JTR:The Streatham Connection

JACK THE RIPPER - THE STREATHAM CONNECTION.

In 1988 when I was exploring the possibility of publishing a local history book on Whitechapel, to mark the centenary of the Jack the Ripper murders, I discovered references to a local Streatham man who had been arrested on suspicion of being the Ripper.
The incident occurred at around noon on the 21st November 1888, 12 days after what is now considered to be the Ripper's final, and most gruesome, murder, that of Mary Jane Kelly at 13 Miller's Court, in the East End of London.
A Mrs. Fanny Drake, of the Conservative Club, living at 15 Clerkenwell Green, was walking over Westminster Bridge when a man answering the description of the Whitechapel murderer approached her, and as he passed he gave her "such a grin as she would always remember it." Mrs. Drake immediately retraced her steps across the bridge and followed the man until they were opposite Westminster Abbey where she saw a mounted policeman, an Inspector Walsh, to whom she reported the incident.
The Inspector sent Mrs. Drake to Rochester Row Police Station and followed the suspect as he walked to the Army and Navy Stores in Victoria Street. There he duly apprehended the man and took him to the Charge Room at Rochester Row where the mystery grinner was interviewed by Inspector D. Fairey.
On being asked to account for himself, the gentleman produced his business card and correspondence showing that he was Mr. Douglas Cow, of Cow & Co., India Rubber manufacturers of Streatham, with offices at 70 Cheapside in London, and that he resided at 8 Kempshott Road, Streatham Common.
This information was relayed to Mrs. Drake who, on learning that he was a respectable businessman, at once apologised to him for having caused him inconvenience and both parties left the station.
Douglas Cow must have had an evil-looking grin indeed for Fanny to report him to the police as a Ripper suspect. Unquestionably Ripper fever was running high in London at that time and, when mixed with Victorian morals towards sex and impropriety, a villainous smile was all it took in the days following the Ripper murders to be considered a suspect for one of the most heinous crimes of the age.
However, what today is equally surprising is that merely producing a business card showing that you are a manufacturer of rubber goods in Streatham was sufficient to ensure your immediate release from custody.
For many years I believed this incident to be the only Ripper connection with Streatham until recent research by Kevin Kelly unearthed another fascinating reference concerning a man who once lived just yards away from my old family home in Danbrook Road in South Streatham.

This concerns the murder of the prostitute, Frances Coles, in Swallow Gardens, on 13th February 1891, whose killing was attributed as a Ripper murder, due to its macabre nature, although it was dismissed as such by Sir Melville Macnaughten, who joined Scotland Yard as an Assistant Chief Constable with the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in 1889, a year after the Ripper murders, and wrote a confidential note on the subject.
James Sadler, also known as Tom Sadler, an itinerant seaman with a nasty temper, was born c1838 in Stepney. He had known Frances when on shore leave 18 months earlier. So when he saw her, following his discharge from his ship on the 11th February 1891, he had renewed her acquaintance and they spent the night drinking together, after which he took her back to his cheap lodging house in Dorset Street.
After they rose at midday on the 12th, they resumed their drinking. Later that afternoon, as the couple continued their pub crawl, Sadler bought Frances a new hat and she was seen wearing it as they staggered from pub to pub.
As the couple lurched down Thrawl Street to their next drinking stop, Sadler was hit on the back of the head by a woman in a red shawl and a gang of men then set about him, robbing him of his watch and money. After the thieves had run off, Sadler slowly recovered from the assault. When he eventually rose from the ground, he had a flaming row with Frances Coles as to why she had not come to his assistance when he was being mugged.
As James was now penniless and destitute and unable to buy any more drinks, Frances parted company and Sadler was left on his own. He returned to the docks hoping to get a berth for the night but, when this failed, he went back to the Dover Street doss house where he found a drunken Frances in the kitchen sleeping off her insobriety. The landlord allowed Frances to stay, but turned Sadler out. No doubt he anticipated that a man may turn up later in the night who would be prepared to pay to share a bed with Coles. Alas this was not the case and she left the lodging house and nothing more is known of her movements until she was discovered in Swallow Gardens with her throat cut.
Sadler was arrested for Frances's murder. After questioning, the police had suspicions that he could have been involved in the earlier Jack the Ripper killings. So strong were their suspicions, Sadler was included in an identity parade attended by a witness to a previous Whitechapel murder. However, the witness failed to identify him. Having alibis for the time of the Ripper murders when, between 17th August and 1st October 1888, he was aboard the ship, Winestead, and the police having no concrete evidence proving that he had killed Coles, charges against him were dropped and he was freed on the 2nd March.
Following this incident, Sadler became reunited with his wife, Sara, and their family. Two months later they were living together at 121 Danbrook Road, Streatham, where they were running a chandlers' shop. They appear to have financed their Streatham business venture from money Sadler had obtained by selling his story to the newspapers following his release for the murder of Frances Coles.
Despite their new start in life, James's uncontrollable temper soon came to the fore again. Probably after a bout of heavy drinking in the local Streatham pubs, he appears to have attacked his wife. On the 10th December 1891, Sarah Sadler wrote to the police accusing her husband of assaulting her. The police were quick to investigate the complaint, no doubt because suspicions of Sadler being a candidate for Jack the Ripper was still fresh in their minds. It transpired that James had not only beaten his wife and treated her cruelly but had also been heard to threaten to kill her.
Their lodger, James Moffatt, described the seaman as a "treacherous and cowardly man" and was so afraid of him that he would lock himself in his room at night for fear that Sadler may inadvertently enter his lodgings when he was the worse for drink. It is not known if Moffatt knew his landlord was once suspected of being Jack the Ripper, notwithstanding which he had no doubts that he was a brutal and vicious man well capable of committing murder.
Despite her husband's cruelty towards her, Sarah did not press charges. However, she must have been relieved when the police told her that a constable would be posted to keep an eye on their Danbrook Road shop to ensure her future safety.
Despite this, things did not improve and, in March 1892, James Moffatt felt compelled to write to the police, such was his concern about James's aggressive behaviour towards his wife.
Two months later, on 9th May 1892, Sadler was heard to threaten to cut his wife's throat; as a consequence of which he was taken before the Lambeth Police Court on 16th May, where he was bound over to keep the peace.
Although the 1892 Streatham Directory lists James Thomas Sadler as running a general shop at 121 Danbrook Road, by January 1893 he was no longer living in Streatham and had taken lodgings at 108 Faraday Street, Camberwell. James and Sarah appear to have sold their business to Charles Michael Hubbard, who is detailed as running the shop in the 1894 local directory and continued to trade there until the end of the decade. It is assumed that, once Sadler had quit the premises, the elderly James Moffatt no longer had cause to lock his door at night and started to enjoy a good night's sleep again.
It is not known when James Sadler died. The Camberwell death registers list a Thomas Sadler as dying there in 1906 and a James Sadler of around the right age is also registered as dying in Wandsworth in 1910.
It is intriguing to speculate that my paternal grandparents, who lived at 47 Danbrook Road, and my maternal grandparents, who lived in the adjacent Colmer Road, may have known the Sadlers and could have shopped in their store.
Definitely by the 1950's, when I and my brothers would "run down to Wackett's" - the name by which we then called the shop, after Miss Wackett who ran the premises in the 1920's - all knowledge of a contender for being Jack the Ripper having trade there had long since been forgotten. However, the old wooden paneling on the walls and the well-worn counter, that the Sadlers would have known so well, could still be seen and had probably not been painted or varnished since the hands of the Jack the Ripper suspect had rubbed up against them in the 1890's.

Source: The Streatham Society News, No. 198 Autumn 2009, by "JWB."