Jack The Ripper

by Mark Whitehead

  The Met’s investigation following Elizabeth Stride’s death was exhaustive. Along with the distribution of the Ripper’s two missives to the newspapers, 80,000 leaflets were deliv-ered to households and lodging houses in the area, appealing for anyone with information to come forth.The police pres­ence continued to be bolstered by men from other divisions. The police detained at least eighty suspects and were watch­ing the movements of a further 300, all follow-ups to infor­mation received. House-to-house enquiries were made and in many cases the premises were searched. Donald Swanson reported to the Home Office on 19 October 1888 that over 2000 lodgers were examined during this period. Sailors were checked by the Thames Police. All Asiatics were checked after a suggestion from an Indian correspondent to The Times that the mutilations to Eddowes’ face seemed ‘peculiarly Eastern’. Following the perceived Americanisms in the Ripper letters (e.g. ‘Boss’, ‘shan’t quit’) the police checked the whereabouts of any Americans in the East End, including three cowboys in town as part of an American Exhibition. In total, 76 butchers and slaughtermen were questioned as well as Greek gypsies. Following the misinter­pretation of Mrs Mortimer’s evidence, men with black bags were stopped and searched (and often chased by members of the public). One of the more bizarre suggestions posited German thieves using the stolen uteri to put their potential victims to sleep by occult means!

  All suggestions and suspicions, however curious, were pursued. Swanson’s report notes that there are ‘994 dockets besides police reports’. Inspector Abberline would often leave work and patrol Whitechapel until four or five in the morning before retiring for the night. On many occasions he would be summoned back immediately to Whitechapel to interview another suspect. Certainly, the Ripper case nearly broke him, and the pressure on most of the police force was not aided in other quarters. Their lack of success was con­tinually attacked by the press, who ridiculed Sir Charles Warren’s failure to organise his men properly. Papers of all political stripes united in calling for Matthews’ and Warren’s resignations. While private rewards offered exceeded £1,200, Matthews continued to vacillate. Now aware that any change of heart would be viewed as an embarrassing climb-down, he sought to implicate the Commissioner by offering a reward only on Warren’s admission of police defeat. Warren immediately saw through this and back­tracked. The stalemate continued.

  Despite doubts about their being able to function properly within Whitechapel’s heavily-populated streets, bloodhounds were also tested. Several successful trials of the two dogs, Barnaby and Burgho, were held in Regent’s Park and Hyde Park in early October, with Sir Charles Warren twice playing the hunted man. The press and public supported their use, believing their introduction was keeping the Ripper at bay. Warren was clearly impressed enough to leave orders that, should another murder occur, nothing be touched until the dogs were brought to the scene. This order appears not to have been retracted and caused a long delay in investigating Mary Kelly’s murder. By then, the bloodhounds’ owner had reclaimed them, once it became clear that the police weren’t prepared to buy them or pay for their upkeep.

  Other, more worrying suggestions, were made. Sir John Whittaker Ellis, a former Lord Mayor of London, proposed the police draw a half-mile cordon around Whitechapel and search every house in that area. Warren resisted, wisely seeing that such an operation, as well as being illegal, had the very real possibility of causing rioting and further damaging the police’s reputation. In the end, the search area was con­fined to houses within Spitalfields and Whitechapel bounded roughly by Whitechapel Road to the south, Dunk Street to the east, Buxton Street and the Great Eastern Railway to the north and halting to the west at the City boundary. Properties were only searched with owners’ consent, but such was the response from people that they met with little obstruction. Dr Robert Anderson noted a week later that ‘the public generally and especially the inhabitants of the East End have shown a marked desire to assist in every way, even at some sacrifice to themselves, as for example in per­mitting their houses to be searched’.

  Anderson appears to have been little help. Appointed Assistant Commissioner for Crime on the day of Polly Nichols’ murder, he went on extended sick leave to Switzerland the day Annie Chapman was found. Hastily recalled, following the double murder, and given personal responsibility for the case by Warren and Matthews, his first proposal was even more short-sighted than that of Ellis. Taken aback by prostitutes having police protection, he sug­gested that any woman ‘on the prowl’ after midnight, should be arrested immediately. Given that a conservative estimate placed the number of prostitutes operating in Whitechapel at 1,200, his suggestion was not only inoperable but incred­ibly out of touch with the problems faced by women in the area.

  October wore on with no further atrocities. The increased police presence and heightened public awareness probably kept the Ripper from operating during this period. With more legitimate trades, such as charring and hawking, oversubscribed as always, prostitutes, driven by the need for the basic necessities of food and lodgings, began to venture out after dark once more.

  Mary Jane Kelly

  One woman who certainly needed money that October was Mary Jane (or Marie Jeanette) Kelly. Like hundreds of others, she was already nervous about the Ripper. Her lover, Joseph Barnett, testified that she asked him to read out the latest newspaper reports on the case. But, Ripper or not, money was tight and she already owed 29 shillings in back rent. Her attempts to earn money on the night of 8 November would result in the most infamous of the Ripper’s crimes, bringing his reign of terror to a horrific climax.

  She was born in Limerick around 1863 and had six or seven brothers and one sister. In early childhood her family moved to Wales where John Kelly, her father, worked in an ironworks.Around 1879 she married a collier named Davies but was widowed two or three years later when he was killed in a pit explosion. She moved to London in 1884 and worked at a high-class West End brothel for a time. At the invitation of one of ‘her gentlemen’ she went to live in Paris but returned to London a fortnight later as she didn’t like it. She then lived on Ratcliffe Highway before moving in with a man named Morganstone at Stepney. Later, she lived in Bethnal Green Road with a plasterer, Joseph Fleming. Kelly remained fond of him and he continued to visit her after they separated. Julia Venturney, who lived at 1, Miller’s Court, remembered Fleming and testified that he had ‘often ill-used her because she cohabited with Joe (Barnett)’.

  Mary met Joseph Barnett in 1887 when she lived at Cooly’s lodging house in Thrawl Street. Barnett, an Irish cockney, worked as a fish porter at Billingsgate. They first met in Commercial Street and had a drink together. Their friendship was immediate and, after a couple more encoun­ters that same week, they decided to live together. They seem to have been well suited. By Barnett’s testimony they lived together for a year and eight months. During this time they moved around the area taking lodgings in several addresses.

  From the start of 1888, they finally settled at 13, Miller’s Court. The couple rented the room, at 4/6 a week, from John McCarthy, who owned the chandler’s shop at 27, Dorset Street. Miller’s Court was one of several courts off Dorset Street and was accessible by a narrow passageway between numbers 26 and 27. The court was a small paved yard, flanked by run-down tenement houses, with a single gas lamp. Number 13 backed onto 26, Dorset Street and had originally been number 26’s back-parlour before being par­titioned off when the rest of the building had been let out as furnished rooms. (It now lies under a multi-storey car park in Dorset Street.)

  During their time together, there is no account or infer­ence that Barnett was violent and generally they did not drink excessively. Kelly did occasionally get drunk. Towards the end of their relationship she had broken one of the two windows in the room in a drunken temper. Their quarrels seem to have been rooted in Barnett’s dislike of Kelly’s pros­titution. He regularly gave her money so that she would not have to walk the streets. Barnett’s reason for their separation on 30 October was tha
t Kelly was allowing another prosti-tute to share their room. At the inquest he admitted that he had been out of work, but denied that this had any bearing on their parting. He had been fired from his job at Billingsgate several months before (possibly for theft) and despite taking labouring jobs where he could, they soon fell behind with the rent. Kelly’s return to prostitution cannot have helped their relationship.

  Following their separation, Barnett moved into lodgings in Bishopsgate. Despite their differences they remained friends and Barnett continued to visit Kelly, giving her money when he could. Barnett testified that he visited her on the evening of 8 November to apologise because he couldn’t give her any money as he had no work.

  Barnett visited her between 7.30 and 7.45pm. Maria Harvey, who had been visiting, left at that point. It seems likely that Harvey was not the prostitute who caused Barnett to leave in the first place, but a second guest whom Kelly had invited to stay. Harvey had stayed on the Monday and Tuesday and had then moved to a room at 3, New Court, Dorset Street. Also present, according to a press interview, was Lizzie Albrook, a friend of Kelly’s who lived in Miller’s Court. She left after Barnett’s arrival. Barnett’s statement mentions only ‘a woman,’ so someone was lying. The next time we hear of Kelly, she is ‘intoxicated’. At mid­night, Mary Ann Cox, another prostitute, who lived at 5, Miller’s Court, met Kelly at the entrance to the court.With Kelly was a short (about 5 feet 5 inches), stout man, wear­ing a longish, shabby, dark coat and a hard, black billycock hat. He had a blotchy face, full carroty moustache and a clean chin. Cox bade her good night and the couple went into number 13. Kelly was heard to start singing. Cox stated that she would know the man again. She left her own room again at 12.15am to look for customers. It was a bitter night and raining most of the time.When she returned at 1.00am to warm herself before setting out once more, Kelly was still singing.

  The next witness to enter the scene is Elizabeth Prater from 20, Miller’s Court, which was the room above Kelly’s. From 1.00am she had been waiting outside 27, Dorset Street for the man that she lived with to appear. At 1.20am she gave up and went upstairs to her room.Through the partition she could see a glimmer of light but heard no singing nor sounds of movement. Nervous of the Ripper, she put two tables against the door and, slightly drunk, retired to bed.

  Sarah Lewis was a laundress who lived at 29, Great Pearl Street.After ‘words’ with her husband, she went to stay with friends on the first floor room of 2, Miller’s Court. She heard the clock of Christ Church, Spitalfields, strike 2.30am as she arrived. Standing alone in the doorway of a lodging house opposite the court was a man. She described him as ‘not tall, but stout,’ with a wide-awake black hat. She did not notice his clothes. He was looking up the court ‘as if waiting for someone to come out’. Mary Cox returned home at 3.00am.The light was out at number 13 and she heard noth­ing the rest of the night.

  Around 3.30am Sarah Lewis, who had been dozing in a chair, awoke. At about the same time, Elizabeth Prater was woken by her kitten climbing over her neck. Both of them testified that shortly afterwards they heard a woman cry ‘Oh! Murder!’ It was faint but seemingly nearby. Neither of them checked, however. Prater went back to sleep. Lewis stayed awake until five.

  At 8.30 that morning, Caroline Maxwell, the wife of a lodging house deputy in Dorset Street, saw Mary Kelly out­side Miller’s Court. She testified that she had known her for four months but only spoken to her twice during that time. Maxwell asked Kelly why she was up so early, and was told she had the ‘horrors of drink’ upon her. Later, returning from Bishopsgate at around 8.45am she saw Kelly again out­side the Britannia pub talking to a man. Although she only saw them from a distance she was certain that it was Kelly. The man was not tall, and wore dark clothes and a plaid coat.

  Whether you accept Maxwell’s testimony (which, given the coroner’s estimate of time of death, means that it verges on the Fortean), depends on whose theory you are accept­ing. There are theories for all aspects, including one that suggests the state of rigor mortis could mean that Kelly wasn’t killed until 10am that morning. Maxwell was adamant about the date she saw Kelly and so another mys­tery remains, along with many others in this case.

  What is certain is, at 10.45am on Friday 9 October, the day of the Lord Mayor’s Show, John McCarthy sent Thomas Bowyer, his assistant, to 13, Miller’s Court to collect Kelly’s outstanding rent of 29 shillings. He knocked twice at the door but there was no answer. Bowyer went around to the side to the broken window. What he saw through the window sent him racing back to McCarthy. They returned to Miller’s Court and looked through the broken window together.What they beheld must have looked as though from a nightmare. Kelly had been butchered.The privacy that the cramped room had afforded the Ripper had given him free rein for his impulses.

  Bowyer was immediately dispatched to Commercial Street police station. His arrival startled Inspector Walter Beck and Detective Walter Dew. Bowyer’s garbled message (‘Another one. Jack the Ripper. Awful’) was all they needed to hear to galvanise them into action.They were at the scene by 11.00am. Unable to open the front door (Barnett said that the key had been lost sometime before, probably the night of the quarrel when the window was broken), Beck went round to the side and the broken window. Inside, an old coat was hung over the gap in the pane to keep out the draught. (Attempts to trace the coat’s owner led only to Mrs Harvey, who had left some clothing with Kelly.) Beck drew it back and blanched. He stepped back and told Dew not to look. Needless to say, he did, and what he saw would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  Dr Phillips arrived at 11.15am, followed by Inspector Abberline at 11.30am. The delay in opening the door can only be attributed to them. No attempt to force the door was made until 1.30pm due to the mistaken belief that the bloodhounds would soon be arriving to track the area. At 1.30pm, Dr Anderson arrived. Meanwhile, the Court had been sealed off but little else had been done. Following Anderson’s command, McCarthy broke the door open with a pickaxe.The job could have been done by reaching through the broken window and releasing the catch, as Barnett and Kelly had done since the loss of the key.

  McCarthy’s statement that, ‘It looked more like the work of a devil than of a man’ seems entirely apt.The crime scene photograph that adorns almost every spine-broken book on the Ripper case, as terrible as the image it contains, cannot do justice to what they must have witnessed that day. Until 1987, it was all that we had to understand exactly what the Ripper had done to Kelly in that cramped space. Phillips’ brief report at the inquest meant that there was little authentic evidence that remained and thus gave way to years of false supposition by many theorists. One of the central beliefs was that Kelly’s uterus had been taken to conceal the fact that she was pregnant. Both of these claims were proved incorrect when Dr Thomas Bond’s notes taken at the crime scene and the post-mortem were returned anonymously to Scotland Yard in 1987.

  A brief summary and conflation of the two sets of findings should demonstrate how terrible the mutilations to Kelly’s body were. Her throat was cut right down to the spinal column, the knife had notched several vertebrae. The face was mutilated by irregular slashes and the nose, cheeks, eye­brows and ears were partially removed. Both breasts had been removed by circular incisions. The intercostal muscles had been cut and the contents of the thorax were visible.The skin and tissues of the abdomen had been removed in three large flaps and the viscera removed.The right thigh had been denuded across and including outer labia and part of right buttock removed. The left thigh had been stripped to the knee and the left calf gashed. Both arms bore extensive wounds and the right thumb bore a superficial 1-inch inci­sion. There were several abrasions on the back of the right hand and forearm.The lower part of the right lung had been torn away. The uterus, kidneys and one breast had been placed under the head. The other breast was by the right foot. The liver had been placed between the feet, the intes­tines by the right side of the body and the spleen by the left. The flesh from abdomen and thighs had bee
n piled on the bedside table. The bed and floor beneath the bed were satu­rated with blood and the wall on the right side, in line with the victim’s neck, was marked by blood. After further inves­tigation and the reassembly of the body by Phillips and Bond, only one part of the body was found to be missing. Kelly’s heart.

  By the time the doctors had examined the body at the site, the news of the Ripper’s latest outrage had reached the crowds at the Lord Mayor’s Show and thousands converged on Dorset Street. Police cordons held them at bay but they clogged the surrounding streets. Kelly’s remains were removed to Shoreditch Mortuary at around 4pm and 13, Miller’s Court was boarded up and padlocked to keep out the curious.

  The next day, Inspector Abberline returned to the Court to examine the fireplace. The heat that it had produced appeared to have been so fierce that it had partly melted the solder and spout of a kettle hung above (although there is no evidence to show that this hadn’t occurred at a previous time). All that remained in the fire were some remnants of women’s clothing. As Kelly’s clothing was still piled on a chair, it was presumed that the clothes had been those left by Maria Harvey and that the fire had been lit by the Ripper to help him see what he was doing.

  Phillips and Bond disagreed on the time of death, both of them estimating according to the onset of rigor mortis, the temperature of the body and the coldness of the weather. Bond put death at about 1–2am, Phillips much later at 5–6am. It is entirely possible that the middle period, 3–4am is within both estimates. This suggests that the cry of ‘Murder’ that Mrs Prater and Mrs Lewis heard was Kelly’s final utterance. The marks on her thumb and hand certainly suggest that she attempted to fight off her attacker, if only briefly before she was overpowered. If so, it is likely that she would not have done so silently.