The Real Mary Kelly (11 page)

Francis’s lodgings at 306 Mile End Road were in the heartland of the Jewish East End. Directly opposite was the old Beth Holim Jewish hospital, behind which lay the Sephardic burial ground, first opened when Oliver Cromwell allowed the Jews to return to England in 1656. It is tempting to think that as Francis pondered his strategy he may have gained inspiration by witnessing a
shochet
, or Jewish ritual slaughter man, at work. There were many butchers and slaughter houses that used the ritual method of slaughter, or
shechita
, by which animals were rendered kosher and fit to be eaten by observant Jews. If he persuaded a friendly
shochet
to allow him to witness the methods they used, he would have discovered that the most highly favoured was the
shechitamunachat
, in which the animal was lain upon its back on the ground before the long
challaf
or ritual knife was drawn in single sweep through all the soft tissues of the neck severing the carotid arteries, the jugular veins, the oesophagus, the trachea and the vagus nerves which supply the heart. That way the heart stopped almost instantly and bleeding was minimal. A slight hesitation, or failure to sever all the vessels in a single sweep, risked spraying the
shochet
with blood as well as
rendering the animal
neveleh
or unfit to eat. Later the police surgeons who disagreed on many details concerning the killings were unanimous on one thing. The Ripper’s victims were all killed lying flat on their backs, four of them on the ground and the last on her bed.

But in order to use this method Francis would have to get his intended victims to lie flat on the ground, not something that they were likely to do voluntarily given the filthy and often muddy condition of the Whitechapel streets. His father, E.T. Craig, published a pamphlet in 1892, called, in his typically over-verbose style,
‘History of a great discovery in the Prevention of Premature Death by the Power to Restore Fluidity of the Vital Current in cases of Inflammation of the Blood when Dying’.
It contains detailed instructions for the application of
tapotement
(tapping or percussion) to the veins and arteries of the neck, the anatomy of which is shown in great detail in accompanying illustrations which may have been done by either E.T. or Francis, both of whom were accomplished draughtsmen
⁷³
. E.T. would have known, and may have warned his son, that the technique carried a certain degree of risk if not performed by an expert. On either side of the neck, an inch or so below the angles of the jaw, the two carotid arteries which carry most of the blood to the brain divide into their two major branches. At this point, called the ‘carotid sinus’, they lie just in front of the transverse processes of the third and fourth cervical vertebra. If both are pushed back against the bony prominences, simultaneously the circulation to the brain is cut off and instantaneous loss of consciousness results. Even sudden brief pressure on one or other of the carotid sinuses can stimulate the baroreceptors which detect blood pressure and may result in a catastrophic drop in arterial pressure and loss of consciousness. Using these so-called pressure points to render a victim unconscious was a technique taught to commandos in the Second World War and is still taught to Special Forces soldiers today. It can leave very characteristic bruising of the neck which is nothing like the bruising left by manual strangulation
⁷⁴
.

The final parts of the preparations would have been the acquisition of a suitable weapon and the selection of the murder sites. The first was easy. In 1888 there were more than 40 surgical cutlers’ shops in London, most of which were clustered around the great hospitals and medical schools of the capital. Across
the river near Guy’s Hospital were the shops of Laundy and Down, around St. Batholomew’s lay Evans, Ferguson and Arnold, and in the Whitechapel Road itself, not half a mile from Francis’s lodgings, was Krohne and Seseman’s. The knife used in the Ripper murders, although never found, was described in detail by the police surgeons. It had a narrow, pointed blade about 7 or 8in long and was lethally sharp. It was a perfect description of a surgeon’s amputation knife, designed over centuries for cutting with lightning speed through the skin, muscles and sinews of the leg in the pre-anaesthetic days when split seconds could mean the difference between life and death.

The blades of amputation knives, being made of the highest quality tempered carbon steel, snapped easily and they frequently had to be replaced in the sets that all surgeons and many general practitioners owned. Replacements were therefore sold singly in pasteboard cases about a foot long and an inch wide, with an internal cork to protect the needle-sharp tip of the blade. Weiss’s catalogue of 1889 shows that a knife of this sort could be had for eight shillings and sixpence
⁷⁵
. Weiss also sold an amputation knife with a choice of a 7 or 8-inch blade that partially retracted into the handle, reducing its overall length to about 10in for portability. Such a weapon would have been ideal for carrying concealed up a sleeve or in a pocket.

Keeping the blade suitably sharp would not have been a problem. Even in the hirsute second half of the 19th century most men shaved at least part of their face and neck and most owned at least one cut-throat razor which had to be kept keen on a leather strop or a whetstone. Francis, like his father, was apparently clean-shaven except for bushy sideburns. He would have been perfectly familiar with the daily ritual of keeping a blade in good order.

Francis was more than just a creature of habit. If later accounts of him are to be believed he verged on being an obsessional compulsive. Having decided on his course of action he would certainly have selected a number of possible sites for his forays and then have reconnoitred them more thoroughly than any military commander. His three years as a reporter in the East End combined with his map-maker’s eye must already have familiarised him with most of the warren of streets, alleyways and courts of the area, but now he would have looked at them with a new sense of purpose. He needed places that were frequented by
the unfortunates yet quiet enough to allow him five or more minutes in which he could be reasonably sure of being undisturbed. They needed to have a little light but sufficient shadow that if he was seen the observer would not be able to recognise him easily later.

They also needed to have more than one exit so that if he was surprised he had a fair chance of being able to make his escape. It is safe to bet that he selected and recce’d more locations than he was likely to need and meticulously walked the different routes to and from them, measuring the time that it would take him to regain the sanctuary of 306 Mile End Road before the discovery of a body and the resulting hue and cry made the streets too dangerous. Francis though had one enormous advantage: his profession as a reporter gave him a good excuse to be out in the streets at all hours of the day and night. Almost certainly he was known to all the local policemen who would have been used to seeing him in the local police court most days and for him to have been found in the vicinity of a crime scene was the most natural thing in the world. He was simply doing his job.

The relationship between the police and the press during the events of 1888 was not a happy one. Senior officers, particularly the unpopular Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Charles Warren, were singled out for ridicule for their bungling inability to catch the right man and this made them defensive and antagonistic. Warren himself, like many senior police officers at the time, had been a regular soldier and had carved out a highly successful career in the Royal Engineers. He had spent a large part of his early military life in Africa and the Middle East and used his surveying and engineering skills to good effect in conducting the first modern excavation of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a feat for which he was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society. A vertical shaft that he discovered and which was once thought to be part of the water supply of the city is known to this day as Warren’s Shaft. He also succeeded in uncovering what had happened to Edward Palmer’s ill-fated political expedition to the Sinai peninsula in 1882, discovering that Palmer and his two companions, who had been carrying a great deal of money to buy the allegiance of the local Bedouin tribesmen, had been robbed and brutally murdered. He succeeded in recovering their bodies, which were then shipped back to England,
and in bringing the killers to justice. For this and other of his exploits he was knighted and it was probably the element of detection involved in the Palmer expedition that led to his being considered a suitable person to take charge of the Metropolitan Police
⁷⁶
.

Soon after standing unsuccessfully for election to Parliament in the Liberal interest, Warren was invited to take the post of Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in 1886. From the outset he did not hit it off with his immediate colleagues. He was ridiculed for designing for himself a ludicrously over-ornate dress uniform and, probably because of his Liberal sympathies, he never succeeded in gaining the support of Henry Matthews, the Tory Home Secretary. Very early on he clashed with James Monro, the Assistant Commissioner. Monro, who had a legal background, had been expecting to succeed to the role of Commissioner himself and was understandably peeved when Warren was appointed over his head. It led to continuous bickering between the two men which culminated eventually in both offering their resignations to Matthews.

The Home Secretary accepted Monro’s resignation but sweetened it by allowing him to retain control of the Special Branch and to report directly to him as part of the Home Office. In doing so he removed a highly efficient investigative tool from the control of the Metropolitan Police. In Monro’s place Robert Anderson, another lawyer, was made Assistant Commissioner and Superintendent Adolphus ‘Dolly’ Williamson was appointed Chief Constable in charge of the Criminal Investigation Department. All three men were in the confidence of Henry Matthews and they habitually met behind Warren’s back. Effectively it meant that he was out of the loop for much of the Ripper investigations, which did not enhance his chances of success.

Probably at Francis’s level things were different and the beat policemen were more easily disposed towards a local reporter that they trusted than towards the hordes of out-of-town newsmen and even ones from America and further afield that began to arrive in droves by the middle of October.

His appearance was also in his favour. There are no known pictures of Francis Craig, although there are many of his more famous father. There is a contemporary newspaper illustration of Annie Chapman’s inquest that shows a man looking very much like a younger version of E.T. Craig, of which more later,
but descriptions of him at his own inquest used words like ‘nervous’, ‘sensitive’ and ‘reticent’. He was apparently an inoffensive, unremarkable looking man, a man who by his own account was shabby and down at heel during this period of his life. He wore the standard dress of the clerical, lower middle-class man, an Inverness coat and a billycock hat
⁷⁷
.

Mr. Thomas Bond, Lecturer in Forensic Medicine at the Westminster Hospital and police surgeon to the Metropolitan Police, probably came nearest to it than anyone when he described him thus: ‘… the murderer in external appearance is quite likely to be a quiet inoffensive looking man, probably middle-aged and neatly and respectably dressed.
⁷⁸
’ It could hardly have been a better description of Francis.

By Thursday 30th August the stage was set. A mild-mannered, inoffensive looking reporter, 51 years of age, although he probably looked younger, had armed himself with a vicously sharp amputation knife and, driven by a blinding hatred of a much younger woman who he felt had done him a grievous wrong, was about to embark on the most notorious rampage in criminal history.

At about 8.45pm on the evening of 30th August 1888 a large fire broke out in the London docks. It started in a bonded warehouse at the South and Spirit Quay of St. Katherine’s Docks and every available steam fire engine in the city and East End of London was sent to deal with it
⁷⁹
. At well past midnight, they were still engaged in what was increasingly beginning to look like a losing battle to stop the fire from spreading to the brandy stores in the basement and causing an explosion that would threaten the very fabric of Tower Bridge, now two years into construction a few hundred yards upstream. Most of the men that could be spared from the City of London Police and H Division of the Metropolitan Police had been sent to the docks to control the huge crowds of spectators whose numbers had been swelled by people coming out of the theatres and music halls. Fortunately they were able to use the high dock gates to keep most people at a relatively safe distance, but their very numbers were causing severe congestion in the narrow streets where the horse-drawn engines from further and further afield were struggling to get through.

It was a squally night with occasional spats of rain and the blaze cast an angry reflection on low clouds whipped across the sky by the brisk west wind.
Every now and then a great shower of sparks shot up into the night as another roof timber collapsed and the roar of the crowd gathered by the riverside swept over the rooftops of Whitechapel like the sound of a wave on a distant beach. Since no-one’s life was threatened, except perhaps those of the firemen, the crowd was in high good humour. Even though the next day – Friday – was a working day, no-one seemed to be in a hurry to leave the scene and return to their homes. They cheered loudly as each new steamer arrived, horses at the gallop and smoke already belching from the brass chimney.

Then, shortly after 1am, a rumour started to spread that yet another fire had broken out at Shadwell about half a mile downstream. This time it had started in an engineer’s shed in the Ratcliffe Dry Dock and it quickly spread to Gowland’s coal store. Before long 800 tons of fuel were ablaze and the whole East End of London was lit up as if morning had come early.