Gay Gibson: Murder on the High Seas

The Disappearance of a Young Actress Aboard an Ocean Liner Leads to One of Britain's Most Sensational Trials

Actress Gay Gibson (photo source) 

It was around 2:58 a.m. on Saturday, October 18, 1947 when Frederick Steer, a duty watchman for Union-Castle Line ship Durban Castle, was awakened by a summons from cabin 126, a first-class cabin on the B deck.  Upon arriving at the cabin, Steer noted that the lights for both the steward and stewardess had been rung by the cabin's occupant, something he found strange as normally a passenger would ring for one or the other but not both.  

He knocked on the cabin door and as he started to open it, it was slammed shut but not before Steer recognized the man who closed it.  He was James Camb, a thirty-year-old steward working on the liner.  Steer wondered if, since Camb was a steward, he had arrived for the summons before Steer himself had - but his uneasy feelings about the situation led him to report the incident to the night watchman, James Murray.  Steer and Murray returned to cabin 126, where all was quiet.  Murray relayed the events to the officer of the watch but without mentioning James Camb's name.  The officer on duty believed it to be a private matter and not of any concern to the ship's officers and that appeared to be the end of it.    

At 7:30 that morning, Eileen Field, the stewardess for B deck, arrived at cabin 126, prepared to begin cleaning.  She carried a glass of orange juice for the young lady occupying the cabin, an actress by the name of Gay Gibson.  

A promotional photo of Gay from 1945 (photo source) 

Gay

Born Eileen Isabella Ronnie Gibson in India, she had been educated in England, before joining the women's army corps during World War II.  She became interested in acting and acquired the stage name of Gay Gibson when she began touring with a theatrical company.   By the time she traveled to South Africa to appear as the female lead in the Clifford Odets play Golden Boy, the redheaded Gay was reportedly attracting men "like bees to a honeycomb." At a time when sexually active single women were considered scandalous, she reportedly flouted convention, carrying on affairs with two married men.  Following the run of the play The Man With a Load of Mischief, it was said to be one of these men who purchased her first class ticket aboard the Durban Castle, which departed Cape Town on Friday, October 10, 1947.   Gay was headed for London and a play in the West End.

As the only young woman among the ship's sixty first-class passengers, most of whom were quite a bit older than she was, the twenty-one-year-old Gay quickly caught the attention of not only the ship's male passengers but also the male employees, especially James Camb, who gossiped about her to other members of the crew and was said to be friendly with her on deck.  Other than a supposedly intimate friendship with Camb, Gay's activities appeared to have been fairly sedate, confined to dining with her assigned dinner companions (a Mr. Hopwood, who worked for the ship's line, and a Wing Commander Bray) and dancing with them.  

The Durban Castle (photo source)

On the evening of Friday, October 17, 1947, Gay dined with Hopwood and Bray, shared dances with both and then retired to her cabin to change into a swimsuit.  As it was a hot evening, she planned to take a dip in the swimming pool and either one or both of the gentlemen were going to swim with her.  However, she returned from her cabin still in her evening dress and saying that she could not locate her swimsuit.  With the swim party cancelled, Hopwood escorted her back to her cabin around 12:40 a.m., under the impression that she was retiring for the evening.  Twenty minutes later, around 1 a.m., Gay, still attired in her evening gown, was seen on the afterdeck, smoking a cigarette and telling the boatswain's mate that she found it too hot to sleep.  It was the last time Gay Gibson was seen by anyone other than James Camb.

A Mystery

When stewardess Eileen Field arrived at cabin 126 on Saturday morning, October 18, 1947, she found the door unlocked, which was very unusual as Gay had been in the habit of locking it each night.  Finding the cabin empty, she at first believed that Gay was in the lavatory and left the glass of juice in the cabin to go about other duties.  Returning two hours later, there was still no appearance from Gay.  The juice was still on a bureau untouched and Gay's bedroom slippers, which she would have worn had she left the cabin, were in their usual spot by the bed.  Field noted that the bed was a little more disheveled than usual and the porthole was open.  Panicked, she went to Captain Patey.

At 10 a.m., Captain Patey broadcast an appeal for Gay over the ship's PA system.  With no response, at 10:30, he turned the ship about and began a thorough search.  At the time, the Durban Castle was 60 miles off the coast of Equatorial Guinea in western Africa.  Word spread quickly amongst the passengers and the crew, all of whom searched for Gay to no avail.  By noon, Captain Patey concluded that Gay Gibson was no longer aboard the ship and must have tragically gone overboard into the shark-infested waters.  Feeling there was nothing else he could do, Captain Patey once again set sail for England.

James Camb's shipmates, however, reported his interest in Gay to Captain Patey as well as his odd behavior over the previous 24 hours.  Despite the heat, and the fact that the rest of the crew were wearing their short-sleeved uniforms, Camb remained in his jacket.  His cabinmate told Captain Patey that not only had Camb turned in in the very early hours of the morning but had retired in his jacket.  Captain Patey locked Gay's cabin and ordered Camb to submit to a medical examination.  

Scratch marks were discovered on Camb's arms and nec, by the ship's surgeon.  Camb claimed they were result of scratching himself due to the heat and were exacerbated by the ship's rough bath towels.  He denied any involvement with Gay Gibson at all, much less that he was the man in her cabin when Frederick Steer had responded to the summons early Saturday morning.  

On Friday, October 24, the Durban Castle anchored off the Isle of Wight in southern England.  Two police detectives boarded the ship to conduct an investigation.  When they left the ship, they had James Camb with them, taking him to Southhampton police headquarters for further questioning.  Two days later, he was formally arrested and charged with the murder of Gay Gibson.

James Camb (photo source) 

Camb

James Camb came from a small mill town in southeast Lancashire, England called Waterfoot.  Unwilling to fall into what he considered the tedium of factory life, he aimed for adventure and excitement.  Blessed with a highly confident nature, an ability to smooth talk anyone and movie star good looks, he began working on ships at the age of 17, with a brief hiatus during the war when he was in the Merchant Navy Reserve.  While serving in the Navy, he married and fathered a child but did not allow having a family hamper his extracurricular activities.  

Originally hired as an assistant cook aboard the Durban Castle, Camb soon worked his way up to being the first-class deck steward, a plum position aboard a ship and a plum position for him to pocket generous tips and woo female passengers.  In a nod to Don Juan, he was soon dubbed "Don James" and "Don Jimmy" by the crew, who heartily disliked him.  He reportedly based the success of a voyage by the number of female passengers he bedded and was more or less reliably said to have slept with at least one woman on every cruise on which he worked.  

Arrest and Trial

Camb reportedly changed his story several times before giving what would ultimately be his final version of events, after telling the police that "my wife can know nothing of this."  Although he had at first denied being the man in Gay's cabin, under police interrogation he admitted that Steer was correct and he had been in the cabin.  He confessed to having gone to her cabin with a drink and having sex with Gay but insisted that it had been consensual.  According to him, while in the throes of passion, Gay's eyes had rolled back in her head, she had began foaming at the mouth, clutched at him and then died.  He said he had attempted resuscitation but had not pressed any alarms for help.  Fearing that Gay being discovered dead in her bed would expose Camb's unprofessional relationship, leading to him being fired, he decided the best way to handle the situation was to get rid of the evidence - the evidence being Gay herself.  Feeling positive she was dead, he picked up her body and forced it through the cabin porthole and into the ocean, saying "She did make one hell of a splash."    

James Camb's mug shot (photo source) 

As Captain Patey had had Gay's cabin secured, upon examination it told its own tale.  Traces of blood were found on the pillow and there was a urine stain on the bottom sheet.  Both could indicate that Camb, after trying to force himself on Gay, had strangled her.  

Inspection of Gay's suitcase failed to turn up the black silk pajamas she had worn during the first week of the cruise, which stewardess Eileen Field confirmed.  According to Camb, Gay had greeted him at her cabin door in nothing but a sheer dressing gown in which she had nothing on underneath and that dressing gown had been on her body when he had pushed it out the porthole.  He had no explanation for where her usual black pajamas were.    

The porthole from the Durban Castle is carried into trial (photo source)

Camb's trial opened at the Great Hall of Winchester Castle on Thursday, March 18, 1948.  In presenting their case, the prosecution did not have a body and so they hired the best medical experts and constructed a replica of Gay's cabin to use in the trial, as well as bringing in the bed and door from her cabin and the actual porthole that Gay had been pushed out of.  They stressed it was not a case of sexual misadventure but a murder of cruelty and callousness.  The prosecution believed that Camb had coaxed his way into Gay's cabin and then had strangled her either when she resisted him or as a means to avoid being charged with rape or attempted rape.  Before she had been strangled to death, Gay managed to scratch him (photographs taken of the scratches at the Southhampton police station were shown to the jury) and pulled both the steward and stewardess bells.  

During the investigation, affidavits were collected from three young women, all travelers aboard the Durban Castle before Gay Gibson's fatal voyage, who claimed that Camb had made unwanted and insistent advances toward them, all separate events that took place between September 18 and October 7, 1947.  One woman claimed she had been taking an afternoon nap in her cabin when she awoke to find Camb by her bed.  Before she could rise, he was on top of her, holding her down.  According to the woman, only mentioning that her aunt was in the cabin next door dampened Camb's ardor and he left the cabin. Another woman claimed that Camb had strangled her when she refused his advances and when she regained consciousness, he was standing over her and laughing.  

Unfortunately for the prosecution, they were barred from using these affidavits and bringing up Camb's predatory behavior.  

They did admit that a contraceptive device was found in Gay's suitcase and suggested that if the young woman had been planning a sexual encounter with Camb (or anyone), it would not have been in her suitcase.  They also believed that had Gay been expecting Camb, she would not have been wearing her black pajamas, which they believe she had on when she died and accounted for the fact they had not been located.  

The prosecution also introduced a statement the police claimed he had made to them that "She struggled.  I had my hands around her neck . . . I threw her out of the porthole." 

The defense denied that Camb had made such a statement and insinuated that Gay was a young woman with loose morals, as evidenced by her contraceptive device.  They suggested that she had been pregnant at the time of her death as a result of one of her affairs and it was that condition that necessitated her journey to London.  A pregnancy, they said, would make the contraceptive device unnecessary and explained why she would not have taken it from her suitcase.  

The defense had witnesses who testified that Gay had been "hysterical" and "neurotic" and that she was subject to fainting fits in which her mouth, hands, and fingernails turned blue.  They also said that she had "a weak chest,"  perhaps congenital heart disease.  

In opposition, Gay's mother testified that her daughter was none of the things the defense claimed and instead was "one of the finest types of English womanhood physically, mentally, and morally."  

Camb himself took the stand and while he admitted that pushing Gay out of the porthole was "beastly conduct," he denied any other wrongdoing.  When confronted with his story changing multiple times, he claimed it was for "self-preservation" and said he believed he was an honest man.

Following the four-day trial, the jury deliberated only 45 minutes before finding James Camb guilty of the murder of Gay Gibson, making him the first defendant in Britain to be convicted of murder without a body.   As the abolition of the death penalty was being deliberated in Parliament at the time, his death sentence was overturned.  Escaping the hangman's noose, he was instead sentenced to life in prison.  Winston Churchill was enraged by this, stating that "The House of Commons has, by its vote, saved the life of the brutal lascivious murderer who thrust the poor girl he had raped and assaulted through a porthole of the ship to the sharks."  

Convictions

Camb had served less than nine months of his sentence when, in December, his wife divorced him on grounds of adultery.  

In September of 1959, after serving eleven and a half years of his sentence, Camb, then 41 years old and considered a "star prisoner" by authorities, was released.  Still denying his guilt, he sold his story to the press and remarried to a woman with a child that he adopted.  In 1967 he was jailed again after he attacked a 13-year-old girl and served two years.  Following his release in 1969, he obtained work in Scotland as a head waiter for a hotel.  Only months later, he was charged with the sexual misconduct of three 11-year-old schoolgirls when he broke into the room they were staying in.  He was imprisoned once again, where he remained until 1978.

In July 1979, he died of heart failure at the age of 62, no longer the dashing Tyrone Power lookalike but a disheveled shell of his former self but still denying the murder of Gay Gibson.

Gay's body was never recovered.  

The bed and door from Gay's cabin (photo source) 

Sources:

Crime Reads (March 25, 2021), The Actress, The Steward and the Ocean Liner.

Criminal Encyclopedia (November 12, 2016), James Camb - 1947.

Fido, Martin, The Chronicle of Crime.  Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1993.

Keith, W. Barrington, The World's Greatest Crimes.  Hamlyn Publishing Group, 1990.

The Mirror (March 25, 2018), Gorgeous Gay Gibson Was Thrown Out of  a Cruise Ship Porthole.

 Murderpedia (2021).  James Camb. 

Soapboxie (October 8, 2020).  The Porthole Murder.  

    

   

 

Jack the Ripper's London

How London's Socioeconomic and Industrial Changes Led to the Birth of England's Most Infamous Serial Killer

Commercial Street in Whitechapel, late 1800s 
(photo source)

When Alexandrina Victoria ascended to the throne of England in June of 1837, London was the largest city in the world, boasting not only the largest port (an honor held for about a decade), but the heart of global finance, trade and politics.  At the start of the 19th century, London's population was around 1 million.  By the end of the century, the population was nearly seven times that size, larger than Beijing, Paris and five times greater than that of New York City.   With the population bloat, London's actual territory expanded as well.  At 122 square miles around 1850, by the end of the century it had expanded to 693 miles. 

The port of London, in addition to being the largest port in the world, was also a major shipbuilding center, producing some of the most technologically advanced vessels the world had seen.   Unfortunately, the ports simply didn't have the capacity to endure the massive growth, rendering its operations less than efficient.  Ships clogged the stretch of the Thames known as the Pool of London, with sailors sometimes having to wait as long as a week or more to unload cargo, an invitation not only for theft but also evasion of paying import duties.  The sailors brought their earnings, however meager, into the local pubs where they would spend it on drink and women.   

With its financial, political and international trade connections, London soon became a draw for immigrants throughout Europe and the colonies.  A famine in Ireland led to 20% of London's residents being Irish, a population large enough in itself to make up a city the size of Limerick, Belfast, and Cork combined.  The Jewish population in London was estimated as a sizable 46,000 souls in 1882, many of them having fled to London to escape persecution and poverty.  Most of the Jewish community ended up in the area of London known as the East End, the core of Eastern London north of the Thames and indisputably, the poorest district of London.  

The East End and Whitechapel in 1888

Much of London celebrated Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in the summer of 1887 with adornments of  Union Jacks and royal standards, toasting to the Queen's health with champagne, claret and beer,   In a perfect homage to Victorian life (at least for the upper classes), concerts, picnics, dinners, regattas, puppet shows for children and services at Westminster Abbey were held. Debutantes and eligible bachelors danced and sipped lemonade with little knowledge or concern as to what was happening outside their sheltered environments.  

The spring leading into summer of 1887 had been a particularly warm and dry one, leading to water shortages and destroyed harvests.  Unemployment soared, thanks to the lack of agricultural jobs due to the drought.  With no produce to ship, move and sell, it also meant the working class that came into London in an attempt to find work at Covent Garden Market instead found themselves sleeping rough on the streets or in Trafalgar Square.   

This all coincided with Britain's industrial preeminence being challenged by America and Germany.  A trade slump had begun to fester the previous decade and by 1887 and 1888, it led to massive unemployment.  There was a clear line drawn between the West End, where the upper and middle classes resided, and the East End, where the poor working class was shuttered away.  

If the East End was the poorest area of London, the district of Whitechapel was its epicenter, a slum and ghetto where the occupants suffered from poverty, overcrowding, starvation, homelessness and desperation.   Until the mid-nineteenth century the city had been prosperous but by the time Jack the Ripper began making his murderous swath through the area, it was one of the most dangerous areas in London. 

The streets were dirty by day, with sewage, rotting fruit, runoff from the slaughterhouses, human waste and animal waste from the many horses that clip-clopped throughout the area at all times of day and night.  Even in the middle of the day, Whitechapel seemed to be perpetually under a blanket of gloom.  Smoke belched from the nearby shipyard, as well as the multitude of factories, clogging the air.  The stench of waste (human and animal), the slaughterhouses and body odors comingled constantly with the overwhelming hopelessness.  At night, gas street lamps were manually lit by men who climbed ladders to do so.  Lighting was rarely more than adequate and only in certain areas.  Some alleys and walkways were cloaked in almost complete darkness. 

The streets, from the peak of the morning's light to the night's darkest hour, were never silent.  Besides the echoing noise of horses' hooves, drunkards yelled of their discontent at passersby, street performers and barrel organs played on, hawkers yelled of their wares, and soapbox preachers attempted to get the guilty to repent.  

Crime was rampant, along with daily cruelty, making Whitechapel somewhat inured to brutality.  Of the children born there, only half would live to see their fifth birthday, dying from either malnutrition, disease or accident.  Domestic disputes and drunken fights were so commonplace that many who lived in Whitechapel and the East End simply ignored them.  Murder, however, was uncommon.

1888, off Dorset Street in Whitechapel (photo source) 

  

Employment for the majority of residents was mostly intermittent.  The docks always offered jobs but this required turning up early to await a foreman at the gates, where the sought-after positions were literally fought over; kicking, punching and even biting was a normal means of getting to the front of the line and thus, securing a job.  

Ohers toiled in the many sweatshops and factories that dotted Whitechapel and its environs, from boot making to cabinet making.  The hours were long (10 to 18 hours a day, six days a week) and the pay was abysmal.  An inexperienced factory worker might collect 4 shillings for a week's work (there were 20 shillings to the pound), one shilling less than the 5 shillings required for reasonable lodgings in the poorer areas.  Women who could operate a sewing machine could hope to make 16 shillings a week.  Showing up late to work would likely garner you a financial penalty, as could having dirty feet or an untidy work area.  Some workers were subjected to the constant breathing in of noxious fumes and/or fibers, leading to debilitating respiratory disorders, for which they were given no remedy, and sometimes death.  As there was always another man, woman or child willing to take someone's place, job security was nonexistent.    

The public houses, or pubs, were always busy with many of Whitechapel's residents attempting to drink away their misery, at least for a while.  The pubs, and their closing times, provided thieves, pickpockets and other cunning folks with opportune (and often inebriated) targets.     

The majority of Whitechapel's residents lived in one of the dwelling houses that densely packed the streets.  Oftentimes, as many as 20 people resided in a dwelling, with entire families sharing a single, squalid room.  These buildings were often infested with rats and mice.  The toilet facilities were either a hole dug into the cellar of the property, with the resultant odors and unsanitary conditions, or an outhouse.  Since many of the dwelling houses did not have bathtubs or washing facilities, communal wash houses were available in the area - if the resident could afford it.  If not, neither clothes nor body was washed.  

Landlords of these properties were very often greedy, renting the rooms at extortionate rates and packing as many people as possible into a property.  Unsurprisingly, disease was rampant.  A cholera outbreak had killed more than 3,000 in the 1860s.  Sexually transmitted diseases were common and incurable.

For those who were not fortunate enough to be able to afford to pay for a dwelling house were the lodging houses or doss houses.  In doss houses, four pence paid simply for a bed for the night, where the occupant was packed into an overcrowded facility with poor conditions.  Some of the area's doss houses would let a bed to one person during the day and another during the evening, a sort of "relay" system, and some even let their beds in eight-hour shifts, allowing the owner to basically collect three rent payments for the same bed.  For two pence, some of the lodging houses would allow a person to lean against a rope that was strung from one wall to another.  It was not unusual to have prostitutes conducting their business in a bed next to a poverty-stricken mother and her child.   

Those who didn't have the funds for a lodging house, or who used their money for drink instead, could be found "sleeping rough," choosing to attempt to sleep in doorways and stairwells and even up against gates throughout the area.  These "accommodations" were free but left the individual vulnerable to other homeless, knife-wielding gangs and, eventually, Jack the Ripper.   

      

The "Fallen" Women

The queen's own identification with strict moral codes had an unusual juxtaposition with London during her reign, as well as general notions of the time as far as marriage, sex, and independence.  Divorce was not only taboo at the time but costly enough to elude most working class couples.  While men could retain their jobs and standing in the community after separating from their wives and unofficially remarrying with another woman, the wives, by comparison, had no such luxury.  Married, they had no independence; they could not own property and could not execute contracts.  Without the protection of their husband, and living outside of what was considered conventional matrimony, they were considered "fallen women," unlikely to find what was considered respectable work and provide for themselves.  Women who were fortunate enough to receive financial support from their estranged husbands could just as quickly find that support forfeited should their husbands ever be able to prove they were cohabitating with another man (even if the husband was living with another woman.)  

For the most unfortunate of women, who received no financial support (and this included widows who had received nothing on their husband's deaths), they could apply for public assistance.  In that case, they had to prove their husbands abandoned them (either by leaving or via death) and therefore, they were destitute.  Such an admission required them to live and work in the local workhouses, labeled an "inmate" and forced to wear a uniform.  Workhouses were little more than institutions rife with squalor, degradation, and sexual violence.  Meals were sparse, often a watery porridge made of bread, cheese and potatoes.  Vermin infestation was common, as was illness.  Work was hard labor consisting of stone-breaking, milling corn, and using a spike and bare hands to pull apart ship ropes for fibers that could be used to caulk ships.      

So horrific were the workhouses that it was not uncommon to hear of women who chose to end their lives versus going into a workhouse.  One such woman reportedly set herself alight, after asking two children for matches with which to do the job and ended up in the morgue.  

For other women, sex work seemed a preferable option to the workhouse.  Back in 1888, prostitution was not illegal.  Unfortunately, whether working in a brothel, kept by wealthy men or soliciting on a street corner, be it full-time or part-time, the women were stained by the association and were unable to escape it.

Young women were not immune from the necessity of sex work, should their parents or siblings be unable to work.  In such cases, the daughters/sisters were expected to contribute to the family's coffer however they could. 

It was unknown exactly how many females were forced to prostitute themselves in order to survive.  The founder of the Salvation Army claimed 60,000 to 80,000 in the East End, although that number may have been exaggerated.  At the height of Jack the Ripper's reign, the police constables believed there were 1,200 prostitutes just in the quarter-mile area to the east and west of Commercial Street in Whitechapel and they were "mostly of a very low condition." 

This particular class of prostitutes, most of whom were homeless, were called "unfortunates."  These were the workers who would lead clients into the darkest alleys and corners of Whitechapel, where there was less chance of interruption by police or anyone else.  It also put them at greater risk.  Besides Jack the Ripper in 1888, they were also vulnerable to gangs who would often beat them in order to steal their pitiful earnings, clients who would do the same in order to get out of paying them and on occasion, even other prostitutes who would get territorial over someone else coming into her territory.

During the winter of 1887/1888, Frederick Charrington, heir to a local brewing dynasty, took it upon himself to rid the East End of vice.  The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 allowed him, as a citizen, to report any house suspected of operating as a brothel to the police -- and he did so.  Police reportedly closed down 200 brothels, which had dire results for the displaced workers.  For those who did not pack up and move elsewhere (and "spread their moral contagion elsewhere" as newspapers of the time reported), they were forced to work on the streets, amid all types of weather and potential violence.  Charrington, instead of being a do-gooder, was accused of adding to the general misfortune.    

For those in the West End, who preferred to live as though the East End simply did not exist, when they did think of sex workers, it was under the misapprehension that they were doing so out of an immoral desire for sex.  

Some of London's finest, circa 1888 (photo source) 

The Police

To patrol London before, during and after Jack the Ripper, were two police forces:  the Metropolitan Police and the City of London Police.  Both were dealing with a serious manpower shortage.  For London's over five million occupants, the city had a reported 14,000 officers.   

At that time, officers were allowed to be men only.  Wearing a blue uniform and hat, their gear consisted of a wooden baton, handcuffs (called shackles in those days), a lantern, and a whistle to signal for assistance.  

Sixty percent of the police force worked the night shift - 10 p.m. until 6 a.m., patrolling their beat on foot.  Most officers walked up to 20 miles a day during their shift, moving at the regulated pace of two and a half miles per hour.  The passageways that snaked through areas like Whitechapel made the officers' jobs that much harder; standing on a street corner, they could only see what was happening on that particular street at that particular intersection.  

For most of the officers, they weren't able to prevent crime so much as catching criminals in the act. 

They were, however, kept constantly busy.  Those who broke the law, if convicted, faced harsh conditions.  Prisons were notoriously tough with enforced hard labor and damp cells.  Being sentenced to flogging and whipping was not uncommon, nor was a date with the hangman.  Public executions were banned in 1868 but reporters would still flock to the prisons, where executions were carried out inside the prison walls.  In 1887, the year before the Ripper committed his acts that would put him into infamy, 21 men and women died on the gallows.

Standard police equipment in 1888 (photo source)

   

The Metropolitan Police was headed by Sir Charles Warren, a Wales native with extensive military service before becoming Police Commissioner.  At first hailed by The Times upon his commission, Warren came under fire during Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in June of 1887 when an allegedly respectable young seamstress was arrested for alleged solicitation.  When the seamstress's employer supported her in the courts, and was quite verbal about it, Warren, and the Metropolitan Police, took a bashing in the press.

The more radical press turned against him completely only months later, in November of 1887 when Warren, in response to a socialist demonstration in Trafalgar Square, sent in baton-wielding police officers, soldiers, and mounted police.  While the majority of the 40,000 protestors were peaceful, the small percentage that was not were armed with knives, pokers, and iron bars and pipes.  The result was a violent explosion that ended with 75 persons badly injured and 400 persons arrested and would become known as "Bloody Sunday."  Worse, it became known that Warren had turned down the use of a steam fire engine as a water cannon in order to clear protestors more peacefully out of the Square.

(photo source) 

Warren's style of leadership also apparently caused problems within the police department itself.  Things grew so bad between him and his assistant commissioner, James Monro, that Monro abruptly quit on August 31, 1888 -- in the very thick of the Ripper investigation.  The department, already stretched thin and working on what would end up being the greatest unsolved murder cases in Britain's history, were demoralized and worn out.  

To replace Munro and given direct responsibility for the Ripper case, a Dublin-born lawyer by the name of Dr. Robert Anderson was chosen.   Unfortunately, Anderson arrived on the job suffering from exhaustion and within a week was forced to take recuperative leave to Switzerland, a break that would last a month.  To take Anderson's place, at least until October, was Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, who would eventually become most knowledgeable about the elusive Ripper.    

Within the Metropolitan Police were divisions, each of which had responsibility for policing a specific area.   Once the ghastly murders of 1888 began, two different divisions would be involved in the investigations:  H and J.  

The H Division was headed by a popular detective called Edmund Reid.  Reid, who had been a pastry cook and a ship's steward before joining the force in 1872, had the unusual distinction of being the shortest man with the Metropolitan Police, standing at only five foot six.   In 1887, he succeeded Frederick Abberline as the Local Inspector and Head of the Criminal Investigation Department at H Division in Whitechapel.   Reid, unlike many of his coworkers, was spared the brutal criticisms they were regularly subjected to by the increasingly hostile press.

Frederick Abberline, after moving to Scotland Yard following his tenure in the H Division, would soon return to Whitechapel.  The former clockmaker, who had been with the Metropolitan Police since 1863, was placed in charge of the J Division on August 31, 1888 - the same day that James Munro resigned and the day Ripper victim Mary Ann Nichols was murdered.  His extensive experience in the Whitechapel area led him to be placed in charge of the detectives investigating the Ripper murders, leading the on-the-ground hunt for the unknown killer.

The murder of Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square on September 30, 1888 took place in the City of London and so fell within the jurisdiction of the City of London Police.  Acting Commissioner Major Henry Smith and Detective Inspector James McWilliam, whose forte pre-Ripper was the investigation of financial fraud, joined the investigation with the Metropolitan Police.

George Lusk (photo source)

The Mile End, or Whitechapel, Vigilance Committee

On September 10, 1888, following Annie Chapman's murder by the Ripper, a group of some sixteen Whitechapel and Spitalfields businessmen and tradesmen got together to form a volunteer group to patrol the streets of Whitechapel during the Ripper's killing season.  They elected local builder George Lusk as their president and made it their goal to assist the police in bringing the killer to justice.   

They orchestrated their own nighttime patrols of the area, paying unemployed men a small stipend and furnishing them with a police whistle and stick, and worked on raising funds to offer as a reward for information on the Ripper.   The Committee met each evening at 9 p.m. in The Crown pub. 

As president and chairman, Lusk's name appeared in national newspapers and posters around Whitechapel, bringing him unwanted attention and threats, the most famous of which would be the October 15, 1888 "From Hell" letter address to him and containing half of a human kidney.    

(photo source)

 The Newspapers

Before the  mid-1880s, newspapers had been subject to a wide variety of taxes that made them very expensive and typically beyond the average person's means.  Repealing these taxes over a decade or so, along with the Education Act of 1870 in which elementary education was compulsory, meant that newspapers would reach a wider mass of the populace.  

Circulation skyrocketed and led to more newspapers being launched.  By 1880, there were a reported 158 daily newspapers in the United Kingdom, all of them in a daily circulation war, working hard to grab a maximum share of the readers' market.  

At the same time, a new kind of journalism emerged, one we recognize today as investigative journalism, brought about by a fascination of the habits of the rich and famous and an ever-growing need for sensationalism.  The paper Truth exposed political and financial scandals while the Pall Mall Gazette exposed society scandals.   

On January 17, 1888, a newspaper called The Star made its debut in London.  Its editor, Thomas P. O'Connor, found a young journalist named Ernest Parke who could be trusted to come up with daily sensationalistic stories.  While all the papers would devote coverage to the Ripper, it was O'Connor, and The Star in particular, who realized the public's thirst for every gory detail and went about titillating its readers with any morsel, no matter how small, it could find.   Soon, The Star had reached unparalleled circulation, particularly with its evening editions.   

Before long, the other newspapers jumped on the bandwagon, making a cottage industry of not only the Ripper but pointing out the local police's mistakes and missteps and suggesting they were buffoons.  

Journalist William Le Queux, who wrote for The Globe, would write in 1923 of "writing lurid and picturesque details" while he and two journalist friends "stood in the very spot where the tragedy occurred."  If one newspaper published a theory on how the murder happened, a competing newspaper would publish its own the following day, leading another newspaper to do the same the following day, and so on.  Truth mattered little when death, disaster and murder sold papers.    

Other Attacks and Acts of Murder

At the time the Ripper picked up his knife in 1888, a string of murders in London spanning nearly 15 years had been taking place.  Beginning in September of 1873, when a portion of a woman's torso had been found floating in the Thames (more body parts, including her severed head, were discovered over the next seven days but she was never identified), six more victims would be found , with the last being discovered in July of 1887.  All victims were women and none were ever identified.   Neither was their killer or killers, who was dubbed "The Embankment Killer," 

On February 25, 1888, a 38-year-old widow named Annie Milwood was admitted to the Whitechapel Infirmary with numerous stab wounds in her legs and "the lower part" of her body.  She said she had been attacked by a man with a clasp knife that he had pulled from his pocket and claimed to not know him.  It is not known where the actual attack took place, although the time was said to be at 5 p.m., but Annie lived in a lodging house at Number 8 White's Row in Spitalfields, very near the Ten Bells pub and the Christ Church on Commercial Street.  She survived the knife attack but on March 31, after being admitted to the South Grove Workhouse on Mile End and while working at the rear of the building, she fell.  It was assumed she was ill.  She was, in fact, dead.  

On Tuesday night, April 3, a woman named Malvina Haynes was attacked by a knife-wielding man near the Leman Street railway station.  Her screams for help got the attention of a nearby lodging house keeper, who came outside to investigate.  He arrived to see Malvina being attacked "with great violence" and her assailant ran off.   By the time a police constable arrived, Malvina was lying in a pool of blood, moaning and "insensible."  Upon arrival at London Hospital on Whitechapel Road it was determined that she was suffering from "a concussion of the brain" and a scalp wound "of rather extensive character."  She was not expected to recover, much less survive, but after laying unconscious for a week she did recover but with no memory of her attack.  Unlike Annie Milwood, Malvina Haynes was a married woman, or at least considered herself to be a married woman.  

On the same night of Tuesday, April 3, a 45-year-old widow by the name of Emma Smith suffered a horrible, and ultimately fatal, attack.  She had been on Whitechapel High Street around 1:30 a.m., heading back to her lodgings on George Street when she saw "some men" coming and crossed the road to get out of their way.  They followed her to Osborn Street and Brick Lane and near Taylor Brothers Limited, a chocolate and cocoa manufacturer on Brick Lane, she was "assaulted in the most brutal manner" and robbed of what little money she had.  She managed to get herself back to her lodgings on George Street, her face bleeding, her right ear torn, and with an injury "to the lower part" of her body - a blunt instrument had been forced into her vagina with such force that it had penetrated her peritoneum (the membrane that lines the abdominal cavity) and caused peritonitis.  Emma could not describe her attackers other than to say that one of them she suspected was a youth of around 19.  

Emma was taken to the London Hospital on Whitechapel Road, same as Malvina Haynes, but she wasn't as lucky.  Soon after arriving, she fell into a coma and died.  

On Saturday, May 5, 26-year-old Georgina Green, a resident of Spitalfields, was attacked by a man as she walked along to Whitechapel in the early hours of the morning.  She was stabbed in the forehead and lost "a quantity of blood" but was taken to London Hospital on Whitechapel Road and survived.  

Whoever attacked and/or killed these women remained at large as Jack took to the streets and were never caught.    

Whitechapel in 1888 (photo source)

 

Sources:

Jack the Ripper 1888 (2021).  The Metropolitan Police 1888.

Jack the Ripper Tour (5/10/2017).  London in 1888.

Jones, Richard.  The Jack the Ripper Files, Andre Deutsch Limited, 2015.

Mr. Castle History (2021).  The Metropolitan Police, 1888.

Priestley, M.P.  One Autumn in Whitechapel, Flower and Dean Street Ltd., 2016.

Roland, Paul.  The Crimes of Jack the Ripper: The Whitechapel Murders Reexamined, Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2012.

The Jack the Ripper Tour (2021).  Jack the Ripper and the London Press.

The Victorian Web (2021).  Slums and Slumming in Late Victorian London.

Trow, M.J. Jack the Ripper:  Quest for a Killer, Pen & Sword Books Ltd., 2009.

Whitechapel Jack (2021).  The 1888 Autumn of Terror.