The Dracula Secrets by Neil Storey

Author:Neil Storey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752484631
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2012-05-03T16:00:00+00:00

8

THE WHITECHAPEL VAMPIRE

‘Do something – do something!’ Lord Salisbury cried

‘We’ve done all we can!’ Worried Warren replied;

‘We keep on arresting as fast as we can,

And we hope soon or late we shall get the right man.’

Then, goaded by taunts to the depths of despair,

The poor First Commissioner tore at his hair,

And fell upon Matthews’s breast with a sob –

But the Whitechapel Vampire was still on the job.251

Dagonet, George R. Sims

As the crowds poured out on to the portico and into the cold night beyond the warm glow of the theatre, the streets of 1880s London were suffering from an intensifying climate of fear.

The old fires of the Young Ireland movement, which had agitated for rebellion in Ireland, had been rekindled with the creation of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in Dublin in 1858. In 1859, the American wing of the IRB, the Fenian Brotherhood, was founded to raise funds and muster volunteers for the cause. Many of the Irish driven to America to escape the potato famines in the 1840s were resentful that they had been conscripted to fight in the American Civil War and were drawn to the Fenians; the more extreme element formulated a plan of military action. A daring raid was attempted on Canada in 1866 whereby Fenian forces attempted to seize the transport systems of the British province and hold it for ransom in exchange for Ireland’s freedom. The Fenian force contained many battle-hardened soldiers of the Civil War but the size of the force doomed it to failure. Nevertheless, fundraising and fear of further actions in America and against Britain were very much alive into the 1880s.

The IRB began to stockpile weapons and planned a rebellion in 1865 but British authorities, forewarned by their spies within the Fenian movement, were able to move rapidly to emasculate the rising by shutting down their newspaper and arresting most of the leadership. Early in 1867 a group of Irish-American officers landed at Cork intent on raising an army against England but were doomed by bad organisation, lack of support and British intelligence, and yet again the leaders were rounded up and imprisoned.

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