Sherlockian Sojourns #28: ‘Brisk currents of London life’

A return to ‘the great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained’, London, to visit some North London Sherlockian sites. I made my way by bus and tube to Notting Hill Gate, well known to me for its secondhand shops. A short walk brought me to Peel Street, which has been identified as the ‘line of fine houses lying in the vague borderland between Notting Hill and Kensington’ in which Mr. Culverton Smith’s home was located in ‘The Dying Detective’. There are houses on this street that meet the description of Culverton Smith’s house: ‘old fashioned iron railings, massive folding door and shining brasswork’. David Hammer identified Culverton Smith’s residence as being one of those on the corner with Campden Hill Road.

A five minute walk took me to Pitt Street which was where both the residence of Horace Harker and ‘Harding Brothers’, the store where he purchased his Napoleon bust, were located in ‘The Six Napoleons’. 

‘In half an hour we had reached Pitt Street, a quiet little backwater just beside one of the briskest currents of London life. No. 131 was one of a row, all flat-chested, respectable, and most unromantic dwellings. As we drove up, we found the railings in front of the house lined by a curious crowd. Holmes whistled. “By George! It's attempted murder at the least. Nothing less will hold the London message-boy” ’.   [SIXN]

H.W. Bell identifies No. 14 as the Harker residence (No. 131 not existing).

A further five minute walk took me to High Street Kensington station, where I caught a District Line train to Edgware Road. It was then another short walk along Edgware Road, until I reached the Old Marylebone Road, and St. Mark’s Church (called ‘St. Monica’s’ by Watson)  It was here that ‘the woman’ Irene Adler married Godfrey Norton, with a disguised Holmes as witness, in ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’.  

    

 

Continuing up Old Marylebone Road, I turned onto Marylebone Road which runs up to Baker Street Station. Walking a short distance, I turned onto Lisson Grove, just before reaching the Landmark Restaurant, the exterior of which was used for the restaurant in ‘Sherlock: The Empty Hearse’ where Sherlock reveals himself to John.

 

A long walk up Lisson Grove finally led to my reaching Elm Tree Road, and number 33 which was the location of ‘Bryony Lodge’, where Irene Adler lived, and where Holmes managed to trick her into revealing the hiding place of an incriminating photograph in ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’. There was also a staged fight on the roadway outside.

 

Another short walk brought me to a bus stop where I caught a #46 to Hampstead Station. From here it was a ten minute walk to East Heath Road, and 'The Logs', believed to be 'Appledore', where  'the worst man in London', Charles Augustus Milverton, lived in the story of the same name, a property that Holmes and Watson attempted to burgle.

 

This property also has another Sherlockian claim to fame as it was being lived in by Marty Feldman (and his wife Loretta), when he appeared as Orville Sacker (a name based on ACD’s original name for Watson) in ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother’ (1975). There is a pleasing symmetry to this, as the film’s Eduardo Gambetti (played by Dom DeLuise) ‘the cleverest of the blackmailers’ was clearly modelled on Milverton, ‘the king of blackmailers’.

Darkness was descending, so I decided to put off my planned visit to Highgate Cemetery and the grave of Adam Worth (1844-1902) widely considered the inspiration for the criminal mastermind Professor James Moriarty, to another day. I therefore made my way back to Hampstead Station, catching the Northern Line back to Morden, and then catching a bus home.

Sherlockian Sojourns #27: The Whitechapel Horrors.

Something a little different this time, a sojourn based on one of Holmes’ contemporaries, but on the other side of the law. Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. In both the criminal case files and contemporary journalistic accounts, the killer was called the Whitechapel Murderer and Leather Apron.

Watson’s originally published accounts make no mention of Holmes having any involvement in the search for the Ripper, but subsequent discoveries of alleged Watsonian manuscripts have given multiple accounts of the most famous Victorian detective and most famous Victorian serial killer crossing swords (or knives). Two excellent films ‘A Study in Terror’ and ‘Murder By Decree’ have also dramatised other accounts, with several computer games focusing around the match-up.

Even Watson’s literary agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in an interview with an American journalist republished in ‘The Portsmouth Evening News’ on 4th July 1894., explained how Holmes would have set about the work of tracking the Ripper by deducing the writer of the ‘Dear Boss’ letter. Also, the historical record, as we shall see, gives a hint that the Great Detective may have had some involvement in the ending of Jack’s reign of terror.

Travelling up to Tower Hill, listening to an audiobook of the excellent ‘The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper’ (by Hallie Rubenhold), read by Louise Brealey (Molly Hooper in ‘Sherlock’), I then made my way to my first port of call – ‘The Jack the Ripper Museum’, situated in a historic Victorian house in Cable Street in the heart of Whitechapel. The museum, which was controversial when it opened, tells the full story of the Jack the Ripper murders, focusing on the lives of the victims, the main suspects in the murders, the police investigation and the daily life of those living in the east end of London in 1888. Six floors recreate the murder scene in Mitre Square, Jack's sitting room, the Whitechapel police station, victim Mary Jane Kelly's bedroom, and the mortuary. I found an appropriate focus on the victims, and along with 'The Five' came away with a better idea of the five canonical victims, only one of which it can be proved was a prostitute. I also had not realised that the victims had almost certainly been attacked whilst sleeping rough (save the final victim who was in her own bed) hence the lack of defensive wounds.

  

 

 

Returning to Tower Hill, I made my way to Mitre Square, the site of the murder of Catherine Eddowes, the second victim of the so-called ‘double event’. At 8.30pm on 29^th September 1888, Eddowes had been arrested for causing a drunken disturbance on Aldgate High Street. She was taken to Bishopsgate Police Station and locked in a cell, where she promptly fell asleep. Sobering up around midnight, she awoke and was released at 12.55am, walking in the direction of Houndsditch. At 1.30am on 30^th September 1888, PC Watkins of the City Police passed the south-east corner of Mitre Square, finding it to be deserted and quiet. Fifteen minutes later, PC Watkins returned to the square and found Eddowes’ mutilated body lying in a pool of blood in the dark south-west corner. The site is now a school playground, and the body was found where there is now a tree.

  

  

A short walk brought me to ‘Happy Days’, a Fish and Chips restaurant on Goulston Street. After the murders of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes in the early morning hours of 30 September 1888, police searched the area near the crime scenes in an effort to locate a suspect, witnesses or evidence. At about 2.55am, Constable Alfred Long of the Metropolitan Police Force discovered a piece of an apron in the stairwell of a tenement, 108-119 Goulston Street, Whitechapel. The cloth was stained with blood and faeces, and the blade of a knife had evidently been wiped on it. On the arrival of another officer on the scene, Long took the portion of apron round to Commercial Street Police Station, where he handed it to an Inspector. The piece of cloth was later confirmed as being the missing part of the apron worn by Catherine Eddowes. Above where the apron piece was found (which is now part of ‘Happy Days’), there was writing in white chalk on either the wall or the black brick jamb of the entranceway – “The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing”. This message plays an important part in the film ‘Murder by Decree’.  

 

 

   

A five minute walk took me to Gunthorpe Street. On 7^th August 1888, a little after 5am, the body of Martha Tabram was found on the first floor landing of a tenement building in George Yard, a dark and sinister alley. Tabram had suffered a frenzied assault, and 39 stab wounds had been inflicted from her throat to her lower abdomen. A friend of Tabram, and a fellow prostitute, Mary Anne Connelly, told police that she and Tabram had spent the previous evening drinking with two soldiers along Whitechapel Road. Just before midnight they had split into couples and Tabram had led her soldier through an arch into Gunthorpe Street which leads to George Yard, whilst she had gone into an adjourning alley. The soldier was never identified, and because her injuries were not consistent with those of the latter victims – she had been stabbed rather than ripped – Tabram’s murder is generally ruled out as being the work of the Ripper.

  

However, the nearby ‘White Hart’ public house also has a possible Ripper link. On 13^th February 1894, the Sun newspaper began a series of articles in which it claimed to know the Ripper’s identity. Although they never named their suspect, it was clear that they were referring to Thomas Hayne Cutbush, the nephew of a senior Metropolitan Police Officer. Worried that they may be accused of a cover-up, the Chief Constable of Scotland Yard, Sir Melville Leslie Macnaghten, was asked to prepare a document in which he refuted the Sun’s claims. This document, now known as the Macnaghten Memorandum, was rediscovered in the late 1950s, and was found to mention the names of three suspects “any one of whom would have been more likely than Cutbush”. The first of these names was George Chapman, born Severin Klosowki in Poland. In 1887 having qualified as a junior surgeon, Chapman came to London, finding work as an assistant hairdresser. In October 1889, he married Lucy Baderski, and by 1890 was working as a barber in the basement of the ‘White Hart’. A board on the side of the public house emphasises its Ripper connection. It is also the starting point for a nightly ‘Jack The Ripper Tour’.

 

   

 

Walking to my next stop, I passed a barbers with a punning name – Jack The Clipper - finally reaching the soaring white tower of Christchurch, Spitalfields, which  dominates its surroundings today just as it did in 1888 when the Ripper’s victims would have glanced on it on an almost daily basis, as they pounded the streets trying to earn money to be put up in a common lodging house.

 

Opposite was the ‘Ten Bells’ public house, linked with the final hours of both Annie Chapman and Mary Kelly. Chapman may have drunk at the pub shortly before she was murdered; and it has been suggested that the pavement outside of the pub was where Kelly picked up clients as a prostitute. Between 1976 and 1988, the public house was named ‘The Jack the Ripper’, and memorabilia relating to the case were displayed in the bars. The brewery ordered the change back to its original name after a long campaign by ‘Reclaim the Night’ demanded that a murderer of women should not be commemorated in such a fashion. It also appeared in the Johnny Depp Ripper-film 'From Hell', including a scene showing Depp (as Inspector Abberline) having a drink with Ripper victim Mary Kelly (Heather Graham). A car park now occupies the site of Dorset Street where Mary Kelly was murdered on 9^th November 1888.

   

A short walk brought me to the rather ugly brewery building which now stands on the site of 29 Hanbury Street, in the back yard of which the body of Annie Chapman was found at 6am on 8^th September 1888. However, the opposite section of Hanbury Street, the south side, is more or less intact, so it is possible at least to gain an impression of what the north side would have looked like at the time of the murder. On the evening of 7^th September 1888, Chapman arrived at her lodging house in Dorset Street intoxicated. Not having the money for her bed, he was escorted off the premises. Chapman pleaded with the manager to stay, but he observed that she could find money for beer but not a beer. At 5.30am on the 8^th, a Mrs Elizabeth Long, noticed Chapman talking to a man outside 29 Hanbury Street. She found nothing suspicious about their behaviour and hurried by. However, she noted that the man who had his back to her wore a deerstalker, and had a 'shabby genteel' appearance. Was this Holmes following a lead that Chapman was to be the next victim ?   However, Long also stated that the man that she saw seemed to be a foreigner.

  

Another short walk took me to Brick Lane, and the Brick Lane Hotel, which was formerly the ‘Frying Pan’ public house, it was here that Mary Nichols (known as Polly), the first ‘canonical’ Ripper victim, drank away her doss money on the night of her murder, 30^th August 1888. Her inquest revealed that she had been turned out of the Thrawl Common Lodging House because she did not have the money (four pence) to pay for her bed. She was last seen alive at 2.30am, when she met her friend Ellen Holland at the junction of Osborn Street and Whitechapel Road. Nichols told Holland that she had made her doss money twice over, seemingly from prostitution, but that she had drunk it all away in the ‘Frying Pan’. Close scrutiny of the building’s upper storeys reveals that two crossed frying pans still adorn its upper gable, along with its original name ‘Ye Frying Pan’. Holland had tried to persuade Nichols to come back to the lodging house, but she refused, and instead headed unsteadily off along Whitechapel Road.

   

 

At some time during the next 70 minutes, she would meet her killer and take him into a dark gateway, then named Buck’s Row. Following in her footsteps, I continued for around 10 minutes, reaching Durward Street, which was formerly Bucks Row, it was here that just before 3.40am on 31^st August 1888, a carriageman, Charles Cross, noticed a bundle lying in a gateway. He went to inspect it and found that it was a woman lying on the ground. Joined by another carriageman, Robert Paul, they crouched over the prone form of Mary Nichols, who seemed to be just alive. The two men went on their way, intending to tell the first policeman that they met of their find. They narrowly missed PC Neil, who arrived at the body at around 3.45am, shining his lantern onto her, seeing blood oozing from a deep cut in her throat. Within moments he was joined by another officer, PC Thain, who was sent for local surgeon, Dr. Ralph Llewellyn,  both returning at 4am, where she was pronounced dead. Local residents became ashamed of their sudden notoriety, and successfully petitioned the council to change its name to Durward Street. A small car park now stands on the murder site itself. One building, however, has survived in the immediate vicinity. The looming bulk of the Board School still towers over the street, just as it did in 1888, although today it has been converted into flats.

  

Continuing along Whitechapel Road, I finally reached The Royal London Hospital, where a Dr. Thomas Openshaw worked as a pathologist. His opinion was sought in connection with the “From Hell” letter in October 1888.  This was a letter sent alongside half a preserved human kidney to the chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, George Lusk. The author of the letter claimed to be the Ripper, and to have fried and eaten the other half of the kidney. It was also here that Emma Smith, the first Whitechapel Murders victim died. In the early hours of 3^rd April 1888, she was assaulted and robbed by a gang of three men on Brick Lane. She survived the first attack, but died in hospital the next day of peritonitis. At the subsequent inquest, a verdict of “wilful murder by some person, or persons, unknown” was returned. However, it is almost certain that Smith was not murdered by the Ripper, given the lack of mutilation. She was probably the victim of one of the street gangs that were known to prey on the vulnerable prostitutes of the area.

  

Making my way to Whitechapel Underground Station, I caught a tube to Cannon Street, for a brief respite from the Ripper, having a quick lunch and visiting sites from ‘The Man With The Twisted Lip'. First port of call was Upper Thames Street, the location of ‘The Bar of Gold’, the Opium Den in which Neville St. Clair was last seen alive, and where Watson found a disguised Holmes.

   

The nearby ‘Bennett’s Hill’, was the true name of ‘Fresno Street’, where Mrs. St. Clair was walking when she saw her husband in an upper window.   

 

It was then time to return to Jack the Ripper, by visiting locations used in the 1979 ‘Holmes vs the Ripper’ film, ‘Murder by Decree’. After around a fifteen minute walk (and crossing the Thames via the Millennium Bridge seen in ‘Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia’, and passing Borough Market which appears in 'Sherlock: The Six Thatchers'), I found myself in Clink Street (a location used in multiple films and in the Sherlockian Doctor Who story ‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang’). Scenes featuring Holmes (Christopher Plummer) searching for Mary Kelly (Edina Ronay) and both of them being pursued by a carriage, with Holmes being knocked down and Mary kidnapped. Clink Street also contains one of England’s oldest and most notorious prisons, The Clink (from which other prisons are named), which dates back to 1144. It is now a Prison Museum.

   

 

  

A five minute walk took me to Southwark Cathedral, where the funeral of Catherine Eddowes takes place in 'Murder By Decree', and Holmes sees Mary Kelly, deciding to follow her. The cathedral also appears in 'A Study in Terror' where Doctor Murray (Anthony Quayle) addresses a crowd, alongside Sally Young (Judi Dench).

   

Making my way to the nearby London Bridge Underground Station, I caught a tube to Green Park. A short walk took me to the Royal Academy of Arts (Burlington House), which appears in the film’s opening as the Royal Opera House, from which Holmes and Watson (James Mason) are returning to Baker Street.  (Barton Street, visited in a previous Sojourn)

   

A fifteen minute walk brought me to Carlton Gardens, where a scene where medium Robert Lees (Donald Sutherland) points the home of the killer out to Inspector Foxborough (David Hemmings), was filmed.

 

A ten minute walk brought me to Charing Cross Station, where Holmes and Watson catch trains in ‘The Abbey Grange’ and ‘The Golden Pince-Nez’, and where Watson learns that Holmes has been hospitalised in ‘The Illustrious Client’. I then caught the Northern Line back to Morden, and then a bus home, continuing to listen to ‘The Five’.