Joseph Lawende
Encyclopedia
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, a cigarette salesman, is, with Israel Schwartz
Israel Schwartz
Israel Schwartz was a Hungarian, apparently of Jewish descent, who in 1888 claimed to have witnessed an assault on a London woman that is believed to be tied to the Jack the Ripper slayings....
, among the most discussed of witnesses in the series of murders committed by the notorious Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper
"Jack the Ripper" is the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, that was disseminated in the...
in Whitechapel
Whitechapel
Whitechapel is a built-up inner city district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London, England. It is located east of Charing Cross and roughly bounded by the Bishopsgate thoroughfare on the west, Fashion Street on the north, Brady Street and Cavell Street on the east and The Highway on the...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1888.
Lawende lived at 45, Norfolk Road, Dalston
Dalston
Dalston is a district of north-east London, England, located in the London Borough of Hackney. It is situated northeast of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London...
, and had commercial premises for the manufacture of cigarettes in St Mary Axe
St Mary Axe
St Mary Axe was a medieval parish in London whose name survives on the street it formerly occupied, St Mary Axe. The church itself was demolished in 1561 and its parish united with that of St Andrew Undershaft, which is on the corner of St Mary Axe and Leadenhall Street...
.
Mitre Square
On the night of the murder of Catherine EddowesCatherine Eddowes
Catherine Eddowes was one of the victims in the Whitechapel murders. She was the second person killed on the night of Sunday 30 September 1888, a night which already had seen the murder of Elizabeth Stride less than an hour earlier...
in Mitre Square
Mitre Square
Mitre Square is a small square in the City of London. It measures about by and is connected via three passages with Mitre Street to the SW, to Creechurch Place to the NW and, via St James's Passage , to Duke's Place to the NE....
, Lawende and two companions, Joseph Hyam Levy, a butcher, and Henry Harris, a furniture dealer, all three Jewish, left the Imperial Club in Duke's Place just after 1.30 a.m, the time having been checked by the club clock and by Lawende's pocket watch
Pocket watch
A pocket watch is a watch that is made to be carried in a pocket, as opposed to a wristwatch, which is strapped to the wrist. They were the most common type of watch from their development in the 16th century until wristwatches became popular after World War I during which a transitional design,...
. About fifteen yards from the club, at the entrance to Church Passage, which led to Mitre Square, they saw a man and a woman talking quietly. The woman had her hand on the man's chest. Lawende would later identify the woman as Eddowes by her clothing when he was later shown her body at the mortuary.
Lawende walked slightly apart from his two friends, and was the only one to take any notice of the man's appearance, having glanced at him briefly. He described the man as being of average build and looking rather like a sailor, wearing a pepper-and-salt coloured loose fitting jacket, a grey cloth cap with a matching peak, and a reddish neckerchief
Neckerchief
A neckerchief, necker or less commonly scarf is a type of neckwear associated with Scouts, cowboys and sailors. It consists of a triangular piece of cloth or a rectangular piece folded into a triangle. The long edge is rolled towards the point, leaving a portion unrolled...
. Lawende said that the man was aged about 30, with a fair complexion and moustache, being about 5ft 7-8 inches tall. He did not believe he would be able to identify the man again. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
newspaper claimed that Lawende had said that the man was about 5ft 9 inches and was of a shabby appearance.
The Metropolitan Police
Metropolitan police
Metropolitan Police is a generic title for the municipal police force for a major metropolitan area, and it may be part of the official title of the force...
clearly regarded Lawende as an important witness, because they kept him away from the press and, at the inquest into Eddowes' murder, City Solicitor
Solicitor
Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...
Crawford said, "Unless the jury wish it, I have special reason for not giving details as to the appearance of this man" (i.e. the killer). The Coroner
Coroner
A coroner is a government official who* Investigates human deaths* Determines cause of death* Issues death certificates* Maintains death records* Responds to deaths in mass disasters* Identifies unknown dead* Other functions depending on local laws...
agreed and Lawende merely provided a description of the man's clothes.
Major
Major
Major is a rank of commissioned officer, with corresponding ranks existing in almost every military in the world.When used unhyphenated, in conjunction with no other indicator of rank, the term refers to the rank just senior to that of an Army captain and just below the rank of lieutenant colonel. ...
Henry Smith of the City Police, in whose area Eddowes had been killed, was impressed by the fact that Lawende was disinterested in the previous 'Ripper' murders, and would not be drawn with leading questions. Smith believed him to be a credible witness.
Later life
According to the 1891 censusCensus
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...
, by 1891 Lawende (listed as a 'Naturalised British Subject') and his wife Annie and their 12 children (all of whom were born in Whitechapel) had moved to Islington
Islington
Islington is a neighbourhood in Greater London, England and forms the central district of the London Borough of Islington. It is a district of Inner London, spanning from Islington High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the area around the busy Upper Street...
and Lawende has 'anglicised' his name to Lavender, a spelling which is continued in the 1901 census. In 1923 Lawende/Lavender was photographed seated for a portrait with his family. This photograph was reproduced for the first time in the online magazine
Online magazine
An online magazine shares some features with a blog and also with online newspapers, but can usually be distinguished by its approach to editorial control...
Ripperologist in its January 2008 issue.
Lawende died in London in January 1925.
Anderson and Swanson
Lawende has been identified by some Ripperologists as the witness described by Robert Anderson as "the only person who ever had a good view of the murderer." The annotations written by Chief Inspector Donald SwansonDonald Swanson
Chief Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson was born in Thurso in Scotland, and was a senior police officer in the Metropolitan Police in London during the notorious Jack the Ripper murders of 1888.-Early life:...
(the ‘Swanson Marginalia’) in his copy of Anderson’s memoirs, The Lighter Side of My Official Life, published in 1910, states that the witness was a Jewish man who would not give evidence against the suspect, namely Kosminski
Aaron Kosminski
Aaron Kosminski was an insane Polish Jew who was a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders. He emigrated to England from Poland in the 1880s and worked as a hairdresser in Whitechapel in the East End of London, where the murders were committed in 1888...
,
"...because the suspect was also a Jew and also because his evidence would convict the suspect, and witness would be the means of murderer being hanged which he did not wish to be left on his mind...And after this identification which suspect knew, no other murder of this kind took place in London...after the suspect had been identified at the Seaside Home where he had been sent by us with great difficulty in order to subject him to identification, and he knew he was identified. On suspect's return to his brother's house in Whitechapel he was watched by police (City CID) by day & night. In a very short time the suspect with his hands tied behind his back, he was sent to StepneyStepneyStepney is a district of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in London's East End that grew out of a medieval village around St Dunstan's church and the 15th century ribbon development of Mile End Road...
WorkhouseWorkhouseIn England and Wales a workhouse, colloquially known as a spike, was a place where those unable to support themselves were offered accommodation and employment...
and then to Colney Hatch and died shortly afterwards - Kosminski was the suspect - DSS"
However, neither Anderson nor Swanson actually name the witness.