In mid-September 1888, the decomposing body of a boy was found in an abandoned house in Southport. At his inquest on the 18th, the jury returned an open verdict. It does not appear that the boy’s identity or cause of death were ever known, but the police strongly suspected that he was murdered.
“Any youth I see I will kill,” the Ripper wrote on November 26,1888.
“I will do the murder in an empty house,” the Ripper wrote in an undated letter.
Train travel in England was excellent at that time. Sleeper trains were also available. One could leave London at 6:35 in the evening, have a pleasant dinner and a good night’s sleep, and wake up in Aberdeen, Scotland, at five minutes before ten the next morning. One could leave Paddington Station in London at 9:00 P.M. and wake up in Plymouth at 4:15 A.M., take another train to St. Austell in Cornwall and end up near Lizard Point, the southernmost tip of England. A number of Ripper letters were written from Plymouth or near it. Plymouth was the most convenient destination were one headed to Cornwall by train.
Sickert knew Cornwall. In early 1884, he and Whistler spent quite a lot of time there painting at St. Ives, one of Cornwall’s most popular seaside spots for artists. In a late-1887 letter to Whistler, Sickert indicated he was planning on going to Cornwall. He may have visited Cornwall frequently. That southwest part of England has always been attractive r artists because of its majestic cliffs and views of the sea, and its picturesque harbors.
Cornwall would have been a good place for Sickert to tuck himself away when he wanted to rest and “hide.” During the Victorian era there was a popular private house called Hill’s Hotel – affectionately know: as “The Lizard” – at Lizard Point, a narrow peninsula of farmland and steep, rocky cliffs about twenty miles from St. Ives. The sea crashes a- around the peninsula. A visit today requires parking into the wind les~ it rip off your car door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE GUEST BOOK
In the spring of 2001, award-winning food writer Michael Raffael was working on a Food & Travel feature and happened to stay at the Rockland Bed Sc Breakfast at Lizard Point. The B&B is a modest 1950s farmhouse that can sleep seven, and the woman who owns it is the only living remnant of The Lizard Hotel’s distant and illustrious past.
It had been a hard year for Joan Hill, who inherited Lizard guest books and other records that had been in her husband’s family for 125 years. Cornwall had been in the throes of foot-and-mouth disease, and her son is a farmer. Government restrictions reduced his income, and Mrs. Hill, recently widowed, found her business all but gone when quarantines kept tourists far away from anything with hooves.
Michael Raffael recalled that while he was there, Mrs. Hill began telling him stories about the prosperous days when The Lizard was frequented by artists, writers, Members of Parliament, and Lords and Ladies. Scans through guest books show the introverted scrawl of Henry James and the confident flourish of William Gladstone. Artist and critic George Moore knew The Lizard. Sickert knew James but thought his writing was boring. Sickert was a crony of Moore’s and tended to make fun of him. Artist Fred Hall stayed there, and Sickert couldn’t stand him at all.
Food and drink were enjoyed with abandon, the rates were reasonable, and people would travel from as far away as South Africa and the United States to vacation on that desolate spit of land jutting out into the sea. They would forget about their cares for a while as they strolled, rode bicycles, and went sightseeing in the bracing air, or read in front of the fire. Sickert could have mingled with interesting people he did not know, or kept to himself. He could have wandered to the cliffs to sketch – or just wandered, as was his habit. He could have taken excursions by train or horse and carriage to other villages, including St. Ives. Sickert could easily have gotten away with registering under an assumed name. He could have signed anything he liked in the guest book.