Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman (27 page)

The following year in 1890, he applied to cease performing the abdominal operations which had made his name within the medical profession, while the year after that he resigned his position as Dean of the Medical Committee at University College Hospital. Thereafter, he took no further part in managing the hospital. In 1893, five years after the murders at the age of
fifty-three,
Williams retired from the active staff of the hospital, although he continued to practice privately for another ten years.

Writing Sir John Williams’s obituary in University College Hospital’s in-house magazine
The Lancet
in 1926, Dr Herbert Spencer explained his friend’s early retirement from the hospital as “in part to considerations of health”. Ruth Evans repeated the same ‘official’ line and Tony Williams leapt to the obvious
conclusion
that the statement meant that it was Dr John Williams who had become ill, while all the evidence suggests that he had not. This argument is strengthened further by the fact that Dr John Williams lived for a further thirty-three – very active – years after his retirement from the hospital, while his wife, though ten years younger, lived for just another twenty-two years.

In fact, the statement is ambiguous; perhaps deliberately so, and may have been designed to mislead rather than illuminate. While it was generally taken to mean that it was Dr John Williams’s health that had suffered, it may equally have referred to the ill-health of his wife.

Tony Williams suggested that it was
guilt
which explained Dr Williams’s sudden loss of interest in medicine and the ambition that once had been his life’s driving force: his search to find a cure for infertility. But it did not seem to my father and me that it was his conscience that was troubling him, causing him to retire so early from the profession he loved. More likely it was the horrific discovery that his wife was a murderer – and the appalling realisation that he was indirectly to blame.

We believe that it was Lizzie Williams who had become unwell. Perhaps soon after the murders ended, and before the end of that calendar year, overcome by the strain, fear and enormity of what she had done, she suffered a delayed nervous or mental
breakdown
. In the circumstances, and coupled with her other traumas, such an illness would not have been surprising. Then she may have confessed her sins to her husband through endless floods of tears, while begging his forgiveness; this would explain the contents of the letter Tony Williams found among his great-great-uncle’s personal effects in the National Library of Wales. She may even have given him the shoe-maker’s knife, ‘well-ground down’, she had used in the Stride murder, as proof of her crimes, which he placed with his personal possessions, where it would remain undisturbed until its discovery by Tony Williams several decades later.

It is possible that, up to this point, Lizzie Williams had appeared to everyone – her husband, family, friends, and neighbours if she knew them – as perfectly normal, likeable even. She may have been quiet and reserved, or amiable and charming. But no one would have guessed at the burning turmoil which lay beneath her outer veneer of solid Victorian respectability, though it is clear that Dr Williams suspected that something was wrong with her – which was why he had kept a diary – and later removed its many telling pages.

Shocked by her admission, upset, confused and not knowing what he should do – except that he could not allow Lizzie to remain in London – Dr Williams made the arrangements he thought best and sent her back to her family in Wales, far away from Whitechapel and the police who were frantically searching for the murderer, known by the pseudonym Jack the Ripper. There, he knew she would be properly, and lovingly, cared for – and kept out of harm’s way – at least until the panic was over, and she was able to recover from her illness.

Just over two years later, on 31 March 1890, while his wife was recuperating in Wales, Dr John Williams moved again, this time to 63 Brook Street, also in London’s West End. It was an old house, somewhat dilapidated and, judging by the building tradesmen’s quotes that appear in his private papers, it needed substantial renovation. It seemed to us that his intention was to leave behind the ghosts of Queen Anne Street, with all the bad memories that the house held, and start afresh elsewhere – it would be a new start for Lizzie also when she was well enough to return. At this time, Dr Williams was highly regarded in his profession, numbering royalty and the top echelons of society among his patients. He must have envisaged a private practice lasting for many years into the future, which was why he sanctioned the expensive repairs to his new home, from where he also ran his surgery.

In 1894, and in gratitude for the years of service that Dr John Williams had devoted to the Royal family, he was elevated to the ranks of the nobility when he was awarded a baronetcy by Queen Victoria so that he became a Sir, and Lizzie took the courtesy title of Lady Williams. She was now entitled perhaps to enjoy the privilege of being hanged with a silk rope.

My father and I believe that by the early 1890s Lizzie Williams had recovered sufficiently from her breakdown to return to London from time to time, and during these visits Dr Williams made every effort to integrate her back into their everyday life, renew old friendships and meet with acquaintances. It appears that their lives may have returned to what they might have regarded as normal – at least for a while.

But early in 1903, Sir John Williams, as he now was, suddenly abandoned his lucrative private practice, and left London for rural Wales, never to practice medicine again. His life thereafter took an entirely different course. It provokes the question: why, and what was it that happened which caused him to change his plans so radically?

The answer might be found in a strange letter discovered by Tony Williams. It had been written by Sir John Williams just twenty-six months earlier, and sent to one of his patients, Mrs Margot Asquith. She was the wife of the future Liberal Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, whose term of office ran from 1908 to 1916. He had served as Home Secretary from 1892 to 1895, and was – in November 1900 – an opposition M.P.

The letter concerned Lizzie – Lady Williams – and was,
apparently
, viciously critical of her. Tony Williams took it as further evidence of the poor state of the marriage, but when my father and I read the letter, we felt it held far deeper significance than that. We also were unable to locate the letter that Margot Asquith had initially sent to Sir John Williams, which was odd, bearing in mind the pains he took to retain his personal correspondence – just like the pages removed from his 1888 diary, so the letter received by Sir John, which might have thrown so much more light on the matter, had disappeared. Nevertheless, we felt that much might be deduced from the content and tenor of Sir John’s letter.

The letter, dated 25 November 1900, reads in part, as follows:

The tone of the paragraph is sharp, but its message is clear, and one can only wonder what, following her recuperation in Wales, Lizzie Williams had said or done to have caused such acerbic comment to be made about her. Whatever it was, Margot Asquith had considered that it was of such a serious and derogatory nature that she was compelled to write to Sir John Williams informing him about it. Clearly, it was both important, and highly critical of Lady Williams; something that Sir John appeared to brush aside and ignore, so as to nip the incident in the bud. But his blithe dismissal obscured a deep unease that was impossible for him to mask. Whatever the content of the letter, we felt that it supported our belief that it was Lizzie Williams who had suffered a breakdown and was now thought to have recovered, but clearly she was far from well.

Perhaps the next paragraph in Sir John Williams’s reply to Margot Asquith provides a clue as to the content of the letter he had received from her:

To what ‘foolish and wicked talk’ might Sir John have been referring which had troubled him ‘beyond measure’, and who was the ‘friend’ who had died? It was clearly something deeply disturbing and of a distressing personal nature. And what was the ‘scandal’ that he had tried to quell amongst his friends. Perhaps Lizzie Williams had not quite recovered from her breakdown and had either said or done something to illustrate the fact; perhaps she had let slip some detail about the Whitechapel murders that caused someone in her circle of acquaintances to sit up and take notice. Had she, in her troubled state of mind, mentioned that Mary Kelly had been her husband’s friend, or that she had ‘taken care’ of Mary Kelly, or even that Sir John Williams might have been ‘responsible’ for the murders, and that was the scandal he was trying to quell?

If so, it might have been at this point that Sir John realised that he and his wife’s lives had changed forever; that Lizzie might never make a full recovery from her breakdown. Even if she did, she would likely continue to suffer the mood swings and depressions that her infertility had given rise to, and that would be something that would affect her all her life; though all the current medical evidence suggests that, with the passage of time, a feeling of profound sadness would replace more emotive thoughts. If she were allowed to remain in London, there would always be a risk that she would reveal something more about the murders, and next time the tongues of scandal might not be so easily silenced. In such an inconceivable event, the consequences that might follow would be far too dreadful to contemplate….

Alternatively, had Margot Asquith discussed the issue with her husband Herbert Asquith perhaps, who was, of course, connected with the highest levels of government? Is it possible that, the murders having ended more than twelve years before, someone, somewhere, perhaps the then Home Secretary, Charles Thompson Richie (term of office 1900-1902) decided that in order to avoid a scandal involving the many royals, and influential patients of Sir John Williams – of whom Asquith’s own wife was just one, the matter could be quietly, and better, disposed of if Sir John could just be persuaded to co-operate, and leave the medical profession, and London, of his own accord.

Perhaps it was ‘suggested’ to Sir John that unconfirmed rumours were circulating about Lady Williams – or possibly even about him – which might require Scotland Yard to redirect its investigation (which was officially closed on 14 February 1902) towards the source of the speculation and gossip. Rather than run the risk of their reputations being irrevocably tarnished by police involvement – whatever the outcome – or worse, it might be better for Sir John Williams and his disconsolate lady wife, to depart the scene
gracefully
, and while no stigma was attached.

In 1903, Inspector Abberline, having retired from the Metropolitan Police on 7 February of the previous year (which was, coincidentally, Lizzie Williams’s fifty-second birthday), told the
Pall Mall Gazette
in an interview, “You can state most
emphatically
that Scotland Yard is really no wiser on the subject [of the identity of Jack the Ripper] than it was fifteen years ago.” But this statement contrasts sharply with what he allegedly told Nigel Morland, novelist and crime-writer, some years later: “I’ve given my word to keep my mouth permanently closed about it … I know my superiors know certain facts … the Ripper wasn’t a butcher, Yid or foreign skipper … you’d have to look for him not at the bottom of London society but a long way up.”

When publishing his memoirs
Lost London
in 1934, ex-Detective Sergeant Benjamin Leeson, who joined the police force two years after the murders, wrote: “…amongst the police who were most concerned in the case there was a general feeling that a certain doctor … could have thrown quite a lot of light on the subject.” This opinion expressed a widespread belief, which was held by certain police officers, that a doctor was in some way involved in the murders.

So what was it that Inspector Abberline (and for that matter, Benjamin Leeson) had come to learn after 1903 – the year that Sir John Williams so unexpectedly gave up his private practice and moved back to Wales with Lady Williams – which was not known in the fifteen-year period that had elapsed since the murders? What was it that Abberline had promised to keep his mouth closed about, and to whom had the promise been made? Had one of his friends at Scotland Yard told him something? Perhaps only an examination of the files held at the Home Office for the years between 1900 and 1903 might provide the answer – rather than any that may have been retained by Scotland Yard.

It is likely that Abberline maintained many friendships within the police force after he retired. He worked for more than a decade as a private detective for the American Pinkerton Detective Agency, when he almost certainly made use of his connections forged with colleagues at Scotland Yard. He appeared to have enjoyed a close relationship with James Monroe, with whom detectives consulted during the period of the murders, and it was Monroe who held Abberline in such high regard that he had specifically requested his transfer to Scotland Yard in 1887. Monroe held a dual role as Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and Head of the Detective Service. He succeeded Sir Charles Warren as Chief Commissioner on 3 December 1888, on the latter’s resignation after the death of Mary Kelly, and Monroe reported directly to the Home Office on matters of national security. It was said of him that if anyone knew anything about the murders, he would. But while James Monroe may well have possessed and imparted information of a sensitive and confidential nature about a possible suspect to Abberline, neither of them wrote their memoirs, and Monroe, a very private man, gave few interviews and any secrets to which they may have been party, remain untold.