Crimes of Jack the Ripper

by Paul Roland

  There are at present three cases of suspicion.

  1. The lunatic Isensmith [sic], a Swiss arrested at Holloway who is now in an asylum at Bow and arrangements are being made to ascertain whether he is the man who was seen on the morning of the murder in a public house by Mrs Fiddymont.

  2. A man called Puckeridge was released from an asylum on 4 August. He was educated as a surgeon and has threatened to rip people up with a long knife. He is being looked for but cannot be found as yet.

  3. A Brothel Keeper who will not give her address or name writes to say that a man living in her house was seen with blood on him on the morning of murder. She described his appearance and said where he might be seen. When the detectives came near he bolted, got away and there is no clue to the writer of the letter.

  All these three cases are being followed up and no doubt will be exhausted in a few days – the first seems a very suspicious case, but the man is at present a violent lunatic.’

  Of the three suspects, Isenschmid seemed the most likely perpetrator at the time. He had been arrested on 12 September after two doctors and the landlady of a public house had reported his eccentric and threatening behaviour to the police. Dr Cowan and Dr Crabb informed the authorities that in their professional opinion Isenschmid was a violent lunatic and that he disappeared from his lodgings at odd hours of the night. He was also known to have a habit of sharpening knives in the vicinity of anyone he didn’t like the look of, as if to intimidate them. Four days earlier, on the morning of the Chapman murder, Mrs Fiddymout, the landlady of the Prince Albert public house, had been disturbed by the appearance of a furtive man who had a wild look in his eyes and dried blood on his hands. It was Isenschmid, but his brother supplied an alibi for his movements on the day of the Chapman murder and he was released after the Ripper struck again while he was still under arrest.

  Oswald Puckridge still looks like a viable suspect, although he was 50 years old at the time of the Ripper murders, which does not conform with the eye-witness descriptions. He was released from Hoxton House Lunatic Asylum three days before Martha Tabram was murdered and he ended his days in Holborn Workhouse on 28 May 1900, so he was at large during the crucial period. However, there is no evidence of any kind to connect him with the killings.

  The third man referred to in Warren’s report was probably Francis Tumblety, an American doctor, who, in the light of recently uncovered evidence, now seems a very likely candidate for the Whitechapel murders.

  An unfortunate double event – 30 September 1888

  ‘Long Liz’ was comparatively fortunate in that she was spared the ghastly mutilations which the Whitechapel fiend had inflicted on the other women and was instead despatched with a single slice of a razor-sharp blade. However, for this reason there is still some doubt that she was an ‘official’ Ripper victim, but may have been slain by another hand. In all other respects her story was much like the other women.

  A farmer’s daughter and Swedish by birth, Elizabeth Stride had left her home country in 1866 and emigrated to England after the death of her parents and the trauma of having given birth to a stillborn baby. Her marriage to carpenter John Stride did not last long and she was soon walking the streets of Whitechapel. On the night of her death, in the early hours of 30 September 1888, she had been working as a cleaner in Flower And Dean Street but needed to supplement her pitiable income by prostitution.

  By all accounts she was slim and pretty, a more attractive prospect than the dowdy bawds with whom she shared a pitch, and she had made an effort to make herself presentable for the punters. To her long, black, fur-trimmed jacket she had pinned a red rose, which proved an important detail when it came to establishing her movements and the veracity of the various conflicting witness statements. In addition she was wearing a black crêpe bonnet, a dark threadbare skirt, a brown bodice, white stockings and the customary side-spring boots.

  It was the rose which helped PC William Smith to be confident that it was Stride he had seen with a man in Berner Street 30 minutes after midnight. Her companion was 170cm (5ft 7in) tall, of respectable appearance, and carried a small parcel wrapped in newspaper which the constable estimated was 15–20cm (6–8in) broad and about 45cm (18in) long – the right size to contain a small medical bag, perhaps? He was about 28 years of age, with a dark complexion and a small dark moustache, and was wearing a dark coat, dark trousers, white collar and tie and a hard felt deerstalker hat of the kind made famous by Sherlock Holmes.

  A second witness

  Fifteen minutes later Israel Schwartz, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who spoke little English, witnessed a struggle at the very spot where Stride’s body was later found, by the gate to Dutfield’s Yard in Berner Street. The man was attempting to drag the woman into the street, then threw her to the ground whereupon she screamed. Frightened of becoming involved in a violent argument, Schwartz crossed over the road, passing a second man who was lighting his pipe. A moment later the first man called out ‘Lipski!’ (a derogatory generic name for a Jew, deriving from the name of a notorious murderer who was still in the public mind at that time), whereupon the pipe-smoker gave chase and Schwartz fled, fearing for his life.

  After evading his pursuer Schwartz reported the incident to the police and gave the following descriptions of the two men, neither of whom conforms to the descriptions of previous suspects. The man who assaulted the woman was approximately 165cm (5ft 5in) tall, round-faced and broad-shouldered, with dark hair and a short brown moustache. He was wearing a dark jacket and trousers and a dark peaked cap. Schwartz thought he might have been about 30 years of age. The man with the pipe was in his mid-thirties, 180cm (5ft 11in) tall, with light brown hair, and was wearing a dark overcoat and a black wide-brimmed hat.

  Was it the Ripper?

  A possible explanation for the incident might be that the first man took exception to a stranger – particularly a Jew – being a witness to his argument with the woman and may have ordered his friend to give chase. This second sighting is the more intriguing as it places Stride at the murder scene just 15 minutes before her death and raises the distinct possibility that she was murdered by the men Schwartz saw and not the Ripper. This would explain why there were no post-mortem mutilations. And then there is the testimony of Dr Phillips, the police surgeon, who told the Stride inquest on 1 October that there was a ‘great dissimilarity’ between the Chapman and Stride murders, specifically the choice of weapon, which was a round-bladed knife in the latter case. This raises the possibility that Stride may have been murdered by her brutal former partner Michael Kidney, from whom she had separated only a few days earlier, and that Kidney was the man Schwartz had seen pushing her to the ground.

  However, many Ripper historians disagree, arguing that Stride had still 15 minutes to meet her murderer after the two thugs had moved on and that the reason for the lack of mutilations was that the Ripper was interrupted by the arrival of a hawker, Louis Diemschutz, who pulled into Dutfield’s Yard in his pony and trap at 1am. When the horse shied Diemschutz looked to see what had disturbed it and saw what appeared to be a bundle of clothes on the ground. But it was too dark to see clearly. The only light in the yard came from the windows of a socialist club to the right and from the second-storey windows of the tenement opposite. The fitful light from the street lamp outside was not strong enough to illuminate the yard even though Diemschutz had left the gate wide open. So he prodded the bundle with his whip and then lit a match which blew out in the wind – but the brief glimpse he caught was enough for him to see that it was a woman’s body. Her throat had been slit, the windpipe severed, the blood clotting a cheap check scarf around her neck. She was lying on her left side with her legs drawn up, knees together. In her left hand she clutched a packet of cheap breath fresheners, the contents of which had rolled into the gutter. Her right hand lay across her stomach, speckled with blood.

  The body of Elizabeth Stride was still warm when Dr Frederick Blackwell examined it at the site just after 1.15am, which
suggested that she had been killed between 12.45am and 1am when Diemschutz entered the yard. If he had disturbed the Ripper in the act then the killer’s bloodlust must have been unsatisfied and it would explain why he took such pitiless revenge on his second victim of the night, Catherine Eddowes.

  Elizabeth Stride who was ‘despatched with a single slice of a razor-sharp blade’

  Inquest into the death of Elizabeth Stride

  On the first day of the inquest into the death of Elizabeth Stride on 2 October 1888, Dr George Bagster Phillips testified:

  ‘On Oct. 1, at three p.m., at St. George’s Mortuary, Dr. Blackwell and I made a post-mortem examination, Dr. Blackwell kindly consenting to make the dissection, and I took the following note:

  “Rigor mortis still firmly marked. Mud on face and left side of the head. Matted on the hair and left side. We removed the clothes. We found the body fairly nourished. Over both shoulders, especially the right, from the front aspect under collar bones and in front of chest there is a bluish discolouration which I have watched and seen on two occasions since. On neck, from left to right, there is a clean cut incision six inches in length; incision commencing two and a half inches in a straight line below the angle of the jaw. Three-quarters of an inch over undivided muscle, then becoming deeper, about an inch dividing sheath and the vessels, ascending a little, and then grazing the muscle outside the cartilages on the left side of the neck. The carotid artery on the left side and the other vessels contained in the sheath were all cut through, save the posterior portion of the carotid, to a line about 1-12th of an inch in extent, which prevented the separation of the upper and lower portion of the artery. The cut through the tissues on the right side of the cartilages is more superficial, and tails off to about two inches below the right angle of the jaw. It is evident that the haemorrhage which produced death was caused through the partial severance of the left carotid artery . . .

  I have come to a conclusion as to the position of both the murderer and the victim, and I opine that the latter was seized by the shoulders and placed on the ground, and that the murderer was on her right side when he inflicted the cut. I am of opinion that the cut was made from the left to the right side of the deceased, and taking into account the position of the incision it is unlikely that […] a long knife inflicted the wound in the neck.

  Coroner: From the position you assume the perpetrator to have been in, would he have been likely to get bloodstained?

  Dr Phillips: Not necessarily, for the commencement of the wound and the injury to the vessels would be away from him, and the stream of blood – for stream it was – would be directed away from him, and towards the gutter in the yard.

  Coroner: But why did she not cry out while she was being put on the ground?

  Dr Phillips: She was in a yard, and in a locality where she might cry out very loudly and no notice be taken of her. It was possible for the woman to draw up her legs after the wound, but she could not have turned over. The wound was inflicted by drawing the knife across the throat. A short knife, such as a shoemaker’s well-ground knife, would do the same thing. My reason for believing that deceased was injured when on the ground was partly on account of the absence of blood anywhere on the left side of the body and between it and the wall.’

  At the close of the inquest Dr Blackwell was called to give evidence and, asked by the foreman of the jury if he had noticed any marks or bruises about the shoulders, replied, ‘They were what we call pressure marks. At first they were very obscure, but subsequently they became very evident. They were not what are ordinarily called bruises; neither is there any abrasion. Each shoulder was about equally marked.’

  In summing up on the final day the coroner attempted to clarify the apparently conflicting testimony of three key witnesses who claimed to have seen a woman answering the description of the deceased in the company of a man near the location where the body was discovered between 15 minutes and an hour later.

  ‘William Marshall, who lived at 64, Berner-street, was standing at his doorway from half-past 11 till midnight. About a quarter to 12 o’clock he saw the deceased talking to a man between Fairclough-street and Boyd-street. There was every demonstration of affection by the man during the ten minutes they stood together, and when last seen, strolling down the road towards Ellen Street, his arms were round her neck.

  At 12 30 p.m. the constable on the beat (William Smith) saw the deceased in Berner Street standing on the pavement a few yards from Commercial-street, and he observed she was wearing a flower in her dress.

  A quarter of an hour afterwards James Brown, of Fairclough-street, passed the deceased close to the Board school. A man was at her side leaning against the wall, and the deceased was heard to say, “Not to-night, but some other night.” Now, if this evidence was to be relied on, it would appear that the deceased was in the company of a man for upwards of an hour immediately before her death, and that within a quarter of an hour of her being found a corpse she was refusing her companion something in the immediate neighbourhood of where she met her death. But was this the deceased? And even if it were, was it one and the same man who was seen in her company on three different occasions?

  With regard to the identity of the woman, Marshall had the opportunity of watching her for ten minutes while standing talking in the street at a short distance from him, and she afterwards passed close to him. The constable feels certain that the woman he observed was the deceased, and when he afterwards was called to the scene of the crime he at once recognized her and made a statement; while Brown was almost certain that the deceased was the woman to whom his attention was attracted. It might be thought that the frequency of the occurrence of men and women being seen together under similar circumstances might have led to mistaken identity; but the police stated, and several of the witnesses corroborated the statement, that although many couples are to be seen at night in the Commercial-road, it was exceptional to meet them in Berner Street.

  With regard to the man seen, there were many points of similarity, but some of dissimilarity, in the descriptions of the three witnesses; but these discrepancies did not conclusively prove that there was more than one man in the company of the deceased, for every day’s experience showed how facts were differently observed and differently described by honest and intelligent witnesses. Brown, who saw least in consequence of the darkness of the spot at which the two were standing, agreed with Smith that his clothes were dark and that his height was about 5ft. 7in., but he appeared to him to be wearing an overcoat nearly down to his heels; while the description of Marshall accorded with that of Smith in every respect but two. They agreed that he was respectably dressed in a black cut away coat and dark trousers, and that he was of middle age and without whiskers.

  On the other hand, they differed with regard to what he was wearing on his head. Smith stated he wore a hard felt deer stalker of dark colour; Marshall that he was wearing a round cap with a small peak, like a sailor’s. They also differed as to whether he had anything in his hand. Marshall stated that he observed nothing. Smith was very precise, and stated that he was carrying a parcel, done up in a newspaper, about 18in. in length and 6in. to 8in. in width. These differences suggested either that the woman was, during the evening, in the company of more than one man – a not very improbable supposition – or that the witness had been mistaken in detail. If they were correct in assuming that the man seen in the company of the deceased by the three was one and the same person it followed that he must have spent much time and trouble to induce her to place herself in his diabolical clutches.

  In the absence of motive, the age and class of woman selected as victim, and the place and time of the crime, there was a similarity between this case and those mysteries which had recently occurred in that neighbourhood. There had been no skilful mutilation as in the cases of Nichols and Chapman, and no unskilful injuries as in the case in Mitre Square, possibly the work of an imitator; but there had been the same skill exhibited in the way in which the victim had
been entrapped, and the injuries inflicted, so as to cause instant death and prevent blood from soiling the operator, and the same daring defiance of immediate detection, which, unfortunately for the peace of the inhabitants and trade of the neighbourhood, had hitherto been only too successful.’

  After a short deliberation the jury returned a verdict of ‘Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown’ and the inquest into the death of Long Liz was concluded.

  Murder in Mitre Square

  Forty-six-year-old Catherine Eddowes had not entirely slept off her drink when her cell door was opened at 12.55am and she was ushered on her way by the jailer at Bishopsgate police station. She had been singing softly to herself for almost an hour and was deemed sufficiently sober to be released. ‘I am capable of taking care of myself now,’ she assured PC Hutt, the duty officer, as she made her way unsteadily towards the exit at the end of a passage. Then she enquired, ‘What time is it?’ PC Hutt replied it was just before one and too late for her to get any more drink, to which Eddowes responded, ‘I shall get a fine hiding when I get home, then.’

  ‘Serves you right,’ said the PC as he watched her cross the station yard, adding that he would be obliged if she could close the back door on her way out. ‘All right,’ she replied. ‘Good night, old cock.’

  It was beginning to rain as she turned down Houndsditch toward Aldgate High Street, but her black straw bonnet would keep her hair from getting bedraggled. She wore a black cloth jacket trimmed with imitation fur, a brown bodice and a green alpaca skirt with a white apron, which gave her an appearance more in keeping with a charwoman than a streetwalker.

  Eight minutes later she entered Mitre Square, a gloomy, ill-lit quadrangle bounded on all sides by grim, imposing warehouses. About 20 minutes later PC Watkins crossed the square, shining his bull’s-eye lamp into the dark recesses of the quadrangle and, seeing nothing unusual, he continued on his beat, which took 12–14 minutes to complete. Had he not stopped for a cup of tea offered by a night watchman he might have caught the Ripper in the act.