BAXTER: 'Was he carrying a stick or umbrella in his hands?'

MARSHALL: 'He had nothing in his hands that I am aware of.'

BAXTER: 'Different people talk in a different tone and in a different way. Did his voice give you the idea of a clerk?'

MARSHALL: 'Yes, he was mild speaking.'

BAXTER: 'Did he speak like an educated man?'

MARSHALL: 'I thought so.'16 Marshall's evidence is intriguing because the man he described was similar in appearance to those seen by PC Smith and Israel Schwartz. All three witnesses could easily have observed the same man. The value of the labourer's testimony, unfortunately, was reduced by his failure to get a good look at the man's face. Where the couple were first standing, by No. 58, it was too dark for Marshall to see the man's face distinctly. The nearest gas lamp, he explained, was 'at the corner, about twenty feet off.' Later, when the two set out in the direction of Ellen Street, they were walking towards Marshall and into the ambit of a lamp at the corner of Boyd Street. But they walked in the middle of the road and, as they pa.s.sed Marshall, the man was looking towards the woman: 'he [the man] was looking towards the woman, and had his arm round her neck.' Unquestionably the main objection to Marshall's evidence as far as the police were concerned, however, was the time of his sighting. It took place at about 11.45, one hour and fifteen minutes before the murder was discovered, and although Marshall's man might indeed have been the killer a prost.i.tute like Elizabeth Stride could have accosted, or have been accosted by, several men in the ensuing hour.

The testimony of James Brown, a dock labourer, of 35 Fairclough Street, is more problematical. At about 12.45 on Sunday morning Brown was returning from a chandler's shop at the junction of Fairclough and Berner Streets to his home when he saw a man and a woman standing at the corner of the board school. The woman was facing the man and standing with her back to the wall. The man was bending over her, his arm resting on the wall above her head. As he pa.s.sed them Brown heard the woman say: 'Not tonight, some other night.' The man's height was about five feet seven inches and he was wearing a dark overcoat, so long that it nearly came down to his heels. Brown did not think that either of the two were drunk.17 It will be noted that the Schwartz and Brown sightings were supposed to have occurred at the same time 12.45 a.m. This means that one of the witnesses must have been mistaken in the time or that they had observed different people. The question of times will be considered later. Here it is enough to say that one if not both of the witnesses could certainly have been in error. Brown's timing, for example, does not seem to have been much more than intelligent guesswork. He arrived home that night at 12.10 a.m. and not long after that went to the chandler's to get something for his supper. He thought that he was there about three or four minutes but, as he admitted at the inquest, 'I did not look at any clock at the chandler's shop.' On his way home with his victuals he saw the couple by the school. And home again, he had nearly finished his supper when terrified cries of 'Murder!' and 'Police!' from the street first alerted him to the tragedy. It was Diemschutz and Kozebrodski pounding eastwards along Fairclough Street in futile quest of a policeman. Brown said that this had occurred about fifteen minutes after he had got back from the shop.

A mistake of minutes on the part of just one witness would reconcile the statements of Schwartz and Brown on that score. But Brown's descriptions of the man and woman he saw raise grave doubts as to whether he can have been talking about the same people observed by William Marshall, PC Smith or Israel Schwartz.

Brown saw Elizabeth Stride's body at the mortuary. He was 'almost certain', he told the inquest, that this was the same woman he had seen by the school. One wonders. Elizabeth had been wearing dark clothes on the night of her death a black jacket trimmed with black fur, a black skirt and a black c.r.a.pe bonnet. The only splash of colour about her had been that solitary red rose and maidenhair fern, prominently displayed on the breast of her jacket. PC Smith had seen them there at 12.35. But ten minutes later Brown missed these obvious items. 'Did you notice any flower in her dress?' queried the coroner. 'No,' replied Brown. And later he added: 'I saw nothing light in colour about either of them.'

Brown's description of the woman's companion is very vague indeed. He gave no details whatsoever about the man's face and if the suspect was wearing any headgear at all Brown did not see, or could not remember, anything of it. The few particulars the labourer did swear to accord ill with the statements of other witnesses. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the man's appearance was a long, dark overcoat 'which came very nearly down to his heels.' This detail cannot possibly be reconciled with Marshall's talk of a small, black, cutaway coat, with Smith's description of a black diagonal cutaway coat, or with Schwartz's reference to a dark 'jacket'. The height of Brown's man five feet seven inches is consistent with the descriptions proffered by the other witnesses but the build is not. Brown's man was of average build. Schwartz, on the other hand, described Elizabeth's a.s.sailant as a broad-shouldered man. And William Marshall, who saw Elizabeth with a man at about 11.45, thought that he appeared 'rather stout'.18 At this date the truth can no longer be recovered. There remains, however, a distinct possibility that the labourer Brown did not see Elizabeth Stride. PC Smith told the inquest that very few prost.i.tutes were accustomed to solicit in Berner Street. But there was a second couple in the vicinity at the time of the murder. Mrs f.a.n.n.y Mortimer of 36 Berner Street saw them and mentioned them in a statement to the press on the day of the tragedy: 'A young man and his sweetheart were standing at the corner of the street, about 20 yards away, before and after the time the woman must have been murdered, but they told me they did not hear a sound.' What was evidently the same pair were alluded to again in a news report. 'A young girl had been standing in a bisecting thoroughfare not fifty yards from the spot where the body was found,' it ran. 'She had, she said, been standing there for about twenty minutes, talking with her sweetheart, but neither of them heard any unusual noises.'19 The board school, at the corner of which Brown saw his couple, was at the junction of Berner and Fairclough Streets.

Before leaving the Berner Street murder we will need to consider some of the questions arising out of the evidence.

The time of the murder can be established with reasonable certainty. At about 12.40 Morris Eagle, pa.s.sing over the spot where the body would later be found, noticed nothing. At one Louis Diemschutz discovered the body. All the indications are that it had not been there long. Edward Spooner, one of the early arrivals on the scene, distinctly saw blood still flowing from the wound in the dead woman's throat. By 1.16, when Dr Blackwell saw the body, the bleeding had stopped. Elizabeth's neck, chest and legs, however, were still quite warm and her face slightly so. Blackwell thought that she must have been murdered after 12.46 and possibly after 12.56. Elizabeth died, then, not long before Diemschutz's barrow clattered into the yard. Indeed, the steward's approach might well have disturbed the murderer at his grisly task.

The evidence we possess suggests that Dr Phillips' reconstruction of the murder was correct. He opined that the victim had been placed upon the ground and that her killer, working from a position on her right side, had then cut her throat from left to right. There is no doubt that Elizabeth's throat was cut while she was lying down for the wound to the left carotid artery and other vessels had bled out upon the ground a few inches to the left of her neck. From this pool, blood had flowed along the gutter towards the side door of the club. No other traces of blood were discovered except for a few stains on Elizabeth's right hand and wrist. Equally, the close proximity of the body to the club wall seems to preclude any possibility of the murderer working from a position on the victim's left. Elizabeth was found huddled up, her face, knees and feet close to the wall. Diemschutz told the inquest that the body was only about a foot from the wall, PC Lamb that her face was not more than five or six inches distant from it.

This reconstruction does, however, pose problems. We cannot believe that Elizabeth would have voluntarily lain down in Dutfield's Yard. Earlier that evening there had been heavy rain and the pa.s.sage between Nos. 40 and 42 had evidently been transformed into a muddy channel. Elizabeth's body was discovered lying on its left side and the left side of her head, hair and coat were well plastered with mud.20 Dr Phillips, taking his cue from the pressure marks over Elizabeth's shoulders, reasoned that she had been seized by the shoulders and 'placed' on the ground. Since she was lying on her left side, head up the yard, one must presume that at the moment of the fatal attack she was facing the wall of the club and that the murderer then pressed her down to his left. But if Elizabeth was forced or thrown down, why were there no signs of a struggle? 'She looked as if she had been laid quietly down,' said PC Lamb. Why did she die still clutching her packet of cachous in her left hand? In the event of a struggle is it not likely that Elizabeth would have dropped these items, either to defend herself or as she flung her arms out to break her fall? Most puzzling of all, if Elizabeth was attacked and forced down, why did no one hear her cries? At the time Morris Eagle was singing upstairs in the International Working Men's Club. Despite the music, he felt that he would have heard a scream from the yard if there had been one. The windows were open but Eagle heard nothing. Downstairs, Mrs Diemschutz was busy about the kitchen and dining room. The day after the murder she told the press that although the side door of the club, close to the kitchen, had been half open, she had not heard anything suspicious whatsoever: 'I am positive I did not hear any screams or sound of any kind. Even the singing on the floor above would not have prevented me from hearing had there been any. In the yard itself all was as silent as the grave.' Mrs Mortimer of 36 Berner Street, standing at the door of her house 'nearly the whole time' between 12.30 and 1.00, heard no noise. And Diemschutz himself, trundling into the yard at one, noticed nothing suspicious at all until his pony shied.21 We just do not know enough to resolve these riddles. A possibility that Elizabeth was drunk or had been drugged is apparently dismissed by Dr Phillips' testimony that there was no trace of malt liquor in her stomach and 'no perceptible trace of any anaesthetic or narcotic.'22 In the Tabram, Nichols and Chapman cases clear signs of strangulation indicated a likely explanation for the absence of cries but these do not seem to have been present in Elizabeth's case. As Mr Baxter pointed out in his summing-up, 'there were no marks of gagging, no bruises on the face.'23 Elizabeth's scarf, the bow of which Dr Blackwell found turned to the left and pulled very tight, may present us with a solution. Blackwell thought that the murderer had pulled his victim backwards by catching hold of her scarf. Even this promising circ.u.mstance, however, has but a doubtful bearing on the problem. The killer, for example, could have jerked the scarf tight when his victim was already on the ground, simply in order to expose her throat to the knife. None of this speculation precludes the possibility that Elizabeth did call out and that her cries were lost in the strains of the singing from the club.

The Berner Street evidence raises an even more intriguing question. Was Elizabeth's killer responsible for any of the other Whitechapel murders? Since 1965 it has been fashionable for Ripperologists to name Elizabeth Stride as the third victim of Jack the Ripper, Nichols and Chapman being seen as the first and second. In fact, there is a very strong case for regarding Martha Tabram as the first Ripper victim and at least a plausible one for discounting Elizabeth Stride altogether.

On the face of it the arguments for excluding Elizabeth from the reckoning are formidable. There were, as we have noted, no obvious signs of strangulation. There were no abdominal mutilations. Although Elizabeth's throat had been cut there was, as Dr Phillips told the inquest, a 'very great dissimilarity' between that wound and those which had nearly decapitated Dark Annie. Annie's throat had been severed all round down to the vertebral column. Furthermore, the vertebral bones had been marked by two sharp cuts and there had been an evident attempt to separate the bones. The cut in Elizabeth Stride's throat was neither as deep nor as extensive. It left the vessels on the right side of the neck untouched and the left carotid artery only partially severed. 'The wound was inflicted,' said Dr Phillips at one point, 'by drawing the knife across the throat.'24 The doctor's testimony on the weapon used in the Stride murder also cautions us against any glib a.s.sociation of this crime with the slaying of Annie Chapman. In his judgement Annie's injuries had been inflicted with a knife having a blade at least six to eight inches long. He did not believe, however, that a long-bladed weapon had been used on Elizabeth Stride. In this case a short knife, like those employed by shoemakers, could have been the murder weapon.

Because of these factors there must always be an element of doubt about the Stride case. On the evidence as it now stands, however, it seems probable that she was indeed struck down by the slayer of Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman. The case for discounting Elizabeth as a Ripper victim is not as weighty as it first appears. The differences between her injuries and those inflicted upon Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman do not oblige us to take the view that she was slain by another hand. The less extensive wounding of the throat and total absence of abdominal mutilations in her case may only mean that her killer was disturbed and scared off before he could complete his task. Again, the fact that Annie Chapman and Elizabeth Stride may have been mutilated with different knives proves nothing. Even if we knew for certain that a single killer was responsible for all the murders we would not be ent.i.tled to a.s.sume that he invariably used the same weapon. In this context it is nevertheless worthy of note that Dr Llewellyn, who carried out the post-mortem examination of Polly Nichols, thought that her injuries had been inflicted, not with an exceptionally long-bladed knife, but with a pointed one that had a stout back, perhaps a cork-cutter's or shoemaker's knife. This appears to have been just such a weapon as was later used upon Elizabeth Stride. In many respects the Stride murder was very like its predecessors. Tabram, Nichols, Chapman and Stride were all prost.i.tutes, silently slaughtered in dark or unfrequented byways of the East End. More than that, in the last three cases the victims had all had their throats cut from left to right while they were lying upon the ground.

Dutfield's Yard was a cul-de-sac. A visitor had only two means of egress: he might, like William West, pa.s.s through the premises of the International Working Men's Club, or go through the main gateway. Whether the murderer could have availed himself of the first option is doubtful for at 12.40 on the fatal night Morris Eagle had tried the club's street door and had found it locked, at least to someone on the outside. More probably the killer escaped through the main gates.

Mrs Mortimer, who was standing at the door of No. 36 for much of the time between 12.30 and 1.00, saw no one leave Dutfield's Yard before one, and Louis Diemschutz, approaching the yard at one, noticed no one running away. The murderer, then, could still have been there when the steward turned into the gateway. If so he retreated farther into the yard and awaited his chance, slipping out when Diemschutz dashed into the club to raise the alarm or vanishing into the crowd of onlookers that gathered in minutes around the body. It was not until after 1.10, while Edward Johnston, Dr Blackwell's a.s.sistant, was examining the dead women, that PC Lamb closed the main gates.

Which route did the killer take from Berner Street? The answer to this question, curiously enough, may just be found in an uncorroborated newspaper report. For the day after the murder the Star printed this item: 'From two different sources we have the story that a man, when pa.s.sing through Church Lane at about half past one, saw a man sitting on a doorstep and wiping his hands. As everyone is on the look-out for the murderer the man looked at the stranger with a certain amount of suspicion, whereupon he tried to conceal his face. He is described as a man who wore a short jacket and a sailor's hat.'25 Compare this description with those derived from Marshall and Schwartz. Marshall's man wore a small black cutaway (as opposed to a frock) coat and a round, peaked cap, 'something like what a sailor would wear.' And the man Schwartz saw attacking the woman was dressed in a dark jacket and trousers and a black cap with a peak. Compare it, too, with a description of the supposed Mitre Square murderer, procured by the City Police from a commercial traveller named Joseph Lawende. Lawende's suspect wore a loose pepper-and-salt jacket and a grey cloth cap with a peak and he had the 'appearance of a sailor.' The fascinating thing about the Church Lane report is that it appeared before any of these other descriptions had been published. Only a version of PC Smith's description, with references to a black diagonal coat and hard felt hat, was then in circulation.26 Furthermore, Church Lane might logically have been traversed by anyone walking from Berner Street to Mitre Square.

Driven out of Dutfield's Yard, the killer's first priority would have been to put distance between himself and the scene of his crime. If he turned northwards along Berner Street he would probably not have felt safe until he reached Commercial Road. But then a new danger would have presented itself. He could not remain in Commercial Road, let alone hazard Whitechapel High Street, with bloodstained hands, for both thoroughfares were well-lighted and populous on Sat.u.r.day nights, even after one. Church Lane, a relatively secluded byway running from Commercial Road to the High Street, could thus have proved a tempting haven to clean up. This done, he would have pa.s.sed from thence into Whitechapel High Street, the main artery into Aldgate. If the Church Lane report did describe a genuine sighting of the murderer, however, the estimated time (about 1.30) was at least ten minutes too late.

Hitherto this report has been neglected by students of the Ripper crimes. There are, indeed, good reasons for pa.s.sing it by now. After all, the two independent sources alluded to in the Star cannot be identified and no substantiation for the story exists. Nevertheless, it is difficult to escape the feeling that this was a rare occasion upon which the press turned up a clue the police would have done well to follow up.

Finally, what can we learn from the evidence of the eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen Elizabeth with a man? The man seen by William Marshall at 11.45 was very like those observed by PC Smith at 12.35 and Israel Schwartz at 12.45. All three descriptions might well refer to one and the same man. If they do, and if he was the killer, he exposed himself to great risk in hanging about the area with his intended victim for over an hour. More, Dutfield's Yard was a hazardous spot in which to commit murder. Although gloomy it was frequented at night by the inhabitants of the cottages as well as by members of the club, and it was a cul-de-sac which could and very nearly did become a trap in the event of discovery.

The most important witness, if he was telling the truth, was Schwartz. As the closest in time to the discovery of the body he was the most likely to have seen the murderer. Above and beyond that, however, his evidence challenged the popular a.s.sumptions then being made about this series of crimes. For, on the face of it, he incriminated not one man, but two, not Jews but Gentiles.

Before considering the implications of Schwartz's evidence we had best remind ourselves that there is a real possibility that his sighting had nothing to do with the murders. Admittedly he claimed to have seen an a.s.sault near the entry of Dutfield's Yard at 12.45, about the time Elizabeth must have been attacked, but most witnesses to the events of that night were vague in the matter of times. Diemschutz seems to have given the inquest something better than a guess when he said that he returned home at one, noticing the time 'at the baker's shop at the corner of Berner Street.'27 And Dr Blackwell was presumably accurate when he swore that he was called out at 1.10 because he at least had a watch. But few of the other princ.i.p.al witnesses seem to have had any means of verifying the time. Even PC Lamb and Edward Johnston, Blackwell's a.s.sistant, admitted at the inquest that they did not carry watches. Edward Spooner, the horse-keeper whom Diemschutz brought back to the yard instead of a policeman, thought that he reached the scene of the crime at about 12.35, half an hour earlier than could have been the case, but then, as Spooner explained before the coroner, 'the only means I had of fixing the time was by the closing of the public houses.' Matthew Packer, a greengrocer of whom much more later, also used closing time at the pubs to estimate the time at which he had put up the shutters of his shop at 44 Berner Street. Similar imprecision is to be found in the depositions of witnesses at the inquest into the death of Catharine Eddowes, the woman murdered in Mitre Square on the same night. 'I can only speak with certainty as to time,' said PC Harvey, 'with regard to the post-office clock.'28 Schwartz's time, then, was not necessarily correct. Furthermore, altercations such as that he described seem to have been commonplace in the area. Baxter asked PC Lamb, whose beat in Commercial Road took him past the end of Berner Street, whether he had seen anything suspicious that night. The constable's reply is revealing: 'I did not at any time. There were squabbles and rows in the streets, but nothing more.'29 Berner Street itself was the subject of conflicting testimony. PC Smith said that very few prost.i.tutes were to be seen there. William West, Morris Eagle and Louis Diemschutz, stalwarts of the International Working Men's Club and hence doubtless anxious to dissociate it from all scandalous imputation, denied that the club yard was regularly used by prost.i.tutes. Nevertheless, West did concede at the inquest that he had once seen a couple chatting by the yard gates and that he had sometimes noticed low men and women standing about and talking to each other in Fairclough Street close by. Some Berner Street residents, moreover, certainly did regard the club and its yard as a troublespot. 'I do not think the yard bears a very good character at night,' said Barnett Kentorrich of No. 38, 'but I do not interfere with any of the people about here. I know that the gate is not kept fastened.' The reaction of several residents to the alarm occasioned by the finding of the body is instructive. Charles Letchford of No. 30 told the press that he had taken no notice because 'disturbances are very frequent at the club and I thought it was only another row' and Mrs Mortimer of No. 36 similarly attributed the commotion to 'another row at the Socialists' Club close by.'30 If Schwartz was out just fifteen minutes in his reckoning, if the incident he saw took place, not at 12.45 but, say, at 12.30, then the significance of his statement is greatly reduced. We do not know that he was mistaken but it will always be on the cards that he was witness to nothing more than a street brawl.

Despite these reservations we have in Schwartz a witness and a witness the police believed who claimed to have seen a woman attacked at the time and place of a known murder. Not only that, but we have a witness who identified the dead woman as the victim of the attack he saw. His is crucial evidence and we cannot ignore it.

We may be wrong in thinking of Jack the Ripper as just one man. For Schwartz compels us to take very seriously the possibility that he was really two. The Hungarian certainly saw two men at the scene of the crime that night. Were they, in fact, confederates? Schwartz's impression at the time was that they were. In his statement to the police he said that the first man, the one attacking the woman, 'called out apparently to the man on the opposite side of the road "Lipski".' Schwartz then walked away but, 'finding that he was followed by the second man', started to run. He ran as far as the railway arch 'but the man did not follow so far.' Quite clearly Schwartz was under the impression that the murderer had alerted his accomplice to Schwartz's presence and that the accomplice, the second man, was seeing him off.

But a badly frightened man is not a good observer. Later, safe in the police station and under Abberline's patient cross-examination, Schwartz could not be absolutely certain that the two men had been acting together.

'Schwartz cannot say,' runs Swanson's digest of the original report, 'whether the two men were together or known to each other.' Schwartz's first impression may have been mistaken. Perhaps, like Schwartz, the second man was simply an innocent pa.s.ser-by. And perhaps, like Schwartz, he took fright at what he was seeing and fled in the same direction. We do not know. However, to judge by the interview Schwartz later gave to the Star, the Hungarian remained true to his first instinct. The newspaper evidently dressed the story up to make it a more exciting read but the connection between the two men was reaffirmed. In this version the second man, perceiving Schwartz, called out a warning to the murderer and then rushed forward, knife in hand, 'as if to attack the intruder [i.e. Schwartz]'. Schwartz, once again, precipitately fled.

Schwartz's story is also quite strong evidence that the murderer was not a Jew. Since the Home Office made precisely the opposite deduction from it, though, this statement calls for explanation.

Schwartz thought at the time that when Stride's attacker shouted 'Lipski' he was addressing his accomplice across the road. Lipski was a familiar Jewish name throughout the East End because of the trial and execution of Israel Lipski, a Polish Jew, for the murder of Miriam Angel in 1887. The Home Office favoured the view, therefore, that the murderer probably had an accomplice named Lipski and that both were Jews.

On 24 October, in response to a call for 'a report of all the measures which have been taken for the detection of the perpetrator of the Whitechapel Murders and of the results', Warren forwarded to the Home Office copies of Chief Inspector Swanson's summary reports on the murders. In the margin of the Stride report, against the pa.s.sage relating to Schwartz, G.o.dfrey Lushington, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office, wrote: 'The use of "Lipski" increases my belief that the murderer was a Jew.' And on 27 October Matthews himself minuted the papers: 'The statement of Schwartz that a man, who was in the company of Elizabeth Stride 15 minutes before she was found dead, & who threw her down, addressed a companion (?) as "Lipski" seems to furnish a clue which ought to be followed up. The number of "Lipskis" in Whitechapel must be limited. If one of them were identified by Schwartz it might lead to something of importance.'31 Abberline's own interpretation of Schwartz's observations, however, was very different. We owe its committal to paper to the Home Secretary's continued interest in the affair. Matthews' queries on Swanson's reports were transmitted to Warren on 29 October. 'It does not appear,' one of them ran, 'whether the man [murderer] used the word "Lipski" as a mere e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, meaning in mockery "I am going to 'Lipski' the woman", or whether he was calling to a man across the road by his proper name. In the latter case . . . the murderer must have an acquaintance in Whitechapel named Lipski. Mr Matthews . . . will be glad if he can be furnished with a report as to any investigations made to trace the man "Lipski".'32 Abberline was consulted by his superiors for material with which to furnish a reply to this missive and his report, dated 1 November 1888, has survived. It reads in part: I beg to report that since a Jew named Lipski was hanged for the murder of a Jewess in 1887 the name has very frequently been used by persons as a mere e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n by way of endeavouring to insult the Jew to whom it has been addressed, and as Schwartz has a strong Jewish appearance I am of opinion it was addressed to him as he stopped to look at the man he saw apparently Musing the deceased woman.

I questioned Israel Schwartz very closely at the time he made the statement as to whom the man addressed when he called Lipski, but he was unable to say.

There was only one other person to be seen in the street, and that was a man on the opposite side of the road in the act of lighting his pipe.

Schwartz being a foreigner and unable to speak English became alarmed and ran away. The man whom he saw lighting his pipe also ran in the same direction as himself, but whether this man was running after him or not he could not tell. He might have been alarmed the same as himself and ran away.

. . . Inquiries have also been made in the neighbourhood but no person named Lipski could be found.33 This report, marrying personal knowledge of the witness with an intimate understanding of conditions in Whitechapel, is such a doc.u.ment as only Abberline could have written, and as one of very few that enable us to see inside the head of this fine detective is quite fascinating. The inspector knew that the name Lipski had become an insult, spat in the faces of Jews in the East End, and he noted Schwartz's 'strong Jewish appearance'. His deduction, therefore, was that when Stride's attacker shouted 'Lipski!' he was not addressing an accomplice by name, as Lushington and Matthews both a.s.sumed, but directing an anti-semitic taunt at Schwartz himself. The import of Abberline's interpretation is clear the murderer was probably an East Ender and almost certainly not a Jew.34 There is, though, a third possible interpretation of Schwartz's evidence. It is an attractive one because it preserves Schwartz's original feeling that 'Lipski' was shouted to an accomplice while, at the same time, suggesting a solution to other unexplained riddles of the 'double event'. Referring to accomplices by false names in front of witnesses was just as obvious a ploy to Victorian villains as it is to their counterparts today. So if the murderer did call an accomplice 'Lipski' it was perhaps because he intended Schwartz to think that this was the man's real name and that both he and the murderer were Jews. We may be dealing, then, with a deliberate subterfuge designed to incriminate the Jews, crude certainly, but good enough to hoodwink the Home Office and perhaps only one of several such ploys practised by the murderer that night. A plan to fix the blame on the Jews would explain, for example, why the murderer killed Elizabeth in Dutfield's Yard, by the door of the International Working Men's Educational Club, a club largely patronized by Jewish immigrants, and why, in order to accomplish that object, he might have been prepared to loiter about the street with his chosen victim for more than an hour, observing the movements of PC Smith and awaiting his chance. No other murder in the series took place to the south of the Aldgate-Whitechapel Road thoroughfare.

Such a design could explain, too, that cryptic message left in chalk in a doorway in Goulston Street, just above a piece of the Mitre Square victim's bloodstained ap.r.o.n: 'The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.'

11.

False Leads.

NO ACCOUNT OF the Stride killing would be complete without reference to Matthew Packer and Mrs Mortimer. Both witnesses were, and indeed still are, commonly believed to have seen the murderer. And both, in their different ways, contributed immeasurably to the mythology surrounding Jack the Ripper.

Matthew Packer was a greengrocer and fruiterer, trading from a barrow and from his small shop at 44 Berner Street, two doors south of the International Working Men's Educational Club. Police records describe him only as an elderly man. The reporter who interviewed him for the Evening News said that he was quiet and intelligent, that he and his wife were 'both a little past the prime of life and . . . known as respectable hard-working people.'

The first detective to encounter Packer was Sergeant Stephen White of H Division, one of two officers detailed by Abberline on Sunday, 30 September, the day of the murder, to make house-to-house inquiries in Berner Street. We know that he was supplied with a special notebook in which to record his findings. This, alas, has disappeared. So our only record of White's first interview with Packer is contained in a report written by the sergeant on 4 October: About 9 a.m. [30 September] I called at 44 Berner Street, and saw Matthew Packer, fruiterer in a small way of business. I asked him what time he closed his shop on the previous night. He replied 'Half past twelve, in consequence of the rain it was no good for me to keep open'. I asked him if he saw anything of a man or woman going into Dutfield's Yard, or saw anyone standing about the street about the time he was closing his shop. He replied 'No I saw no one standing about neither did I see anyone go up the yard. I never saw anything suspicious or heard the slightest noise. And knew nothing about the murder until I heard of it this morning.'

I also saw Mrs. Packer, Sarah Harrison and Harry Douglas residing in the same house but none of them could give the slightest information respecting the matter.1 If the police imagined that they had done with Packer they were very much mistaken. For by 2 October, just two days later, the greengrocer was telling a quite different story to Messrs Grand and Batchelor of 283 Strand, two private detectives in the employ of the Mile End Vigilance Committee. He now insisted that at about 11.45 on the night of the murder he had sold half a pound of black grapes to a man and a woman standing outside his shop in Berner Street and that this couple had afterwards loitered about the street for more than half an hour. 'The man,' said Packer, 'was middle-aged, perhaps 35 years; about five feet seven inches in height; was stout, square-built; wore a wideawake hat and dark clothes; had the appearance of a clerk; had a rough voice and a quick, sharp way of talking.'2 Further inquiries by Grand and Batchelor apparently tended to substantiate this story. Two sisters, Mrs Rosenfield and Miss Eva Harstein of 14 Berner Street, told them that early on the Sunday morning they had noticed a grape-stalk, stained with blood, in Dutfield's Yard, close to where the body had been found. Reasoning that the police could have washed the stalk down the drain when they cleaned up the yard, Grand and Batchelor then visited Dutfield's Yard to search the sink. There, amidst a heap of heterogeneous filth, they are said to have discovered a grape-stalk.

The Evening News got wind of this development. And on the evening of 3 October one of its reporters called at 44 Berner Street to hear the full story from the lips of the man 'who spoke to the murderer'. Packer's tale, as set forth in this interview, is worth recounting at length.

For most of Sat.u.r.day, 29 September, Packer was out with his barrow. But he didn't do much business and, 'as the night came on wet', decided to go home and take his wife's place serving in the shop. At some time between 11.30 and midnight a man and a woman walked up Berner Street from the direction of Ellen Street and stopped outside his window to look at the fruit.

The man looked about 3035 years of age, was of medium height and had rather a dark complexion. He wore a black coat and a black, soft, felt hat. 'He looked to me,' explained Packer, 'like a clerk or something of that sort. I am certain he wasn't what I should call a working man or anything like us folks that live around here.' His companion was middle-aged. She wore dark clothes and was carrying a white flower in her hand.

After the couple had stood there for about a minute the man stepped forward and said: 'I say, old man, how do you sell your grapes?'

'Sixpence a pound the black 'uns, sir,' replied Packer, 'and four pence a pound the white 'uns.'

The man turned to the woman. 'Which will you have, my dear, black or white? You shall have whichever you like best.' The woman chose the black. 'Give us half a pound of the black ones, then,' ordered the man. Packer thought that he sounded educated. He had 'a loud, sharp sort of voice, and a quick commanding way with him.'

There was no need for the couple to come into the shop. It had a half window in front and most of Packer's dealings were carried on through the lower part of the window case in which his fruit was exposed for sale. He put the grapes into a paper bag and handed them out to the man.

For a minute or two the man and woman stood near the entrance of Dutfield's Yard. Then they crossed the road and, for more than half an hour, stood across the way from the shop. 'Why,' Packer exclaimed to his wife, 'them people must be a couple o' fools to stand out there in the rain eating the grapes they bought here, when they might just as well have had shelter!' They were still there when the Packers went to bed. Packer couldn't remember exactly when that was but thought that it 'must have been past midnight a little bit, for the public houses were shut up.'3 The Evening News concluded its article with a sally at the police. 'Well, Mr Packer,' the reporter is made to observe, 'I suppose the police came at once to ask you and your wife what you knew about the affair, as soon as ever the body was discovered?'

'The police?' echoed Packer. 'No. THEY HAVEN'T ASKED ME A WORD ABOUT IT YET!!!' He then went on to explain that although a plain-clothes officer had come to the shop a day after the murder in order to look over the backyard no policeman had yet questioned him about what he might know of the tragedy.

When the Evening News story was published on 4 October the police were understandably bewildered. Inspector Moore immediately sent Sergeant White to talk to Packer again and to take him to the mortuary to see if he could recognize Elizabeth Stride. White's efforts, however, were consistently thwarted by the private detectives. First he went to Packer's shop but Mrs Packer told him that two detectives had already collected her husband and taken him to the mortuary. On his way there the sergeant met Packer, with one of his escorts, coming back.

'Where have you been?' asked White.

'This detective asked me to go to see if I could identify the woman,' said Packer.

'Have you done so?'

'Yes' replied Packer. 'I believe she bought some grapes at my shop about 12 o'clock on Sat.u.r.day.'

Soon they were joined by the second detective. White then asked them what they were doing with Packer. They said that they were detectives and when the sergeant asked to see their authority added that they were private detectives. One of them produced a card from his pocket book but would not allow White to touch it. Eventually they 'induced' Packer to go away with them.

Later in the day White again visited Packer in his shop. But while he was talking with him the same two men drove up in a hansom cab. This time they said that they were taking Packer to Scotland Yard to see Sir Charles Warren and persuaded him to go off in the cab with them.4 The antics of Grand and Batchelor, however frustrating for the police, were apparently well intended. Certainly they delivered Packer to Scotland Yard. The grocer's statement, written in the hand of A. C. Bruce, the a.s.sistant Commissioner, is dated 4 October: On Sat. night [29 September] about 11 p.m., a young man from 2530, about 5 [feet] 7 [inches], with long black coat b.u.t.toned up, soft felt hat, kind of Yankee hat, rather broad shoulders, rather quick in speaking, rough voice. I sold him pound black grapes, 3d. A woman came up with him from Back Church end (the lower end of street). She was dressed in black frock & jacket, fur round bottom of jacket, a black c.r.a.pe bonnet, she was playing with a flower like a geranium white outside & red inside. I identify the woman at the St. George's Mortuary as the one I saw that night.

They pa.s.sed by as though they were going up [to] Commercial Road, but instead of going up they crossed to the other side of the road to the Board School, & were there for about an hour till I should say 11.30, talking to one another. I then shut up my shutters. Before they pa.s.sed over opposite to my shop, they went near to the club for a few minutes apparently listening to the music. I saw no more of them after I shut up my shutters.

I put the man down as a young clerk. He had a frock coat on no gloves. He was about 1 inches or 2 or 3 inches a little bit higher than she was.5 On 6 October the Daily Telegraph published a new Packer account. It contained a few more details about his suspect's appearance. He was described as a square-built man, about five feet seven inches tall and perhaps thirty years of age. His hair was black, his complexion dark, his face full and alert-looking. He had no moustache. Wearing a long black coat and a soft felt hat, the man struck Packer as being more like a clerk than a workman. He spoke in a quick, sharp manner. What distinguished the Telegraph's article, however, was its attempt to go beyond words.

The journalist responsible for the article was J. Hall Richardson. 'In accordance with the general description furnished to the police by Packer and others,' he explained, 'a number of sketches were prepared, portraying men of different nationalities, ages and ranks of life.' The sketches had been submitted to Packer and according to Richardson he had unhesitatingly picked out a picture of a man without a moustache and wearing a soft felt or American hat as most resembling the man he had seen. His choice was one of two woodcut sketches published in the article under the caption: 'SKETCH PORTRAITS OF THE SUPPOSED MURDERER.'6 The difficulty for the police in all this was that, for reasons we will presently notice, they were unhappy about the accuracy and relevance of Packer's evidence. Fearing, therefore, that Richardson's initiative would mislead rather than inform the public, they issued a notice in the Police Gazette disavowing the sketches as 'not authorized by Police.' And, at the same time, they published as a corrective the descriptions furnished by PC Smith, Israel Schwartz and Joseph Lawende, though suppressing the names of these witnesses.7 What value is to be placed on Packer's evidence? Perhaps he was telling the truth. Perhaps, when White questioned him on the morning of the murder, Packer had not yet made a connection in his mind between the couple who bought the grapes and the crime. Perhaps he did not do so until the next day, when the press carried statements alleging that grapes had been found in one of the dead woman's hands. Perhaps. Certainly, to judge by the number of latter-day Ripperologists who trawl up the grocer's story to sustain their own theories, his evidence is still very widely believed.

a.s.suming for the moment that Packer was an honest witness, how does his information fit in with that of the other witnesses? Well, his man was very like the one seen by James Brown at 12.45. Both Packer and Brown described a man of about five feet seven, wearing a long dark coat, standing with a woman by the board school. The only recorded difference between them Packer's suspect is said to have been square-built and Brown's of average build is less significant than the sum of the like factors. It is thus tempting to link these two and to speculate whether the differences between the reported times of the witnesses could have been produced by the obvious imprecision of both. However, in several respects (in the absence of a moustache and in the wearing of a long frock coat rather than a short/cutaway coat and of a wideawake, soft felt or Yankee hat rather than a peaked hat or cap) Packer's man is impossible to identify with those described by PC Smith and Israel Schwartz. An obvious explanation of this difficulty is that Stride got rid of the man with the long coat seen by Packer and Brown and accosted or was accosted by her murderer, the man in the peaked cap, almost immediately afterwards. Indeed, the words James Brown overheard testify to some kind of rejection of the man in the long coat by the woman. 'Not tonight,' she said, 'some other night.' The stumbling block to this tidy little reconstruction of events is William Marshall. For Marshall deposed to having seen Stride with a man strikingly similar to those described by Smith and Schwartz as early as 11.45. This raises once again the possibility that Packer and Brown may have seen a different couple altogether. We have already noted the presence in the vicinity of at least one other couple before and after the time of the murder.

Overwhelmingly, though, the available evidence suggests that Packer was not an honest witness.

There is a discrepancy between his narratives on times. According to the statement recorded by Bruce, he sold the grapes at about 11 o'clock and closed his shutters, leaving the couple standing by the school, at about 11.30. But the other accounts all place the whole episode an hour later. The time that the man and woman came to the shop is given by Grand and Batchelor as about 11.45, by the Evening News as between 11.30 and 12.00, by Sergeant White as about 12.00 and by Richardson as about 11.30. The couple were standing across the road for perhaps half an hour after that and were still there when Packer closed up and went to bed. Packer told White that he closed at 12.30 because of the rain. Grand and Batchelor understood that he had last seen the couple, as he was preparing to close, at 12.10 or 12.15, and that he had estimated the time 'by the fact that the public houses had been closed.' And the Evening News got the same story: 'I couldn't say exactly, but it must have been past midnight a little bit, for the public houses were shut up.' In all fairness it should be said that witnesses are characteristically vague on times and that, Bruce apart, those given by Packer are broadly consistent.

More damaging is Packer's readiness to modify details in his story in order to accommodate fresh knowledge or movements in popular opinion. It is noticeable, for example, how Packer's suspect shed years during the course of the grocer's four narratives. In the statement procured by Grand and Batchelor the man was said to have been middle-aged, perhaps 35, and in the Evening News interview about 3035. Packer told the police, however, that the suspect was a young man, aged between 25 and 30. And Richardson understood, too, that the man's age was 'not more than thirty'. Inevitably one suspects that this rejuvenation of Packer's man had something to do with the release of PC Smith's description to the press. For the constable's account, describing a man aged 28, was being circulated in the newspapers from 1 October.8 Even more revealing is this extract from the Evening News interview: 'Did you observe anything peculiar about his voice or manner, as he spoke to you?'

'He spoke like an educated man, but he had a loud, sharp sort of voice, and a quick commanding way with him.'

'But did he speak like an Englishman or more in this style?' I asked, imitating as well as I could the Yankee tw.a.n.g.

'Yes, now that you mention it, there was a sound of that sort about it,' was the instantaneous reply.

The notion that an American might have been involved had been fostered by Baxter's story of the American seeking specimens of the uterus and by the alleged Americanisms of the first Jack the Ripper letter, to be discussed in a later chapter, and it is remarkable how easily Packer fell in with the reporter's suggestion. Packer's description of his suspect's headgear is also instructive in this context. He told Grand and Batchelor that the man was wearing a wideawake hat and the Evening News that it was a black, soft, felt hat. After the News interview Packer's terminology changed. Bruce wrote of a 'soft felt . . . kind of Yankee hat', Richardson of a soft felt or American hat.

Finally, there are definite suggestions in the Packer evidence that his story owed less to personal knowledge and observation than it did to contemporary press reports. Thus, in at least two instances, we can catch him out incorporating details from earlier newspaper accounts which were subsequently shown to be incorrect. One is the alleged colour of Elizabeth Stride's flower. On 2 October Edward Spooner told the inquest that he saw a red and white flower pinned to the dead woman's coat. This was an error for PC Smith, who saw Elizabeth at 12.35, later deposed to a red rose in her coat, and Inspector Reid, who examined the body specifically in order to compile a description, only inventoried a red rose and maidenhair fern. It is probable, then, that when Packer spoke of the woman carrying a white or white and red flower in her hand, his comment was inspired, not by actual observation, but by press reports of Spooner's testimony.

Even more important to the credibility of Packer's story are the grapes.

On Monday, 1 October, the Daily News carried statements by Louis Diemschutz, Isaac Kozebrodski and f.a.n.n.y Mortimer, all alleging that the dead woman had been found clutching a packet of sweetmeats in one hand and a bunch of grapes in the other.9 Now, a packet of cachous was most certainly discovered in Elizabeth's left hand. But the detail about the grapes appears to have been a baseless fiction. At the inquest the doctors were interrogated on this very point.

Dr Phillips deposed: 'Neither in the hands nor about the body of the deceased did I find any grapes, or connection with them. I am convinced that the deceased had not swallowed either the skin or seed of a grape within many hours of her death.' Dr Blackwell was equally emphatic: 'Did you perceive any grapes near the body in the yard?'

'No.'

'Did you hear any person say that they had seen grapes there?'

'I did not.'10 We do not know how the press conducted their interviews with Diemschutz, Kozebrodski and Mrs Mortimer but one of these witnesses the only one summoned before the coroner testified differently at the inquest. According to Louis Diemschutz's press statement, supposedly made on the day of the murder, Stride's hands 'were clenched, and when the doctor opened them I saw that she had been holding grapes in one hand and sweetmeats in the other.' The very next day, however, Baxter asked Diemschutz: 'Did you notice her hands?' And Diemschutz replied: 'I did not notice what position her hands were in.'11 It is very doubtful if any grapes were seen in Dutfield's Yard but the printing of such a falsehood could well have given Packer ideas.

We are left with the inescapable feeling that when Packer told Sergeant White that he had seen no one 'standing about' on the night of the murder he was speaking the truth and that his story of selling grapes to a strange couple was an afterthought, cobbled together with the aid of newspaper and local gossip. The Yard reached a similar conclusion for Chief Inspector Swanson, reporting on the matter later that month, wrote that Packer had 'unfortunately made different statements so that . . . any statement he made would be rendered almost valueless as evidence.'12 This may be why he was never summoned to appear before the Stride inquest as a witness.

But why should Packer seek to deceive the police? It is possible that the fantasy was designed to enhance this modest grocer's status amongst his neighbours by providing him with a key role in the drama, by enrolling him in the company of the few who had 'seen the murderer'. A much more likely explanation, however, will be found in the sudden escalation in the scale of the reward money prompted by the double murder. On 30 September Packer told White that he had seen nothing suspicious. Two days later, when Grand and Batchelor were conducting their investigations, he had changed his mind. But in the interval fresh rewards, including one of 500 from the Corporation of London, had increased fivefold the total sum on offer for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer. The money probably provided the spur, the story about grapes being found in Elizabeth's dead hand, published on 1 October, the substance for Packer's tale. On the night of 12 October, lured by the rewards, amateur sleuths appeared in force on the streets of the East End. And the next day, sensing a new spirit abroad, the Star spoke of others 'who turn in descriptions on the chance of coming near enough the mark to claim a portion of the reward if the man should be caught, just as one buys a ticket in a lottery.'13 This prescient columnist seems to have hit the nail right on the head. For by then there seems little doubt that Packer, too, had joined the gold rush.

Packer continued to regale the press with stories. On 27 October, while standing with his barrow at the junction of Greenfield Street and Commercial Road, he supposedly saw the murderer again. The man gave Packer 'a most vicious look' but, when the grocer sent someone to find a policeman, escaped by jumping on a tram bound for Blackwall. According to yet a third tale, a man who came to his shop on 13 November to buy rabbits told him that he believed his own cousin to be the murderer.14 By this time, however, even the press offices had begun to weary of Packer and soon he slipped back into the obscurity from whence he came.

Unlike Matthew Packer, Mrs f.a.n.n.y Mortimer was not a romancer. But unwittingly she bestowed upon the growing legend of the Whitechapel killer one of its most potent symbols. Mrs Mortimer lived at 36 Berner Street, two doors from the scene of the tragedy, and for most of the critical half hour between 12.30 and 1.00 on the fatal morning was standing at the door of her house. What she saw and heard has been greatly misrepresented by twentieth-century authors.

Walter Dew, writing in 1938, told his readers of a man, aged about 30, dressed in black and carrying a small, shiny black bag, whom Mrs Mortimer saw stealing furtively out of Dutfield's Yard just before Diemschutz's pony and cart turned into the gate. It was more than probable, wrote Dew dramatically, that she was 'the only person ever to see the Ripper in the vicinity of one of his crimes.' Twenty years later Donald McCormick quoted what purported to be the actual words of Mrs Mortimer's contemporary statement. This related how she heard a suspicious noise from the direction of the International Working Men's Educational Club: 'It wasn't like an argument, though there was something like a stifled cry, or an angry voice. Then there was a b.u.mp; it must have been the body falling . . . Before I could properly tell what it was I saw a young man carrying a black shiny bag, walking very fast down the street. He looked up at the club, then went round the corner by the Board School.'15 Since Dew and McCormick are amongst the Ripperologists' favourite cribs it is scarcely surprising that Mrs Mortimer continues to figure in the literature as one of those likely to have seen Jack the Ripper. But the truth was very different.

Mrs Mortimer's original statement, made on the day of the murder, can be found in the Daily News of 1 October. It contains no references to stifled cries or the thuds of falling bodies. Indeed, she categorically states that until Diemschutz raised the alarm she had heard nothing. 'There was certainly no noise made,' she said, 'and I did not observe anyone enter the gates.' She did see a man with a black bag but her statement makes it quite clear that he came, not from Dutfield's Yard, but from Commercial Road: 'the only man whom I had seen pa.s.s through the street previously [before one] was a young man carrying a black shiny bag, who walked very fast down the street from the Commercial Road. He looked up at the club, and then went round the corner by the Board School . . . If a man had come out of the yard before one o'clock I must [i.e. would] have seen him.'

There is nothing here to suggest that the man with the black bag was anything other than an innocent pa.s.ser-by. But a day or so after Mrs Mortimer had made her statement he voluntarily presented himself at Leman Street Police Station to clear himself of any possible suspicion. He was Leon Goldstein of 22 Christian Street, a member of the International Working Men's Club. He had left a coffee house in Spectacle Alley only a short time before Mrs Mortimer had seen him. And his bag had contained empty cigarette boxes.16 Goldstein must be dismissed from our investigation. Nevertheless, his brief appearance in the drama had consequences far more reaching than he or anyone else can have imagined. Mrs Mortimer's statement was widely broadcast in the press and soon everyone seemed to know that a man with a black bag had been seen near the scene of the Berner Street murder. Perhaps because it reinforced the view given currency by Dr Phillips at the Chapman inquest that the killer might be a doctor, the bag lodged in popular imagination.

So that, even today, in legend Jack the Ripper is as inseparable from his black bag as Davy Crockett from his c.o.o.nskin cap or Long John Silver from his parrot.

12.

'Don't Fear for Me!'

THE IDENTIFICATION OF the Mitre Square victim, lying dead in the city Mortuary, proved a simpler task for the City Police than that of Elizabeth Stride for their Metropolitan counterparts.

At first there seemed little enough to go on. The dead woman looked about forty. She was thin and about five feet in height. She had dark auburn hair and hazel eyes.

Her clothes were old and dirty. The main items were a black straw bonnet trimmed with green and black velvet and black beads; a neckerchief of red gauze silk; a black cloth jacket with imitation fur edging around the collar and fur edging around the sleeves; a dark-green chintz skirt, patterned in Michaelmas daisies and golden lilies, with three flounces; a man's white vest; a brown linsey dress bodice with a black velvet collar and brown metal b.u.t.tons down the front; a pair of brown ribbed stockings, mended at the feet in white; a pair of men's laced boots; and a piece of old white ap.r.o.n. She wore no drawers or stays but there were plenty of undergarments: a grey stuff petticoat, a very old dark-green alpaca skirt, a very old ragged blue skirt and a white calico chemise.

The quant.i.ty and condition of the woman's clothing, and the nature of her belongings, stamped her as a vagrant or, at best, a frequenter of common lodging houses. Her belongings consisted of a large white handkerchief, one blue striped bedticking pocket and two unbleached calico pockets, a white cotton pocket-handkerchief, twelve pieces of white rag, a piece of white coa.r.s.e linen, a piece of blue and white shirting, two small blue bedticking bags, two short clay pipes, one tin box containing tea and another containing sugar, one piece of flannel and six pieces of soap, a small tooth comb, a white-handled table-knife, a metal tea-spoon, a red leather cigarette case with white metal fittings, an empty tin match-box, a piece of red flannel containing pins and needles, and a ball of hemp.1 An examination of the body and its effects yielded possible leads. There was a tattoo (the initials 'T.C.') in blue ink on the dead woman's left forearm. And there was the mustard tin picked up by Sergeant Jones from beside the body. It contained two p.a.w.ntickets. One was for a man's flannel shirt, pledged in the name of Emily Burrell, 52 White's Row, on 31 August for 9d. The other was for a pair of men's boots, pledged in the name of Jane Kelly, 6 Dorset Street, on 28 September for 2s. 6d. Both items had been pledged at the shop of Joseph Jones, 31 Church Street, Spitalfields.2 When the police tried to trace these women they discovered that the addresses given were fict.i.tious. In White's Row, Spitalfields, there was no No. 52. And at 6 Dorset Street no one by the name of Jane Kelly was known to the occupants. But it was the publicity accorded these leads by the press that succeeded in identifying the dead woman. For on the evening of Tuesday, 2 October, a middle-aged labourer walked into Bishopsgate Street Police Station and said that he thought he knew her. His name was John Kelly.3 The deceased, he said, was Kate Conway alias Kelly, a woman he had been living with for seven years at c.o.o.ney's lodging house at 55 Flower and Dean Street.

Kate's real name was Catharine Eddowes and in some ways she was the most likeable of all the murderer's victims. Mrs Eliza Gold, her married sister, spoke of her as a "regular jolly sort", and Frederick Wilkinson, the deputy at c.o.o.ney's, where Kate regularly stayed, knew her as a "very jolly woman, always singing." In 1888 friends in Kate's native Wolverhampton still remembered her. To them she was an "intelligent, scholarly woman, but of fiery temperament." Her history, quarried from contemporary records, is set down here in full for the first time.4 Kate's parents, George and Catharine (nee Evans) Eddowes, were married at Bushbury, near Wolverhampton, on 13 August 1832. They were a young couple. George, a tinplate worker, was twenty-one, his bride only sixteen.5 Catharine would bear George twelve children. The earliest were Alfred (born 1833 or 1834), Harriet (1834), Emma (1835), Eliza (1837) and Elizabeth (1838 or 1839).

In 1841, when the household was recorded in the national census, it was ensconced at Graisley Green, Wolverhampton, amidst a community of tinplate workers. And it was there, on 14 April 1842, that Kate was born. Her birth certificate renders her name Catharine, like that of her mother, but no matter. To her family she was known by the nickname 'Chick', to John Kelly and the friends of her later life simply as 'Kate'.

The early 1840s were years of prosperity for the tinplate industry in Wolverhampton. But despite this George Eddowes, in search of a better future for his burgeoning brood, took the family to London not long after Kate's birth. In December 1844, when the second son, Thomas, was born, they were living at 4 Baden Place, Bermondsey, in what is now the Borough of Southwark. Soon there were even more mouths to feed George (1846), Sarah Ann (1850) and Mary (1852). The 1851 census found them at 35 West Street, Nelson Street, in Bermondsey. Harriet and Emma, the oldest girls, were not listed with the others. Since neither had yet married it is probable that they were in domestic service and living in the houses of their employers. Alfred, the oldest boy, was recorded as an idiot. Eliza was a domestic servant. And Elizabeth, Kate, Thomas and George were still at school.