Anyone who thinks this fifty-one-year-old arsenic-head was going to sprawl on his deathbed while some scatterbrained girl murders him with his drug of choice might not be best qualified to examine the complexities of the so-called ‘Maybrick Mystery’. But ‘the Liverpool Document’ suggests just that. Its misleading christening by excited publishers as a ‘diary’ is something I don’t want to get into.
As a matter of fact, I don’t want to get into this document at all. Argument and counter-argument as to its authenticity is entirely counterproductive. Apparently various scientists, graphologists, ionising-ink experts, ultraviolet paper buffs, and even a clairvoyant have examined it. One proves it’s genuine, another proves it isn’t, and they’re all wasting their time. Personally, I couldn’t give a toss whether it’s real, fake, or written in Sanskrit. This document and its association with the word ‘mystery’ means you’ve got to junk all the crap and start thinking sideways. There’s an ancient Chinese adage: ‘When a finger points at the moon, the imbecile looks at the finger.’ Not that I’m accusing devotees of James Maybrick of imbecility, simply that they’re up the right arsehole on the wrong elephant.
Only two things about this document are of any interest to me: 1) The name Maybrick (which the text doesn’t actually mention); and 2) Its potent association with Freemasonry (which the text doesn’t mention either).
James Maybrick’s Freemasonry has been guarded as a precious ingredient of the ‘mystery’ for about 130 years, and as far as I’m aware is here made public for the first time. In a later chapter it will become clear why such effort has been lavished on keeping it a secret, and when you know it, you understand why.
James was a prominent Liverpool businessman, a provincial Mason of zeal and eminence, ‘initiated into the mysteries and privileges of Freemasonry’ on 28 September 1870, although he was clearly unaware of what kind of ‘mystery’ he was going to get. He remained an enthusiastic Freemason until the day of his murder in Liverpool in May 1889.4
It was almost certainly James who introduced his younger and equally zealous Freemasonic brother Michael to the Craft. He was initiated into the Athenaeum Lodge (1491), London, on 3 May 1876, at the age of thirty-five. Michael was a successful singer, songwriter and composer, a rising star heading for the glittering pinnacle of Victorian society. He knew everyone who was worth knowing, sharing especial friendship with Sir Arthur Sullivan and Sir Frederick Leighton, intimates of the Prince of Wales. Both Michael and James were Master Masons (M.M.) as well as initiates of Christian degrees (both eighteenth-degree) as practised under the aegis of the Holy Royal Arch.
But a more comprehensive biography must wait. For the moment, I want only to demonstrate how these brothers – both blood and Craft – were associated by Masonic osmosis with the Victorian Establishment, what Henry Austin called ‘government within government’, and my grandfather called ‘wheels within wheels’.5
I need briefly to return to the squabble of experts over the veracity of the Liverpool Document. The nub of the issue rests on a discovery made in the City of London archives by Mr Donald Rumbelow, a historian of notable expertise in Whitechapel matters to whom the record owes much. In 1987 Mr Rumbelow unearthed an original police list of Catherine Eddowes’ possessions, taken at or about the time her mutilated body was undressed for autopsy.
An officer, probably a policeman, recorded them as another called them out. One of the items he listed was
Tin Matchbox Empty
These three words are absolutely vital to the association of the name Maybrick with Jack the Ripper. ‘Tin Matchbox Empty’ is a perfectly reasonable statement for a copper in a gaslit shed in London in September 1888, but it tends to look a bit iffy on its reappearance in a scrapbook discovered in Liverpool about a hundred years later. The salient question is framed accurately by Mr Martin Fido, who writes: ‘This undoubted fact [the existence of the empty tin matchbox] was not in the public domain until 1987, so the journal [scrapbook] is either genuine or a very modern forgery.’6
It couldn’t be clearer, and I couldn’t agree more. If whoever wrote the scrapbook had means of knowing about the ‘Tin Matchbox Empty’ contemporaneously with the Ripper, then it is genuine, and has an unimpeachable association with the name Maybrick.
On the other hand, if there is no discernible source for this information, we’re left with the animated opinion of veteran Ripperologist Mr Melvin Harris. ‘Fido printed the police-list of Eddowes’ belongings,’ he writes, ‘and this provided the “diary” fakers with some telling references, and [Ripper author] Paul Feldman fell for them.’
And so did a lot of others. There are entrenched arguments on either side, with a lot of exclamation marks in between. On one side are disciples of the Harris school of certainties, and on the other individuals with a more open mind. I let Mr Harris speak for the former, disseminating characteristic misconceptions with his usual small-calibre popgun.
‘Feld’, as he uncharitably calls Feldman, ‘creates a little drama around one item [the empty matchbox]’, and ‘goes on to take up a page brooding over the mystery’. ‘There is no mystery,’ he squawks, ‘since the Diary is a modern forgery.’ The tin matchbox ‘was not in print until 1987, the fakers seizing on the box and other items, simply in order to scribe lines of doggerel’:
One whore no good, decided Sir Jim strike another
I showed no fright, and indeed no light.
Damn it, the tin box was empty.7
I’m sorry Mr Harris is no longer with us, but as my grandmother used to say of such personages, he was all hat and no drawers. Had he got off his one-eyed microscope and been able to widen his field of vision, he might well have been intrigued by a piece in Lloyd’s Weekly, dated 30 September 1888, published literally within hours of the ‘Double Event’.
Lloyd’s was the first newspaper in London to carry an account of the murders. It was a scoop shared in part by the Observer, which also reported the slaying of Mrs Stride and Mrs Eddowes on the very morning following their deaths.
The first thing I wanted to know was, who was the author of the Lloyd’s report?
At an early hour this [Sunday] morning two women were found murdered in the East End of London … many of the horrors of the recent Whitechapel murders are found to be repeated … Information of the crimes was quickly sent to the police stations of the district, and doctors were immediately summoned, the first to arrive being Mr F. Gordon Brown and Mr Sequeria. They made a minute examination of the body [Eddowes], Dr Gordon Brown taking a pencil sketch of the exact position in which it was found. This he most kindly showed to the representative of Lloyd’s when subsequently explaining the frightful injuries inflicted upon the body of the deceased.8
The emphasis is mine, banged in to demonstrate that Dr Gordon Brown was not averse to showing confidential material