At the time of the Jack the Ripper murders, Charles Thomson Ritchie, 1st Baron Ritchie of Dundee (1838 – 1906) was the Member of Parliament for St George’s-in-the-East, one of the poorest constituencies in England.
The fact that such a wealthy individual should have been voted into Parliament to represent some of the most poverty-stricken residents of Victorian London led to a few eyebrows being raised in the radical press, and Ritchie came under attack in several newspapers, and he found himself accused of being out of touch with his constituents.
As a Tory M.P, he also found himself under attack from members of his own party, as it was he who was responsible for the Local Government Act of 1888, which instituted the county councils, among them the London County Council, which came into being in 1889, and remained the principal local government body for the London, until it was replaced by the Greater London Council (GLC) in 1965.
AN ATTACK IN THE PRESS
In early October, 1888, as press reporting on the Whitechapel murders reached fever pitch, Reynolds’s Newspaper published the following letter in its edition of Sunday, 7th October, 1888, which laid into the unfortunate Mr. Ritchie, which accused him of lacking any understanding of the hardships faced by his constituents and which ended by quoting from Charles Kingsley’s 1848 poem Alton Locke’s Song.
The article read:-
PUBLIC AND SOCIAL
LETTERS TO MR. RITCHIE
M.P., ST. GEORGE’S IN THE EAST
“SIR, – What are you doing while the metropolis is panic-stricken by the crimes committed in and about your constituency?
You are a member of a Cabinet in which the head of the Metropolitan police is your colleague.
You share with the Home Secretary (Sir Henry Matthews) the responsibility for the safety of the metropolis, yet you say nothing while murder, and outrage, and terror are rampant among the people, of whose interests you are supposed to be the protector and representative.
THE FOLLY OF THE WORKING MASSES
It is natural. It is only another illustration of the folly of the working masses selecting for their member a wealthy man from among the classes.
You, sir, never tread the unclean streets of St. George’s; you are never seen talking with the poor who inhabit those dingy abodes; you take no part in their social life; they have returned you, and you neglect them.
It is pitiful that the poor should be so blind to their interests.
HE SANCTIONED BLOODY SUNDAY
Are you not one of the men who sanctioned the policy of bludgeoning the poor in Trafalgar-square?
Alas! That our fellow citizens should be so indifferent to what so nearly concerns them.
It would have been the duty of a fitting representative of St. George’s-in-the-East to go among his people at this unparalleled juncture, and to aid them with his counsel and sympathy.
THEY WOULD VOTE FOR HIM AGAIN
But you who know not what poverty means hold coldly aloof. It is too much trouble; it is in an inodorous neighbourhood; the silly people, you believe, would vote again as they have done, in spite of any neglect.
Why, therefore, should you trouble?
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?
I hold you, sir, responsible for much that has happened in the East-end.
You are a member of the Government.
What measures have you proposed or taken for the relief of distress among these unhappy people?
Why is it that the sanitary condition of the houses and streets of St. George’s-in-the-East is a disgrace to civilization?
Answer these questions, or stand condemned as a futile Minister and an unworthy representative.
THE EYES OF THE PEOPLE WILL OPEN
Surely the East-end terror, if it has any lasting effect, will open the eyes of the people to their folly of sending such men as yourself to the House of Commons.
And here it is proper to suggest that if the inhabitants of St. George’s have shown an almost criminal folly in the choice of a representative, they should make no mistake in the man they may choose for their representative on the London County Council.
They have a chance now of repairing the deep blunder of which they have been guilty; for I believe that the action of the County Council will have a greater effect upon the interests and daily lives of the people of the metropolis, with their multiform occupations, than Parliament itself.
HE HAS FORSAKEN THE PEOPLE
Let the inhabitants of the murder district lose no time in selecting their candidate. Their man in Parliament has forsaken them; let them not forsake themselves.
The pity of it is that it should take blood to stir this apathetic district.
Their squalid surroundings; their miserable lives; their blank look-out on the future – these have been unavailing.
Perhaps the circumstance that their district has been turned into a human slaughter-yard may have the desired effect.
Are there no men at the East to take up manfully, and to voice skilfully, the cause of the people?
TRIED AND FOUND WANTING
The mediocre, machine-politicians who misrepresent these great districts have been tried, and have been found wanting.
I am convinced that there are men in East London who could play the necessary part, were they not restrained by a reprehensible mistrust of their own powers, and a culpable bashfulness, engendered by a too long endurance of the reign of these vague, nerveless, boneless individuals, who pass off their commonplaces as an energetic declaration of the sentiments of the democracy.
A CALL TO ARMS
Shake these creatures from your back, and be men!
Why is it that we do not hear any proposal for the holding of some great indignation meeting to call attention to these matters, and to evoke and consolidate a permanent public spirit in the eastern districts?
The east is so distinct from other parts of London that it requires a separate organization, and separate agencies for gathering together the effective force of the people.
What the Metropolitan Radical Federation has done for all London, a special federation of East-end clubs, trades, and societies ought to do for those regions east of the City, which are practically unknown to the residents in the other quarters of London.
A VOTE OF CENSURE
But first, let the public meeting be held, and let Mr. Ritchie be invited, as a member of the Government, to attend, and give an account of his misused stewardship.
If he refuses, a vote of censure would be the first natural punishment for his indifferent contempt.
Wise men, who are anxious for the improvement of the East-end, will not let the present opportunity, when public excitement is at fever pitch, pass away without taking advantage of it to push towards the objects at which they have been aiming.
SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY
Such opportunities do not often occur. Let them be utilized to the fullest.
The present state of the East-end – the possibility of such occurrences in such a community, all point in the one direction – namely, that crime and poverty go hand in hand.
It is a question of work and wages – of the pressure of the social machine upon the poor.
It is only in a poor locality that these crimes could be possible.
WEEP FOR THE EAST END
The wail of the East-end, of the poor everywhere. is always the same.
Weep, weep, weep, and weep
For pauper, dolt, and slave;
Hark! from wasted moor and fen,
Feverous alley, workhouse den,
Swells the wail of Englishmen
Work I or the grave!
“Down, down, down, and down
With idler, knave, and tyrant;
Why for sluggards stint and moil?
He that will not live by toil
Has no right on English soil
God’s word’s our warrant.”
If these tragedies awake us to the living truth of Kingsley’s lines, they will not have occurred in vain. WMT.”