The Complete Jack the Ripper

by Donald Rumbelow

  MR CRAWFORD: Would not such a knowledge be likely to be possessed by one accustomed to cutting up animals?

  DR BROWN: Yes.

  MR CRAWFORD: Have you been able to form any opinion as to whether the perpetrator of this act was disturbed when performing it?

  DR BROWN: I think he had sufficient time. My reason is that he would not have nicked the lower eyelids if he had been in a great hurry.

  MR CRAWFORD: About how long do you think it would take to inflict all these wounds, and perpetrate such a deed?

  DR BROWN: At least five minutes would be required.

  MR CRAWFORD: Can you as a professional man assign any reason for the removal of certain organs from the body?

  DR BROWN: I cannot.

  MR CRAWFORD: Have you any doubt in your mind that there was no struggle?

  DR BROWN: I feel sure that there was no struggle.

  MR CRAWFORD: Are you equally of opinion that the act would be that of one man, one person, only?

  DR BROWN: I think so; I see no reason for any other opinion.

  MR CRAWFORD: Can you as a professional man account for the fact of no noise being heard by those in the immediate neighbourhood?

  DR BROWN: The throat would be so instantaneously severed that I do not suppose there would be any time for the least sound being emitted.

  MR CRAWFORD: Would you expect to find much blood on the person who inflicted the wounds?

  DR BROWN: No, I should not.

  At the conclusion of the hearing on 12 October the jury brought in a verdict of ‘Wilful murder by some person unknown’.

  4. Miller’s Court

  Number 26 Dorset Street was less than a quarter of a mile away from Hanbury Street where Annie Chapman had been murdered. The rooms were let to anyone who wanted them by the lodging-house keeper, John McCarthy, who also kept a small chandler’s shop close by. The original back parlour had been cut off from the rest of the house by a false partition and this was now known as Room 13. Although it was only a single room, and as such was part of the house, it had its own entrance (the second door on the right) into Miller’s Court; this was a narrow court about a yard and a half wide at the side of the house. Further up this court, which was approached through a narrow arch, there were six more houses with whitewashed fronts, three on each side, two of which were certainly occupied by prostitutes (and so, one suspects, were the rest). Most of the slum housing in the area had been converted into common lodging houses. One of them, directly opposite Miller’s Court, had three hundred beds which were taken every night.

  Earlier in the year, in February or March, Room 13 had been let for four shillings a week to an attractive 24-year-old, Mary Jane (or Mary Ann) Kelly. She shared the room with her common-law husband Joseph Barnett until 30 October when they had a violent quarrel, breaking a window in the process. According to Barnett, who left her and went to live in a lodging house in Bishopsgate, they broke up because Kelly brought home another prostitute and insisted on their sharing the room with her. After two or three nights he had refused to do so any longer and this had led to the violent quarrel and break up. He apparently made no attempt to move back, not even when this prostitute, Mrs Harvey, moved out to lodgings in nearby New Court.

  Kelly was desperately short of money and went back to soliciting in the Aldgate and Leman Street area. She owed over three months’ rent and was drinking more heavily than usual. She spent part of the last night she was seen alive, 9 November, in the public houses in Commercial Street. It was probably in one of these that she picked up a client and took him back home. Mrs Cox, one of the Miller’s Court prostitutes, followed them into the court at about 11.45 p.m. Kelly was very drunk. She was with a short stout man, shabbily dressed, with a billycock hat on his head and a quart can of beer in his hand; he had a blotchy face and a heavy carrotty moustache. Mrs Cox said ‘Goodnight Mary,’ and as the man banged the door behind them Kelly called out ‘Goodnight, I’m going to have a song.’ She began to sing ‘Only a violet I plucked from my Mother’s Grave when a Boy.’ She was still singing when Mrs Cox went out again about quarter of an hour later and when she returned home at 1 a.m. At about 3.10 a.m., when Mrs Cox returned for the last time, wet through from the rain, the light was out in Room 13 and the court was quiet.

  Directly above Mary Kelly’s room was No. 20, occupied by Elizabeth Prater. She was separated from her husband and almost certainly a prostitute like the others in the court. She went wearily to bed about 1.30 a.m. and fell asleep still wearing her clothes. About 3.30 or 4 a.m., she wasn’t sure which, she was woken up by her cat. At the same time she heard a low cry of ‘Oh! Murder!’ coming from somewhere close by. The voice was a woman’s but she wasn’t sure whether it came from the court or one of the houses. She said later that Kelly had only to move about in her room and she could hear her. As she didn’t hear it again she dropped off to sleep once more. This wasn’t callousness. She didn’t pay any attention because such shouts were a normal occurrence in the neighbourhood. She slept on until 5 a.m. when she got up and went to the Ten Bells pub for her morning tot of rum and to solicit for custom among the market porters.

  At 10.45 a.m. the lodging-house keeper sent his shop assistant, Thomas Bowyer, to ask Kelly if she could pay the rent as she was twenty-nine shillings in arrears. Bowyer knocked on the door and, as he couldn’t get an answer, he went to the side and poked his hand through the broken pane of glass (it had been stuffed with rags ever since the final quarrel with Barnett) and pulled back the muslin curtain inside. He was horrified by what he saw. The first thing he observed was what appeared to be two pieces of flesh on the table in front of the bed. When he could steel himself to look again he saw the body, which was lying on the bed, and a pool of blood on the floor. He went back to the shop and told McCarthy what he had seen.

  ‘Good God, do you mean that, Harry?’ McCarthy said. They ran back together to Miller’s Court, and the sight was even more ghastly than McCarthy had expected. He sent Bowyer to the police station. Inspector Beck soon arrived and after he had confirmed the accuracy of Bowyer’s report he sent a telegram to Divisional Superintendent Arnold telling him what had happened. Shortly afterwards Inspector Abberline arrived and gave orders to seal off the court. Nobody was to enter or leave without his permission. At Dr Phillips’s suggestion he refused to let anyone enter the house until the bloodhounds had been given a chance to show what they could do. He cabled a telegram to Commissioner Warren requesting that they be brought immediately.

  Unfortunately, none of them there knew that Warren had resigned the day before.

  Monro’s resignation in the summer as head of the CID had only added to the Commissioner’s troubles. Monro had transferred to the Home Office but, even though no longer at Scotland Yard, he still retained his hold over the CID. He was only able to maintain his grip on the plain-clothes department with the support of the Home Secretary, Henry Matthews, who was just as much a misfit as was Warren himself. Warren had vigorously campaigned against this twin-pronged attack and against the constant undermining of his authority, but his complaints had been ignored and for the past few weeks he had been given only the scantiest details of the daily conferences held at the Home Office between Monro, Anderson and the heads of the CID. In November Warren forced a crisis by writing an article for Murray’s Magazine on ‘The Police of the Metropolis’. In it he stressed that the head of CID should be subordinate to the Commissioner of Police, and that it was impracticable for police work to be done efficiently when one was independent of the other.

  Matthews angrily drew his attention to a Home Office circular forbidding police to discuss internal matters in the press and Warren replied by tendering his resignation for the second time on 8 November, the day before Kelly’s murder. This time it was accepted. The pill was made even more unpalatable for him by Matthews then appointing Monro as Commissioner in his place.

  His resignation momentarily paralysed the police machine and was the reason for the hesitation and inde
cision next morning after Kelly’s body had been found. Nobody in Miller’s Court knew, as they waited, that Warren, even then, was still undecided about the merits of buying the dogs Burgho and Barnaby. Burgho was sent back, at the owner’s request, to compete in some dog shows, while Barnaby stayed in London at a house in Doughty Street. After the Mitre Square murder, his temporary keeper was asked to take him to a nearby shop that had been burgled that same night, just in case the two incidents were linked and the dog might be able to pick a scent. This was an impossibility as any scent that might have existed had been scoured from the ground by the large number of curious policemen blundering in and out of the shop. Barnaby’s owner was furious when he heard that his dog had been used for such a purpose and demanded its return at once. His greatest fear was that, if it became known that his dogs were being used to track burglars, certain ‘ruffians of the night’ might try to kill them by putting down poisoned meat. As the police hadn’t bought his dogs it was unlikely that in this event they would compensate him for their loss.

  Throughout the morning the crowds steadily gathered in Dorset Street. It was Lord Mayor’s Day, but Jack the Ripper had stolen the show. When the procession had turned into Ludgate Hill in front of St Paul’s Cathedral, the newsboys burst through the crowds with their newspapers and placards screaming ‘Murder –Horrible Murder ’. At the same time scores of medical students dashed along the street and the wet and greasy pavements knocking off hats in their exuberance. One policeman was pushed to the ground by a student who jumped on his back and bit his thumb. All the ‘circus element was let loose’ and, for the Lord Mayor, Sir James Whitehead, the day was ruined. If, as The Star thought, the Ripper was craving notoriety and wanted to ‘be the sensation of the hour’, then he had chosen his time well. ‘He got his sensation. While the well-stuffed calves of the City footmen were being paraded for the laughter of London his victim was lying cold in a foul, dimly-lit court in Whitechapel.’

  At 1.30 p.m. Superintendent Arnold decided that they could wait for Warren no longer and ordered one of the windows to be taken out. The investigators were appalled by what they saw. The Illustrated Police News reported:

  Miller’s Court. Mary Kelly’s lodgings

  The throat had been cut right across with a knife, nearly severing the head from the body. The abdomen had been partially ripped open, and both of the breasts had been cut from the body, the left arm, like the head, hung to body by the skin only. The nose had been cut off, the forehead skinned, and the thighs, down to the feet, stripped of flesh. The abdomen had been slashed with a knife across downwards, and the liver and entrails wrenched away. The entrails and other portions of the frame were missing, but the liver etc., it is said, were found placed between the feet of this poor victim. The flesh from the thighs and legs, together with the breasts and nose, had been placed by the murderer on the table, and one of the hands of the dead woman had been pushed into her stomach.

  A photographer arrived and took pictures of this butcher’s shambles. There was a popular theory that in cases of violent death the last images were permanently fixed on the retina of the eye and, that by photographing them the killer could be identified. This was the basis of Jules Verne’s story ‘Les Frères Knap’. Surprisingly, the killer had not mangled the eyes at all. Possibly he had left them alone as some sort of unspoken challenge to the police to do their best – or worst. According to a German correspondent there were three ways of photographing the retina. The eye had to be drawn a little way out of its socket and a small incandescent lamp placed behind the eye. Three photographs had to be taken: of the illuminated pupils, of the illuminated pupils with the nerves of the eye excited by electricity, and the eye not illuminated but again with the nerves electrically excited. Other than the official statement that the eyes were photographed now, nothing more is known.

  After the photographs had been taken, McCarthy broke open the door with a pickaxe. This again is an unexplained mystery. According to Inspector Abberline, giving evidence at the subsequent inquest, the murderer had not locked the door and walked off with the key as some newspapers supposed. The key, he said, had been missing for some time. Joseph Barnett confirmed this. He said that he and Kelly used to open the door by reaching through the broken window at the side and pulling back the bolt. Yet this window was not broken until their quarrel on 30 October. After that, Barnett had visited Kelly several times, on friendly terms – indeed, he brought her money – and it is only on these subsequent visits that he could have used this means of entrance. It also means that the key was lost only within the last ten days. Yet someone had a key, and used it, which is why the door had to be forced.

  As Dr Phillips pushed the door back it knocked against a table by the bed. The first thing he noticed was how sparsely the room was furnished. It was about twelve feet square, and apart from the bed the only furniture was a chair and two tables. The body was wearing a chemise or some linen undergarment and was lying on the edge of the bed nearest to the door. The other side of the bed was touching the wooden partition. From the amount of blood on the floor and on the sheets nearest to the partition Phillips was sure that the body had been moved after the carotid artery had been cut (this having been the immediate cause of death). The bedclothes had been rolled back, presumably by the murderer, but the dead woman’s clothes were still neatly folded on one of the chairs. There were no signs of a struggle, and no knife.

  A large fire had been burning in the grate. The ashes were still warm, even seven hours after the estimated time that the Ripper had left the house. When they were sifted it was evident that he had burnt some women’s clothing, and it was presumed that he had done this to enable him to see what he was about. There were parts of a skirt and the rim of a woman’s hat in the grate.

  Phillips ordered the body to be taken to Shoreditch mortuary for a detailed post-mortem and inquest. A one-horse carrier’s cart trundled into Dorset Street at 3.45 p.m. and the crowds of horrified but interested bystanders watched as a scratched and dirty coffin which had seen a lot of use was carried into the court. When it was realized that the body was to be brought out there was an immediate rush of spectators into Dorset Street from the surrounding area, and a determined effort was made to break through the police lines. ‘Ragged caps were doffed and slatternly-looking women shed tears as the shell, covered with a ragged-looking cloth, was placed in the van’ and taken away.

  After it had gone, the windows of Room 13 were boarded up, a padlock was put on the door and a policeman had to be stationed temporarily by the court to keep sightseers away.

  Dr Roderick MacDonald MP, who was the coroner for the district, fixed the following Monday morning for the inquest.

  From the police inquiries, it transpired that only Mrs Prater and Sara Lewis, a laundress who was visiting a friend in Miller’s Court, had heard a cry for help. Barnett, the main suspect until he had satisfied the police about his quarrel with Kelly, was soon eliminated from the inquiry. His story of the quarrel was confirmed by Mrs Maria Harvey, the prostitute who was its cause. She told the police that Kelly was a better educated woman than most of her class, and that she had last seen her alive on the Thursday night. In spite of a few drinks Kelly had been quite sober when they split up, and she had gone on to her beat in the Leman Street area. That was the last time that Mrs Harvey had seen her alive.

  Already there was a flood of new rumours and scare stories in the newspapers. The latest was that the murderer might be a butcher or drover on one of the cattle boats that usually docked in the Thames on a Thursday or Friday night and left again for the Continent on Saturday or Sunday. This schedule explained why the murders had been committed at weekends, and also how the murderer had made his escape. This theory had a lot of support, including that of the Queen, who mentioned it in one of her letters and asked if the cattle boats had been searched. Another argument in its favour was that it fitted in with the assertion made at some of the inquests that a butcher might have sufficient knowledge of
anatomy as well as the skill to perform the mutilations.

  Filed away amongst the police correspondence was a long and extremely detailed memorandum from an official at the Customs House Statistical Department identifying two particular cattle boats, City of Cork and City of Oporto, regularly sailing between London and Portugal, with Portuguese crews and cattlemen, with sailing times that neatly dovetailed with the murders. An English sailor in New York, where the case had aroused considerable interest, identified another suspect as a Malay ship’s cook called Alaska who had been robbed of two years’ savings and had been heard threatening to murder and mutilate every woman in Whitechapel unless he recovered his money; he was thought to be on a ship making short trips in and out of London.

  The Whitechapel Vigilance Committee called a special meeting for the following Tuesday at the Paul’s Head tavern to discuss further ways in which they could help the police. Certainly people were not slow in coming forward to say that they had been accosted by or had seen the Ripper. Mrs Paumier, who sold roasted chestnuts at the corner of Widegate Street, only two minutes’ walk away from Miller’s Court, said that on the day the body was found a man, dressed like a gentleman but clearly not one, asked her if she had heard that there had been another murder. When she replied that she had he had grinned and said that he knew more about it than she did. From her description – black moustache, black silk hat, black coat, and speckled trousers, carrying a black shiny bag – he was the same man who had accosted three of her friends on the night that Kelly was murdered. When one of them had asked him what was in his bag he told her ‘Something the ladies don’t like,’ and walked away. A man carrying a similar bag was arrested and taken to Leman Street police station. Another, arrested near Dorset Street, was followed by a howling mob to the police station in Commercial Street.