I suspect the document is authentic and possibly even written by Sickert. If a Ripper letter was available in 2001 through a search by a rare-documents dealer, then that letter at some point must have disappeared from the case files. How many others disappeared? I was told by officials at Scotland Yard that the overriding reason they finally turned over all Ripper files to the Public Record Office in Kew is that so much had vanished. Police officials feared that eventually there would be nothing left except reference numbers linked to empty folders.
The fact that the Home Office sealed the Ripper case records for a hundred years only increased the suspicion of conspiracy enthusiasts. Maggie Bird, the archivist in Scotland Yard’s Records Management Branch, offers a historical perspective on the subject. She explains that in the late nineteenth century it was routine to destroy all police personnel files once the officer turned sixty-one, which accounts for the absence of significant information about the police involved in the Ripper cases. Personnel files on Inspector Frederick Abberline, who headed the investigation, and his supervisor, Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, are gone.
As a matter of routine, Ms. Bird says, even now high-profile murder cases are sealed for twenty-five, fifty, or seventy-five years, depending on the nature of the crime and whether there remains a privacy issue for family of the victim or victims. If the Ripper case records had not been sealed for a century, there might not be anything left of them at all. It took two short years after the records were unsealed for “half of them” to vanish or be stolen, according to Ms. Bird.
At present, all Scotland Yard files are stored in a huge warehouse, the boxes labeled, numbered, and logged into a computer system. Ms. Bird claims “with hand on heart” that there are no Ripper files lurking about or lost in those boxes. As far as she knows, all have been turned over to the Public Record Office, and she attributes any gaps in the records to “bad handling, human nature or pinching, and the bombings of World War II,” when headquarters – where the records were then stored – were partially destroyed during a blitzkrieg.
While it may have been appropriate to prevent the publication of the graphic details and morgue photographs of nude, mutilated bodies for a period of time, I suspect discretion and sensitivity were not the only motives behind locking up files and hiding the key. No good could come from reminding the world that the Yard never caught its man, and there was no point in dwelling on an ugly chapter in English history when the Metropolitan Police Department was disgraced by one of its worst commissioners.
Her Majesty the Queen must have been suffering a spell of some sort when she decided to drag a tyrannical general out of Africa and put him in charge of the civilian police in a city that already hated “blue bottles” / and “coppers.”
Charles Warren was a brusque, arrogant man who wore elaborate uniforms. When the Ripper crimes began in 1888, Warren had been commissioner for two years, and his answer to everything was political subterfuge and force, as he had proven the year before on Bloody Sunday, November 13th, when he forbade a peaceful socialist demonstration in Trafalgar Square. Warren’s order was illegal, and it was ignored by socialist reformers such as Annie Besant and Member of Parliament Charles Bradlaugh, and the peaceful demonstration was to go on as planned.
Following Warren’s orders, the police attacked the unsuspecting and unarmed protesters. Mounted police charged in, “rolling men and women over like ninepins,” wrote Annie Besant. Soldiers arrived, ready to fire and swinging truncheons, and peace-loving, law-abiding working men and women were left with shattered limbs. Two were dead, many were wounded, people were imprisoned without representation, and the Law and Liberty League was formed to defend all victims of police brutality.
To add to Warren’s abuse of power, when the funeral for one of those slain was scheduled, he forbade the hearse to travel along any of the main roads west of Waterloo Bridge. The massive procession moved slowly along Aldgate, through Whitechapel, and ended at a cemetery on Bow Road, passing through the very section of the Great Metropolis where a year later the Ripper began murdering the Unfortunates whom Annie Besant, Charles Bradlaugh, and others were trying to help. Sickert’s brother-in-law, T. Fisher Unwin, published Annie Besant’s autobiography, and Sickert painted Charles Bradlaugh’s portrait twice. Neither was a coincidence. Sickert knew these people because Ellen and her family were active Liberals and moved in those political circles. In the early days of Sickert’s career, Ellen helped him professionally by introducing him to well-known figures whose portraits he might paint.