Complete History of Jack the Ripper

by Philip Sudgen

  3

  Without the Slightest Shadow of a Trace

  AT ABOUT 3.40 on the morning of Friday, 31 August, a carman was walking to work along Buck’s Row, Whitechapel. He was Charles Cross of 22 Doveton Street, Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green, and he had worked at Pickford’s for more than twenty years. Buck’s Row seemed deserted. Cross was on the north side of the street and was walking towards Baker’s Row. The morning was chilly and still very dark.

  For much of its length Buck’s Row was narrow, cobbled and gloomy. Beyond the board school it became wide and open. It was as he approached the end of the narrow section that Cross saw something on the opposite side of the street, a large object lying across the entrance to a stable yard. At first he thought it was a tarpaulin, but when he got halfway across the street he realized that he was mistaken. It was the body of a woman. Standing uncertainly in the middle of the street the carman then heard the approaching footsteps of another workman. The newcomer, walking in the same direction as Cross, was also a carman, Robert Paul by name, of 30 Foster Street, Bethnal Green. Cross went up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Come and look over here,’ he said, ‘there’s a woman lying on the pavement.’

  Together they gingerly approached the silent form. She was lying on her back, her skirts raised almost to her stomach. Cross felt her hands. They seemed cold and limp. ‘I believe she’s dead,’ he ventured. Paul was not so sure. He found her face and hands cold and when he crouched down and tried to hear her breathe he could detect nothing, but touching her breast fancied there was slight movement. ‘I think she’s breathing,’ he said, ‘but very little if she is.’ He suggested that they prop her up but Cross would not touch her. In the gloom neither of them noticed the ferocious gashes in her throat that had nearly severed her head from her body. And, callously, neither were prepared to lose more time to the matter. Paul said that he would fetch a policeman except that he was behind time, and Cross was late himself. So, after attempting to pull down the woman’s skirts, they nonchalantly proceeded on their way intending to tell the first constable they might see. In Baker’s Row, at the junction of Hanbury and Old Montague Streets, they met PC Mizen 55H and told him of their discovery. ‘She looks to me to be either dead or drunk,’ enlarged Cross, ‘but for my part I think she is dead.’1

  The vicinity of Buck’s Row. × marks the spot where the body of Mary Ann Nichols was found, at 3.40 a.m. on 31 August 1888

  In the meantime the body had also been found by a policeman on the beat. At about 3.45 PC John Neil 97J, a tall fresh-complexioned man with brown hair and a straw-coloured moustache and imperial, was patrolling eastwards along the south side of Buck’s Row. Thirty minutes earlier, when his beat had last taken him this way, he had seen no one. On this occasion he found the body. It was dark and the light from a street lamp some distance away on the opposite side of the street was poor. But, with the help of his lantern, Neil was able to inspect the woman more closely than the two carmen had done. She was lying on her back, lengthways along the footway and outside the gate to Mr Brown’s stables, her head towards the east, her left hand touching the gate. Her hands, which were open, lay by her sides and her legs were extended and a little apart. The woman’s eyes, wide open, stared upwards into the night. Blood oozed out of the wounds in her throat. Cross and Paul had partly pulled her skirts down and they were now a little above her knees. Lying by her side, close to her left hand, was a black straw bonnet trimmed with black velvet.

  Neil felt her right arm and found it quite warm from the elbow upwards. At this moment he heard another constable patrolling up Brady Street from the Whitechapel Road, and as he passed the end of Buck’s Row Neil called him and flashed his lantern. It was PC John Thain 96J. ‘Here’s a woman has cut her throat,’ said Neil, ‘run at once for Dr Llewellyn.’ When PC Mizen arrived soon after, hotfoot from Baker’s Row, Neil sent him for an ambulance and further assistance from Bethnal Green Police Station.

  While awaiting the doctor PC Neil scouted around. The gate, some nine or ten feet high, was closed. To the west of the stable yard was a board school, to the east a row of shabby two-storey houses inhabited, for the most part, by respectable working people. On the north side of the street, opposite the gateway, was Essex Wharf. When Neil rang the bell at the wharf the face of Walter Purkis, the manager, appeared at an upper window. The constable wanted to know whether anyone had heard a disturbance in the street but Purkis and his wife had heard nothing. Neil was soon reinforced by Sergeant Kirby. The sergeant knocked up Mrs Green, who lived at New Cottage, the house immediately to the east of the gateway, but she too had heard no disturbance. And when Neil examined the road with his lantern he discovered no trace of wheel marks or any other clue.

  Dr Rees Ralph Llewellyn of 152 Whitechapel Road, called out by PC Thain at or shortly before four, quickly arrived on the scene. When he made a preliminary examination of the body he noted the severe injuries to the throat and pronounced life extinct. But although the woman’s hands and wrists were cold, the doctor discovered that her body and legs were still warm and he did not think that she could have been dead for more than half an hour. By this time early morning sightseers were already beginning to collect, including three horse slaughterers from Barber’s slaughterhouse in nearby Winthrop Street, and Llewellyn decided that the body should be moved. ‘Move her to the mortuary,’ he told the police officers. ‘She is dead and I will make a further examination of her there.’

  The relatively small amount of blood left at the place where the dead woman had been found was later to be the subject of some speculation. Dr Llewellyn, in a statement issued to the press later in the day, spoke of a small pool of blood on the footway, ‘not more than would fill two wine glasses, or half a pint at the outside.’ And constables Neil, Thain and Mizen subsequently told the inquest of a patch of congealed blood about six inches in diameter, some of which had run towards the gutter. This blood on the pavement had apparently trickled from the wounds in the throat. Some of it, however, had been absorbed by the woman’s clothes. PC Thain was one of those who lifted the body onto the ambulance. Her back appeared to be covered with blood which, Thain believed, had flowed from her neck as far as her waist, and his hands became smeared in the stuff. Neil, Mizen and Kirby went with the body to the mortuary while Thain waited in Buck’s Row for Inspector John Spratling. When Spratling arrived Thain showed him the spot where the woman had lain. By that time the blood was being washed away by one of Mrs Green’s sons who worked at the stables but Spratling could still see traces of it between the paving stones.

  It was a discovery by Inspector Spratling that brought Dr Llewellyn tumbling from his bed for the second time that night. From Buck’s Row the inspector quickly repaired to the mortuary in Old Montague Street. He arrived to find the place locked up and the body still on the ambulance in the yard. But the keeper of the mortuary had been sent for and while waiting for him to come Spratling began taking a description of the dead woman. At some time between 5.00 and 5.20 Robert Mann, the keeper, turned up with the keys and the body was moved into the mortuary. There Spratling completed his description of the deceased and, upon lifting her clothes, discovered that her abdomen had been savagely ripped open from as high as the breast bone and that her intestines were exposed. Dr Llewellyn, hastily summoned by Spratling, made a fresh examination of the woman and was appalled at the extent of her injuries. ‘I have seen many terrible cases,’ he would tell the press, ‘but never such a brutal affair as this.’2

  The character of the wounds do not appear to have been identical to those which had been inflicted upon Martha Tabram. But, unfortunately, no report from Dr Llewellyn on the Buck’s Row murder has survived. We must gather what we can from the brief references in police reports and from press notices of the doctor’s inquest testimony.

  The earliest report on the case in the records of the Metropolitan Police is signed by Inspector John Spratling and dated 31 August 1888. At this time Llewellyn had made two prelim
inary examinations of the body, one in Buck’s Row and the other at the mortuary, but he had not yet conducted a full post-mortem. The inspector summarized Llewellyn’s findings thus:

  . . . her throat had been cut from left to right, two distinct cuts being on left side, the windpipe, gullet and spinal cord being cut through; a bruise apparently of a thumb being on right lower jaw, also one on left cheek; the abdomen had been cut open from centre of bottom of ribs along right side, under pelvis to left of the stomach, there the wound was jagged; the omentum, or coating of the stomach, was also cut in several places, and two small stabs on private parts; [all] apparently done with a strong bladed knife; supposed to have been done by some left handed person; death being almost instantaneous.

  Subsequent police reports added only one significant detail to this information. Chief Inspector Donald S. Swanson, writing on 19 October, noted: ‘At first the Doctor was of opinion that the wounds were caused by a left-handed person but he is now doubtful.’3

  On the morning of Saturday, 1 September, Llewellyn carried out a post-mortem examination. His evidence, presented to the inquest the same day, can now only tentatively be recovered by a comparison of the various newspaper versions.

  There was bruising about the face. A bruise running along the lower part of the jaw on the right side of the face might have been caused by a blow from a fist or by the pressure of a thumb. On the left side of the face was a circular bruise. Llewellyn thought that this might have been caused by the pressure of fingers.

  There were two incisions in the throat. One, about four inches long, began on the left side of the neck at a point immediately below the ear and ran about an inch below the jaw. The second was about eight inches long and encircled the throat. It commenced on the left side of the neck about an inch in front of the first, ran about an inch below the first incision and terminated at a point about three inches below the right jaw. This cut had severed both carotid arteries and all the tissues down to the vertebrae. Both incisions had been made from left to right. They must have been inflicted, thought the doctor, with ‘a strong-bladed knife, moderately sharp, and used with great violence.’

  And there were further severe cuts in the lower part of the abdomen. Two or three inches from the left side was a long, very deep and jagged wound which had cut through the tissues. Several incisions ran across the abdomen. On the right side were three or four similar cuts running downwards. The abdominal injuries had been inflicted with a knife used violently and downwards.

  On the murderer himself Llewellyn offered very few clues. He had inflicted all the wounds with the same weapon and might have been left-handed. Replying to questions, the doctor added that the murderer ‘must have had some rough anatomical knowledge, for he seemed to have attacked all the vital parts. The murder could have been executed in just four or five minutes.4

  At first the identification of the woman promised to be difficult. Apart from a small scar on the forehead and three missing teeth, one at the front of the upper jaw and two in the left side of the lower, there were no distinguishing marks on the body itself. She was small – not more than five feet two or three inches tall – and middle-aged. Her dark-brown hair had been in the process of turning grey, her eyes were brown and her complexion dark. Her face was bruised and very much discoloured. The woman’s few belongings – a comb, a piece of looking glass and a white pocket handkerchief – afforded no clue to her identity. And most of her clothing was equally anonymous. The main items were a reddish-brown ulster, somewhat the worse for wear, with seven large brass buttons; a brown linsey frock, apparently new; a white chest flannel; two petticoats, one of grey wool, the other flannel; a pair of brown stays; a pair of black ribbed woollen stockings; a pair of men’s side spring boots, cut on the uppers and with steel tips on the heels; and a black straw bonnet trimmed in black velvet.

  Yet within twenty-four hours of the murder the victim had been named. As news of the crime spread throughout the East End various women came forward to identify the deceased and it soon transpired that a woman of her appearance had been living in a common lodging house at 18 Thrawl Street. Ellen Holland, fetched from there, identified the body as that of ‘Polly’, a woman who had once shared her room at Thrawl Street. But the real breakthrough occurred when the police examined the dead woman’s petticoats and found the mark ‘Lambeth Workhouse, P.R. [i.e. Prince’s Road]’ upon them. At 7.30 on the evening of 31 August Mary Ann Monk, an inmate of the Lambeth Workhouse, was taken to Old Montague Street and she gave the deceased a name. The victim was Mary Ann Nichols and she had been a resident of the workhouse as late as May 1888. With this information the police soon traced the relatives. Edward Walker, Mary’s father, and William Nichols, her husband, both identified her body the next day.

  Mary Nichols, or Polly as she was known to her friends, is conventionally regarded as the first victim of Jack the Ripper. Perhaps for this reason her sad career of drunkenness and decline has been documented more thoroughly than that of any other victim in the Whitechapel murder series.5 The daughter of Edward Walker, a locksmith, and his wife Caroline, Polly was born in Dawes Court, off Shoe Lane, on 26 August 1845. She married William Nichols, a printer’s machinist, at St Bride’s, Fleet Street, on 16 January 1864.

  By the summer of 1868 the couple were living at 131 Trafalgar Street, Walworth. They stayed there for several years. Then, in 1874, they set up home for themselves at 6D Block, Peabody Square, Duke Street, in Lambeth. There were five children: Edward John (1866), Percy George (1868), Alice Esther (1870), Eliza Sarah (1876) and Henry Alfred (1878). Notwithstanding all of which the marriage ended acrimoniously in 1880.

  The pain of that break-up seems to have permanently embittered relations between Nichols and his father-in-law. Walker told the inquest that the cause of the marriage’s failure was Nichols’ affair with Polly’s nurse when Polly was last confined, that the couple separated (the eldest boy subsequently living with Walker and the four remaining children staying with their father) and that Nichols later sired another family by the nurse. This tale smeared Nichols in 1888 and, since it continues to be regularly trotted out in the books, still does today. Yet it was a considerable distortion of the truth and when Nichols himself appeared before the inquest he moved swiftly to refute it. ‘No, sir, that is false,’ he told the foreman of the jury, ‘I have a certificate of my boy’s birth two years after that.’ Curiously, neither here nor anywhere else does Nichols seem to have denied that an affair had actually taken place, merely that it had been the direct cause of the failure of his marriage. And certainly, if – as Nichols implies – his affair occurred when Polly was pregnant with Eliza Sarah in 1876 then the marriage survived it by a good three years. Interviewed by the press, Nichols elaborated: ‘I did not leave my wife during her confinement and go away with a nurse-girl. The dead woman deserted me four or five times, if not six. The last time she left me without any home, and with five children, the youngest one year and four months. I kept myself with the children where I was living for two and a half years before I took on with anybody, and not till after it was proved at Lambeth Police Court that she had misconducted herself.’

  Walker’s statement that Edward John, Polly’s eldest child, was living with him in 1888 inspired a news report that Nichols had had so little to do with his son that when they met at Polly’s funeral he did not recognize him. It has also led modern writers to infer that the boy decisively took his mother’s part when the marriage of his parents disintegrated. This, too, may be inaccurate. In his press statement Nichols insisted that Edward John remained with him until as late as 1886: ‘He left home of his own accord two years and a half ago, and I have always been on speaking terms with him. Only two or three months ago I saw him, and last week received two letters from him asking me if I knew of any work for him.’

  From 6 September 1880 to 31 May 1881 Polly lived in the Lambeth Workhouse. There is then a gap of nearly a year in her record. During this time perhaps she took up with another man.
In any event we know that Nichols paid Polly an allowance of 5s. a week which he stopped in 1881 or 1882 upon learning that she was living with another man. Apparently the Guardians of the Parish of Lambeth, to whom Polly then became chargeable, summonsed him to show cause why he should not be ordered to contribute to her support but his plea that she had been living with someone else prevailed and the summons was dismissed. Thereafter Polly lost touch with her husband. In a statement made at the Mitcham Workhouse on 13 February 1888 she declared that she didn’t know where he had been living for the last six or seven years, and on 3 September Nichols informed the inquest that he had not seen Polly at all for three years.

  Many of Polly’s remaining years were spent in workhouses and doss-houses. Between 24 April 1882 and 24 March 1883 she sheltered continuously in the Lambeth Workhouse or its infirmary and she returned there for another twelve days on the following 21 May. Her name then disappears from workhouse records for another four years. The gap, again, reflects an attempt by Polly to better herself. For a short time she lived with her father. She was not ‘fast’ with men, he recalled, and was not in the habit of staying out late, but she drank heavily and they did not get on. Eventually they quarrelled and Polly left home. After that Walker heard that his daughter was living with a blacksmith named Thomas Stuart Drew in York Mews, 15 York Street, Walworth. He saw her for the last time in June 1886. His son had been burned to death in the explosion of a paraffin lamp and Polly attended the funeral. The quarrel still rankled too much for either of them to attempt a crossing of the gulf that had opened up between them and they did not speak to each other. It was nevertheless apparent from her respectable dress that her circumstances had improved.