The Complete and Essential Jack the Ripper (9 page)

‘Lipski’ was a direct reference to the notorious case of Israel Lipski, convicted of the murder of Miriam Angel at 16 Batty Street in 1887 and who was hanged at Newgate for the crime. Since then the word had been used ‘by persons as mere ejaculation by way of endeavouring to insult the Jew to whom it has been addressed’.
²⁰
Schwartz, a young Hungarian immigrant, was of decidedly Jewish appearance. The
Star
was the only newspaper to cover the incident in any depth, interviewing Schwartz with the aid of an interpreter. Their report
²¹
added other details, some of which contradicted the original statement, despite the basic story being essentially the same. Schwartz described the attacker as intoxicated in the
Star
interview. In the police statement, he tried to pull the woman
from
the passage, whereas in the
Star
, he tried to push her
into
the passage. In the
Star
interview, it was the second man (not the attacker) who yelled ‘a warning’ (as opposed to ‘Lipski!’ in the police statement). In the interview, the second man had a red moustache, but no mention of this is made in Swanson’s report. And, significantly, the
Star
stated that the second man was holding a
knife
, not a pipe.

Another intriguing press account came in the form of Fanny Mortimer, a resident of 36 Berner Street, a mere two doors down from Dutfield’s Yard. She stated that she was standing at her door for much of the time between 12.30 and 1.00 that morning. She heard no noise and the only person she saw was a man holding a black bag who walked along Berner Street, looking up at the club as he passed, before turning the corner by the school.
²²
Moments after going back into her house, she
claimed she heard a commotion from the working men’s club. Mrs Mortimer’s account flies in the face of testimony from PC Smith and Israel Schwartz – it raises questions regarding the accuracy of her timekeeping and the duration of her stay at the door. She did see a man with a black bag, a man who was a member of the International Working Men’s Educational Club named Leon Goldstein and who had been encouraged to come forward after the sighting was made public.
²³
The commotion she heard from the club was not ‘another row’, as she described it, but the activity surrounding the discovery of a dead woman in Dutfield’s Yard.

It was the steward of the club, Louis Diemschitz, who found the body of Elizabeth Stride in the yard at 1.00 a.m. As would be normal after a long day’s work (Diemschitz was a market trader who that day had been working in Sydenham), he was driving his pony and cart into Dutfield’s Yard with the purpose of dropping off some unsold goods before stabling the pony in George Yard, Cable Street. On this occasion the pony stopped at the entrance and pulled to one side. Diemschitz could see something in the way and prodded it with his crop before getting off the cart and striking a match to get a better view in the dark. Before the wind blew the match out, he could see a woman lying on the ground. Initially worried that it was his wife, he went into the club and, finding her safe and well, went back into the yard with Morris Eagle and Isaac Kozebrodsky, at which time he wasn’t sure if the woman was dead. By the light of a candle, the men could see blood on the cobbles near the body. Without touching anything, the men went out into Berner Street and separated, looking for the police. Diemschitz and Kozebrodsky, running towards Fairclough Street and beyond, encountered only Edward Spooner, but Eagle, going north into Commercial Road found PCs
Henry Lamb and Henry Collins, who accompanied him back to Dutfield’s Yard.

PC Collins was sent to fetch Dr Frederick Blackwell from his surgery at 100 Commercial Road, but, as he was still in bed, Blackwell’s assistant Edward Johnson went to Berner Street first. PC Lamb sent Morris Eagle to fetch an inspector from Leman Street police station and examined the body, noting there was no pulse and that the face was quite warm. As he did so, people began to enter Dutfield’s Yard, but he told them to keep back, eventually closing the gates to the yard assisted by Edward Spooner, who had followed Diemschitz and Kozebrodsky back to the scene. A constable was put on the gate, allowing nobody to leave or enter, and PC Lamb made an examination of Dutfield’s Yard and the club building. In the club, he checked the hands of attendants for bloodstains.
²⁴
Edward Johnson made initial observations on the body before Dr Blackwell arrived at 1.16 a.m. He observed that

The deceased was lying on her left side obliquely across the passage, her face looking towards the right wall. Her legs were drawn up, her feet close against the wall of the right side of the passage. Her head was resting beyond the carriage-wheel rut, the neck lying over the rut. Her feet were three yards from the gateway. Her dress was unfastened at the neck. The neck and chest were quite warm, as were also the legs, and the face was slightly warm. The hands were cold. The right hand was open and on the chest, and was smeared with blood. The left hand, lying on the ground, was partially closed, and contained a small packet of cachous wrapped in tissue paper. There were no rings, nor marks of rings, on her hands. The appearance of the face was quite placid. The mouth was slightly open. The deceased had round her neck a check silk scarf, the bow of
which was turned to the left and pulled very tight. In the neck there was a long incision which exactly corresponded with the lower border of the scarf. The border was slightly frayed, as if by a sharp knife. The incision in the neck commenced on the left side, 2 inches below the angle of the jaw, and almost in a direct line with it, nearly severing the vessels on that side, cutting the windpipe completely in two, and terminating on the opposite side 1 inch below the angle of the right jaw, but without severing the vessels on that side. I could not ascertain whether the bloody hand had been moved. The blood was running down the gutter into the drain in the opposite direction from the feet. There was about 1lb of clotted blood close by the body, and a stream all the way from there to the back door of the club.
²⁵

More police officers arrived at the scene, as did Dr George Bagster Phillips. It was not until 4.30 a.m. that the body of Elizabeth Stride was removed to the nearest mortuary, a small brick building within the grounds of St George-in-the-East church at the junction of Cannon Street Road and Cable Street. Within the hour, PC Collins had washed the blood away from the yard. But by this time news was rapidly circulating that another murder had taken place, this time within the bounds of the City of London.

At 1.30 a.m., City Police Constable Edward Watkins entered Mitre Square from Mitre Street, something he had done several times since commencing his beat at 10.00 the previous night and, with his lantern turned on and attached to his belt, he examined the various corners and passages. Mitre Square was surrounded mostly by tall warehouses, and there were also two dwelling houses in the north-east side, one of which was unoccupied. Other than the entrance from Mitre Street, the small covered St James’s Passage gave access to St James’s Place (also known as ‘the Orange Market’) and on the opposite corner, narrow Church Passage ran to Duke Street. The south-east corner, at the rear of Tayler’s picture-framing shop in Mitre Street, was the darkest part of the square, gaining little illumination from the two gas lamps which served the immediate area. Satisfied that all was well, PC Watkins continued on his way. He returned at 1.44 a.m., immediately turned right into the dark corner and, on shining his lamp into the darkness, found the body of a woman in a terrible state of mutilation:

I saw the body of the woman lying there on her back with her feet facing the square, her clothes up above her waist. I saw her throat was cut and her bowels protruding. The stomach was ripped up, she was lying in a pool of blood.
¹

Watkins immediately ran across the square to the warehouse of Kearley and Tonge and alerted the night watchman there, retired Metropolitan Police officer George Morris. On being told that there had been ‘another woman cut to pieces’, Morris fetched his lamp and accompanied Watkins to the body. Being in possession of his old police whistle (City police did not carry them), he blew it and ran into Mitre Street towards Aldgate, whereupon he was approached by two officers, PCs James Harvey and Frederick Holland. Returning with Morris to the scene, Holland immediately went to fetch Dr George Sequeira from his surgery in Jewry Street, and Harvey remained by the body with Watkins. Joining them were Detectives Edward Marriott, Robert Outram and Daniel Halse, who had heard the alarm being raised as they stood talking at the bottom of Houndsditch a few hundred yards away. At Bishopsgate police station, Inspector Collard got word of the murder and sent for Dr Frederick Gordon Brown before rushing to Mitre Square, finding the various police officers by the body with Dr Sequeira, who had arrived at about 1.55 a.m. From then on, officials began to assemble quickly as the small gaggle of men were joined by Dr Brown and Superintendents James McWilliam and Alfred Foster, who set about instructing their men to make a search of the immediate vicinity and surrounding streets.

Sometime after 2.20 a.m., the body was conveyed to the mortuary on Golden Lane and stripped, Inspector Collard making a list of her clothing and possessions. Dr Brown conducted the post-mortem that afternoon, assisted and observed by Dr Sequeira, Dr George Bagster Phillips and Dr William Sedgewick Saunders. The woman’s injuries were extensive:

The face was very much mutilated. There was a cut about a quarter of an inch through the lower left eyelid, dividing the
structures completely through. The upper eyelid on that side, there was a scratch through the skin on the left upper eyelid, near to the angle of the nose. The right eyelid was cut through to about half an inch. There was a deep cut over the bridge of the nose, extending from the left border of the nasal bone down near the angle of the jaw on the right side of the cheek. This cut went into the bone and divided all the structures of the cheek except the mucous membrane of the mouth. The tip of the nose was quite detached by an oblique cut from the bottom of the nasal bone to where the wings of the nose join on to the face. A cut from this divided the upper lip and extended through the substance of the gum over the right upper lateral incisor tooth. About half an inch from the top of the nose was another oblique cut. There was a cut on the right angle of the mouth as if the cut of a point of a knife. The cut extended an inch and a half, parallel with the lower lip. There was on each side of cheek a cut which peeled up the skin, forming a triangular flap about an inch and a half. On the left cheek there were two abrasions of the epithelium under the left ear.

The throat was cut across to the extent of about six or seven inches. A superficial cut commenced about an inch and a half below the lobe below, and about two and a half inches behind the left ear, and extended across the throat to about three inches below the lobe of the right ear. The big muscle across the throat was divided through on the left side. The large vessels on the left side of the neck were severed. The larynx was severed below the vocal cord. All the deep structures were severed to the bone, the knife marking intervertebral cartilages. The sheath of the vessels on the right side was just opened. The carotid artery had a fine hole opening, the internal jugular vein was opened about an inch and a half – not divided.
The blood vessels contained clot. All these injuries were performed by a sharp instrument like a knife, and pointed.

The cause of death was haemorrhage from the left common carotid artery. The death was immediate and the mutilations were inflicted after death.

The front walls were laid open from the breast bones to the pubes. The cut commenced opposite the enciform cartilage. The incision went upwards, not penetrating the skin that was over the sternum. It then divided the enciform cartilage. The knife must have cut obliquely at the expense of that cartilage. Behind this, the liver was stabbed as if by the point of a sharp instrument. Below this was another incision into the liver of about two and a half inches, and below this the left lobe of the liver was slit through by a vertical cut. Two cuts were shewn by a jagging of the skin on the left side. The abdominal walls were divided in the middle line to within a quarter of an inch of the navel. The cut then took a horizontal course for two inches and a half towards the right side. It then divided round the navel on the left side, and made a parallel incision to the former horizontal incision, leaving the navel on a tongue of skin. Attached to the navel was two and a half inches of the lower part of the rectus muscle on the left side of the abdomen. The incision then took an oblique direction to the right and was shelving. The incision went down the right side of the vagina and rectum for half an inch behind the rectum.

There was a stab of about an inch on the left groin. This was done by a pointed instrument. Below this was a cut of three inches going through all tissues making a wound of the peritoneum about the same extent. An inch below the crease of the thigh was a cut extending from the anterior spine of the ilium obliquely down the inner side of the left thigh and separating the left labium, forming a flap of skin up to the groin.
The left rectus muscle was not detached. There was a flap of skin formed by the right thigh, attaching the right labium, and extending up to the spine of the ilium. The muscles on the right side inserted into the frontal ligaments were cut through. The skin was retracted through the whole of the cut through the abdomen, but the vessels were not clotted. Nor had there been any appreciable bleeding from the vessels. I draw the conclusion that the act was made after death, and there would not have been much blood on the murderer. The cut was made by someone on the right side of the body, kneeling below the middle of the body.

I removed the content of the stomach and placed it in a jar for further examination. There seemed very little in it in the way of food or fluid, but from the cut end partly digested farinaceous food escaped. The intestines had been detached to a large extent from the mesentery. About two feet of the colon was cut away. The sigmoid flexure was invaginated into the rectum very tightly. Right kidney was pale, bloodless with slight congestion of the base of the pyramids. There was a cut from the upper part of the slit on the under surface of the liver to the left side, and another cut at right angles to this, which were about an inch and a half deep and two and a half inches long. Liver itself was healthy. The gall bladder contained bile. The pancreas was cut, but not through, on the left side of the spinal column. Three and a half inches of the lower border of the spleen by half an inch was attached only to the peritoneum. The peritoneal lining was cut through on the left side and the left kidney carefully taken out and removed. The left renal artery was cut through. I would say that someone who knew the position of the kidney must have done it. The lining membrane over the uterus was cut through. The womb was cut through horizontally, leaving a stump of three quarters of an
inch. The rest of the womb had been taken away with some of the ligaments. The vagina and cervix of the womb was uninjured.

Attention was also drawn to a dirty linen apron worn by the deceased over her skirts, a portion of which was missing. It transpired that the fragment had already been found, at 2.55 a.m. by PC Alfred Long, a Metropolitan Police officer on his beat walking through Goulston Street, Whitechapel. The portion was found in the open doorway to 108–119 Wentworth Dwellings and appeared to be partly wet with blood. He at once searched the staircases and other parts of the building without any result, but he had noticed, on the wall above the apron, some writing in white chalk upon the black brickwork. According to PC Long’s transcription of the message in his notebook, it read: ‘The
Juews
are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.’
²
He was sure that neither the apron piece nor the writing were there when he passed along Goulston Street at 2.20 a.m. Detective Halse had also passed through the street at about that time while conducting his neighbourhood searches and had not noticed anything out of the ordinary then. Once news of the discovery had reached Leman Street police station, numerous officers from both the Metropolitan and City forces converged on Goulston Street. Directions were given by Inspector McWilliam of the City Police to have the writing photographed;
³
however, Superintendent Thomas Arnold from the Metropolitan force was desirous that the writing be erased lest it cause a riot against the local Jewish community in the wake of the recent accusations against them and excitement that had surrounded ‘Leather Apron’.
⁴
Arnold’s concern was vindicated following the arrival of Sir Charles Warren, who at 5.30 a.m., despite the urgings of some
officers to have the offending part of the message covered prior to photographs being taken, ordered the erasure of the writing. A police constable who had been standing by with a wet sponge for some time awaiting further instructions did the deed. Warren later gave an explanation to the home secretary:

A discussion took place whether the writing could be left covered up or otherwise or whether any portion of it could be left for an hour until it could be photographed; but after taking into consideration the excited state of the population in London generally at the time, the strong feeling which had been excited against the Jews, and the fact that in a short time there would be a large concourse of the people in the streets, and having before me the Report that if it was left there the house was likely to be wrecked (in which from my own observation I entirely concurred) I considered it desirable to obliterate the writing at once.
⁵

Of course, there is little to suggest that the message was
actually
written by the murderer, and the possibility of it being anti-Semitic graffiti (of which there was much at the time) cannot be ignored. However, Warren’s decision may have averted a disaster of great magnitude, even though he was roundly criticized for his judgement – Sir Robert Anderson later described the erasure as an act of ‘crass stupidity’.
⁶

The inquests into the two murders, for a time, ran concurrently, the Stride inquest being the longest, as was a characteristic of Wynne Baxter’s proceedings. A number of witnesses were called who were able to give more details about the night of Stride’s death; William West furnished the inquest with a detailed description of the crime scene and the
club and testified that he had left the premises at 12.15 a.m. and had seen nothing unusual, noting that the gates of Dutfield’s Yard were wide open.
⁷
Club member Joseph Lave also stated that he had left at 12.40 a.m. to catch some air and again saw nothing unusual – the yard was so dark he had to feel his way along the wall to reach the street.
⁸
Identification of Stride’s body came quickly, but not without a little trouble; Mary Malcolm, a resident of Red Lion Square, Holborn, claimed that on the night of the murder she had felt a hand on her chest as she lay in bed and was kissed three times by a presence she was convinced was her sister Elizabeth Watts. Concerned for the well-being of her sibling, Mary visited the mortuary twice and identified the body as that of her sister, pointing out some distinguishing marks into the bargain.
⁹
The whole claim was reduced to a sham when Mrs Malcolm’s sister, now remarried as Elizabeth Stokes, made an appearance to vouch for her safety.

Identifying the woman found in Mitre Square was a different matter. The body lay in the Golden Lane mortuary for several days until John Kelly, a labourer living at a lodging house at 55 Flower and Dean Street, identified the woman as his common-law wife, Catherine Conway. Soon after, Eliza Gold, a widow living in Thrawl Street, identified her as her sister, Catherine Eddowes.

Catherine Eddowes was born in Wolverhampton on 14 April 1842, the sixth of twelve children born to George Eddowes and his wife Catherine. The family moved to Bermondsey in London before Catherine was two years old, and she was subsequently educated at St John’s Charity School, Potter’s Field, Tooley Street. Her mother died in 1855, and her father two years later, from which point most of her siblings entered Bermondsey workhouse and industrial school. According to later
press reports, she returned to the care of her aunt in Bilston Street, Wolverhampton, and found employment as a tin-plate stamper.
¹⁰
Around 1862 she began a relationship with an army pensioner named Thomas Conway (formerly enlisted in the 18th Royal Irish Regiment under the name Quinn and drawing a regimental pension under that name), who at that time was earning a living writing and selling chapbooks, cheap books sold on the streets by pedlars, the content usually being political or religious tracts, histories, nursery rhymes or accounts of current events. Together, they eked out a living this way around Birmingham and the Midlands, and in 1863, their first child, Catherine Ann Conway (‘Annie’), was born in Norfolk.
¹¹