The Cry from Street to Street

by Hilary Bailey

‘Did you recognize him?’ I asked.

  ‘No. I only saw his back, just for a moment. There was a lot of people there, as usual. But it was a clear day. I think I saw her.’

  He turned away, pulled a pint for a man, agreed that murders were bad for trade. I looked round. Rosie had disappeared. ‘Where’s Rosie?’ I asked in alarm. Jack said, pulling another pint, ‘She slipped out while we was talking, with a geezer in a brown bowler – gave me a wink in the doorway. Silly bitch. Do anything for money, she would. Jewess, of course. Don’t go out looking for her, Mary, for Christ’s sake,’ he warned. ‘Pound to a penny Rosie’s all right. She’s one of the tough ones. But while you’re searching the alleys for her, you could come across our friend with the knife.’

  Then Rosie materialized behind me, her hair wispy and her bonnet disarranged. She said, ‘Come on, Mary, my duck, if you want those handbills printed.’

  ‘That didn’t take you long,’ said Jack. ‘It’s not healthy round here for you lot – why don’t you take a cab to where you’re going? That man in the corner’ll take you.’

  Rosie shouted, ‘Oi! Cabbie! Over here!’ adding, ‘My feet are killing me anyway.’

  ‘I don’t suppose that’s all, either,’ Jack said.

  ‘Stow it, Jack,’ she said. ‘If my money’s good enough for you, so am I. Hope your wife feels better soon.’

  The cabman came up and took us to where his horse was standing, wearing a nosebag. He took the nosebag off and we clopped off to a narrow street in Stepney, where Rosie muttered, ‘Here we go. Sabbath’s over. They’ll let me in now if it’s business. Not like my mother and father. They wouldn’t let me in if they were starving and I was the Prince of Wales.’ Then she banged hard on a door and called out, ‘Uncle Lem! It’s Rosie. Let me in.’ Then a stream of her language. Finally a bearded Jew in a black hat and a collarless shirt opened the door and looked at her suspiciously. ‘Business?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Come on, uncle,’ she said, and entered the house. We went down two steps into a low passageway past a door, past an old pram with a baby asleep in it, into a kitchen at the back. Two children were asleep head to toe on a trestle bed against a wall and the rest of the space, about ten feet long, was occupied by six people. In spite of the lateness of the hour, they were all active. A woman in a long dress and a headscarf was cooking something up on an old primus stove in a corner; an old man sat, reading and smoking a pipe, on a wooden chair by the fire, where another cauldron of food was boiling on a trivet. On either side of a table two young women also in headscarves were sorting sheets of paper into various sizes while at one end a young man in a little cap was putting type into a frame with a pair of tweezers, and at the other a boy was reading a huge book written in funny characters, his finger sliding backwards along the line as he muttered under his breath.

  All this was taking place by the light of a couple of hurricane lamps, one in the middle of the table, one on the mantelpiece. A babble of foreign talk stopped as we came in, the uncle first, then Rosie, and me behind. The people at the table looked up. The old man, spotted Rosie and instantly turned his eyes to his paper again. Then the young man with the book, who had not taken his finger off the line, looked down and began to mumble again. The other young man looked at her with open disapproval. The woman at the primus stove, who’d swung round, greeted Rosie curtly, turned the stove off and turned back to us, hands on hips. She gave me a dirty look, too, as I stood in the doorway. The black sheep of the family, Rosie, in her bright yellow bonnet and low-cut blue dress, was home. Rosie, in the meanwhile, greeted everybody. ‘Auntie Hep – Becky – Suzanna – Sol – David – how’s the studies, David? Is the wedding fixed yet, Becky dear?’ But she got the cold shoulder from everybody.

  However, the black sheep’s wool always looks a little lighter to the family when the sheep arrives holding cash in its hoof, so the atmosphere brightened a little as we sketched out my handbill. ‘REWARD’, it was to begin, in big black letters, saying underneath, ‘For any person giving information as to the present whereabouts of MARY JANE KELLY, also known as MARIE JEANETTE KELLY, whose sister Mary Anne Kelly is searching for her, the sum of 15 POUNDS will be paid.’ Then followed her description, and Mr Ratcliffe’s name and address. Then, imagining him bombarded by everybody in the East End who needed fifteen pounds, I added the following words: ‘Bearers of information not given seriously and only in the hope of payment will be reported to the proper authorities and prosecuted.’

  I left money for the handbills and the boys to distribute them, and we departed, Rosie getting a fairly cordial farewell.

  In the dark street she asked, ‘Going home, Mary?’

  ‘Where else, at this hour? You’d better come with me, there’s a murderer on the prowl.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve rent to pay. See here, Mary. All I’ve got to do is find a cab, go up west, pick up a toff, take him to Mrs Murchison’s where there’s plenty of people and I’ll be safe as houses. You coming?’

  ‘No.’

  Neither of us had a coat or a shawl and we were both shivering. A policeman with a lantern walked down the opposite pavement.

  ‘Going to catch the murderer for us?’ called Rosie provokingly.

  ‘It might be better if you went home,’ he said.

  ‘Why? Can’t you protect us?’ she responded.

  ‘We’ll get him. Have no fear,’ the policeman said, and went on his way.

  Rosie shook her head at me in the darkness.

  ‘They’ll get him,’ I said.

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ she replied and strolled off in search of a cab. She had a nerve, Rosie Levi.

  On Monday came a letter effortfully written by Dolly Halloran in Calgary. After some domestic details of liquor supplies, a rotten portion of the verandah replaced, the regular visit of the doctor from Banff (‘All well,’ she said), she went on in this way: ‘The Indjun girl called Kid got hersef pregnant again so this time I threw her out but guess the others have been feeding her from the back door at night for she is still hangin about and will not go back to her farther, maybe for the reson he will not have her. The profitt for the week you left hear was 29 shillin for there was cowboys in and trappers celebratin their departur for the mountins, and a side of beef, which we ate and made some jerki. For the next week it was 30 shillun, but will be lower when the trappers went away for the winter. I have got men to split kindlin, about 70 logs, for the winter, Harriet is complainin of a cold but I pay her no mind, and ther is a new girl I mite take on, says she is French and cals herself Adely, but she is mostly Cree I think. This would make ten girls to seven room, as you know, but she is a good girl, only 18 but not silley, you put me in ful charge of the house on leeving, but I must hav your advise. There was a fight Saturday, beggs broke his leg bein thrown down the stairs by Flash and Marie. But nobody payd no mind, the redcotes looked tother way. Wether good, tho windy it is not cold and Mr Hamilton sends his best reggard, as I do and will you do me a big favor Mary as you love me which is send money from London to my family in Donegal as the mortgige is nearly up and it will be sooner than from hear. I cannot bear to see ar farm go back to Capt Armitage and the family starve. So do it please, Mary do, as you love me and pleas do come back soon. Mary as that all goes well I’m uncertain it is a big wurry and a stragne on me looking arfter all mysef wich I do not complane of at all but miss you bein gratefull for your true presense and the good laffs we allways have, and Jack Berry is still pressin marrige on me so you see my plite. So I leav you with all love and blessins to you and hoping that you found your sisters. Come back saf my freind, your Dolly.’

  This communication gave me pause. I had been away a fortnight when Dolly wrote and already she was feeling the strain of office, so to speak, while the prosperous rancher who was in love with her was pressing his suit, and she, no judge of Indians, planned to take on a girl she knew nothing about. Takings, too, were low, which must mean that bills were too high, or some not paying because the girls
were letting them get away with it.

  I reflected that I had been in London for almost two weeks and had found one sister, though had been rejected by her, while the other, though nearby, still eluded me. Perhaps the handbills would find her. Meanwhile I was getting more frantic. I could feel London dirt sinking into my skin and my soul. I felt invaded by that old London atmosphere of greed, lies and betrayal. It was like that yellow-green fog they call the London particular, which writhes into houses through cracks and crannies and leaves all it touches dirty and greasy. Yet the city was full of glamour and enticement. Everything was here, the cruelty, dirt and want, and the entertainment, the luxury, the variety, and a frantic, exhausted vitality, like that of the tarantella, that dance where people cannot stop dancing until they drop dead.

  I slept that night and dreamed again of that monster pursuing me through the streets and alleys of the great, grim city under heavy, filthy skies. Walls dripped blood as I ran in a panic closer to the dark waters of the Thames and found the dark ship where my sisters stood, waiting for me, beckoning to me. Yet I could not reach them. My pursuer seized me as I stood on the dock, I saw the two white-clad figures open mouths as they screamed – and woke, terrified. As I lay in bed with a clammy brow I thought, I must not stay in London too long. If I did something terrible would happen to me.

  Next morning I set about, through Mr Ratcliffe, unravelling Dolly Halloran’s business over the mortgage her family had with Captain Armitage of Donegal, but it was not as simple as it seemed on the surface. For although it appeared to be just a matter of paying the thirty pounds owed to Armitage he began to struggle not to receive the money. It emerged that he wanted to seize the farm – more of a patch than a farm in fact – because he planned to divert a river running through the property into his own grounds to make a water garden. So it turned out to be a complicated, tricky business with letters to and fro and duplicity on all sides.

  I kept out of Whitechapel for a time. The Times said after the murder of ‘the woman Chapman’, as they called her, that the ordinary prudence of a murderer couldn’t be counted on in the case of this man as he was a madman. Yet it wasn’t fear of death that kept me away, nor the stricken silence of the streets (which soon enough ended, human life being what it is thereabouts, too demanding and agitating to allow any mood to last long). What it was I do not know, unless the feeling I’ve described, that the place was reclaiming me, and I knew it could, one way or another, kill me.

  I shopped, I visited the theatre, bought books, Marcus Brown called and wrote. I told Dora when he came to the door to say I was with my sick friend, and I did not reply to his notes. Jim Bristow sent an ill-written love message by a dirty boy. I sent it back to Mrs Mundy’s, saying I was in Liverpool with my sister Mary Claire. He seemed to accept this for there were no further messages. So I led an even life for nearly three weeks, but I was not easy in my mind and the dreams went on.

  The days grew cooler, the nights began to close in. The grass was weary, the trees turning orange and brown and a big sun was low in the sky.

  One late afternoon I was in Hyde Park, listening to the band. Fashionable men walked to and fro. Summer was over and the well-off were coming back to town. Nurses hurried perambulators and children in sailor suits with hoops and boats back to their homes for tea. But the Whitechapel murders had penetrated this peace and prosperity. Sitting in my chair in front of the bandstand I heard a well-dressed woman talking to a companion behind me as the band stopped for an intermission, the soldiers in tunics shaking moisture from their instruments, the drummer tightening his drums.

  ‘What a shocking thing,’ came one woman’s voice.

  ‘Of course, the victims are all women of a certain kind,’ came the other.

  ‘But can we be sure that will continue to be so? He may widen his net.’

  ‘The police will catch him. At any rate, my dear, it’s unlikely he’ll start to prowl about Grosvenor Square at night. I’m sure we have nothing to fear.’

  The other woman thought she had, but ‘It’s the servants I’m afraid for,’ she said. ‘One’s never quite sure where they’re going – or who they know.’

  There was a pause. ‘Hm,’ said the other consideringly. She must have been imagining the scullery maid letting in a murderer by the back door. I’d had the thought myself, about Dora’s lover, but had dismissed it. I didn’t think him a homicidal maniac, and I did, after all, sleep with a gun under my pillow.

  Meanwhile, the bandsman had climbed back on to the bandstand and raised his baton. They were playing tunes from Gilbert and Sullivan.

  ‘So charming,’ sighed one of the women, terrors forgotten.

  ‘Was that a drop of rain?’ I heard the other say.

  ‘Three little maids who all unwary

  Come from a ladies’ seminary

  Freed from its genius tutelary …’

  ‘Three little maids from school,’ both woman sang with the band enjoyably, under their breaths.

  I turned and copped a look at the ladies behind me, both in their thirties but young-looking, with pleasant expressions. They were fresh-faced after holidays in the country and wore nice tailor-mades. Small bonnets were firmly set on well-coiffed hair, their hands were in tight gloves, their umbrellas and handbags were tidily about them. They didn’t seem likely candidates for murder in an alley. The women who had died, and those who might die yet, if they did not catch the murderer soon, were poor prostitutes whose only comfort was a neat gin and a chat, maybe a bit of love from a man as poor and beaten as they were.

  The victims were women past their prime, half-forgotten mothers of children they had half forgotten themselves, abandoned by their husbands when their looks went and the drink took over, unprotected even by the law. They had nothing but the clothes they stood up in, and the coppers, if any, in their pockets. They lived between lodging houses and the alleys they whored in, standing up against fences and walls. They had nothing, they were nothing, except to the few who knew them, and if a man ripped one of them up in the dark – angry lover, thief or maniac – and left them lying out in the open like a slaughtered animal, their carcasses were worth less than any pig’s in a slaughterhouse. If one of these women appeared now in the park and sat down beside one of the ladies behind me to listen to the band (which she never would dare), to those ladies she would seem less than an animal, dirtier, more depraved, her life more horrible than a beast’s. Those prosperous women came from houses barred and locked, dogs and servants there to keep guard, streets well lit, policemen patrolling, looking for those whose appearances suggested they had no business there. They were safe; a guinea or so to an East End mission at Christmas took care of conscience. But, in any case, what could they do but live as they did? They had one thing in common with the whores, they were not men. They seemed rich, but probably owned nothing. Anything they did possess would be firmly in the hands of men, husbands, fathers, bankers. Their fears of murder, I thought, were like a shadow of something else, the fear of men in general, who could do what they liked.

  They sang by turn, ‘One little maid is a bride, Yum-yum.’

  ‘Two little maids in attendance come,’

  ‘Three little maids is the total sum,’ and then together, ‘Three little maids from school!’

  I got up and walked slowly from the park, enjoying the long composed view, the pond, the fresh breeze. That night, within the space of one hour, the man people now called Jack the Ripper killed two more women in the East End.

  Elizabeth Stride, a pretty woman, Swedish by birth, was forty-five and had separated from her husband, by whom she’d had two children, about six years earlier. She’d been living on and off with a labourer in a lodging house in Flower and Dean Street, working when she could and whoring when she couldn’t work or needed extra cash for a binge. She was killed at the back of a big house in Berners Street off Commercial Road, where men the neighbours called ‘bad Jews’ went, those who did not adhere to their religion. They published a ma
gazine from the annexe at the back of the building, near where the body of Mrs Stride was found dead at one in the morning. She had a flower pinned to her jacket and was holding a paper of scented cachous to sweeten her breath, just as if she’d been out with a lover. Her throat was cut. She was not mutilated, unlike Catherine Eddowes, whose body was discovered only three quarters of an hour later, in Mitre Square, half a mile away.

  Catherine Eddowes was forty-six and had parted from her common-law husband after fifteen years of marriage eight years earlier, having had three children. She lived mostly with a regular lover, a market worker. When found by a policeman who had patrolled the area only fifteen minutes earlier, she was sprawled flat, one leg aslant, her skirt pulled up showing hideous abdominal wounds, her face almost unrecognizable. Her throat had been cut, eyelids and lips slit, parts of her nose and cheeks had been cut away. Her trunk had been slashed open from the breast to thigh, and from this great jagged wound the murderer had cut out, and taken away, her uterus and one kidney.

  She was the woman I’d met at Mrs Mundy’s the day I arrived in London.

  More work for the Old Montague Street mortuary. Real panic ensued now and not just in the East End. This was when they took off the play of Jekyll and Hyde at the Lyceum. The Conservatives were calling for the Home Secretary to resign, as he’d not caught the murderer. More police flooded in, partly to protect the Jews from riot, for they were being blamed for the murders. Yet still Jack the Ripper went free.

  Letter to George Lusk, Chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee:

  From Hell. Mr Lusk. Sir, I send you half the kidne I took from one woman, presarved it for you, tother piece I tried and ate; it was very nise. I may send you a bloody knif that I took it out if only you wait a while longer. Catch me when you can Mr Lusk.

  That night I was awoken by strange noises. I got out of bed and pushed up the window. Fleet Street was full of policemen. There were two wagons full of them with others standing on the running boards. There were ten mounted men, going down Fleet Street in formation at a fast canter, and on the pavements other policemen were running. Dora was shouting from the upstairs window, ‘What is it? What’s happening?’ Other windows were going up elsewhere, other voices were calling out. A policeman racing down our side of the pavement stopped, looked up at Dora and me and cried, ‘Two more women found murdered nearby. Stay at home, for the love of God, until we catch him.’ Then he ran off. Dora screamed, and above in the window I heard her boy consoling her.