Behind Closed Doors

IntroductionThe year 1888 remains memorable for many different reasons. In the USA, blizzards swept across the country, claiming the lives of hundreds of innocent souls. In Germany, Wilhelm II was crowned Emperor, and in London, in June of that year, Annie Besant organized the famed matchgirls' strike, which was to have future implications for the working classes within the great hub of the British Empire. It was, however, within the annals of crime that the year passed most memorably into history, for 1888 was the year in which the city of London was rocked to its core by the most vicious and diabolical series of murders ever recorded in the history of such events in the United Kingdom. In the space of a few short weeks, the great metropolis was to be witness to a series of murders most foul, which, to this very day, have ensured lasting immortality and infamy for their perpetrator. The streets of the Whitechapel and Spitalfields areas, in particular, became streets of fear, as the unknown and, to this day, unidentified assailant, known only as Jack the Ripper, seemed to appear and disappear like a wraith in the night, leaving a trail of blood, death, and terror in his wake. Little, however, is known of another series of murders which took place in London at that time. As Jack the Ripper struck with apparent impunity on the mean, filthy, rat-infested streets of London's East End, another, less spectacular, but no less dangerous killer was on the prowl, hardly a stone's-throw from the scenes of the Ripper's handiwork, the killer striking with unerring regularity, less than twenty-four hours after the murders of the Ripper himself. With the Metropolitan police force's resources stretched almost to their limit in their search for Jack the Ripper, and with the banner headlines of the popular press screaming of his atrocities with almost daily regularity, it is little surprise that the story of the second, rather less newsworthy series of murders has been relegated to little more than a footnote in history. Yet, with political machinations taking place to suppress news of the second string of killings in an attempt to avoid a massive public backlash against not only the police, but the government too, and an investigation hampered by interference at many levels of authority, the story of the so-called Underground Murders is one that should, and will, be told in the following pages. Today, the London Underground, known almost universally as The Tube, carries millions of passengers every year in relative comfort and safety, both above and below the streets of the capital. Back in the days of Queen Victoria, however, the Underground Railway was a new and innovative feat of engineering brilliance, which was yet to make its permanent mark on the infrastructure of the city. With steam locomotives and cold and often uncomfortable carriages plagued by noxious fumes from the locomotives and the tunnels, it was nonetheless popular, especially with the working classes, for whom it provided a cheap and for the most part ultra-reliable means of travelling far greater distances to and from work – or at least, the search for work – than had hitherto been possible. This new transport system was also to become the unfortunate setting for the murders which feature within the pages of this book. Only the release of certain documents from Scotland Yard's archives, under the United Kingdom's recent Freedom of Information Act, has made the telling of this little-known murder mystery possible, so, without further ado, I ask you accompany me on a journey back in time, back to the autumn of the year 1888, and a cold, rather misty London morning… Part One