Everton Football Club and Jack the Ripper

Saturday, 8 September 1888

At approximately 5:30 am on Saturday, 8 September 1888, 47-year-old, Paddington‑born Annie Chapman, a hopelessly destitute alcoholic prostitute who had been tramping the streets since 1:35 am for want of the price of a filthy, ramshackle bed, four old pence, at her usual common lodging house, was butchered. It happened in the publicly accessible backyard of now long‑demolished 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields, the skid row district of the Capital of the British Empire just a short, brisk walk from Liverpool Street Station in the adjacent Square Mile. The assailant was a hitherto unidentified assassin who subsequently entered the annals of criminal history under the – in my opinion, most likely pressman‑invented – cognomen "Jack the Ripper". 

The fiend had already slain at least one, and possibly two, other such “unfortunates”: one, 39-year-old, Southwark-born Martha Tabram (a possible victim) in George Yard, now Gunthorpe Street, Whitechapel, in the early hours of Tuesday, 7 August 1888; and a second in 43-year-old, Fleet Street-born Mary Ann Nichols (a definite and the first canonical – meaning generally accepted - victim) in Bucks Row, now Durward Street, Whitechapel, in the similarly early hours of Friday, 31 August 1888.

He had not only cut Annie Chapman’s throat, almost severing her head from her shoulders in the process; he had also disembowelled her and plundered her pelvic region for “trophies”, taking, to cite the evidence adduced at the inquest into her violent demise, her “uterus and its appendages with the upper portion of her vagina and the posterior two‑thirds of the bladder” back with him to his bolt‑hole.

That same day, Saturday, 8 September 1888, witnessed the completion of the inaugural six fixtures of the ground‑breaking Football League, comprising Accrington, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Burnley, Derby County, Everton, Notts County, Preston North End, Stoke, West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers. Everton, a surprise and controversial late inclusion among the ranks of the footballing elite, were paired at home to Accrington and, courtesy of two second‑half strikes by their outside‑right, one G Fleming, duly prevailed by the slender margin of two goals to one at their Walton Breck Road stadium in Anfield. 

It was a historic triumph witnessed by far and away the largest Football League attendance of the day, estimated at some 10,000 who – except for members of the fairer sex, who were admitted free of charge, and boys, who were charged three old pence – paid six old pence for the privilege. Plus, if they so chose, 1d for a four-page match programme, 35% of which was filled with advertisements. For this encounter, the Everton starting eleven, sporting Cambridge blue and white halved shirts and white shorts, encompassed, from goalkeeper to outside‑left, Robert Smalley, Alec Dick, Nick Ross (Captain), John Holt, Robert Jones, George Dobson, G Fleming, D Waugh, William Lewis, Edgar Chadwick and George Farmer.

Of that inaugural team, no fewer than six bore surnames shared by persons connected in one fashion or another with the Jack the Ripper case, namely, in order of appearance in this infuriatingly impenetrable 137-year-old saga: Jones, Farmer, Dobson, Fleming, Lewis and Holt.

For Robert Jones, a centre-half born in Wrexham in 1869 and caricatured in the Liverpool Daily Post Everton versus Accrington match report as “of little or no use”, this was his first and last outing in Everton’s colours during this inaugural Football League campaign. However, he did register a further appearance the following season in a 4-3 victory at Bolton Wanderers on 21 September 1889. This was followed by three consecutive outings in season 1891-92, namely, a 1-0 home and a 1-0 away success over Stoke and a 3-0 home triumph over Accrington, on 5, 12 and 19 March 1892 respectively.

He also made two final appearances a year later, namely, a 4-2 victory versus Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molineux on 19 March 1893 and a 4-0 home demolition of Blackburn Rovers on 1 April 1893. He was eventually transferred to Manchester City in June 1894, though not before debuting for Wales in a full international fixture versus Ireland on 24 February of that year.

In the field of “Ripperology”, as the study of the Jack the Ripper is frequently termed, the surname Jones rears its head on no less than three cameo occasions. The first bit-part player in this regard is one Sergeant Jones, a police officer in attendance in Mitre Square, City of London, subsequent to the discovery of the savagely mutilated body of Jack the Ripper’s fourth canonical and sole Square Mile victim, 46-year-old, Wolverhampton‑born Catherine Eddowes, another penniless, Spitalfields-based prostitute with a predilection for drink, at approximately 1:40 am on Sunday, 30 September 1888.

Sergeant Jones searched the immediate vicinity of the murder area, in the process locating a thimble, three buttons, and a mustard tin which had belonged to the deceased. It was this mustard tin in which two tickets for items pledged to the next extra surnamed Jones in this same murder investigation were found, namely, one Joseph Jones, the owner of a pawnshop at 31 Church Street, Spitalfields.

Although the tickets were issued in the names of Emily Birrell and Jane Kelly, which proved to be false leads, local reports of these findings eventually resulted in the long‑standing partner of Catherine Eddowes, John Kelly, reporting to Bishopsgate Police Station in the City of London on 2 October 1888 and the subsequent positive identification of the victim.

The last of the trio of Joneses destined to play a cameo role in this Victorian autumn tragedy is one Mary Jones, a madam charged, alongside one Gertrude Smith, with running a brothel at Thames Magistrates Court on Friday, 7 December 1888, exactly one month following the murder and virtual physical destruction of the last of the canonical victims of Jack the Ripper, a 25-year-old, Irish-born, Welsh-raised alcoholic prostitute named Mary Jane Kelly at 13 Miller’s Court, Dorset Street, Spitalfields, at approximately 4.00 am on Friday, 9 November 1888.

Given the fact that, in the event, this would very neatly explain the puzzling cessation of the murders – always, that is, assuming that Mary Jane Kelly was indeed the final Ripper victim, and this is by no means absolutely certain – this circumstance is significant insofar as the same charge sheet included a, in my view, plausible latter-day Jack the Ripper suspect, one Aaron Davis Cohen, a 23‑year‑old foreign, most likely Polish, Jew accused of being a lunatic at large, an indication that his erratic conduct during the initial police raid on the brothel had attracted attention and resulted in his arrest. Refusing nutrition and uncooperative and unruly to the point of violence, on 21 December 1888 he was, under the name David Cohen, confined in Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, where he succumbed to mania and pulmonary tuberculosis on 15 October 1889.

Welsh international utility ace George Farmer, notcher of the Toffeemen’s first-ever strike in the illustrious Football Association Challenge Cup competition in a restaged 1st Round tie versus Bolton Wanderers, which finished 2-2, at Everton’s Walton Breck Road facilities in Anfield on 29 October 1887, joined the Moonlight Dribblers from Oswestry White Star in 1885, becoming the club’s second professional footballer in the process. 

During the 1888-89 Football League season, which saw Everton field a grand total of 35 players, a figure not exceeded until the 1919-20 season, he was a cornerstone of the team, featuring in Everton’s first eleven on 21 occasions, including the first 15 games of the campaign. His record was bettered only by Everton and England stalwart Edgar Chadwick, in the process registering a solitary strike during a 2-0 home victory over Aston Villa on 6 October 1888. He made his final appearance for the Toffeemen during a dismal 5-1 setback at Walton Breck Road at the hands of the “Invincibles”, reigning Football League Champions Preston North End, on 16 November 1889, his tenth start in the club’s colours that season, departing for pastures new sometime in 1890.

The deluge of correspondence relating to the Jack the Ripper murders which swamped the national, London and provincial press alike at this time ensured that the resulting shock-horror outrage spread throughout the length and breadth of the land. This is evidenced by a piece which was featured in The Times on 16 October 1888, revealing the first of the two Farmer-surnamed bit-players in this tale.

Superintendent Farmer of the Royal Tyne Police, “received information which, it is considered, might form a clue to the East-end murders. An Austrian seamen signed articles on board a Faversham vessel in the Tyne on Saturday, and sailed for a French port. Afterwards, it was found that his signature corresponded with the facsimile letters signed “Jack the Ripper” and that the description of the man also corresponded with that of the Whitechapel murderer circulated by the Metropolitan Police.” However, the outcome of Superintendent Farmer’s enquiries, if any, into the apparently suspicious, but doubtless innocuous, circumstances surrounding this unlikely seafaring suspect is not recorded.

The second Farmer-surnamed cameo character in this Victorian saga, an approximately 40-year-old prostitute named Annie Farmer, plays a purely slap-stick role. At approximately 7:30 am on Tuesday, 20 November 1888, she escorted a client back to her usual dismal place of abode, a cheap and nasty common lodging house at 19 George Street, Spitalfields, where her would-be paramour paid for a bed in which they could complete the transaction which had been negotiated.

Some two hours later, a scream pierced the building and Annie Farmer appeared in the communal kitchen suffering from a throat wound. However, it soon transpired that the cut was superficial and, when the investigating police discovered that she was concealing coins in her mouth, they rapidly reached the conclusion that, far from having been the victim of a knife assault, she had robbed her client, inflicted the throat wound upon herself and then cried wolf, banking on the fact that, for his part, her luckless client would be forced to flee the wrath of a madding crowd baying for the blood of Jack the Ripper which, fortunately for him, he had duly succeeded in doing.

In passing, it should perhaps be noted at this juncture that the press reports of this farcical interlude did not escape the notice of one of the countless Jack the Ripper letter-hoaxers who had plagued the police ever since the original red-inked Jack the Ripper epistle of 25 September 1888 and the red-chalked follow-up Saucy Jacky postcard in, it is generally agreed, the same hand, dated 1 October 1888. Both had, courtesy of the press and the innumerable facsimiles produced and posted by the Metropolitan Police, entered the public domain. In this case, the fruitcake author, mimicking the original epistle, penned a red-inked message categorically denying any responsibility for this “bungling affair yesterday morning (sic) in Whitechapel”. Dated 23 November 1888 and implausibly addressed from Rea Street Lodging House, Birmingham, this correspondence was signed “from the Old Original Jack the Ripper”.

Besides enjoying the distinction of featuring in Everton’s inaugural Football League fixture, versatile defender George Dobson also appeared in the Toffeemen’s first four FA Cup encounters, beginning with a 1-0 defeat at Bolton Wanderers on 15 October 1887, a tie which was ordered to be restaged and which, following two draws, was eventually won 2-1 by Everton at Walton Breck Road, Anfield, on 19 November 1887. But they were subsequently disqualified for fielding no fewer than seven illegally poached players. All told, he featured in the Everton starting eleven on 18 occasions during this historic 1888-89 Football League campaign, of which the Moonlight Dribblers won seven, lost nine and drew two. Having played a stalwart defensive role during this roller-coaster season for the club, he departed Walton Breck Road for a fresh start elsewhere sometime in 1889.

On the Jack the Ripper front, on Saturday, 20 October 1888 a 22-year-old Oldham-born mantle-maker by the name of Maria Coroner appeared at Bradford Borough Police Court charged with having caused a breach of the peace by sending two letters on black-bordered notepaper, signed Jack the Ripper, one to James Withers, the Chief Constable of Bradford Police, threatening “to do a little business”, and one to the offices of the Bradford Daily Telegraph, which published its missive on 15 October 1888, announcing his “arrival in Bradford”.

One of the arresting officers in this affair was a Detective Inspector Dobson, who, acting on information received, had searched the accused’s lodgings and discovered incriminating copies of these epistles in the same hand. The foolish young lady, who claimed that her actions had been intended as nothing more than a prank, was duly arrested and subsequently remanded in custody. At her trial on the morning of Wednesday, 24 October 1888 Maria Coroner was found guilty of having caused a breach of the peace and was bound over “in her own recognizance of £20” for 6 months, thus becoming the first and last person to be convicted of sending hoax Jack the Ripper letters to the police and the press.

Outside-right G Fleming was recruited to Everton’s ranks in 1887, making his debut for the club in a 1-1 draw in an FA Cup 1st Round replay at Bolton Wanderers on 12 November 1887. His historic brace in Everton’s first Football League fixture versus Accrington notwithstanding, he registered just three more first-team outings for the club, a 2-1 success over Notts County on home soil on 15 September 1888 and a 2-2 away draw and a 3-2 home win versus Burnley on 17 and 24 November 1888 respectively. He departed Walton Breck Road, next club unknown, sometime during the following year.

The Fleming linked to the Jack the Ripper mystery is one Joseph Fleming, a 29‑year‑old plasterer with whom the final canonical victim, Mary Jane Kelly, cohabited in Bethnal Green, East London, prior to the commencement of her live-in liaison with her next and final non-client admirer, Joseph Barnett, at Easter 1887. Quite why Kelly’s relationship with Fleming ended is a mystery, but it is reputed that he remained fond of and intimate with her throughout her involvement with Barnett. It is additionally mooted that, out of pure jealousy, he occasionally maltreated her on account of this involvement, thus meaning that he has come under scrutiny as a possible Jack the Ripper suspect, but other than such hearsay, there is nothing whatsoever to link him with the whole sordid affair.

However, for the record, it is perhaps worth noting that a dedicated Ripper researcher named Mark King has established the, given that severe mental illness in one form or another has long been ascribed to Jack the Ripper, rather interesting fact that, under the name James Evans, Joseph Fleming was admitted to the City of London Asylum on 4 July 1892. Here he remained until he was transferred to the City of London Mental Hospital on 14 February 1895, where, on 28 August 1920, like fellow Ripper suspect David Cohen before him, he fell victim to pulmonary tuberculosis.

The Everton career of 24-year-old, Bangor-born forward William Lewis was even less distinguished than that of his team-mate G Fleming in the Everton side which faced Accrington on 8 September 1888. Having joined the club from Bangor in 1888, he registered just three first‑eleven appearances for the Moonlight Dribblers, the additional two coming in a 2-1 home success over Notts County on 15 September 1888 and a depressing 6-2 reverse at Bolton Wanderers a fortnight later, Everton’s highest defeat of the campaign, in which he notched one of the consolation strikes.

Having palpably failed to cut the first-eleven mustard at Everton, William Lewis duly packed his bags and returned to Bangor in 1889. For the record, Bangor was also the birthplace of Sir Charles Warren, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police throughout the Ripper-inspired Autumn of Terror. He subsequently returned to his military roots and, during the Second Boer War of 1899-1902, was in command of the British troops who launched a disastrous assault on an obscure, Boer-held hill in Natal on 24 January 1900. Its name? Spion Kop.

Two Lewis-surnamed players enjoy walk-on parts in the Jack the Ripper saga, both in the train of the slaughter of Mary Jane Kelly on the morning of Friday, 9 November 1888. First to tread the boards is one Maurice Lewis, a tailor and resident of Dorset Street, the scene of the atrocity.

In interviews with the press, he claimed to have known the deceased for 5 years, a likely story given that this is considerably longer than she had actually lived in the area, and that he had seen her drinking in the Britannia public house on the corner of Dorset Street and Commercial Street at around 10:00 am on 9 November 1888, in other words, some 6 hours subsequent to her generally accepted time of death. In view of the fact that Mary Jane Kelly’s butchered remains were discovered at approximately 10:30 am that same morning, this is an impossible scenario. Exit stage left.

An altogether different kettle of fish, however, is one Sarah Lewis, who was actually a witness at the all-too-brief inquest into Mary Jane Kelly’s death, which was held at Shoreditch Town Hall on Monday, 12 November 1888. And 7 days later, she occupied a seat in one of the two mourning coaches which followed the deceased’s hearse to the Roman Catholic Cemetery at Leytonstone, East London, where the mortal remains of the tortured woman were laid to rest.

At the inquest, Sarah Lewis testified that, following a row with her husband, she had left their home and walked to nearby Miller’s Court, Dorset Street, where she intended seeking alternative accommodation for the remainder of the night with her parents, a Mr and Mrs Keyler at 2 Miller’s Court, directly opposite the rented hovel which Mary Jane Kelly had called home.

Upon turning into Dorset Street at 2:30 am, timed by means of the Spitalfields Church clock opposite the street entrance, on Friday, 9 November 1888, she noticed a stout man, not very tall, sporting a wide‑awake hat, standing opposite the entrance to Miller’s Court as if he were waiting or looking for someone. She paid him scant notice and proceeded down the court, passing, without seeing anything or hearing a sound, Mary Jane Kelly’s door as she did so.

At the Keylers, she dozed in a chair, awaking at around 3:30 am, and, some 30 minutes later, she heard a young woman’s voice not too far distant emit one scream, “Murder”, to which she paid no further attention. Hot on the heels of her inquest testimony, a local unemployed man named George Hutchinson reported to Commercial Street Police Station, Spitalfields. It soon transpired that he was the man Sarah Lewis had seen loitering opposite the entrance to Miller’s Court. His dubious reasons for being there and doing so were, it seems, readily accepted by the police and he furnished a, frankly absurd, description of a flamboyantly attired, well-to-do client of Jewish appearance whom he had witnessed entering Miller’s Court with Mary Jane Kelly at around 2:00 am on the morning of Friday, 9 November 1888.

It has been mooted that this description was a red herring deliberately planted by Hutchinson in order to deflect attention from his suspicious presence in the immediate vicinity of the crime for which, if it was committed at or around 4:00 am later that morning, he had no alibi worth the name. Needless to say, George Hutchinson, most certainly an alias given the fact that, the best efforts of Ripper researchers notwithstanding, no record of this man ever having been born, existed or died, has surfaced, has fallen under justified suspicion in some interested quarters. But was he really Jack the Ripper? At the time of writing, all I can legitimately state is that the case, though, in my view, most definitely interesting, is far from proven, albeit not wholly beyond the realms of possibility.

John Holt, nicknamed the “Little Everton Devil”, a tireless, skilful centre‑half standing just 5 feet 4 inches and tipping the scales at a mere 10 stones, was born in Blackburn in 1869 and joined Everton in 1888 from their original local rivals Bootle. He had enjoyed the distinction of featuring in the first eleven from a Merseyside club to contest an FA Cup tie in the Capital, the occasion being an 1888 quarter‑final fixture versus Old Carthusians at the Oval which Bootle had lost 2-0.

He featured in 17 of Everton’s 22 fixtures during the inaugural 1888-89 Football League season, missing just a handful of first-team games in the next nine campaigns. During the course of his distinguished Everton career, which saw him qualify for the medal especially minted by the Everton custodians to mark the club’s 1890-91 Championship-winning season, he made a grand total of 225 First Division appearances, scoring 3 goals, and 27 FA Cup appearances, including the 1893 and 1897 FA Cup Finals, notching one solitary strike in the 5-2 demolition of Second Division Burton Wanderers in an FA Cup 1st round tie at Goodison on 30 January 1897.

While on Everton’s books, he, along with team-mate Fred Geary, enjoyed the distinction of being the first Everton player to be capped for England when he featured in the England XI which defeated Wales 3-1 in a Home Championship fixture at Wrexham on 15 March 1890. A second England XI featuring hat-trick hero Fred Geary defeated Ireland 9-1 in another Home Championship encounter in Belfast that same day. All told, he won 9 full England caps whilst on Everton’s books, his last during a 3-0 Home Championship victory over Scotland at Goodison on 6 April 1895, and a further one following his switch to Reading in October 1898, of which England won eight and drew two. A very fine international record indeed.

The cameo role of the player named Holt in the Jack the Ripper tale of mystery and suspense is one of pure Baldrickesque comedy. Late in the evening of Saturday, 10 November 1888, just one day subsequent to the tragic end of Mary Jane Kelly, a bespectacled amateur sleuth with a cunning plan named Dr William Holt, his face blackened with burnt cork, emerged from the swirling fog in George Yard, Whitechapel, the scene of the murder of possible Ripper victim Martha Tabram 3 months previously, only to frighten a passing local resident by the name of Mrs Humphries half to death.

When challenged, he burst into laughter and proceeded to flee, provoking Mrs Humphries to emit a cry of “Murder”. Such was the tension prevailing in the vicinity at the time, however, that an angry, aggressive crowd gathered apace and began attacking the hapless physician who, resisting for all he was worth, was eventually rescued by the police and escorted to a nearby police station. After admitting that he was in the habit of donning disguises and prowling the streets of Whitechapel in a fruitless endeavour to ensnare the by now infamous murderer, he was able to establish his innocent credentials to the satisfaction of the authorities. Dr William Holt has entered Ripper folklore as the “white‑eyed man”, the reason being that press reports of this farcical incident transformed his visual aids into white rings around his eyes.

As for Everton, well, that same day, Saturday, 10 November 1888, we suffered a 3-0 reverse at Blackburn Rovers, our fourth defeat in five outings on opposition soil. The Everton XI on this occasion featured an inside-right named Robert Watson, another surname with tenuous Jack the Ripper links, and an outside‑left by the name of W Brown — a surname involving very far‑reaching Jack the Ripper connections indeed… so don’t even start me, you hear?

 

Sources

Publications

Paul Begg: Jack the Ripper. The Definitive History (2004)
Paul Begg, Martin Fido and Keith Skinner: The Jack the Ripper A to Z (1994)
John J Eddleston: Jack the Ripper. An Encyclopaedia (2002)
Stewart P Evans and Keith Skinner: Jack the Ripper. Letters from Hell (2004)
David France and David Prentice: Virgin Blues (2003)
Tony Onslow: The Men from the Hill Country (2002)

Database

Jeff Hurley, Everton AFC Database 1887-1996 (1996)

Website

Casebook: Jack the Ripper (http://www.casebook.org/index.html)

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