The Ripper's Victims in Print

by Rebecca Frost

  The final lines of Abrahamsen’s book are enough to give pause. He declares that “Prince Eddy and J. K. Stephen were victims but so were those who raised them. In a significant way we are all victims of victims.”39 Indeed Abrahamsen posits that his duo murdered because the way their mothers had treated them led to violent feelings of misogyny, making them victims of their mothers and those who allowed that relationship to develop by removing themselves from the equation—their fathers, for example. The young men are victims of their toxic relationships, and their parents become victims by having birthed and raised serial killers, but what of the women most commonly referred to as victims? Are Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes, and Kelly included in Abrahamsen’s “victims of victims” comment with the rest of us? If the statement was meant to include us all, then certainly they would be included and not held separate. Just as Marie Jeanette Kelly does not occupy a special place in this narrative of the murders, so it would seem that the murdered women do not hold a special place as victims, either.

  Seeking Out the Positive

  Alongside the books offering something new in the way of authors or suspect types, the 1990s of course presented readers with more examples of books accusing a lone male of being Jack the Ripper. The names offered up to replace the pseudonym ranged between previously mentioned men backed up by new evidence to newly named men suggested by new evidence. Just as in previous decades, these authors also run the gamut as far as how much time and space they wished to devote to the victims.

  William Beadle’s 1995 book Jack the Ripper: Anatomy of a Myth resurrects William Henry Bury as a suspect but also closes with the admonition “Spare no thoughts for him; only for those who did not deserve to die—his victims.”40 The Scottish Bury holds the dubious honor of having been the last person hanged in Dundee, Scotland after having been convicted of murdering his wife. In this case “those who did not deserve to die” encompass not only the women murdered by Jack the Ripper, but Ellen Bury, as well.

  From the beginning Beadle takes a sympathetic approach to the women murdered in the East End, declaring that the women “were already victims, used and outcast, doomed to wander blind alleys until they died.”41 He recognizes that prostitution was not a chosen occupation but the last recourse of the desperate, acknowledging that the women in question could not hope to find better positions for themselves. Once women became prostitutes, they were trapped in a cycle of misery either ignored or overlooked by the better off. Beadle does not condemn these women for not being able to raise themselves out of such a position.

  His empathy toward the murdered women begins with his descriptions of Polly Nichols. First Beadle wishes to correct the modern conception that Polly was a hag and old before her time, bringing up contemporary reports that she looked at least ten years younger than her given age. Although yes, Polly was a known alcoholic, he does not place the breakup of her marriage solely on her shoulders. Indeed, Beadle declares the allowance William Nichols gave his wife to be “niggardly,”42 further presenting him in a negative light when he points out that Polly’s family gave testimony that he was lacking as a husband. Between her failed marriage, the breakup of her following long-term relationship with a blacksmith, the dismissal from a short-lived maid’s position, and her alcoholism, Beadle presents an unhappy Polly who never quite managed to settle into an expected position. The fact that her husband was less than a perfect specimen did not help. We are left with a Polly whose life might have been wasted, true, but a Polly who endured her share of adversity in the process.

  Annie Chapman is likewise defended. Beadle notes that writers often present her as “a drunken sot who slept with other men”43 before pointing out that there is no evidence to support this. Whereas her estranged husband died of cirrhosis of the liver, clearly from his own drinking habits, Beadle argues that Annie was not an alcoholic. She did enjoy alcohol, yes, but limited it to one day a week, and was likely not drunk on her last night as many have argued. Since Annie was sick and had spent her last week in the infirmary, Beadle makes it clear that it was illness and not alcohol that hampered her.

  This Annie is almost a pathetic figure, one who huddles close to the lodging house stove because her dying body was in need of the warmth. She has been sick and unable to earn money, either through prostitution or more respectable means, and it is in this condition that she is tossed out onto the street. Already cold, already dying, with a miserable past behind her, Annie was without the pennies for a bed and in no condition to defend herself against a murderer. She may have even gone with him eagerly, being desperate for money so she could pay for a place to rest.

  Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes share a chapter entitled “The Swedish Femme Fatale & The Little Sparrow.”44 Liz’s epithet is confusing, since it is difficult to see how she was dangerous to the men around her. Despite the chapter title Beadle once again comes to her defense, arguing that “[s]he in particular suffered at the hands of myth makers,”45 being portrayed as both ugly and violent. Beadle’s Liz is instead a romantic dreamer who wanted more than a Swedish farming village could offer her. Instead of making her a femme fatale this actually turned her into a target, easily used by men and just as easily abandoned. Instead of the user, Liz is presented as the used, unhappy in her relationship with Michael Kidney and with her life in general. Poor Liz was a victim of her own longings and a time period that would not let women fulfill them long before she was murdered.

  Moving on in his defense of the murdered women Beadle comes to Catherine Eddowes, whom he insists on calling Cathy. He dismisses claims of alcoholism and ugliness, arguing that Cathy actually looked younger than her real age despite her hardships and her life on the streets. Although he does not recommend that his readers seek it out, Beadle’s personal interpretation of Cathy’s mortuary photograph leads him to conclude that she was pleasant and likable. The framing of this assessment is just that: based on his viewing of a photograph of Cathy after her death and not on testimony from those who knew her in life. It is enough for Beadle to continue arguing against any negative representation of Cathy, including the reports that her daughter knew her to be a scrounger. It seems that Beadle has made up his mind to defend the women entirely, perhaps beyond the point of realism and certainly against contemporary reports as well as against narratives that have been formed in the decades since.

  Despite the fact that she was locked up for being drunk and incapable on the last night of her life, Beadle argues both that Cathy was not an alcoholic and that she did not pay for those drinks through prostitution. The support for the first comes through the coroner’s assessment of her liver, which did not suggest a chronic drink problem, and the second rests on the lengths Cathy and her boyfriend John Kelly went to in order to earn money during their last few days together. The Little Sparrow is “a tiny, inoffensive woman”46 as undeserving of such a violent death as she is of the various negative tales that have circulated in the intervening years. Perhaps because of his assessment of her character through her morgue photograph, Beadle goes so far as to suggest that Cathy would have been amused by the expense and the expanse of her funeral. It was, after all, the first indication that her death meant more to the outside world than her life, and the beginning of a form of immortality, although the lack of support from contemporary interviews brings the thought of amusement into question. After all, as he later parenthetically declares, “(there is nothing frivolous about the murder of a young woman),”47 and it seems the same would apply to her funeral. Amusement seems too frivolous a reaction for Cathy to have to her own death.

  Mary Jane Kelly, presented with a list of nicknames, seems comparable to Beadle’s Liz. She is described as “a rather charismatic young woman—possibly intelligent and talented—who needed more from life than the East End … had to offer.”48 Mary’s past is likewise cloaked in mystery and lacking in detail, especially since what little detail is known cannot be corroborated. Beadle suggests she is as mysterious as the ripper—a titl
e he refrains from capitalizing—and has not been given the credit she deserved. When Mary invited fellow prostitutes to share the small room with her and Joseph Barnett, it was done knowing that he would become annoyed and move out. Instead of charity, it was in fact manipulation in a way that would allow her to continue to take advantage of Barnett if she needed to. By making the situation seem like Barnett had made the decision himself, she was able to continue to use her looks and her intelligence to get what she wanted, the way she continued to use a past boyfriend, Joe Flemming.

  Beadle summarizes the position of the murdered women by pointing out the failings of Society that led to their demise. Because these women were prostitutes, they almost assisted the ripper by going alone with him to secluded places, although Beadle does pull back enough to point out that Society—capitalized even when ripper is not—was more than willing to look the other way both during these transactions and during the women’s deaths. Yet he remains determined to find the good in the story, ending his discussion of Mary’s death by claiming that her legacy is both “an epitaph of sorts and in a way her victory over the man who so fouly slew her.”49 Cathy can feel amusement at the scope of her funeral while Mary can feel victorious because her story has lived on—always tied to the ripper name, of course, but Beadle feels this is a victory nevertheless. It seems that his desire to present these women in a positive light extends past their living selves and includes the circumstances of their deaths.

  The Search for Balance

  Although authors like William Beadle seem intent on correcting many misconceptions about the murdered women and presenting them in a much more positive light, so many others have fairly dismissed them as nothing more than East End whores. It is much more likely that their true character falls somewhere between the two extremes and that they were neither saints nor entirely despicable. Two authors of the 1990s, Philip Sugden and James Tully, have made it clear that their books were meant to focus just as much on the victims as on their killer, and each has devoted more space on the page to the victims than many.

  Sugden’s The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, first published in 1994, sets out to present a simple history of the murders without an agenda to prove or disprove any specific suspect. His book is often praised for being both comprehensive and unbiased. In his descriptions of the lives of the murdered women he at times offers contradictions based on given testimony in a way that seeks to find the middle path of a true personality, and not the saint many people seem to become after death, or the dismissal so frequently offered to prostitutes.

  Polly Nichols, for example, is “frequently drunk”50 throughout her life. Her alcoholism is in fact a recurring theme, from the dissolution of her marriage to her condition on her final night. Granted, Sugden does present the rumors that Nichols cheated on his wife before they parted, although the fact that all but their oldest child went with their father after the split suggests that this was not the only issue in that marriage. Sugden offers no critique of the allowance Nichols paid Polly, and explains that this allowance stopped when Nichols learned she was living with another man. It seems understandable both that Polly might live with another man, considering the time period, and that her former husband would not wish to keep supporting her if she had another man occupying that place. All the same, and even though her drinking cost Polly her relationship with her father as well as her marriage and her children, she managed to “inspire affection”51 in those who encountered her in the East End. This might have been because they were interviewed about her after her death, or it might have been the honest assessment from a population that held different expectations of its women. After all, even her husband forgave her after her death, despite all that he insisted she had put him through in life.

  Sugden’s assessment of Annie leans more toward the positive, or at least toward the sympathetic, considering the run of her life: a late marriage, one child a cripple and one dead of meningitis, the failure of that marriage, and the loss of both her allowance and her subsequent steady relationship when her husband died. There is certainly room for sympathy when the sieve-maker abandoned her, considering he only seemed to form that attachment because of her allowance, leaving Annie completely alone and on the street. On the other hand, alcoholism is again a factor. Between some friends saying they often saw her drunk and others saying she confined her drinking to Saturdays—presumably her best market days—the actual extent of Annie’s alcoholism is up for question, although Sugden mentions twice that Annie’s earnings must have been spent on alcohol instead of food or shelter. Indeed, this Annie is “a pathetic little woman in the last extremities of want,”52 both poor and in poor health when she is turned out of her lodging house for the last time. She is even industrious enough, at least when sober, to have her position of prostitute questioned, since she likely only turned to selling herself as a last report—again, likely for alcohol. Annie’s possible good traits are held in foil against the likely negative aspects, although neither can be fully proven. Thus the reader is left with possibilities that fall on both sides and might even exist in tandem.

  Liz is even more of a question than Annie because of her penchant for telling stories about her life. Since she was born and raised in Sweden, there is no one local who would be able to support or refute her claims—all her friends had were these stories. Sugden dispels the narrative of the Princess Alice since there is no support, although he also admits that little was known of her marriage to John Stride. Again there is conflicting information regarding how much Liz drank, with one argument being that her friends recalled her as good-natured and sober, while she made multiple appearances at court for being drunk and disorderly. Her boyfriend Michael Kidney seems to agree more with the latter, since he declares that drinking was the reason for the gaps in their relationship. All the same, those gaps add up to a handful of months out of a total of three years, and thus her drinking seems not to have been constant. Again Sugden points out that one of the Ripper’s victims may not have been working steadily as a prostitute—unless Liz needed the money to spend on alcohol, “Long Liz may have only been an occasional prostitute.”53 Again, the uncertainty is there for readers to assess and draw their own conclusions.

  Kate Eddowes seems to master the dichotomy of opposing tales. Although her sister says her common-law marriage to Tom Conway failed because he beat her when he was drunk, their daughter claimed that Conway was a teetotaler and Kate the drinker. Kate nursed that same daughter through her final confinement, showing a degree of care, but the daughter moved without leaving a forwarding address since her mother continually asked for money that she either did not have or did not want to give. During the final days of her life Kate selflessly negotiated limited funds with her long-term boyfriend John Kelly, except she somehow managed to find enough money to get drunk with this money that was not shared. Both John Kelly and Kate’s sister insist that Kate was not a prostitute, but there is the question of how she was able to find the money to get drunk and what she might have been doing in Mitre Square so late at night. There are simply too many questions to make too firm a statement about the lives of any of the victims, although the broad strokes seem to come through.

  Mary Jane Kelly, like Liz, had moved to London and thus was able to tell her own tales about her past. There seems to be little corroboration about the details Mary Jane told her boyfriend, Joe Barnett, and thus her past—from her stint in a West End brothels to a trip with a gentleman to France—remains questionable. Her position as a prostitute, however, seems certain, unlike the previous women. Mary Jane was also apparently fond of drink, having been heard singing drunkenly in her room on her final night alive, although friends reported that she was quite kind when she was sober. This Mary Jane is not nearly such a standout as others, since she does not seem to be so highly intelligent or as upper class as other authors have presented. Being far from home but with few close friends, her story is filtered through Joe Barnett, who seems to be the only one to know
it. Mary Jane largely kept to herself in life, and thus became an enigma in death.

  James Tully’s 1997 book The Real Jack the Ripper: The Secret of Prisoner 1167 likewise sets out to uncover the real murdered women. In his introduction he declares, “I have paid especial attention to the lives of the poor women who were slaughtered so brutally—to give them the dignity they deserve. They were not merely victims; they were people like you and me,”54 and, as people must have both faults and charms. For Tully these women had ended up on the street in the East End because of circumstances beyond their control, and thus were faced with making the best of the bad situation that was the only one offered to them.

  Polly was a drunk who had made the mistake of marrying a “pompous … humbug”55 of a man who could barely be bothered to care about the mother of his children during their marriage, much less after. Tully has her drinking quite heavily during her marriage and even leaving the home a few times, but later managing to keep her alcoholism under some semblance of control during her relationship with the blacksmith, Drew. Perhaps being involved with a man who was less of a humbug alleviated the need for drinking, although it never left her entirely. Every attempt that Polly made—or hoped to make—at a new or better life was foiled by her love of alcohol, which Tully presents as being an essential part of her personality. It is true that this Polly at least wanted to change, but she lacked the means or perhaps the self control to manage it.