The Ripper's Victims in Print

by Rebecca Frost

  From wherever it was she had met the young Stanley, Marie disappeared into the vast populous of the greater city. Somehow, even though Woodhall insisted that she was able to stand out, she also apparently managed to disappear completely. After the death of his son, Dr. Stanley has a difficult time trying to track her down. Despite the fact that she stood out in the East End due to her looks and her age, he must search for months before he can track her down, murdering some of her “fellow-sisters”19 along the way. This is a more subtle indication that, beauty or not, Marie was just like the other women and should be thought of as no better. She might even perhaps be worse, since she set out not to earn the simple price of a bed for the night, but to seduce and therefore ruin the life of a young, upcoming doctor.

  It is the final line of Woodhall’s book—a statement of Dr. Stanley’s logic—that sums up the Ripper’s approach to the women he killed: “What did a few lives of this type matter … so long as the one ‘sacrificial victim’ in the long run led him to the ONE woman he sought?”20 His victims mattered to Dr. Stanley as little as Elizabeth Stride does to Woodhall, although Mary Ann, Ann, and Catherine could not be said to have mattered much more. They are sacrificed to the glory of his personal revenge for the death of his son. Their role in this story, as within this investigation, is to be discovered dead and to be subjected to a thorough post-mortem so that authors and readers might be convinced of the identity of the Ripper.

  Murdered by One of Their Own

  William Stewart’s 1939 book Jack the Ripper: A New Theory does not pursue the Dr. Stanley theory, but rather proposes that Jack the Ripper was not a man after all, but a midwife. Instead of making up a pseudonym for this woman, he simply states her occupation and argues how a midwife would have been perfectly situated to perform the murders. She would have had knowledge of anatomy, as well as a reason to be out and about on the streets at all hours. Stewart further adds that the voluminous women’s clothing of the day would have allowed her to hide any bloodstains she procured during the murders. For motive, he sticks with the popular idea of revenge, although his midwife is seeking it against the class of women who reported her to the police and had her arrested, instead of justice for a dead child.

  Stewart is not only a former detective, but he is also an artist, and along with presenting information he says he has rediscovered, he includes his own personal sketches of the victims. These are presented alongside photographs of the locations in which their bodies were discovered. The photographs help to show the lengths to which he went in preparing for this book, although the sketches—around the size of a postage stamp—lead to Stewart revealing a lot more.

  Although he furthers his authority by explaining various experiments he and his friends performed at the murder sites, mainly to determine how well sound would travel, it is his discussion of the victims’ appearances that leads to closer scrutiny of his sketches. Stewart places the victims as the poorest in London, adding that “the older members had sunk so low that they looked like bad drawings of human beings.”21 Does this mean that his own sketches, if they appear to be poorly done, are in fact meant to look exactly as they do in order to be accurate representations? Is it possible to make a good sketch of a bad face? The size of his sketches means that the level of detail is sacrificed in favor of the larger photographs of the locations, but presumably the drawings are not themselves “bad.” They simply represent women who had lived hard lives prior to their gruesome deaths, although it is difficult to see how such small images could inspire either attention or empathy.

  Stewart’s sympathy, or perhaps his romanticism, comes when he declares stoutly that “there is abundant proof that Annie Chapman and Mary Kelly are ‘one-man’ women.”22 To be a “one-man” woman presumably means to live under his care and protection, although that protection failed each of them. Annie was of course out late at night, having been turned away from her usual doss house because she lacked the money for a bed, and Mary, although in her own room, was alone on the night of her murder since Joe Barnett had moved out. Stewart shows resistance to classifying all five women as being of the same occupation, despite the other similarities in their stories. Ostensibly Annie and Mary are indeed “one-man” women out of devotion and care, and not through schemes to keep themselves fed and sheltered.

  Mary Ann Nicholls, on the other hand, was indeed a prostitute, living a life in which women were expected to be “continually knocked about. Such assaults seemed one of the normal conditions of the profession,”23 which Stewart presents as part of the thought process on the morning when her body was discovered. She might have been too drunk to move, yes, but she might also have been beaten. Mary’s body was identified by her estranged husband, which leads to further questions: if she had been married, and if life on the street was so dangerous, why would she have left him? Stewart does not offer an explanation for their parting, or even indicate which spouse made the decision to leave the other, or if it was a mutual decision. It is difficult to see why a woman would willingly leave the relative security of a marriage in favor of fending for herself on the street, which suggests that her husband must have had a reason to call for the separation. Readers are left to speculate on that reason for themselves.

  Stewart traces her path through various workhouses and her single attempt to work as a servant that ended when she stole money from her employer. This led to Mary being on the street, once again drifting from workhouse to lodging house. The only hint as to what she might have done with her stolen money, as well as why she might not have been able to afford a bed on her final night, is that, when she was last seen, she was drunk enough to be unable to walk straight. There is no attempt to argue whether this drunkenness was a common or uncommon state and thus whether it might have been the cause of other misfortune in Mary’s life.

  Stewart ends each chapter with numbered points about the “evidence” in each “case” and only here reveals Mary’s age and the fact that she had five children. While this information is important enough to include in this summing up—and indeed will play into Stewart’s proposed theory that he introduces later—it was not worthy of earlier mention. Although Mary’s husband is included in that he identified her body, her children appear to have no role in either her death or her identification, and presumably her role of mother was minimal in the years since their separation.

  The chapter on Annie Chapman opens with a lengthy first-person account of a journalist who rushes to the scene soon after her body as discovered, and only then moves toward the inquest descriptions that refer to Annie in her life. Although Annie had been married, her husband himself died a year and a half before her murder, leaving her a widow without the weekly payments he had faithfully provided. Although the fact that she received a weekly payment seems to indicate that they had not been living together, Stewart does not present Annie as ever actually having left her husband. Instead, she is simply a “one-man” woman and a widow, not at fault for her status of being without a husband.

  Stewart continues his almost compassionate description of Annie when he reports that she was, in all likelihood, not “a regular street-walker.”24 Witnesses reported that Annie had sold flowers and crochet work instead of her body. Rather than show skepticism at these reports and question whether Annie’s friends may have been presenting a dead women in the best light possible, Stewart includes this information in his summing up of reliable facts. Again, her age and number of children make their first appearance in this numbered list at the end of the chapter, indicating their importance for Stewart’s forthcoming theory despite what little they add to the murder narrative.

  The power of the “canonical five” victims is revealed when Stewart comes to Elizabeth Stride. He opens this chapter with the declaration that “[w]hile there is not a shred of evidence to support the belief that Elizabeth Stride was murdered by the Ripper this murder is included for … no account of the East End murders would be complete without it.”25 That the Ripper murdered a minimu
m of five women was a theory already established within the first fifty years after the murders, linking these five women together in death even when an author wishes to argue against that linking. The entirety of information about her life comes from Michael Kidney, who had lived with her for a handful of months prior to her death. He relates the Princess Alice story, though in this version Stride herself worked aboard as a stewardess. Unlike in the case of Annie Chapman, Stewart does not accept this secondhand retelling of Elizabeth’s life story as completely accurate, since his summing up of the chapter includes that point that, despite the Princess Alice tale that included the death of her husband and two children, all nine of her children were alive at the time of her death. Also in spite of the lack of such testimony, Stewart declared that Elizabeth was living estranged from her husband and does not allow her to rise to the position of a “one-man” woman despite Kidney’s testimony.

  Instead, Stewart argues for a kind of serial monogamy when his summing up states that Elizabeth spent her life going from man to man, and Kidney just happened to be the one she was living with at the time of her death. Somehow the “one-man” woman distinction is reserved for women who have in fact had two men in their lives—their husbands and one other—and not simply for women who are living with a man while avoiding prostitution. Kidney is thus not elevated to the level of Annie’s nameless man, who receives a single mention as some kind of pensioner. Instead suspicion is thrown upon him when Stewart feels the need to clarify that it is impossible to prove that Kidney ever sent her onto the streets. Although no such evidence exists, the suspicion certainly does—and is worth mentioning in such an oblique way—and casts Kidney in a negative light. Presumably the only reason an East End woman would devote herself to a man would be for the protection he could provide, and a man who sent his woman out with the goal of prostitution was a poor provider and perhaps not much of a man, even for the East End. After all, Kidney believed the tales that Elizabeth had told him, when Stewart can flatly declare them to be untrue. Kidney might be under her spell, care so little for her that he would have accepted any tall tale that she told him, or perhaps be fully aware that it was a lie but repeat it out of respect for Elizabeth. Stewart does not present enough information for readers to guess.

  One further point is a mention of Elizabeth that has nothing to do with her lack of beauty or her history: “She was an exceedingly powerful woman.”26 Stewart makes this observation after his statement of her age and before giving the number of children Elizabeth had borne, a puzzling place. Was she exceedingly powerful for a woman of forty-five, or is the fact that she had delivered nine children proof of how powerful she was? And further, if she were indeed powerful, what sort of man—or, as Stewart will argue, woman—could have murdered her? Stewart’s theory suggests a means by which Elizabeth would have let her guard down, but this is a curious statement lacking in the description of any of the other women, including the younger and less alcohol-ravaged Mary Kelly.

  Catherine Eddowes falls under the same almost contradictory umbrella as Elizabeth in that, although John Kelly testified that he had been living with her for quite some time, she is also not a “one-man” woman. This identification is followed by the parenthetical notation that “[t]he face of the victim had been badly disfigured,”27 meaning that Kelly must have identified her despite these injuries and others to her body. Is this meant to indicate that Kelly knew her well if he were up to the task, or that his knowledge of her was indecent because they were not married and yet he was able to recognize her naked body? Kelly himself is dismissed after two sentences, having served his purpose of identifying the victim. Although he is identified by name, unlike Annie’s nameless pensioner, he is apparently lacking that certain something that would allow Stewart to identify him as Elizabeth’s “one man.”

  Catherine is known to have been drinking the night before her murder because Stewart informs readers that she was not entirely sober when she was released from police custody hours later. Whether or not this was unusual for her is a subject not even considered—aside from her final movements, Stewart reports his standard statistic of age and number of children, then adds that Catherine was in and out of lodging- and workhouses. This, then, is the whole of what Stewart feels important enough about Catherine’s life to impart to his readers.

  Mary Kelly, as has now become common practice, is carefully separated from the other women. Stewart reports her landlord, John McCarthy, thinking of her as “a decent little woman … different to others of her type.”28 Whether this difference rests solely in her decency or is for another reason, Stewart does not say. At the very least Mary was able to charm her landlord to a certain extent, since she was behind in her rent and he still thought of her so fondly. This is especially notable after so many of the previous women were thrown out of their lodging houses for lacking the mere pennies necessary for a single night’s stay.

  Mary’s “one man” was named Joseph Barnett and had been living with her for a few months at the time of her death, although not in the days immediately prior to it. Despite his presence and support, presumably monetarily as well as emotionally, Mary was friends with the local prostitutes even if she did not herself engage in prostitution, and she often spent money on drink. Barnett left her because she had invited a prostitute to share their small room with its single bed. This fact could be used to shine a favorable light on Mary and an unfavorable one on Barnett. Although there had not been any further murders in the weeks since the night of the double event, newspapers were keeping the story of the murders alive, and Mary would have taken in her friend in order to protect her from becoming a possible victim. After all, it only took a single night on the streets to lead to a gruesome death. True, their room was small, but Barnett’s absence made her more vulnerable despite the possession of a room to herself, especially since he left her to make up the missing weeks of rent.

  Unlike Kidney’s reporting of Elizabeth’s history on the Princess Alice, Stewart presents Barnett’s retelling of Mary’s past as fact. According to Barnett and undisputed by Stewart, Mary had lived both in the West End and for a time in France, although she had left France of her own free will. Whatever had happened there was perhaps not as terrible as what waited for Mary next, since she ended up in the poorer East End. At least she had Barnett and her little room for a while, until he left her and she had to find a way to start paying for that room. A woman alone in the East End had few choices, and it was Barnett’s absence that forced her onto the streets. Presumably Barnett had been honorable enough, unlike Kidney, to have kept her away from prostitution while they were living together—although the fact that they owed so much rent did not speak well for his earning power.

  Just as Stewart presents Annie as sympathetic, he does the same for his second “one-man” woman. Much later in the text, after his chapter about Mary has been concluded, Stewart addresses the questionable tale of her time in France and subsequent quick decent by pointing out that she is a “born romantic” and, as such, would “find some measure of consolation by fabricating stories of some high estate” from which she was meant to have fallen.29 He does not believe her story, after all, although he does not dismiss Mary’s tales as suddenly and firmly as he did Elizabeth’s in her biography. In this case he even seems to understand why such a young woman, in need of a man, might prefer to tell such a lie. This sympathy was not extended to Elizabeth.

  There is one further statement Stewart makes specifically in reference to Mary Kelly that applies not only to the other women, but to many discussions of victims of violent crime, past and present. He writes it bluntly: “Mary Kelly, like the previous victims, was an accessory to her own death, for she had lived a life which, while contributing to the Ripper’s success, by that very reason helped to make the unsuccess of the police a certainty.”30 While other authors dance around the subject, suggesting that the Ripper selected his victims because they were used to going with strangers into dark corners, Stewart states it
outright. He accuses Mary and all the others of putting themselves in this danger—as though they had a choice of vocation, or as though they should have fought back or otherwise protected themselves. This is not an argument that Jack the Ripper should not have killed women, but that these women should not have made themselves such easy prey.

  The bluntness of this statement—“accessory to her own death”—reveals these underlying thoughts about murder victims, especially those who, in life, had been prostitutes. It also perhaps explains Stewart’s limited details of these women’s lives, since the salient fact is that each was a prostitute, and thus had a hand in arranging her own death. The Ripper specifically chooses prostitutes of the East End as his victims, selecting a class, gender, and profession that could be—and has been—so easily dismissed. Stewart, then, is not saying anything new when he accuses these women of being accessories to their own deaths. He has simply taken what Matters and Woodhall have merely hinted at and stated it plainly.

  No Ripper texts were written in the 1940s, and certainly few authors ever spoke so plainly as Stewart. The next appearance of the Ripper narrative in books came in the 1950s and 1960s, after the Second World War in a world where tragedy could indeed have struck at home, but where few readers, if any, would remember the Whitechapel of 1888. Perhaps, after a war in which the enemy attacked with bombs that could strike anyone, reading about a single man with a knife who chose very specific victims was an escape.

  • THREE •

  “Ladies of the pavement”

  Ripper Narratives of the 1950s and 1960s