Complete History of Jack the Ripper

by Philip Sudgen

  In the statements Maria Harvey and Joe Barnett gave to the police on 9 November there is a slight discrepancy on the matter of times. Maria said that she left Mary at 6.55, when Barnett arrived. Barnett averred that he visited Mary between seven and eight and that he stayed until eight o’clock. At the inquest he said that he called on Mary between 7.30 and 7.45 and stayed about fifteen minutes.5 Whatever the precise time of Barnett’s visit, his was, as we have seen, a friendly call. But he could give Mary no money and that helps to explain why, later in the evening, she ventured out into the streets.

  When Barnett saw her last Mary was quite sober. Four hours later, when Mary Ann Cox encountered her in Dorset Street, she was intoxicated and with a stranger. Mrs Cox, described by the Star as ‘a wretched looking specimen of East End womanhood’, was a thirty-one-year-old widow who supported herself by prostitution. She lived at 5 Miller’s Court, the last house on the left at the top of the court, and had known Mary about eight or nine months.

  That Thursday night Mrs Cox had been soliciting in Commercial Street. But there was a chill in the autumn air and she decided to pop home and warm herself up before trying her luck on the streets once more. It was about 11.45 when she turned into Dorset Street. There she saw Mary walking in front of her with a man. The young Irish prostitute wore a red knitted ‘crossover’ about her shoulders and a linsey frock, but neither hat nor bonnet. She had had far too much to drink. The couple turned into Miller’s Court just ahead of Mrs Cox. When the widow entered the court they were going into Mary’s room. ‘Good night, Mary Jane,’ called Mrs Cox. ‘She was very drunk,’ the widow told the police, ‘and could scarcely answer me, but said good night.’

  Mary’s client is of great interest to us. Mrs Cox, who saw him in the light of the gas lamp opposite the door of No. 13, gave two descriptions. Her statement to the police, made on the day of the murder, reads: ‘the man was carrying a quart can of beer . . . was about 36 years old, about 5 ft. 5 in. high, complexion fresh and I believe he had blotches on his face, small side whiskers, and a thick carrotty moustache, dressed in shabby dark clothes, dark overcoat and black felt hat.’ Three days later she told the inquest of ‘a short stout man shabbily dressed . . . he had a longish coat very shabby dark and a pot of ale in his hand, he had a hard billy cock black hat on, he had a blotchy face and a full carrotty mustache his chin was clean.’

  As Mrs Cox went into her own room she heard Mary singing ‘A violet I plucked from Mother’s grave when a boy.’ Soon after midnight the widow went out again. When she returned, at about one o’clock, there was a light in Mary’s room and she was still singing. Mrs Cox warmed her hands and ventured out again shortly after one. At three she was back. There was then no light in No. 13 and all was quiet.

  Mrs Cox did not go out again but she could not sleep. It rained hard that night. Occasionally, through the drumming of the rain, she heard the heavy tread of men entering or leaving the court. ‘I heard men going in and out, several go in and out,’ she told the inquest, ‘I heard someone go out at a quarter to six. I do not know what house he went out of [as] I heard no door shut.’6

  Neither Mary Cox nor Julia Venturney, the German charwoman in No. 1, heard anything suspicious or alarming during the night. But two other witnesses did. One of them was Elizabeth Prater, who lodged in Room 20 in 26 Dorset Street, above Mary’s room.

  On this particular night she retired at about 1.30 a.m. She barricaded her door with a couple of tables, lay down to rest and, having drunk heavily, at once fell fast asleep. Two or three hours later she was suddenly awake. It had been her kitten, clambering across her neck, which had disturbed her slumbers. But just then she heard screams of ‘Murder!’ Unfortunately neither upon the time of the screams nor upon their nature is Mrs Prater’s evidence consistent. In both her statement to the police and her inquest testimony she estimated the time at about 3.30 to 4.00 a.m. But at the inquest she reflected further: ‘I noticed the lodging house light was out, so it was after 4 probably.’ And while she spoke to the police of ‘screams of murder about two or three times in a female voice’ she told the inquest jury of but one cry of ‘Oh! Murder!’, faint but seemingly close at hand. It is nevertheless apparent that she was unperturbed. ‘I did not take much notice of the cries,’ Mrs Prater explained to the police, ‘as I frequently hear such cries from the back of the lodging house where the windows look into Miller’s Court.’ Dismissing the incident from her mind, she went back to sleep.

  Up and about at 5.30, Mrs Prater walked to the Ten Bells at the corner of Commercial and Church (present Fournier) Streets for a tot of rum. There was no one about in Miller’s Court but she saw two or three carmen harnessing their horses in Dorset Street. When she returned to her lodging she went back to bed and slept until eleven.7

  Elizabeth Prater’s befuddled tale of screams in the night would command scant consideration were it not for the corroboratory testimony of the laundress Sarah Lewis. Sarah lived at 24 Great Pearl Street in Spitalfields, but in the early hours of Friday, 9 November, after a quarrel with her husband, she came to stay with her friends the Keylers at No. 2 Miller’s Court. For the real beginning of Sarah’s story, however, we must go back two days to the evening of Wednesday the 7th, to her encounter with a sinister stranger in Bethnal Green Road.

  At 8 o’clock that evening the laundress was walking along Bethnal Green Road with a female friend when a man, who had already passed them by, turned back to speak. A middle-aged man, perhaps forty years old, he was short of stature, pale-faced and sported a small black moustache. His short black coat and ‘pepper and salt’ trousers were partly concealed by a long brown overcoat. He wore a high round hat and carried a black bag some nine or twelve inches long. The man wanted one of the women – he did not mind which one – to follow him. Both of them refused and he went away, but he was soon back. This time, promising to treat them, he tried to inveigle Sarah and her friend into a narrow passage, but his appearance and persistence had now seriously alarmed the women and they held back. ‘What are you frightened of?’ he asked, putting down his bag. When he undid and reached for something beneath his coat the women ran without looking back.

  Between two and three o’clock on Friday morning Sarah went to stay with the Keylers. As she passed Christ Church, Spitalfields, she looked at the clock. It was 2.30 a.m. Despite the lateness of the hour there were still people about. And in Commercial Street, near the Britannia, Sarah saw the stranger who had accosted her on Wednesday night. On this occasion he had no overcoat but he wore the same trousers, short coat and high hat. And he carried the same black bag. Somewhat shaken, Sarah hurried past and then looked back. But the man was preoccupied talking to another woman and made no attempt to stop her. When she reached the corner of Dorset Street Mrs Lewis looked back at the man again.

  In Dorset Street, opposite Miller’s Court, was a lodging house. As Sarah entered the court she noticed, standing alone by the lodging house, yet another man. In her statement to the police Sarah said that she could give no description of this man but at the inquest, three days later, her memory had improved: ‘He was not tall, but stout, had on a wideawake black hat, I did not notice his clothes. Another young man with a woman passed along. The man standing in the street was looking up the court as if waiting for someone to come out.’

  At the Keylers’ Mrs Lewis hardly slept. She dozed in a chair until 3.30 and then sat awake until nearly five. Just before four o’clock the silence was shattered by a single loud scream of ‘Murder!’ It sounded like the cry of a young woman not far distant but Sarah did not even trouble to look out of the window. Such cries were common in Whitechapel. Her estimate of the time of the scream, nevertheless, is probably preferable to that of Mrs Prater for she seems to have been more fully awake. She thus heard the clock strike 3.30.8

  Did Elizabeth Prater and Sarah Lewis hear Mary’s last terrified scream? If the testimony of another witness, Mrs Caroline Maxwell of 14 Dorset Street, is to be credited they did not. For Mrs Maxwel
l insisted that she saw and spoke to Mary at the corner of Miller’s Court at about 8.30 on Friday morning.

  ‘What brings you up so early?’ asked Mrs Maxwell.

  ‘I have the horrors of drink upon me,’ Mary replied, ‘as I have been drinking for some days past.’

  ‘Why don’t you go to Mrs Ringer’s9 and have half a pint of beer?’

  Mary pointed to some vomit in the roadway. ‘I have been there and had it,’ she said, ‘but I have brought it all up again.’

  Some thirty minutes later Mrs Maxwell saw her again although only at a distance. Mary was wearing a dark skirt, black velvet bodice and maroon shawl, and she was talking to a man outside the Britannia.10

  The statements and depositions in the coroner’s papers contain nothing further to our purpose. But we have already learned something very important from them – the probable time of Mary’s death. Admittedly our witnesses offer conflicting testimony on this point. On the one hand Elizabeth Prater and Sarah Lewis both attested to a cry of ‘Murder!’ just before 4.00 a.m. And on the other Mrs Caroline Maxwell was emphatic that she saw Mary as late as 8.30 and 9.00. A moment’s consideration of the medical evidence, however, will enable us to decide the issue between them.

  When Dr Bond saw the body at two in the afternoon rigor mortis was beginning to set in. If this normally occurred, as he explained, six to twelve hours after death, Mary died at some time between two and eight in the morning. But the body was comparatively cold so Bond opted for an early time, about 1.00 or 2.00 a.m. It is possible, however, that Mary’s body lost heat more rapidly than is usual and that she was killed at a later hour than two. Such, indeed, seems to have been the view of Dr Phillips. Unfortunately we have no official report from him and he made no reference at the inquest to the time of death. But The Times appeared to reflect his views in the following paragraph: ‘the opinion of Dr George Bagster Phillips, the divisional surgeon of the H Division, [is] that when he was called to the deceased (at a quarter to 11) she had been dead some five or six hours. There is no doubt that the body of a person who, to use Dr Phillips’s own words, was “cut all to pieces” would get cold far more quickly than that of one who had died simply from the cutting of the throat; and the room would have been very cold, as there were two broken panes of glass in the windows. Again, the body being entirely uncovered would very quickly get cold.’11 Phillips was, in fact, called out at about eleven and arrived at Miller’s Court fifteen minutes later. If his opinion was correctly reported, therefore, the doctor believed the murder to have been committed at about 5.00 or 6.00 a.m. This estimate, though, is possibly too late because Phillips does not seem to have taken into consideration the heat of the Ripper’s fierce fire. A time of death between the estimates of Bond and Phillips would thus seem reasonable.

  It will be readily apparent that the testimony of Elizabeth Prater and Sarah Lewis is consistent with the medical evidence and that of Caroline Maxwell is not. The scream of ‘Murder!’ heard by Prater and Lewis was close at hand and sounded like that of a young woman. Sarah even told the inquest that it seemed to come from the direction of Mary’s room. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that both women disregarded what was Mary’s last desperate cry for help. Bond, it is true, told Anderson that the attack was probably so sudden and ‘made in such a position’ that Mary could neither resist nor cry out. But his comment may have been prompted partly by an erroneous belief that no one had heard a cry and is, in any case, in conflict with some of his other findings. The autopsy revealed that Mary had sustained a small incision to her right thumb and abrasions to the back of her hand and forearm and these indicate that she attempted some kind of defence.

  The testimony of Mrs Maxwell is an unanswered riddle. Was she lying, drunk, or simply mistaken? On the first occasion she supposedly saw Mary, at 8.30, they conversed across the street. On the second Mary was standing about twenty-five yards away. At either distance Mrs Maxwell should have been able to recognize Mary and it seems more likely that she confused the date than the person. Whatever the answer, all we can say for certain is that her testimony was wrong.

  What of the Ripper himself? The coroner’s papers, alas, probably tell us nothing about him. The stories of the witnesses certainly abound in dubious characters. The man Mrs Maxwell thought she saw talking to Mary at nine, if he ever existed, is exonerated. But there are plenty of others – the short, stout man with the blotchy face and carrotty moustache seen by Mrs Cox, the man with the black bag and the high hat, the man with the wideawake black hat Sarah Lewis saw lurking opposite the entrance of Miller’s Court and looking up the court ‘as if waiting for someone to come out’, and the young man seen with a woman by Sarah in Dorset Street. It should be remembered, though, that the fact that strange men, with or without women, were seen about Dorset Street in the nocturnal hours is of no significance in itself. The street consisted almost entirely of common lodging houses. That at 14 Dorset Street, where Mrs Maxwell’s husband was deputy, alone could accommodate 244 people. And, as we have already noted, the street and its courts harboured prostitutes galore. It was thus by no means unusual to encounter men and prostitutes in the street in the early hours of the morning.

  The only suspect these witnesses refer to against whom a case can be made is the man with the carrotty moustache because he was actually seen to enter No. 13 with Mary Kelly. Even the case against him, however, is extremely weak. It was about 11.45 p.m. when Mrs Cox followed them into Miller’s Court, no less than four hours before the probable time of the murder and far too early for us to assume that he was the killer. Mary was a prostitute. She was, moreover, in financial trouble. Her rent arrears stood at 29s. and Thomas Bowyer’s call the next morning may not have been unanticipated. Quite possibly she feared eviction. When Joe Barnett’s visit on Thursday evening proved barren of succour she took to the streets. She procured one client, the man Mrs Cox saw at 11.45, and in the ensuing four hours, impelled by necessity, she could easily have procured another. Indeed, there is crucial eyewitness evidence that she did precisely that.

  The witness was George Hutchinson, a casual labourer then living at the Victoria Working Men’s Home in Commercial Street. His name will not be found in the coroner’s papers for the simple reason that he did not appear at the inquest. This was not, as some have recently alleged, because his evidence was deliberately suppressed, but because at the time of the inquest neither the police nor the coroner knew anything of him.

  It was not until six in the evening of Monday, 12 November, after the inquest had been concluded, that Hutchinson walked into Commercial Street Police Station and made his statement. This document, still preserved in the records of the Metropolitan Police, merits quotation in full:

  About 2 a.m. 9th I was coming by Thrawl Street, Commercial Street, and just before I got to Flower and Dean Street I met the murdered woman Kelly and she said to me Hutchinson will you lend me sixpence. I said I can’t I have spent all my money going down to Romford. She said good morning I must go and find some money. She went away towards Thrawl Street. A man coming in the opposite direction to Kelly tapped her on the shoulder and said something to her. They both burst out laughing. I heard her say alright to him and the man said you will be alright for what I have told you. He then placed his right hand around her shoulders. He also had a kind of a small parcel in his left hand with a kind of a strap round it. I stood against the lamp of the Queen’s Head Public House and watched him. They both then came past me and the man hung down his head with his hat over his eyes. I stooped down and looked him in the face. He looked at me stern. They both went into Dorset Street. I followed them. They both stood at the corner of the court for about 3 minutes. He said something to her. She said alright my dear come along you will be comfortable. He then placed his arm on her shoulder and gave her a kiss. She said she had lost her handkerchief. He then pulled his handkerchief a red one out and gave it to her. They both then went up the court together. I then went to the court to see if I could see th
em but could not. I stood there for about three quarters of an hour to see if they came out. They did not so I went away.

  Description: age about 34 or 35, height 5 ft. 6, complexion pale, dark eyes and eye lashes, slight moustache curled up each end and hair dark, very surley looking; dress, long dark coat, collar and cuffs trimmed astracan and a dark jacket under, light waistcoat, dark trousers, dark felt hat turned down in the middle, button boots and gaiters with white buttons, wore a very thick gold chain, white linen collar, black tie with horse shoe pin, respectable appearance, walked very sharp, Jewish appearance. Can be identified.12

  Hutchinson has been widely described by students of the case as the witness most likely to have met Jack the Ripper. Fortunate it is for us, then, that he was sniffed out by the newshounds as quickly as Israel Schwartz had been before him. On 13 November, just one day after his appearance at Commercial Street, he gave the press a fuller statement than that preserved in the police file.

  By this account Hutchinson was in Romford, Essex, on Thursday the 8th. We are not told why. However, tramping back to London, he reached Whitechapel Road early on Friday morning. When he passed St Mary’s Church it was between ten and five minutes to two. He turned north into Commercial Street. Walking into Spitalfields, he passed a man standing at the corner of Thrawl Street and then, approaching Flower and Dean Street, met Mary Kelly. ‘Kelly did not seem to me to be drunk,’ remembered Hutchinson, ‘but was a little bit spreeish.’

  ‘Mr Hutchinson,’ she asked, ‘can you lend me sixpence?’