WE publish a few - a very few - specimens of the feeling of the police force about Sir C. Warren. We could give our readers plenty more - by the score, by the bushel if they please. Our reporters have only got to talk to the first policeman they chance to meet on his beat in order to get his opinion of his chief, often expressed with that tropical luxuriance of phrase for which the force is famous. It is "War on Warren" with a vengeance. The only piece of advice we venture to tender the superintendents, inspectors, sergeants, and constables who are dissatisfied with the Chief Commissioner is not to talk to our reporters but to Mr. Matthews.
THE Pall Mall is a wonderful journal. It suggests that instead of bludgeoning Londoners in Trafalgar-square Sir Charles Warren should be commissioned by Lord Salisbury to shoot Arabs and Boers on the Zambezi. Well, there would be no doubt that under Sir Charles the shooting would be effectually done; but the notion that our Chief Commissioner was any more of a success with savages than with Socialists is one of those pleasant delusions which a cursory study of the pigeon-holes of the Colonial Office would speedily dissipate. Sir Charles was in Africa what he is in England, a maladroit martinet, embroiling himself with all and sundry. We have far too much consideration for the Zambezi folk to want to see a Puritan Jingo making good practice at them with Bibles and bullets. He and his class have done quite enough mischief already.
HAVE we a murderous maniac loose in East London? It looks as if we had. Nothing so appalling, so devilish, so inhuman - or, rather non-human - as the three Whitechapel crimes has ever happened outside the pages of Poe or De Quincey. The unravelled mystery of "The Whitechapel Murders" would make a page of detective romance as ghastly as "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." The hellish violence and malignity of the crime which we described yesterday resemble in almost every particular the two other deeds of darkness which preceded it. Rational motive there appears to be none. The murderer must be a Man Monster, and when Sir Charles has done quarrelling with his detective service he will perhaps help the citizens of East London to catch him.
Sir Charles Warren is on tour in France, and will not be back for a fortnight. It is rumored Mr. James Monro, C.B., will shortly take up a portfolio at the Home Office of a quasi-Fouché order.
Women Lured to Bye Streets to be Butchered - The Latest Victim Identified - Opening of the Inquest - Great Local Excitement.
The victim of the latest Whitechapel horror - the woman who was found yesterday morning in Buck's-row completely disembowelled and with her head nearly gashed from her body - was for a time completely unknown. As the news of the murder spread, however, first one woman and then another came forward to view the body, and at length it was found that a woman answering the description of the murdered woman had lodged in a common lodging-house, 18, Thrawl-street, Spitalfields. Women from that place were fetched, and they identified the deceased as
who had shared a room with three other women in the place on the usual terms of such houses - nightly payment of 4d. each, each woman having a separate bed. It was gathered that the deceased had led the life of an "unfortunate" while lodging in the house, which was only for about three weeks past. Nothing more was known of her by them but that when she presented herself for her lodging on Thursday night she was turned away by the deputy because she had not the money. She was then the worse for drink, but not drunk, and turned away laughing, saying, "I'll soon get my 'doss' money; see
She was wearing a bonnet which she had not been seen with before, and left the lodging-house door. A woman of the neighborhood saw her later she told the police - even as late as half-past two on Friday morning - in Whitechapel-road, opposite the church and at the corner of Osborne-street, and at a quarter to four she was found within 500 yards of the spot murdered. The people of the lodging-house knew her as "Polly," but at about half-past seven last evening a woman named Mary Ann Monk, at present an inmate of Lambeth Workhouse, was taken to the mortuary and identified the body as that of
also called "Polly" Nicholls. She knew her, she said, as they were inmates of the Lambeth Workhouse together in April and May last, the deceased having been passed there from another workhouse. On 12 May, according to Monk, Nicholls left the workhouse to take a situation as servant at Ingleside, Wandsworth-common. It afterwards became known that Nicholls betrayed her trust as domestic servant, by stealing £3 from her employer and absconding. From that time she had been wandering about. Monk met her, she said, about six weeks ago, when herself out of the workhouse, and drank with her. She was sure the deceased was "Polly" Nicholls, and, having twice viewed the features as the body lay in a shell, maintained her opinion.
There is a terribly
between this ghastly crime and the two mysterious murders of women which have occurred in the same district within the last three months. In each case the victim has been a woman of abandoned character, each crime has been committed in the dark hours of the morning, and more important still as pointing to one man, and that man a maniac, being the culprit, each murder has been accompanied by hideous mutilation. In the second case, that of the woman Martha Turner, it will be remembered that no fewer than 30 stabs were inflicted. The scene of this murder was George-yard, a place appropriately known locally as "the slaughter-house." As in both other cases there was in this not the slightest clue to the murderer - no one was known to have any motive for causing the woman's death. She was parted from her husband, and had lived with a man named Turner, but the searching coroner's inquiry revealed nothing connecting either with the crime. It was fancied that some of her many wounds had been caused by a bayonet, and she was said to have been seen with a soldier shortly before her death. Some soldiers were paraded at the Tower, and one was said to have been identified by a policeman as having been waiting about George-yard just about the time of the murder. But nothing came of it. The first murder, which, strangely enough, did not rouse much interest, was committed in Osborne-street. The woman in that case was alive when discovered, but unconscious, and she died in the hospital without recovering her senses, consequently she was unable to whisper a word to put the police on the track of her fiendish assailant, and her murder has remained a mystery. All three crimes have been committed
Each of the ill-lighted thoroughfares to which the women were decoyed to be foully butchered are off turnings from Whitechapel-road, and all are within half a mile. The fact that these three tragedies have been committed within such a limited area, and are so strangely alike in their details, is forcing on all minds the conviction that they are the work of some cool, cunning man with a mania for murder.
There was no new light thrown on the case this morning. At nine o'clock the body of deceased was removed from the mortuary to an improvised operating room on the premises, and Dr. Ralph Llewellyn made a post-mortem examination. The object of the examination was to determine if possible, the order in which the various cuts were made. It is evident from the cuts in the throat that the head was bent back by the murderer before the knife was used. Whether the other mutilation took place before or after death remains to be settled, as also the position in which the woman lay when the deed done. There are several questions of this kind which may throw light on the case, notably the small quantity of blood at the place where she was found and the fact that there must have been much of it somewhere else. At present
are entirely lacking, and the location of the place where the deed was done was the first point necessary to establish.
While the medical examination was in progress, an officer arrived from the Bethnal-green Station with two men, who were regarded as possibly able to throw some light on the case. The first was a man who keeps the coffee-stall at the corner of Whitechapel-road and Cambridge-road. He said that at three o'clock yesterday morning a woman answering the description of the deceased came to his stall in company with
Both men were allowed to view the remains, but
The coffe-stall keeper said he did not think it was the same woman, but was not sure. The woman, if it was the same, had grown thinner in the face. Scorer said that deceased was neither his wife nor her friend Nicholls, so far as he could remember.
This afternoon at the Working Lads' Institute, Whitechapel-road, Mr. Wynne E. Baxter opened the inquest on the body of the unfortunate woman. The desire that no time should be lost in tracing the perpetrator of the atrocity prompted the Coroner to commence his investigation as early as possible, although his arrangements for the day had been fixed before information of the crime reached him. In order, however, that the police should not be in any way trammelled in their duties, and that they should have the advantage of having any information in their possession tested on oath, he decided to at once get through the preliminary formalities of the inquest. On behalf of the police authorities, Inspectors Helston and Spratling, J division, were present, as well as Inspector Abberline and several members of the detective force. It is needless to say that there was a great amount of morbid interest displayed in the inquiry. The jury, having been sworn, went to view the body.
(Proceeding.)
No matter with what member of the force The Star man met it was still the cry of dissatisfaction.
"You are having some pleasant news just now in Scotland-yard," said a Star man this morning to a detective.
"Oh, yes, and the more we have the better for the force. There's a lot of clearing out needed there."
"Then the men are not satisfied with the present state of matters?"
"They are not; some may be so far as some things are concerned, but generally speaking no man cares for the present system."
"What do you mean so far as some things are concerned?"
"Well, I mean Sir Charles would put down a great deal of the meanness in the force that is a disgrace to it. He could put down drinking and loafing about, and let the smartest men get promotion. Before his time old chaps without any principle, and unable to read or write, got the stripes; but all the same he is not popular."
"How is that?"
"There is
about him, and he is a tyrant. There are too many inspectors and that sort of thing, and as a rule Army Reserve men, or men who have served their time, get these positions, and they know nothing about police work. There are too many old soldiers in the force and they're the worst men. They come from the regiments, well recommended, and Sir Charles does not like to refuse them, and these soldiers are no use as policemen. They sleep at their posts, and Sir Charles acknowledges that. Men from the country make the best men. Old soldiers don't do for going among the people."
"The men would be glad to see Sir Charles going?" - "Yes, very glad, and it is the rumor in the Yard that
It is said he is going to get an appointment in Africa. That would suit him, but he is destroying the force here with his military notions."
"What about Mr. Monro's resigning?" - "He could not agree with Warren. He was over the Criminal Investigation Department, and he did not want the Chief to interfere. The Chief wanted to know everything, and Mr. Monro would not have it. Mr. Monro is a good policeman. He is well up in police duties, and the best man, and he is well liked. It is said that Mr. Monro will come back again as Chief."
"You might," added the old man, "if you're writing anything, say the men would like to have a public audit of the accounts. They pay 3d. or 4d. a week to the pension and other funds, and they would like to know how the money is going. They are a bit suspicious, and the public they think should know more about the working of the Yard."
A portly superintendent of police, well known, strange to say, for his good nature and intelligence, interrogated by a Star reporter, said, "Yes, it's true enough what the Daily News says: Sir Charles seems to think a soldier and a policeman the same thing. Why we could not carry out our duties but for our long training. How can soldiers know anything about the control of criminal classes in London? These military chief constables are really useless. There is no work for them to do."
A young, smart police-constable, who declared he had left "the service" to don the blue, laid all the blame of the countless disturbing orders and circulars issued by Sir Charles Warren to the fact that he was an engineer. "Sir Charles, you see, sir, is a gunner, and everyone in the army knows engineer officers are famous for firing off orders on every possible occasion."
An inspector gave the explanation of the present restless feeling of the police as the result of Sir Charles mixing up the plain clothes with the uniform branch, and exercising a system of espionage over the head men, which tended to lower their authority with the rank and file.
