Complete History of Jack the Ripper

by Philip Sudgen

  By 23 August, when George Collier reopened the inquest at the Working Lads’ Institute, the police investigation had thus ground to an ignominious halt. Popular excitement had now begun to wane and at two o’clock p.m., when the proceedings commenced, only a small crowd had gathered outside the Institute. As on the previous occasion the general public were excluded from the court, but they carefully scrutinized the witnesses as, one by one, they passed into the building.

  The evidence heard inside identified the victim as Martha Tabram and dwelt at some length upon her character and history. On the circumstances surrounding her death, however, the only important witness was Pearly Poll. Wrapped in an old green shawl and speaking in a low, husky voice, she told the inquest of her Bank Holiday night out in Whitechapel with Martha and the two soldiers. And that being all, the proceedings came to an end.

  In his concluding remarks to the jury Collier left them in no doubt as to what their verdict must be. ‘This was one of the most horrible crimes that had been committed for certainly some time past,’ he reminded them. ‘The details were very revolting, as they would remember from the doctor’s evidence on the last occasion, and the person who had inflicted the injuries could have been nothing less than a fiend.’ Martha Tabram had clearly been ‘foully and brutally murdered’. They could bring in no other verdict than one of wilful murder.19

  The jurors returned a unanimous verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown, and when Martha’s death was registered two days later, that was recorded as the cause of death. ‘Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown’ . . . words which would become frighteningly familiar to the people of the East End that autumn.

  The facts of the Tabram slaying, like those relating to almost all of the Whitechapel murders, have been obscured by generations of supposition and invention. It is important to be clear about them. Tabram was stabbed thirty-nine times. A special report upon the case, prepared in September 1888 by Chief Inspector Donald S. Swanson, noted that she had been stabbed ‘on body, neck and private parts with a knife or dagger’, and press versions of Dr Killeen’s inquest testimony indicate that there were no fewer than nine stab wounds to the throat.20 But there is no evidence that carotid arteries had been severed, the throat cut or the abdomen extensively mutilated.

  The notion now sometimes expressed that the George Yard murderer displayed anatomical knowledge is a myth. It sprang, apparently, from the remarkable statements which Donald McCormick, in his book The Identity of Jack the Ripper (1959), placed in the mouth of Dr Killeen. According to McCormick, the doctor tentatively identified the murder weapons as a long-bladed knife and a surgical instrument, and told the police that ‘whoever it was, he knew how and where to cut.’21 Anyone who cares to examine the contemporary evidence will soon discover that these were not Killeen’s views. At the inquest he said that the murderer had employed two weapons. All but one of the wounds had evidently been inflicted with an ordinary penknife, but the wound on the breast bone had been inflicted with a strong long-bladed weapon, possibly a dagger or a bayonet. There is no reason to suppose that the doctor changed his mind upon this point. The records of the Metropolitan Police still contain a contemporary digest in tabular form of all the official reports made upon the case.22 In one column, headed ‘Nature and description of wounds as given in surgeon’s report’, is written the comment ‘twenty wounds on breast, stomach and abdomen apparently inflicted with a penknife.’ As for the killer’s supposed anatomical knowledge, there is no record that Killeen ever expressed an opinion upon the subject. To judge by what we know of the case the question would scarcely have arisen. There had been no systematic mutilation. Instead, in an apparent frenzy, the murderer had repeatedly stabbed his victim through and through. We know of no police inquiries amongst doctors, or even butchers and slaughter men, at this time, which in itself suggests that Killeen had given the CID no reason to suspect that the murderer might be possessed of anatomical knowledge.

  The ‘fiend’ responsible for the outrage was never identified. Yet a view that the crime was perpetrated by soldiers has taken root in conventional Ripperology and will now be very difficult to shift. Paul Harrison’s optimistically titled Jack the Ripper: The Mystery Solved endorsed it as recently as 1991: ‘To this day the crime remains unsolved, though the Grenadier Guard theory seems highly probable since the wounds inflicted upon the body of Martha Turner/Tabram were like those caused by a bayonet.’23 My discerning readers will already know better. The truth is that there is no persuasive evidence against the soldiery.

  Certainly Martha Tabram was last seen alive on Bank Holiday night, walking up George Yard with a soldier. But that was at 11.45 p.m. Dr Killeen estimated the time of her death as about 2.30 the following morning, an estimate that is consistent with the testimony of both Elizabeth Mahoney and Alfred Crow. Between 1.40 and 1.50 that morning Elizabeth climbed or descended the staircase in George Yard Buildings three times and saw nothing on the first floor landing. Crow noticed a body, almost certainly Martha’s, there at 3.30. Almost three hours thus elapsed between the time Pearly Poll last saw Martha alive and that of the murder, ample time for her to have ventured out again into Whitechapel Road or Commercial Street, found herself another client and returned to the relative seclusion of George Yard. The police realized this very well and their identity parades at the Tower and Wellington Barracks are evidence less of their conviction that the murderer was a soldier than of their diligence in following up the only leads they had.

  Certainly, too, sergeants and corporals were then permitted to carry side-arms when on leave and Dr Killeen told the inquest that just one of Martha’s wounds might have been inflicted with a bayonet. But it is important to note that he did not positively assert that a bayonet had been used, only that the wound on the breast bone had been inflicted with a strong, long-bladed weapon which could have been a bayonet or a dagger. And even if, for the sake of argument, we assume that a bayonet was one of the guilty weapons, such a circumstance would not unequivocally have incriminated a soldier. The police, too streetwise to attach much importance to the alleged bayonet, explained this at the time to the East London Advertiser: ‘The police state that they should not be at all surprised to find that the murder was not entirely the work of soldiers or that soldiers had a [i.e. no] hand in the crime at all . . . Old bayonets, they assert, can at any time be bought in Petticoat Lane, and at the old iron stalls there, for about a penny each, and they have frequently been seen as playthings in the hands of the children.’24

  A view propagated by some modern writers that the murderer was ambidextrous has even less to recommend it. It was suggested, of course, by the killer’s use of two weapons. However, Killeen’s testimony made it clear that although one wound might have been inflicted by a left-handed person the others all appeared to have been inflicted by a right-handed person. And the only sensible conclusion we can draw from that is that the murderer was right-handed.

  Back in August 1888 no one seems to have feared that the George Yard murder might herald a series of such atrocities. There had, however, already been three murderous attacks on women in the area that year.

  The first, and in the context of the Tabram murder by far the most interesting, occurred on Saturday, 25 February 1888. At 5.00 p.m. that day Annie Millwood, widow of Richard Millwood, a soldier, was admitted to the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary from 8 White’s Row, Spitalfields. In infirmary records the cause of her admission is simply given as ‘stabs’. But an Eastern Post report is more revealing: ‘It appears . . . the deceased was admitted to the Whitechapel Infirmary suffering from numerous stabs in the legs and lower part of the body. She stated that she had been attacked by a man who she did not know, and who stabbed her with a clasp knife which he took from his pocket. No one appears to have seen the attack, and as far as at present ascertained there is only the woman’s statement to bear out the allegations of an attack, though that she had been stabbed cannot be denied.’

&n
bsp; Annie recovered from her wounds. On 21 March she was discharged to the South Grove Workhouse, Mile End Road, but on 31 March, while engaged in some occupation at the rear of the building there, she suddenly collapsed and died. An inquest was held before Coroner Baxter five days later. It attributed Annie’s death to ‘sudden effusion into the pericardium from the rupture of the left pulmonary artery through ulceration’. In other words, she died from natural causes and not from the effects of the stab wounds.25

  We are not told whether Annie was a prostitute or not but, although only thirty-eight, she was a widow and may have been maintaining herself in this way. White’s Row, off Commercial Street, was only a few minutes away from George Yard. And Annie was attacked by a stranger who wounded her ‘numerous’ times in the legs and lower torso with a knife. Annie’s case thus has much in common with Martha’s. Both women could easily have encountered the same man.

  The victim of the second attack was Ada Wilson, a 39-year-old machinist of 9 Maidman Street, Burdett Road, Mile End. At about 12.30 on the night of 27–28 March Ada was about to go to bed when she heard a knock at the door. Opening it, she was confronted by a man, a total stranger. He looked about thirty, his face was sunburnt and he had a fair moustache. He was about 5 feet 6 inches tall. His clothes included a dark coat, light trousers and a wideawake hat. The man demanded money and told Ada that if she did not at once produce the cash she had but a few moments to live. Then, when Ada refused to give him anything, he immediately drew a clasp knife from his pocket and stabbed her twice in the throat. Fortunately her screams attracted help and, after Dr Wheeler of Mile End Road had bound up her wounds, she was sent to the London Hospital. It had been a very dangerous attack indeed. Press reports of the incident commented: ‘it is thought impossible that the injured woman can recover.’ But Ada baffled their expectations and on 27 April, after thirty days in hospital, she was discharged as cured. Her assailant, who had probably been scared off by the screams, was never traced.26

  Robbery seemed to have been the motive for the attack on Ada Wilson. The fatal assault upon Emma Smith, less than a week later, was less easy to explain. Emma Elizabeth Smith, a 45-year-old widow, lived in a common lodging house at 18 George Street, Spitalfields. At seven o’clock on the evening of Easter Monday, 2 April 1888, she went out. Nine or ten hours after that she staggered back into the lodging house and told the deputy keeper, Mrs Mary Russell, that she had been set upon and robbed of all her money. She certainly looked in a dreadful state. Her head and face were injured, her right ear had nearly been torn off and she complained of pains in the lower part of her body. Mrs Russell immediately took Emma to the London Hospital. But her injuries were severe and she did not long survive them. A blunt instrument had been inserted into her vagina with great force and had ruptured the perineum. At nine o’clock on Wednesday morning she died of peritonitis.

  Two days later, on 6 April, the News gave its version of the murder: ‘Yesterday the authorities of the London Hospital informed the coroner of the death in that institution of Emma Elizabeth Smith, aged 45, a widow, lately living at 18, George-street, Spitalfields. It appears that the deceased was out on Bank Holiday, and when returning home along Whitechapel-road early on Tuesday morning she was set upon by some men and severely maltreated. The men made off, leaving the woman on the ground in a semi-conscious condition, and have not yet been apprehended. She was taken home, and subsequently conveyed to the hospital, where she died.’27 This account leaves many questions unanswered. So what really did happen to Emma Smith in the nine hours or so after seven on Easter Monday?

  At about 12.15 a.m. Margaret Hames, who lodged at the same address, saw her with a man at the corner of Farrance Street and Burdett Road in Limehouse. The man was of medium height and wore a white silk handkerchief around his neck and a dark suit. More important, however, were the dying statements of Emma herself. Piecing together the fragments of information gleaned from her by Mary Russell and George Haslip, the house-surgeon at London Hospital, we can learn something of the fatal attack. Emma was walking home along Whitechapel Road about 1.30 on the Tuesday morning. By St Mary’s Church she saw three men coming towards her. Although she crossed the road to avoid them they followed her into Osborn Street, attacked and raped her, and made off with what little money she had. She remembered nothing of her assailants except that one was a youth, apparently about nineteen years old.28

  Emma Smith was entered in the hospital records as married and a charwoman. In reality she was a friendless widow who supported herself at least partly by prostitution. She told Haslip, indeed, that she had not seen any of her friends for ten years. According to Walter Dew, writing fifty years later, she was once asked why she had broken so completely with her old life and friends. ‘They would not understand now any more than they understood then,’ she replied wistfully. ‘I must live somehow.’ Like Martha Tabram her living was made on the streets. Yet, by Dew’s account, the vestiges of a respectable past never entirely deserted her. ‘There was something about Emma Smith,’ he wrote, ‘which suggested that there had been a time when the comforts of life had not been denied her. There was a touch of culture in her speech unusual in her class.’ If Dew was not wearing the rose-coloured spectacles of age Emma must have fallen far by 1888 for contemporary records depict little refinement in her appearance or behaviour. Her clothing was in such a dirty and ragged condition that the police, who inspected it for clues, were unable to tell if any part of it had been freshly torn. And Mrs Russell often saw the consequences of her dissipated lifestyle. When she had been drinking she behaved like a madwoman. She frequently returned home with black eyes given her by men and one night came home and told Mrs Russell that she had been thrown out of a window.

  There were certain similarities between the Smith and Tabram murders. Both seem to have been unprovoked attacks and both took place on Bank Holiday nights. They were committed within 100 yards of each other. And the victims had much in common. Both women were prostitutes and both were residents of common lodging houses in George Street. Emma Smith lived at No. 18. Martha Tabram’s last known address was No. 19. It is interesting too that Martha Tabram sometimes masqueraded under the name ‘Emma’.

  Yet it is most unlikely that the same hand slew both women. As far as we know Tabram was murdered by a lone killer. Smith was the victim of a gang of bullies. Tabram’s murderer used two weapons, a penknife and a long-bladed weapon like a dagger or bayonet. The injuries upon Emma Smith were inflicted, not with a knife, but with some blunt instrument, possibly a stick. Most telling of all was the apparent difference in purpose displayed by the attackers. Although the perpetrators of a particularly nasty street robbery and sex attack, the assailants of Emma Smith probably did not intend murder. Had they done so they would scarcely have allowed her to totter away and tell what she knew. It is very likely that they were intoxicated and left her unaware of the real extent of the injuries they had inflicted. But there can be no such doubts about the man who accompanied Martha Tabram into George Yard Buildings. No common street robber or drunken lout would have evinced the relentless fury of that attack. Her slaying bore all the hallmarks of a maniacal killer.

  There is no evidence that the police or the press linked the Smith and Tabram murders as early as August. Although the inexplicable savagery of the Tabram slaying shocked East London it seems to have been regarded as an isolated, freak tragedy; no one suggested that the George Yard murderer might strike again. Prostitutes, from among whose ranks both victims had been chosen, plied the streets as brazenly as though nothing had happened. Heavy rain ushered out one of the wettest and coolest summers on record. On Thursday, 30 August, the showers were sharp and frequent and accompanied by loud peals of thunder and vivid flashes of lightning. That night two fires broke out in the London docks, reddening the sky above the East End with a great glow. Art traditionally depicts monsters fresh from Hell in just such settings, but no sense of foreboding, no premonition of disaster touched Polly Nichols as she tramped
the streets that night.

  Polly was a prostitute. Her life oscillated between the common lodging house, the workhouse and the pavement. And like Smith and Tabram before her she was middle-aged, destitute and frequently drunk. Witnesses later recalled glimpses of her on Thursday night and Friday morning.29 At about 11.00 p.m. she was seen in the Whitechapel Road and at 12.30 a.m. leaving the Frying Pan public house in Brick Lane. For about six weeks Polly had shared a room in a common lodging house at 18 Thrawl Street with an elderly married woman named Ellen Holland. About a week before she had moved to another common lodging house in Flower and Dean Street but at 1.20 on the morning of Friday, 31 August, she was back at 18 Thrawl Street. Polly was the worse for drink and wearing a new black straw bonnet trimmed with black velvet. When the lodging house deputy turned her away because she did not have 4d. for a bed she was far from dispirited and asked the deputy to keep her bed for her while she went out to get the money. Then she turned away, laughing. ‘I’ll soon get my “doss” money,’ she cried, ‘see what a jolly bonnet I’ve got now!’

  About an hour later Ellen Holland met Polly at the corner of Whitechapel Road and Osborn Street. Ellen was on her way home after going to see the fire that had broken out that morning at Shadwell Dry Dock. Polly had come down Osborn Street and was alone. She was very drunk. The two friends talked at the corner for perhaps seven or eight minutes. As they did so the clock at St Mary’s, across the road, struck 2.30. Mrs Holland tried hard to persuade Polly to come home with her but she was determined to earn her ‘doss’ money. ‘I have had my lodging money three times today,’ she boasted, ‘and I have spent it . . . It won’t be long before I’ll be back.’ They parted. And that was the last time Mrs Holland saw Polly alive, a small, lonely figure, staggering eastwards along the Whitechapel Road.