Ghost of Whitechapel Page 4

  ‘As I told you a little while ago, consider that official,’ said Dobbs.

  ‘But what do you think, guv?’

  ‘That I’m not going to like it if the newspapers raise him up from the dead,’ said Dobbs. ‘They’ll land him on my back.’

  ‘Those reporters are sniffing about in search of his live bones,’ said Ross, ‘and they can’t wait to get gnawing.’

  ‘There’s one way, laddie, of burying the bones.’

  ‘What way?’ asked Ross.

  ‘Handing them a story about a prime suspect who could never be the Ripper.’

  ‘You’ve got one in mind, guv? The bloke Godfrey?’

  ‘I’ve already chucked him at them,’ said Dobbs. ‘That reminds me, if Godfrey shows himself, he’s probably not our man. If he doesn’t, he’s probably a prime case for investigation. Meanwhile, I’ll think of a suspect that’ll do Fleet Street in the eye, the kind they can’t turn into the Ripper. Say a mad female.’

  ‘Christ, guv, would you flannel ’em to that extent?’

  ‘All’s fair in law and war, my son,’ said Dobbs. ‘Now give this file back to Robinson and tell him to re-bury it as soon as possible. That means immediately. Then find out if our artist has finished the sketch of Maureen Flanagan. He should have, he was back from the mortuary some time ago. I want to hawk it around the West End this evening and find out if any of the tarts can tell us where Flanagan’s – um – business pitch was. I’ve got a feeling it was somewhere in the West End.’

  ‘You’ve got an idea, have you, guv, that that’s where the villain might be hanging about, looking for another throat?’

  ‘You worked that out on your own, sunshine?’ said Dobbs. ‘Well done. Yes, if we go looking we might run into Godfrey.’

  Chapter Three

  BRIDGET HAD BEEN out when Daisy returned from her triumphant sally into the den of the laundry superintendent. Daisy was a bit disappointed she hadn’t been able to communicate her good news immediately to her stalwart sister. Still, never mind, it didn’t affect the happy outcome. She just hoped Bridget wouldn’t do anything silly out there. It was like her, to go and help the starving workers in their fight against the bosses, but she could get very aggressive on behalf of the downtrodden, and if the police turned up in force, there was no telling what she’d do. Nothing aggravated her more than a police uniform. The police, she often said, were traitors to the poor because they were always on the side of the bosses.

  Mr Pritchard had been home for his midday meal, but hardly touched his food. His wife’s agitated description of how the police had talked to her about the murder of Maureen Flanagan had taken the stuffing out of him. He needed a drop of the hard stuff to pull himself together. Seeing there was none in the house he finished off what was left of his wife’s port. That fortified him a bit, although more details of the visit by the men from Scotland Yard hardly made him happy. What with one thing and another, it was the kind of day neither he nor his shaken missus liked at all.

  At three-twenty, Mrs Pritchard, ignoring shocked and whispering neighbours out on their doorsteps, set off for the Jug and Bottle of the local pub. The afternoon was bleak with rising grey mist that threatened to turn into fog, but that was a small handicap to a woman in need of a new bottle of port. On her way she met Mr Oxberry, a newcomer to the neighbourhood, a gent down on his luck who had managed to get a part-time job with a shop in the Strand, a gentlemen’s outfitters. He worked there from nine till three.

  ‘Oh, ’ello, Mr Oxberry, ’ave you ’eard the ’orrible news?’

  ‘What news, Mrs Pritchard?’

  ‘It’s Miss Flanagan,’ said Mrs Pritchard heavily, ‘she was found murdered in Tooley Street this mornin’ with ’er throat cut, poor woman.’

  ‘Good God,’ said Mr Oxberry, a dignified-looking man in his early forties, ‘can this be true?’

  ‘She didn’t come back to ’er room last night, yer know, and no wonder she didn’t,’ said Mrs Pritchard. ‘The police ’ave been round about it, and what with them and all me neighbours comin’ round as well, I’ve suffered the kind of palpitations I wouldn’t wish on me worst enemy.’

  ‘I’m appalled,’ said Mr Oxberry, ‘such news is ghastly.’

  ‘I never felt more ill meself,’ said Mrs Pritchard, ‘I’m still shakin’ all over. Me own lady lodger, would yer believe, Mr Oxberry, comin’ to an ’orrible end like that, it don’t bear thinkin’ about.’

  ‘It’s terrible,’ said Mr Oxberry. ‘I’m truly appalled. Poor Miss Flanagan. I’ve had very little to do with her, but I’ve sighted her from time to time and said good morning to her.’

  ‘I don’t know I’ll be able to see the day through,’ said Mrs Pritchard, her face burdened with gloom, its redness of a paler shade that usual. ‘She was such a cheerful woman and all. I told the police that I just ’ope Jack the Ripper ain’t turned up again.’

  ‘I’m sure he hasn’t, Mrs Pritchard. Calm yourself on that score.’

  ‘I’m goin’ to get a bit of refreshment to cure me shakes,’ said Mrs Pritchard. ‘Just a small bottle of port.’

  ‘Yes, do that, Mrs Pritchard, and if I can help in any way, just let me know.’

  ‘You got a kind and sympathetic ’eart, Mr Oxberry,’ said Mrs Pritchard, and went worriedly on her recuperative journey to the pub.

  The afternoon had only been a little misty when, at one o’clock, striking workers of the East End began their preparations to march and demonstrate. By four o’clock, however, fog had arrived as a shifting mass that curled thickly around the street lamps of London and all but hid their light. At four-thirty, a woman was crossing Tower Bridge, peering into the murk. Not far behind her walked a tall gentleman in an overcoat and bowler hat, a Gladstone bag depending from his left hand, a walking-stick in his right. The woman was making hurried progress because of the fog and despite the fog. His own progress was measured and careful. She was a flitting figure, and she increased the distance between them, so that when she turned to make her way towards Cable Street and her home, the fog had swallowed her up. Her disappearance was of no consequence to the gentleman, although he turned towards the streets of Whitechapel himself in a little while.

  The old were already by their firesides, such as firesides were in the slums of Whitechapel, the fires themselves fed by anything but coke or coal. Ragged kids foraged for fuel by night as well as by day, laying eager hands on anything that would burn and keep a kitchen fire going. In some kitchens at night the kids slept on the floor, feet to the fireplace. Thin, peaky and near to starvation, any kind of warmth at night secured them a little comfort.

  Old Queen Victoria, ailing and frail though she was in the sixty-fourth year of her reign, nevertheless demanded action from her Prime Minister to alleviate the lot of subjects suffering abject poverty. Her Prime Minister assured her, not for the first time, that her Government was determined to take the necessary measures to improve conditions.

  Some hopes. There were always strong factions in Westminster convinced that to improve the lot of the poor would make them get above themselves.

  At this moment, hordes of the poor of the East End were creating bedlam. A continuous muffled roar issued from the area of battle. The fog, shifting and restless, hadn’t yet affected the determination of striking workers to make war on the factories and sweatshops of the East End, nor the efforts of the police to resist them.

  What a battle it had been and still was, fought between the starving men and women of Whitechapel, Spitalfields and Shoreditch and the uniformed forces of law and order. Since early afternoon, the dingy streets of Whitechapel had been swarming with people desperate for a living wage, their ragged kids hovering on the fringes of the mobs. The factories and the sweatshops of the East End had been grinding their workers deeper into the gutters of abysmal poverty for years, and the workers had finally taken to the streets, threatening to close the factories down and to set fire to them unless conditions and wages were improved.

  De
struction of the factories will mean there’ll be no work at all for you, said the bosses, and you’ll starve. You bleedin’ capitalists, we’re starving already on what you pay us, said the workers. Give us a decent wage. Make do with what you get, said the bosses, instead of spending it on drink. That’s done it, said the workers, we’ll burn you down if you don’t cough up out of your profits. Our profits are meagre, lied the bosses, and we can’t afford any rises.

  After an hour of this angry but vain dialogue, the workers went into action, and the bosses called on the police to protect their property. Things turned nasty then. The strikers swarmed, the police produced truncheons, and pitched battles began. The forces of law and order, defending the factories, wielded their truncheons vigorously, but were outnumbered and hard-pressed. The noise was an uproar of angry people close to the kind of starvation that meant early death.

  Queen Victoria, hearing of the riot, called on her Ministers to put right that which had driven the strikers to resort to civil warfare. Her Ministers, however, chose to support the right of employers to fix wages, and to back the police in whatever measures were necessary to protect property and to ensure the re-establishment of law and order.

  The workers, unlike the bosses, had to fight their own battles and did so with fists, boots, sticks, bottles, clubs and fire-raising methods.

  Near Wentworth Street, Whitechapel, one factory was alight and burning furiously, while the mobs impeded the progress of fire engines. Close to Brick Lane, the police were defending other buildings against a surging mob of people led by a popular local advocate of fair wages, Bridget Cummings. Bridget, with her strong and buxom figure that no amount of hunger had ever been able to reduce, was well-equipped to be in the fore-front of the fighting. Even though she didn’t sweat in a factory herself, she was heart and soul with those who did. The mob she was leading included fire-raisers, men and women who were carrying pails of hot coals or burning rags or bottles of paraffin. Backing them up were workers wielding clubs and sticks. And some men and women carried bricks for the smashing of windows.

  Police whistles were blowing in attempts to summon up reinforcements, and some such had arrived at the north end of Brick Lane, where they were trying to fight their way through the fog and the rioters in an effort to help defend threatened factories. The restless fog swirled, hampering the workers as much as it was hampering the police, but Bridget and her followers were determined to get at the largest factory, an engineering works that as good as sucked the blood from the men who worked there. Her great mop of black hair had lost its pins and was tossing about, her straw hat hanging by its pin at the back of her head, her face flushed with righteous anger and effort.

  ‘Charge, will yer, charge!’ she shouted at men and women behind her, shaking a laundry copper stick to encourage them on. They pushed forward, although the fog and encroaching darkness were curtailing vision and shielding targets. The factory itself had disappeared in the murk, and one could only distinguish the enemy by catching a glimpse of helmets. Bridget made herself heard again. ‘Come on, shove, the lot of yer, and bury the rozzers. You’re fightin’ for your right to live.’

  ‘Meself, I can’t see for lookin’,’ panted a frustrated striker, ‘not in this perishin’ fog, I can’t.’

  ‘Get bashin’, d’you ’ear me?’ shouted Bridget.

  The workers shoved and surged, the police shoved back, and a whirling mêlée developed. It broke into individual groups of struggling rioters and truncheon-smiting police, all amid the swirling yellow. One constable downed another. One striker felled a fellow-striker and trod on him.

  ‘Oh, gawd bleedin’ blimey,’ gasped the fallen man, ‘ain’t I got troubles enough?’

  The fog, buffeted and assaulted, eddied violently about. Two merchant seamen, caught up accidentally in the riot, tried to manoeuvre free. Bridget, glimpsing a peaked cap and instinctively associating it with authority, rushed forward and vanished in the fog as far as the workers at her back were concerned. She smote with her copper stick. One of the merchant seamen took the blow between his shoulder blades. It might have staggered him if he hadn’t been as solidly built as he was. Instead, it made him whip round, bringing his right arm with him in a swinging counter. Bridget, alas, paid for her unfortunate mistake as his fist struck her temple. Down she went, out for the count, and her copper stick rolled away. Shifting feet trampled her, and the merchant seamen were sucked clear of her by eddying bodies.

  A constable spilled out of a mêlée. His foot connected with Bridget’s prone body. A man swore and leapt at him, aiming a blow with a broom handle. Constable Fred Billings parried it with his truncheon, then knocked it from the man’s grip and discouraged further aggression by digging him in his stomach and robbing him of breath. The man reeled away and the fog gathered him. Fred peered down at the fallen woman. Police reinforcements, having fought their way through, arrived at that moment, and the individual mobs besieging the factory were pushed back. With the fog so hampering, and the police reinforced, discouragement set in among the workers, and there was a general melting away of the men and women before conditions and the swelling police ranks turned the battle into disaster for them.

  Bridget came to with some fighting still going on elsewhere. In the cloud of yellow fog, palely illuminated by one forlorn street lamp, she saw a rozzer looking down on her, and she saw a police sergeant moving away from him. She heard the sergeant say, ‘All right, so it’s Bridget Cummings. If you’re sure she wasn’t tryin’ to commit assault, get ’er on her feet, get ’er home and give ’er a stiff warning.’ Then he was gone, marshalling other constables and ordering them to help clear the streets.

  ‘You hit me, you bleeder,’ said Bridget from the pavement. ‘I’ll ’ave the law on you for battery and bodily ’arm.’

  ‘Not guilty,’ said Constable Fred Billings, ‘but given the chance, I’d ’ave tanned your bottom, Bridget Cummings.’

  ‘Oh, ruddy ’ell, it’s you, Fred Billings,’ said Bridget, her head aching. ‘That’s like you, that is, downing an innocent woman.’

  ‘Leave off, you minx,’ said Fred. ‘Get up and I’ll see you ’ome.’

  ‘Just go away, will yer?’ said Bridget.

  ‘Get up,’ said Fred.

  ‘I ain’t gettin’ up till you’ve taken yerself off to a dog’s ’ome,’ said Bridget, ‘you’ll only knock me down again. Anyway, I can’t get up, me ’ead’s on fire.’

  ‘Can I help?’ A shadow moved within the swirling uneasy yellow to emerge and resolve itself into a figure that Bridget, still on her back and propped on her elbows, saw as dark and looming. By the pale glimmer of the lamp she also saw a Gladstone bag and a black ebony stick, wicked-looking. An image of last night’s murder most foul leapt into her dizzy mind, and in a moment of near hysteria, she gasped, ‘Oh, Lord ’elp us, the Ripper!’

  The gentleman stared down at her, then laughed aloud. It was the first laughter Bridget had heard since the demonstration had begun and battle had commenced. It had not been a time for laughter, or even the smallest smile.

  ‘The Ripper? Old Jack?’ said the gentleman, and laughed again.

  ‘It’s not as funny as that, sir,’ said Constable Fred Billings.

  ‘No, not when things are as bad as they are for the people of Whitechapel, I agree, constable. I’m a doctor. Is this young lady hurt?’

  ‘Course I’m ’urt,’ said Bridget. ‘It’s me ’ead. A brick fell on it. Or something,’ she said accusingly to Fred Billings.

  ‘Do you have a lamp, constable?’ asked the gentleman. Fred unhooked his lamp and turned it on. The area was clearing, his colleagues exercising a variety of persuasive methods to get the people off the streets. The gentleman went down on one knee beside Bridget, placed his bag and stick aside, and examined her eyes by the light of the lamp, gently pushing each upper lid back. Then he ran a light hand over her bruised temple. Bridget winced. ‘Painful?’ he said.

  ‘More like mortification,’ said Bridget. ‘
Me gettin’ downed, that’s mortification all right, and it’s that what ’urts. Lordy,’ she breathed, ‘you give me a turn, you did, doctor, when I looked up and first saw yer.’

  ‘Look at me now, please,’ said the gentleman, and Bridget looked, still a bit suspicious of him. He sensed it, and a faint little smile parted his mouth. ‘Any double vision, miss?’

  ‘What d’you mean, double vision?’ she asked.

  ‘Can you see double, that’s what he means,’ said Fred.

  ‘Crikey, one of ’im’s enough,’ said Bridget. ‘I can’t see two, thank gawd.’

  ‘No concussion, then, just a slight headache, I fancy,’ said the gentleman. ‘It won’t last long. But be careful of any other falling bricks.’ The little smile showed again as he straightened up. ‘If you’ve a headache powder at home, take it when you get there. If not, I’ve one in my bag.’

  Bridget sat up.

  ‘I ain’t ’aving that, you’ll charge me,’ she said.

  ‘Not today,’ he said, and opened his Gladstone bag.

  ‘No, it’s all right, I’ve got some at ’ome,’ said Bridget. ‘Oh, and thanks, doctor, sorry I miscalled yer like I did, but I was a bit dizzy at the time.’

  ‘I’ll tell that story to my patients,’ he said. ‘I’ve a call to make on one now. Goodbye. Goodbye, constable.’ He left, and the fog took him into its restless embrace.

  ‘Well, Bridget Cummings?’ said Fred.

  ‘I ’ope you noticed, Fred Billings, ’ow that doctor treated me like a lady,’ said Bridget. Reluctantly, she took Fred’s hand and let him help her to her feet. ‘That uniform don’t give you the right to knock me about, yer know, just because I’m on the side of the workers.’

  ‘Will you leave off?’ said Fred. ‘Of all the cussed females, you’re the limit. I suppose you’ve spent the afternoon goin’ it ’ammer and tongs. Come on, I’ve got to get you ’ome and then report back. Start walkin’.’

  ‘Where’s me copper stick?’ asked Bridget.