The Ripper panic was not suddenly resurrected after Emily’s homicide, and Sickert’s name was never mentioned in connection with the crime. There were no Ripper-type letters to the press or the police, but curiously enough, right after Emily’s homicide a Harold Ashton, a reporter for the Morning Leader, went to the police and showed them photographs of four postcards sent to the editor. It is not clear from the police report who sent these postcards, but the implication is they were signed “A.C.C.” Ashton inquired if the police were aware that the writer of the postcards might be a “racing man.” The reporter went on to point out the following:
A postmark dated January 2, 1907, London, was the first day of racing after “a spell of wintry weather,” and the race that day was at Gatwick.
A second postcard was dated August 9, 1907, Brighton, and the Brighton races were held on the 6th, 7th, and 8th and at Lewes on the 9th and 10th of that month. The reporter said that many people who attended the races at Lewes stayed the weekend in Brighton.
A third postcard was dated August 19, 1907, Windsor, and the Windsor races were held on Friday and Saturday, the 16th and 17th of that month.
The fourth postcard was dated September 9th, two days before Emily’s murder, and one day before the Doncaster autumn race in Yorkshire. But what was very strange about this card, Ashton pointed out, is that it was a French postcard that appeared to have been purchased in Chantilly, France, where a race had been held the week before the Doncaster autumn race. Ashton said, according to the rather confusing police report, that he believed “the post card may have been purchased in France, possibly at Chantilly, brought over and posted with English stamps at Don-caster” – as if to imply it had been mailed from Doncaster during the races. Had the sender attended the Doncaster autumn races, he could not have been in Camden Town at the time of Emily’s September 11th murder. The Doncaster races were held on the 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th of September.
Ashton was asked to withhold this information from his newspaper, which he did. On September 30th, Inspector A. Hailstone jotted on the report that the police thought Ashton was correct about the dates of the races, but the reporter was “quite wrong” about the postmark of the fourth postcard. “It is clearly marked London NW.” Apparently, it didn’t strike Inspector Hailstone as somewhat odd that a French postcard apparently written two days before Emily Dimmock’s murder was for some reason mailed in London to a London newspaper. I don’t know if “A.C.C.” were the initials of an anonymous sender or meant something else, but it seems that the police might have questioned why a “racing man” would have sent these postcards to a newspaper at all.
It might have occurred to Inspector Hailstone that what this racing man had accomplished, whether he intended to or not, was to make it clear he had a habit of attending horse races and was at Doncaster on the date the much-publicized murder of Emily Dimmock occurred. If Sickert was now supplying himself with alibis instead of taunting the police with his “catch me if you can” communications, his actions would make perfect sense. At this stage in his life, his violent psychopathic drive would have lessened. It would be highly unusual for him to continue maniacal killing sprees that required tremendous energy and obsessive focus. If he committed murder, he did not want to be caught. His violent energy had been dissipated – although not eradicated – by age and his career.
When Sickert began his infamous paintings and etchings of nude women sprawled on iron bedsteads – the Camden Town Murder and L’affair de Camden Town, or Jack Ashore or the clothed man in Despair who sits on a bed, his face in his hands – he was simply viewed as a respected artist who had chosen the Camden Town murder as a narrative theme in his work. It wouldn’t be until many years later that a detail would link him to the Camden Town murder. On November 29, 1937, the Evening Standard printed a short article about Sickert’s Camden Town murder paintings, and stated, “Sickert, who was living in Camden Town, was permitted to enter the house where the murder was committed and did several sketches of the murdered woman’s body.”