Part 1 (1/2)

The Mangle Street Murders.

Kasasian, M.R.C.

For Tiggy, with love.

Introduction.

It is sixty years since I first met Sidney Grice. He was still quite young a though he did not seem it at the time a and already well known in England. But he had yet to achieve the international fame that a series of hilariously inaccurate Hollywood films was to bring upon him.

He was a vain man and loved the limelight, but even he baulked at some of the more outrageous stories that were circulated. He never, for example, climbed the Niagara Falls in pursuit of a werewolf. He was neither as glamorous nor so athletic as that. But also he was not the s.a.d.i.s.tic monster that recent biographers have portrayed. It was only ill health that stopped him from suing E.L. Jeeveson for his scurrilous and sc.r.a.ppily researched book claiming that Sidney Grice had murdered his own father.

It was the fear of hurting the innocent and of legal (or illegal) action from the guilty that constrained my first accounts of Sidney Grice's investigations in the Monthly Journal but, with almost everybody dead now and my own life nearing its natural conclusion, I thought it time to set the record straight.

The London I first knew rose magnificently from its stench of rotting humanity. The London of today is being sacked, reduced to rubble by an enemy whose savagery is unmatched since the hordes of barbarians swept away the Roman Empire.

Whether the British Empire will be destroyed also, as so many predict, remains to be seen but I know that Sidney Grice would not have fled its capital city a for all his faults he was never a coward a and neither shall I, though the lights go out and the very earth trembles as I write this here in the cold, dripping cellar of 125 Gower Street.

M.M. 3 October 1941.

1.

The Slurry Street Murders.

Lizzie Shepherd got the chop.

Right above the drinking shop.

Janie Donnell got chopped too.

Turn around. It could be you.

Victorian skipping song (from Rhymes and Reasons.

by Jenny Smith and Alex Duncan MacDonald).

Eliza shepherd was murdered. Her body was discovered on her bed at eight o'clock on the morning of Monday 28 January 1882 by her sister and room-mate, Maria. They had lived on the top floor of a ramshackle pile of rooms over the Red Lion Public House, Slurry Street, Whitechapel.

Two hours later the body of Jane O'Donnell was discovered in another room along the corridor.

Both women had been brutally murdered. Their faces, limbs and torsos had been slashed and hacked exactly forty times each. There were no signs of robbery and, though there may have been a s.e.xual motive, neither was a known prost.i.tute. Eliza Shepherd worked as a seamstress and Jane O'Donnell had recently started serving in the bar downstairs.

In both cases the doors were bolted from the inside and had to be forced to gain access. There was little doubt, however, about the murderer's means of entry. The windows had been smashed from the outside. How the murderer reached the windows was another matter. They were some thirty feet above street level with no drainpipes or other climbing aids and it would be impossible to carry, set up and remove a ladder in such a busy thoroughfare without being noticed. The roof was not easily accessible and proved so rotten and unstable that it would not even support the small boy sent up by the police to inspect it.

It was difficult to imagine who would commit such savage acts and theories of animal attacks abounded, a gorilla from a travelling fair being most frequently cited. Rumours were rampant and a slavering lion cornered one night in Knackers' Yard turned out to be a tethered and elderly Shetland pony patiently awaiting its fate.

Stories of Springheel Jack, the legendary demon, were revived with numerous sightings of him leaping across the rooftops. In years gone by many a respectable girl had reported him jumping in front of her, shredding her clothes with his clawed hands and crus.h.i.+ng his deadman's lips to hers, but he had never been known to kill before.

Death was common in the East End, violence and murder not rare, but the ferocity of these killings shocked even the police and the outcry led to questions being asked in both Houses of Parliament.

There was a flurry in the production of Penny Dreadful pamphlets with lurid accounts of other crimes tenuously linked to the two murders, and the press were soon issuing sensational claims about the ident.i.ty of the killer. It was said that Rivincita, the Italian word for revenge, was smeared on the walls in blood and an account of a mysterious redheaded Neapolitan man seen acting suspiciously in the area led to a spate of attacks on immigrants around the docks.

A gruesome song, *The Slaughterhouse of Slurry Street', became briefly popular as did a melodramatic production of Murder at the Red Lion but, with the lack of any real suspects and the absence of any further outrages, public interest waned.

The murderer was never caught but he was to inspire more than the writers of ballads and pamphlets. He was also to inspire at least one person to follow in his footsteps.

2.

The Chelsea Strangler.

This was my last day. Mr Warwick, the land agent, arrived promptly at nine, and I handed him the keys and set off in a cart without even a backward glance. My family had lived in the Grange for three hundred years and no doubt it would stand the same again without us.

George Carpenter, the old gamekeeper, drove me with his ancient donkey, Onion, struggling up Parbold Hill and skittering down the other side so hesitantly that I feared we might miss the train, but we arrived in good time and George carried my carpet bag to the platform.

*Mrs Carpenter made you this.' He held out a small package in brown wax paper tied with brown string. *She thought you might get hungry.'

I thanked him and he shuffled his feet.

*We held the Colonel in great regard,' he told me.

I put five s.h.i.+llings into his broken hand, and the train whistled and jolted and pulled away. And I wondered if ever I would see him again, or Ashurst Beacon, or the shallow poisoned River Douglas, winding as a saffron thread under the straight-cut LeedsaLiverpool Ca.n.a.l.

I changed stations at Wigan Wallgate, waiting head bowed at the roadside for a procession of miners' families to pa.s.s behind four coffins. It was only three days since the colliery explosion and the town was still angry.

At Wigan North Western I purchased a book from W.H. Smith & Son, and was soon off again in a ladies-only compartment with no corridor. It was a non-smoker but, as it was otherwise unoccupied, I was able to enjoy all of Mrs Carpenter's game pie, three cigarettes and a small cup of gin from my father's hip flask before the train ground screechily to a stop at Rugby.

There was a great deal of shouting and slamming, but I was beginning to believe that I should be left alone when, just as the guard blew his whistle, the door swung open and a middle-aged, well-dressed lady clambered aboard and sat opposite me. She had a haughty humourless expression and for a while we were silent, but then the lady sniffed the air.

*Have you been smoking?'

*No.'

She took off her left glove, laid it with her hat on the seat beside her, and looked at me.

*What is that you are reading?' She peered over. *The Shocking Case of the Poisoner of Primrose Hill. What utter tosh. You should try The Chelsea Strangler. It is very grisly and much more amusing.' She sniffed again. *You have been smoking.'