|
 |
 |
|
|
|
** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Disappearances in london
Casebook Message Boards: General Discussion: General Topics:
Disappearances in london
Author: e.j. dekker
Sunday, 16 July 2000 - 12:42 pm |        | hi
In The Mammoth book of JAck the Ripper (eds Jakubowski & Braund) there's an article by Mark Daniel, entitled Ripper Saved Whitechapel Murderer. HE mentions on page 141, that in period 1881-1890, there were in London a "rash of disappearnces, particularly in the areas of East and West HAm (...) Children, men and women simply vanished from teh London streets, never to be seen again. (...) many of them seemed to know that somethinh was about to happen, and were torn between terror and fascination..."
Victims included
eliza Carter, Charles Wagner.
Doea anyone have any info on this?
thanks!!
eilish |
Author: Grailfinder
Saturday, 09 December 2000 - 11:18 am | | Hi Eilish;
When I first read your above post, I knew I had read an account of these Vanishings somewhere in one of the hundreds of books I own, and spent the next three days hunting down the book, unfortunately it had, like the story itself, vanished! and so finally gave up the search.
However this morning, whilst looking for my copy of 'The Complete works of Oscar Wilde' I found the story you are interested in. It was in a large box of books in the spare room, a box that I had searched at least three times while looking for your story, "Sods Law, eh!"
Anyway, the following account is called 'The riddle of the Vanishings' by Richard Whittington-Egan.
(Please note: this story is probably copyrighted, so my advice would be to make a copy or printout, in case we are asked to remove it from the Boards)
I have copied the story in full, and hope this is of help to you.
'The riddle of the Vanishings'
When people began to disappear without trace in Victorian London, the question 'Has Jack the Ripper come back?' struck fear into the heart of the capital.
Victorian London was a city of unsolved mysteries. Classic, and most widely remembered of these, is the series of Jack the Ripper murders which, in the "Autumn of Terror" of 1888, sent a frisson of fear crackling the length of the country.
Wrote a contemporary chronicler: "Horror ran through the land. Men spoke of it with bated breath, and pale lipped women shuddered as they read the dreadful details. People afar off smelled blood, and the superstitious said that the skies were of a deeper red that autumn."
Fearful epidemic
But there were other mysteries... just as horrifying...just as inexplicable! Perhaps the strangest was the fearful epidemic of disappearances which became known as "The riddle of the Vanishings." They centred on east London and came in two waves. The first in the year 1881-1882, and the second in 1890.
In those sparsely documented days, it was easy to melt into one of those swirling, saffron-yellow, pea-souper fogs and never be seen again. Easy to slip off some slimy quay steps into a reeking cut or canal. Or to plunge without taking thought down a narrow ally where a footpad or garrotter lay in wait in the darkness.
But the "Vanishings" presented an additional, to many people's way of thinking almost supernatural, dimension.
Let us begin with the case of Urban Napoleon Stanger, the vanishing Baker.
The owner of that curious and evocative name was a German. Born about 1843 in the Prussian spa town of Bad Kreuznach, in the Rhine Province of western Germany, Stanger was 25 and a master baker, when he married Elizabeth, 18, from his native town.
In 1870 or 1871, they came to England to seek their fortune and, after a short period of work and a dedicated spell of scrimping and saving, Stanger set up his own business at 136, Lever Street, City Road, in the East End district of St. Luke's.
Long suffering
Lever Street was in the middle of a densely populated area of London favoured by a community of ex-patriot and inward-turning Germans. Stangers bakery prospered.
Working in nearby St. John Street, was Stanger's compatriot, Franz Stumm.
He, too, was a baker. He, too, hailed from Kreuznach. But he had not done so well for himself and was glad to be invited to lend a hand - and earn a little extra - at his friend's bakery.
So the trio is completed...Urban Stanger, Age 38. By all accounts dull, unimaginative, mild-mannered, amiable and hard-working. His sole apparent interest: making and amassing money.
Elizabeth Stanger. Age 31. Superior in education to her husband, but described as a hard-faced, coarse-looking, rough-tongued woman, with a fondness for bedecking her stout, massively built person with showy dresses and cheap jewellery. A creature of moods, she is said to have alternated between slaving over a hot (baker's) oven from morn till eve in the shop, and sitting sullen upstairs sipping brandy until she would take to pelting the baker with his own loaves.
Franz Felix Stumm. Age 34. A black bearded, hook-nosed, corpulent and powerful-bodied, mercenary Lothario. Dark, deep-set eyes. The total effect exuding a definite air of cunning, a possible aura of malice.
Drinking night
On the edge of the circle, or rather triangle, was Stumm's wife.
November 12th, 1881, was a Saturday. Saturday night, busy week's end, was traditionally a night for going out for a drink.
Honouring tradition, Stanger went out with his friend, Stumm, and his employee, Christian Zentler, subsequently described as Stanger's 'journeyman baker.'
It was ten minutes to midnight when Stanger said goodnight to Stumm and Zentler and was, incidentally, seen doing so by two passersby of his acquaintance, Mr Kramer and Mr Lang. All four saw him enter his home. He was never seen again.
Naturally, the disappearance of Urban Napoleon Stanger set tongues wagging. Stumm and Mrs Stanger came under suspicion.
When, at eight o'clock on the Sunday morning, Christian Zentler, recovered from the previous night's bacchanal, presented himself at the baker's shop, he was promptly dispatched by an agitated Madame Stanger to fetch Franz Stumm. Her husband, she explained, had gone away and she wanted Stumm to run the business during his absence.
Stumm arrived-and stayed! Indeed, he seems to have found the entire arrangement so much to his taste that after ten days he ceased to go home in the evening and displayed every sign of having wholly abandoned his own business. Tongues wagged.
Weeks passed. There was no sign of Stanger. Enquiries after his health were told, as were those who called to see him on business, that private affairs had necessitated his making a hurried visit to Germany.
Prominent among those pressing for an interview with the mysteriously absent baker were two gentlemen in the flour trade, Simon Moll and Thomas Letch. Neither saw him.
Letch, however, received on November 15th, a cheque for £133-17s.-6d (£133.87half p), ostensibly signed by Stanger.
Moll had to persevere until the end of January, 1882, before managing to extract a cheque for £50 £25 in gold from Mrs Stanger.
Dreadful scream
If it was somewhat less than tactful in the circumstances obtaining for Stumm and Mrs Stanger to permit themselves to be seen out walking arm-in-arm one fine Sunday, Stumm was positively asking for trouble the day he painted out Stangers name from over the bakery and substituted his own.
Whose fault was it if the ugly word "murder" might now occasionally be heard among the suspicion-alerted neighbours?
Gossip took fire. There was talk of a dreadful scream, whose scimitar pierced the silence of Lever Street in the small hours of November 13th. It was rumoured that Stumm had been seen staggering along the City Road with a sinisterly bulging sack on his back.
Rumoured that "certain meat pies, prepared by Mrs Stanger, were composed of something that was not the flesh of any bull, sheep, pig, or horse."
If such things came to the ears of the police - and indeed they must have done - they took no apparent notice of them.
It was not until October, 1882, that any official action was taken. Stumm and Mrs Stanger were arrested.
The police had first begun to show interest in the disappearance of Stanger when, in April 1882 the following announcement appeared in a newspaper and on handbills and hoardings: "Fifty pounds reward. Mysteriously disappeared, since the early part of November last, from his residence No. 136, Lever Street, City Road, Urban Napoleon Stanger, master baker, native of Kreuznach, Germany. "Any person who will give information leading to his discovery will receive the above reward. Wendil Scherer, Private Enquiry Agent, 28, Chepstow Place, Bayswater."
Social call
This advertisement had been placed by John George Geisel, a friend and business colleague of Stanger who, together with a solicitor's clerk, William Evans, was Stangers executor.
In his will, made on July 28,1881, some fifteen and a half weeks before his disappearance, Stanger had left everything on trust to " my dear wife Elizabeth" for her life, or until she should marry again or cohabit with a male person, with remainder to the survivors of his two brothers, George and Ernest-Augustus, and three sisters. All five lived in Saarbrucken.
In May, Police-Constable Henry Imhoff, who had known Stumm when they had both been in New York long before Imhoff became a policeman, was requested by his superiors in the Metropolitan Force to pay an exploratory social call on Stumm and encourage a frank discussion with that gentleman.
It proved as fruitless as Geisel's advertisements. The story of how Stumm and Mrs Stanger came to be arrested is curious. Geisel ans Evans, as Stanger's duly appointed executors, had applied for warrants against them on charges of forging and uttering a cheque for £76.15s (£75.75p) with intent to defraud, and with conspiring together to cheat and defraud the executors.
On September 13 Stumm was brought before the Magistrate, and allowed bail in the sum of £100.
Mrs Stanger was arrested on September 28. She was found to be pregnant.
Stanger and Stumm made a joint appearance at Worship Street Police Court on October 4th. Stumm was remanded in custody. Mrs Stanger was released on bail, and two days later gave birth to a child. The case against her was subsequently withdrawn.
Feared judge
In December, Stumm appeared at the Old Bailey before the much feared Mr. Justice Hawkins - "anging awkins" as he was known to the criminal fraternity of the day.
At the end of a three day trial, the jury convicted on both charges. Whereupon Stumm, white with fury, gripping the rail of the dock as fiercely as if it were Sir Henry Hawkins throat, roundly cursed, demeaned and denounced his legal advisers and representatives.
Casting a cold eye, the judge told him in a voice of parchment: "Franz Felix Stumm, you have been convicted of a very wicked forgery, and you have not improved your position by throwing unmerited abuse on your legal advisers. I am to punish you now for the forgery you have committed and I take nothing into consideration except the fact that you committed that forgery under the circumstances which have been disclosed to the jury. In all the circumstances I feel it is my duty to condemn you, and I do condemn you, to be kept in penal servitude for ten years."
It was a hefty sentence. The stout German staggered beneath its impact, with visible effort pulled himself together, and said: "Thank you. I am very much obliged to you." Then, defiant insolence giving place to cold fury, he added with heavy contempt: "This is English justice is it not?" The judge simply signalled "Take him down." And Franz Felix Stumm vanished from the black limelight of the dock into the permanent blackness of an oblivion as complete, if not as mysterious, as that which had encompassed Urban Napoleon Stanger.
Different view
Some people said that Stumm had murdered Stanger. Or, alternatively, that Elizabeth had made away with her husband so that she could be with Stumm, and that he had helped her to get rid of her husbands body. How? By destroying it in the ready-to-hand incinerator of the baker's oven - or, the more gruesome (with a folk memory of the legend of Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street) hazarded, by mincing it up and serving it in Mrs Stranger's meat pies ... to become the equivalent of Mrs. Lovett's tarts!
But others, particularly in the light of later events, took a different view of things. They believed that the disappearance of Urban Napoleon Stanger was one of the first of "The Vanishings." Yes, they said, yes, Franz Stumm and Elizabeth Stanger probably were in love. And that was precisely why, when Mr Stanger mysteriously disappeared, they were absolutely terrified that they would be accused of having 'disposed' of him.
People do act foolishly under the stress of guilt, adulterous guilt, not necessarily murdered guilt. That is why they first of all told a tale of his having fled to Germany to escape the pressings of his creditors. But they had to tell a different story to Stanger's cousin, Otto Braden, because he knew Germany, had relations there, was in a position to check whether or not Stanger was in Kreuznach as they implied. So they fabricated the episode of a midnight quarrel, blows struck, recriminations hurled, and the angry baker walking out on his wife.
Lies, all lies. Admittedly. But...murder? Certainly there was nothing to substantiate it. Not even a hair of the missing baker's head remained to give evidence of foul play.
Police suspicion
The police suspected the worst, and top-flight suspicion meant the most raking confirmatory clue. But it drew a total blank.
All that remains to be said of the Urban Napoleon Stanger case must be accounted legend.
The rumour is that on his release from prison in 1892 - for Stumm proved a most difficult and troublesome prisoner, forfeiting all remission - he returned to an odd menage, consisting of his wife and the lady whom he described as "mein goot vriend" Mrs. Stranger, to Germany.
On January 28th, 1882, also a Saturday, just eleven weeks after the vanishing of the German baker, Eliza Carter, a pretty, 12-year-old child, set out at ten o'clock in the morning from her elder sister's house in West Road, West Ham, to go to her parents, who lived in nearby Church Street.
On her way she left some clothes in at a laundry. She was not seen after that until around 5pm, when she stopped one of her school friends in Portway, opposite West Ham Park, and told her some garbled story about being afraid to go home because of "that man". What she meant has never been clarified.
However - it was later reported that Eliza had been seen at about 11 o'clock that Saturday night. She was then with a middle-aged woman of unprepossessing appearance, dressed in a long ulster and a black frock. The following day a blue dress identified as "the one with buttons all down the front" which Eliza had been wearing, was found on a local football field - shorn of all its buttons.
Wide search
As in the case of Urban Napoleon Stanger, rewards were offered for news that would lead to the discovery of Eliza Carter, but from that day to this nothing has ever been heard of her.
The child's disappearance set folk remembering how, around Easter, 1881, a little girl named Seward had also disappeared from her home in West Ham, and how, despite a wide search and the offer of a reward, nothing was ever heard of her again, either.
The next to disappear, also in April 1882, was young Charles Wagner, the son of a West Ham Butcher.
In this case his body was found at the foot of a cliff at Ramsgate, 74 miles from his home.
There was no clue as to how the lad had got there. Even stranger, the body is said to have borne no signs of injury.
He had neither fallen from the cliff nor been drowned. The death riddle remained unanswered.
Barely a fortnight later, there was another vanishing in West Ham. This time, it was a well-to-do lady of 67 who disappeared from her home in Keogh Road.
No answer
On the evening of April 12th, 1882, she left her house, went to the shops in Stratford, and bought some soap and candles. The next morning, the postman, the milkman and various other tradesmen called at the house in Keogh Road as usual, but received no answer to their knocks.
Eventually the police forced an entry, fearing that something had happened to the old lady and that she might be in need of help. What they found was a kind of land-locked Mary Celeste mystery.
The Grandfather-clock was ticking away in the hall. The soap and candles had been stowes neatly away in the kitchen cupboard. The washing-up had been done. The bed made.
Everything in the house was in apple-pie order. But of the old lady herself, there was not a sign.
Five vanishings from east London within a year! No wonder the district had, for many years, a very sinister name.
The second wave of "Vanishings" broke over West Ham in January, 1890, when three girls, all living in the same neighbourhood, disappeared, one after the other. The fate of only one of them was ever ascertained.
Several weeks after she had disappeared from her home, the body of Amelia Jeffs, an attractive girl of 15, was found in an empty house in Portway, opposite West Ham Park (the same thoroughfare where Eliza Carter had been encountered by her school friend).
Amelia had been strangled. If the other missing girls had been similarly attacked, one might have expected that in the fullness of time, their bodies, too, would have been discovered. They never were.
Desperate fight
A medical examination established that Amelia had put up a desperate fight for her life, and it was generally supposed that she - and the others - had fallen victim to some wandering sexual monster.
In January, 1890, the terrible Ripper murders of little more than a year before, were still very much in the forefront of peoples minds and more than once the question was anxiously asked: Has Jack the Ripper come back?
Happily, as things turned out, there were no more vanishings after January 1890. The dreadful epidemic - as some truly believed it to be - had finally run its course.
The "Vanishings" were - and remain - one of the most disturbing and provocative mysteries of the Victorian Age.
------------------------------------------------------------
I hope the above account of the "Vanishings" is of use to you, I have included the Artwork that came with the article for you below.
Cheers |
Author: Sarah Pleasanrt
Tuesday, 03 April 2001 - 12:03 pm | | | This is quite fascinating, does anyone have any veiws on what really might have happened to these people? |
Author: Jeff Bloomfield
Tuesday, 03 April 2001 - 09:52 pm | | The Disappearances deserves more study, but usually end in just a review (almost word for
word) of what Elliot O'Donnell wrote about Stanger
and the others in STRANGE DISAPPEARANCES (1929).
O'Donnell mentions some of his sources (such
as the British newspaper, News of the World).
Guy B. H. Logan, GUILTY, OR NOT GUILTY? discusses
the vanishings of the children in a chapter about
a 1914 child murder that was unsolved. He points
out that the murders of children usually follow
their sexual mistreatment by the criminal, and
lists several cases in the 19th Century where
the silencing of the little victims followed the
initial outrage. More than likely Eliza Carter
was raped and murdered by some unknown pervert.
Michael Harrison discussed the vanishings in West
Ham in IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. He
must have remained fascinated by the story all his
life, for in his study of spontaneous combustion,
FIRE FROM HEAVEN, he mentions one of those odd
little notes that make things appear closer to us
in time and space, but really does not help us.
Harrison mentioned that he once was on a radio
program discussing the West Ham cases, and an
elderly woman called up who was a friend of Eliza
Carter, and spoke to her the last day poor Eliza
was seen. Eliza was frightened of a man who was
following her, who she did not know, but she was too scared to run away from him. One wonders what
power this creep had over Eliza, but we'll probably never will know.
Jeff |
Author: Ivor Edwards
Wednesday, 04 April 2001 - 01:34 am | | Although we hear a great deal about black slavery in the USA during the 18th-19th century very little is ever mentioned about British childen placed into white slavery.Many childen were kidnapped from the UK and shipped to America to work on the plantations of the South as slaves. Many disappearances of childen can be accounted for in this way. This trade was very predominant in the South of England especially the South West.
I have a copy of a letter received from a 14 year old English girl working as a slave in a Southern plantation.She was forced to live in a barn and her only clothing was a sack cloth. She had no shoes to wear and she lived on a diet of corn and whatever she could steal.Beatings were not uncommon. |
Author: Ivor Edwards
Wednesday, 04 April 2001 - 09:36 pm | | | Has anyone information on a Mrs Lilley,who is alleged to have lived several doors away from the stable in Bucks Row. On the night of the Nichols murder she heard whispering in Bucks Row,then gasps and moans.She roused her husband but a passing train drowned out any further sounds. Time around 3.30am. I need the source of this story and confirmation that it is fact and not fiction.Thanks. |
Author: Warwick Parminter
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 01:35 pm | | On Thursday August 31st 1972, The Sun newspaper, (G.B.) ran a daily article on Jack the Ripper. It lasted a week, and was based on the beliefs of a senior Scotland Yard detective. It starts,-- Ex-Detective Chief Superintendent Arthur Butler, a man with eight solved murder cases to his credit, presents his case exclusively in the SUN this week. His belief was that the Ripper killings were committed by a backstreet abortionist and her male partner. The mutilations were to hide the abortionist's failed work. The bodies were not killed where they were found, but,-(and this will please Ed) were transported by PRAM to where they were found! Despite being a senior officer, he gets a number of things wrong,-eg-coins at Chapman's feet, Kelly's intestines festooned around the walls of her room. Of Polly, he writes,-"she was seen by a friend alive and cheerful one and a half hours earlier. She had died a short time before her body was discovered. Yet not one of several constables patroling nearby could remember seeing her. It was as though Polly, a popular woman among others of her profession,had slipped past the constables and met her killer by appointment in the darkened street. A woman living nearby heard two people whispering in the street shortly before the body was found. Could they have been the abortionist and her accomplice in the act of dumping Polly after dreadfully mutilating her to hide evidence which would link her with them. He goes on,-- "I have no evidence that Polly was pregnant at the time she died, but I do know that she visited an abortionist in the area twice in the previous two years. Martha Tabram had a friend,-- Rosie Johnson or Johnston, but known as Rosie Lee. Rosie was pregnant, but knew a certain abortionist, Martha went with her to same and left Rosie with them. When she returned she was told Rosie had gone. She never did see Rosie again, but kept returning to the abortionist inquiring after her. The last visit ended in a blazing row and Martha leaving making threats. Martha was killed to keep her quiet, she was a nuisance, getting too close, and knew too much.
Butler thinks that Stride was a separate killing by another hand.
I kept the articles as they were printed, but I don't seem to have the last, and most important one,--CURSES
Rick |
Author: Christopher T George
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 03:23 pm | | Hi, Rick:
Thanks for sharing those articles with us.
Chris |
Author: Ivor Edwards
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 05:12 pm | | | Hello Rick,I join Chris in thanking you for the information. Ivor. |
Author: Rosemary O'Ryan
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 05:48 pm | | Dear Ivor,
Sounds like one of those brainier men of Scotland Yard. I wonder what happened to him/:-)
Rosie Lee |
Author: Ivor Edwards
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 06:41 pm | | Your right there Rosemary, Probably someone took him for a ride in a pram and left him
somewhere.!!! :-) |
Author: Jeff Bloomfield
Thursday, 05 April 2001 - 08:54 pm | | Dear Rick,
If there is anything to this story about the
abortionists and the pram, it leads us back to
the chief candidate for "Jill the Ripper", Mary
Eleanor Pearcey. After all, she did use Phoebe
Hogg's daughter's parabulator to transport the
corpses of Phoebe and the infant through Hampstead, away from her home, in 1890.
Jeff |
Author: Jeff Bloomfield
Wednesday, 06 June 2001 - 09:22 pm | | Well, having looked into The Times again yesterday, I decided to look into the matter
of the disappearances of 1881-82, 1890, in West
Ham. I am by no means finished with this work,
but just what I located taught me much.
The first thing it taught me (or reinforced in me)
was the realization that printed texts in books
are not, necessarily, so sacred that they can be
repeated ad nauseum as fact. In the case of
the West Ham mysteries, the stories are repeated
as ... well stories, chiefly for the goosebumps.
The actual tragedies involved are secondary.
Let me demonstrate: The following passage is
from Elliott O'Donnell's book, STRANGE DISAPPEARANCES. My edition is a paperback
reprint from Carol Publishing Group from 1990,
but it was originally published in the late
1920s or early 1930s (no better date available).
[P.292 - 296]:
"I cannot conclude this volume without referring, albeit very briefly, to the remarkable
number of disappearances that occurred in the
eighties and early nineties of the last century
at West Ham.
These disappearances gave the district for
many years a very sinister name. The epidemic, for it seems to have been little else, may be
said to have reached its climax with the disappearance of Eliza Carter.* [* See "Penny
Illustrated Paper," February 4th, 1882.] Eliza
Carter, a pretty little girl of twelve years of
age, left her sister's house in the West Road at
10 a.m. to go to her parents, who lived close by
in Church Street.
On the way she left some clothes at a laundry, and was not seen again after that till
about five o'clock in the afternoon, when she stopped one of her schoolfellows in the Portway
and told her she was afraid to go home because of
some man.
About eleven o'clock that night she was reported to have been seen with a middle-aged
woman of unprepossessing appearance, dressed in a
long ulster and black frock, and after that nothing more was ever heard of her again; but a blue dress, shorn of all its buttons, and identified as the one she had been wearing, was
picked up the following day on the local football field. Rewards were offered for news of her, but in vain, and, as far as the public are concerned,
her fate remains a mystery to this day.
About Easter time in the previous year a little girl named Seward,** [**See "Penny Illustrated Paper," March 25, 1882.] also
disappeared from her home in West Ham, and, despite the offer of a reward by the Director of Criminal Investigations, nothing was ever seen or heard of her.
In April 1882, Charles Wagner***,[*** See
"Penny Illustrated Paper", April 15th, 1882.]
son of a West Ham butcher, disappeared, but in
this case he was definitely proved to have met
with foul play, his dead body being found under
a cliff at Ramsgate.
A few weeks later there was another disappearance**** [**** See "News of the World,"
May 7, 1882]in West Ham, the missing person this
time being a lady of the mature age of sixty-seven.
Possessed of considerable private means, and
with, as far as was known, no serious worries or
troubles of any kind, she left her home in the Keogh Road on the evening of April 12, 1882, and
bought some soap and candles in Stratford. The postman, milkman, and various other tradesmen called at the house in the Keogh Road as usual in the morning, but received no answer to their knocks, and on the police eventually forcing an entry, as it was feared somehting must have happened to the old lady, it was found that she was not there. The grandfather clock was ticking away in the hall, the soap and candles which the old lady had purchased were neatly stored in the kitchen cupboard, and everything was in apple-pie
order; but of the old lady herself there was no sign, and, from that day to this her fate has
remained a baffling mystery, since no clue to it
of any sort was ever found.
After this West Ham enjoyed a comparative immunity for some years. There were disappearances and tragedies, but they were occasional and spasmodic. In January,1890,
however, a seier or epidemic of disappearances
again occurred. Three girls, all living in the
same neighbourhood, disapppeared, one after the other, and the fate of one only of them was ever
ascertained.
The body of this one, an attractive girl of fifteen named Amelia Jeffs, was found several weeks after she disappeared from her home, in an empty house in the Portway, facing West Ham Park;
and a medical examination of her remains proved
that she had been strangled, but not before she had made a desperate fight for her life. This
discovery led to the supposition that the other missing girls had met with a similar fate, and it was generally supposed the crimes were committed by some sexual maniac with homicidal tendencies,
some nightmarish monster that, under the cloak of
a respectable exterior, prowled about the more quiet of the West Ham thoroughfares, on the look out for juvenile victims of the female sex.
One is apt to jump to the conclusion that all
criminals of this class are men; indeed, Feminists,in their propaganda of the usual anti-male description would lead us to suppose that such is the case; but they are wrong. Some, at
least, of the assassins of children have been
proved to be women.
Hence the idea that Amelia Jeffs and the other girls who disappeared, but whose bodies were never found, were decoyed by a woman, must not be too lightly dismissed. Women are as
susceptable to the lowest forms of mania as men."
Note that O'Donnell does include footnotes (which
I have reproduced) to show his sources for the
story. However, he seems to pick the most sensational part of the press when he gives a
cite, and thus blots out some better reporting
that might have been available. A point in
question is the issue of the three girls who
disappeared in 1890. As shown later, this was
a stupid mistake.
The name of Michael Harrison is associated with
the theory that Jack the Ripper was not the
Duke of Clarence, but his Cambridge tutor, and
possible lover, James Kenneth Stephen. But he
was a Victorian scholar, and a fan of Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle's character, Sherlock Holmes. He
wrote, IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES in
the 1950s, and my paperback copy is a Berkeley
Windhover book, published by Drake Publishers, Inc., of New York City, dated 1972. It is not a
bad way to get a good view of Victorian London,
and life in the 1870s - 1890s. But he is dependant on secondary sources. Unlike O'Donnell
he does not include footnotes (except one referring to Holmes which I will omit). His
bibliography is limited: "I have had necessarily
to leave out all but the principal aids to my
literary research." He does not mention O'Donnell's book in the bibliography.
P. 215 - 217:
"Almost immediately after that, disappearances began to be reported frequently: we shall consider
a few of the most widely publicized, noting that,
though this phenomenon of disappearance was nation-wide, there were foci of vanishment, notably about the East London suburbs of East Ham
and West Ham.
A girl named Seward vanished at East Ham, around the Easter of 1882; in the April of that
year -- the month in which [Wendel] Scherer
advertised for the missing Urban Napoleon Stanger
--Charles Wagner, son of a West Ham butcher, disappeared in the most mysterioius circumstances,
his dead body being found at the foot of some cliffs at Ramsgate (74 miles from London) -- a
fact which was doubtless recalled to [Sherlock]
Holmes's mind, twenty-five years later, in the case of The Lion's Mane. Young Wagner's body,
however, bore no signs of injury: his being one
of the few disappearances to be followed by the
finding of the body.
On April 12th, 1882 -- again note the month
and year -- a 67 year old woman, possesed of
considerable private means, left her home in Keogh
Road, West Ham, in order to do some shopping --
the shops, in those days before the passing of
successive Early Closing Acts, remaining open until a late hour at night. The lady purchased
soap and candles, and presumably took her purchases home.
Presumably.... But after the postman, the
milkman, and various tradesmen had, for several
days running, been unable to get an answer to
their knocks, a policeman forced an entry.
The soap and candles that the woman had been
known to buy were lying in their wrappings on a
hall-table. But there was no woman. She was
never seen again.
A year later, Eliza Carter, a pretty little
girl of twelve, left her elder sister's house in
West Road, East Ham. The time ten o'clock in the
morning: Eliza was off to see her parents in nearby Church Street.
On her way home, Eliza left some soiled
linen at a laundry, but did not go on to her paernts' house. She was not, in fact, seen again, until about five o'clock in the evening,
when she stopped some schoolfellows in the Portway,and told them that she was afraid to go home 'because of a man'. The most mysterious
aspect of Eliza Carter's disappearance is that she
did not aske her friends to escourt her home.
Again she vanished -- temporarily. Then, at
about eleven o'clock on that same night, she was seen in the company of a middle aged woman 'of
unpropossessing appearance, wearing a long ulster,
and a black frock."
On the following day, a blue dress, identified
as Eliza's was found on the football field at
East Ham. The buttons had vanished as completely
as Eliza.
So the disappearances continued all through
the decade. Then the name, 'Portway' which had
acquired so sinister a significance in the case
of the missing Eliza Carter, reappeared in the
newspapers, in connection with a mass-disappearance: that of three girls in January
1890.
One and only one was to turn up again: strangled, after an obviously desperate fight for
her life. This was Amelia Jeffs, aged fifteen,
whose body was found in an empty house in Portway,
facing West Ham Park. Weeks had passed since the
vanishing of the three girls.
It being suspected that the same 'unprepossessing' woman who had been seen with
Eliza Carter had been responsible for the luring
away of the three girls, seven years later, the local Coroner delivered himself of this (for 1890,
most enlightened) opinion: 'Women are as susceptible to the lowest forms of mania as men.'"
Careful reading of Harrison (despite some color
he adds to the story - Eliza is now bringing
"soiled" linen to the laundry (what type of
clothing is brought to a laundry?)) shows he
has cribbed the story from O'Donnell, and has
made mistakes as a result. Seward (whaterver
her first name) disappeared a year before Eliza,
and the newspaper account O'Donnell cites was
from March 1882 - possibly a late news report,
or a mistake by O'Donnell. But Eliza vanished
in 1882, not 1883. O'Donnell mentioned that the
old lady (whose name is so aggrevatingly missing)
had put her soap and candles into their proper
storage places. Suddenly it is on a table
unwrapped. O'Donnell said that Charles Wagner
was found dead at the base of a cliff. Suddenly
(an incredibly) Harrison says he had not been
injured? Well if it was natural causes, certainly
it would have been mentioned, though why the boy
travelled 74 miles to a distant cliff to lie down
and die is extroadinary to think about.
Harrison also has garbled up the conclusion of
O'Donnell's account, and come to the wrong
conclusion. O'Donnell never said the coroner
suggested that a woman was behind the death of
Jeffs (and the coroner did not, as we shall see).
O'Donnell was simply musing that there was no
reason to limit the killer to being a male. In
his attempt to show he was on top of his information, Harrison read poorly and decided
O'Donnell was paraphrasing the coroner.
Due to limitations in my schedule, I looked at
The Times of London for only February and March
1890, to see what was the actual story of the
murder of Amelia Jeffs. The issues I looked at,
for anyone looking them over, are those of Saturday, Feb. 15, 1890, page 7 col.f [which
tells of the discovery of Amelia's body]; Tuesday,
February 18, 1890, page 12, col. b-c [the start of
the inquest]; Tuesday, March 4, 1890, page 11 a-b;
and Tuesday, March 11, 1890, page 4, col.f.
One thing came out very quickly in the initial
report of 2/15/90. There were no mass disappearances of three girls in West Ham in
January 1890. Only Amelia had disappeared. What
led to the three girl error that both O'Donnell
and Harrison so passionately believed in. It seemed that a local religious leader, Canon Scott,
whose day school Amelia attended, mentioned to the
authorities that this was not the first time a
local girl vanished. "Canon Scott informed the
magistrate that some four years ago two young
girls disappeared under somewhat mysterious
circumstances from the same street in which Amelia
Jeffs resided." What did Scott mean? I think his
memory telescoped events. Remember nine and eight
years ealier two girls, Seward (whatever her first
name was) and Eliza Carter both vanished, and they
lived near where Amelia lived. From this innocent
mistake, O'Donnell and Harrison built up the
fantasy of three girls vanishing at one time in
January 1890.
Amelia Sarah Jeffs lived with her parents, Charles Albert Jeffs and Mary Anne Jeffs, at
38 West Road, West Ham. Charles Jeffs worked as
a machinist on the London, Tilbury, and Southend
Railway Company at Plaistow. Amelia was born on
March 12, 1867, and was approaching age 15 when
she was murdered. Descriptions of her suggest that she was tall and good looking. She was also
a good scholar at Canon Scott's school. She left
her home to go to the school on January 31, and
was last seen waiting on a street corner at
West Road, apparently waiting for somebody.
Afterwards, Amelia was supposed to get fish and
bring it home in a basket she was carrying. When
she did not return from school her mother went
there, and Canon Scott said she had not been to
school. She had also failed to go to the fish
store. Mr. and Mrs. Jeffs waited until midnight, hoping that Amelia would return home.
When she did not, they went to the West Ham Police
Station. Police inquiries began at that point.
The case was assigned to Detective-Inspectors
Wildey and Langrish, with Detective-Sergeant Forth.
No clue arose until February 12 or 13, when a man
who had gone to an empty house at 126, Portway,
West Ham. The man complained to them about some
terrible odor in the house. Detective-Sergeant
Frederick Forth of K Division searched the house on February 14. On the top floor Froth found a cupboard that had been locked. The door was forced open, and Amelia's body was found. Near her body was her basket. A piece of rope found about her neck, which was used to strangle her. But the evidence that eventually came out showed that Amelia had first been raped.
Initially attempts were made to see if Amelia had
a boy friend. None ever turned up. Amelia had
been out of Canon Scott's school for a year, and
spent part of the period (from April to September
1889)with an aunt at Weston-super-Mare. She also
worked as a nurse-girl for a Mrs. Knox in
Stopford Road for one month leaving it to help
her mother (who was having a baby).
The Inquest was held at King's Head Public House,
West Ham, under Mr. C. C. Lewis, the South Essex
Coroner.
The main points brought out at the inquest were
these:
Initially the public had believed that Amelia and
the murderer entered the house from the back,
by a window. But the back of the house (one of
a set of houses - more of that shortly)had a muddy
field in back of it - so muddy that one could find
up to six feet of mud in spots when one walked.
There was no speck of mud on Amelia's clothes,
and on her boots' heels and soles. So she and
the killer entered the building from the front.
They had to come in together (no mudstains in the
house). Moreover, it was unlikely that a frightened Amelia would have willingly stayed
around to go in, if the killer was a stranger and
he left her to open the house by a rear window.
But here you had a major problem. It seems that
126 Portway was one of a set of three buildings
that had been being constructed over a period of
three years. There were constant problems between
the builders, and the landlord (a Mr. Dashwood)
about expenses and payments. The stonework for these buildings was being done by Mr. Joseph
Roberts, whose father, Samuel Roberts occasionally
was the watchman on the site. In fact, the local
children (including Amelia) called Sam Roberts,
"Daddy Watchman". Sam kept denying ever hearing
this at the inquest, but the Coroner was assured
that witnesses could be brought to show he was so
called.
Finally there was the mystery of the key to 126
Portway. A large set of keys to all the buildings
was given to Joseph Roberts by Mr. Dashford to
let him go into the buildings to do the work he
had to. And Joe gave the keys to "Daddy Watchman"
when he did not need to carry them. But at some
point, possibly when a Mr. Warren had to install
some pipes in the house, the keys were returned, and apparently the key to 126 wasn't returned. At
least, so it appeared in March 1890, when the police could not find it on the chain. Yet, Joe
Roberts kept insisting the key had never been
missing, and he had always had access to the house
at 126. To add to this problem about the Roberts,
there was Joseph Rendlesham Roberts, the son of
Joe Roberts. He claimed he decided to go through
the houses, and when he went into 126 he saw nothing amiss (and claimed there was nothing in
the cupboard). All he found was empty lemonade
bottles (from the workers, or Amelia and her killer). Eventually Joe Jr. admitted he was not
quite sure of the day he went through, or if it
was 126 he visited. Joe Jr. is described (in The
Times of March 11, 1890) as "a smart lad of about
13". That places him into Amelia's age group.
Joseph Senior was asked about his whereabouts
on the evening of January 31, 1890. He mentioned
he spent most of the night from 8 P.M. to midnight
at the West Ham Conservative Club. However, his
father could not be absolutely certain about time
regarding Joe Sr.'s movements. The fact that
Joe Sr. was a member of the local Tory Club should
not astound us. Joe Jr. mentioned (in passing) his mother was one of the members of the West Ham
Board of Guardians).
The Coroner was being aggrevatingly even handed
in his final summation. He had to be...it was
one of those annoying cases where it is clear as
crystal who knows what really happened, but the
parties are stone-walling it and you can't get
at them (unfortunately, in 1890, DNA evidence was
so far in the future nobody even could guess it
existed). Mr. Lewis said that the evidence in
the house, especially a footprint in some dust,
showed Amelia did struggle against the rapist, and
the latter killed her to silence her. Lewis
also said, WHOEVER TOOK AMELIA INTO THE HOUSE DID
IT THROUGH THE FRONT, AND MUST HAVE HAD THE KEY,
AND THAT JOE JR. "must have made a mistake" WHEN
HE SAID HE CHECKED THE CUPBOARD AND DID NOT FIND
THE BODY THERE.
The jury (unlike the one in the Bravo Inquest,
fourteen years before) did not drop final words
from the classic wording of the verdict. After
28 minutes they returned with a verdict that the
deceased was outraged and wilfully murdered at
126, The Portway, West Ham, on night of January
31, by some person or persons unknown. The
foreman of the Jury, a Mr. Cherry, said that the
Jury wished to draw attention to the dark and
incomplete state of the roads in the neighbourhood, and would be glad if the Coroner
would draw the attention of the local authorities to their unfinished state. Mr. Lewis agreed to
do so. That concluded the inquest.
Yes, in the legal sense the killer of Amelia
Jeffs (and his accomplices?) were never brought
to justice, but reading between the lines of the
account of the inquest, I suspect "Grandfather
Watchman", Joe Sr., and Joe Jr. must have had
a rather harsh time of it for the remaining years
they were in West Ham, even with the good old
West Ham Conservative Club and the West Ham Board
of Guardians.
Jeff |
Author: Peter R.A. Birchwood
Friday, 17 August 2001 - 12:43 pm | | The following are messages off the Fortean Times message board where there's been some discussion about Conder and the disapearances. I've editted out a certain amount of disagreement between the writer and another. You'll find the full discussion on: www.forteantimes.com
East End Disappearances and Ritual Sacrifices The writer Tom Slemen recently broadcast a documentary about his slant on the Jack the Ripper murders and maintained that Eliza Carter and other people who vanished were victims of a sacrificial murder cult that had connection with Claude Reignier Conder (Jack the Ripper) and a mysterious Colonel Robert Cooke, who was accused of burning a baby in a Satanic ritual in the early 1880s. The documentary has been snapped up by NBC and many magazines and newspapers across the world. The documentary can be heard in real audio format on: www.bbc.co.uk/radiomerseyside
I HAVE heard of Tom Slemen, at last count he had 12 books out, and Paul Begg - leading Ripperologist - believed Slemen has a very strong case for Conder being Jack - you obviously haven't read or heard the documentary. Whitehall now says that (a) Conder's cousin was a close friend of Walter Sickert and that Claude did visit Charles under the pretence of a brotherly visit when in fact, Claude was keeping an eye on the Russian anarchists and Fenians of Whitechapel and Spitalfields. Conder was not only an occultist and best friend of Sir Charles Warren, he was a trained killer and an Oriental and Altaic student |
Author: Jon
Friday, 17 August 2001 - 01:18 pm | | Thankyou Peter.
Here's an extract from a site devoted to the Conder name:
Charles Edward Conder brings us full circle. The family disapproved of his vocation as a painter and sent him off to Australia to get over it. Instead he bloomed under the Australian sun. The Conders, despite their descent from the sculptor Roubiliac, seemed a family with no time for such artistic nonsense, their men were soldiers of the surveying and engineering type. Take his cousin, Major Claude Reignier Conder, Leader of the Palestine Exploring Expedition of 1871 - 78, where he was assisted by Kitchener from 1874. Claude was the author of a succession of works of Biblical Archaeology whose mission was to establish once and for all the disputed dimensions of the Temple of Jerusalem and to give a map reference for the site of Calvary. He was also the explorer of the water tunnel at the Pool of Siloam and identifier of the territories occupied by the grandsons of Noah as well as author of a Note on Various Traditions as to the Place Where Messiah Should be Born, Jerusalem 1876.
Excavations at the site of Solomon's Temple had been initiated by Charles Warren, later to be Police Commissioner at the time of the Jack the Ripper murders. It is not entirely surprising that Claude Reignier Conder should be the latest figure to be named as a Ripper suspect, his Masonic association with the Police Chief protecting him from arrest. There would appear to be a nest of Ripper conspiracy theorists in Liverpool and this latest one was announced on Good Friday, Friday 13th April 2001 on a Merseyside Radio Station. Though it may not amount to an alibi, as such, I can report that Conder's book on Palestine dated 1889, a précis for the general reader of the Palestine Explorations, seems a disappointingly rational piece of work.
http://www.btinternet.com/~j.b.w/elg2.htm
http://www.skyeklad.com/wwwboard/messages/1011.htm
http://www.100megsfree4.com/farshores/nripper.htm |
|
|
|
|
