Bruce Alexander - Person or Persons Unknown

“It’s true, my experience of journalism has not been a happy one. But then, few of its practitioners are so careful of their facts as you have been, consulting first with Mr. Marsden and then with Rabbi Gershon. As for the ideal you stated in court — the duel of ideas and opinions leading ultimately to truth — ”

“Controversy, yes.”

“Such an ideal is possible only in an ideal society of intelligent men and not one, like our own, ruled by ignorance and riot. It is I, as magistrate, who must deal with the consequences of careless journalism.”

“Sir John,” said Oliver Goldsmith, rising from his chair, “I appreciate your position, as you seem to appreciate mine. Let us say that this is a matter upon which reasonable men may differ, and leave it at that.”

Also rising. Sir John extended his hand to his visitor. They clasped warmly.

“For the time being, we shall, but I am sure we shall speak of it again in our future discussions.”

“I look forward to them, sir. But for now, goodbye.”

So saying, Mr. Goldsmith turned and walked swiftly from the room.

Once settled again in his chair. Sir John inclined his head in my direction.

“Jeremy? You’re still here, I take it.”

“Still here, sir.”

“What thought you of that talk we had?”

“Very stimulating, sir — though I felt you certainly got the better of him.” In truth, I was not near so certain of it as I sounded.

“Perhaps. By God, these Irish can be near as contentious as the Scots. I believe I shall ask Kate to put together a dinner for Goldsmith and Mr. Donnelly — should prove an interesting evening, don’t you think?”

It should not surprise you to learn, reader, that when, later in the day, a copy of “A Truthful Way with the Jews” was delivered to Sir John from Boyer and Nicholson, Sir John Fielding was near as pleased with it as he might have been had he written it himself. Nay, more, for he did tend to be rather critical of his own efforts at composition which he gave to me in dictation; and as heartily as he did endorse the contents of Mr. Goldsmith’s brief history of the Jews, he did as much marvel at its style. “Can you imagine,” said he to me, “writing so many such surpassingly beautiful sentences all of a single night?”

Those sentences described both the history of the Jews and their practices of worship. The lie was put firmly to the horrendous tales of human sacrifice repeated by Mr. Ormond Neville. These Mr. Goldsmith dismissed as “notorious fabrications of Eastern European origin.” He concluded:

Some will tell you that the Jews have no right to be here, and that, in a strict sense is true, for Edward I expelled them in 1290, and that ancient Medieval ban has to this day never been lifted. Yet if their presence here is illegal, so also, in a similar sense, is that of the Irish Catholics who are with us in far greater number, though they may not here legally practice their religion. I put it to the English public and their representatives in Parliament that it is time that outdated primitive laws directed against whole peoples were repealed in order to conform with present reality.

“Well said,” declared Sir John as I ended my reading of the broadsheet, “very well said. It is the laws — and the draconian punishments prescribed — that are at fault and not the judges and magistrates to whom it falls to enforce them.”

And so, well satisfied, he dictated invitations next day to Mr. Goldsmith and Mr. Donnelly, to dinner one week hence. I myself delivered them.

Thus did the days pass. The month was October. It was yet near dark as I rose each morning to kindle the cooking fire in the kitchen, and daylight went so swiftly in the late afternoon that it seemed no time at all until the day was done. Yet each day was counted by Sir John Fielding both a defeat and a victory: a defeat since he was no nearer to discovering the identity of him who had murdered four women; a victory because a fifth had not joined the list of victims.

In his capacity as acting coroner. Sir John conducted inquests into the deaths of the third and fourth women to die in less than a month. Nell Darby, the young woman (hardly more than a girl) whose body Mr. Tolliver had discovered, was identified through the advert I had written; she was a runaway from service in the household of a Kentish farmer, had not been in Lx)ndon long, and as Mr. Tolliver had guessed, probably kept herself alive by prostitution. Elizabeth Tribble, commonly known as Libby, was she whose body was so horribly mutilated by the murderer. There had been two organs sold off by her husband (if that he was in truth); they were recovered, so that she was made whole, after a fashion, by Mr. Donnelly — except for her eyes, which he had assumed were burned in the fireplace. A great crowd turned out for the Tribble proceeding, most of them women of the streets who so loudly hissed Edward Tribble when he appeared to testify that Sir John was forced to eject a dozen of the loudest from the courtroom. This was our last look at Mr. Tribble, who was far more docile than earlier; next day he went in irons to a ship bound for the town of Savannah in the colony of Georgia, where he would work seven years in servitude. But neither of the two inquests turned up matters in testimony that might be of use in Sir John’s inquiries. And in both cases he was forced to direct the jury to verdicts of “willful murder by person or persons unknown.”

There was no sign of Mr. TolUver, which gave me both a feeling of chagrin and a sense of sustained relief. I was sure that there was a good explanation for his absence, and Sir John admitted he had not greatly emphasized that he remain for the inquest — who would have thought it necessary? It was clear, however, that in Sir John’s mind the butcher’s absence counted greatly against him. He gave me the task of checking Mr. Tolliver’s stall in Covent Garden from time to time. And sometime each evening Mr. Langford was detailed to stop by the apartment on Long Acre to see if there was any sign of him. Those constables who knew the butcher by sight were urged to keep a sharp eye out for him. Yet as time passed, he remained disappeared.

The four murders, particularly that of the unfortunate Libby Tribble, had a dampening effect upon the commerce in flesh in the Covent Garden area. For nights after the inquest into her death had made public the awful mutilations of her body, there were no, or perhaps few, prostitutes to be seen on the streets. They remained in the dives and dram shops, drinking away the little money they might have, skeptically assessing the men who came to them as customers, rejecting all except those who were earlier known to them.

Lady Fielding mentioned to me in passing that the number of those seeking admittance to the Magdalene Home for Penitent Prostitutes, which she oversaw, had risen so sharply that they were near full-up. “I know not,” said she to me, “if these are true penitents, or whether they merely seek temporary shelter until this terror passes. Of some I am downright suspicious.”

She named it terror, and terror it was — yet one of silent and sullen nature, perhaps closer to dread. When a night passed with no news of a murder, there was no feeling of relief among the inhabitants of Covent Garden, but rather a sense of growing fear for what the next night might bring. None doubted that the murderer was still among us; none suggested he may have hopped aboard a ship for the colonies and gone off to inflict his horrors upon the whores of Boston or Philadelphia. No, he was with us still, and it was only a matter of days until he would strike again. The Bow Street Runners were aware of this, and their chief, Sir John, most keenly of all. He had instructed them to go out each night in full gear — cutlass and pistols — and to be most specially watchful, to explore the passages and the dark courts. To aid them in their searches, each also was obliged to carry an oil lantern, which became a cause of irritation to them. Some said it reduced them to the level of the old night watchman; others said it made easy targets of them should the murderer be armed with a pistol; and all seemed to agree that with sword and pistols, it was all just too damned much to carry about. Thus with each night that passed did the constables grow more tight-hpped and snappish.