Ring any bells? Probably not if you’re writing an article for the Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, but they look like a pair of compasses to me. Let us hear it again from Bro Warren, recalling the most indelible adventure of his Masonic life. Among the stones of Solomon’s Temple, he wrote, ‘the next visitor will see … the Square and Compasses, as cut by our hand’.
‘A Master Mason, in teaching apprentices,’ writes Masonic historian Bro Dr J. Fort Newton, ‘makes use of the Compasses and the Square.’1 Over the next few pages I want to explore the proposition, to examine whether these curious symbols meant anything to Warren. (The compasses on Mitre Square. Ha ha.)
But a problem immediately presents itself, and it’s the same problem that faced Jack. The scene of Eddowes’ murder on the Square wasn’t in Warren’s manor, so if he’s to enjoy the ‘Funny Little Game’, some ingenuity must be employed. The question was, how could Eddowes be connected with Stride, the duo becoming the single and simultaneous presentation of a ‘Double Event’ to the tortured and ridiculous Boss Cop?
As with Annie Chapman, Jack cut Eddowes’ pockets open. As with Chapman, he was looking for all things metal. His hunt for metal was part of the ‘Funny Little Game’. No novice Mason can decline this timeless ritual, and in Jack’s Masonic nightmare, nor could any victim.
Every piece of metal in Eddowes’ possession was removed, and strewn about her body. They included tin boxes, a tin matchbox, a small metal cigarette case, a knife, a metal teaspoon, a metal thimble ‘laying off the finger’, and several metal buttons ‘found in the clotted blood after the body was removed’. The rules of the psychotic game also demanded body parts. Trophies. Eddowes’ left kidney and uterus were extracted with rudimentary skill. These organs ‘would have been of no use for any professional purpose’, noted Dr Brown, excusing himself of any support for Baxter’s ‘Womb-Collector’.
When Jack had finished, he sliced off a piece of Eddowes’ apron – ‘about a half of it’, according to testimony given at the inquest. These Victorian aprons were around nine feet square. So we’re looking at a sizeable piece, something in the order of four or five square feet of cloth. The consensus amongst Ripperologists is that he used it to wipe blood and excrement from his knife and hands. But he could have done that just as well without cutting it off. I think he used it to wrap the kidney and uterus (the Telegraph described the purloined sheet of apron as ‘wet with blood’, suggesting more than a hand-wipe).
Although Eddowes had satisfied the signatory requirements of Jack’s idea of fun, one thing was missing from the equation, and that was Warren. It was probably at this juncture that the metaphorical light went on. Rather than discarding the repugnant piece of cloth (wrapping body parts or not), the Ripper decided to convert this specific of City evidence into an intriguing ‘Metropolitan clue’. It’s my view that he carried this piece of apron out of one police jurisdiction and into another simply because he didn’t want to entirely throw away the success of Eddowes on City Commissioner Smith.
For about fifteen minutes he walked east with his apron and his trophies, back into Warren’s precinct of the Met. Why he didn’t run into a tidal wave of coppers following the Stride murder isn’t explained. Were there no patrols out hunting him? Apparently not. The police didn’t seem to be bothered with him any more than he seemed bothered by them. Warren’s claim that he had saturated Whitechapel with extra police requires explanation, and will later be exposed for the fairy tale it was. ‘By the supineness and fatuous stupidity of the police,’ jibed the Yorkshireman, ‘one would have thought that for their own credit’s sake the authorities would have organised such a system of espionage and patrol over that terror-ridden portion of the metropolis that an attempted repetition of such crimes would be instantly detected.’
Meanwhile, the ‘lair’ idea has taken a bit of a bashing. Jack wasn’t looking for anywhere to hide, and he still had some way to walk. Had any copper cared to stop him, he might well have wondered what this man’s business was with a nine-inch blade and bits and pieces of a woman’s body. But no one was going to question Gentleman Jack, and he knew it.
And here’s something of interest. After leaving the Eddowes crime scene, Jack vanished for the best part of forty-five minutes. During this time the kidney, and almost certainly the uterus as well, were transferred into a preservative – subsequently determined, for the kidney, to be spirits of wine (i.e. alcohol). Trophies pickled, he was left with the piece of bloody apron. Virtually every other assassin on earth would now be scurrying anxiously to conceal this tell-tale piece of evidence, to destroy it in any way he could.
But not Jack.
At about 2.30 a.m., doubtless spruced up, he emerged from his inspired choice of digs. He was looking for an appropriate surface on which to write his funny little Masonic teaser for Warren, and he found it in the entrance of some tenements in Goulston Street, Whitechapel. The wall was black, and so was the passage. He could stand off the street without being seen. It was in this doorway that he left his bloody clue and, having a stick of chalk about him, wrote on the wall above it:
The Juwes are
The men that
Will not
be blamed
for nothing.
About half an hour later a thirty-three-year-old constable called Alfred Long was proceeding down Goulston Street. His beat that evening had brought him past this doorway before, but he’d noticed nothing unusual. Now he stopped and shone his light at the writing on the wall.
I was on duty at Goulston Street on the morning of 30 Sept: at about 2.55 a.m. I found a portion of apron covered in blood lying in the passage of the doorway leading to Nos 108 to 119 Model Dwellings at Goulston Street.
Above it on the wall was written in chalk ‘The Juews [sic] are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.’ I at once called the P.C. on the adjoining beat and then searched the staircases, but found no traces of any persons or marks. I at once proceeded to the station [Commercial Road] telling the P.C. to see that no one entered or left the building in my absence. I arrived at the station about 5 or 10 minutes past 3, and reported to the Inspector on duty of finding the apron and the writing.
The Inspector at once proceeded to Goulston Street and inspected the writing. From there we proceeded to Leman St [police station] and the apron was handed by the Inspector to a gentleman I have since learned is Dr Phillips. I then returned back on duty at Goulston Street about 5.2
Police Constable Long obviously believed he’d found something of importance, otherwise why post the guard and get the Inspector? The Inspector obviously concurred, otherwise why at once proceed with Long and his evidence to Whitechapel’s most senior cop at Leman Street? It was the first disastrous move of this notorious night.
Other than for his description of the discovery of the piece of apron and his rush to Leman Street, Long’s account is unsound on virtually every level. It had been tailored to harmonise with the requirements of his superiors, most notably Warren, but also Thomas Arnold, the fifty-three-year-old Superintendent of H Division at Leman Street, who went into zombie-like mode to take charge of the proceedings.
The first hint of iffiness about Long’s account is its date. His report is not that of a constable on duty in late September, but a curious retrospective written about five weeks later. It is curious too that Warren and Arnold should have created their retrospective accounts of the Goulston Street saga on precisely the same date, 6 November 1888. Even by the risible standards