Long before the Jack the Ripper crimes brought terror and panic to the inhabitants of Victorian Britain, the newspapers were pondering why murders should have such an impact on society as a whole.
The St James’s Gazette, in its edition of Friday the 4th of January, 1884, had this to say about the conundrum:-
TALK ABOUT MURDER
For one person who troubles his head this morning about the doings of the Cabinet or the chances of a Franchise Bill, there are fifty who think of little and talk of nothing but the murder at Stoke Newington.
Not by any artifice of the newspapers has the matter taken hold of the public mind.
THE DILIGENCE OF REPORTERS
The first account appeared in the most modest of paragraphs; and, if all of a sudden the subject has claimed the utmost diligence of the reporters and the full honours of typography, that is because there is a demand which journals are concerned to supply.
Not even about the Lefroy case was there a more eager curiosity; and one has to go far back in the history of notorious crimes to find such a display of personal interest.
The few who are too philosophical to share this feeling may perhaps forgive us if we essay a word or two about it.
A FOUL AND ATROCIOUS CRIME
Certainly we have not disposed of our problem when we say that the affair arrests attention by reason of the foulness and atrocity of the crime.
So far as conjecture carries us, the assassination had in it no element of adventure. It was simply brutal; and brutalities are always with us.
A MYSTERY
We hardly open a paper without lighting on some horrid tale – told in a few brief conventional sentences – of how a wife here or a child there has been done to death.
“Drunkenness again!” we remark: and pass on to the notice of the latest play.
Nor will it help us any more to reflect that the occurrence is, as the phrase goes, a “mystery.”
MANY UNSOLVED CRIMES
The calendar of undiscovered crime is large, and receives additions almost every day. Now and then some item is added which, looked at superficially, ought to challenge attention as much as the murder at Stoke Newington.
The record of the past few months yields striking instances.
THE WOMAN IN THE THAMES
A woman is found in the Thames below bridge, bearing on her person marks of brutal murder.
The coroner’s quest pronounces accordance with the evidence; the police are “making inquiries.”
We hear no more, and forget to ask for more.
THE MAN’S BODY IN THE RIVER
Again, above bridge the corpse of a man is discovered.
The surgeon who examined it declares that he has never seen a more “exquisite body;” the face, he remarks, is singularly handsome; the delicate hands, the carefully fitted clothes, all told that the dead man was of the class to which Fortune is kind.
But all we know of his fate is that he was “found drowned.”
Who he was, how he met his sad end, the detectives may possibly have discovered but the people who felt a passing interest in his case have never been told.
OUR CONSCIENCE IS AT REST
Nor is there, as far as we know, anything more pathetic in the story of Stoke Newington than the simple fact that a fellow creature met a sudden and violent death.
When some little waif was found dead in a dust-bin at Chandos-street, society, which had done nothing for him, yielded to a passing thought of pitying self-reproach when his death told it that he had once lived.
But here our conscience is at rest.
AMPLE FIELD FOR IMAGINATION
What, then, is the painful charm which takes so many men’s thoughts to the patch of green-sward and the clump of trees near the reservoir?
In the first place, we should say, the piquancy with which the known facts lead us to the borders of the unknown.
We have material enough to stimulate curiosity without satisfying it.
There is an ample field for imagination; yet enough has been precisely ascertained to keep speculation within rigid limits.
The elements of the case are easily grasped; and every one who has a turn for elucidating the obscure can invent theory of his own and hope from day to day for further revelations to justify or verify his hypothesis.
The interest is, in fact, scientific: though its sphere is of a vulgar kind.
A NEW YEAR MYSTERY
But beyond this there is a certain tragic appropriateness in the circumstances which feeds the fancy.
The last chimes of the old year had hardly ceased to sound when the deed was done.
The dullest imagination can follow the two friends as they walked homewards from the solemn watch-night service.
We hear the interchange of good wishes for the New Year, and see one of the two hurrying away to meet his doom.
Then the scene has its suggestions.
Though there is nothing picturesque – little, indeed, that is not hideous and depressing in the aspect of the border-land where bricks advance and trees disappear – still the new suburbs are for Londoners what the forest-paths are to the pioneer in the back-woods settlements.
A CHORD OF SELF-CONCERN
People not easily worked upon by the tricks of stage scenery will add to their picture of the struggle, neighbouring windows lighted up with the light of the “social gathering.”
Lastly and chiefly, the tragedy touches a chord of selfish concern in every citizen.
Not one of us but has some time or other to pass through places as deserted as that where Tower was assailed.
THE PERIL IS ALWAYS PRESENT
Sensible people will remind us – with superfluous wisdom -that the peril is always there: that our chances are not worse now than they were last week.
The sensible people are right.
But human nature has its laws, and many who were contentedly regardless of their risks will dwell on them now that the fate of one has brought those risks home to them.