Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

by kindels

  Of the many people who have been considered as suspects down through the years, Lizzie Williams alone had all the attributes that the Whitechapel murderer required in order to accomplish, and get away with, the terrible crimes. She was intelligent, confident and determined, yet cautious and careful too. She possessed a sufficient knowledge of anatomy and the requisite theoretical surgical skills both to kill her victims and, when necessary, to extract the organ she wanted to possess – the uterus. The coroner in the Annie Chapman inquest, Wynne Baxter, noted: “The organ had been taken by one who knew where to find it.”

  Lizzie Williams had access to surgical knives. The Divisional Police Surgeon, Dr George Bagster Phillips, an expert witness in the inquest, gave his opinion that the weapon used in four out of the five murders was “very sharp… probably with a thin, narrow blade at least six to eight inches long; perhaps a small amputating knife.” The Williams household also owned a shoemaker’s knife “well ground down”, which expert opinion considered had been used in the Stride murder, because such a knife was discovered among the personal possessions of Dr Williams held by the National Library of Wales.

  Of great significance was the possibility that Dr John Williams had a direct connection with at least three of the murder victims, Nichols (perhaps), Eddowes and, crucially, Kelly, and so, by indirect association, did his wife.

  And she was a woman. Since everyone – the police, the press and the public – were looking for a man, Lizzie Williams was ‘invisible’. She was able to come and go at will; she walked along alleyways and passages, roads and high-streets, through police cordons, past constables and detectives wherever and whenever she wished, always unnoticed.

  But, most significantly of all, she had the motive to commit murder.

  As a child, Lizzie was gifted at both acting and music. At the age of fifteen, she won a competition at an Eisteddfod for which she was given the Bardic name of Morfydd Glantawe. At the age of twenty, she was given the honour of awarding prizes at the 1870 Eisteddfod. She was an accomplished organist and accompanied the choir in her local chapel, Libanus. While Lizzie Williams is now largely forgotten, Morfydd Street and Glantawe Street still exist in Morriston, the town of her birth. However, no more than a handful of people living there now know that these street names honour the gifted daughter of a leading industrialist, whose husband was a doctor to royalty, and when in 1894, her husband was made a baronet, she became Lady John Williams.

  Soon after the murders ended, and almost certainly before the end of the year 1888, Lizzie Williams returned alone to live with her family in Wales. Also living with her was Edward R. Morgan, whom we believe was a qualified medical practitioner whose job it was to keep her under constant supervision. She remained with her family, visiting her husband in London from time to time, until Dr John Williams moved back to Wales on his retirement in 1903. When Lizzie moved to her husband’s new home in Llanstephan, she was accompanied by her stepmother, who lived with them, and it was she, Mary Hughes, who now provided the constant care that Lizzie needed for the few remaining years of her life. Lizzie Williams died of cancer in 1915 at the age of sixty-five.

  Dr John Williams unexpectedly gave up all his hospital work within five years of the murders, and his successful private practice ten years after that at the relatively young age of sixty-two years. He cited ‘ill health’ as the reason, but this is highly questionable. Despite devoting almost his entire professional life to the search for a cure for infertility, he was never able to make the discovery he had worked so hard to find.

  In 1908 Dr Williams contributed his vast collection, almost 20,000 Welsh language volumes and books of Celtic interest, to the National Library of Wales, checking every individual book and manuscript first. The shipment weighed about twelve tons, filled 116 chests, and moving it to Aberystwyth over the Christmas period took almost a month. The Hengwrt-Peniarth collection, a private library of ancient Welsh volumes consisting of a further 10,000 books, was delivered directly to the great library of which he became the first president.

  In that same year, the Williamses moved to Snowdon House on Marine Parade in Aberystwyth. He later renamed it ‘Blaenllynant’ after the farm where he had grown up. After his wife’s death, he continued living in the house with Mary Hughes, who had become his close companion.

  Within the National Library of Wales, a marble bust of Sir John Williams by Sir W. Goscome John greets visitors at the entrance hall, while his portrait hangs near the Council Chamber. A large marble statue of Sir John Williams by sculptor Mario Rutelli, which stands at the west end of the Reading Room, watches over the many thousands of people who come to visit the library every year. Sir John died in 1926 at the age of eighty-six.

  Richard Hughes, Lizzie’s father, was a director and joint managing partner in the Landore Tinplate works in Swansea. He was one of the wealthiest men in Wales and Lizzie was the apple of his eye. He lavished every expense on her both before and during her marriage. By the spring of 1888, his company had gone into decline; Hughes lost all his money and a third of his workforce. Before the end of the year, everything he owned was charged to the bank. Increasing competition from other factories, and the shift of the tinplate industry from South Wales to the United States had made itself felt; the imposition of the McKinley protective tariff, coupled with competition from an old business rival, Daniel Edwards, dealt the death blow and had a devastating effect on Hughes’s tinplate works. By the end of 1892, he was declared bankrupt and was a ruined man. On 28 October 1903, nine months after Dr John Williams gave up his hospital work and moved back to Wales, Hughes died at Rock House in Morriston at the age of eighty-six. His funeral took place in the town of his birth, Llanbrynmair.

  Detective Inspector Frederick George Abberline, appointed by Scotland Yard as co-ordinating officer in the Whitechapel murder investigation, a quiet, methodical watchmaker, never caught the Whitechapel murderer, nor did he ever discover the motive behind the killings. He once considered the idea that the murderer might have been a woman. He had discussed the theory with a colleague at the time and thought that perhaps she might have been a midwife. But Abberline was never able to resolve the issue of Caroline Maxwell’s unwavering testimony that she had both seen and spoken to Mary Kelly on the morning of the murder, several hours after the young woman was known to have been killed.

  In 1890, Inspector Abberline was promoted to Chief Inspector of the London Metropolitan Police, but he resigned from the force two years later, having achieved 84 commendations and awards. He worked as a private detective for a further twelve years before moving to Bournemouth on his retirement. He died in 1929 at the age of eighty-six – the very same age that Dr John Williams and Richard Hughes had been when they died.

  Detective Sergeant George Godley, who was appointed to assist Abberline in the murder investigation, remained in the police force for another twenty years. By the time he retired, he had attained the rank of Inspector. In 1903 he arrested George Chapman, one of the Ripper suspects, for the alleged murder of his wife by poisoning. Godley died in 1941, aged eighty-five.

  Inspector Walter Dew, one of the first officers in the murder investigation to enter 13 Miller’s Court, regarded the sight of Mary Kelly’s remains as “the most gruesome memory of the whole of my police career” (I Caught Crippen, 1938). He gained fame for himself when he arrested ‘Dr’ Hawley Harvey Crippen in Quebec, Canada, who poisoned his wife in 1910. The case was notable because Crippen was the first criminal to be captured with the aid of wireless communications. Walter Dew died in 1947.

  Wynne Edwin Baxter, coroner for the South-Eastern District of Middlesex, held many thousands of inquests during his professional lifetime, including, notably, that of Joseph Meyrick, the Elephant Man. Two years after the Whitechapel murders, in 1890, he was appointed Life Governor of the London Hospital. Like John Williams, he was an avid book collector but with a specific interest in the works of John Milton. Baxter was also a popular and very successful solicitor, politic
ian and businessman whose legal practice in Worthing survives to this day under the name Mayo Wynne Baxter LLP. Baxter died in 1920, aged seventy-six.

  Thomas Power O’Connor, founder and editor of The Star newspaper, was almost certainly the originator of the name Jack the Ripper, though it has since been proved beyond reasonable doubt that the infamous ‘Dear Boss’ letter, including its notorious signature, was penned and signed by his employee, journalist Frederick Best. As an astute marketing ploy, it must rank as one of the best in history as a means of selling newspapers, because it catapulted sales of the newly launched paper far beyond competitors of the day. O’Connor, a shrewd Irishman and Member of Parliament (1880-1929), founded several other newspapers, including The Weekly Sun (1891) and The Sun (1893). It was as much because of his sensationalised style of journalism, that morbid curiosity, panic and terror increased among the general public, as the brutality of the murders and mystery surrounding the identity of the murderer. A marble bust of O’Connor gazes down Fleet Street to this day to commemorate his better-known achievements in the newspaper industry, though none are as well-known as the sobriquet he almost certainly coined so surreptitiously, which is still used as an instantly recognisable pseudonym to categorise brutal serial killers the world over. He died in London in 1929 at the age of eighty-six.

  The summer of 2008 marked the 120th anniversary of the Whitechapel murders, and my father’s death. His funeral was held at the very same Welsh chapel, in Morriston, where Lizzie Williams had laid the foundation stone in 1870. Also a quiet and methodical watchmaker, Byron Morris developed a passion for historical research during the latter years of his life, and ferreted out the answers to several mysteries long past. Though he became almost blind and very deaf, his memory was clear, his mind sharp and intuitive. He was, it was said, a hard act to follow. It was he, rather than me, whose spark of realisation as to whom the murderer could have been led us – eventually – to discover the truth. But at the age of ninety-six, and with so much more to give, his time had also come.

  APPENDIX I

  After I delivered the ‘final’ draft manuscript to my forgiving publisher for a third time, I made a startling and unexpected discovery. It occurred as I looked up a small detail about the Savile Club in Piccadilly to which Sir John Williams belonged. A familiar, and famous, name in the list of members caught my eye: Rudyard Kipling, author of ‘The Female of the Species’, an extract from which I had included in the text earlier, was also a member of the club.

  Founded in 1868 for the purposes of conversation and good company, membership of the Savile Club was based on a man’s character and sociability. It comprised professionals drawn from all walks of life: actors, composers and writers; scientists, doctors, lawyers and politicians. All members were encouraged to talk with one another in the club, no matter who they were or what their social standing might be. They were expected to ‘leave their halos in the hall’.

  The Savile Club boasted many famous members, including Robert Louis Stevenson, author of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), the stage version of which played nightly to packed audiences at the Lyceum Theatre in London’s West End. So realistic was Richard Mansfield, the leading actor, in his transformation from good to evil, that he was once proposed as a Ripper suspect, though quickly dismissed as such.

  At the age of twenty-three, Rudyard Kipling had left his home in India, bound for England via America where he spent several months touring extensively. In Elmira, New York he met Mark Twain who, he said, impressed him deeply. During this time he supported himself by writing articles for The Pioneer – an English language newspaper published in India. He arrived in London in 1889 when Sir John Williams was still a member of the club; both shared the bond of Freemasonry, and, in view of the club’s code of sociability, it is likely that the two men knew one another, though Williams, at forty-nine, was some twenty-five years Kipling’s senior.

  Rudyard Kipling was a first cousin of Stanley Baldwin, a Conservative politician who became Prime Minister in 1923 (the first of three terms). Already a popular and welcomed character within the country’s literary circles, Kipling’s fame and family connections also gave him easy access to political cliques. These undoubtedly included those of another future Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith MP, and just as importantly, Margot Asquith, his socially active wife. Margot Asquith was a member of an aristocratic circle of politicians and intellectuals named ‘The Souls’. They were a social, non-political group formed for the purpose of amicable discussion and included Sir Henry Cockayne-Cust, politician and editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, to which Kipling contributed, helping to make the periodical a great success, George Curzon, Former Viceroy of India 1898-1905, and Arthur Balfour, Prime Minister 1902-05, all of whom Kipling knew socially. Margot Asquith was a friend and patient of Sir John Williams, and well acquainted with his wife, Lady Williams. It was Margot Asquith who had written to Sir John Williams in late November 1900 concerning something the reverse of complimentary about his wife, which, we believe, judging by the content of Sir John’s brusque letter in reply, linked him and Lady Williams directly to the murders.

  Kipling was also on friendly terms with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sir Arthur was also a Freemason, and they attended Masonic Lodge meetings, and played golf together. It is inconceivable that they would not have discussed the murders when Sir Arthur would undoubtedly have expounded his own ‘Jill the Ripper’ theory to Kipling: that the murderer might have disguised himself as a woman in order to gain the confidence of his victims, or could in fact have been a woman, perhaps a midwife, or a woman who posed as such.

  If, as seems likely, Kipling had heard the “foolish and wicked talk” about the unstable Lizzie Williams from someone within Margot Asquith’s clique, Sir Henry Cockayne-Cust, George Curzon, Arthur Balfour, or perhaps even Margot Asquith herself, then Sir Arthur’s theory would have rung true. Perhaps the fraternal bond of Freemasonry prevented Kipling from speaking out publicly and damaging Lady Williams and Sir John Williams, a fellow Mason who had been “troubled beyond measure” by the “tongues of scandal”. In any event, there was no hard evidence linking anyone to the murders, and Lady Williams was unwell, so whatever she may have said could not be relied upon.

  So was Rudyard Kipling driven to record in 1911, in allegory instead, the person whom he believed the murderer might have been? One who “has the greater determination – the greater courage and single-mindedness in the pursuit of the important in life.”

  Certainly, his poem ‘The Female of the Species’ could have been a metaphor for Lizzie Williams. The phrase encapsulated in the title is repeated a further six times: it is as though Kipling was doing everything possible to press home his point: that a woman is not only capable of committing murder, but might actually do so, if she felt in some way threatened.

  All this is speculative, of course, and I was anxious to avoid chasing shadows and seeing evidence that was, in fact, no more than mere coincidence. And there I would have left it – except for one strange, almost insignificant, anomaly that appears in the last two lines of the ninth verse. It reads:

  And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim

  Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

  Lizzie Williams was certainly lacking both a baby (Babe) and her husband (Man). She was also infertile; but surely the word ‘baron’, written within brackets, appears to have been misspelt. Dating back to the thirteenth century, the word is derived from the Anglo-French barain, meaning ‘infertile land’, though alternatively, it might be of Celtic origin. A quick check in the Oxford English Dictionary confirms that the simile for ‘infertility’ has never, at any time, been spelt ‘baron’, but always ‘barren’. So how could Rudyard Kipling, an intelligent man and future Nobel laureate for literature have made such an obvious mistake?

  The answer is that he didn’t. Kipling has given the word a double meaning: ‘baron’ meaning ‘barren’, for those who are sa
tisfied that it describes infertility and are prepared to ignore the error for the sake of artistic licence; and for others, prepared to accept its literal meaning, it describes a title of nobility. In 1894, a baronetcy was conferred on Sir John Williams by Queen Victoria; so the ‘baron’ in the poem might have referred to him. Could it therefore be that Kipling believed Lady Williams to be the murderer, and was it possible that she, and not, as is generally believed, the troublesome suffragists of the day, had provided the inspiration for one of his most famous poems?

  The Female of the Species

  Rudyard Kipling

  1911

  When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,

  He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.

  But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.

  For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

  When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,

  He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.