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Back in 2016, I posted an extract of an article that had first appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette on 12th September, 1889 under the title ‘Murder Morning in Whitechapel’. The anonymous authors of the piece, described as ‘Two Occasional Correspondents’, had paid a visit to the Pinchin Street arch where the torso of a woman had recently been found. On their way to Pinchin Street, via Leman Street, Cable Street and Backchurch Lane, they acquired a companion, a ‘casual acquaintance‘ who ‘picked us up at the cat’s-meat shop at the corner of Backchurch-Lane…’. Their companion seems to have gone along with them in the hope of obtaining a free drink or two and in return he offered this piece of wisdom to emphasise the ease with which a serial killer might avoid capture in the East End labyrinth: ‘you might do a murder a minute, send a large family to the board School, and die a natural death.’
Robert Linford, Christopher Holmgren and I discussed this intriguing find on the Harrison, Barber thread and made an unsuccessful attempt to locate the cat’s meat shop. We had an inkling that nos 6 or 8 Backchurch Lane might have been the premises in question, but apart from finding them recorded as unoccupied on the 1881 and 1891 censuses, we could find no clue as to what went on in them.
However, since 2016 the LSE has made more of its Charles Booth archive available online and the answer to the cat’s meat shop mystery seems to lie in one of the more recently digitised notebooks compiled by Booth’s researchers.
On 10th October, 1887, a Mr Golding, one of Booth’s researchers, visited Backchurch Lane as part of an economic survey of St George in the East. On page 120 of notebook 29 he recorded his findings in respect of nos 6 and 8 Backchurch Lane:
“Catsmeat vendor - shed only”
I believe Nos 6 & 8 were close to the SE corner of Backchurch Lane and Cable Street under the arch of the London & Blackwall Railway viaduct. Although the ‘Occasional Correspondents’ made no reference to the railway arch, it seems pretty clear from the evidence of the notebook and census returns that the lock up cat’s meat premises were located under the arch.
So that would appear to be the mystery of the Backchurch Lane cats meat shop solved: it was just a few yards from the junction with Cable Street in one direction and from the junction with Pinchin Street in the other direction.
A couple of lock-up sheds that would have been perfect for the storing and dismembering of a body, within easy reach of the Pinchin Street arch. Should anyone with access to the premises have been of that frame of mind.
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