The Jack the Ripper Location Photographs: Dutfield's Yard and the Whitby Collection Read Online Free PDF Page A

there is a photograph of a Horseguard, identified by military historian Peter McClelland as being from The Royal Horseguards and 1st Dragoons (now better known as the Household Cavalry Regiment Mounted). Peter pointed out that the presence of a rifle would date this to the time of the Boer War and the type of sword scabbard just visible to the rider’s left was replaced in 1902. More telling was the fact that the owner of the photograph album had, in antiquity, written ‘Her Majesty’s Horseguards’ on the page, clearly dating the image to no later than 1901 with the death of Queen Victoria and the Royal line then continuing with King Edward VII. This album page has been lost, but Larry had written the wording on the back of the photograph pending auction listing.
    All this detective work came to fruition when, much later in the album, I found the (now empty) page that had once held the missing photograph of the actor Anton Lang. In very faded ink at the bottom of the page was the words ‘Anton Lang, Christus of Oberammergau Passion Play 1900’. Lang, a potter, was almost certainly the best-known of all the many actors who have played the role of Christ at the world-famous German event, consisting of a cast of local people, over the many years it has taken place. He played the role several times in the early 20th century in 1900, 1910 and 1922. Thus the date of 1900 was virtually confirmed.
    Anton Lang
    The Album
The album containing the photographs is now extremely fragile. It measures 8” x 6.5” x 1.25”. The cover is very brittle and is made of board, backed with a white cotton weave and fronted with a dark brown knobbled and textured veneer. The spine is missing but traces of the same veneer still exist where it once lay. It is held together with three round-headed pins on the front face of the album. The back has warped and appears to have some water damage. A label is affixed to the bottom left corner of the inside back page, reading ‘MFD BY THE HEINN SPECIALITY CO. MILWAUKEE, WIS. BADGER ALBUMS’, with the number ‘642’ stamped in red ink in a small cartouche beneath. The whole album gives off a curious strong scent of sherbet.
    The front of the photograph album
    The Heinn label in the album
    The paper inside, cream but yellowing with age, is dry, thick and textured, similar to the paper one would find in a scrapbook today. The binding is still tight in spite of the damage to the album. It consisted of 82 pages and only the last 12 pages are unused. The last nine photographs clearly date to a later period than the rest of the album, as they are all postcard-style, on card with white borders. The last nine images are also American in origin, whereas all the other images (save the first in the album) were taken throughout Europe.
    Reconstruction of the album was a slow process. Thankfully, nearly all the images from the European tour had explanatory notes (sometimes extensive) on the pages if the photograph had been removed. All matched with tears on the paper or with an explanation of the subject. Once these had been grouped and reglued, the loose pages were replaced in their original locations. This could only be achieved by comparison of the tears close to the binding and on the pages themselves. Thankfully, all of them had slight deviations which made accurate matching easier.
    Once this process was completed, it was discovered that only one sheet of the album was missing. That sheet was the page from which the Horseguards image had come. There was no sign of the image that would have once been affixed to the other side of the sheet and this initially gave rise to some curiosity. The preceding images had come from the photographer’s time in London, and the next complete sheet continued in Ireland. Was the missing image a London photograph and, if so, did it have a connection to the Whitechapel Murders? Such possibilities were brought to an end when, in early 2009, Larry discovered the missing image