The Camden Town Murder
On the 11th September 1907 a young woman, Emily Dimmock, was murdered. Her widely reported death laid bare the seedy side of London life and inspired a series of paintings by one of England’s greatest artists, Walter Sickert. Was she killed by a lover, a random stranger, or, as some believe, Jack the Ripper?
It was September 11th, 1907 and Summer was over in Camden Town. It had poured with rain all day and the first skittish winds of Autumn had whisked along the narrow roads tossing abandoned newspapers in the air and playing rat-a-tat-tat on letterboxes.
Emily Dimmock didn’t care about the weather; she was laughing as she tumbled out of The Eagle at closing time. It had been a good night and the gin had flowed.
Perhaps in her thin, green, summer dress, she shivered as she straightened up to make the short walk home. Maybe her companion took advantage of the cold night, to put his arm around her shoulder and move a little closer.
The two were seen wending their way through the wet streets of Camden Town holding each other up. Arm in arm they laughed as they passed the drunks staggering out of the pubs, The Bedford Music Hall where Crippin’s wife Belle Elmore topped the bill and the ‘brasses’ touting for business in the seeping gaslight puddling up the shadowy alley ways.
Emily was lucky, she had a nice warm flat to take her customers back to. She had no need for shadows.
Who Was Emily Dimmock?
Emily Dimmock was a girl with a past. At just 22 years old she already had a history of prostitution behind her.
She had left her job in service and moved to Camden Town seeking a better life. When things didn’t pan out quite as expected, she turned to the ‘oldest profession’ to earn a penny. Calling herself Phyllis, she found herself a room in a brothel run by John Crabtree and built up a regular clientele.
By 1907 her fortunes had improved. Emily met a railway worker, Bert Shaw, three years her junior. With the promise that she would give up her life as a prostitute, the two became engaged and moved into a flat at 29, St. Paul’s Road.
On the 12th September, Emily was expecting a visit from her prospective mother-in-law. The two women had recently argued but as Bert was under the age of consent, the couple needed her permission to marry. With a less than pristine past, Emily knew that she would have to work hard to regain her approval.
While the Cats Away
Bert Shaw earned good money on the railways and Emily had no need to work.
Each day, except for Saturday, he left his home at 4:30 pm and walked the short distance to St. Pancras Train Station and his job as a dining car attendant on the Sheffield Express.
Six nights a week, Bert made the 300 mile round trip returning to his flat and his fiancee at around 11:00 am the following day. While he worked hard, Emily, he thought, was waiting quietly for him at home.
Unfortunately, his fiancee had other ideas and had returned to her old life as Phyllis. Whether she was motivated by loneliness, boredom or just the simple desire to start married life with a few bob in her purse, it is hard to say but while Bert was away Emily was at play; entertaining her old customers in his bed.
A Visit
Bert’s mother was not a happy woman, she had travelled some distance to put things right with her son’s fiancee only to discover the girl wasn’t at home or worse, couldn’t be roused from a drunken stupor.
Thankfully, the landlady of the flats took pity on her and fetched her a chair so that she could wait in the corridor outside.
Mrs Stock liked Bert Shaw and felt sorry for the lad who clearly had no idea what Emily was up to while he was at work.
Mrs Shaw’s expression was grim, the landlady hoped there wasn’t going to be trouble when the two women did meet.
A little after 11:00 am Bert arrived home to find his mother still sitting and waiting. What was Emily playing at? She had known for a week that his Ma was coming.
He had expected to find the two making friends over a pot of tea, instead he found his mother looking cold, tired and angry. Bert fumbled for his key, keen to get her inside and comfortable but it was gone. Eventually, a neighbour found a spare and the two men, followed by Bert’s mother, entered the flat.
The Body Discovered
The room was a scene of abject horror. Emily lay naked and dead upon the bed. Her throat had been cut from ear to ear.
The doctor who examined her suggested the the killer gently lifted her head by her hair or forehead so as not to waken her, then sliced her neck from left to right with a cut-throat razor.
The wound was so deep that it went almost to Emily’s spine. Only the muscles in the back of the head had prevented decapitation. Pillows and cushions had been piled about Emily’s head to staunch the massive loss of blood.
The killer then washed his hands in a nearby wash basin and dried them on Emily’s petticoat before searching the room.
As dawn broke across Camden town, the murderer took Emily’s keys, left the flat and locked the doors behind him.
A post mortem was performed and the time of the young woman’s death was placed at between 3:30 am 4:00 am on the 12th September. Bert at least, was not a suspect.
The Hunt for a Murderer
A search of the couple’s rooms threw up few clues.
Emily’s purse, a gold watch, a silver cigarette case, a small glass charm and two rings had all been taken but the rings on Emily’s fingers remained untouched.
A partially burnt letter was found in the grate and strangely, Emily’s postcard album had been removed from its usual place and the contents scattered about the room.
This was no robbery, the killer, the police quickly concluded, was searching for something. The folk of Camden Town were terrified, the spectre of Jack the Ripper still loomed large in the memory of many and the police, it seemed, had no real suspects.
The following day a ship’s cook walked into Somers Town police station and made a statement that offered up an intriguing lead.
The Suspects
Robert Percival Robertson, claimed to have spent three nights with Emily in the week before she died.
He had met Phyllis, as he knew her, in a Camden Town Pub, The Rising Sun and the two had struck up an arrangement.
On Wednesday 11th September, Emily asked him to leave her rooms unusually early as she was expecting a visitor. Before he left, Robertson claimed the postman delivered a letter which Emily showed to him. The letter read;
Will you meet me at the Eagle, Camden Town, 8:30 tonight, Wednesday? Bert.
Emily set fire to the letter with a match and tossed it into the grate. The police later found the charred fragments.
At first glance the letter, if what Robertson said was true, appeared to put Emily’s fiance firmly in the frame. Fortunately Bert, like Robertson, had a rock solid alibi.
The ship’s cook went further; Emily, also produced a postcard from a drawer which she told him came from another of her lovers, a man she feared, asking to meet her that night.
Although the police searched, they could find no trace of it. Instead they looked for suspects in Emily’s murky past and soon made their way to the brothel where Emily had previously lived and worked.
John Crabtree, the landlord, gave them two names; Alexander Robert Mackie known as Scotch Bob who had been obsessed with Emily and another man Scottie who had once threatened the young woman with a cut-throat razor.
Scottie was never traced and as for Scotch Bob, he could prove he was working in the kitchens of a Wigtownshire hotel at the time of the murder.
Hidden Evidence
With the few leads they had going nowhere the police were becoming desperate, so desperate that they called in a psychic to help solve the case. The Daily Chronicle recorded what happened;
A clairvoyant called at the police-station to meet the detectives…and went with them to the murdered woman’s house…
After a short inspection of the room, the clairvoyant lay down on the bed where the body was found, and apparently sank into a deep trance. Soon he began to speak in a rapt, tense voice. He described several persons and he mentioned their names. Then he proceeded to give a startlingly vivid description of the commission of the crime…and concluded by exclaiming
“The man you want is on his way to Melbourne.”
Unfortunately, the psychic failed to pick up that just a few feet away from him, hidden under a sheet of newspaper used to line a drawer, was the piece of evidence the police had been seeking, the missing postcard.
Robert Wood
It was Bert who eventually found the vital piece of evidence while clearing out Emily’s things. The card which was delivered the day before the murder stated the following
‘Phyllis darling if it pleases you meet me at 8:15 at the (image of a rising sun).
Yours to a cinder
Alice’
The writer of the postcard was a young commercial artist in a glass factory, Robert Wood.
The Rising Sun was a popular pub in Camden Town. From the beginning Wood was less than honest.
As soon as Emily’s death hit the headlines Wood began to arrange his alibi.
He had been in a relationship with Ruby Young, an artist’s model but things had ended badly when she discovered that he had been seeing other women.
On Friday 13th September he sent his ex girlfriend a telegram out of the blue asking to meet her. Ruby recounted in court what Wood said to her at this meeting;
“Ruby if any questions are put to you, you must say you always saw me Mondays and Wednesdays.”
I asked him why. He said “Will you do so? As he gave no reason I said yes.
In the subsequent days Wood began to court Ruby again, even promising to marry her if her name became ‘besmirched’.
When a facsimile of his postcard appeared in the ‘News of the World’ along with a reward of £100, Wood made up an elaborate lie to explain away its existence, one he stuck to throughout his trial.
Ruby, was beginning to panic and shared her fears with others who contacted police. Wood was arrested and charged with Emily’s murder.
The Trial
The evidence against Wood largely centred on the postcard and a series of eyewitnesses who swore that they had seen him with Emily in The Eagle the evening before her death or leaving Emily’s home the morning after the murder.
Although he at first denied meeting Emily at all, Wood was forced to acknowledge chatting with her in the pub The Rising Sun a week before her death. At the time he was in the presence of an acquaintance, Mr Lambert, a bookseller.
Wood asked Lambert ‘to leave the girl out of it’ if he was ever questioned but Lambert refused. Backed into a corner Wood came clean but claimed his acquaintance with Emily was recent, in fact just a few days old.
Friends of Emily’s claimed he was a regular customer. Wood also admitted writing both the card and the burnt letter; strange behaviour for a new acquaintance.
Things looked bleak for Wood until he played his trump card, the appointment of the celebrated barrister, Mr Edward Marshall Hall.
One by one Hall tore apart the prosecution witnesses on the stand.
He ridiculed the witness who claimed to have seen Wood leaving Emily’s home at 5:00 am on the morning of the murder, forcing him to admit the day was foggy and murky and that a number of street lamps weren’t working.
Wood’s respected elderly father swore that he was home by midnight.
As for the female witnesses who testified that Wood had known Emily for a number of years, or those that had seem him with the young woman in the days leading up to the murder, Hall simply humiliated them.
It was Ruby, he claimed, who had persuaded Wood to concoct a false alibi. Wood was just a decent sort of a chap, led astray by his sweetheart.
After just fifteen minutes deliberation, the jury found Wood ‘Not Guilty’
Walter Sickert
The drama of the Camden Town Murder captured the public imagination.
In 1908 a play was staged on London’s West End dramatising the trial.
The artist Walter Sickert caused a further sensation when he released a series of paintings entitled The Camden Town Murder.
At the time Sickert, who lived in nearby Mornington Terrace, was not considered a suspect. Should he have been? If some contemporary Ripperologists are to be believed, the answer is yes.
The American crime writer Patricia Cornwell is convinced that Sickert was Jack the Ripper and has spent millions of dollars purchasing his work and attempting to extract DNA to conclusively prove the connection.
Her supporters believe she is right, her detractors are sceptical. Could Emily Dimmock be a twentieth century victim of Jack the Ripper? The jury is out.
The murder of Emily Dimmock remains unsolved and the victim herself is now almost forgotten extra in a much greater drama.
The prime suspect Wood, went on to tour the country’s theatres and music halls, recounting his trials and tribulations and drawing sketches of those who had appeared as witnesses in court. He received rapturous acclaim.
Ruby and other female witnesses who appeared for the prosecution lost their positions and their homes because of their connection to the scandal.
Bert of course, lost his fiancee and his self respect and Emily, well Emily; she lost her life.
Sources
The Camden Town Murder of Emily Dimmock in 1907 Solved- John Barber
A Gray Dawn and Murder Stalked the Streets- Stuart Martin
Ripper: The Secret Life of Walter Sickert-Patricia Cornwell
jack-the-ripper.org
Camdenwatchcompany.com
unsolvedcasebook.com
strangecoblogspot.com
The Guardian
The Chronicle
The News of the World
