miter Square and Galston Street that could be walked in just a few minutes, why did it take more than an hour after Catherine's murder for the bloody scrap to be discovered. When it comes to the graffiti, the arguments multiply over who might have written it, what it said, what it meant, and why Charles Warren would have agreed that it should be scrubbed away.

All of those questions began immediately, and they were spurred on by a postcard. It arrived for the Metropolitan Police the next day in the flood of mail, but this one stood out because it looked so much like the Dear Boss letter the police had received just a few days before on September a handwriting well, it looked identical, and it was written in the same blood red ink. This note confused things even more, especially because it seemed to know the murders of Liz Strie and Katherine Eddo's

in grizzly marking detail. The note read, I wasn't cutting dear old Boss when I gave you the tip. You'll hear about Saucy Jackie's work tomorrow. Double event. This time Number one squealed a bit, couldn't finish straight off, had no time to get ears for police. Thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again. And of course it was signed Jack the Ripper. It was also stained with a red smear to match the red ink written and covered in blood. At least that's what

it looked like. Here's historian Paul Beg. The Soucy Jackie postcard was posted to the Central News on the first of October. It also addressed the recipient as Boss, and other contents suggested that it was written by the same person as the Dear Boss letter, and the postcard appeared to give details of the murders of Elizabeth Stride and Katherine Eddoes that only the killer at that time could

have known. Ever since the Dear Boss letter had arrived, Donald Swanson and the other officers at the mets head kept it quiet. Analyzing it and thinking over what it might mean, but it had been given to them by the Central News Company. This note followed the same path to Swanson's desk, but somewhere along the way word had gotten out, and on Sunday, October one, the Star published

a transcription of the postcard. The name Jack the Ripper was now at large, but Swanson and the detectives could hardly be upset with the press for releasing the text of the notes. After all, they were about to make revelations of their own and broadcast them throughout London. Now that they had both the Dear Boss letter and this postcard, together with matching handwriting and matching styles, they knew that

someone was mocking the police with these notes. To catch them, they thought they would pull all of London on the scent. So Swanson and his team at Scotland Yard hired printers to put copies of both images onto a poster, and within days they were pasted unto every police notice board in London. If that wasn't enough, it was copied down into the pages of the London Evening News and roared

through readers. On October three, Here's historian Adam would to describe the results, in the absence of any other clues of faccinity, was published in the national press to see if the handwriting would be recognized, with the inevitable result that hundreds of copycat letters were sent to them Met and also the city of Police, all of which had to be followed up and discounted, wasting valuable police time and certainly Swanson. I'm sure these were it doesn't categorically

state it. I'm sure these letters were sent to Swanson Scotland Yard along with all the other documents, and so each day he'd have to go through these hoax letters, which I'm sure they must have known at the time. But looking at pertinent points, is there a name, user address, Is there something that we can send a comfortable to investigate.

That was probably one of the biggest mistakes that the police made in the investigation was publishing that letter, because it just ended up wasting so many police hours and directing work that could shooting down on a more direct basis. And when it comes to the Saucy Jackie postcard, there's little reason to believe it even provided any new information to the police, which was the only reason for them to give it any attention. In the first place. Here's

Paul beg once again. It's now thought possible that it could have been posted after the details of the murder were published, and neither Dear Boss nor Saucy Jackie are really now believed to have been written by the murderer at all, but they certainly contributed considerably to the notoriety of this series of murders. As if the murderers weren't already notorious enough, Donald Swanson's investigation and his desk were snowed under, that might have been the end of the

leads for the police to follow. But unfortunately, the letter wasn't the only one claiming firsthand knowledge of what happened on the night of the so called double event. There were witnesses who all came forward with their own testimony, and Donald Swanson and his team at Scotland Yard weren't the only ones on the case. Another inquest, another moment to shine for a win. Baxter. Elizabeth Stride had died in Duttfield Yard only a few days before, and Baxter's

inimitable hand rested on the proceedings. Once again. His questioning brought in the same cacophony of voices that Donald Swanson was trying to compose into something that sounded clear, and when it came to assessing Liz Stride's death, Baxter had

to do the same. So he called in the whole roster, the steward of the Socialist club at Dutfield Yard, the neighbors on Berner Street, the doctor who responded to the scene and examined Liz Stride's wounds, even members of a club who were there that night and had seen Liz Stride's body just outside their walls. He called in plenty

of constables from the area to describe the night. He called in a widow who had lived in a Spittlefield's lodging house with Liz Stride for six years, who identified the body as the woman she knew as long Liz.

The surgeon, Dr Phillips, testified as well. He described how he had worked together with a local doctor on the post mortem examination and detailed the bruises on Liz Stride's shoulders, marks that were made as if strong hands had brutally thrown her down, though he couldn't tell if they were

from the night she was killed or earlier. In fact, over multiple days, when Baxter called back, both doctors to give minute details about Stride's body, her position, the exact depth of the cut across her neck, what was in her hands, and what was in her stomach. None of it, though, turned up, and he clues to the killer or leads for the police to follow. It was as if the coroner was following a confused trail. The earlier cases had him and Dr Phillips asking if a surgeon could be

behind the killings. Now he was chasing after any sign that would build on or contradict any aspect of the profile he had sketched out with Phillips from the earlier murders. But Liz Stride's inquest simply did not reveal anything new to go on. Curiously, though, there was one significant person who did not appear at the inquest, Israel Schwartz, the Jewish Hungarian, the man who had seen the attack. That wasn't because he dodged the authorities, though far from it.

Together with an interpreter, Israel Schwartz went to the London Street Police station on the day he had seen the murder of Liz Stride. That's where he gave the testimony that Donald Swanson would include in his reports. He knew he had witnessed the crime in question. In fact, Inspector Aberleine had been on hand, and in a later report described their encounter. I questioned Israel Schwartz very closely at

the time he made the statement. Aberleine wrote, as to whom the man addressed when he called Lipski, but he was unable to say. Schwartz, being a foreigner and unable to speak English, became alarmed and ran away. No doubt it was Aberleine's interrogation of Schwartz that formed the basis of Donald Swanson's report too. But there were a few things that Aberleine wanted to clear up, because that shout

the name Lipsky was likely to be confusing. Aberleine wrote that since a Jew named Lipski was hanged for the murder of a Jewess in eight seven, the name was very frequently been used by persons to insult the Jew to whom it has been addressed, and when it was shouted at Schwartz, Inspector Aberline rights, I am of the opinion it was addressed to him. As he stopped to look at the man he saw ill using the deceased woman.

So there's no question that Schwartz was closely questioned by the police, and Donald Swanson even makes a note that by all accounts, it seemed like the man was telling the truth. At the very least, Israel Schwartz convinced the inspectors working on the case that he had really seen the attack that killed Liz Stride. One thing that makes it all more puzzling that Israel Schwartz did not appear at Liz stride inquest. The coroner in the eight seven

Lipsky murder case was none other than Win Baxter. After all, that murder had been in the same neighborhood where Liz Stride had been killed. Here's Paul beg once again to tell us more about that case. Israel Lipsky lived in Batty Street, which was a street adjacent to Burner Street, which is where Stride was molded. A fellow lodger in the house was a young woman named Miriam Angel, and in June of seven, she was poisoned with nitric acid.

On nitric acid, it also appears that Lipsky had tried to commit suicide by drinking the acid too, but he didn't die, and when he had recovered, he was charged and tried and convicted of murdering Miriam Angel. He denied having done so, and a lot of people believed him, but the jury wasn't amongst them, and he was sentenced

to hang. There was a great deal of effort to try and persuade the Home Secretary to commute the sentence, but Henry Matthews refused to do so, and Lipsky then wrote a confession shortly before he went to the gallows. Many people still entertained doubt about his guilt. However, the name we had told Lipsky was briefly used as a

term of insult. It was just one more event that had sown seeds of hatred and suspicion in London, especially of London Jews, connecting them to stories of crime and violence. That's how the name had come to be a slur.

Shouting Lipsky was about turning that hatred and suspicion into a weapon, especially at a time when someone was killing women in the Jewish and immigrant neighborhoods of London, and none of the officials trying to untie the knots at the center of the Whitechapel murders would have known this better than when Baxter he had conducted Miriam Angel's inquest one step in Lipsky's march toward the gallows, and Inspector Aberleine wrote in his report that Israel Schwartz did see

the body of Liz Stride together with his interpreter. Aberleine says he was taken to the mortuary and he confirmed that she was the woman he had seen attacked on Berner Street. So what made Schwartz disappear at this point, it's hard to know. It could be that his testimony became less trusted over time, or it could be that the police themselves held him out of the public eye well almost you see, before he vanished from the public record, he was run to ground by a journalist from the Star.

A reporter heard that he was giving a statement to the police and followed him home to back Church Lane, where he took down a wild version of Israel schwartz testimony. The embellishments on the police account included a man chasing Schwartz with a knife, but what Israel told the reporter also repeats his description of Liz strides attacker, a man about thirty years old, dressed respectably in dark clothes, and a felt hat, a man whose face he had been well enough in the dark to tell that he had

a brown mustache. After that statement was published in the Star, though Israel Schwartz disappeared. Here's Paul Beg. Once again, we know that another witness in the street who had also seen nothing, but whose testimony was relevant to what was happening or rather not happening in burn The Street at

the time of the murders. She wasn't called either. So it's possible that the police were keeping Schwartz under wraps, which they shouldn't really have done and assuming they were doing it, or rather they shouldn't have done it, assuming that they did it at all, Or it's possible that Schwartz gave his testimony and camera or off the public record, or finally that he'd gone to ground and the police

couldn't find him. Whether he disappeared in police custody or under his own power, Israel Schwartz wasn't the only person to give a statement to the papers but then never appeared at Win Baxter inquest. That distinction also goes to Mrs Mortimer and her man with his black bag, leaving her out of the inquest. Is slightly less puzzling, though. As a matter of fact, the shining black bag she described was one of the easiest matters for the police

to clear up. That's because after reading Mrs Mortimer's testimony in the paper, a man named Leon Goldstein followed Israel Schwartz's example and arrived at the Lenham Street police station. He was the man who matched Mrs Mortimer's description. He said he had left a coffee shop in Spectacle Alley a few minutes before and he was walking home. That put him on Berner Street at around the time of

the murder. And he said he hadn't seen anything, but he was sure that he was the one the neighbor had seen because in his hand he had a set of cigarette boxes, recently assembled and ready to be delivered to a shop where they could be filled. Of course, he was carrying those cigarette boxes in a shiny black bag. Leon Goldstein, it seems, simply had the bad fortune of walking through the neighborhood at the time. But through the testimony of Mrs Mortimer printed in the Evening News, his

brisk walk turned from ordinary to ominous. Here's Paul Beg once again the contents of his black bag were utterly harmless, and Mr Goldstein went on his way, but his black bag stayed in the public's mind and added to the image of the top the the upper class gent with a top hat, wearing a cape, and always carrying a black bag. The bag is iconic in the story of Jack the Ripper, as much as the dear stalker hat

is iconic in the image of Sherlock Holmes. So Leon Goldstein inadvertently gave rise to this this myth of the black bag, and the police didn't help because they never released the story of Mr Goldstein to the press, so it was never significantly reported. In fact, Goldstein's testimony at the Lehman Street station would stay tucked away in the police files for decades, like so many of Donald Swanson's

observations and conclusions. So as far as the press of the public knew, Mrs Mortimer's fleeing man with the mysterious black bag had vanished into the night, and in the time that followed, with fear, uncertainty, and doubt simmering in the minds of everyone fascinated by the murders, the mysterious black bag would loom large thousands of paper boxes were assembled at East End homes and then delivered to match factories and cigarette shops in bags and boxes of all

kinds at home. Assembly was the gig work of London, a crucial cog in the Empire's grandest manufacturing giants. But despite simply being a testament to the kinds of factory work done in the East End Leon Goldstein's Shiny Black Bag, but instead assume the mythic proportions of the killer himself.

Katherine Etto's inquest was different matter altogether, and there was a different man in the lead her murder in Miters Square took the case not only into the jurisdiction of the London City Police, but also across into the jurisdiction of a different corner. He opened proceedings on October four, and though it was a different man calling the witnesses and guiding the jury through the process of determining the cause of death, there was much about the process that

was familiar. Catherine's sister Eliza appeared at the inquest and offered the first hints about her life with Thomas, the traveling and the storytelling. Her recent partner, John Kelly, filled in the picture of their life in lodging houses and trips to the hops fields. The deep grief they expressed, echoes the other families whose voices come to us out of each inquest, telling the stories of women who could

not be brought back from the grave. Constable Watkins gave his testimony the circuits around the synagogue and through Miters Square, the gruesome discovery by the light of his lantern of the violence that the killer had to Catherine. But with different minds at work, new assumptions and new models of thinking were brought to bear. Take for instance, Dr Frederick Gordon Brown. He was the surgeon who examined Catherine's body, both at the scene and later in the mortuary for

her full post mortem. So he learned and informed the police and the coroner that the murderer had cut away Katherine Etto's uterus and one kidney. But where previous examinations had put forward the idea that a surgeon would have carried out these mutilations, Dr Brown took a different direction. I cannot assign any reason for these parts being taken away, he said. The parts removed would be of no use

for any professional purpose. And yes, although it would take someone with significant knowledge to remove the organs the way they had. It didn't need to be a doctor. Such knowledge, he suggested, might be possessed by someone in the habit of cutting up animals. The trail, in other words, could lead to a surgical office. It it could also lead

to a slaughterhouse or a butcher's shop as well. And then on October five, Donald Swanson received a third letter in red ink from the journalists at the Central News Agency. Once again, it made wild claims about the murders. The handwriting in red mocked the efforts of his investigation and threatened that every sex worker in London would receive God's judgment through the hand of the Whitechapel murderer. This time the letter ended threatening three murders at once, but that

pushed it beyond the bounds of believability. If Swanson, Aberline and Warren had previously considered whether the letters they were getting from the Central News could be genuine, this put a stop to it. There was no real question for them after that. The journalist who passed it along, Tom Bulling, was the one responsible for writing the notes and also then for drawing the police into his own little mind

games and away from the trail of the real killer. However, furious the police were that he had invented a story out of thin air, they just eidd it was not best to unmask him for the public. Charles Warren wrote saying he believed the letters were frauds, but with nothing more compelling to go on, it was too little, too late. Just like the Black Bag, the Red Ink letters were Jack the Ripper now, and the powers of Tom Bulling's imagination had made them a reality. But Bullyings mind games

weren't the only ones being played that month. On October six, Bryant and May told the police that they had received a letter of their own, which they turned over to the authorities for examination. Of course, like almost everyone else, they also told what they knew to the press, and that was published that Monday in the Daily News. Here's Dr Louise raw to read it for us. I here by notify you that I'm going to pay your girls a visit. I hear they are beginning to say what

they will do with me. I'm going to see what a fifth have have in their stomachs, army, and I will take it out of them so that they will have no more to do on the quiet. It signed John Ripper p s. I am in Poplar today. Well, it's an incredible letter, whether or not it was a hoax. What it says is so revealing, even a few lines if we break it down. So this person says, the reason who's going to attack the match women is I hear they are beginning to say what they will do

with me? Well, what does that mean? That means that the match women, rather than being understandably terrified that there is a killers talking their streets, are furious because what this means they're going to say what they will do with me? They're presumably saying, right, we're going to find that bastard, wait till we get our hands on him. They are threatening the Ripper basically, and why wouldn't they. After all, they were women who knew their own strength,

and they had a union to build. As horrifying as they were, the murderers weren't going to stop them. These women had already faced down the factory bosses, the middle class journalists, and even the esteemed members of parliament. Many Londoners may have been frozen in fear, but women like Mary Driscoll and the others of her union in the match factory weren't going to let the vicious attacks against their neighbors and the threats against them stop them from

banding together and fighting for their lives. The union was really active and they were probably more concerned and busy with that than they would have been worrying about the rip. I'm not saying they didn't worry. I'm sure when they walked down the streets at night they were concerned. But you see, they were always in danger. The Eastern was never a safe space if you were a working class women, so they always traveled in gangs. They had to be

prepared to come out fighting and no questions asked. So I think in that respect they would have been much more careful, but they were always used to being careful. They were always used to being on their guard and to not being particularly so. But if the match women and the other white chapel working people were focused on

fighting for their dignity in the face of opponents. Besides the undiscovered killer, much of London and the reading public beyond the city was only becoming more engrossed in the case. The letters that arrived with the press and the police flew in from amateur detectives across the country who saw patterns and possibilities in the newspaper reporting. They felt the police had missed and they let the officers know it. They begged for the police to spend more time in

the White Chapel sewers. They suggested that the police should follow the trail of a knife hand from the slaughter houses in the East End. But it wasn't just amateurs pitching in. After the Daily News published two sketches of a stout man based on the description of a man the constables had seen with Liz Stride in the hours before her murder, a letter arrived at Scotland Yard from the police in France. Passed through the consulates and the

Home Office. It said a man who much resembles the picture of the supposed murderer had been arrest As Dion, Warren and Swanson spent valuable time writing back and forth with the Home Office and the Consulate. They determined the man's identity and traced his movements back to England. In the end they confirmed that the man was simply a

laborer who had crossed the Channel looking for work. They were convinced he was not the man required in the midst of this postal barrage, one more parcel was delivered, this time not to the police, but to the desk of the man who chaired the White Chapel Vigilance Committee ever since they had organized the local business owners to lobby for a government reward. The committee had been led by a builder and decorator named George Lusk, and on October six a package arrived on his desk, a small

cardboard box that had a letter inside. It sent Lusk running for a local doctor and then to the Lennon Street police station, where it could be examined, photographed and passed along to Donald Swanson and then of course circulated between the Metropolitan and City police because the contents of the package were horrifying. The letter itself said the package held half the kidney taken from one woman. The other half, the writer said, had been fried and eaten. It ended

with a line that was half threat, half offer. I may send you the bloody knife that took it out if you only wait a while longer, catch me when you can, Mr Lusk, as promised, The package held half a kidney alongside the letter. The doctors who examined it all agreed it was the kidney of an adult human. Both police forces attempted to trace the sender, but their efforts failed. There was a return address, though, but it didn't help the police. Nevertheless, it's been pinned to Jack

the Ripper ever since. At the top of the paper it was said to come from hell. It was becoming the fashion, it seems. Who wasn't writing to the police. In an open letter published in The Times on October two, the clerk of the Whitechapel Board of Works lambasted Charles Warren for failing to catch the murderer. It passed along the horror of the board and it urged Warren to strengthen the police presence in the East End. The next day,

Charles Warren returned fire. He offered a predictable response to it, simply, wasn't his fault, So where did the blame lie? Well, he suggested that the women of Whitechapel, in his words, connived at their own destruction. They were asking for it, he seemed to say, if they were willing to sell sex. If a brutal murderer took their lives in the midst of that transaction, the police weren't to be blamed. To be honest, it was a disgusting instance of blaming the

victims for the crimes they suffered. It was one more terrible piece of evidence that the police did not see the women of Whitechapel as people they were meant to serve. But if that wasn't enough, he wrote to the clerk that the police had already strained every nerve to catch the murderer and act. He said, if the board wanted the police to get results, then they shouldn't push to

make police actions public. The very fact that the Board of Works was unaware of what Scotland Yard was doing was a sign, in fact, strong proof that the police were doing their work with the necessary secrecy and efficiency. How convenient was that, But October was the month when the police would set aside their precious secrecy and efficiency. Because however much Charles Warren might cast blame elsewhere and dismissed the criticisms against him, he knew the Metropolitan Police

were failing in their task. It wasn't just the man hunt that strained Warren's nerves either. There were also the increasingly urgent demands from the Home Secretary to produce some results. The notes from Secretary Matthews make him sound somewhat understanding and cooperative at the beginning of the month, authorizing money for Warren to station dogs throughout Whitechapel and making suggestions

for how to use them things of that nature. But within two weeks matters were not so pleasant, and ARLs Warren felt that pressure. October was the month that he would authorize monumental police action that would take Whitechapel by storm, starting with a massive house to house search. Here's Adam

Wood to explain what we know about that mobilization. This took place on the third of October, couple of days after the double event murderer and Watchapel was flooded with policing plain clothes at a house to house search was carried out and to give an idea of the scala that operation, the police issued some eighty tho leaflets to the households and lodgin houses in the area, pinning for information and in addition to the residents of the area,

more than two thousand people who were staying at the coming lodgin houses were questioned. The thing is whether the search was legal or not was questionable at best. It had been suggested by an MP and pressed on Warren by the Home Office. Warren had even passed along the remainder that there were streets in Whitechapel quite hostile to the police, and forcing entry might not be read it with open arms. Warren called the plan drastic and arbitrary. But whatever else you can say about the man, he

was certainly a loyal soldier. With the Home Office backing him, Warren carried out the plan and he brought everything to bear. I think it stretches the imagination that they would send not only watch up police, but they drafted in officers from other divisions to assist this. And they questioned every every household, every resident, searched the rooms. As I said, they questioned all the lodgers. I find it's a bit unusual that they would have just done that, not knowing

what to expect. They probably had a little bit of an under an idea or hope perhaps what they might uncover. It was a massive operation. It started on October three, but it took over two weeks for the Metropolitan Police

to search each and every home and lodging house. They scooped up dozens of people in their dragnuts and they made arrests too, and interrogations, and with an effort like that, there were demands for an accounting from the Home set greet Terry Matthews needed something to show that he was doing absolutely everything in his power and driving his police department to the same lengths, and the matter of drafting that report felt and none other than Donald Swanson here's

Adam Wood once more. Shortly after the house to house search, the Home Office demanded a report or an update on the ongoing investigation, and Assistant Commissioner Robert Anderson was annoyed at the time of this request. Um you know, he felt he felt there was more important matters for Swanson

and the Office officers to be attending to. But nevertheless, the report that Swanson wrote, dated the nine team of October was obviously a prize the Home Office at the time, but but for us researchers, it's invaluable because it gives the clearest picture of the police investigation into the murders at that point, and Swanson details each of the murders going right back to Elizabeth Stride, Margaret tabram Um, Mary and Nichols, Earn and Nannie Chapman and as well as

police investigation at that point, um And gave details of the house to house search we just heard about. Um And Swanson writes more than the three hundred people were investigated, as well as seventy six, which isn't slaughter men and all the sailors who were on at that point on board ships in the terms or or the various East End docs. I think all eighty of these people that were detained would have been questioned to some degree. You know,

some we easily dismissed, another's needed to be interrogated more closely. However, closely they were interrogated, though they didn't offer up anything conclusive to satisfy the Home Office. They had a laundry list of their efforts but no achievements. Suspects had been cleared, but none had been charged. The White Chapel Vigilance Committee had been pressing Matthew's hard, urging him to set a

large reward on the murderers capture. They had sent him a petition to put before the Queen herself, and the conversation wasn't one way. Matthews was also getting criticism from above as well. Word must have filtered down to him. The government were worried that he was bungling the administration of the country, and the White Chapel murders were at

the center of that concern. Queen Victoria had even gone so far as to write the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, saying that the Home Secretary was doing the government's harm. She thought that he had a general want of sympathy with the feelings of the people. With the coroners coming up empty and the massive police efforts falling shorts of conclusive arrests, it was a precarious moment for Matthews, and it gave him very little patience for someone else, Charles Warren.

On October twenty, the entire White Chapel Vigilance Committee called it quits after receiving the package from Hell. George Lusk just didn't have the will to go on, despite the police efforts to trace the killer to his hidden den. The other men who had gathered to protect their neighborhood were also discouraged. There was a lack of moral and material real support. They felt neither their neighbors nor their

government had done enough to keep Whitechapels safe. After the worry and anxiety and horror of that October they disbanded, but they weren't the only ones who had had enough. Charles Warren was right there with them. Policing London was hardly like surveying the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Nor was it like rallying volunteer cavalry to ride down South African insurrectionists, or leverage the political power of the Empire to pressure

Egyptian courts into criminal prosecutions. Warren had always been a man of imperial service, but in London he was a man under the imperial eye, and that meant not doing anything to ruffle the royal feathers or to give the government a bad name. But by the end of October of eighteen eighty eight it seemed that he was guilty of both, and if you remember, the year had already been trying even before the White Chapel murders became a

press sensation. And neither were the White Chapel murders. His first trial by fire in the press that came in the response to his police forces beating Londoners in the streets. And then well there was his relationship with the Home Secretary and all the rules of being police commissioner. When

he took the post. Warren had expected to be given free reign to pursue the development of his police forces at his own discretion, But when Matthews became Home Secretary, Warren found his leash was a lot shorter than he'd hoped for. When he forced Monroe to resign over the mcdonughton spats, he found that Monroe had then immediately been

hired into the Home Office. It's the sort of politicking that might drive anyone up the wall, especially when Warren learned that his Scotland Yard detectives were going to the Home Office to meet with Monroe more often than they were meeting with him. And when it came to using his government power to carry out invasions of London neighborhoods with dubious legal foundation, well maybe he was just following orders.

But Warren was done with all of that. He was ready to break a few rules, so he took action on the surf us. What he did may seem harmless to us, He wrote an essay. It was published in Murray's magazine with the title The Police of the Metropolis. Over the course of twenty pages, Warren set out to respond to all of the criticisms of his force. You can almost see the anger of White Chapel citizens that

he's responding to on each and every page. In his essay, Warren dismissed the criticisms that his police were too much like the Imperial military. He suggested that if there were problems in London, it was because the city's people chose to create panics and false alarms. If his police were better at beating people in the streets than solving crimes in the dark, then it was simply because they were honest,

straightforward Englishmen. In fact, he declared, it was well known among oriental and savage tribes very far afield that the word of an Englishman could be trusted. It's a shame, he seemed to sniff, that the people of darkest England weren't able to see how good and honest he really was. It's a huffing piece of writing. It tries to respond to all the criticisms Warren and his police had received

from the public. It's sneers at foreigners and at the malcontents of London who wouldn't take their beatings in grateful silence. And of course there were some who didn't take too kindly to that here's Dr Drew Gray. The article for Laura's magazine was his chance to have a goal of those who criticize and called for his resignation. And you just look at the reaction of the press to it. I mean, you know, the staff as a real go in for me. It says I wrote this down. A

more extraordinary document never found his way into print. It would be charitable to suppose that when he penned this remarkable addition to the literature of Conney Hatch, Sir Charles Warren was laboring under some unusual excitement. And for contents, Coney Hatch is London's largest lunatic asylum. So it's it's kind of like saying that he gone mad basically. But the Star was inflating its claims. There were plenty of

London officials writing blithe defenses of imperial violence. There's more to it than that, though, because by publishing such a prominent defense of the police, Charles Warren was overstepping one of the boundaries. He was breaking one of the Home Secretary's rules. And if the press thought that his essays showed that Charles Warren had gone off as rocker, while the Home Office saw it as a sign that he

was thoroughly off his leash. Here's Adam Wood once again. Well, it's interesting because Warren's article in itself was homeless enough. Has just just been about police administration, didn't didn't give any secrets away or anything that may be deemed to make it a horrific publication, and it was quite actually was well received by the newspaper reviews and commentators at

the time. But unsurprisingly, Warren run foul of Home Secretary Henry Matthews yet again, who wrote to remind Warren that it'd broken a rule that prohibited civil servants from publicly discussing matters relating to the Kimmons, and it was a confrontation of Warren's own making. Whatever he would say, it's likely he knew what kind of response he'd get. That the Home Secretary's anger was one final source of satisfaction that offered the Police commissioner away out Browbeaten by his

superiors once again, Warren throw in the towel. On November eight, he turned in his resignation on its own. His abandoning his post would have shocked the city even while it gratified his opponents, but the news reached London alongside a second, much darker revelation. Another woman had been killed in Whitechapel, and this one was the most horrifying murder of all. That's it for this week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around after this short sponsor break for a preview of what's

in store for next week. If Londoners feared that a police force given the authority to investigate crimes would also become a clandestine agency with a political agenda, well they didn't have to wait long. Soon enough, a branch of the detectives would be ferreting out members of a political

movement that we're making themselves known in London. But of course, as these things go, certain members of the public who might have rejected the idea of playing clothes officers sneaking around in alleys and back gardens of Londoners might eventually change their tune because as much as they hated a secret police, there were other things that they feared far more. Unobscured was created by me Aaron Manky and produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams and Josh They, being in partnership

with I Heart Radio. Research and writing for this season is all the work of my right hand man Carl Nellis and the brilliant Chad Lawson composed the brand new soundtrack. Learn more about our contributing historians, source material and links to our other shows over at history unobscured dot com, and until next time, thanks for listening Unobscured as a

production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit i heeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.