It seems likely that the murderer seized the women from behind, with his left arm or hand gripping face or chin and forcing it upwards, thereby stifling any cry and exposing the throat to the long-bladed knife in his right hand. He would then cut from left to right. In every case, the drunken women were taken by surprise. Despite the fact that people were awake and within a few yards of the murders, there was evidently never any resistance or any sound.
Catherine Eddowes wore a black cloth jacket with an imitation fur collar; her black straw bonnet was trimmed with beads and velvet; her dark green dress was patterned with michaelmas daisies and lilies. In her pockets were a handkerchief, a comb, two clay pipes, a cigarette case, a matchbox containing some cotton, a ball of worsted, a mitten, a small tin box containing tea and sugar, five pieces of soap and a blunt table-knife. Around her neck was a ribbon and ‘a piece of old white coarse apron’, presumably in place of a scarf. The three previous victims had also worn scarves. Part of this bloodstained apron had been cut off, and was found at the bottom of some common stairs leading to 108-119 Wentworth Dwellings, Goulston Street (north-east of Mitre Square and on the way to Spitalfields) at 2.55 am.
PC Long, who noticed the bloody rag during his night patrol, stated that at 2.20 am it had not been there. Nor, he said, had a five-lined message written in chalk on a black-bricked wall in the passage: ‘The Juwes are / The men that / Will not / be Blamed for nothing.’ When the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Charles Warren, arrived in Goulston Street about 5 am, he ordered the words to be rubbed out, even before a daylight photograph could be taken of this possible clue. The words, however, were copied. Warren’s action was explained by his concern to avoid the exacerbation of prevailing anti-semitic prejudice. For apart from the fact that some main suspects had been Jews, the last four women had been murdered in Jewish areas and near buildings occupied by Jews.
The ‘double event’ of the murders of Eddowes and Stride provided the press with even more sensational and lurid headlines and reports, and added further fuel to the clamour for the resignation of Sir Charles Warren and the Home Secretary. It was felt that not enough was being done to identify and apprehend the murderer, and the police were strongly criticised. Vigilance committees were formed, petitions signed and demonstrations made. Thousands of letters about the murders and the murderer’s identity were sent to the police and to the press, exhibiting every sort of social, sexual and racial prejudices.
Meanwhile, in the East End, where large morbid crowds had gathered in the streets to view the scenes of the murders and indulge in rabid speculation, a ‘terrible quiet’ descended.
Then a letter and a postcard, received by the Central News Agency, were published with the permission of the police on 3 October. From now on the murderer had a name – Jack the Ripper.
The letter, addressed to The Boss, Central News Office, London City, was dated 25 September 1888 and posted in the East End on 27 September, the Thursday before the double murder in the early hours of Sunday, 30 September. It read:
Dear Boss
I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady (Annie Chapman) no time to squeal … I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldnt you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife’s nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck.
yours truly
Jack the Ripper
Dont mind me giving the trade name
wasnt good enough to post this before I got all
the red ink off my hands curse it. No luck yet.
They say I’m a doctor now ha ha.
The letter was followed a few days later by a postcard. It was postmarked 1 October – the Monday after the double murder and not, as many writers have said, on the same day – even ‘a few hours after’ the murders of Stride and Eddowes. The postcard was probably written at least 24 hours after the murders, and after details of them had been sensationally splashed in the Monday morning papers. It was addressed to: Central News Office, London City, EC:
I wasnt codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip. youll hear about saucy Jackys work tomorrow double event this time number one squealed a bit couldnt finish straight off. had no time to get ears for police thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again. Jack the Ripper
The postcard might have been written on Sunday the 30th, anything from twelve to twenty hours after the murders, which were within the few hours after midnight. It might have been written by someone in the locality who had heard of the ‘double event’, or indeed by a journalist, or by anyone connected with the police or medical investigations. In no way does the postcard betoken any foreknowledge of the murders.
Misconception and myth also cloud the next alleged communication from the murderer. Seventeen days after the murders of Stride and Eddowes, on Tuesday, 16 October, at either 5 pm or 8 pm (there were two postal deliveries in the evening in those days), a builder, Mr George Lusk, who was chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee and lived in Alderney Street, Mile End, received a small brown paper parcel, 3 1⁄2 inches square. Within was a cardboard box that contained half a kidney. The postmark was indecipherable, although post-office workers thought the parcel could have been posted in the Eastern or East Central areas. A brief letter came with the stinking kidney, with an address at the top – ‘From hell’.
Sor I send you half the kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer.
signed Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk
The writer of this note is probably not the same man who penned the ‘Jack the Ripper’ epistles. Apart from the fact that the handwriting is different, the spelling of the Ripper letter and card are superior and written in quite a neat copper-plate. A curious feature of the note to Mr Lusk is the oddly illiterate spelling – it seems deliberate. Words like ‘half’, ‘piece’, ‘fried’ and ‘bloody’ are properly spelt, yet ‘kidne’, ‘prasarved’, ‘nise’, ‘knif’, ‘wate’ and ‘whit’ are not, being given a sort of phonetic spelling which in three cases is merely attained by the omission of the last letters – ‘kidne’, ‘knif’ and ‘whit’. Yet in the last two words, the silent letters ‘k’ and ‘h’ are included. There is also an obvious Irishness to the spelling of ‘Sor’ and ‘Mishter’.
Mr Lusk had already been bothered by a prowler and other letters, and was at first inclined to dismiss the kidney as a disagreeable hoax. But friends advised him to submit the half kidney to the inspection of the police and doctors, and on 18 October Dr Openshaw, at the Pathological Museum, after examining the offensive organ, concluded that the kidney had come from a woman who drank, had Bright’s Disease, and that it was part of a left kidney. He thought it had been removed within the last three weeks. It had also been preserved in spirits after its removal.
It has since been assumed that the kidney was the one missing from the body of drunken Catherine Eddowes. There is no proof of this. Eddowes was buried in the City of London Cemetery at Ilford on 8 October, so there was no chance of direct verification or of comparing the alleged length of renal artery attached to the postal kidney and that still in the murdered woman. It is also virtually impossible – it would have been completely so in 1888 – to tell whether a kidney comes from a woman or a man. Moreover, Bright’s Disease, which infected the kidney, is not necessarily cau
sed by alcoholism, and the postal kidney had been put in spirits within a few hours of its removal – something the murderer of Eddowes would surely not have thought of or had time to do.
Assumptions and error have gilded the half-kidney since it was sent to Mr Lusk. The sender was most probably a morbid hoaxer, possibly a medical student or hospital worker, who must have been much gratified by the success of his little device. On 29 October, another illiterate letter was sent, this time to Dr Openshaw:
Old boss you was rite it was the left kidny i was goin to hopperate agin clos to your ospitle just as i was goin to dror my nife along of er bloomin throte them cusses of coppers spoilt the game but i guess i wil be on the job soon and will send you another bit innerds Jack the ripper.
An interesting feature of the letters quoted above, one or two of which are thought by some to have possibly been written by the actual Whitechapel murderer, is that the addresses were correct (and correctly spelt) and that none of them was addressed to the police – who, in fact, received thousands of letters. This is odd, for murderers with a literary leaning invariably feel bound to communicate with the police, and with no one else – with the exception of Dr Cream, who wrote to everyone.
Sir Robert Anderson, who became head of the CID at the Yard in September 1888, said later: ‘The “Jack the Ripper” letter which is preserved in the Police Museum at New Scotland Yard is the creation of an enterprising journalist.’ And Sir Melville Macnaghten, who became Assistant Chief Constable at the Yard in 1889 and head of the CID in 1903, wrote: ‘In this ghastly production I have always thought I could discern the stained finger of the journalist – indeed, a year later I had shrewd suspicions as to the actual author! But whoever did pen the gruesome stuff, it is certain to my mind that it was not the mad miscreant who had committed the murders.’
The fifth and final murder generally attributed to the Ripper happened forty days after the ‘double event’. It was different in that the victim, a prostitute, was young and attractive, was killed indoors and more horribly and extensively mutilated than any female murder victim before, or perhaps since.
Mary Jane Kelly – also known as Dark Mary, Mary Ann and Marie – aged twenty-four, was murdered in the early hours of Friday, 9 November, in a back room of 26 Dorset Street. Two women in nearby but separate rooms said they heard a woman cry ‘Murder’ about 3.45 am. Mary Kell’s lodging, rented for four shillings a week, was Room 13 in the house and had its own entrance, a side-door opening into a passage called Miller’s Court. Until 30 October she had shared the room with her common-law husband, Joseph Barnett. After a stormy row he left her, since when another prostitute had stayed with her occasionally.
Kelly’s body was discovered about 10.45 am by her landlord’s assistant, Thomas Bowyer, who had been sent to ask her for the thirty-five shillings she owed in rent. Getting no answer to his knocking – the door was locked – he peered through a broken window, removing rags that filled the gap and pulling aside a curtain to do so. The police were sent for, but as the Commissioner, Sir Charles Warren, had chosen to resign the day before, the police force were in some confusion. Kelly’s room was not entered (at first by the window) until 1.30 pm.
The bloodstained room was sparsely furnished. Mary Kelly, wearing the remains of a chemise or slip, was lying on her back on a bed, where she had been placed after the murderer cut her throat. By the light of a fire, fuelled by clothes and other items he found in the room (although Kelly’s clothes, folded on a chair, were not so used), he set to work mutilating the body, which was stabbed, slashed, skinned, gutted and ripped apart. Her nose and breasts were cut off and dumped on a table; entrails were extracted; some were removed; other parts lay on the bed. Mary Kelly was nearly three months pregnant.
The last person believed to have seen her alive was George Hutchinson, an unemployed labourer. He had known Kelly for three years. He met her in Thrawl Street as he walked towards Flower and Dean Street about 2 am. She said: ‘Hutchinson, will you lend me sixpence?’ ‘I can’t,’ he replied. ‘I’ve spent all my money going down to Romford.’ She shrugged. ‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘I must go and find some money.’ She walked off, and a man coming in the opposite direction accosted her – they both laughed. Hutchinson watched. He heard Kelly say: ‘All right.’ ‘You’ll be all right for what I’ve told you,’ said the man. They walked towards Hutchinson and passed him – he was standing under a lamp outside a pub, the Queen’s Head. The man lowered his head and his hat as he passed. But Hutchinson was later able to describe him as being about thirty-four, 5 ft 6 in tall, dark-haired, with a small moustache curled up at the ends. He was dressed in a long dark coat, with a dark jacket and trousers; his waistcoat was as pale as his face, and across it was a gold chain. He wore a white shirt, button boots with gaiters and his black tie had a horseshoe-shaped pin in it. He seemed quite respectable, and Jewish.
Hutchinson’s description is very exact: it seems too good to be true. He goes on to say that he followed Kelly and her pick-up into Dorset Street, where they stood talking by Miller’s Court for a couple of minutes. He heard Kelly say: ‘All right, my dear. Come along – you’ll be comfortable.’ The man kissed her, and they went into Miller’s Court. Hutchinson waited, but they failed to reappear.
Nothing is known about Hutchinson that might lend credence or otherwise to his statement. The man he saw need not have been Kelly’s murderer – she was not killed until at least an hour and a half later. Unlike the dark gentleman who chatted quite carelessly outside Miller’s Court, the murderer would have been very careful, one imagines, about not being seen with Mary Kelly and certainly not so near her room.
The rest is silence, apart from the clamour of speculation at the time, as well as generations later, about the identity of the Whitechapel murderer.
Another heavy-drinking prostitute, Alice McKenzie, was murdered in Whitechapel, in Castle Alley, on 17 July 1889. She was found in the street with her throat cut (or rather, stabbed twice); her dress had been pushed above her knees, and there were cuts and scratches on her stomach. However, the death of ‘Clay-pipe Alice’ is not thought to have been the work of the Ripper, who is generally believed to have died or to have been imprisoned for other crimes soon after the murder of Mary Kelly.
Who was he? What happened to him? No one can say for certain. Sir Charles Warren is reported by his grandson to have believed the murderer ‘to be a sex maniac who committed suicide after the Miller’s Court murder – possibly the young doctor whose body was found in the Thames on December 31st 1888.’ Sir Robert Anderson, who became head of the CID in September 1888, wrote in his memoirs: ‘I am almost tempted to disclose the identity of the murderer … In saying that he was a Polish Jew, I am merely stating a definitely ascertained fact.’ A note scribbled in a copy of his memoirs given years later to the Crime Museum indicates that he believed the Ripper to be in fact a Polish barber, Aaron Kosminski.
Sir Henry Smith, Acting Commissioner of the City Police at the time of the murders, thought the murderer must be the man described by Joseph Lawende. Chief Detective Inspector Abberline, who was the senior Yard detective investigating the murders, thought George Chapman (his real name was Severin Klosowski) was the killer. Chapman, a hairdresser’s assistant in Whitechapel in 1888, when he was twenty-three, was ultimately hanged in 1903 for poisoning his three wives – another kind of murder altogether. Other police officers involved at the time, such as Leeson and Dew, disagreed, writing in their autobiographies: ‘Nobody will ever know’ – ‘I am as mystified now as I was then.’
In February 1894, one man, Sir Melville Macnaghten, wrote what must be the most sensible account of the murders. It was a hand-written seven-page memorandum deposited in the Ripper file to discredit and disprove a newspaper story that a deranged fetishist, Thomas Cutbush, was the Ripper. Cutbush was arrested in 1891 for maliciously wounding two women by stabbing them in the rear. He was found guilty but insane, and incarcerated in an asylum. Macnaghten states: ‘The Whitechap
el murderer had 5 victims – & 5 victims only.’ They were: Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes and Kelly. Macnaghten continued:
It will be noticed that the fury of the mutilations increased in each case, and, seemingly, the appetite only became sharpened by indulgence. It seems, then, highly improbable that the murderer would have suddenly stopped in November 88, and been content to recommence operations by merely prodding a girl behind some 2 years and 4 months afterwards. A much more rational theory is that the murderer’s brain gave way altogether after his awful glut in Miller’s Court, and that he immediately committed suicide, or, as a possible alternative, was found to be so hopelessly mad by his relations, that he was by them confined in some asylum. No one ever saw the Whitechapel Murderer, many homicidal maniacs were suspected, but no shadow of proof could be thrown on any one. I may mention the cases of 3 men, any one of whom would have been more likely than Cutbush to have committed this series of murders:
(1) A Mr MJ Druitt, said to be a doctor and of good family, who disappeared at the time of the Miller’s Court murder, and whose body (which was said to have been upwards of a month in the water) was found in the Thames on 31st Dec – or about 7 weeks after that murder. He was sexually insane and from private info I have little doubt but that his own family believed him to have been the murderer.
Murder of the Black Museum 1875-1975: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England Page 5
