Complete History Of Jack The Ripper Part 10

15.

'I want to go to the Lord Mayor's Show'

APART FROM THE occasional stable or chandler's shop, Dorset Street, Spitalfields, in 1888, was almost entirely occupied by common lodging houses offering beds at fourpence and sixpence a night. Several narrow courts, largely inhabited by prost.i.tutes, led off Dorset Street. One such, on the north side of the street, was Miller's Court. A stone-flagged pa.s.sage, three feet wide and twenty feet long, gave access to the court, a small paved yard upon which faced some half dozen mean houses.

Mary Jane Kelly, a young Irish prost.i.tute, rented a ground-floor room in Miller's Court. But she did not lodge in any of the half dozen houses we have noticed. The house in which Mary lived actually fronted on Dorset Street. Indeed her room had once been the back parlour of No. 26, but the house had been let out in furnished rooms and Mary's, part.i.tioned off from the rest of the house, commanded a rent of 4s. 6d. a week. The only entrance to the room, designated No. 13, was in Miller's Court, the second door on the right from Dorset Street. Its only two windows also looked out into the court. In the smallest window, that nearest the door, two panes of gla.s.s were broken.

No. 13 was perhaps the most public habitation in Miller's Court. At the opposite side of the court its doorway could be observed from a small window at the back of John McCarthy's shop (27 Dorset Street) and from the windows of at least three of the succeeding tenements up the court, and at night the traffic in and out of Mary's room was illuminated in the yellow shade of a gas lamp, located almost directly opposite her door. Yet few residents of the court seem to have known much about Mary Jane Kelly or to have been more than pa.s.sing acquaintances.

She was, they well knew, occasionally drunk. At such times she was noisy, 'spreeish' and given to singing Irish songs. She was probably the 'Mary Jane Kelley', aged twenty-two, who was fined 2s. 6d. at Thames Magistrates' Court on 19 September 1888 for being drunk and disorderly1 and it was during a drunken quarrel with Joe Barnett, the man who lived with her, that she broke the window of her room. In general, however, Mary was a quiet woman with few serious relations.h.i.+ps. Of Joe Barnett she was genuinely fond. Sometimes she visited another friend, a prost.i.tute as herself, in the Elephant and Castle district. But the name of only one close female friend that of Maria Harvey, a laundress who came to live at New Court in Dorset Street a day or two before Mary's death can be reliably established and at the subsequent inquest only Barnett could tell the coroner anything of Mary's history.

Her story, as Barnett had it from Mary herself, is simply told. She was born in Limerick (whether the county or the town is not stated) but the family moved to Wales when she was very young. Her father, John Kelly, became a foreman at an ironworks, either in Carmarthens.h.i.+re or Caernarvons.h.i.+re, and Mary married a collier named Davis or Davies when she was about sixteen. A mine explosion, which killed her husband two or three years later, ended that part of her life. In 1884, when Mary was about twenty-one, she came to London. She found work in a West End brothel and so engaged one of the clientele there that he asked her to accompany him to France. It was not, apparently, a happy experience and after only two weeks abroad Mary returned to London. In the East End she attracted several paramours and, when not being supported by one of them, made a living by prost.i.tution. At one time she was living with a man named Morganstone near the Commercial Gas Works, Stepney, at another with a mason's plasterer named Joe Flemming in Bethnal Green Road.2 The only corroboration of any of this comes from a long news report of 12 November. By this account Mary entered the service of a French lady living in Knightsbridge when she first came to London. While with this lady she led a 'degraded life' but drove about in a carriage and made several trips to Paris. Later she found her way to the East End. There she stayed first with Mrs Buki in St George's Street, Ratcliff Highway. On one occasion both women went back to the French lady's house to demand Mary's box containing numerous costly dresses. From 1885 to 1886 or 1887 Mary lodged at the house of Mrs Carthy at Breezer's Hill, Pennington Street. According to Mrs Elizabeth Phoenix of 157 Bow Common Lane, Burdett Road, in Bow, Mrs Carthy's sister, Mary was very quarrelsome and abusive when drunk but 'one of the most decent and nicest girls you could meet' when sober. Mrs Carthy herself said that Mary eventually left her house 'to live with a man who was apparently in the building trade, and who she (Mrs Carthy) believed would have married her.'3 Presumably the man in the building trade was Joe Flemming, the plasterer also mentioned by Barnett. It is obvious that an especially close relations.h.i.+p once existed between Mary and Flemming. Barnett tells us that Mary was very fond of him. Mrs Carthy believed that Flemming would have married Mary. And Mary told Julia Venturney, a German charwoman who lodged opposite her in Miller's Court, that a man called Joe continued to visit her after she had taken up with Barnett. But we know next to nothing about this or any other of Mary's early relations.h.i.+ps. Our sources, too, leave important questions unanswered. Why did Mary leave Wales for London? What was the truth behind the stories of the West End brothel and that mysterious jaunt to France? And why was a girl of Mary's youth and apparent good looks prec.i.p.ated so swiftly into the desperate squalor of the East End lodging house? Ripperologists have pondered such questions for decades. We can reap a harvest of speculation and theory from their labours. But they are no subst.i.tute for facts.

Mary's life acquires sharper focus after her meeting with Joe Barnett in Commercial Street in 1887. At that time she was living at Cooley's lodging house in Thrawl Street.4 Barnett, a steady respectable Irish c.o.c.kney, worked as a market porter at Billingsgate. The two struck up an immediate friends.h.i.+p. Over a drink they arranged to meet again the next day and on that second meeting agreed to live together. At first the couple took lodgings in George Street. From there they moved to Little Paternoster Row, Dorset Street, and from there, evicted for getting drunk and failing to pay their rent, to Brick Lane. At the beginning of 1888 they rented 13 Miller's Court from John McCarthy, the owner of a chandler's shop at 27 Dorset Street.

Neither the horrendous scene-of-crime photographs taken by the police nor the fanciful sketches of the ill.u.s.trated papers help us to visualize Mary's appearance. But she was young and evidently quite attractive. Mrs Phoenix said that she was about '5 feet 7 inches in height, and of rather stout build, with blue eyes and a very fine head of hair, which reached nearly to her waist.' Some of Mary's neighbours in Dorset Street have also left us word portraits of her. To Elizabeth Prater, lodging in a room directly over Mary's, she was 'tall and pretty, and as fair as a lily', a very pleasant girl who 'seemed to be on good terms with everybody'. To Caroline Maxwell, living in Dorset Street across the way from Miller's Court, 'a pleasant little woman, rather stout, fair complexion, and rather pale . . . she spoke with a kind of impediment.'5 The only durable result of her French connection seems to have been the affectation of the name Marie Jeanette Kelly.

Mary lived at Miller's Court with Joe Barnett until 30 October, when Barnett walked out after a quarrel. He had been out of work for several months, the couple had fallen behind in their rent and Mary had returned to prost.i.tution. Her trade had occasioned differences between the two. 'I have heard him say that he did not like her going out on the streets,' Julia Venturney, a neighbour, told the police, 'he frequently gave her money, he was very kind to her, he said he would not live with her while she led that course of life.'6 But Mary's compa.s.sion was the immediate cause of their separation. Always big-hearted, she invited a homeless prost.i.tute to share their room at Miller's Court.7 Barnett suffered the intrusion two or three nights and then remonstrated and left.

Barnett found shelter in. a common lodging house in New Street, Bishopsgate, but he and Mary remained friends. On the evening of Thursday, 8 November, he visited her at Miller's Court and told her that he was very sorry he had no work and could not give her any money. The terror that had gripped the East End that autumn had touched Mary as it had every other prost.i.tute. In Dorset Street, within a few yards of the entrance to Miller's Court, a bill proclaiming the Ill.u.s.trated Police News 100 reward offer hung precariously from a wall. And several times Mary had asked Barnett to read to her from the newspapers about the murders. But when they parted that Thursday night, perhaps about eight, neither could possibly have antic.i.p.ated the disaster that was about to engulf them. It was the last time Barnett saw Mary alive. And when he would look upon her, dead and mangled in Sh.o.r.editch Mortuary, he would recognize her only by her hair and eyes.8 Friday, 9 November 1888. The day of the Lord Mayor's Show. The day when the Right Honourable James Whitehead, the new Lord Mayor, would drive in state, amidst all the pomp and pageantry the wealthiest city in the kingdom could devise, to the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand for his oath of office. Mary would have enjoyed the festivities. Apparently she had been looking forward to it. 'I hope it will be a fine day tomorrow,' she had told Mrs Prater on Thursday morning, 'as I want to go to the Lord Mayor's Show.'9 John McCarthy, Mary's landlord, had other things on his mind. At 10.45 on Friday morning he was in his shop at 27 Dorset Street and checking his books with concern. He was not a hard man but he had already allowed Mary to clock up 29s. in rent arrears. So, calling Thomas Bowyer, his shop a.s.sistant, he sent him round to her room to see if she could pay the money. Perhaps he thought they might catch her before she disappeared to see the Lord Mayor's procession.10 Bowyer knocked twice at the door of No. 13. Each time there was no answer. He stepped round the corner to the broken window and, reaching inside, pulled aside the curtain. A first glance into the room revealed two lumps of flesh on the bedside table. A second discovered Mary's b.l.o.o.d.y and mutilated corpse lying on the bed itself. It was enough for poor Bowyer. He fled precipitately back to the shop. 'Governor,' he stammered, 'I knocked at the door and could not make anyone answer. I looked through the window and saw a lot of blood.' Such words, in the East End that autumn, presaged horrific murder, and filled with forebodings McCarthy returned with Bowyer to No. 13. There the sight which greeted the landlord when he looked through the window was even more stomach-turning than he had prepared himself for. The bedside table was covered with what looked like pieces of flesh and the body on the bed resembled that of a butchered beast. White-faced and shaken, he turned to Bowyer. 'Go at once to the police station,' he said, 'and fetch someone here.'

At Commercial Street Bowyer found Inspector Walter Beck on duty. Chatting with him was Walter Dew, the young detective who, fifty years later, recalled for us Bowyer's dramatic entrance. A youth, his eyes bulging out of his head, burst panting into the station. For a time he was so overcome with fright as to be unable to utter a single intelligible word. But at last he managed to babble something: 'Another one. Jack the Ripper. Awful. Jack McCarthy sent me.'11 Soon they were hearing the tale from McCarthy himself who, having recovered his composure, had hurried after his a.s.sistant. 'Come along, Dew,' said the inspector, donning his hat and coat, and they set out together with Bowyer and McCarthy for the scene of the crime. They arrived at Miller's Court at or soon after eleven. 'The room was pointed out to me,' recalled Dew. 'I tried the door. It would not yield. So I moved to the window, over which, on the inside, an old coat was hanging to act as a curtain and to block the draught from the hole in the gla.s.s. Inspector Beck pushed the coat to one side and peered through the aperture. A moment later he staggered back with his face as white as a sheet. 'For G.o.d's sake, Dew,' he cried. 'Don't look.' I ignored the order, and took my place at the window. When my eyes had become accustomed to the dim light I saw a sight which I shall never forget to my dying day.'

DORSET STREET.

Miller's Court and Mary Jane Kelly's room Miller's Court was soon bustling with police personnel. Dr George Bagster Phillips, the divisional police surgeon, arrived at 11.15. Abberline was there by 11.30. Both must share some responsibility for the ensuing fiasco. The door of Mary's room was locked but, incredibly, no attempt was made to force it until 1.30 in the afternoon. Although Phillips was primarily responsible for the delay the testimony he gave three days later at the inquest cannot be said to be very illuminating on the point. There he described how, having looked through the broken window and ascertained that Mary was beyond help, he decided that 'probably it was advisable that no entrance should be made into the room at that time.' It was left to Abberline, who had charge of the case, to explain this bizarre decision to the inquest: 'I had an intimation from Inspector Beck that the dogs had been sent for [and] Dr Phillips asked me not to force the door but to test the dogs if they were coming.'12 The dogs, as we now know, were no longer available, and in the two and a half hours after eleven the police did little more than seal off Miller's Court, acc.u.mulate statements from local residents and get in a photographer to photograph the corpse. At 1.30 Superintendent Arnold arrived. He brought the news that the order for the bloodhounds had been countermanded and gave immediate instructions for the door to be forced. John McCarthy then broke it open with a pickaxe. It was an unfortunate beginning to the investigation. Even the violence visited upon the offending door was unnecessary. Joe Barnett later told Abberline that the key had been missing for some time. The door had a spring lock that fastened automatically when it was pulled to but the catch could easily be moved back from the outside by reaching through the broken window!

The little room was cluttered. As the door was pushed open it banged against the bedside table. A moment later Abberline and his team were inside. The sight that met their eyes was one to haunt dreams.

Spa.r.s.ely furnished, the room was nevertheless so small that there was very little s.p.a.ce in which to move around. It was about twelve or fifteen feet square. The bedside table, against which the door had knocked, was close to the left-hand side of an ancient wooden bedstead and the right-hand side of the bedstead was close up against the wooden part.i.tion which sealed Mary's room off from the rest of the house. The only other furnis.h.i.+ngs were another old table, a chair or two, a cupboard, a disused washstand and a fireplace. The grate contained the ashes of a large fire. There was little attempt at decoration. A cheap print, 'The Fisherman's Widow', hung over the fireplace. But the floorboards were bare and filthy and although the walls themselves were papered the pattern was barely discernible beneath the dirt.

Mary's body, grotesquely mutilated, lay on the bed, two-thirds over towards the left-hand edge, that nearest the door. The first person through the door was Dr Phillips. From Phillips, above all others, we might have expected an authentic report about the condition of the body but he tells us almost nothing. Certainly he spoke at the inquest three days later. On that occasion, however, he deliberately suppressed the details of Mary's injuries. The immediate cause of death, he said, was the severance of the right carotid artery. From the blood-saturated condition of the pallia.s.se, pillow and sheet at the top right-hand corner of the bed, and from the large quant.i.ty of blood found under the bedstead there, he deduced that she had been moved from the right-hand side of the bed after receiving her death wound.13 Phillips' silence ensured that for a century little authentic scene-of-crime information was known about what was perhaps the Ripper's last and most gruesome murder. Then, in 1987, a set of long-lost medical notes made by Dr Thomas Bond, who had worked with Phillips at Miller's Court and during the subsequent post-mortem, came to light among a bundle of doc.u.ments posted anonymously to Scotland Yard. These notes, written on 10 November 1888, after the post-mortem, blow to bits the untrustworthy news reports and the fictional flourishes of Ripperologists that have served to bridge the gap in the doc.u.mentation for so many years.

Dr Bond had been sucked into the Ripper investigation as early as 25 October, when Anderson had written to him requesting him to review the medical evidence given at the inquests and to hazard an opinion respecting the killer's alleged anatomical knowledge. 'In dealing with the Whitechapel murders,' the a.s.sistant Commissioner had explained, 'the difficulties of conducting the inquiry are largely increased by reason of our having no reliable opinion for our guidance as to the amount of surgical skill and anatomical knowledge probably possessed by the murderer or murderers.'14 Anderson looked to Bond for such guidance and, on the face of it, there were few more qualified to give it. For in addition to conducting the post-mortem examination in the celebrated Whitehall torso case at the beginning of October15 he had twenty-one years' experience as police surgeon to A Division.

When the Kelly murder occurred Bond had already studied police notes on the Buck's Row, Hanbury Street, Berner Street and Mitre Square outrages. And at two on the afternoon of 9 November he turned up at Miller's Court to conduct his personal examination of the latest victim. His notes, written the next day, tell us what he saw: The body was lying naked in the middle of the bed, the shoulders flat, but the axis of the body inclined to the left side of the bed. The head was turned on the left cheek. The left arm was close to the body with the forearm flexed at a right angle & lying across the abdomen, the right arm was slightly abducted from the body & rested on the mattress, the elbow bent & the forearm supine with the fingers clenched. The legs were wide apart, the left thigh at right angles to the trunk & the right forming an obtuse angle with the p.u.b.es.

The whole of the surface of the abdomen & thighs was removed & the abdominal cavity emptied of its viscera. The b.r.e.a.s.t.s were cut off, the arms mutilated by several jagged wounds & the face hacked beyond recognition of the features & the tissues of the neck were severed all round down to the bone. The viscera were found in various parts viz: the uterus & kidneys with one breast under the head, the other breast by the right foot, the liver between the feet, the intestines by the right side & the spleen by the left side of the body.

The flaps removed from the abdomen & thighs were on a [bedside] table.

The bed clothing at the right corner was saturated with blood, & on the floor beneath was a pool of blood covering about 2 feet square. The wall by the right side of the bed & in a line with the neck was marked by blood which had struck it in a number of separate splashes.16 Bond's statement that Mary's body was found naked was contradicted by Phillips' inquest testimony that she was clad in a linen under garment. Phillips was right because in a surviving police photograph of the scene a puffed sleeve of the garment is clearly visible about the top of Mary's left arm. One possible explanation of the discrepancy is that most of the under garment had been cut away from the body in the process of mutilation.

From the moment the police and their surgeons descended upon Miller's Court the local residents became little more than helpless bystanders to the drama being enacted in their midst. The few who saw inside the butcher's shambles that was No. 13 were left numb with shock. One was Elizabeth Prater. Her husband, a boot machinist named William Prater, had deserted her five years since and she now earned a living by prost.i.tution and lodged alone in No. 20 Miller's Court, above Mary's room. 'I'm a woman myself,' she sobbed to a Star reporter on the day of the murder, 'and I've got to sleep in that place tonight right over where it happened.' Mrs Prater had good cause to know what had happened. A pump stood in the court near No. 13 and Mrs Prater took advantage of a trip for water to peep through the window of Mary's room. 'I could bear to look at it only for a second,' she said, 'but I can never forget the sight of it if I live to be a hundred.'17 John McCarthy, who had forced the door, was among the first to enter No. 13. 'The sight we saw,' he said later in the day, 'I cannot drive away from my mind. It looked more like the work of a devil than of a man. The poor woman's body was lying on the bed, undressed. She had been completely disembowelled, and her entrails had been taken out and placed on the table. It was those that I had seen when I looked through the window and took to be lumps of flesh. The woman's nose had been cut off, and her face gashed and mutilated so that she was quite beyond recognition. Both her b.r.e.a.s.t.s too had been cut clean away and placed by the side of her liver and other entrails on the table. I had heard a great deal about the Whitechapel murders, but I declare to G.o.d I had never expected to see such a sight as this. The body was, of course, covered with blood, and so was the bed. The whole scene is more than I can describe. I hope I may never see such a sight again.'18 Tidings of the murder soon swept through the crowded courts and alleys of the East End. 'Women rushed about the streets,' said one report, 'telling their neighbours the news, and giving utterance in angry voices to expressions of rage and indignation.'19 As the Lord Mayor's procession swung into Fleet Street from Ludgate Circus the news burst upon the crowds lining the route there. Soon spectators were deserting the show in thousands and converging upon Dorset Street. Cordons of police at each end denied them access but the entrances from Bell Lane and Commercial Street became choked by crowds of excited, frightened-looking people.

At about four o'clock a one-horse carrier's cart with a tarpaulin cover was driven into Dorset Street and halted opposite Miller's Court. A long sh.e.l.l or coffin, scratched and dirty with use, was taken from the cart and carried into No. 13. The surgeons had completed their preliminary examination of the remains. The news that the body was about to be removed produced a great rush of people from the courts leading out of Dorset Street and a determined push against the police cordon at the Commercial Street end. 'The crowd, which pressed round the van [cart], was of the humblest cla.s.s,' ran the Times report, 'but the demeanour of the poor people was all that could be desired. Ragged caps were doffed and slatternly-looking women shed tears as the sh.e.l.l, covered with a ragged-looking cloth, was placed in the van.'20 After the remains had been driven to Sh.o.r.editch Mortuary the windows of No. 13 were boarded up and the door padlocked. The cordons at the ends of the street were withdrawn but although crowds of idlers roved through Dorset Street all evening there was nothing for them to see since two stalwart constables vigilantly guarded the pa.s.sage into Miller's Court.

In Whitehall the news of the latest murder was greeted with dismay. When Beck saw Mary's mutilated corpse through the broken window he lost no time in apprising Commercial Street by fast-running constables and from there the news was promptly relayed by telegraph to Scotland Yard. Warren dashed off a brief note to Lus.h.i.+ngton. 'I have to acquaint you, for the information of the Secretary of State,' he wrote, 'that information has just been received that a mutilated dead body of a woman is reported to have been found this morning inside a room in a house (No. 26) in Dorset Street, Spitalfields.' The matter, he added, had been entrusted to Anderson. Messages then flew back and forth. The Home Office telephoned Warren. They wanted to be informed as soon as possible of any further news. And, after personally inspecting the scene of the murder, Anderson telephoned the Home Office. A scribbled note of his message still survives in the Home Office papers: 'Body is believed to be that of a prost.i.tute terribly muti [sic] much mutilated. Dr Bond is at present engaged in making his examination but his report has not yet been received. Full report cannot be furnished until medical officers have completed enquiry.'21 On Sat.u.r.day morning the police returned eagerly to their investigation of the crime. Abberline was back at Miller's Court, exploring the ashes cold in the grate of Mary's room. It had been a large fire, so fierce that it had melted the spout of the kettle, but the only clues his search turned up were a few remnants of women's clothing. A Times report a.s.sures us that they were a piece of burnt velvet, presumed to be the remains of a jacket, and the charred rim and wirework of a woman's felt hat. Press versions of Abberline's inquest testimony speak of the remnants of a skirt and the brim of a hat.22 What had been the purpose of this blaze? To destroy something? Abberline did not think so. He discovered but one piece of candle in the room and decided that the Ripper had been compelled to burn clothes in order to provide the light by which he mutilated his victim.

That same morning Doctors Phillips, Bond and Gordon Brown carried out a post-mortem examination at the mortuary. Press notices of their labours are brief and unreliable and leave the question as to whether any parts of the body were missing unresolved. Indeed, on the matter of missing organs, they performed a complete volte-face. The earliest reports of the autopsy insisted that after Phillips had 'fitted' the dismembered portions of Mary's anatomy into their proper places all the organs had been fully accounted for. By the beginning of the following week, however, the same papers were confidently a.s.serting the contrary. Thus, on 13 November, the Daily Telegraph: 'We are enabled to state, on good authority, that notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, a portion of the bodily organs was missing.'23 To discerning members of the public the behaviour of the medicos would have proved a better guide. For on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, only hours after the post-mortem had been terminated, Phillips and Dr Roderick Macdonald, the district coroner, went to the scene of the crime and, having sifted the ashes from the grate through a sieve, proceeded to inspect the residue for traces of burnt human remains. Obviously Mary's corpse had not been restored complete.

In providing us with our first accurate account of the autopsy findings, Dr Thomas Bond's newly discovered post-mortem notes finally settle this long standing controversy.24 They make harrowing reading. But they are an important part of the record.

Mary's throat had been cut with such ferocity that the tissues had been severed right down to the spinal column and the fifth and sixth vertebrae had been deeply notched by the knife. The air pa.s.sage had been cut at the lower part of the larynx through the cricoid cartilage.

There were terrible mutilations to the face: 'The face was gashed in all directions, the nose, cheeks, eyebrows & ears being partly removed. The lips were blanched & cut by several incisions running obliquely down to the chin. There were also numerous cuts extending irregularly across all the features.'

But the injuries inflicted upon Mary's torso and limbs exceeded in b.e.s.t.i.a.lity anything the Ripper had yet done. Dr Bond wrote: Both b.r.e.a.s.t.s were removed by more or less circular incisions, the muscles down to the ribs being attached to the b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The intercostals between the 4th, 5th & 6th ribs were cut & the contents of the thorax visible through the openings.

The skin & tissues of the abdomen from the costal arch to the p.u.b.es were removed in three large flaps. The right thigh was denuded in front to the bone, the flap of skin including the external organs of generation & part of the right b.u.t.tock. The left thigh was stripped of skin, fascia & muscles as far as the knee.

The left calf showed a long gash through skin & tissues to the deep muscles & reaching from the knee to 5 in. above the ankle.

Both arms & forearms had extensive & jagged wounds.

The right thumb showed a small superficial incision about 1 in. long, with extravasation of blood in the skin & there were several abrasions on the back of the hand & forearm showing the same condition.

On opening the thorax it was found that the right lung was minimally adherent by old firm adhesions. The lower part of the lung was broken & torn away.

The left lung was intact; it was adherent at the apex & there were a few adhesions over the side. In the substances of the lung were several nodules of consolidation.

The pericardium was open below & the heart absent.

Mary's heart had obviously been cut out and could not be found but Bond does not venture an opinion as to whether the murderer had burned it or had carried it away. For what they are worth and upon such matters they are worth very little the newspaper reports aver that no traces of human remains were discovered in the ashes of the fire.

The doctors found partly digested food, consisting of fish and potatoes, in the abdominal cavity. Similar food was discovered in the remains of the stomach attached to the intestines.

The post-mortem over with, Bond felt able to respond to Anderson's plea for guidance on the degree of medical expertise displayed by the murderer. And, in a general report penned for the a.s.sistant Commissioner later in the day, he set down his conclusions on this and other aspects of the case.25 His remarks embraced the Nichols, Chapman, Stride and Eddowes murders, police notes relating to which he had read, as well as that of Mary Kelly.

Bond was sure that all five women had been slain by the same hand. The throats of the first four appeared to have been cut from left to right. In Mary's case extensive mutilations made it impossible to tell in which direction the fatal cut had been made but, like the others, her throat had been cut first for splashes of arterial blood were found on the wall close to where her head must have been lying.

In no case had any sign of a struggle been discovered. It thus appeared to the doctor that the attacks were 'probably so sudden and made in such a position that the women could neither resist nor cry out.' The victims were probably lying down when murdered. As noted by Phillips, the sheet at the top right-hand corner of Mary's bed was b.l.o.o.d.y and badly cut. The explanation that occurred to Bond was that Mary's face might have been covered with the sheet at the time the attack was made. In the first four cases the murderer must have attacked from the right side of the victim. In the case of Mary Kelly this would have been impossible because there would not have been room for him between the wooden pet.i.tion and the bed. He must therefore have attacked her from in front or from the left. Although Bond did not think that the murderer need necessarily have been 'deluged' with blood, he did believe that his hands and arms must have been covered in it and that parts of his clothing must have been stained.

The mutilations of Nichols, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly, said the doctor, were 'all of the same character.' They were inflicted with a strong knife, very sharp, pointed at the top, about an inch in width and at least six inches long. 'It may have been a clasp knife, a butcher's knife or a surgeon's knife,' he speculated, '[but] I think it was no doubt a straight knife.'

On the important question of the killer's medical expertise Bond provided Anderson with a categoric reply. The murderer was a man of physical strength and 'great coolness and daring.' But, as far as Bond was concerned, he possessed no anatomical knowledge: 'In each case the mutilation was inflicted by a person who had no scientific nor anatomical knowledge. In my opinion he does not even possess the technical knowledge of a butcher or horse slaughterer or any person accustomed to cut up dead animals.'

Of more immediate interest to Abberline, struggling to unravel the mysteries of Miller's Court, would have been the answer to a different question. When did Mary die? But on this point Dr Bond was less sure of his ground: In the Dorset Street case the body was lying on the bed at the time of my visit, 2 o'clock, quite naked and mutilated . . . Rigor Mortis had set in, but increased during the progress of the examination. From this it is difficult to say with any degree of certainty the exact time that had elapsed since death as the period varies from 6 to 12 hours before rigidity sets in. The body was comparatively cold at 2 o'clock and the remains of a recently taken meal were found in the stomach and scattered about over the intestines. It is, therefore, pretty certain that the woman must have been dead about 12 hours and the partly digested food would indicate that death took place about 3 or 4 hours after the food was taken, so one or two o'clock in the morning would be the probable time of the murder.

The most dramatic development of Sat.u.r.day 10th was the intervention of the government. A Cabinet Council held at the Foreign Office decided that Mr Matthews should stand firm on his refusal of a reward and instead agreed to countenance the offer of a free pardon to any accomplice of the murderer of Mary Kelly who would betray him into the hands of the police. Lus.h.i.+ngton accordingly authorized Warren to issue the following notice, which appeared in the press and outside police stations: MURDER. PARDON. Whereas on November 8 or 9, in Miller Court, Dorset Street, Spitalfields, Mary Janet [sic] Kelly was murdered by some person or persons unknown: the Secretary of State will advise the grant of Her Majesty's gracious pardon to any accomplice, not being a person who contrived or actually committed the murder, who shall give such information and evidence as shall lead to the discovery and conviction of the person or persons who committed the murder.

CHARLES WARREN, the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis.

Metropolitan Police Office, 4 Whitehall Place, S.W., Nov. 10, 1888.26 It would be naive to believe that the Cabinet expected to detect the Ripper by this intervention. Their decision was immediately challenged in the Commons. W. A. Hunter, the Member for Aberdeen North, asked on 12 November whether the Home Secretary had considered extending the pardon to the killer's accomplices in the earlier murders, especially since 'in the case of the first murder, committed last Christmas [Emma Smith], according to the dying testimony of the woman, several persons were concerned in the murder.' Matthews declined to answer at that time. When Hunter repeated his question eleven days later, however, he attempted to project a facade of omniscience and replied that he would be quite prepared to extend the pardon if he had any evidence that such a decision might be fruitful. But, he pointed out, 'in the case of Kelly there were certain circ.u.mstances which were wanting in the earlier cases, and which made it more probable that there were other persons who, at any rate after the crime, had a.s.sisted the murderer.'27 Matthews' explanation of the rationale of the pardon offer is, quite frankly, unbelievable. In at least two of the earlier murders, that of Emma Smith, which was apparently perpetrated by three men, and that of Liz Stride, for which Israel Schwartz had accused two, there had been evidence of accomplices. The Home Secretary was not ignorant of these facts. Hunter himself had drawn his attention to the first instance and Warren had sent him a detailed report on the Stride murder on 24 October. In the case of Mary Kelly, on the other hand, there was no evidence whatsoever that more than one man had been involved and Dr Bond had said so in his report. So what was the real purpose of the Cabinet's hasty, ill-judged action? Simply that the latest murder threatened to deluge the Home Secretary in a tidal wave of public anger and recrimination and it was deemed imperative that he do something, however futile, to appease the outcry. Having argued so forcefully against rewards in the past, Matthews could scarcely endorse them now and retain credibility. But a pardon . . . It was, then, an empty gesture, a sop to public opinion, prompted not by wisdom but by fear.

The inquest was held on Monday, 12 November. The murder had been committed in Spitalfields and the body had been deposited in Sh.o.r.editch Mortuary. So the proceedings were conducted, not by Wynne Baxter, but by Dr Roderick Macdonald, Coroner for the North Eastern District of Middles.e.x. The venue was Sh.o.r.editch Town Hall.

There was great public excitement. All day curious sightseers rambled up and down Dorset Street. They were prevented from entering Miller's Court, still guarded by two constables, but a crowd collected outside the court and maintained a permanent vigil. At Sh.o.r.editch Town Hall, where the inquest got under way at 11.00 a.m., large numbers of people had to be shut out. When the crush outside threatened to overwhelm the coroner's officer, trying to hold the door, the door was locked and an inspector stationed there. By that time the inquest room was packed.

After the jurors had been sworn they were conducted by Abberline to the mortuary to view the body and then to Miller's Court to see the murder room. Mary's corpse had been st.i.tched together and coffined. Only her face was visible, her mutilated body lying concealed beneath a dirty grey cloth. 'The eyes were the only vestiges of humanity, commented the Pall Mall Gazette. 'The rest [of the face] was so scored and slashed that it was impossible to say where the flesh began and the cuts ended.'28 It was close on twelve before any evidence was taken. The jury learned something about Mary from Joe Barnett. Thomas Bowyer and John McCarthy told them how her body had been discovered on Friday morning. And depositions bearing upon her final hours were contributed by half a dozen residents of Dorset Street and Miller's Court. But those antic.i.p.ating a feast of gory revelations were profoundly disappointed. Dr Phillips spoke only briefly about the medical aspects of the case. Indeed, beyond his a.s.sertion that death had been caused by the severance of the right carotid artery he told the jury virtually nothing. And no question was put to him as to the details of the extensive mutilations or as to whether any organs were still missing. From Beck and Abberline, whose testimonies wound up the day's proceedings, they heard little more about the police investigation.

However frustrating to the modern historian, the att.i.tude of Phillips and the police was, of course, understandable. Their view was that the work of the police might be hindered by the immediate publication of the full details. Dr Macdonald, himself a police surgeon (to the Metropolitan Police's K Division), recognized the logic of their case and told the jury that he was only going to take the preliminary portion of Phillips' evidence, the remainder of which could be more fully given at the adjourned inquiry. The inquiry, in the event, was not to be adjourned. After Abberline had made his deposition Macdonald terminated the day's proceedings. In doing so he advised the jury that it would be sufficient for them to ascertain the cause of death only, leaving other matters in the hands of the police, and he asked them if they had already heard enough evidence to enable them to reach a verdict. The foreman, having consulted his colleagues, affirmed that they had. They returned a verdict of 'wilful murder against some person or persons unknown'.

During the days immediately after the Miller's Court outrage East Enders were witness to frantic police activity. But, from the first, the press expressed little confidence in their success. 'It is quite clear,' thundered the Star, 'that nothing can be expected from the police, and that we may have 20 murders, as well as seven or eight, without their doing a single thing or making a single effort which will be fruitful for the public good.' Even The Times was beginning to despair of the CID: 'The murders, so cunningly continued, are carried out with a completeness which altogether baffles investigators. Not a trace is left of the murderer, and there is no purpose in the crime to afford the slightest clue, such as would be afforded in other crimes almost without exception. All that the police can hope is that some accidental circ.u.mstance will lead to a trace which may be followed to a successful conclusion.'29 Admirable as The Times' exposition of the problem was, we must challenge its a.s.sumption that the Ripper had left absolutely no new clues to his ident.i.ty. Clues in the form of tangible objects there were certainly none. No weapon had been discovered. A pipe found by the police in No. 13 turned out to belong to Joe Barnett and a man's black overcoat to have been left there by Mary's friend Maria Harvey. But there was no shortage of witnesses who saw Mary on the night of the murder. Several of them even claimed to have seen her in the company of strange men.

It is time for us to examine the evidence of these witnesses, to explore the last few hours of Mary Jane Kelly's life, to probe the dark secrets of Miller's Court on that cold November night a century ago.

16.

'Oh! Murder!'

OUR SEARCH FOR THE FACTS about the murder of Mary Kelly must discount the unsupported tattle of the Victorian press. Even when important witnesses were seen by reporters, interviews were often conducted so sloppily and edited and published so hastily that the words of witnesses appear to have been quite misconstrued.

Take, for example, the John McCarthy statement printed by the Daily News on 10 November. It was made on the day of the murder and contains this intriguing pa.s.sage: 'At eleven o'clock last night she [Kelly] was seen in the Britannia public house, at the corner of this thoroughfare [Dorset Street], with a young man with a dark moustache. She was then intoxicated. The young man appeared to be very respectable and well dressed.' Who was McCarthy's informant? He does not say. But a sighting of Mary with a man on the night of her death would have been an observation of the greatest importance so it is difficult to understand why McCarthy made absolutely no reference to the incident in his statement to the police or in his testimony before the coroner.

A report from the Western Mail, published in Paul Begg's book, seems at first glance to provide a plausible solution to this mystery McCarthy's informant was his a.s.sistant, Thomas Bowyer, and the observation had been made, not on Thursday night but on Wednesday, more than a day before the murder. The report reads: 'Harry Bowyer states that on Wednesday night he saw a man speaking to Kelly who resembled the description given by the fruiterer of the supposed Berner Street murderer. He was, perhaps, 27 or 28 and had a dark moustache and very peculiar eyes. His appearance was rather smart and attention was drawn to him by [his] showing very white cuffs and a rather long white collar, the ends of which came down in front over a black coat. He did not carry a bag.'1 Sadly even this tidy solution will not do. For Bowyer's inquest deposition proves that he saw Mary Kelly neither on Wednesday night nor on Thursday night. Replying to a specific question from the inquest jury, Bowyer said: 'I last saw deceased alive on Wednesday afternoon in the court [Miller's Court].'2 If the incident alluded to in McCarthy's press statement happened at all the informant was not Bowyer or it had predated the murder by several days. In either case the story, as it stands, is worthless as evidence. This is not to say that newspapers do not yield occasional gems and we will have occasion to be thankful to them when we encounter George Hutchinson. But unless, as in that case, we can corroborate them from police or coroner's file, press statements of witnesses should be used with great caution and news reports when they treat of the details of the murders and murder investigations altogether discounted. Fortunately authentic evidence of the Kelly case does exist and if we are to find any answers to our questions we must seek them there.

Nine local residents appeared to give evidence at the inquest on 12 November. The records of coroners' inquests held for the North Eastern District of Middles.e.x still survive. And the papers relating to this case3 contain, not only an official record of the depositions made at the inquest, but copies of the original statements made by the nine witnesses to the police three days earlier. The statements are all dated 9 November and all but one are in the handwriting of Inspector Abberline.

Taken together the depositions and statements of these witnesses const.i.tute our main source of doc.u.mentary evidence relating to the murder. They furnish invaluable insights. Nevertheless, full of comings and goings, suspicious characters and contradictory testimony, they are often frustrating to use. And the light they shed upon the events of that night is but a fitful one. By it we can drive the shadows from Miller's Court for brief intervals, but they lurk in the corners, and as regularly as our light falters they close around us again to envelop us in impenetrable gloom.

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 s.h.i.+rts, a boy's s.h.i.+rt, a girl's white petticoat, a black crepe bonnet with black strings and a p.a.w.n 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.4 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 c.o.x encountered her in Dorset Street, she was intoxicated and with a stranger. Mrs c.o.x, described by the Star as 'a wretched looking specimen of East End womanhood', was a thirty-one-year-old widow who supported herself by prost.i.tution. 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 c.o.x 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 prost.i.tute 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 c.o.x. When the widow entered the court they were going into Mary's room. 'Good night, Mary Jane,' called Mrs c.o.x. '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 c.o.x, 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 c.o.c.k black hat on, he had a blotchy face and a full carrotty mustache his chin was clean.'

As Mrs c.o.x 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 c.o.x 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 c.o.x 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 c.o.x 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 3.30.8 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's9 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 gla.s.s 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.

What of the Ripper himself? The coroner's papers, alas, probably tell us nothing about him. The stories of the witnesses certainly abound in dubious characters. The man Mrs Maxwell thought she saw talking to Mary at nine, if he ever existed, is exonerated. But there are plenty of others the short, stout man with the blotchy face and carrotty moustache seen by Mrs c.o.x, the man with the black bag and the high hat, the man with the wideawake black hat Sarah Lewis saw lurking opposite the entrance of Miller's Court and looking up the court 'as if waiting for someone to come out', and the young man seen with a woman by Sarah in Dorset Street. It should be remembered, though, that the fact that strange men, with or without women, were seen about Dorset Street in the nocturnal hours is of no significance in itself. The street consisted almost entirely of common lodging houses. That at 14 Dorset Street, where Mrs Maxwell's husband was deputy, alone could accommodate 244 people. And, as we have already noted, the street and its courts harboured prost.i.tutes galore. It was thus by no means unusual to encounter men and prost.i.tutes in the street in the early hours of the morning.

The only suspect these witnesses refer to against whom a case can be made is the man with the carrotty moustache because he was actually seen to enter No. 13 with Mary Kelly. Even the case against him, however, is extremely weak. It was about 11.45 p.m. when Mrs c.o.x followed them into Miller's Court, no less than four hours before the probable time of the murder and far too early for us to a.s.sume that he was the killer. Mary was a prost.i.tute. She was, moreover, in financial trouble. Her rent arrears stood at 29s. and Thomas Bowyer's call the next morning may not have been unantic.i.p.ated. Quite possibly she feared eviction. When Joe Barnett's visit on Thursday evening proved barren of succour she took to the streets. She procured one client, the man Mrs c.o.x saw at 11.45, and in the ensuing four hours, impelled by necessity, she could easily have procured another. Indeed, there is crucial eyewitness evidence that she did precisely that.

The witness was George Hutchinson, a casual labourer then living at the Victoria Working Men's Home in Commercial Street. His name will not be found in the coroner's papers for the simple reason that he did not appear at the inquest. This was not, as some have recently alleged, because his evidence was deliberately suppressed, but because at the time of the inquest neither the police nor the coroner knew anything of him.

It was not until six in the evening of Monday, 12 November, after the inquest had been concluded, that Hutchinson walked into Commercial Street Police Station and made his statement. This doc.u.ment, still preserved in the records of the Metropolitan Police, merits quotation in full: About 2 a.m. 9th I was coming by Thrawl Street, Commercial Street, and just before I got to Flower and Dean Street I met the murdered woman Kelly and she said to me Hutchinson will you lend me sixpence. I said I can't I have spent all my money going down to Romford. She said good morning I must go and find some money. She went away towards Thrawl Street. A man coming in the opposite direction to Kelly tapped her on the shoulder and said something to her. They both burst out laughing. I heard her say alright to him and the man said you will be alright for what I have told you. He then placed his right hand around her shoulders. He also had a kind of a small parcel in his left hand with a kind of a strap round it. I stood against the lamp of the Queen's Head Public House and watched him. They both then came past me and the man hung down his head with his hat over his eyes. I stooped down and looked him in the face. He looked at me stern. They both went into Dorset Street. I followed them. They both stood at the corner of the court for about 3 minutes. He said something to her. She said alright my dear come along you will be comfortable. He then placed his arm on her shoulder and gave her a kiss. She said she had lost her handkerchief. He then pulled his handkerchief a red one out and gave it to her. They both then went up the court together. I then went to the court to see if I could see them but could not. I stood there for about three quarters of an hour to see if they came out. They did not so I went away.

Description: age about 34 or 35, height 5 ft. 6, complexion pale, dark eyes and eye lashes, slight moustache curled up each end and hair dark, very surley looking; dress, long dark coat, collar and cuffs trimmed astracan and a dark jacket under, light waistcoat, dark t