Jack The Ripper

by Mark Whitehead

  On the day of Kelly’s discovery, Sir Charles Warren resigned. Kelly’s death has often been read as the cause but, in fact, the ongoing power struggle between Warren and the Home Office over control of the Met was the main factor. Warren had written an article on ‘The Police of the Metropolis’ for Murray’s Magazine and, contrary to official procedure, had not had it cleared by the Home Office before publication. Reprimanded by Matthews for this infraction, Warren tendered his resignation on 8 November. It was accepted and announced the following day and the coinci­dence was too good for many to read anything else into it. The radical press were especially pleased. The Star announced ‘Whitechapel has avenged us for Bloody Sunday’ and so the belief has continued. It is still felt by some theorists that Warren’s squabbles with Matthews diverted his attentions from giving the Ripper case the attention it deserved.

  With renewed uproar about the murders and continued cries for rewards for information leading to his capture, the Home Secretary offered a pardon to any accomplice of the Ripper who came forth with information. This can only be seen as a cynical face-saving exercise. His reasoning, that the other murders did not suggest accomplices but Kelly’s did, is a blatant piece of bluster, if one considers Schwartz’s testi­mony of Stride’s murder. No one took up the offer and it continues to seem unlikely that this elusive killer ever employed an accomplice. After forcing Warren’s resignation, Matthews remained, despite offers to resign. Prime Minister Lord Salisbury believed that his resignation could only fur­ther harm his government.

  The inquest into Kelly’s murder was held at Shoreditch Town Hall on 12 November.The removal of Kelly’s body to Shoreditch Mortuary meant that the coroner for the inquest was Dr Roderick MacDonald, Wynne Baxter’s rival. Like the Eddowes inquest, it was a brief affair. Phillips’ testimony was especially truncated, stating that Kelly had been found dead from ‘the mortal effects of severance of the right carotid artery’. The rest of the grisly details were withheld rather than hinder the police investigation. MacDonald first hinted at an adjournment. He then stated that a verdict of the cause of death could be drawn from the evidence already given as it was not the jury’s duty to uncover the murderer. The jury agreed and the verdict was given: ‘Wilful murder by some person or persons unknown.’

  Mary Kelly’s funeral was held at St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cemetery at Leytonstone. None of her relatives were ever traced but when her coffin left the mortuary at St Leonard’s, Shoreditch, a crowd of several thousand locals were there to see her off. The men removed their hats, the women wept openly and the police struggled to clear a path through the crowd so that the cortege of the hearse and two mourning coaches could proceed. Determined that she would not suffer a pauper’s grave, Henry Wilton, the verger of St Leonard’s, paid the entire cost of the funeral.

  George Hutchinson

  The early closure of the inquest unfortunately meant that one important witness never testified, and from him comes what is probably our final and clearest glimpse of Jack the Ripper. George Hutchinson, a labourer, walked into Commercial Street police station on 12 November. His information, if true, clears both Mrs Cox’s man with the carroty moustache and explains who Sarah Lewis saw hang­ing around outside Miller’s Court.

  Hutchinson had been in Romford on Thursday 8 November and had walked back to London. At about 2am on 9 November he had arrived back in Whitechapel and there he met Mary Kelly at Flower and Dean Street. He had known her for about three years and ‘occasionally gave her money’. Kelly asked him to lend her sixpence. He said he couldn’t as he had spent all his money going down to Romford. Kelly told him that she must go and find money and they parted. Kelly headed towards Thrawl Street. A man coming in the opposite direction tapped Kelly on the shoul­der and said something. They both laughed. Kelly said, ‘Alright’. The man responded, ‘You will be alright for what I have told you’, and put his right hand around her shoul­ders. He had a small parcel with a strap around it in his left hand.

  Hutchinson stood against the lamp by the Queen’s Head pub and watched them. As they passed, the man hung his head so that his hat covered his eyes. Hutchinson stooped down to get a look at his face. ‘He looked at me stern.’ He followed them as they turned into Dorset Street and they stood on the corner for a few minutes. The man said some­thing to Kelly and she replied, ‘Alright, my dear. Come along, you will be comfortable.’ He placed a hand on her shoulder and kissed her. She said that she had lost her hand­kerchief and the man pulled out a red one and gave it to her.

  They then both went into Miller’s Court. Hutchinson fol­lowed but could no longer see them. He waited around for about 45 minutes to see if they would re-emerge but they did not.

  Impressively, Hutchinson’s statement to the press the fol­lowing day differs surprisingly little. He described the man as aged about 34 or 35, 5 feet 6 inches tall, of pale complexion (his press statement says ‘dark’) with dark eyes, dark hair and a slight moustache (press: dark and heavy) turned up at the ends. No side whiskers and his chin was clean shaven. He wore a long dark coat, its collar and cuffs trimmed with astrakhan and underneath a dark jacket, light waistcoat, white collar and black necktie with a horseshoe pin. His hat was of dark felt and turned down in the middle. He wore button boots under spats with light buttons. He had a thick gold watch chain with a big seal, a red stone hanging from it. He walked very softly and was of respectable and possibly Jewish appearance. Hutchinson was certain that he could identify him again and thought that he had seen him in Petticoat Lane on Sunday, but was not certain.

  Inspector Abberline, who interrogated Hutchinson on Monday evening, was certainly impressed. Hutchinson was slow in coming forward, probably because he was spotted lurking near Miller’s Court that night and this implied he was responsible for Kelly’s death. The fact that he overcame his fear of being suspected of her murder and gave evidence probably convinced Abberline that he was telling the truth. He immediately sent Hutchinson out with two constables to patrol the East End. They did so until three in the morning and again on the next day but to no avail. The Ripper had vanished forever.

  Jack’s Back

  ‘When the stolid English go in for a scare they take leave of all moderation and common sense. If nonsense were solid, the nonsense that was talked and written about those murders would sink a Dreadnaught.’

  Robert Anderson

  Following Mary Kelly’s death, Joe Barnett had been interro­gated for four hours, his clothing examined for bloodstains and his lodgings searched. He was released, cleared of sus­picion. Throughout the winter, the police continued their investigations, although overwhelmed by the size of the task. Despite the arrest of several suspects, none was ever charged with the murders. Kelly’s murder had brought a further flood of letters that had to be investigated. But with no recurrence of the Ripper’s activities, a gradual winding down began to take place towards the beginning of 1889. The amateur patrols and Vigilance Committees gave up due to the long hours.The special plain-clothes patrols were dis­banded around February 1889, not so much out of certainty that the Ripper was dead or locked in an asylum, but more from the financial strain of paying the extra night duty allowances. Many of the extra uniformed police drafted from other divisions were kept on, at least until the summer of the same year. There were the occasional scares that the Ripper had returned.

  Rose Mylett aka Lizzie Davis

  A 26-year-old prostitute, Mylett was found at 4.15am on 20 December 1888 in Clarke’s Yard near Poplar High Street by PC Robert Goulding. Her body was still warm and there was no obvious sign of injury. A post-mortem revealed that there was physical evidence to suggest that she had been strangled from behind by a thin cord. The marks, however, were very faint and only covered a quarter of her neck. Despite one witness claiming Mylett had been drunk that night, no alcohol was found in her stomach. The police doubted the verdict of homicide, and were unable to find any cord near the scene. Dr Thomas Bond was asked to con­duct a further post-mortem, he p
roposed that Mylett had choked to death while drunk, the mark on her neck caused by her stiff velvet collar. Bond’s evidence was thrown out at the coroner’s inquest by Wynne Baxter, who resented the intrusion. The jury brought in the same verdict as for the Ripper’s victims. Robert Anderson would later write that, if not for the Jack the Ripper scare, ‘no one would have thought of suggesting that it was a homicide’.

  Alice McKenzie aka Clay Pipe Alice

  Alice McKenzie, 40, was a charwoman and occasional pros­titute. She lived at a common lodging house at 52, Gun Street with a labourer, John McCormick. On 16 July 1889, McCormick gave Alice their doss money for the night but they had quarrelled that day and Alice took the money and went out drinking. She was last seen some time between 11.30pm and midnight by a friend, Margaret Franklin.

  Franklin was sitting with two other friends outside a barber’s shop in Brick Lane when McKenzie hurried past. She chatted briefly but told Franklin that she could not stop.

  Her body was found at 12.50am by PC Joseph Allen in Castle Alley off Whitechapel High Street.The same alley had been empty half an hour before when Allen had previously been there. McKenzie’s throat had been cut, her skirts were raised and her abdomen mutilated. However, while her left carotid artery had been severed like the Ripper’s other vic­tims, the two jagged wounds did not penetrate to the spinal column, nor did they extend around the neck. The greater of the two was only 4 inches in length. The abdominal wounds were mainly no more than scratches. The deepest was seven inches and divided the skin and subcutaneous tissue without opening the abdomen itself. Whereas most evidence pointed to the Ripper being right-handed, these appeared to have been inflicted by a left-handed assailant. Bagster Phillips conducted the post-mortem with Thomas Bond making his own examination the day afterwards. Bond disagreed with Phillips’ left-handed proposal and with his suggestion that the knife had been much shorter than that used on the other victims. While Phillips saw just another murder, Bond believed that the Ripper had killed McKenzie. Whether she was a victim of the Ripper or a possible copy­cat killer remains uncertain but the day of her murder saw plain-clothes detectives being redeployed on the streets of Whitechapel.

  No further outrages occurred that year and in April 1890 plain-clothes police were finally withdrawn. But in February 1891 there was to be one last scare.

  Frances Coles

  Frances Coles was a 26-year-old prostitute who, for eight years, had managed to conceal the fact from both her elderly father and her sister, Mary Ann. They believed that she worked for a chemist. It is possible that they both had their suspicions. Mary Ann noted that on later visits her sister looked ‘very poor and very dirty and sometimes smelt of drink’.

  On 11 February 1891, James Thomas Sadler, a 53-year-old ship’s fireman was discharged from his ship, SS Fez, and headed towards Commercial Street. Sadler had previously been a client of Coles’ and they met once more in the Princess Alice.They slept together that night and spent most of the next day drinking in various pubs in the area. At some point that evening the couple quarrelled. Sadler had suppos­edly been mugged in Thrawl Street and had asked Coles for money. She had refused and they separated. Coles had returned to her lodgings in White’s Row and passed out at the kitchen table. Sadler arrived, the worse for drink and bleeding. However, as neither he nor Coles had money to doss, the watchman encouraged first Sadler, then Coles to leave.

  At around 1.45am on Friday 13 February, Coles was turned out of Shuttleworth’s Eating House in Wentworth Street and headed toward Brick Lane. At 2.15am PC Ernest Thompson’s first solo patrol of his career was to prove his most memorable. As he walked along Chamber Street, just off Leman Street, Thompson heard a man’s footsteps walk­ing unhurriedly away from him towards Mansell Street. He gave it no thought until, turning into Swallow Gardens, a passageway under the railway arches, he found the body of Frances Coles. Her throat had been cut and her blood still flowed. Worse, as he approached, she opened one eye. Thompson blew his whistle for assistance and, as he waited, Coles died.

  Both Dr Phillips, who conducted the autopsy, and Dr Oxley, who was the first at the scene, agreed that Coles had had her throat cut after being flung to the ground. Coles’ clothing had not been touched and there were no abdominal wounds. Both doctors concurred it was unlikely that the assailant had been the Ripper.

  The police quickly arrested Sadler. He had returned to the White’s Row lodging house at about 3.00am. He was blood­stained. He claimed he had been robbed again, this time in Ratcliffe Highway. Another witness identified Sadler as the man who had sold him a knife for a shilling and some tobacco at 10.15am that morning.After Sadler had been charged with murder on 16 February, detectives began to think carefully about the possibility that they might just have caught Jack the Ripper. It did not take long for their hopes to be dashed.

  Witnesses soon cleared Sadler of being with Coles later that night and proved that his second beating, courtesy of some dock labourers, had occurred. The knife, it turned out, was so blunt when it had been sold that the witness had to sharpen it before he could use it. Witnesses also stated that Sadler had been so drunk it was unlikely that he would have been able to control his hands enough to inflict Coles’ wounds. The inquest verdict of ‘Murder by some person or persons unknown’ cleared him.The case for Sadler being the Ripper finally fell apart when it was found that he had been at sea from 17 August to 1 October 1888.

  After this point there were no more Ripper-style killings. The file at the Met remained open but suspects were thin on the ground. The Ripper disappeared into the fog of history in much the same way that movies depict him swirling off into London pea-soupers. Behind him he left the bodies of at least four women (Nichols, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly) and quite probably six (these plus Tabram and Stride), possibly more. Ahead of him lay a century and more of the­orising, arguments, backbiting, fraudulence and the muti­lated corpses of several reputations.

  The Suspects Assemble

  ‘Theories! We were almost lost in theories; there were so many of them’ Inspector Abberline, quoted in Cassell’s Saturday Journal, 22 May 1892

  ‘Too many Rippers and not enough corpses’ could easily be the motto of anyone hoping to solve Jack the Ripper’s crimes. The sheer wealth of possible Rippers ranges from those considered by the police at the time right up until the present day.

  Given that various theorists could devote a whole book to just one of these possible Rippers, we can’t possibly hope to do justice (or bring justice) to any of them.You too could be a Ripperologist – just perm one from any of the following then match it against the murdered prostitutes that best fit your theory.

  FBI psychological profile

  In 1988 the Feds prepared a profile, specifically for the docu­mentary ‘The Secret Identity of Jack the Ripper’. It contained the following observations: ‘A local, resident male in his late twenties. Since the murders generally occurred at weekends, he was probably employed. Murders took place between mid­night and 6am, suggesting that he was single, with no familial ties. Of low class, since murders evinced marked unfastidious­ness. Not surgically skilled or possessing anatomical knowl­edge. Probably known to the police. Seen by acquaintances as a loner. Probably abused/deserted as a child by his mother.’

  ‘Dr Stanley’ (?–c.1918)

  Fingered by Leonard Matters in The Mystery of Jack the Ripper (1929, reissued 1948)

  The first full-length English language Ripper tome ‘names’ this brilliant Royal surgeon. His son supposedly caught syphilis from Mary Jane Kelly, leading to his untimely death. Once ‘Stanley’ had eased his grief by carving up Kelly and her associates he took a world cruise, settling in Buenos Aires in 1908. Matters’ source was an unreferenced Buenos Aires journal in which an anonymous former student of Stanley’s was summoned to the great man’s deathbed in time to hear his confession. Daniel Farson, in Jack the Ripper (1972), cited a letter from a Mr Barca of Streatham. Barca claimed that a Buenos Aires dive called Sally’s Bar h
ad been reputed to be owned by Jack the Ripper. Colin Wilson would later hear from Mr AL Lee of Torquay. Mr Lee’s father had supposedly met Dr Stanley while working at Golden Lane mortuary. All well and good, except Matters admitted in his book that the name was fictitious. And Kelly’s post­mortem makes no mention of syphilis.

  Olga Tchkersoff (?–?)

  Fingered by ET Woodhall in Jack the Ripper: Or When London Walked in Terror (1937)

  Tchkersoff was a Russian immigrant whose sister, Vera, was a prostitute who died after an abortion. Needless to say, it was all Mary Jane Kelly’s fault again. The death of Olga’s father from pneumonia and her mother due to alcoholism in 1888 pushed Olga over the edge and the rest is history. Possibly. After Mary Kelly’s murder, Inspector Abberline postulated a ‘Jill the Ripper’ to his mentor, Dr Thomas Dutton. Abberline’s reasoning rested mainly on Mrs Maxwell’s testimony that she’d seen Kelly alive the morning after her murder. If the killer was female, she could have burned her own bloodstained clothes then worn Kelly’s to leave Miller’s Court, which may have accounted for Mrs Maxwell’s supposed sighting, (although Kelly’s clothes were reportedly found piled neatly on a chair at Miller’s Court).

  Another ‘Jill the Ripper’ theory was expounded by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A midwife would probably already be blood-spattered so could pass without question through the East End streets. A male killer disguised as a midwife could do so equally well.William Stewart in Jack the Ripper – A New Theory (1939) (and later, Ex-Detective Inspector Arthur Butler) advanced the theory that Jill was a backstreet abor­tionist, murdering and blackmailing prostitutes to cover up her trade.Their belief, that Kelly brought the ‘mad midwife’ into her house in order to abort a child she couldn’t afford, falls at Dr Thomas Bond’s autopsy findings that Kelly wasn’t pregnant. Stewart advanced Mary Pearcey as a suspect. Like George Chapman and others (see below), she seems to have been a suspect mainly because in October 1890 she mur­dered her lover’s wife and child. Pearcey was hanged in December 1890. Stewart saw certain similarities between Pearcey’s m.o. (slit throats, killing in private and dumping bodies in a public place) and the Whitechapel murderer.Tom Cullen suggested Stewart had overlooked the possibility of a vengeful lesbian lover. He singled out Kelly’s friend, Maria Harvey as the possible culprit, although she reportedly left before Barnett was ejected.