|
Part 1 - Mary Anne 'Polly' Nichols
"Fancy a knee-trembler, do ya," Polly slurred, fingering the woolly lapel of the stranger's fancy coat.
All she needed to be allowed back into the crowded dormitory of the 'White House' at 56 Flower and Dean Street - described as 'perhaps the fowlest and most dangerous street in the whole metropolis'* - in Spitalfields - the most notorious of London's rookeries - was poxy fourpence.
Having started her drunken spree well before midnight, she had merrily spent three times that amount in various Spitalfield Pubs, like the 'Frying Pan' on the corner of Thrawl Street and Brick Lane - her old neighbourhood, from when she had been staying at 'Wilmott's' at 18 Thrawl Street - looking for 'old' customers willing to stand her a drink or two before groping her in the dirty and ill-lit back alleys, and, after weaving down Osborn Street alone at around half past two on Friday morning, she had ended up in yet another, unfamiliar, drinking establishment, about a ten minutes' walk from where her friend Emily had last seen her standing by the shop at the junction of Osborn Street and Whitechapel Road.
By now she'd had enough - the cheap gin burning a hole in her stomach lining - and she was suddenly desperate to call it a night.
"Come on, then, sweetie pie," she beckoned to her latest companion, unsteadily getting up and clumsily knocking into the solid edge of the stained table next to theirs.
"Oops-a-daisy," she smirked at the unsmiling patrons sitting at the table, nursing glasses of stale ale, "don't mind me, just carry on, will ya. Cheerio."
The man had got up, too, ignoring her antics, and was pushing through the rowdy crowd, silently holding the steamed-up door open for her.
She didn't really feel like getting too close to the fellow, who had struck her as odd - she couldn't really put her finger on why she found him weird, as he hadn't said much, and had been quite polite - but since he had shown willing to give her the doss money in exchange for her 'services', she had woozily put aside her gut-feeling. Now, coming down the few stone steps into the street, she hung on to his arm regardless, so as to keep her balance.
His coat was of quality wool, soft to the touch, and he smelt nice, too - of new-mown hay.
She suddenly felt a bit panicky, thinking how out of place he seemed, wondering what shady business might have brought him to this seediest of neighbourhoods.
He marched her swiftly along eerie Buck's Row, ignoring her feeble attempts at conversation, head down, his brown trilby at an angle, one gloved hand buried deeply in his pocket, the other holding a Gladstone bag.
"In a hurry, are ya? Well, so am I, actually," Polly joked, trying to keep up. "there's a stable yard coming up. It should do, what d'ya think, darlink? No one's about. Be quick."
He abruptly pushed her up against the locked gate, his heavy body pressing in close, his quickening breath tickling her ear - the sudden movement causing her jolly new black velvet bonnet to fall onto the worn cobblestones.
"Oi, Mister! Hold yer horses. We'll 'ave yer pecker out soon enough."
As Polly, muttering “cheese and crust” under her breath, bent down to retrieve it - her greying dark brown hair coming loose - she caught a glint on steel in the corner of her eye, and although the poor woman sobered up instantly, it was too late.
Too late to plead with the man, too late to be saved by a passer-by, too late even to repent before god.
As he roughly covered her twitching mouth with his right hand to keep her both at arms' length and from screaming - her high cheekbones protruding even more prominently as his vicious fingers squeezed her pallid face, bruising it - the imploring gaze of her brown eyes never left the contorted face of a man possessed.
Oh dear God please let this not be the end This is not the end Not the end
It was all over within seconds, her pale throat now a gaping, red wound from two brutal, deep incisions, decisively inflicted from left to right. Her precious blood, quickly staining the grimy lapel of her well-worn dress bright red, was now draining into the killer's open bag, into which he had forcefully pushed the petite woman's nearly severed head, in a surprisingly concise downward movement.
The toff wasn't done, though.
He had only briefly stepped away from her, to avoid the first gush of blood, but when she had stilled, he carefully manoeuvred her onto her back, languidly stretched her out at his feet next to the leather bag with its sloshing contents, her lifeless left hand touching the high gate - her wide open eyes now directing their gaze to high heaven.
He then unhesitatingly carried out his sordid mission, following the precise choreography of his own sick devising, before making good his escape, heavy bag in hand, in the twilight, into the morning's market traffic on busy Whitechapel Road.
Shady business, indeed.
Concluded within five minutes.
When the carman Charles Cross, together with the cartdriver Robert Paul, chanced upon her lifeless body at twenty to four in the morning, her open hands already felt cold, yet her dead-pan face remained warm to the touch.
£££
Police Constable Mizen, who had been informed of their disturbing find by the two men at the corner of Hanfield Street and Baker's Row, was dispatched to fetch reinforcements and the Police 'Ambulance' - a handcart - by PC Neil, who had arrived first at the scene, at a quarter to four, while Constable Thain, who had been alerted by the light of Neil's lantern, was dispatched to fetch Doctor Llewellyn, the renowned surgeon of 152 Whitechapel Road.
It was duly noted that there were no blood trails nor wheel marks in the vicinity, and that, while very little blood had seeped into the dirty cracks between the uneven cobblestones surrounding the body, a small amount had pooled, and then congealed, under her neck.
At four o'clock the surgeon declared that the woman had been dead for about half an hour and had her removed to the Old Montague Street Mortuary of the nearby Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary, where, upon his arrival at twenty past five in the morning, Inspector Spratling discovered further atrocious injuries, apart from the obvious ones, causing him to send for Dr Llewellyn once more.
Polly's dead body had suffered one deep, jagged abdominal wound on the left, along with several crosswise incisions, causing her bowels to protrude, while similar slashes were visible down the right side.
Her private parts had been viciously stabbed twice - with the same, moderately sharp, six to eight inches long cork-cutter, or possibly a shoemaker's knife, very violently thrust down by her left-handed assailant.
Mary Ann Nichols' sorry existence was snuffed out like a candle on the last day of August - a bank holiday Friday - in 1888.
She was a destitute and desperate forty-something mother of five, estranged from their children and her husband, whose refusal - six years prior to her savage murder - to pay her allowance, altogether based on the hearsay that she was resorting to prostitution to keep off the streets, had been granted, without giving Polly as much as a say in the matter - which undoubtedly had contributed to her life becoming a downward spiral, blighted by poverty and alcoholism.
£££
The funeral cortège's solemn progress was watched by several thousand preoccupied people as the horse-drawn, closed hearse, carrying her mutilated remains, carefully arranged in a handsome coffin of polished elm surmounted with a brass plate in gilt letters, and two black mourning coaches carrying her father, Edward Walker, her estranged husband, William, and three of their children, slowly made their way to the City of London Cemetery.
Much more seems to have been invested in her death than was ever granted this quiet woman that kept to herself, in life.
* James Greenwood 'In Strange Company', 1883
Part 2 - Eliza Anne 'Dark Annie' Chapman
"Cor blimey," she exclaimed loudly when she encountered 'Dark' Annie on Commercial Street, near Spitalfields Church, on Tuesday the 4th of September, "you've been batty-fanged alright. Look at your poor chevy chase."
Annie - sporting a black eye and a bruised temple - beckoned Amelia to step closer, then quickly opened her tattered dress so her friend could see the nasty bruise across her chest.
"I might admit myself to the casual ward at the 'Loafries' for a few days."
Amelia, taking in her short, plump friend's pale face, whiter than the Tuscan columns of Spitalfields Christ Church behind her, asked if she had had anything to eat that day.
"Haven't had as much as a cuppa to wash my consumption pills down with."
Amelia searched her frilled apron pocket, and handed over tuppence to buy some food. "Not to be spent on rum", she said sternly, knowing - having seen her the worse for drink - that Annie, a sociable, albeit respectable woman, had a weakness for it and sometimes drank to excess on Saturday nights but was usually sober for the remainder of the week.
When their ways crossed again in Dorset Street at five o'clock on Friday afternoon, Amelia silently took in Annie's lacklustre, wavy, dark brown hair, her ashen face, and the dullness in her blue eyes, and said softly: "My goodness, you look even worse than before, didn't you go to the Infirmary?"
"I did. They discharged me today, even though I'm not up to dick at all."
She normally was an industrious woman when sober, a deft hand with a crochet hook, selling small bouquets of flowers and even smaller packets of matches, and only occasionally resorted to prostitution. That day, however, she felt bruised and in pain, her health noticeably deteriorating - her lungs and brain membranes were in an advanced state of disease that would probably have killed her within months, had she not been in the wrong place, at the wrong time, later that night.
At eleven thirty, she was sharing a beer with a fellow resident of 'Crossingham's' at 35 Dorset Street - nicknamed 'Dosset' Street - which she had been frequenting since May.
Lacking the required money for her habitual doss - bed number 29 - she went out shortly after midnight, only to return at half past one, slightly tipsy, to eat a baked potato in the communal kitchen, still lacking funds for her bed.
At a quarter to two, she was escorted out by 'Brummie', the lodging house's night watchman, who observed her walk along Dorset Street - reputedly 'The worst street in London'* - then turn into Paternoster Street's court, and on into Brushfield Street, before turning right towards Spitalfields Church.
She was still wandering the streets close to Commercial Street - completely sober - in the early hours of the morning, trying to sell her wares - wary, hurting and increasingly desperate - when she saw a short, well-dressed albeit slightly shabby gent with very dark hair, wearing a brown, low-crowned hat and a dark coat, coming slowly towards her. She deftly stepped in his way, at the narrow entrance to the yard of number 29 Hanbury Street - the numerals clearly visible above the door - just as the nearby brewery's clock chimed the half hour, calling out: "Looking for a fine bouquet of flowers for your lady? Or maybe a crocheted anti-massacar for mother's delicate setee? If you're a smoker, I also have quality matches for sale!"
He had looked up, startled, when she had briefly touched his arm, and had stopped in his tracks. Now, he was looking her up and down, while asking in a low, husky voice whether she had any other services on offer.
"If it's firkytoodling you're after, I might consider it for the right price", she conspiratorially whispered, just as a working woman walked past them, glancing at her briefly.
"Will you", he said, more confidently this time, leaning close. Pleasantly surprised by his nice scent - the freshly mowed meadows of her childhood - she loudly replied: "Yes."
She then had simply unlatched the wooden yard door, walked through the dark passage towards the unlit yard and had just reached the few stone steps that led down to it, with her eager client following on her heels, when she suddenly felt his gloved hands grabbing her coarse muslin neckerchief. "No, no!" she cried, and in the ensuing struggle - his stranglehold making her gasp for breath, her damaged lungs not coping, her mouth wide open but no sound coming out, her pale tongue protruding beyond her perfect teeth - her left foot slipped, and she fell into the less than one metre wide recess between the steps and the wooden fence that divided the yards of number 29 and 27, where a tenant, on his way back into number 27 after having visited the lavatory in the yard for his morning's ablutions, heard her crash into the sturdy fence but refrained from investigating - despite the fence being considerably less than two metres high - for reasons of his own.
Darling Emily Ruth my sweet wilful child I missed you so It's been nigh on six years It's time to join you once more
Her own trembling hands were just inches from her damaged throat when her determined killer - having deftly jumped down after her - was upon her, taking hold of her chubby chin and slashing her bruised throat from left to right as she was struggling to sit up, once again avoiding the gush of blood by smartly ducking out of the way - it splattered the wall in six places, about half a metre from the ground, instead.
The knife he carried had been concealed in his coat pocket, as before - he had taken care to sharpen it this time. Oh yes, he hadn't wanted to lose precious seconds struggling with the sodding head like last time.
This time, in the unexpected intimacy of this little yard, he took his time as he created his second work of art - to the joyful pounding of his heart and the soft susurration of his blood flow - before taking away his prized trophies in his good old bag, carefully shutting the back door - just as Christ Church's clock struck a quarter to six - leaving the front door open in his hurry to get away, unnoticed by the grey people hurrying to work, or home.
£££
Upstairs, in the top front room, John Davis, an elderly carman at Leadenhall Market, stirred in his bed to the ringing of the bell, eventually got up and made himself a cup of tea before going downstairs into the yard. Surprised to find the back door shut, he went through to the yard where he could smell Annie's blood before he even took the first stone step down - one look into the pit was all it took. Thoroughly spooked, he shakily turned on his heels, sprinted through the narrow passage, and burst through the open front door, shouting murder and waving to some men three doors down, outside Bailey's packing case workshop.
While the men dispersed to find a policeman on his beat, Davis reported his discovery to Divisional Inspector Joseph Chandler at nearby Commercial Street Police Station, who immediately dropped the papers he had been reading to personally hurry along to the crime scene.
He then proceeded to coordinate the policemen at his disposal - several had arrived within minutes - to clear the vicinity, to request the assistance of police surgeon Dr Phillips from 2 Spital Square and to bring as many reinforcements as possible to contain the agitated crowd on the outside, which, by the time the surgeon arrived at around half past six, was already several hundred strong.
Dr Phillips, after diligently lifting the sacking Inspector Chandler had used to cover the mutilated body with, quickly established a definite link between 'Dark' Annie's and Polly's murder.
She was found lying parallel to the wooden palings dividing numbers 27 and 29, her all but severed head almost touching the rear steps, her swollen face turned to the right. Her left arm was placed across her left breast, her hands, covered in blood, were raised and bent towards the throat. Her legs were drawn up, with the knees turned outwards, her feet resting on the ground, next to two forlorn, small, white pills that had spilt from her pocket, and scattered.
For all to see, poor Annie had been disembowelled, an unwanted section of flesh from her abdomen had been placed upon her left shoulder, and more flaps, together with skin and the coils of her small intestine had been placed above her right shoulder, out of the way of her frenzied assailant.
She - like Polly before her - was carted off to the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary's mortuary in Eagle Court in a police 'ambulance', where what was left of her arrived a little before seven.
Once again, as in the first case, her body was stripped and washed against strict instructions, so Dr Phillips could add little more, a little later in the morning, than make a note of her not having consumed alcoholic beverages for at least some hours prior to her assassination, and that good portions of her uterus, bladder and vagina were missing.
How had she ended up on precisely the same slab at the morgue as Polly, little more than a week later, in even worse condition?
Eliza Anne Chapman, too, had separated from her husband, who had had custody of their remaining two children until his death of liver cirrhosis - the subsequent cessation of her allowance leaving her destitute.
Her elder daughter had died of meningitis at the tender age of twelve, and her unfortunate youngest child, a son, had been born crippled - enough tragedy to suck her into the vicious circle of depression and alcohol-dependency.
£££
At the request of her family, her funeral was not publicised and no mourning coaches were employed.
Her remains were buried within an elm coffin draped in black, in communal grave number 78, in square 148 of Manor Park Cemetery, Forest Gate, East London.
Owing to a journalist writing for the Daily Telegraph** at the time, it didn't go unnoticed that - like Mary Anne Nichols a week before - Annie Chapman had died a gruesome death for the lack of fourpence for the right of a 'doss', 'after having been turned out sick, weak and bruised, to earn it anywhere and anyhow.'
* George Duckworth, investigating London Poverty on behalf of Charles Booth in 1898
** September 10th 1888 issue of The Daily Telegraph
Part 3 - Elizabeth 'Long Liz' Stride
"Might be 'Leather Apron' turning on his charm, Queenie!" one of the two men trying to enter the Bricklayer's Arms on Settles Street teased 'Long' Liz, fetchingly attired in a black skirt and jacket - sporting a posy of a red rose in a spray of leaves - and a black crêpe bonnet, sheltering from the downpour in the doorway.
She and her companion, a respectably dressed clerkish type wearing a dark suit, overcoat and hat, had been blocking the pub's entrance for a while, kissing and cuddling, unwilling to go out into the rain, but now, embarrassed, they took off towards busy Commercial Road.
They wandered the gas-lit streets, a little wet but quite sober, until they finally parted company at around quarter to midnight, on the pavement outside 63 Berner Street, still kissing, and being observed from the doorway of number 64 by a resident labourer, who overheard the stout, short, middle-aged man say jokingly to the pale woman: "You would say anything but your prayers."
The curly-haired forty-five-year old woman then met another acquaintance, about three quarters of an hour later, still on Berner Street. "What've you got in that pa-pa-package", she called out to him - a severe injury to the palate had caused a permanent stutter - and he told her that he had bought two replacement majolica tiles for his fireplace, as they crossed the street together. She leant against the wall on the corner of Berner Street, outside the popular International Working Men's Educational Club, while they maintained an amicable conversation. "No, not ta-ta-tonight. Some a-a-other night", she was overheard saying by a passerby.
The mention of the fearful 'Leather Apron' had alarmed her, and although - or maybe even because - she had been a practised prostitute for all her adult life - whenever her situation between jobs as a domestic servant or between tumultuous relationships had demanded it - she had enough sense to try to stay out of trouble. After all, she had already secured her bed for the night during the day, by cleaning some rooms at 32 Flower and Dean Street, the dosshouse where she had been in residence - on and off - since 1882, ever since separating from her husband - with whom she had operated a decent little coffee-shop in Poplar and who had died of tuberculosis in 1884.
After chatting a while in Yiddish - a language she had picked up doing cleaning work for the local Jewish community - to some friendly members of the socialist and predominantly Jewish club on the corner, she strolled to adjacent Fairclough Street, where an unfamiliar, slightly intoxicated man grabbed hold of her sleeve and accosted her in such a brusque manner that the normally very calm and quiet woman emphatically rejected his advances: "Wouldn't ta-ta-touch you with a barge-pole, you wagtail." Liz then turned around and hurriedly retraced her steps in the direction of the Club, where she felt it was safer.
As Israel Schwartz turned into Berner Street, he noticed the broad-shouldered, dark-haired thirty-something stranger, who had a fair complexion, a full face and a small brown moustache, walking just ahead of him.
The man suddenly stopped, at the gateway off Berner Street known as Dutfield's Yard, and tried to forcefully pull 'Long' Liz - who had been catching her breath and was in the process of getting out a cough lozenge she was in the habit of sucking when she felt it was becoming difficult to breathe, and was therefore completely off guard and surprised by his blitz attack - into the street.
Not wanting to get involved in what he thought to be a domestic argument, Schwartz put his head down and quickly crossed the road when the man put both hands on the only slightly shorter woman's shoulders and shoved her to the ground, to her screams of protest.
Schwartz, hurrying away, never looked back.
He could have prevented the first murder of what was to become known as the 'Double Event'.
Liz, still clutching her small bag of throat lozenges, was having trouble getting up, as her deformed right leg - the bones were bowed forward - was giving her considerable gyp.
Her determined attacker hurried past her, and pulled her into the dingy passage, and back onto the ground, by her chequered neckerchief.
He then knelt beside her, close to the wall on the right, brutally pinning her to the ground, and with a swift - by now routine motion - cut her throat with a very clean, clear-cut incision, slicing the windpipe.
He nervously let go of her dark brown hair when he heard a pony and cart approaching, quick-thinkingly turned to face the wall - practically melting into it - and pulled up his dark coat around him as soon as he realised that the contraption was turning into the open gates of the yard.
The tired pony, sensing there was something amiss, abruptly veered to the left, and upon striking a match, the club's anxious steward spied the supine body of dying Elizabeth Stride by its flickering light.
Worried for the safety of his wife, he jumped off on the left, and hurried into the club via its back door.
The fiend, blood in his heart, abandoned his victim and made good his escape, while Liz lay there, in the dirt and mud, silently bleeding to death - saying her last prayers in her head, over and over again.
Gud förbarma dig över mig en syndare Gud förbarma dig Gud
By the time the shaken steward - having found his dear wife, unharmed, in the club's busy kitchen - returned to the gruesome crime scene together with some concerned regulars, carrying a spattering candle, the wicked perpetrator had already successfully mingled - completely unobserved - with the merry crowds still out and about on this wet and windy weekend night.
The five or so men in the dark passageway, spooked by the amount of blood pooling beneath the woman's slashed neck, slowly flowing into a narrow gutter and on down a grimy drain close to the victim's feet, dispersed to seek help.
Some soon encountered Police Constable Spooner on the junction of Fairclough and Christian Street, and when they returned with him, a small crowd of about fifteen curious people had already gathered.
It had swelled to some thirty onlookers by the time Constable Lamb from Commercial Street alerted PC Collins and gave orders to close the gates and to fetch further assistance from Leman Police Station.
The club's premises and the cottages in Dutfield's Yard were meticulously searched in the hope of rousing the killer, alas, to no avail.
The first doctor on the scene was resident Dr Blackwell, from 100 Commercial Road, at quarter past one, who was soon joined by police surgeon Dr Phillips, in the company of Inspectors West and Pinhorn, about twenty minutes later, and with Inspector Reid on his way from Commercial Street Police Station.
Dr Blackwell had found the victim's chin still slightly warm, while her hands had already been cold to the touch, and it was estimated that she had been killed just before the club's steward had turned into the yard at one o'clock.
She was lying on her right side, with her head up the yard, her left arm extended - her hand still clutching the little packet of drops - her right arm over the abdomen, the back of her slim hand and wrist speckled with clotted blood. Her legs - like Annie's had been - were drawn up.
Her ghostly white face, muddied on the left from when she had been looking directly at the attacker with her wide open, pale grey eyes before he had savagely grabbed her by the hair and turned her head to face away from him, abrasing the skin on her right brow, causing blood to flow, in the split second before her head was severed and the blood-flow was directed into the gutter.
A few hours later, in the privacy of Saint George's Mortuary in Cable Street, the bluish discolouration over both her bony shoulders - especially the right - as well as under the prominent collarbone and in front of the chest were recorded as having been caused by first being shoved and then brutally pinned to the ground by the killer.
£££
Elisabeth Stride, née Gustafsdotter in Sweden, was laid to rest in East London's Cemetery in Plaistow, in the quietest possible manner - with just a handful of mourners present - and, having no living relatives, at the expense of the parish.
Part 4 - Catherine 'Kate Kelly' Eddowes
The 'Whitechapel Murderer' - conscious of having escaped apprehension by the skin of his teeth - had just enough self-control - inspite of the state of frenzy he found himself in - to inconspicuously amble towards his Aldgate druggist's for his pick-me-up of choice - laudanum - along the main thoroughfares where he was less likely to stick out as being suspicious. Desperately needing to achieve release - his primary fetish being the post-mortem mutilations, not the act of killing itself - he was on the lookout, should an opportunity arise.
While Liz was slowly bleeding to death in Dutfield's Yard, petite Kate - her black bonnet at a jolly angle and her black jacket a little crumpled - was being released into the streets of the City of London from the holding cell of Bishopsgate Police Station, where she had been sleeping off a whopping bender - she had earlier in the night been taken into custody for causing a public disturbance in Aldgate High Street, very, very drunk.
The jolly 'church-bell' - who was also known for her fierce temper - unaware of the time of night, headed off towards Houndsditch, and ultimately Bermondsey - where she was hoping to obtain some money from her married daughter, not knowing that she had long moved away to escape her mother's begging - and was alternately muttering to herself and softly singing, still feeling a little woozy and quite nauseous, when her path crossed that of the slayer at Aldgate Station and she became that night's second victim.
She had suddenly felt too weak to walk all the way over to her daughter's house and then make the long trek back to 'Cooney's' at 55 Flower and Dean Street where her common-law husband of seven years, John Kelly - a porter at the markets - would be anxiously waiting for her, having warned her of the 'Whitechapel Murderer', whom she claimed she knew.
When that individual - obviously not who she thought it was - spotted her dithering outside Aldgate Station at around half past one, unsure whether to head back or stoically walk on, he was immediately drawn to her wavy, dark auburn hair.
He fell into pace beside her, asking whether she was also headed towards Spitalfields and needed a bit of company.
"Need a bit more than that if I'm to sleep in a bed tonight, sweetheart", she replied, breathing in his pleasant scent, reminiscent of the Staffordshire meadows of her teenage years.
Taking her by the elbow, he said, "Come along then, and you shan't be lacking a resting place."
They were last seen at the entrance to Church Passage, a long narrow walkway which led from Duke Street into cobbled, wide Mitre Square, a little after half past one, by three men who had just left the 'Imperial Club' in 'Duke's Place', talking quietly - black-clad Kate's hand resting comfortably on the medium built, thirtyish, moustachioed man's chest.
Eight minutes were all it took, once he had her in the deep darkness of the entrance to Heydemann's Yard in the square's southwest corner, to execute what by now came natural to him: overpower the unsuspecting brass with her fancy neckerchief, lay her on her back, pin her down, kneel on the right below the middle of her body, slash her throat from left to right, slicing through the windpipe...
How could I have been so wrong I promised Johnny I'd be back by four
...wait a few seconds for the flow to ebb somewhat, and then - bliss - make the dollymop truly yours forever after.
Annoyed by the defiant stare of the head's hazel eyes, he cut through the lower left eyelid, scratching the upper lid, and cut the right one right through, before - irate now - he sliced the bridge of her nose and all the way down to near the angle of her right jaw, only stopping when the knife hit bone, slicing off her ear lobe when bringing the knife up.
Disliking the disgusted expression on her face, he all but detached the tip of her nose and divided the upper lip, the cut extending into the gum. He then quickly made triangular incisions on her cheeks, so the skin peeled off in dashing flaps.
Feeling the onset of relief, his demons, however - having had to endure a seemingly endless wait since the aborted attempt barely an hour ago - couldn't be placated by simply slicing open her tummy. He had to rip out her intestines to a large extent, place them over her right shoulder, swiftly detaching half a metre - fecal matter pouring forth - to be placed between her body and her left arm. A few violent stabs here and there before he took - as he had done before - a part of her womb, and almost as an afterthought, carefully removed her left kidney as a grisly souvenir, before slicing off a piece of her apron to wrap them in, along with his dripping knife. Having discarted his faithful bag as by now being too conspicuous, he simply stuffed everything, including his gloves, into his overcoat's pockets - which he had been carrying over his arm since before spotting her on Aldgate High Street.
£££
He was seen returning alone via Mitre Street - by the same watchman who had seen the pair earlier, outside Aldgate Station - just before the bells of Saint Botolph's struck a quarter to two, heading back towards Aldgate Station, where he turned left onto Goulston Street just as alert Constable Watkins - on his beat which had taken him past the Square at half past and now at quarter past - dicovered Catherine Eddowes' mutilated and disembowelled body in Mitre Square, with her head - turned towards her left shoulder - resting on a coal hole.
The shrill tone of his police whistle directed PCs Harvey and Holland to the square, the latter promptly running off towards local surgeon Dr Sequeira's surgery at 34 Jewry Street, with whom he returned at five minutes to two, being joined by Police Surgeon Brown, of 17 Finsbury Circus, shortly after two.
Between the two, they duly noted the positioning of the victim on her back, both arms by the side of the body, both palms upwards, fingers slightly bent, a thimble lying off the finger of her right hand, left leg in line with the corpse, right leg bent at the knee, bonnet at the back of the nearly severed head - in line with the killer's known signature.
The extensive disfigurement of the face, however, came as a bit of a surprise - even to them.
They verified that the victim was still quite warm and not showing signs of rigor mortis, along with a quantity of clotted blood on the pavement, by the left side of the neck, but no bruises anywhere, no spurting, no secretions or blood on the skin or clothes, and probably not much, if any, on the killer.
Inspector Collard from Bishopsgate Police Station, who had arrived together with Super Intendant McWilliam, Head of the City Police's Detective Department, ordered an immediate search of the neighbourhood with door-to-door inquiries, as well as a thorough search of Spitalfields streets and lodging houses, but nothing was found.
The notorious killer, in the meantime - taking his time - was making his way home to 'the wicked quarter mile', now perfectly calm and collected - and he knew exactly where he was going to leave the stained and stinking piece of apron to taunt the police and cause confusion, and this time, maybe even a riot.
The police having determined that the perpetrator must have left Mitre Square via 'the Orange Market' through narrow Saint James' Place, towards Aldgate Station, vigilant Constable Long, correctly surmising that Goulston Street would be the most direct route towards Spitalfields' Flower and Dean, Dorset and Commercial Streets, discovered it at just before three o'clock inside the recessed and dark doorway leading to the staircases of Wentworth Model Dwellings, smack below a provocative anti-semitic writing on the wall that had been there for a few days, obliquely blaming the Jews for everything.
The policeman was adamant that the only real clue ever to be found had not lain there at twenty past two.
In the days following the gruesome 'double event', John Kelly, sick with worry, had been searching Kate high and low, enquiring among the Jewish Community in Brick Lane, where she was known to have been doing quite a bit of domestic work - cleaning and sewing - even asking for her whereabouts at 'the shed' - number 26 Dorset Street's front room - where she had sometimes slept rough in the past, until he finally happened upon a report on the second of October - two days after her untimely demise - describing the latest victim's distinctive tatoo.
Sick to the stomach, he threw down the paper, and hurried first to Bishopsgate Police Station, and then on to Golden Lane Mortuary, where he - mortified - identified the body as that of Kate Kelly’s, his common-law wife.
£££
Catherine Eddowes, who had born her estranged abusive husband Thomas Conway three children, and was known and loved as a jolly and intelligent woman, was allocated the unmarked public grave number 49336 in square 318 of the City of London's Cemetery as her final resting place.
Her polished elm coffin, complete with oak mouldings and a plaque with an inscription in gilt letters, was taken from Golden Lane - where the perturbed crowd was five rows deep and extending into the roadway - along densely packed Whitechapel Road, to the cemetery at Manor Park - where a downcast crowd of about five hundred people was patiently waiting - in an open glass hearse drawn by horses, accompanied by a mourning couch with John, her four sisters and two nieces.
Ironically, had she been been found making a spectacle of herself by a Metropolitan Police constable and taken to Leman Street Police Station instead of being taken into custody of Bishopsgate Police Station by a City policeman, she would have survived the night - they would have kept her safe until the morning.
And what's more, had the slayer been able to implement his abberant phantasies with Liz, Kate probably would have been able to continue on her way 'home'.
Fate hadn't smiled on Kate.
Part 5 - Mary Jane 'Marie Jeanette' Kelly
'Only a violet I pluck'd when but a boy And oft'time when I'm sad at heart this flow'r has giv'n me joy.'*
Mary's sweet singing voice could be heard by her neighbours in Miller's Court as she was entertaining a client at number 13, her small, sparsely furnished private room at the back of number 26 Dorset Street.
The attractive 'buxom girl' had come back a little before midnight, very drunk, after having had a meal of fish and potatoes, and later something to wash it down with - first at the 'Ten Bells' at the corner of Commercial and Fournier Streets, and then at the 'Horn of Plenty' in Dorset Street - with a short, stout, shabbily dressed ginger-haired man in tow.
'Just a song at twilight when the lights are low and the flickering shadows softly come and go Though the heart be weary Sad the day and long Still to us at twilight comes love's old song' **
The singing continued until around one in the morning of Friday 9th of November, but by half past all was quiet and a neighbour passing through the arched passageway at three heard no sound and saw no light.
Marie Jeannette - as she was calling herself after having travelled to France - had bid the teary-eyed, blotchy-faced man - who had thanked her profusely for her ‘performance’ - goodnight, carried out a quick cat's lick, taken off her clean white apron along with the rest of her clothes, neatly arranged them on her only chair, and had gone to bed, wearing only a flimsy chemise.
The young, 'bricky' girl - she was only about twenty-five - had come to London four years before, and had only started drinking heavily - the normally very quiet woman was reported to become quite talkative, noisy, quarrelsome, even abusive when drunk - when she lost the relative safety and comforts of offering her ‘services’ at a 'high class' establishment in London's West End after her first year in the metropolis.
She then met 28-year-old Joseph Barnett - a porter at Billingsgate Fish Market - at 'Cooley's', a Spitalfields lodging house on Thrawl Street, and together they had moved into lodgings in George Street near Commercial Street, then into Little Paternoster Row - where they were evicted for disorderly conduct and non-payment - then Brick Lane, before ending up at her current address, where she was residing on her own since their split-up on the 30th of October - supposedly already owing twenty-nine shillings in arrears to their landlord McCarthy - one of the major slumlords at the time, who officially ran a chandler's business round the corner on Dorset Street.
When the Miller's Court residents heard someone scream 'murder' at around quarter to four, they thought nothing of it - living where they lived - and at half past five it was ascertained by a neighbour that nothing suspicious was going on - although someone might have left at a quarter to six.
As Mary had lost her key, and a pane of one of her windows around the corner from her door - illuminated at night by a gas lamp located almost directly opposite in the passageway - had been broken in the quarrel that resulted in their separation, she was in the habit of bolting and unbolting her door from the outside by reaching through the broken window.
When she was awakened by a tiny 'click' and opened her blue eyes thinking that Joe had come back ready to make up, 'Jack the Ripper' - knife in hand - was already so close that she screamed only briefly before he clapped his gloved hand over her mouth, simultaneously silencing her forever with his knife, at the ready in the other.
Why did it have to come to this Oh please No I want to go home My Ireland
He lovingly ran his knife down her arms, forearms and left calf - slicing - before giving over to carnage.
In a little less than ninety minutes he delivered, and his demons were, for now, silenced.
He quietly let himself out, taking the ultimate award: the young girl's heart.
He didn't have far to go and met no-one who might have questioned his being in the street.
Incidentally, it was also the last time the Ripper would venture out.
The 'click' of the lock upon coming home was overheard by his suspecting family - by then acutely aware of the toll his drug-abuse was taking on his mental state, and fearful of the stories of ever-increasing carnage being havocked in the streets of Whitechapel - who then, by unanimous vote, proceeded to keep him in a drug-induced state of sedation by covertly tampering with the doses - after all, his preferred tincture of opium and red wine, mixed with saffron and cinnamon, was cheaper than actually buying wine, or gin - until, not much after, he died of respiratory arrest while in the lavatory, attested as a death by ‘natural causes’ by the unsuspecting parish officer.
£££
Back on Dorset Street, at a quarter to eleven on 'Lord Mayor's Day', Mary's landlord sent his rent collector round Miller's Court.
Thinking that the girl was probably still fast asleep, he peered into the gloom of her room after having knocked on her door, and recoiled in horror.
"Guv come quick there's a lot of blood she's been done in", he said breathlessly, as soon as he was through the shop's door, desperately trying to keep his breakfast of bread and drippings and a top o'reeb, down.
"You don't mean...", his boss asked, never finishing his sentence and toppling over his chair in his haste to get up.
Together they went back round the corner, and for a long moment, McCarthy was rendered speechless, before quietly saying, "You'd better fetch the gaver, Tom."
Inspector Beck was informed at Commercial Street Police Station, and he immediately requested the assistance of Dr Phillips. Scotland Yard was telegraphed and bloodhounds were suggested. Superintendent Arnold, Head of Whitechapel's H Division and Inspector Reid, Head of the Criminal Investigation Division as well as Chief Inspector Abberline for the Metropolitan Police and Assistant Police Commissioner Anderson from Scotland Yard hurried over. Orders were given to prevent anyone from entering and exiting the yard.
Crowds at each end of Dorset Street had to be contained.
When the order for bloodhounds was finally countermanded at around half past one in the afternoon, Arnold ordered the room be brocken into with a pickaxe and Doctors Phillips and Bond - of Number 7 The Sanctuary - at last set to work while Abberline busied himself taking an inventory of the room.
They quickly established the modus operandi and signature as that of the 'Ripper', differing only slightly due to the position of the victim from right to left in her bed, with the wall behind it.
The atrocious, extensive mutilations were a deeply disturbing sight even for the experienced professionals in the room, and Dr Bond would later write what is considered to be the first criminal profiling analysis - speaking of the offender as an unobtrusive, respectably dressed, middle-aged man periodically suffering from attacks of homicidal mania.
The 'low-profile' killer had removed Marie Jeanette's skin and tissue of the abdomen in three large flaps, stripped her left thigh as far as the knee and denuded the right to the bone, including the vagina and part of her right buttock - neatly placing the flaps on the rickety table in front of the bed.
He then had eviscerated her, carefully depositing the intestines between the body and the wall, before removing both her breasts by circular incisions - depositing one along with the uterus and kidneys under her head, and the other at the bed's foot-end, by the right foot.
After some deliberation, her liver had ended up between her feet, and the spleen on the left side.
He had already painstakingly removed parts of her nose, cheeks, eyebrows and ears - not in the least bit disconcerted this time by the stare of terror in her eyes - when he drew up the corner of the sheet to cover her marriage face and then slashed it beyond recognition.
It was nearly four o'clock when a horse and cart took Mary Jane Kelly's remains to Saint Leonard's Church Mortuary in Shoreditch in a wooden crate, where a distraught Joseph Barnett identified her by her eyes.
£££
The day she was laid to rest in Saint Patrick's Catholic Cemetery in Leytonstone in her polished elm and oak coffin, on top of which two crowns of flowers and a floral cross had been placed, several thousand solemn-faced onlookers had gathered outside Shoreditch Church.
The cortège - an open car drawn by two horses and two mourning coaches with Joseph, a representative of McCarthy’s, and six of her lady friends, arrived at around two o'clock, awaited by a hundred or so hushed spectators.
'The Autumn of Terror' that had scourged the area - dubbed 'the Abyss' by Jack London*** - then came to an abrupt end - bafflingly so for the police and the public, minus one vindicated and hugely relieved Spitalfields family.
However, the shocking murders - as the playwright George Bernard Shaw pointed out**** - ‘succeeded where social reformers had failed’, and the newly created London County Council helped reform the housing market - alas, few housing schemes were really implemented, despite the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890.
* from a popular American 1880's music-hall hit
** from an Irish Victorian Parlour Song
*** ‘The People of the Abyss’, 1902
**** 'Blood Money to Whitechapel' letter to the Editor of The Star, 24th of September 1888
