Complete History of Jack the Ripper

by Philip Sudgen

  Inspectors Helson and Abberline shared the belief that Polly had been killed outside the stable gateway in Buck’s Row. As early as 2 September Helson told the press that ‘both himself and Inspector Abberline had come to the conclusion that it [the murder] was committed on the spot.’ He reaffirmed this view at the inquest the next day and again in his report of 7 September. And on 19 September Abberline reported that he had ‘no doubt’ that Polly Nichols and the later victim Annie Chapman had both been murdered where the bodies had been found.17 Even Dr Llewellyn, whose initial impression was that the body had been deposited outside the stable, came to accept that he had been mistaken.

  Polly thus met her end at the entrance to the stable yard in Buck’s Row. At 3.15 PC Neil patrolled the street and saw no one about. Twenty-five minutes later Cross came upon Polly’s body, so soon after her death that he might easily have disturbed the murderer. If, as Llewellyn averred at the inquest, the crime could have been executed in four or five minutes Polly died between 3.30 and 3.40 a.m. When Mrs Holland last saw her, only an hour earlier, Polly was tipsy, in search of her ‘doss money’ and reeling eastwards along the Whitechapel Road. Further along that road she met her assassin and they retired to Buck’s Row. The eastern end of the street was dismally lighted, narrow and tenanted on the south side only. High warehouses dominated the north side. Dark and relatively secluded, it was the regular resort of prostitutes.

  The injuries inflicted upon Polly Nichols were unlike Martha Tabram’s but exhibited a similarly pointless ferocity. In two gashes the throat had been cut from ear to ear right back to the spinal column. Inspector Spratling was evidently incorrect when he reported that the spinal cord itself had been cut through but the vertebrae had been penetrated. More, cruel abdominal mutilations had laid the belly open from a point just below the breastbone to the lower abdomen. Either the injuries to the throat or those to the abdomen would have been sufficient to cause death. But, and the point would assume importance later, no part of the viscera was missing.

  The manner in which these injuries were inflicted must be largely speculative. There were no signs of a struggle. The throat was cut from left to right. Dr Llewellyn at first held the view that the murderer had attacked Polly from in front. With his right hand he pushed her head back, his thumb bruising her right lower jaw and his fingers her left cheek, and with his left hand he held the knife that cut her throat.18 More recently several writers, notably Donald Rumbelow (on the strength of an opinion of James Cameron, the pathologist) and Arthur Douglas, have promulgated the view that the killer attacked Polly from behind. If this was the case he could have gripped her head with his left hand and used the knife with his right, the bruise on her left cheek resulting from the pressure of his left thumb and that along her right lower jaw from the pressure of his fingers. Polly’s attempts to pull away from him, moreover, would have facilitated his efforts to expose her throat to the knife.19

  The evidence of the bloodstains can help to resolve this problem for us. If Polly’s throat were cut while she was erect and alive a strong jet of blood would have spurted from the wound and probably deluged the front of her clothing. But in fact there was no blood at all on her breast or the corresponding part of her clothes. Some of the flow from the throat formed a small pool on the pavement beneath Polly’s neck and the rest was absorbed by the backs of the dress bodice and ulster. The blood from the abdominal wounds largely collected in the loose tissues. Such a pattern proves that Polly’s injuries were inflicted when she was lying on her back and suggests that she may already have been dead.

  The probable explanation of this evidence is that Polly was throttled before she was mutilated. Although she went to Buck’s Row anticipating sexual intercourse neither Polly nor her killer are likely to have been lying down in the street, especially after the previous day’s showers. She would presumably have expected to complete that transaction standing against a wall. It is possible that she was felled by a blow and in her besotted condition she would have proved an easy victim. But the fact that Polly’s throat was severed when she was lying down and with so little spillage of blood, together with the apparent absence of any scream, points to prior strangulation. There are indications of this, too, in the medical evidence. We know from police reports that Polly’s face was discoloured and her tongue slightly lacerated. And Dr Llewellyn’s inquest deposition mentions a small bruise on the left side of her neck and an abrasion on the right.20

  We can safely dismiss the notion that Polly’s murderer cut her throat from behind. Whether he was left or right-handed, however, is impossible to determine. If he was kneeling by Polly’s head, facing her feet, he would have gripped her face with his left hand and severed her throat (from left to right) with a knife held in his right hand. This technique would have directed the flow of blood from the left carotid artery away from him and is certainly consistent with the evidence of the facial bruises. Llewellyn himself came to doubt his earlier view of a left-handed killer.

  Both the nature of the murder weapon and the degree of surgical skill exhibited by the murderer are now commonly misconceived. The error relating to the weapon dates back to contemporary press notices of the inquest proceedings. Some of these, including that in the prestigious Times, wrongly reported Dr Llewellyn as identifying the weapon as ‘a long-bladed knife, moderately sharp.’ The belief that the Buck’s Row killer displayed expert surgical skill seems to have originated in Donald McCormick’s Identity of Jack the Ripper, published over thirty years ago. By McCormick’s account Llewellyn testified that the abdominal injuries had been ‘deftly and fairly skillfully performed.’21 These errors have been perpetuated and even embroidered in the literature of the case. Thus, in the recent study by Colin Wilson and Robin Odell, the mutilations inflicted upon Polly were ‘deftly and skilfully performed’ (note the loss of the word ‘fairly’) and the weapon was an ‘exceptionally long-bladed knife.’22

  A comparison of contemporary police reports, press interviews and press notices of the inquest demonstrates that Llewellyn actually spoke of the weapon as a ‘strong-bladed knife, moderately sharp.’ It was not his contention that the knife had a particularly long blade. Indeed, in an interview reported by The Times on 1 September, he specifically refuted that view: ‘The weapon used would scarcely have been a sailor’s jack knife, but a pointed weapon with a stout back – such as a cork-cutter’s or shoemaker’s knife. In his opinion it was not an exceptionally long-bladed weapon.’23 No contemporary substantiation has been discovered for McCormick’s assertion that Llewellyn testified that the mutilations were ‘deftly and fairly skilfully performed.’ At the inquest the doctor credited the murderer with ‘some rough anatomical knowledge’, in other words he knew roughly what was where, but nothing whatsoever was said about his surgical skill.

  Since Polly was undoubtedly lying down, and probably strangled, before the knife attack took place, the killer need not have been greatly bloodstained. The presence of so many slaughterhouses in the area, moreover, may have allayed suspicion when he made his escape. At that time Whitechapel Road was already busy. Even in Brady Street PC Thain saw one or two men walking to work in the direction of Whitechapel Road shortly before he was hailed by PC Neil. But no one suspected Polly’s killer as he merged with the early morning’s market traffic.

  Polly Nichols had been a pauper. Few believed robbery a credible motive for the crime. This suggested a link between her death and the equally purposeless killings, in the same area, of Emma Smith and Martha Tabram. For the first time police, press and public alike began to speak of a new and chilling possibility – that the purlieus of London’s East End harboured a deranged killer who would strike again. It was a thought that quickly found expression in street literature. One verse broadsheet, sung to the tune of ‘My Village Home’, regaled East Enders with Lines on the Terrible Tragedy in Whitechapel:

  Come listen to a dreadful tale I’m telling,

  In Whitechapel three murders have been done;


  With horror many hearts they now are swelling,

  Those fearful deeds that now to light have come.

  Twelve months ago a woman was found lying,

  In death’s cold arms, how dreadful to relate,

  What agony they suffered here when dying

  They were nearly all found in the same state.

  The first poor creature’s death they all are thinking

  The same hand took her life that fatal night,

  Poor people now with fear they are shrinking

  Oh! may this crime be quickly brought to light.

  Now scarcely had the news of that foul murder,

  Which filled all hearts with sorrow and dismay,

  When – sad to tell – the fate of Martha Turner,

  Poor soul, she met her fate near the same way.

  ’Twas thought that soldiers had killed that poor creature,

  And on them many people laid the blame,

  When found ’twas hard to recognise a feature.

  To leave her so, oh! what a cruel shame.

  And now poor Mary Nicholls’ death relating,

  In Buck’s Row, Whitechapel there did lie,

  While in the dark her body lay awaiting

  And no one there to see that poor soul die.

  By workhouse clothes the body recognising,

  That cruel deed all around will show

  Who could have done that deed they are surmising,

  And murdered Mary Nicholls in Buck’s Row?24

  4

  Leather Apron

  POLLY NICHOLS WAS the first victim of Jack the Ripper. Such is the conventional wisdom amongst students of the case. The earlier murders are dismissed as irrelevancies, products of the everyday violence of the East End.

  This view would have found little favour in 1888 for although Emma Smith seemed to have been slain by drunken ruffians there had been nothing at all everyday about the murder of Martha Tabram. Her wounds had not been identical to those of Polly Nichols but both killings shared characteristics that set them apart from routine crime. Neither murder appeared to have had any connection with domestic quarrels, drunken affrays or street robberies. In both cases the murderer had left no clue to his identity. And both crimes, even amidst the violence of the Victorian East End, had been remarkable for their savagery.

  The last point, perhaps, was more evident then than it is now and the Ripper buffs of today, who so casually disregard the George Yard tragedy as ‘just another murder’, would do well to consider the impact that it made upon Martha Tabram’s contemporaries. In his summing up George Collier, the deputy coroner, spoke of it as ‘one of the most brutal [crimes] that had occurred for some years . . . almost beyond belief,’ and newsmen appeared genuinely appalled and bewildered by the rage of Martha’s killer. ‘The wound over the heart was alone sufficient to kill,’ puzzled the Illustrated Police News of 18 August, ‘and death must have occurred as soon as that was inflicted. Unless the perpetrator was a madman, or suffering to an unusual extent from drink delirium, no tangible explanation can be given of the reason for inflicting the other thirty-eight injuries, some of which almost seem as if they were due to thrusts and cuts from a penknife.’ This journal, admittedly revelling in the sensational, devoted six drawings on its front page and more than a column of small print inside to the crime. But in the East End too the manner of Martha’s death evoked unusual horror. Thus, on 11 August, the East London Observer devoted nearly two columns to a murder it considered ‘so unique and mysterious.’1

  At the beginning of September it was the general belief of the press that at least Martha Tabram and Polly Nichols had been slain by the same hand. And although we have no authoritative statement from the police on this point such clues as can be gleaned from the press indicate that they, too, were now seriously considering the possibility that all three Whitechapel murders were linked.

  Three theories were current. One – that the murders had been perpetrated by a gang of thieves – originated in the report of a robbery in Whitechapel circulated by the Central News Agency.2 According to this tale a woman, leaving the Foresters’ Music Hall, Cambridge Heath Road, on the night of Saturday, 1 September, was accosted by a well-dressed man. Inveigling himself into her company, he walked a short distance with her but, not far from the spot where Polly Nichols had been killed, suddenly seized her by the throat and dragged her down a court. The villain was immediately joined by both male and female confederates. They brutally assaulted their victim and despoiled her of her necklace, ear-rings, brooch and purse. She opened her mouth to scream but was silenced by a bloodcurdling threat from one of the gang. Laying a large knife across her throat he warned: “We will serve you as we did the others.” The whole story was, apparently, a newspaper fiction, but even before it was publicly discredited it should have been obvious that there was a world of difference between its affluent if luckless heroine and the penniless whores slaughtered in George Yard and Buck’s Row. Robbery could not plausibly be advanced as the reason for their deaths. The police themselves evidently toyed with the theory that Smith, Tabram and Nichols had been the victims of a ‘High Rip’ gang which levied blackmail upon prostitutes and then took vengeance upon such as failed to pay them a proportion of their earnings.3

  The most widely held view, however, was that the killer was a lunatic. As early as 31 August the Star fostered this theory in screaming headlines:

  A REVOLTING MURDER.

  ANOTHER WOMAN FOUND HORRIBLY MUTILATED IN WHITECHAPEL.

  GHASTLY CRIMES BY A MANIAC.

  A day later it returned to the theme. The Osborn Street, George Yard and Buck’s Row outrages, it insisted, had been committed by a single madman: ‘In each case the victim has been a woman of abandoned character, each crime has been committed in the dark hours of the morning, and more important still as pointing to one man, and that man a maniac, being the culprit, each murder has been accompanied by hideous mutilation . . . All three crimes have been committed within a very small radius. Each of the ill-lighted thoroughfares to which the women were decoyed to be foully butchered are off turnings from Whitechapel Road, and all are within half a mile. The fact that these three tragedies have been committed within such a limited area, and are so strangely alike in their details, is forcing on all minds the conviction that they are the work of some cool, cunning man with a mania for murder.’4

  There was undoubtedly news value in such a theory. But there was substance too, as the East London Observer, commenting on the Tabram and Nichols murders, ponderously elaborated: ‘The two murders which have so startled London within the last month are singular for the reason that the victims have been of the poorest of the poor, and no adequate motive in the shape of plunder can be traced. The excess of effort that has been apparent in each murder suggests the idea that both crimes are the work of a demented being, as the extraordinary violence used is the peculiar feature in each instance.’5 For whatever reason, the notion of a homicidal maniac stalking the streets quickly took hold of the press and by 8 September, when both the leading East End weeklies endorsed it, their voices did little more than add volume to a chorus.

  Talk of this kind naturally stoked the fire of excitement already kindled in the East End by the Buck’s Row murder. In the week after Polly’s death morbid sightseers came in groups of two or three to gaze at the gaudy green gates of the workhouse mortuary. Small crowds, twenty or thirty strong, gathered in Buck’s Row to inspect the murder site. And the latest details of the outrage were hungrily devoured and discussed at street corners throughout the East End.

  In Buck’s Row a Daily News reporter mingled with the crowds on 4 September. He found groups of women clustered together, bending over what they supposed to be the bloodstained paving stones, gossiping nervously but insatiably about the murder, and men, for the most part sullen and taciturn, puffing at their pipes, hands thrust deep in their pockets. The reporter’s account, if coloured, preserves for us something of the flavour of the common talk
in those early September days of 1888.6 Mixed emotions – compassion for the victim, anger against her killer and fear for themselves – repeatedly surfaced amidst the gossip.

  Reflections upon the character of the deceased were met with such emphatic expressions of compassion that the critic was invariably abashed into silence. ‘No matter what she was, poor thing,’ one woman chided, ‘’taint for the likes of us to judge her now.’ ‘No, that’s right enough,’ agreed another, ‘whatever she was it was an awful cruel thing to do to her.’

  The story that the murders had been committed by a gang of robbers had been published that morning in the papers and was widely credited by the gullible Buck’s Row tattlers. But one bystander dismissed it. ‘That’s a got up yarn,’ he scoffed. ‘I rather wish it was true. If there was a gang like that, one or t’other of ’em ’d split before long, and it’d all come out. Bet your money this ain’t been done that way.’ No one was betting anything but this observation stimulated a lively discussion amongst the females as to what they would like to see done to the killer if it did come out. By general acclamation it was agreed that he deserved to be turned out in the midst of the Whitechapel women and then, ‘seemingly forgetful of all the pain and pathos of the dreadful event, [the] women squeezed their elbows and clenched their fists, and went through a mimic performance on the person of the murderer.’