Day 11: Legal Walk

Today was the last day of scheduled events. Tomorrow is a free day to do anything we would like, and 3am Saturday morning we are headed to the airport. How can this be possible, two weeks surely hasn’t passed this fast has it?? But sure enough, this post is titled day 11.

We start our morning with a Legal Walk of London. This means we walk to local sites and establishments of London’s legal system, and man were there a lot of them. Our guide also worked as a solicitors so she could give us firsthand knowledge. We walked past all of the ‘Inns of Court” which are associations of barristers (to my understanding like a guild). There are a total of four, and all barristers (crown court lawyers) must belong to one of these.

The four are Grey, Lincoln, Middle Temple, and Inner Temple. Our guide taught us a jingle that goes-

Inner’s for the rich,

Middle’s for the poor,

Lincoln’s for the scholar,

Grey is for the bore

The guide explained that this jingle was not made by the members of Grey so we are not sure how accurate it really is.

Here we see a wig and robe shop. The long wig is known as a spaniel wig, and is ceremonial for judges only. The smaller one next to it is for barristers, and the robe shown is for female barristers. If you come to court and do not have the wig of robe properly worn, the judge will just act like he can't hear you. 

We also visited the Royal Courts of Justice, which is basically the appeals court for England and Wales (Northern Ireland and Scotland have their own). This was a really beautiful building, probably due to the architect. It was designed by George Edmund Street who was originally a solicitor. Our tour guide explained that he had always wanted to build cathedrals but was never asked. So when he was give the court building to design, he used his cathedral ideas and it is fairly obvious.

 We sat in on a few court matters which were once again very interesting. This was once again a magistrate system so it was 3 judges in front. However the court proceedings seemed much less ‘professional’ in this setting because the first 20 minutes we sat in silence waiting for one of the solicitors to arrive. I was just imagining what Judge Judy would say if someone told her she needed to wait on someone’s lawyer to show.

Our next stop on this fun day of legalness was the Metropolitan Police Museum. Oh man was this cool. I am an ultra geek- the only thing I can think of that I like more than policing and crime stuff is museums and history, so this was heaven for me.  It was really more of a small room than a museum, but was jammed packed with information and things to see and learn.

This is how criminal sketches were done before computers- templates of hair, face, eyes, ect. that witnesses would put together.

An old forensic kit

The badge on a constable's helmets changes with every new King or Queen, and here are some of the past badges. 

Here is the rare case of something police-wise that I think is better than our American way. Handcuffs have a solid piece between the cuffs, which gives a much better control over the person being arrested. Even with only one hand cuffed, Constable Watson showed us how by putting only a small amount of pressure down on the wrist, you have control of the person's entire body. Or you break their wrist, either way they don't fight. Constable Watson explained this as 'pain compliance'. 

With American handcuffs, the links between the cuffs are lose and therefore can be flexed and twisted, and as I was shown at my internship, even with one hand cuffed, a person can get ahold of the other link and use it in their hand has a weapon against police. I was really impressed with these, and am not sure why American police do not switch over. 

Here is one of my favorites. The police brought out actual copies of all the evidence in the Jack the Ripper case. Most of the writing I could not read both because of the handwriting and because I can't read cursive. The picture shows 'Jill the Ripper', which was a theory that it was actually a women who did the murders. 

This was a collar that police wore to prevent throttling, because apparently that was a common attack on police at this time. Yeah. Believe it.  

 We ended the night with a Jack the Ripper tour, because I was so interested after seeing the evidence in the Police Museum. One of the officers there really captured my attention when he said that Jack the Ripper had actually been caught. I asked him to explain since this was news to me, and he said that it was a man that was iinstitutionalized in a mental hospital after the murders where he died soon after. He claimed that this was not told to the public at the time because it was not a popular answer to the mystery, and that the public would want someone to punish even if the killer was dead, so the police decided to not release the info. I was surprised and a bit skeptical, but it was true that it wasn't want people wanted to hear. Jack the Ripper has become such an infamous name that hearing it was just a crazy guy that died soon after just isn't satisfying. 

Anyway, we finished the night with a Jack the Ripper tour. It was also pretty awesome. As my friends have seen and teased me for, I find serial killers and famous murders interesting. I can’t do basic math or remember Army rank structure, but ask me anything about Ted Bundy or the Black Dahlia and I will probably know. Going into the tour I knew most of the common facts of Jack the Ripper- had 5 victims, mutilated the bodies, and was never identified. But on this tour I learned many new clues. There were writing on a wall with one of his victims. At the murder scene of Catherine Eddowes, police also found this written in chalk on the wall- "The Juwes are not the men that will be blamed for nothing." The neighborhood the body was found was largely Jewish, and fearing that seeing the statement could cause a riot, police erased the evidence. Also, in the final victims crime scene photo, it appears to have 'F.M' written in blood on the wall. The tour guide explained that somehow the spelling of 'juwes' and the F.M. ties in members of the Free Mason society, who apparently preformed rituals similar to the disembowelment of the victims. This is all very interesting, however I have trouble believing that all this evidence just went unpublished and only tour guides in London know these facts. But I did greatly enjoy the tour and learned many things about the worlds first known serial killer. 

Tour group outside the location of victim #2.