The Real Mary Kelly (29 page)

The writer of this memorandum was Chief Inspector Henry Moore, Abberline’s immediate subordinate at the time of the Whitechapel murders and, because he continued to work on the crimes for months after Abberline had been moved on to other matters, probably the most experienced of the remaining detectives that had worked on the Ripper case. He went on to say that the phrase ‘The Jewes are the people that are blamed for nothing’ was almost identical with the Goulston Street graffito which was ‘undoubtedly by the murderer’.

Despite noting all of these points of similarity, Moore finally concluded that this letter was not written by the same person as the original ‘Dear Boss’ letters, basing his belief solely on the fact that it was sent to Commercial Street police station, not Central News. Superintendent Donald Swanson – Moore’s superior
and another of the senior officers that had been engaged on the Ripper murders – agreed with him, writing on the bottom of the memorandum:

It is worth noting that Tom Bulling, the journalist who had forwarded the three previous Ripper missives to Scotland Yard and who himself was believed by some to have been their author, had been sacked by Central News earlier that year. Francis would almost certainly have known this and may have felt that, with Bulling’s departure, a letter stood more chance of reaching the right quarters if it was sent via the police station most nearly connected with the crimes.

The letter, like the original ‘Dear Boss’ letters of 1888, may or may not have been written by Francis. The handwriting is similar but looks rather laboured as if written very slowly. At his inquest in 1903 Arthur Lane said that Francis had had a ‘stroke of paralysis’ and suffered from writer’s cramp as a consequence, although he did not say when this was. If it was before this letter was written it might explain the difference in character from the previous letters.

The linguistic style and the chilling humour it contains are almost identical with its predecessors. There is also the same deliberate attempt to make it appear to be the work of an uneducated man that suggests that, even if Francis himself was not the author, it was written by the same person that had been responsible for the others. The reference to the ‘good old times’ is reminiscent of a similar reference in
An Editor’s Christmas
. The letter was written within months of Francis’s resignation from the
Indicator
at a time when he was under great strain caring for his invalid mother. It could have been his way of letting off steam, of relieving the stress he was under. Could the reference to having the good times once again have been nostalgia for a brief period in his life when Francis had felt in control of the situation, unlike his present predicament,
jobless and having to shoulder the burden and embarrassment of nursing his senile mother and caring for her every bodily requirement?

Francis stayed on at 10 Andover Road until the death of his mother in April the following year. Probably because he was largely incapable of looking after himself from a domestic standpoint or maybe because the house held too many painful memories, he moved into lodgings with John and Phoebe Reading in Carthew Road, a few streets away. As the only lodger, paying a good rent, he would probably have had the larger of the two bedrooms at the front of the house and been provided with breakfast and an evening meal. He was apparently a good tenant, paying his rent promptly and causing a minimum of inconvenience to the Readings.

In due course Lane, Warren and his landlord John Reading gave evidence at his inquest that painted a picture of Francis’s behaviour and state of mind in those last years. Arthur Lane said that he was a nervous, sensitive man but Warren disagreed saying that, in his experience, he was self-confident – but he had known Francis for longer than Lane and may have been thinking of him in earlier days. All agreed that his behaviour had become increasingly erratic. Warren and Reading both described being in conversation with him, sometimes even in the course of a meal, when he would abruptly break off and flee from the room. This is typical of schizotypal personality disorder with a psychotic overlay; Francis’s mind was beginning to crumble.

His physical health also began to deteriorate although most of his symptoms were psychosomatic. He slept badly and suffered from constant dyspepsia. He complained about his nerves. After a restless night’s sleep his day started with a glass of warm milk brought up to his room by Phoebe Warren, no doubt to sooth his raging indigestion. Who knows what nightmares of that room in Miller’s Court haunted his sleep?

At some time in either 1901 or 1902 Francis took a trip to France, apparently with some friends. The date is not clear since Edward Warren said at the inquest in early 1903 that it was ‘a year ago’ but both he and Arthur Lane were extremely imprecise in their recollection of the dates of events such as Francis’s marriage – in Lane’s case by more than five years. Whenever it was, it seems to have coincided with a crisis in Francis’s mental state.

According to Edward Warren he visited Paris in the company of two men. One, whom Warren believed was called Hunter, disappeared and when Francis returned he told his friend that he feared that he was suspected of his murder and was being followed by both the French and English police. Research has failed to find any reports of an Englishman of this name dying in France during the years 1900 to 1903 other than a George Hunter who died in Menton in the South of France in 1900 and who does not seem to be relevant.

However, in March 1901, the body of a man was found floating in the river Liane near Boulogne. He was reported to have been strangled before being dumped in the river. Investigations by the French police and their English counterparts established that the body was that of Sergeant David Pool of the
Metropolitan Police. He did not seem to have been robbed and the motive for the murder was unclear
¹⁴⁰
.

Pool’s presence in France was a mystery. He had reported sick with influenza a few days before and had been given leave to return to the Covent Garden section house where, as a bachelor, he was living. As a constable in 1888 he was attached to H Division and had been involved in the Ripper investigations. Pool was not a run-of-the-mill policeman. He was the son of Superintendent David Pool, Deputy Chief Constable of Dumfriesshire, and was an educated man, having been a schoolmaster before joining the Metropolitan Police. A Pool family story has it that he claimed to know the identity of Jack the Ripper but then so did hundreds of people in the last ten years of the 19th century.

Nevertheless he was just the sort of person that Francis might have known. Newspaper reporters at Thames Magistrates court would have been familiar to most of the local constables, who supplied them with titbits of news, usually in return for a small financial reward. Being an educated man and older than most of his contemporaries, Pool might have been a man who could easily have formed a lasting friendship with Francis and thus be someone who might well have accompanied him on a trip to France. The annual police leave at this time was ten days per year and Pool, whose father had died a few weeks before, may have used up his entitlement in attending the funeral and decided to take a few days extra as ‘sick leave’.

Boulogne was the main terminal for the Channel packets and, not infrequently, tourists on their way back from the Continent would break their journey to have a last lunch in one of the many excellent restaurants along the banks of the Liane. Could it have been that Francis, in his disturbed state, was already suspicious as to what David Pool knew or suspected, and perhaps there was a jocular remark as they took a post-lunch stroll down the riverside along the lines of, ‘You know, Francis Old Man, even you could have been the Ripper. You lived in the area at the time, knew it like the back of your hand – and didn’t they say that the man who sent those letters to Central News was a reporter?’ With Francis already suffering extreme paranoia it might just have been sufficient to seal Pool’s fate.

Whatever happened on that trip, Francis came back a changed man. His eccentricity seems suddenly to have escalated to delusional, schizoid behaviour. Edward Warren spotted him one rainless day in August hurrying along Hammersmith Broadway dressed in his heavy Inverness coat and crouched under an umbrella as if to shield himself from identification by invisible pursuers. John Reading recounted how on some evenings Francis would come down from his room and sit talking to him before suddenly and without warning jumping up and rushing upstairs.

In early November 1902 Francis asked Edward Warren to look after £50 for him. It was a sum that would be worth perhaps a hundred times that now and it is easy to appreciate Warren’s reluctance to be responsible for it. Since Francis is known to have had a bank account it is hard to understand why he might have wanted his friend to look after it. Shortly afterwards Francis instructed Warren to hand it over to anyone he might send for it but Warren refused, saying that he would only hand it over to Francis himself. It looks as if Francis was leaving the money as an insurance against his having to go on the run at a time when the authorities might have put a stop on his bank account. He may even have had a bolt hole already identified and a trusted courier who would collect it from Warren at the critical moment. In any event Warren wanted nothing more to do with it and handed it all back. Francis paid £45 back into his account on 7th November and £5 the following month.

It is apparent from the inquest testimony that Francis’s mental state was in a downward spiral by late 1902. Fifteen years after the horror of Miller’s Court, the strain of what he had been living with had finally taken its toll. On 2nd March 1903 the scene was set for the finale. It is clear that something odd happened on that last day for, as his landlord John Reading said, Francis was out all day in the pouring rain and came home in the evening drenched to the skin. What took place on that final day we can now only conjecture.

The 2nd March is a day of almost unceasing rain. The grey skies above London remain sullen and static as a steady drizzle soaks the pavements and sends rivulets of sooty water down grimy walls. Francis is awake and has been pacing his room long before Mrs. Reading taps on his door and, in response to his reply, has entered and placed his regular glass of warm milk on the bedside table. She asks if he is ready for his shaving water yet and, receiving an answer in the affirmative, she has returned with a bowl and a jug of steaming water. He lathers his neck and face in the small mirror above the washstand and gives the razor a few swipes across the leather strop to set the edge before starting the familiar routine that he has performed every day for nearly 50 years.

As he tilts his head back and taughtens the skin of his neck, he feels temptation creeping over him. The smooth white sheet of foam looks like virgin snow. It would be easy to let the blade slide down through it like a ploughshare and effortlessly follow the familiar contour from one angle of the jaw to the other.

He resists. It is not time yet. There is work to be done.

He rinses the razor and dries it on the rough white towel before replacing it in its case. He dresses automatically. There is no need for thought. He has only
two suits and one is with the tailors in the Broadway for repair. He puts on a clean shirt, a new collar and the black silk tie that is shiny with dirt where the knot has been tied so many times.

Downstairs Mrs. Reading offers him bacon, bread and dripping for breakfast but he declines and takes his Inverness coat and his brown hat from the hall-stand before venturing out. Instead of turning right when he leaves the house he turns left and takes the long way round by way of Dalling Road in order to include Andover Road in his route. He walks slowly the length of the street, looking at the familiar houses. Outside number 10 he pauses and looks hard at the cottage. The fanlight above the front door still bears the word Ralahine picked out in gold letters, faded now by 20 years of sunlight. The rain drips off the brim of his hat and soaks into the thick tweed of his coat.

Were there any happy times there? He can’t remember. Were there ever any happy times? What does it matter now? They are all in the past, in another century.

He glances across at number 3 but the rain stings his eyes and he walks on.

When he reaches the Broadway he buys a return ticket on the District Railway to West Ham. He does not need to look at the map. The line from Hammersmith to Whitechapel has been open since 1884 and the eastward extension beyond that has been open a year now. The journey takes 40 minutes and, since it is rush hour, he has to stand most of the way, steam rising from his sodden coat.

It is still raining, if anything even more heavily, when he leaves the station at West Ham. He has about two miles to walk in a northwards direction but the streets are no problem to him. He knows them well. He buys a large bunch of tulips and daffodils from a barrow in Leyton High Road but before he has gone far the rain has caused the brown paper they are wrapped in to dissolve and he is forced to cradle them in his arms. One or two slip from his embrace and fall to the brimming gutter.

He reaches the cemetery and turns in through the gate. There is no-one in sight, just ranks of dripping Madonnas and rain-soaked angels. It is a long time since he was last here but he knows the spot exactly. Nothing marks the grave. It is just a muddy patch of grass. He stands in front of it for a moment and then
opens his arms and lets the flowers tumble out to form an untidy heap on the ground. He is not very good at this sort of thing and doesn’t know what to do next. He just stares down at the ground as if trying to see through it to what lies beyond his sight. There is absolute silence except for the patter of rain on the trees.