The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Whitechapel Horrors by Edward B. Hanna Page B
Authors: Edward B. Hanna
Tags: United States, Historical, Literature & Fiction, Mystery, Private Investigators, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, British Detectives
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yard since Thursday. His mother confirmed it: She had washed it on Thursday and left it on the fence to dry, she said.
Richardson was released. Pizer was released. Piggott was sent to the asylum in Bow. The police had nothing and no one, and the press made much of it.
Hundreds more arrests were to be made — anyone and everyone seemed to be suspect. They were to include Irishmen, Germans, Poles, Jews, stockbrokers, seamen, butchers. They were brought in for the flimsiest of reasons, and often for no reason at all. Said The Times : “It seems at times as if every person in the streets were suspicious of everyone else he met, and as if it were a race between them who could first inform against his neighbor.” And dozens of people, women as well as men, walked in off the streets inexplicably proclaiming their guilt. But the police were to be frustrated at every turn. Few individuals were held for more than an hour or two. There was not a shred of evidence or a single clue to act upon.
Punch , critical of the police for acting on spurious information, published a cartoon showing a blindfolded police constable being spun around by a group of leering criminals. “Blind Man’s Buff’ was the caption.
The tenor of the times was such, the fear in the streets so great, that a drunken prankster could empty out a saloon by merely claiming he had the murder knife in his pocket. An Irishman by the name of John Brennan made such a pronouncement and quickly found himself to be in sole possession of the White Hart pub in Camberwell. How many drinks he helped himself to before the police arrived was not recorded.
More than one lynching was narrowly avoided, according to the press reports. A foreigner, who spoke not a word of English, was nearly strung up in the East End for merely looking at a woman. The Times reported the near lynching was initiated by “an enormous mob of men and women, shouting and screaming in the most extraordinary manner.”
Rumors abounded, the police indiscriminately seemed to chase down every single one of them, and the press, often with ill-disguised glee, reported the results, which were invariably, inevitably, nil. Criticism of the police, by press and public alike, rose to such a level that no attempt was made to hide the fact that officials at Scotland Yard were stymied and close to despair. Acting out of desperation, in an effort to ease the criticism, the police issued a terse “description” of the killer:
Age 37; height, 5 ft. 7 ins.; rather dark beard and mustache.
Dress —shirt, dark jacket, dark waistcoat and trousers, black
scarf, and black felt hat. Spoke with a foreign accent.
It was obvious to Holmes and Watson that the so-called description was manufactured out of whole cloth. High-ranking officials at the Yard thought it would be prudent to try to convince everyone that they knew what they were doing, and since they couldn’t admit they didn’t even know who they were looking for, they decided to invent someone.
“The foreign accent is a nice touch,” commented Holmes dryly.“Who would believe that anyone but a foreigner would commit such a crime?”
During the week that followed, Holmes in his spare moments continued to peruse the newspapers for the latest “developments” in the case, but merely out of curiosity. In any event, his spare moments proved to be spare indeed. Much of his time that week was taken up with the bizarre affair involving Melas, the linguist, and it was during this case that Watson was first introduced to a man he didn’t even know existed, the second most fascinating man he was ever to meet: Holmes’s older brother, Mycroft. 32 Little did he know then that within a fortnight he was to meet with him again.
Eight
W EDNESDAY , S EPTEMBER 26, 1888
“He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right.”
— The Greek Interpreter
“Y ou look tired,
Richardson was released. Pizer was released. Piggott was sent to the asylum in Bow. The police had nothing and no one, and the press made much of it.
Hundreds more arrests were to be made — anyone and everyone seemed to be suspect. They were to include Irishmen, Germans, Poles, Jews, stockbrokers, seamen, butchers. They were brought in for the flimsiest of reasons, and often for no reason at all. Said The Times : “It seems at times as if every person in the streets were suspicious of everyone else he met, and as if it were a race between them who could first inform against his neighbor.” And dozens of people, women as well as men, walked in off the streets inexplicably proclaiming their guilt. But the police were to be frustrated at every turn. Few individuals were held for more than an hour or two. There was not a shred of evidence or a single clue to act upon.
Punch , critical of the police for acting on spurious information, published a cartoon showing a blindfolded police constable being spun around by a group of leering criminals. “Blind Man’s Buff’ was the caption.
The tenor of the times was such, the fear in the streets so great, that a drunken prankster could empty out a saloon by merely claiming he had the murder knife in his pocket. An Irishman by the name of John Brennan made such a pronouncement and quickly found himself to be in sole possession of the White Hart pub in Camberwell. How many drinks he helped himself to before the police arrived was not recorded.
More than one lynching was narrowly avoided, according to the press reports. A foreigner, who spoke not a word of English, was nearly strung up in the East End for merely looking at a woman. The Times reported the near lynching was initiated by “an enormous mob of men and women, shouting and screaming in the most extraordinary manner.”
Rumors abounded, the police indiscriminately seemed to chase down every single one of them, and the press, often with ill-disguised glee, reported the results, which were invariably, inevitably, nil. Criticism of the police, by press and public alike, rose to such a level that no attempt was made to hide the fact that officials at Scotland Yard were stymied and close to despair. Acting out of desperation, in an effort to ease the criticism, the police issued a terse “description” of the killer:
Age 37; height, 5 ft. 7 ins.; rather dark beard and mustache.
Dress —shirt, dark jacket, dark waistcoat and trousers, black
scarf, and black felt hat. Spoke with a foreign accent.
It was obvious to Holmes and Watson that the so-called description was manufactured out of whole cloth. High-ranking officials at the Yard thought it would be prudent to try to convince everyone that they knew what they were doing, and since they couldn’t admit they didn’t even know who they were looking for, they decided to invent someone.
“The foreign accent is a nice touch,” commented Holmes dryly.“Who would believe that anyone but a foreigner would commit such a crime?”
During the week that followed, Holmes in his spare moments continued to peruse the newspapers for the latest “developments” in the case, but merely out of curiosity. In any event, his spare moments proved to be spare indeed. Much of his time that week was taken up with the bizarre affair involving Melas, the linguist, and it was during this case that Watson was first introduced to a man he didn’t even know existed, the second most fascinating man he was ever to meet: Holmes’s older brother, Mycroft. 32 Little did he know then that within a fortnight he was to meet with him again.
Eight
W EDNESDAY , S EPTEMBER 26, 1888
“He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right.”
— The Greek Interpreter
“Y ou look tired,
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