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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2899
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, December 02, 2005 - 1:05 pm: | 
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This is the account of two young ladies underway in the first-class carriage of a train on its way through Swiss Cottage and beyond, where their attention is drawn to a 'young man of gentlemanly appearance'.
At Swiss Cottage all the passengers disembark the carriage apart from the two young ladies and the young gentleman, as the train enters the nearby tunnel, the young gentleman pulls a long knife out of his coat and threatens to kill the pair of them while waving the blade in their faces.
He is described by the ladies as 'acting like an escaped lunatic'.
Well, he probably was.
I can find no actual date for this reference apart from that the incident took place in 1888.
Any further information most welcome. |
Phil Hill
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Phil
Post Number: 1055
Registered: 1-2005
| | Posted on Friday, December 02, 2005 - 3:43 pm: |
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AP - do we know, did he harm the 2 ladies? Or did he just frighten them?
phil |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2901
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, December 02, 2005 - 3:49 pm: |
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We don't know, but the suggestion is that he merely scared the hell out of them.
Next station came up shortly, passengers were waiting to get on, and he jumped off and ran away. |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 5335
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Friday, December 02, 2005 - 4:45 pm: |
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I have tried the Times - not a sausage.
Robert |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2904
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, December 02, 2005 - 4:56 pm: |
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I've been everywhere as well, Robert.
All I ended up with was train time tables and the like. Mind you Sherlock swore by them.
In 1888 there was a frequent service from Swiss Cottage to Baker Street, for both the City and (by omnibus) the West End, and a half-hourly service to Willesden Green and beyond.
From: 'Hampstead: Communications', A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 9: Hampstead, Paddington (1989), pp. 3-8. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=22632. Date accessed: 02 December 2005.
The branch (Metropolitan & St John's Wood Railway) from Baker Street was originally single track to Swiss Cottage, and was extended towards Finchley Road with the idea of a junction with the LNWR and subsequently the MR. |
Jeffrey Bloomfied
Chief Inspector
Username: Mayerling
Post Number: 982
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, December 03, 2005 - 12:55 am: |
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Hi A.P., Phil, and Robert,
Two things come to mind (actually three, but of these three two run into each other).
First, Swiss Cottage had a sinister connotation in 1888. In 1845 it was the site, near Hempstead Heath, of the murder of James De La Rue, by Thomas Henry Hocker. An understudied classic homicide, Hocker almost threw the police off his scent by use of a fake letter found on the victim suggesting the murder was not a robbery killing but a vengeance murder.
The other point (or points) concerns the fact that it is a railway assault case - in 1881 the second known English railway murder, that of Frederick Isaac Gold, occurred on the Brighton line. Percy Lefroy Mapleton would eventually be tried, convicted and hanged for that killing. That case would still be quite well recalled in 1888. Here is the other section of this second point. I just said that the murder of Mr. Gold was the second known railway murder (the first being that of Thomas Briggs by Franz Muller in 1864). But over the years I have noticed that there were many railway assault cases that criminal historians have ignored commenting about, and also some mysterious deaths on English railroads that were never properly classified. This attack at Swiss Cottage may be an isolated incident, or it could have been part of a series by a criminal who had not been tracked down before.
Best wishes,
Jeff |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 5339
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, December 03, 2005 - 5:30 am: |
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Thanks for that, Jeff. Amazing that the Times has several reports on people travelling without tickets, etc, but none apparently of this incident.
Robert |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 5343
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, December 03, 2005 - 2:05 pm: |
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Posted Swiss Cottage on wrong thread. Here it is.
(Message edited by Robert on December 03, 2005) |
Diana
Chief Inspector
Username: Diana
Post Number: 885
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, December 04, 2005 - 12:11 am: |
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Just to muddy the waters a little more. I think that after JTR did his thing quite a number of not so well balanced individuals decided it would be fun to go around brandishing knives and scaring women. Many such coattailers crop up here and there in the JTR saga. When I hear something like this I wonder if this person was JTR or just another coattailer. |
Stephen Thomas
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, December 03, 2005 - 2:59 pm: |
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Thank you very much, Robert. What is 'The Horrors of Whitechapel' that this page is from? This is most interesting as it places a Thomas Cutbush-like character (knife wielding 'young gentleman') in 1888 as opposed to 1891. By the way the two young ladies would have got on the train at Baker Street, not Burke Street as the pamphlet says. A pity Sherlock Holmes didn't get on the train with them. |
Stephen Thomas
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, December 03, 2005 - 11:47 am: |
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Tantalising stuff, AP. I lived near Swiss Cottage for several years on Broadhurst Gardens where Walter Sickert used to live. The area is usually called West Hampstead. The name 'Swiss Cottage' comes from a pub built in 1840 in alpine chalet fashion that was originally known as the Swiss Tavern and is still there and very nice too. Interestingly it is quite close to Camden Town where Thomas Cutbush was wandering about in 1891 with a knife in his pocket. Basically it's the same area of London. Obviously the 'young gentleman' did not know that the next station, Finchley Road, was only half a minute away. Must have been a South Londoner. |
Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 2392
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 06, 2005 - 5:04 am: |
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Hi All,
Keith Skinner, writing to me on Saturday morning, asked if I would like to post the following:
The story has curious resonances with the letter from Forbes Winslow's wife where she makes the suggestion that JTR lives in the north of London. She enclosed in her letter a newspaper cutting which ran the story of a strange affair on the North London Railway, where a young lady was terrified by a gentleman passenger who slipped away at Haggerston Station. The newspaper speculated whether this may have been JTR.
Mrs FW would have ignored the story had not she recalled an earlier incident about two ladies, travelling on the same line, who had got out at Finchley Road after being frightened by a well dressed young man in their carriage, who had taken out a knife and conducted himself like a
madman.
I'm not sure of the background to A.P.Wolf's enquiry - and he probably is aware of this letter anyway - but, if not - and it helps - then glad to be of assistance.
Keith
Love,
Caz
X |
Alan Sharp
Chief Inspector
Username: Ash
Post Number: 832
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 06, 2005 - 5:41 am: |
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The story seemed familiar to me so I've been having a look through all my Irish material. But what I was thinking of was another strange incident on a train. In the way that various stories got confused and muddled in the telling, it could relate to the same incident or be related in some way. This is from the Dublin Evening Mail, November 26th, 1888.
The effect of the “Jack the Ripper” scare is showing itself in various ways. It is leading to the perpetration of all sorts of idiotic eccentricities and so-called “practical jokes,” as well as to indulgence in a semi-hysterical form of dread, the consequences of which are both peculiar and extremely inconvenient. Two remarkable stories - both of them well authenticated - are told to-day. At eight o’clock on Saturday night a young lady in the service of the Civil Service went to the Broad-street Station to catch a train, and in the hurry of starting was hustled into a first-class instead of a third-class compartment. As a porter was about to shut the door, a tall, gentlemanly-looking man, who wore a silk hat and carried a black bag, attempted to enter the carriage. The porter, however, closed the door hurriedly, remarking “There’s plenty of room in the next compartment.” The gentleman took the hint, and stepped into the train, just as it started to leave the station. Nothing was thought of the matter by the young lady, though she was surprised, soon after quitting the terminus, to hear the door of the next compartment violently slammed. A minute or so passed, and then the young lady was startled by the appearance of a thin white hand on the carriage window on the right-hand side of the train. A face next appeared at one of the windows, a pale, thin face, with staring eyes and a determined mouth. The young lady sat almost petrified with fear, but with sudden presence of mind she pulled up the window with a rapid movement and held on to the leather like grim death. The first glance convinced her that the man on the footboard was the same individual who had tried to enter the compartment before leaving Broad-street, and she was equally certain that he was attempting to open the window which she frantically pulled towards her. Just when her strength was failing, and her nerves giving way under the strain, the familiar sound of the break on the train came to her ears, and a few moments later the train drew up at the platform of Haggerston station. Then the strange face disappeared as strangely as it had come, and the young lady on stepping onto the platform, saw the mysterious individual hurrying away among the crowd and became lost to view. She reported the strange adventure, but though a search was made the man with the black bag had disappeared.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me" - Hunter S. Thompson (1939-2005)
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 5347
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 06, 2005 - 8:38 am: |
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Thanks everyone. Stephen, it's from 'Leather Apron; or, the Horrors of Whitechapel, London, 1888' by Samuel Hudson, published 1888.
Robert |
Andrew Spallek
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Aspallek
Post Number: 1007
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 06, 2005 - 12:04 pm: |
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The mention of the Swiss Cottage railway station brought something to mind. Wasn't Thomas Sanders (one of the three "insane" medical students traced to an address at St. John's Wood? Today St. John's Wood is only one station removed from Swiss Cottage, although in 1888 there was an intervening station as Marlboro Road. Traveling from Baker Street the Swiss Cottage, the train would pass through St. John's Wood. Just a thought.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/clive.billson/tubemaps/1889.html
Andy S. |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 2923
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 06, 2005 - 1:04 pm: |
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Thanks for all that folks.
It is rewarding to get confirmation from other sources for the material that Hudson quotes.
There are a number of 'railway' incidents in 1888, and I have come across the 'gentleman' peering in through the window before.
Another interesting one - but I'm not so sure that it is 1888 as I haven't looked at it for some time now - is the case where the lady actually flees the carriage from a maniac and continues the journey on the footboard of the train.
Regarding Cutbush connections, one must not forget the case where a young Cutbush girl - was it Eliza and was it 1888? - was sexually assaulted on a train journey in London.
I must dig that one up again.
Great to have some feedback here and my warmest thanks to all concerned. |
Stephen Thomas
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, December 10, 2005 - 4:21 pm: |
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Alan Sharp,
Thanks for that article from the Dublin newspaper in 1888. But let's face it, this is pure 'urban myth'. I heard an almost identical story when I was very young long before I had heard of Jack the Ripper. And the whole story is super dramatic, 'cinematic' even, long before cinema was invented. Wonderful stuff but not surely a description of real events. I realise that you must already must know this but other people here may not, and might take it as a piece of serious journalism. But then again, that is the whole point of 'urban myths' i.e. that they sound like the Gospel truth. Maybe it happened. Who knows?.
Best Wishes. |
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