The Ripper's Victims in Print

by Rebecca Frost

  Those who envy their notoriety should also remember the deaths that led to it and the lives preceding. Whittington-Eagan does little to remind his readers of what life was like for women without husbands in the East End during the Victorian era, instead focusing on this jealousy-inducing legacy. Their struggles in both life and death have been minimized and dismissed, because they have been redeemed and remembered. They are no longer women but symbols, and their status has somehow been catapulted into one that others wish to obtain.

  Donald Rumbelow’s contribution comes in the form of The Complete Jack the Ripper, also published in 1975. His addition to the growing Ripper library stems from his occupation as a police officer, and the main focus here will be his assertions involving Mary Kelly, her landlord John M’Carthy, and her common-law husband Joseph Barnett.

  Although it is well known and often repeated that Barnett had moved out of the room he and Mary rented from M’Carthy, Rumbelow proposes a reason that would also explain why M’Carthy had allowed Kelly to fall so far behind in paying her rent. Despite the fact that M’Carthy testified he did not know that Mary had been a prostitute, Rumbelow adds that most, if not all, of the other women in Miller’s Court were prostitutes and suggests that the term “M’Carthy’s rents” did not in fact refer to the rooms in Miller’s court, but to the prostitutes he controlled.23 In Rumbelow’s narrative, Kelly is indeed pregnant, again likely not by Barnett, who tries to keep her off the streets due to this fact. Barnett is thus the sole breadwinner, and Rumbelow suggests that he gave the rent money to Mary so she could pass it on to M’Carthy.

  The fight before Barnett left Mary is thus not necessarily over the prostitute she had invited to stay with them in their room, but over the fact that he discovers she has been drinking the rent money and they are far behind in payments. M’Carthy has been allowing the rent to pile up at an alarming rate for an East End landlord because he knows it will give him more control over Mary, who is of course working for him as a prostitute, presumably behind Barnett’s back. When Barnett discovers this, he abandons Mary to fend for herself and attempt to make up the amount in spite of her pregnancy and the accompanying morning sickness.

  This Mary is just as far in arrears as her previous iterations, but while other versions might be able to blame Barnett’s lack of work on her inability to pay bills, Rumbelow’s Mary has no one to blame but herself. She has managed to get herself pregnant by someone other than the man who has been living with her as her husband, and has then drunk away the money he had set aside for their rent. Although readers might question why M’Carthy would have said nothing to Barnett about the rent as it piled up, Rumbelow’s explanation of M’Carthy as in control of the prostitutes living in Miller’s Court would mean he would not want to change the situation if he could see it working out in his favor.

  Mary is thus deceptive and underhanded as well as shortsighted and possessing poor money management. Her relationship with Barnett comes into question despite the length of time the pair had spent together. Her pregnancy and deception would indeed explain why he would not have wished to move back in with her once the fellow prostitute—the ostensible reason for his departure—had left, but he was still on record as having visited her since their final fight. Does she still hold sway over him even once the deception has been revealed? What sort of woman must Mary Kelly have been in order to deceive the man she lived with—the one who had done what he could to keep her off the streets? Rumbelow does not provide enough information for readers to conclude whether Mary’s deception comes out of desperation or whether she might have an understandable, relatable reason for her actions.

  Arthur Douglas’ 1979 book Will the Real Jack the Ripper very nearly waxes lyrical about the killer in question, especially when he proclaims the Ripper to be “the one man in all England who, by his deeds, called a whore a whore and not a fallen angel.”24 Apparently the act of recognizing a whore leads not only to murder but to mutilation, which means that the people of the East End were ignoring the identity of tens of thousands of women. If every man had taken up the avenging role of Jack the Ripper, there is a question of how many women would have been left.

  It seems in contradiction with previous authors that Douglas even suggests that prostitutes were seen as “fallen angels.” True, many of the women who became victims of Jack the Ripper were said to have known better times and to have descended into the East End instead of having been born there, but no author has been so charitable as to refer to any of them as an angel. With this single sentence Douglas sets up all women to be one or the other, a madonna or a whore—and a whore is punishable by brutal murder.

  Douglas, it seems, might perhaps agree with Whittington-Eagan’s assessment that redemption was necessary for these women, even if he would not think that the Ripper would have been so kind as to give it. For Douglas the Ripper represents a moral cause, pulling back the curtain on the conditions of the East End while at the same time eliminating those whose lives offend. The Ripper is indeed praised, and in this case outright instead of sotto voce, for performing his role in cleaning up the streets.

  Preparing for a Long Look Back

  The 1970s represent an eclectic mix of theories surrounding Jack the Ripper, introducing the notion that the women—or at least one woman in particular—called their own deaths down upon them for reasons beyond that of simple prostitution. Even in the midst of these conspiracy theories the lives of the women in question do not demand further investigation. It is enough that they find themselves in possession of information that could be used to hurt the crown and decide to use it for their own gain instead of remaining respectfully, and wisely, silent. Even the notion that they must have known each other needs no further evidence beyond the fact that all were prostitutes in the East End, and thus apparently must have crossed paths.

  The utter lack of attention to the victims, or even the crimes themselves, in a number of these volumes turns out not to be a deviation from the norm, but a forecast of Ripper narratives to come. As little as is shared about Polly, Annie, Liz, Kate, and Mary Jane in the books of the 1970s, even less is revealed in the multiple retrospectives that populate the 1980s.

  • FIVE •

  One Hundred Years Later

  Writing for the Anniversary of the Crimes

  The 1980s was a landmark decade for books about Jack the Ripper, not in the least because it marked one hundred years since the crimes. Numerous authors took this occasion to write reflections on the preceding century, proposing new suspects and rejecting many past theories. They focused intently on identifying the Ripper himself, utilizing new information that had emerged on the subject of serial killers and serial murder.

  First, the term “serial killer” was itself introduced to the reading public. There is debate as to when the term was officially coined and by whom, in English as well as in German, but its common use can be traced to the 1980s. This was also the decade of the American true crime boom which flooded the market with gruesome tales. Ann Rule’s inaugural book, The Stranger Beside Me, was first published in 1980 and discusses serial murderer Ted Bundy without ever using the term. America first found itself face to face with Bundy, the killer “boy next door,” and then was given the language to identify and categorize him. Rule herself testified before the senate about such killers, given her experience of having known Bundy prior to his identification as a criminal.

  This classification applied to Jack the Ripper, as well, although numerous differences separate the two, not the least of which being that Bundy was caught and identified. Bundy was also interviewed extensively while he waited on death row in an attempt to learn about what would make a man murder a series of strangers. These interviews, and interviews of other such killers, were of interest to the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit for the identification and classification of criminals. It was the BSU that first used criminal profiling, which itself exploded into popularity with Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs, first published in 1
988. Bundy was a major influence for more than one aspect of this novel, shaping both serial killer Buffalo Bill and Special Agent Clarice Sterling’s interviews with one killer—Hannibal Lecter—to catch another. The idea of the serial killer as a type permeated both crime fact and crime fiction.

  Supervisory Special Agent John Douglas of the BSU was even asked to profile Jack the Ripper for a television special to commemorate the century mark of the murders. Douglas, who has since retired and published numerous books about his work as a criminal profiler, used the skills he helped develop and perfect on contemporary cases to take a closer look at the Ripper’s identity. Douglas “was provided basic background to each case,”1 although of course forensic techniques of the 1880s were hardly comparable to those of the 1980s. Douglas uses the language the BSU curated in order to discuss such cases, and his section on victimology is first.

  Whereas the entire document is a profile of the Ripper, victimology is the profile of the victims. Douglas classifies these women using the FBI’s term “high-risk” based on their occupations and drinking habits. Risk, when related to a victim, is the chance of that person becoming a victim of violent crime. Because prostitutes regularly go to secluded locations with strangers, and because these women in particular seemed unlikely to be sober and completely aware of their surroundings, they were therefore placing themselves in danger. He also mentioned the fact that many Victorian prostitutes worked on their own instead of under a pimp who, according to Douglas, would offer the benefit of protection in the form of strict control.

  In one of his later books2 Douglas clarifies that identifying victims as either high-risk or low-risk is done with the same purpose as the rest of the profile: in order to identify what sort of criminal would have committed this crime. This investigation into the life of the victim is meant to show the profilers how much of a risk the criminal himself was taking. If the victim leads a low-risk lifestyle, then the crime itself is high-risk for the criminal, and vice-versa. Because Jack the Ripper chose female prostitutes of the lowest class, he murdered them with a very low risk to himself. They would not be noticed to be missing immediately, because their absence would have been more of a comfort to “decent” citizens than their presence. There was also less of a risk because of the conditions of the Victorian era itself—the newness of the police was only one factor working against the women of the East End.

  Although Douglas insists that the purpose of this high- or low-risk label of the victims is purely to point toward the identity type of the killer, this classification is uncomfortably close to the more popular judgment of victims as deserving of their fates or even as complicit in their own demise. This is indeed what Douglas is describing: the lifestyle of these women, often perceived as a deliberate choice, put them in the position where the Ripper could kill and mutilate them. It is somehow not the fault of the Ripper for murdering these women, but the fault of Polly, Annie, Liz, Kate, and Mary Jane for having put themselves in his path.

  It is also intriguing that Douglas felt it was worth noting that “[t]hey were not particularly attractive”3 women, aside from Mary Jane Kelly. This is perhaps more of a note of absence than of presence, because presumably a killer who only preyed upon attractive prostitutes would direct Douglas toward a different profile. So often the appearance of these women has been exaggerated to the extreme, to present them as truly the lowest of the low. Prematurely gray hair, missing teeth, and emaciation all play a role in the presentation of these women as victims deserving of their fates but not of sympathy. For decades authors have been pointing out that these women had been leading high-risk lifestyles that wreaked havoc on their bodies, and now, it seems, the FBI—the leading authority on serial killers—is agreeing.

  With this introduction of expert knowledge and expert language coming from the FBI and specifically from the unit directly concerned with serial crime, it seems that the long-standing conceptions of these women are endorsed and certified. Specific terminology had been created to label exactly what had been being discussed. The victim of a serial crime is now officially examined solely for the clues she can provide to the identity of her killer, and her own actions are used as an explanation for her death.

  This is not to say that every book written in the 1980s minimizes the identity and biography of these women because the authors saw this enacted within the FBI. Rather, it serves as a point of comparison. Whether books about Jack the Ripper feed off the FBI or the FBI reflects the culture of the books, these two distinct entities working for different audiences and different purposes agree on many points. It is not a perspective solely disseminated by the self-selecting readers of Ripper narratives alone, but is now being proclaimed to the government and to the public, couched in language specific to an elite discourse community as an authoritative assessment. As we move through the 1980s, the women themselves almost cease to exist, although their corpses remain to be picked over for the latest fad theory.

  Corrections and Collusions

  In his 1987 book The Crimes, Death, and Detection of Jack the Ripper, Martin Fido makes his assessment of the murdered women clear. He summarizes their situations by lumping their pasts together into a single pattern: “respectable working men found drunken wives intolerable, and after separation the women changed their names and sank to the streets.”4 The women in question must have at one time been respectable themselves, since it seems unlikely a respectable man would take a wife who was not, but by the time the women encounter the Ripper they have sunk far. Due to their drinking they have forced good men to part with them, men who clearly could have supported them due to their jobs. Drinking turned respectable wives into women so terrible that they lost all means of support, and even their good husbands could no longer endure their behavior. Because it is drinking and not, for example, illness, this behavior was presumably a choice and could have been controlled. It is therefore the women’s fault that they tested the patience of their husbands beyond its limit.

  Despite the statement about name changes, Polly Nichols is still Polly Nichols even after she has left her husband. Polly not only spent her husband’s money on her drinking habit but also managed to alienate her father so that all men in her life were glad to be rid of her. When Polly tried to work as a maid, a low but still respectable enough position, Fido declares that this “bored her.”5 This Polly apparently craved the excitement of life on the street, coupled with the uncertainty of income and whether or not she would have a place to sleep at night. Being bored seems like such a trivial assessment of the situation when the alternative was prostitution and death. This apparent boredom may have sprung from the fact that Polly was working for teetotalers, since the overall assessment was that all of these women shared a fondness for drink, but really what it means is that Polly is easily dismissed as she meets the Ripper’s knife.

  Annie Siffey at least occupies more space on the page. She has indeed changed her name since parting from her husband and Fido refers to her as Annie Siffey even though the chapter title presents her as Annie Chapman, still using her husband’s name. At the time of her death even Annie Siffey is passé, since she was no longer living with a sieve-maker. Instead Fido makes sure to point out that there was more than one man in Annie’s life: one who paid for her bed at the weekends and one who apparently enjoyed her favors when the first was not around. Lest readers feel sympathy for the men, it would have been hypocritical for them to expect monogamy from Annie when each of them also went with a second woman—and the same other woman, to boot. Although Polly may have engaged in prostitution, she at least refrained from two-timing a long-term relationship.

  Like Polly, Annie was separated from her husband, although she had managed to live well enough on the allowance he paid her until his death. Fido does not make it clear whether Annie had her concurrent relationships while her husband was still alive, or if she only relied on those men after her payments ceased, but he does argue that she managed to refrain from prostitution until her husband’
s death. However bad their marriage had been, and however acrimoniously it had ended, he still supported her. Perhaps because of this income, or simply to make her past seem more appealing, Annie was apparently fond of telling people that her husband—a coachman—had been a veterinary surgeon, and that they were parted because of his death. Granted, for the last eighteen months or so of her life, Annie was indeed a widow, so the last may not have been a lie, but she certainly seems to have romanticized their time together.

  Whatever Annie’s fantasies may have been, Long Liz Stride topped them all. Fido makes quite a list, from the Princess Alice disaster story to her supposed nine children—seven living and at school thanks to support from the church—to her speech impediment and soft palate injury supposedly incurred during the sinking. Fido, following in the footsteps of Dr. Bagster Philips at Liz’s death inquest, picks through and dismisses these tales completely. Liz was married, yes, but separated from her husband and also childless. She, unlike Annie, was not only an occasional prostitute. Indeed, Fido describes Liz’s final hours as “a busy night of professional whoring.”6 Her husband had died—of illness, not drowning—in 1884, and there is no record that he had given her an allowance prior to this. Liz Stride was a foreign woman left on her own in the East End to make whatever living she could manage.

  Because he declares Liz to be a working prostitute, Fido dismisses any claims that she might have spent the last night of her life with just one man. He finds it almost laughable that other authors have taken witness descriptions and declared that, in each instance, the witness was describing her with the same man. After all, a prostitute is only paid for her favors, and in the hours she supposedly spent with this mystery man she could have—as Fido suggests—serviced two or three. The reason why there was no money found on her body was because the man witnessed attacking her stole it, and here we see another side of Liz: Fido has her marking the man so that she can identify him to her boyfriend later, with the intention that Michael Kidney and perhaps some of his friends would then beat him up. There is a shrewdness as well as a fantasy to Liz who, while she might lie about her past, displays a realistic and perhaps ruthless assessment of the present.