composite portrait.
black coat, teeth much discoloured’. The wanted poster also featured an artist’s impression of the suspect, the first time this was ever used in England.
The inquest into Gold’s death recorded a verdict of wilful murder and Mapleton became the number one suspect. On 8 July, detectives tracked him down to a house in Stepney, which he had given his employer as a forwarding address. There, he was arrested by none other than Detective Inspector Donald Swanson (1848–1924), who went on to oversee the police attempt to capture the elusive Whitechapel murderer in 1888. Swanson had more success with the ‘railway murder’ of 1881. Investigations had discovered that a man fitting the description had recently pawned a pistol and had sold some counterfeit coins. The victim, Gold, had been a coin dealer, and so the police now had a motive for the killing: robbery.
Tried at Maidstone Assizes, Mapleton was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. He denied his crime and told the judge, ‘The day will come when you will know that you have murdered me.’ William Marwood (1818–83) hanged him on 29 November at Lewes Prison. •
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6
4
3
2
6
25
14
3
29
ENGLAND — LONDON.
LONDON BRIDGE STATION.the station from which the brighton train departed.
PRESTON PARK STATION.the station at which percy lefroy mapleton alighted from the train.
BALCOMBE TUNNEL.the point on the railway where isaac gold’s body was found.
CATHART ROAD,WALLINGTON.the boarding house where percy lefroy mapleton stayed to evade the police.
32 SMITH STREET, STEPNEY.the house in which percy lefroy mapleton was arrested.
MAIDSTONE ASSIZES.the court at which percy lefroy mapleton was tried, and sentenced, for murder.
30
PART ONE — EUROPE.
Below. illustrated police news, 16 july 1881. the sensational press report of percy lefroy mapleton’s arrest,
following his flight from the police.
31
ENGLAND — LONDON.
Below. illustrated police news, 23 july 1881. press illustrations of percy lefroy mapleton’s
interrogation and trial.
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2
1
4
1
2
3
4
32
PART ONE — EUROPE.
When Miriam Angel (unknown–1887) failed to turn up at her mother-in-law’s on 28 June 1887, Mrs Angel went to fetch her from the crowded lodging house on Batty Street where she lived. Here she found Miriam, six months pregnant, lying dead on her bed with traces of nitric acid on her lips. As the police searched for the poison bottle, they discovered a man under the bed, semi-conscious, and with the same telltale signs of nitric acid – burns and yellow stains – around his lips. A locked room with one dead and one semi-conscious, it was a genuine mystery and only the man, a 21-year-old umbrella maker named Israel Lipski (1865–87), could solve it.
When he recovered, he told the police that his two employees had attacked him during an attempted robbery. They had killed Miriam then tried to take his life, too, to cover their tracks.
The story was sensational and all too fantastical for the police and the Old Bailey jury that Lipski faced on 25 July. They preferred to believe that he had killed Miriam following a frustrated rape attempt.
Lipski, a Jewish immigrant in London seeking a new life away from the horrors of forced service in the Imperial Russian Army, was badly let down by English ‘justice’. A poor defence barrister coupled with what seems like fabricated police evidence resulted in his conviction. Sentenced to death, his young life was about to be brought to an end until William Stead (1849–1912) of The Pall Mall Gazette began a vociferous press campaign to save him.
In the end, to Stead’s annoyance, Lipski confessed. There is still considerable doubt as to whether he simply did so to avoid the life sentence that his rabbi told him was the likely result of a commuted sentence. Having fled forced labour and persecution in Russia, Lipski could not face exchanging that for a loss of freedom in England. He chose to die instead and was hanged at Newgate Prison on 22 August. •
16 batty street, whitechapel.
une .
englandlondon.
ISRAEL LIPSKI.× Miriam Angel.
weapon. nitric acid.
typology. domestic.
policing. toxicology.
Below. israel lipski’s clothes, the bottle that contained the nitric acid used to kill miriam angel
and the lock from her door.
16 BATTY STREET.
the boarding house where miriam angel
was murdered.
96 BACKCHURCH LANE.
the shop where charles moore claimed to have sold israel lipski
nitric acid.
COMMERCIAL STREET.
the street where a doctor’s cab
was hailed.
LEMAN STREET POLICE STATION.
the police station where israel lipski was taken
by the police.
