Complete History of Jack the Ripper (59 page)

Maria Harvey, our first witness, was a laundress. She was also
one of Mary Kelly’s closest friends. Indeed, on the nights of 5 and 6 November Mary had put Maria up in No. 13. Although Maria had since found a room of her own, at 3 New Court, Dorset Street, the two women enjoyed each other’s company. So Maria spent the whole afternoon of Thursday 8 November with Mary and was still there when Joe Barnett called early in the evening.

After Barnett’s arrival, however, she left. Maria must have known about her friend’s recent quarrel with Barnett but she seems to have felt no apprehension in leaving them alone together. ‘They seemed,’ she would tell the police next day, ‘to be on the best of terms.’ The laundress left some clothes in No. 13 – a man’s black overcoat, two men’s cotton shirts, a boy’s shirt, a girl’s white petticoat, a black crepe bonnet with black strings and a pawn ticket for a shawl. The next time she saw the overcoat it was in the custody of the police. Abberline had a special interest, of course, in identifying this item. It is possible that the other garments were consumed in the flames of the Ripper’s fire but the silence of our sources respecting them does not preclude the possibility that they were also found by the police in the room.
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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.
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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 Maxwell 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’s
⁹
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.