East End Murders from Jack the Ripper to Ronnie Kray
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
Modern-day policing owes as much to the forensics lab as good, old fashioned sleuthing. Many a murderer is captured by a DNA match, rather than Holmes-style deduction. But the case of Frances Coles and Tom Sadler, at the close of the 19th century, makes you wonder how traditional policing ever nailed anyone.
Sadler was a violent drunk, and Frances his occasional mistress. She was found brutally murdered and he turned himself in at Leman Street police station bruised and covered with blood. The police were sure they had their man - they just couldn’t prove it.
Friday the 13th of February, 1891 proved an unlucky night for young PC Ernest Thompson, as he patrolled the area around Leman Street, Mansell Street and Royal Mint Street. The Whitechapel beat was quiet around 2am, so the copper, who had only been on the force for two months, was a little surprised to hear a man’s footsteps retreating from the railway arches on Swallow Street, opposite Chamber Street. It was just unusual enough for PC Chambers to take a look at the clock on the Co-operative store in Leman Street - it read 2.15. But it wasn’t remarkable enough for the PC to pursue the man. How he later wished he had.
Entering the alley, Thompson saw a grisly sight. A young woman lay, barely breathing, her throat slit across. A sergeant was summoned and then the doctor, George Bagster Philips, who pronounced Frances Coles dead. Police Inspector Donald Swanson, ordered that a sample of the blood be kept for analysis and the rest washed away. It was the same hastiness to clean up a crime scene that had been seen in some of the ‘Jack the Ripper’ murders; though detective work and analysis was at such a crude level in the 1890s that it’s arguable that preserving the scene wouldn’t have made much difference. Analysis of blood was very basic, with scientists just about being able to tell the difference between animal and human gore.
And despite the police’s conviction that they had another Ripper murder on their hands, their attempts to track down the most likely accomplice were pretty feeble. They knew that Frances had last been seen with Tom Sadler, a fireman on the SS Fez, and that the two had been seen drunkenly stumbling from pub to pub in the day or two before the murder. They quickly discovered that Sadler took up with 26-year-old Frances, a working prostitute, when he was ashore. They just couldn’t track him down. When Sadler was eventually run to ground the next day at the Phoenix pub, in Upper East Smithfield, he was pretty scathing about the detective work of London’s finest. ‘I have not disguised myself in any way,’ Sadler said. ‘If you couldn’t find me the detectives in London are no damned good.’
Sadler told a desperate story of a couple of days descending ever deeper into drunkenness, with a couple of nasty beatings sustained along the way. No he didn’t kill Frances, he said, though he was infuriatingly vague about his movements, and how and where he had parted from Frances (another drunken row). The coroner identified three cuts across the throat, left to right, back again, then back once more. Sadler’s sailor’s cap was drenched in what was probably human blood. The story changed from day to day, and the arresting officers were not only confident they had got their man, but that they would get a conviction.
But before any trial there had to be an inquest, and that was called before the East London coroner at the Working Lads’ Institute in Whitechapel. Mr Wynne E Baxter heard the evidence of Bagster Phillips who opined that Sadler’s bruised and bloody appearance was at least consistent with having murdered Frances Coles. The press had a field day, deciding that they had at last run Jack the Ripper to ground. It was just three years since the Whitechapel murders had shocked London, and there was enough in common with the murder of Frances for editors to decide this was the latest in that violent series. But when the jury returned on Friday 27 February 1891, they had not found enough to decide on anybody’s guilt. The foreman declared ‘We find that the deceased was wilfully murdered by some person or persons unknown, and we wish to say that we think the police did their duty in detaining Sadler’.
It was a frustrating verdict rather reminiscent of the ‘not proven’ of Scottish courtrooms. The finger had been firmly pointed at Sadler, but no more. The suspect went free, but the story doesn’t end there. Two years later the police logged reports of Salder having threatened to murder his wife Sarah. Neighbours described him as ‘violent and treacherous’. The murder of Frances Coles stayed as an open case meanwhile. The way it was treated speaks volumes at what the police really thought: it was filed as the last entry in the Home Office and police files on the Whitechapel Murders.
With thanks to East End Murders from Jack the Ripper to Ronnie Kray by Neil R Storey, published by The History Press, ISBN 9780750950695, £12.99.
