Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman (14 page)

Israel Schwartz was the last person known to have seen Elizabeth Stride alive when she was attacked, though he made no mention of her assailant wielding a knife; he did, however, state that he saw a knife in the hand of the man with the pipe. He described the woman’s attacker as aged about thirty, 5ft 5in in height, with a fair complexion, dark hair and a short moustache, wide shoulders, dark jacket, trousers and a black peaked cap. Under Inspector Abberline’s intensive questioning, Schwartz could not say if the man attacking the deceased and the man running after him were acting in concert or not.

According to Dr Blackwell, Elizabeth Stride had died at some time after 12.46 a.m., perhaps even after 12.56. The victim’s throat had been cut. There had been no robbery as far as anyone could tell; the deceased’s clothing had not been interfered with, and there was no evidence of a struggle or sexual assault. So the motive for her murder, as for those of Mary Ann Nichols and Dark Annie Chapman before her, was inexplicable.

But there was something strange: the beat of P.C. William Smith, which took about 30 minutes for him to complete, brought him along Berner Street. At a time between 12.30 and 12.35, he passed a man and a woman wearing a single red rose on maidenhair fern in her buttonhole, both of whom he observed carefully, in
accordance
with his orders (in case the woman might be protecting the man). He later identified the female as the deceased. The man and woman were talking together on the other side of the street, opposite the gates to Dutfield’s Yard.

At about 12.45, some 10 or perhaps 15 minutes later, James Brown, a dock labourer, saw a man and a woman talking together at the corner of Berner Street and Fairclough Street. When questioned by the coroner, Wynne Baxter, at Stride’s inquest on 5 October, Brown said he was “almost certain” that the woman he had seen was the same woman he had identified in the mortuary, Elizabeth Stride, but when pressed, he said he had
not
seen a red rose in her jacket. Since he could not possibly have missed seeing the flower if the woman he saw was wearing one, whomever he had seen it was not Elizabeth Stride. Since Stride was middle-aged, it seems reasonable to assume that the woman Brown saw was of a similar age. The woman, who was just yards away from where the murder was committed just a few minutes later, has never been identified. Was she perhaps the murderer?

Since the time of Brown’s sighting, at 12.45 according to his statement, was the very same time that Israel Schwartz said it was when he was walking down Berner Street, one of them must have been mistaken. On a balance of probabilities, it was more likely that it was James Brown who had made the error. He left his home not long after 12.10 a.m., and had not checked the time since.

Within three weeks of the murder, about eighty suspects who had been detained by the police were cleared of any involvement in the crime, while a further three hundred more were investigated, but without result. No one whom the detectives questioned could throw any light on the crime, or suggest a credible suspect. The murderer had vanished.

The Star
on 1 October stated: “He must be inoffensive,
probably
respectable in manner and appearance, or else after the murderous warnings of last week, woman after woman could not have been decoyed by him. Two theories are suggested to us – that he may wear women’s clothes, or may be a policeman.”

The attacks seemed to be getting more brutal with the discovery of each new body. Mary Ann Nichols, who was throttled and had had her throat cut, sustained severe abdominal injuries; Annie Chapman was partially throttled, her throat cut, her abdomen torn open and her uterus ripped out. But in the case of Elizabeth Stride only her throat had been cut; so why was that all?

One popular opinion is that Diemschutz had disturbed the murderer before further injury could be inflicted. It was clear that the murder had only just happened, as evidenced by the blood that was still flowing from the open wound to the victim’s neck. Another, equally likely possibility, is that the murderer intended only to kill Elizabeth Stride, but not to mutilate her body.

The police line of thought was that the murderer may have stayed hidden in the yard until the coast was clear, and escaped when the driver ran into the club to seek help – which was a reasonable assumption to make. Alternatively, by the time Diemschutz arrived at the yard with his pony and cart, the killer had only just left; but Diemschutz had neither seen nor heard anyone leaving the scene of the crime. Yet that was not unusual. As the police would have been the first to admit, no one had been seen or heard fleeing from the scenes of the Nichols and Chapman murders either. In all three cases, after committing the crimes, the murderer had simply disappeared, as though into thin air, avoiding police patrols and passing through tight cordons, leaving no trace or clue behind.

The scene of the second murder in Mitre Square could be reached on foot within twelve minutes or so from Berner Street if one walked at a quick pace. The desolate, run-down square was surrounded by abandoned slums, warehouses and derelict tenements, and was accessible only by one of three long, ill-lit passageways. And it was in the darkest corner of this dimly lit square that the butchered body of Catherine Eddowes was
discovered
by a lone constable patrolling his beat.

At 1.44 a.m. P.C. Edward Watkins, regarded by his superiors as a reliable and trustworthy officer, turned into the narrow passageway that led to Mitre Square. He was proceeding at the slow, regulation pace of 2½ miles an hour, and passed between the premises of Williams and Co. on his left and Taylor’s shop on his right.

There were three gas-lamps lighting the square, but the one in Church Passage at the far end was too far away to provide any effective light. Another lamp, near the corner on the opposite side of the square, was defective, and emitted just a feeble orange glow. The only other lamp was at the entrance to the passageway, but the side wall of Taylor’s shop was blocking its light, so the south corner of the square was in almost, though not total, darkness. When P.C. Watkins entered the square and directed the dull yellow beam of his lamp into this corner, a popular spot for prostitutes to conduct their business, he made his gruesome discovery.

It was the body of a woman lying on her back in a widening pool of blood, her skirts pushed up above her waist, her face a
patchwork
of lacerated flesh, skin and blood. Her throat had been severed, her abdomen ripped open, and her bowels were in full view. The intestines were drawn out of the body in a manner reminiscent of Annie Chapman’s injuries, and these lay on her chest and over the right shoulder, while a second, detached piece, about two feet long, lay between the body and left arm.

P.C. Watkins described his find to
The Star
newspaper later that day: “She’d been ripped up like a pig in the market,” while he told
The Daily News
, “…the stomach was laid bare, with a dreadful gash from the pit of the stomach to the breast. On examining the body I found the entrails cut out and laid round the throat, which had an awful gash in it, extending from ear to ear. In fact, the head was nearly severed from the body. Blood was everywhere to be seen…. A more dreadful sight I never saw.”

Inspector Edward Collard was on duty in Bishopsgate Police Station when news of the second murder broke. He immediately sent for Dr Frederick Gordon Brown, the City of London Police Surgeon, who lived in Finsbury Circus, instructing him to go directly to Mitre Square.

When Dr Brown arrived at 2.18 a.m., he found Dr George William Sequeira, a surgeon who lived in Aldgate, already there, though Dr Sequeira had not examined the body. Dr Brown carried out a thorough examination of Catherine Eddowes’s body, after which he gave his opinion that the victim had died almost instantly when her throat was severed. The cut, which he said had been made from left to right, was so savage and delivered with such force that the victim’s head was almost separated from her shoulders.

Catherine Eddowes’s face was cut to ribbons but, because of the great amount of blood, it was difficult to discern the extent of her injuries. The eyelids, nose, mouth, cheeks and one ear were all slashed, she had lost the tip of her nose in the attack, and, strangely, a triangular flap of skin, about 1½ inches in height, was cut into each of her cheeks by four oblique incisions, in the shape of what appeared to be the inverted letter V.

The apron, which was still tied around the victim’s waist, was cut by what appeared to have been the single stroke of a knife. The severed part, about half of the apron, was nowhere to be found. His examination complete, the doctor called for the ambulance and gave instructions for the body to be taken to the City Mortuary.

Dr Brown gave his view that the deceased had not tried to fight with her attacker, and when her throat was cut, she was already lying down on the wet ground. It had started to rain at 9.05 the previous evening, but ceased soon after midnight. Why Catherine Eddowes had not screamed or cried out, the doctor was quite unable to explain. Either the victim was strangled before her throat was cut, which author Philip Sugden (
The Complete History of Jack the Ripper
) believed to be the case, or, as seems more likely, the attack was unexpected when it came. Since the victim was a
prostitute
, one might think she was well used to defending herself against unruly and aggressive clients, and so the reason why she had not fought back was puzzling.

Detective Constable Daniel Halse, one of the first detectives on the scene, gave orders to search the neighbourhood and to stop and examine every man found on the streets. Proceeding to take an active part in the search, he himself stopped two men in Wentworth Street, but upon answering his questions satisfactorily and
displaying
no traces of blood, they were quickly released.

Inspector Collard passed out his orders: all neighbouring streets, alleys and passageways were to be combed inch by inch; houses, lodging houses and tenements were to be entered and searched, and their occupants questioned. Every male, whether in the company of a woman or not, was to be stopped, questioned and searched for traces of blood. Yet, despite all this intense activity, nothing suspicious was found.

Several police officers were instructed to make enquiries amongst the residents, and search the small cobbled square for clues. Sergeant Jones found three small black buttons, of a type used for women’s boots, in clotted blood near the left side of the victim’s neck. It was always assumed that they belonged to the victim, even though there was no evidence that they did. Furthermore, at the time of her death, the deceased was wearing a pair of men’s laced boots. Jones also found a small metal button in the clotted blood, and a metal thimble – the latter perhaps more closely associated with a woman than a man – near to the right hand. These items were also presumed to have belonged to the victim, although once again, there was nothing substantive to support this view. A small mustard tin found by the left side of the body contained two pawn tickets in the name of Kelly. Further enquiries established that the tin, at least, belonged to the victim, though this discovery led the investigation no further. Inspector Collard searched the pockets of the deceased, but was unable to find either money or any item of value.

Later on the day of the murder, Dr Brown performed the autopsy at the City Mortuary, while Mr Frederick William Foster, architect and surveyor, made a sketch of the wounds the victim had sustained. Brown confirmed that Eddowes had died after her throat was cut. The injuries to her abdomen, he thought, had been inflicted after death. The abdomen was cut open from the privates to the breasts. The left kidney had been extracted from the body, as had the uterus. Since neither organ could be found despite an intensive and wide-ranging search the police assumed that the murderer had taken them away; the reason why, Inspector Abberline said, was “an unfathomable mystery”. The doctor gave his opinion that the cut had been made by someone in a kneeling position on the right-hand side of the body. The weapon used was thought to be a sharp, pointed knife with a blade at least six inches long. Dr Brown also thought that the killer must have possessed some anatomical knowledge and surgical skill.

Dr Sequeira’s opinion concurred. He said that the murderer did not appear to possess “great anatomical skill”. He gave his further opinion that while the murderer could have been a qualified surgeon, he might equally have been a “hunter, butcher,
slaughter-man
or a medical student”. Whichever it might have been, some degree of medical knowledge had certainly been displayed.

It was a strange case. The murderer had never inflicted facial injuries in any of the previous killings, or carved on them what seemed to be any inverted letters either. But therein lay a clue, though my father and I did not realise it at the time. The victim’s uterus and left kidney were removed which, in Dr Brown’s
professional
opinion, would be “of no practical use”. This seemed at least to rule out author Tony Williams’s explanation for the removal of the uterus – that it was required for the purpose of Dr John Williams’s research into the cause or causes of infertility. But the reasons why the terrible facial injuries had been inflicted, the inverted Vs carved into each of the victim’s cheeks and her left kidney removed, remained a mystery.

News of the murders spread as far as America. The headline in
The New York Times
on 1 October read, ‘Dismay in Whitechapel. Two More Murdered Women Found’, while the editorial stated: “The Whitechapel fiend has again set that district and all London in a state of terror…”. The following day, the
Boston Daily Globe
commented, “One after another the mutilated bodies of the victims of this mysterious demon have been picked up on the most populous thoroughfares, but no one has seen the murderer, and the police know not where to turn to begin the task of discovery.” And in further comment which encapsulated the enormous, morbid, fascination the murders generated worldwide, “Such is the story of murder and mystery that now not only holds the attention of all England, but the entire civilized world.”