by kindels
Bearing in mind that in terms of distance the Charing Cross area was not far from Whitechapel, though in terms of its affluence it was a world away, I had no reason to doubt that the writer of the journal had indeed visited the home of my great-grandfather, and that thought in itself caused me to shiver once more. Though I had only seen photographs of the house, and never actually visited it due to it having been demolished years before my birth, it still managed to make me feel a strange sense of disturbance that the Ripper may have sat enjoying afternoon tea or some such social nicety with my ancestor while the entire population of London, and indeed the country, thanks to press reports in all the major newspapers of the day, were seeking his apprehension and conviction.
Then again, little was made, in his own words, of his relationship with my great-grandfather. They 'weren't close', he wondered how my great-grandfather perceived him, and yet he'd written they saw each other often, though they 'hardly knew each other'. Was there a professional link, (some thought the Ripper to be a doctor or medical man of sorts), a social connection, or worst of all, could Jack the Ripper have some tenuous link as a distant family member? My senses positively baulked at that last possibility. I couldn't even countenance such a thing, though I couldn't totally disregard it. It is possible after all to 'hardly know' a relative as the writer put it, if one has little or no contact with that person for a length of time, or indeed throughout the course of their life. Perhaps my great-grandfather would explain all in his own notes, to which I'd come in due course of my study of this incredible, horrifying, yet riveting document.
A quick reference to my research notes showed that there was in fact a lull of twenty two days between the killing of Annie Chapman and the next, (and violently bloody) murder, or should I say murders, as, on the night of 30th September Jack the Ripper would commit not one, but two abominable atrocities. Could it be that between the murder of Chapman and the grisly double killing the Ripper actually went on holiday? Did he become so ill as to be incapable of continuing his murderous quest; was he indeed hospitalized, and, horror or horrors, released back into the community in time to kill again? What twisted path would the journal lead me down, what revelations might be lying in wait for me on the next, and subsequent pages of the astonishing story unfolding in words before my eyes. Was I about to discover the secret of this missing three weeks in the murderous career of Jack the Ripper?
Though tired, and to some extent numb from my broken sleep and nightmares, and the horrific thought that I may be connected by the ties of birth to the bloody slayer of defenceless women, I stretched my arms, reaching towards the ceiling, forcing my eyes to open, despite the unconscious desire to drift off again into slumber. Afraid to know what would come next, yet at the same time caught up in the intrigue of the journal, as the clock continued its inexorable ticking on the wall I prepared to turn to the next page.
Chapter Thirteen
A Pause for Thought
Don't ask me why, but just as I was about to turn to the next page in the journal, something stopped me. I couldn't to this day say what it was, perhaps it was the tiredness, the after-affects of the nightmares, or just a basic need to escape the intensity of the situation for a few minutes, but I decided to lay down the journal and instead look further into the environment, the world inhabited by the Ripper and his victims. Perhaps I was becoming more unsettled than I imagined by the journal and it's recurrent theme of bloodthirsty murder, the potentially insane ramblings of a man reviled by history, and the fact that here, in my study, on my desk, was a document that may have been handled by, and written in the hand of the notorious Jack the Ripper. Was I handling the same papers he had held, placing my own imprint, my fingerprints over those of the Ripper himself?
Of course, it was obvious that my own father and those before him had handled the documents, and there would be various prints upon the pages, but it seemed ironic that somewhere on these pages was the potential means of identifying the Whitechapel murderer conclusively, if only there had been a fingerprint record, a database of sorts from the time of the murders. No such records existed of course, and any fingerprints on the pages were irrelevant as a source of identification, and, at best, if made public, would merely have curiosity value. Enough of this speculation! I wanted to know and understand more of the world as seen through Victorian eyes, including those of my great-grandfather. I turned once more to the computer. Much of what I'd already gleaned about the Ripper and his victims had been found at www.casebook.org, an internet website devoted to the study of the Jack the Ripper case. With hundreds of members worldwide, The Casebook furnished those with an interest in the case with not only details of the crimes themselves, but also with a wealth of detail and information relating to Victorian London, accompanied by a collection of informative and evocative photographs. I clicked onto the site once more, and delved deeper into the world of the Victorians.
Certainly, the London inhabited by my great-grandfather would have seemed like another world to the average inhabitant of the East End. My grandfather's wealth and social standing in the community enabled him to live a privileged existence. He was able to afford the best of food and clothes, was attended by a retinue of domestic servants in his quite palatial London home, and his social life would probably have revolved around visits to friends, the theatre, the races, and of course his private gentlemen's club. My great-grandmother would have filled her time 'receiving' guests, taking tea with her visitors, and perhaps engaging in a little charity work. Even the slightly affluent middle classes would have thought nothing of employing at least one, and perhaps more servants in their comfortable homes, far removed from the slums of Whitechapel and its like. As for the real gentry, the royal family, the lords, ladies and gentlemen of the royal court, their lives would have been even further removed from the reality of the everyday drudgery that was the lot of their most humble fellow Londoners.
The vast majority of those poor unfortunates unlucky enough to inhabit the East End of London in the late nineteenth century lived in an almost continual state of abject poverty. Housing, where it existed was of poor quality, and whole families would often be forced to live in one, cold, cramped, unheated room. Windows would often be glassless, and to keep out the draughts, many would stuff the gaps with old newspapers, or rags, anything indeed to keep out the biting cold of winter. Work was often transient, and always hard, with wages often barely enough to live on. Disease and general ill-health were rife, hardly surprising when one considers that the streets themselves were little more than the most squalid open sewers, and that personal hygiene was virtually non-existent.
Many of those with no home of their own would move from place to place, often sleeping in 'Doss' houses where a bed could be purchased for a few pennies a night. Quite often there would be sixty or seventy people sharing a communal bedroom in these houses, which were more like hostels than homes. Many itinerant workers and the women who prostituted themselves on the streets of the East End would utilize the Doss houses on a regular basis.
A number of dignitaries and celebrities of the day visited the East End, only to be appalled by the degradation and deprivation that existed there. The authors Jack London and Beatrix Potter, and Charles Dickens no less, had all attempted to draw attention to the poverty and poor standards of living of their fellow human beings in Whitechapel and its surrounds, but little was done to help alleviate their daily struggle for existence.
Women, of course, fared even worse then the men in this vast melting pot of disease and poverty. In the nineteenth century, a working-class girl was considered suitable for nothing more than the most menial of work, and then for eventual marriage. What little education available was directed towards boys. With a prolific death rate, and the possibility of widowhood at a young age (an everyday occurrence in this cess-pool of humanity), it was little wonder that so many women, either by choice or circumstance, were drawn into the murky and dangerous world of prostitution.
I felt it im
portant to remember as I read these facts, however, that the Ripper's victims, like all those poor unfortunates who plied their trade on the streets by night, were not born into prostitution. In fact, many were born to respectable families, grew up to be married, bore children, and prostitution tended to be the last resort for many as their lives disintegrated around them through death, divorce, abandonment, alcoholism, or for many other reasons. I was struck particularly during my reading of The Casebook's files on the victims, to see a beautifully posed formal photograph of Annie Chapman and her husband John, a coachman, taken in 1869, and further photos of her children. The picture of normality, of domesticity evoked by these images served to remind me, and should remind others, that, like all the victims of both The Ripper and the system that produced them, these were normal everyday women, not some kind of misfits or rejects. History has, the thought struck me, dehumanized the victims of The Ripper to some extent. We've forgotten that they were living, breathing, warm and vital souls, wanting nothing more than to live, to eat, sleep, and exist alongside their fellow human beings, no matter how sad and squalid their lives may have become.
Annie Chapman had had her own fair share of unhappiness. One of her daughters had died of meningitis aged just twelve years, her son was a cripple, and her marriage disintegrated, (both she and her husband were reputed to be heavy drinkers). John Chapman apparently paid his wife maintenance of ten shillings (fifty pence) a week, which continued until his death from cirrhosis of the liver and dropsy on Christmas day 1886. Annie was said to be distraught upon hearing the news, and it was only after his death that Annie is known to have taken to prostitution, as the only means left to her to maintain herself. At the time of her death she had been living in a lodging house on the infamous Dorset Street in Spitalfields, a street comprising a labyrinth of poor quality lodging houses, the location of three taverns of less than good repute, and a notorious site for the operations of local prostitutes. Here, in these smoke filled microcosmic dens of iniquity, the jangling sounds of old, out-of-tune upright pianos would merge with the raucous voices of gin-soaked prostitutes and their equally drunken clients, where fights amongst the customers were a regular nightly occurrence. Whatever domestic normality Annie Chapman may once have enjoyed, it was sad to realise how far this once respectable woman had fallen in the two years prior to her eventual murder at the hands of The Ripper.
These facts were inescapable. I could at last identify with one of the victims. Annie had become quite real to me. The photographs in particular seemed to call out to me. They evoked happy days in the life of a young family. In those grainy, sepia-toned images there was no hint of the tragedy that would soon overtake those pictured. So far, in the course of my journey through the journal, I had only seen the events through the eyes of the writer, and through my own thoughts. Now I was able to think of the victims themselves, not just as the Rippers' victims, but as very real, quite ordinary people. Having read and digested the details of poor Annie Chapman's life and death, her marriage, her children, eventual grief and degradation, I knew for sure I would be able to find similar circumstances if I were to look into the backgrounds of the other victims, and, indeed, I promised myself that I would do just that.
The room was becoming stuffy, and I opened the window, just a crack to let some much-needed fresh air into what had become quite an oppressive atmosphere. I read the final details about the funeral of Annie Chapman, and the fact that her grave was long buried over, which I found quite sad, and as I gently laid the information sheets on the desk in front of me, my heart felt heavy with sadness for that sad, lonely victim of Jack the Ripper.
I decided that I'd been putting it off long enough. My hands reached out to take up the journal once more, but, as I did, a minor draught from the window must have caught the Chapman pages, and they rustled slightly where they lay on the desk, and almost hovered above the surface. Using one hand, I reached out and gently patted them down onto the desk, putting a paperweight on them to keep them in place. Were there other-worldly presences in the air that night? I was definitely in a receptive enough mood to feel their presence. Trying not to let my nerves get the better of me, I returned to The Ripper's words. Where, I wondered, would those words, his mind, take me next, on this dark, windy, sleepless night?
Chapter Fourteen
Where is Hell?
13th September 1888
The road to Hell is a one-way street, once entered upon the path, there's no way back. I walk the same path each day, following the whores as they too stagger blindly towards the oblivion I provide. Their deaths are pre-ordained, each one foretold by the voices that guide me on the way. Their blood must flow; their lives must end on the streets where they ply their filthy bodies, their rancid flesh. I shall continue my work, until the whores are gone, and the filth is gone, washed clean.
14th September 1888
I dare not leave the house. The temptations are too great, but I cannot work whilst I suffer such pain. The latest supply of laudanum seems not so strong as the last. I need more and more just to hold the pain at bay. I want the pain to stop. I could but slay just one whore tonight, but I cannot. I must wait until the sleeping voices rise within and give me strength and purpose. The whores must wait. Let them think they're safe.
15th September 1888
I wish I could avoid the pain I know must come, yet every day I must live with that knowledge. It's easy for the damned whores. Their pain is brief, as I dispatch them to eternal Hell, while I must live in my own version of that foul wretched place. There is so much more to come, yet every day I wake with the fear, the knowledge of certainty of the end which one day must be mine. No one knows, nor can they, I must suffer alone, for my sins, my earthly indiscretions that now must take me deeper into the foulest depths of despair.
So, something at least was different. For the first time The Ripper, (I shall dispense with 'The Writer' now), had placed three entries on one page of the journal. All the previous entries, no matter how short, had each had a whole page devoted to them. For whatever reason, he had chosen to place these three short entries together. Was he short of paper? He'd written that he'd been unable to go out, or was it that he was simply placing them together because they so closely followed on from each to the other. Perhaps there wasn't any deep reason for it; he'd just changed his writing format. Whatever the reason, the entries were revealing.
He was on a rapidly descending path towards destruction, and he knew it. His vision of a living hell was evident in virtually every word he'd committed to the paper. Strangely, he appeared to see himself as sharing a common road towards his ultimate oblivion with his victims, guided along the way by his voices. Would the voices therefore tell him when it was time to stop, or when it was time he ended his own personal hell? The first entry concluded with yet another threat to the 'whores', intimating that their deaths must take place in the very places where they sold their bodies for a pittance. As far as he was concerned, they were already in Hell, with him! That he wanted to kill again, and badly, I was in no doubt, and he was almost desperate to return to his deadly task. Yet, he was held in check by his pain, the headaches were growing worse. He thought the laudanum was weaker; in fact it was probably no different to that he'd taken before, his body simply accustomed to the drug and it's effects. He could now absorb larger quantities of the opium-based drug before feeling any effects at all. He was probably so intoxicated by the drug that he couldn't 'hear' his voices. They were 'sleeping', perhaps his hallucinations were also lying dormant, he was certainly in a state of some confusion, and felt his life to have become nothing more than a living Hell. I felt he was reaching a point of deep desperation.
Apart from all else, The Ripper was deeply depressed, his unhappiness and his fear screaming out from the page. Fear? Yes, he was afraid of pain, afraid of dying. He wasn't referring just to the pain from the headaches either, of that I was certain. I'd suspected earlier, and now I was sure that he was suffering from the later, (tertiary)
stages of syphilis, probably contracted as I'd previously suspected from some long ago liaison with one of those ladies of the street he now so despised. If that were the case, he was in all probability suffering from painful lesions on various parts of his body, his very tissues beginning to break down as sores developed on his face (though perhaps not yet), hands, and other extremities. (That was why I'd seen the vision of a facial mask over the bottom of his face in my dream). In my subconscious dream-state I'd anticipated the syphilis! He was possibly severely brain damaged by this point, and without doubt the man was gradually going insane. I'd begun to believe that he was an intelligent man, and would thus have known the prognosis of the disease, adding to the terror he felt, knowing exactly what was happening to him, yet being unable to do a thing to prevent it. How strange to think that today the disease can be effectively treated with modern antibiotics. Then, it was akin to a death sentence.
Perhaps, also, he refused to leave the house, particularly in daylight, because of those physical deformities by which syphilis would make him easily recognizable as a sufferer. He had, however, recently paid a social call on my great-grandfather, so I thought that unlikely.
These three entries convinced me The Ripper was not a married man. Surely no wife would have missed the symptoms he must be exhibiting. His words screamed of loneliness and a life of solitude. Perhaps he had been married at some time in the past, but I was sure he had no partner in life at the time he wrote this sorry journal of his. After all, by his own words, he must suffer alone for his sins and indiscretions, or worse still, by Victorian standards, a homosexual dalliance?
