Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

by kindels

  We started with the first of the Ripper’s victims, Mary Ann Nichols, aka Polly, age forty-three, whose body was discovered in Buck’s Row at 3.40 in the morning on Friday, 31 August, the night of the London Docklands fires. The mother of five children and a common prostitute, she was drunk, throttled to death, her throat cut twice from left to right, her abdomen ripped open from top to bottom, her intestines made visible. There were no signs that the victim had struggled with her attacker or tried to fight back. Afterwards, the murderer had escaped, leaving no trace or clue behind.

  No one had been heard or seen leaving the scene of the crime; the only people whom P.C. Neil noticed were a number of women walking in the Whitechapel Road. None were traced, none were identified.

  There had been no rape or sexual assault, and detectives investigating the case thought it was strange that the murderer had shown no sexual interest in the victim during what appeared, at least on the face of it, to be a sexually motivated attack. Emma Smith and Martha Tabram, the two prostitutes murdered in Whitechapel earlier that year, had both been sexually assaulted before their deaths, while Smith had been raped.

  There was nothing in those few brief facts that we didn’t already know, but there was something about the case that rang a small bell in my head, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, so we moved on to the next case.

  Annie Chapman: forty-seven, the mother of three children, occupation common prostitute, whose body was discovered at 6.00 a.m. on Saturday, 8 September in the enclosed backyard of 29 Hanbury Street. Partially throttled, throat cut from left to right, abdomen cut open, her uterus cut out and taken away. No rape or sexual assault, although her legs were found wide apart, as though she expected to perform the sexual act. Again, there were no indications that Chapman had tried to fight off her attacker or defend herself in any way. It appeared that she had merely lain down on the ground and accepted her fate. As before, the murderer silently and mysteriously vanished just minutes before the victim’s body was discovered.

  By this point, it was already obvious that a pattern of sorts had been established. The victims had been throttled, their throats cut and their abdomens ripped open. Mary Ann Nichols’s abdomen had been cut so extensively that her intestines were protruding, while Annie Chapman sustained a similar injury, except that her uterus had been removed. But the long jagged tear that Chapman sustained, from her privates to her breasts, had avoided the navel, leaving the uterus undamaged, as a result of which Dr George Phillips concluded that it was the work of an expert – “of one, at least, who had such knowledge of anatomical or pathological examinations as to be enabled to secure the pelvic organs with one sweep of a knife….”

  One thing was rapidly becoming clear to us: the victims were attacked and murdered so quickly and unexpectedly that they were taken entirely by surprise, and perhaps that was the reason why they had not fought back. There had simply been no time to react. They might have been on their guard if in the presence of a man, but if their attacker was a woman, they would have felt more at ease and unprepared for the assault when it came. Moreover, the injuries sustained by the victims were not just the result of random slashing. The wounds were inflicted deliberately, with precision and deadly purpose.

  The reason why the murderer had not raped the victims, or shown any sexual interest in them was, of course, as clear as day to my father and me. In the light of what we knew, we could not understand why the police had not considered the obvious possibility that the murderer might have been female. Abberline did ponder the matter with a colleague after Mary Kelly’s death, but, it seems, only briefly even then.

  Elizabeth Stride, known as Long Liz, age forty-five; mother to a stillborn child. Occupation: common prostitute; murdered just before 1.00 a.m. on Sunday, 30 September inside the entrance to Dutfield’s Yard in Berner Street; throat cut from left to right. Dr Frederick William Blackwell’s very though medical report revealed no other injuries. Unsurprisingly, again there had been no rape or sexual assault, nor was there any sign of Elizabeth Stride’s murderer who, yet again, seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

  All the evidence suggested that, up until Stride’s death, the murders were becoming ever more horrific. Louis Diemschutz, the steward who discovered Stride’s body, said the “blood was still flowing from the open neck wound”, when he found her, so it was clear that the murder had only just taken place. The generally held view was, and perhaps still is, that the murderer was interrupted before he (or she) could attack the body. We wondered, however, if this was the correct interpretation of the events in this case. Perhaps murder was all that the killer had in mind for Stride. But if this was so, why?

  The next victim was Catherine Eddowes; age forty-six, mother of three children, two boys and a girl. Occupation: common prostitute. She was the second victim to be murdered that night in the ‘double event’. Her body was discovered at 1.44 a.m. in a dark corner of Mitre Square. It appeared to have been a ferocious attack: her throat had been slashed from left to right, her face cut to ribbons, her abdomen ripped open, uterus and left kidney both torn from the body and taken away. There had been no rape or sexual assault.

  It had all happened in an almost impossible time frame. P.C. Watkins’s beat took him through the square at 1.30 that morning when he found nothing amiss. At about 1.41 or 1.42 a.m. P.C. James Harvey looked into the square from Church Passage and he, too, said he saw nothing unusual. At 1.44, P.C. Watkins returned to the square and found the body.

  At some time after 1.30, we surmised, Lizzie Williams and Catherine Eddowes had entered the square, found the dark corner, Eddowes had lain down on the ground on her back; Williams, kneeling beside her, had cut her throat, mutilated her face, opened her abdomen, removed her intestines, cut out her uterus and left kidney, sliced off part of her victim’s apron, in which she wrapped the organs, and then made her escape. Yet again, incredible though it was, no one living in the square saw or heard a thing. It was almost as if the victim had willingly gone to her death because, once again, there was no sign that a struggle had taken place. No one saw or heard anyone enter the square, and no one saw or heard anyone leave. It was as though the murderer was invisible – which of course she was, just as long as the police were searching for a man.

  Finally, we reached Mary Jane Kelly, Lizzie Williams’s fifth and final victim; age twenty-five, mother to a young boy, several failed relationships, the latest being with Joseph Barnett, a labourer and fish-porter, which ended on 30 October, just over a week before her murder. Occupation: common prostitute; estimated time of death, about 4.00 a.m. Her throat had been cut; her face slashed –

  I stopped in my tracks. I had just remembered something about the Catherine Eddowes case which I thought warranted further investigation. It concerned the terrible facial injuries she had sustained. I thought at first they were the result of a frenzied attack, but Dr Frederick Brown’s medical report told a different story when looked at a second time. At first reading, it might have appeared that Catherine Eddowes’s face had been slashed to ribbons, but those injuries paled into insignificance against the other appalling wounds inflicted upon her: a great gaping gash about her throat; her abdomen ripped open from breasts to private parts, her uterus torn from her body, her left kidney cut out and both organs removed from the scene of the crime. Nevertheless, there was something about the injuries to her face that made us want to study the medical report again.

  Dr Frederick Brown, the City Police Surgeon, performed the autopsy on Catherine Eddowes’s body on Sunday afternoon, 30 September at the City Mortuary. He noted a laceration through both her left and right eyelids; a deep gouge from the bridge of the nose which extended across the right cheek; an abrasion to the left cheek; the tip of the nose had been severed; there was a wound to her upper lip, and the right side of the mouth was slit, the lobe of her right ear had been sliced off and, on each cheek, a triangular flap of skin had been cut on two sides by four oblique incisions, each about 1½ inches
long. Mr F.W. Foster, an architect and surveyor commissioned to provide plans of the murder site for the inquest, also produced a rough sketch of the victim at the mortuary on 30 September, which clearly illustrates the injuries Eddowes had sustained.

  It seemed to us that Catherine Eddowes’s facial injuries were not the result of random slashing, as we had thought at first. We realised that every single one of Eddowes’s facial features – those that gave her a feminine appearance – had been destroyed. The murderer had deliberately obliterated Catherine Eddowes’s face – but why? There was something else strange too: the two triangular flaps of skin carved into each cheek. Was that all they were? Four nicks, two on each cheek which met at a point so that the inverted letter V appeared to have been formed. They had clearly been inflicted deliberately: but why?

  The gash to Eddowes’s abdomen was odd too; it was not the dreadful, callous tearing wound from privates to ribs which it appeared to be at first. Instead, it commenced at her private parts, and the blade was drawn upwards to a point where it ended between her breasts. But it was not a straight line. The incision, instead of being drawn up the body in a vertical line, veered immediately to the left; then it circumscribed the navel completely before changing direction again, this time continuing towards the sternum. It was as though the murderer had intentionally avoided damaging the organ located above the pubis – the uterus. Once again, this was no indiscriminate attack, and the abdomen had not been mindlessly ripped open. The wounds appeared to have been administered deliberately. In fact, there was only one rational explanation; it was surgery!

  After the murderer had cut Annie Chapman’s throat, she divided her abdomen, tore out her uterus and took it away. Now, she had repeated the very same act on hapless Catherine Eddowes but, this time, going much further and cutting out Eddowes’s left kidney too. There was no good medical reason for her to take either of the organs; neither would be of any practical use for research, or for any other reason we could think of. It seemed to be an act of wanton barbarity.

  While it was Dr Brown’s view that the murderer had deliberately removed Catherine Eddowes’s left kidney, Dr Sequeira thought that it might have been removed with no knowledge of what it was. One thing that all the doctors agreed upon, however, was that the murderer possessed some, if not great, anatomical knowledge and surgical skill. This opinion appears ambiguous, but a second reading clarifies the fact that ‘the murderer’ did not possess the skill or knowledge of a qualified surgeon; rather, the rudimentary skill and knowledge that one might acquire from watching another, more qualified practitioner, perform his task. This, of course, suggests Lizzie Williams as a suspect, but excludes Dr John Williams, who was an exceptionally talented and experienced surgeon.

  It was all very strange and the questions we wanted to ask went way beyond our search for just the motive to murder. Why had the murderer deliberately destroyed Catherine Eddowes’s face? Why did she carve what appeared to be the inverted letter V into each of her cheeks? What, if anything, did the letter stand for? Why had she cut out and taken her victim’s uterus, and for what possible reason did she remove her left kidney?

  My father and I thought that Catherine Eddowes was more than just an innocent victim. We wondered if the manner of her death, the facial injuries that were inflicted, the careful surgery to her abdomen, the organs cut from her still warm body – her uterus and left kidney – somehow held a key to the mystery, though we did not then know why.

  Since all the injuries to Catherine Eddowes seemed to have been inflicted deliberately and with purpose, the logical extension of this notion was: could our theory be extended to the other victims too? We believed the prospect was well worth investigating, and we began by making a brief comparison of the injuries that Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly had sustained.

  Catherine Eddowes died from severe blood loss when her throat was cut. All her facial features were individually attacked, her abdomen surgically divided, and two organs were cut out of her body and taken away from the scene of the crime: her uterus and her left kidney, both intact.

  When the murderer confronted Mary Kelly in her small room, the young woman was attacked and murdered in much the same way as Catherine Eddowes. Her throat was slashed, her face was ripped to shreds, her abdomen was opened, her uterus torn from her body and, significantly, her heart was cut out. Far greater injuries were ultimately inflicted upon Mary Kelly but, nevertheless, there were strong parallels to be drawn between the two murders – a major difference was that Eddowes’s left kidney had been taken from the crime scene, whereas Kelly’s heart had been removed. We asked ourselves, why?

  We were still sure that the answers to our questions were in the mountain of paperwork in front of us; but they weren’t going to give themselves up voluntarily and without effort. We would have to work hard to find them, no matter how long it might take.

  And we did. It was as we were working our way through the Mary Ann Nichols papers again that we were reminded of a concurrence with the Eddowes case. It was something that, at first, seemed unimportant, but now it appeared to provide a vital piece of the jigsaw. The breakthrough came in the form of a police record which contained little enough, but the information it did reveal was crucial. It was Ellen Holland’s statement that reminded us. She was a friend of the first victim, Mary Ann Nichols. When she went to the Whitechapel mortuary to identify the body, she knew her friend only as Polly, her nickname or alias. That was the first clue, but then it led us to the next one.

  It was a single sheet document – a copy of the release record of Catherine Eddowes. She had been found drunk in Aldgate High Street, arrested and taken to Bishopsgate Police Station where she was locked in a cell until she sobered up. She was released at 1.00 a.m., and within the hour she was dead.

  But it was the name on the form of release that was of immense importance; it was the name by which Catherine Eddowes was known to some of her friends, her alias. It consisted of just three names, two forenames and a surname.

  Upon her discharge from custody, the name that Catherine Eddowes gave to Sergeant Byfield, and which was the name he duly recorded on his form was Mary Ann Kelly. The seductive young Irish girl who was murdered in Miller’s Court nearly six weeks later was Mary Jane Kelly. With each middle name removed, we thought it was almost beyond belief – and it had to be more than just mere coincidence – the last two victims of Jack the Ripper shared the same name, Mary Kelly!

  CHAPTER 11

  The first clue, mentioned briefly at the opening of the Prologue, which led my father to the sudden realisation about the possible identity of the murderer, was provided by Tony Williams’s book, Uncle Jack. Tony Williams assumed that a letter he had found amongst his great-great-uncle’s personal effects, held by the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, was written by Dr John Williams and sent to an old friend, his childhood sweetheart and second cousin, Annie Roberts, whom he once hoped to marry. We were much less sure.

  The letter, in an envelope apparently postmarked ‘early 1889’ (no specific day or month was given), the year following the murders, contained the potentially incriminating sentence, “Thank you for the forgiveness and for keeping my secret”. But while Tony Williams included most of the text in his book, he omitted the signature of the letter’s author, either by accident or design, though he included the valediction, ‘See you,’ and there it ended. It seemed to us a strange omission to make, because, according to our research, Dr Williams routinely signed his letters; we thought that perhaps he was not really sure if the author was Dr John Williams.

  In a letter written by Dr Williams in reply to one sent to him by Queen Victoria, both of which are reproduced in Ruth Evans’s book John Williams 1840-1926, Williams’s letter is dated, ‘November 2, 1887’, and his full signature is included, ‘John Williams’. Again, a letter which he wrote to Dr Morgan Davies, Assistant Medical Officer in the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary, explaining why he is unable to meet with him on 8 September 1888, is also
reproduced in full, including the date, ‘23 August 1888’, and the signature, ‘John’. So why Tony Williams had chosen to omit the signature this time seems very odd and, perhaps, blatant ‘cherry picking’.

  It was not just the missing signature that made us wonder if Dr Williams had written the letter, but the quality of the handwriting. Tony Williams said the writing was ‘poor,’ and did not, apparently, reflect the doctor’s usual neat handwriting. In other words, it looked different. If Dr Williams wrote the letter and sent it to someone else, what was it doing amongst his personal belongings? Why had the recipient of the letter given it back to him?

  But it was not these questions that concerned us; it was a single sentence in the body of the text which read, “You are the centre of my world.” These seven words immediately rang alarm bells with us because they simply sounded out of character for Dr Williams.

  For one thing, Annie Roberts, a childhood friend of the young John Williams, who had lived on a neighbouring farm, was now a respectable married woman. We did not think it likely that Dr Williams would commit such sentiments to paper, even if he thought them, no matter how close their early friendship as children might have been. For another, what was it that Annie Roberts had forgiven him for? It would hardly be for the brutal murders and hideous disfigurement of five London East End prostitutes, an offence that carried the death penalty. Such a secret he would be unlikely to confide to anyone, least of all a woman who was married to somebody else.