Kate's schooling is a bit of a mystery. Press reports of 1888 aver that she was educated at Dowgate Charity School but Neal Shelden, a modern scholar, opts for St John's Charity School in Potters Fields, Tooley Street. The first is unlikely because Dowgate is in the City of London, on the north side of the river. The school in Potters Fields, a charity school for girls for the parish of St John, Horselydown, was merged with St Olave's Grammar School in 1899. Unfortunately, only one admissions register, covering 18427, survives. Neither this, nor the minutes up to 1857, which list all applicants, contain Kate's name.

The prosperity for which George Eddowes laboured eluded him and tragedy eventually dispersed his family in the 1850s. Two children John (1849) and William (1854) died in infancy. Then, on 17 November 1855 at 7 Winters Square, Bermondsey, Catharine Eddowes died of tuberculosis. George himself died two years after that.

Harriet and Emma were already in service, and Elizabeth married in 1857, but some of the younger children were admitted to the Bermondsey Workhouse and Industrial School. Kate should have fared better. Emma wrote to an aunt, Mrs Elizabeth Eddowes, and persuaded her to take her. Mrs Eddowes lived with her husband William, a tinplate worker, and three children at 50 Bilston Street, Wolverhampton. Sadly Kate did not settle. Only a few months after the youngster had returned to Wolverhampton Mrs Eddowes wrote to Emma and told her that Kate had robbed her employer and run away to Birmingham, where she was living with an uncle in Bagot Street. The uncle is listed in the 1851 census. He was a shoemaker named Thomas Eddowes and he lived at No. 7, Court 5, Bagot Street, with his wife Rosanah and their children Jane, Thomas and Mary. But Kate didn't stay long with him either. It was in Birmingham a few years later that she met and fell in love with Thomas Conway and the couple decided to live together.

Almost nothing is known about Conway. Even his correct name is in doubt. From about 1873 he was drawing an army pension by virtue of service in the 18th Royal Irish Regiment, in which, as the police discovered, he had enlisted under the name of Thomas Quinn. During his later years he supplemented his pension by working as a hawker. Kate's life with Conway is also very shadowy. They never married. But they lived together for nearly twenty years and produced three children. On 3 August 1885 Annie, the oldest, married Louis Philips, a lamp-black packer, in Southwark. Annie was then twenty years of age. Kate's other children, both boys, were born in about 1868 and 1873. Conway tattooed his initials, 'T. C.', on Kate's left forearm.

It was with Conway that Kate returned to London. At the beginning of 1881 they were living at 71 Lower George Street, Chelsea, but soon after that they separated. Kate's sister Elizabeth blamed Conway for the failure of the relationship. 'My sister left Conway because he treated her badly,' she said. 'He did not drink regularly, but when he drew his pension they went out together and it generally ended in his beating her.' Emma, the sister who had tried to provide for Kate after their parents had died, heard about the beatings too. But she felt that Kate's own drinking was the root of the problem: 'On the whole, I believe they lived happily together; but there were occasional quarrels between them, owing to my sister's habit of excessive drinking. She has been seen with her face frightfully disfigured [i.e. beaten] . . . I fancy he [Conway] must have left her in consequence of her drinking habits.' Annie Philips, testifying before the inquest, corroborated Emma's fancy. She explained that her father was a teetotaller, that he lived on bad terms with Kate because she drank. 'He left deceased between 7 and 8 years ago,' said Annie, 'entirely on account of her drinking habits.'

In 1881 Kate met John Kelly in the common lodging house at 55 Flower and Dean Street. He was to be her companion and this her home for most of the rest of her life. Three days after Kate's death Kelly told the Star how their friendship started: 'It is nigh on to seven years since I met Kate, and it was in this very lodging house I first set eyes on her. We got throwed together a good bit, and the result was that we made a regular bargain. We have lived here ever since, as the people here will tell you, and have never left here except when we've gone to the country together hopping. I don't pretend that she was my wife. She was not.'

Kate's friends and acquaintances insisted that she was not a prost.i.tute. During the winters she worked as a charwoman for the Jews or hawked trifles about the streets. Kelly picked up labouring jobs in the markets. For the greater part of the summers they tramped the countryside together, hop-picking, fruit-picking or hay-making. 'She would never do anything wrong,' said Eliza, Kate's sister, 'I cannot imagine what she was doing in Mitre Square.' John Kelly told the inquest that although Kate sometimes drank to excess she did not solicit. When they were together, he maintained, she regularly came home about eight or nine at night. And Frederick Wilkinson, the lodging house deputy, spoke well of Kate and Kelly when he appeared before the coroner. They were, by his account, pretty regular in paying their rents. They lived on good terms with each other. They did, admittedly, sometimes quarrel when Kate had been drinking but that was not often and he had never seen Kelly drunk. Kate herself was generally in bed between nine and ten and Wilkinson had never known or heard of her 'being intimate with anyone but Kelly'.

Such protestations carry little conviction. Eliza was perhaps unwilling to speak ill of a sister. Kelly would have been anxious to scotch any suggestion that he lived off Kate's immoral earnings and Wilkinson that he ran a disreputable house. Besides which it would presumably have been very difficult for anyone to talk of the faults of the murder victims in a community still grieving their loss. Kate probably did indulge in some casual prost.i.tution. Certainly her indigent lifestyle distanced her from her relatives.

After the break with Thomas Conway she kept in touch with Annie Philips, her daughter, for some time. Indeed, in 1886, she nursed Annie during her confinement. But soon after that Annie moved from King Street, Bermondsey, without leaving a forwarding address and at the time of the murder she had not seen Kate for two years. It is possible that Annie's flit had been deliberately designed to give her mother the slip because Kate had frequently pestered her for money. Certainly Annie admitted at the inquest that the addresses of her two brothers had been withheld from Kate to prevent her scrounging from them. However, a story Eliza told the press suggests otherwise. 'It's rather strange,' she said, 'one of them [Kate's children], the girl that's married [Annie], came to me last week and asked me if I had seen anything of her mother. She said it was a very long time since she had seen her. But it was a long time since I had, too, and I told her so.'

At least three of Kate's sisters had settled in London. In 1888 Eliza Gold, now widowed, was living at 6 Thrawl Street, Spitalfields, and Mrs Elizabeth Fisher, another sister, was living at 33 Hackliffe Street, Greenwich. Emma, now Emma Jones and married to a packer, lived at 20 Bridgewater Place, Aldersgate Street. Neither Eliza nor Emma got on with Kate. Eliza told the press that they were not on the best of terms and that she had not seen Kate much more than once or twice since she had been cohabiting with Kelly. At the inquest she said that she had not seen her for three or four weeks although that may have been because Kate was away hop-picking. Emma admitted in her press statement that she had not been on good terms with Kate for many years because 'she led a life that was not to my liking.' They met but rarely. Perhaps, upon such occasions, Kate's displays of remorse were intended to elicit Emma's sympathy and hence tap her purse. Or perhaps Kate looked at her sister and saw but for a wasted life what she herself might have become. Whatever the cause, when Kate came to visit her, recalled Emma, she 'used always to cry when she saw me, and say, "I wish I was like you".'

Nevertheless, Kate seems to have found a loyal consort in John Kelly. Little of their precarious life together has come down to us but occasional glimpses of them may be had in the stark records of the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary. Kelly was admitted on 31 December 1886 for rheumatism and discharged to the workhouse on 24 January 1887. Kate was treated at the infirmary for a 'burn of foot' from 14 to 20 June 1887. She was admitted under the name of Kate Conway and her religion was noted as Roman Catholic. Then, on 24 November 1887, Kelly was readmitted suffering from frost-bite. He was discharged on 28 December 1887. On all of these occasions Kate and Kelly were admitted to the infirmary from 55 Flower and Dean Street.6 The autumn of 1888 found them hop-picking at Hunton, near Maidstone, in Kent. According to the Star, Kelly remembered it this way: We went hopping together mostly every year. We went down this year as usual. We didn't get on any too well, and started to hoof it home. We came along in company with another man and woman who had worked in the same fields, but who parted with us to go to Chatham when we turned off towards Maidstone. The woman said to Kate, 'I have got a p.a.w.nticket for a flannel shirt. I wish you'd take it, since you're going up to town. It is only in for 9d., and it may fit your old man.' So Kate took it and we trudged along. It was in at Jones's, Church Street, in the name of Emily Burrell.

Walter Besant's romantic portrait of hop-picking depicts the roads to London after the season as being 'strewn with the old boots discarded by the hoppers when they bought new ones on their way home.'7 At Maidstone our couple certainly had enough money for Kelly to buy a pair of boots from Mr Arthur Pash in the High Street and for Kate to invest in a jacket from a shop nearby, but by the time they got back to London, on Thursday, 27 September, they were flat broke. That night they slept in the casual ward at Shoe Lane.

On Friday they woke up dest.i.tute. Kelly managed to earn sixpence 'at a job' but this was not enough to buy them a double bed for the night at c.o.o.ney's (single beds were priced at 4d. per night, doubles at 8d.). 'Here, Kate,' said Kelly, 'you take 4d. and go to the lodging house and I'll go to Mile End [casual ward].' Kate would not hear of it. 'No,' she replied, 'you go and have a bed and I will go to the casual ward.' She had her way. That night Kelly stayed at c.o.o.ney's and Kate went to the casual ward at Mile End, where she would have to perform some menial task such as picking oak.u.m in return for shelter.

They teamed up again at eight the next morning, Sat.u.r.day, 29 September, the last day of Kate's life. Kelly looked ruefully at his new boots. 'We'll pop [p.a.w.n] the boots,' he announced, 'and have a bite to eat anyway.' 'Oh, no, don't do that,' protested Kate, but this time Kelly insisted on having his way. Kate took the boots to Jones' shop at 31 Church Street and was paid 2s. 6d. Kelly waited at the door in his bare feet. After buying tea and sugar they had enough left over for breakfast and ate it in the kitchen at c.o.o.ney's. It was their last meal together. Kelly then resolved to try his luck in the markets, Kate to go to her daughter in King Street to see what she could do. When they parted in Houndsditch at about two that afternoon John Kelly was worried about his partner. He reminded her of the murders and begged her to return home early. Kate promised to be back no later than four. Her parting words, as Kelly remembered them four days later, were: 'Don't you fear for me. I'll take care of myself and I shan't fall into his hands.'8 Kate did not see her daughter that Sat.u.r.day. Annie, indeed, had left King Street since Kate had last visited her there. In the summer of 1887 she seems to have been living at 15 Anchor Street, Southwark Park, and at the time of the Mitre Square murder her address was 12 Dilston Grove, Southwark Park Road. Yet somewhere, somehow Kate found money. For when we glimpse her next, at 8.30 that evening, she was helplessly drunk in Aldgate High Street.

At that time a crowd outside No. 29 in the High Street attracted the attention of PC Louis Robinson 931. Pushing his way to its centre he found a woman lying drunk on the pavement. The constable picked her up and leaned her against the shutters of No. 29 but she slipped sideways. Then, summoning PC George Simmonds 959 to his a.s.sistance, he managed to get her to Bishopsgate Street Police Station. James Byfield, the station sergeant, remembered the woman being brought in, supported between two constables, at about 8.45. She smelt strongly of drink. When they enquired her name she replied: 'Nothing.'

The woman was placed in a police cell to sleep it off. That night PC George Hutt 968, who came on duty at 9.45, visited the prisoner several times. At 11.45 he found her out of her stupor and singing to herself. And at 12.30 she asked him when she would be allowed to go. 'Shortly,' replied Hutt. 'I am capable of taking care of myself now,' she said.

Twenty-five minutes after that Sergeant Byfield told Hutt to see if any of the prisoners were fit to be discharged and Hutt, judging the woman to have sobered up, unlocked her cell and escorted her back to the office. As he did so she asked him what time it was.

'Too late for you to get any more drink,' he replied.

'Well,' she insisted, 'what time is it?'

'Just on one.'

'I shall get a d.a.m.ned fine hiding when I get home then.'

'And serve you right,' Hutt retorted. 'You have no right to get drunk.'

In the office she gave her name and address as Mary Ann Kelly of 6 Fashion Street, Spitalfields, and was discharged. 'This way, missus,' said Hutt, pushing open a swing door. It admitted her to the pa.s.sage leading to the street door and as she reached the street door Hutt called: 'Please pull it to.' 'All right,' replied the woman, 'good night, old c.o.c.k.' A moment later she had pa.s.sed through the door, pulled it almost closed, and turned left towards Houndsditch. Mitre Square was just eight minutes' walk away.9 Much later PC Robinson would identify the Mitre Square victim as the drunk he had taken into custody in Aldgate High Street. But full identification had to wait upon John Kelly. The extent of his personal tragedy may, perhaps, be gauged from part of the interview he gave the Star on 3 October: When she [Kate] did not come home at night I didn't worry, for I thought her daughter might have asked her to stay over Sunday with her. So on Sunday morning I wandered round in the crowds that had been gathered by the talk about the two fresh murders. I stood and looked at the very spot where my poor old gal had laid with her body all cut to pieces and I never knew it. I never thought of her in connection with it, for I thought she was safe at her daughter's. Yesterday morning [2 October] I began to be worried a bit, but I did not guess the truth until after I had come back from another bad day in the market. I came in here [c.o.o.ney's] and asked for Kate, she had not been in. I sat down on that bench by the table and carelessly picked up a Star paper. I read down the page a bit, and my eye caught the name of 'Burrill'. It looked familiar, but I didn't think where I had seen it until I came to the word 'p.a.w.nticket'. Then it came over me all at once. The tin box, the two p.a.w.ntickets, the one for that flannel shirt, and the other for my boots. But could Kate have lost them? I read a little further. 'The woman had the letters T. C., in India ink, on her arm.' Man, you could have knocked me down with a feather! It was my Kate, and no other. I don't know how I braced up to go to the police, but I did. They took me down to see the body, and I knew it was her. I knew it before I saw it, and I knew her for all the way she was cut . . . I never knew if she went to her daughter's at all. I only wish to G.o.d she had, for we had lived together a long while and never had a quarrel.

Although a study of the full interview does suggest that Kelly furnished the bulk of the information in this account the words were probably the Star's as much as his. There were, moreover, inaccuracies and misrepresentations. Most importantly, the interview leaves us with the impression that Kelly knew nothing of Kate's imprisonment at Bishopsgate Street. This was not the case. At the inquest he told the court that two women had told him that Kate had been locked up at the police station and that he 'made sure she would be out on Sunday morning.' And Frederick Wilkinson, the lodging house deputy, testified that he had asked Kelly where Kate was when the labourer came in on Sat.u.r.day night. 'I have heard she's been locked up' was Kelly's reply.10 Plainly, then, the reason that Kelly was not immediately concerned for Kate was that he believed her to have been safely under lock and key at the time of the murders. However, when questioned by the Star he did not like to admit that Kate had been arrested drunk and tried to protect her by saying that he thought she was at her daughter's.

Whatever the detail there is no doubt that Kelly called at Bishopsgate Street late on Tuesday, 2 October. He was convinced that the dead woman was Kate and, taken to the mortuary, identified her at once. Press reports concur that he was 'very much affected'. The next morning he helped detectives locate Mrs Gold, Kate's sister, in Thrawl Street. Conducted to the City Mortuary, Eliza confirmed Kelly's identification of the body. 'I never dreamed that she would come to such an end as this,' she told reporters that night, 'and I can't get over it.'11 The autopsy upon Kate's body was performed by Dr Brown at the City Mortuary on the afternoon of Sunday, 30 September. Present were Dr Sequeira, who had been the first medical man on the scene of the crime, Dr William Sedgwick Saunders, the City's Public a.n.a.lyst, and Dr Phillips.

As in the Nichols and Chapman murders, the victim's throat had been deeply severed from left to right. Dr Brown's inquest deposition reads: The throat was cut across to the extent of about 6 or 7 inches. A superficial cut commenced about an inch and below the lobe and about 2 inches below behind the left ear and extended across the throat to about 3 inches below the lobe of the right ear. The big muscle across the throat was divided through on the left side. The large vessels on the left side of the neck were severed. The larynx was severed below the vocal cord. All the deep structures were severed to the bone, the knife marking intervertebral cartilages. The sheath of the vessels on the right side was just opened. The carotid artery had a fine hole opening. The internal jugular vein was opened an inch and a half, not divided. The blood vessels contained clot. All these injuries were performed by a sharp instrument like a knife and pointed.12 It was Brown's opinion that the murderer had first cut the woman's throat, that death had been occasioned by the escape of blood from the left common carotid artery, and that the other mutilations had been inflicted after death.

The most extensive mutilation had been to the abdomen, which had been ripped open upwards in a great jagged wound extending from the p.u.b.es to the breastbone. The left kidney and part of the womb had been cut out and taken away. Press reports of Dr Brown's inquest deposition suppressed this part of his testimony altogether but the official transcript in the coroner's papers records it in detail: We examined the abdomen. The front walls were laid open from the breast bone to the p.u.b.es. The cut commenced opposite the ensiform cartilage. The incision went upwards, not penetrating the skin that was over the sternum. It then divided the ensiform cartilage. The knife must have cut obliquely at the expense of the front surface of that cartilage.

Behind this the liver was stabbed as if by the point of a sharp instrument. Below this was another incision into the liver of about 2 inches, and below this the left lobe of the liver was slit through by a vertical cut. 2 cuts were shewn by a jagging of the skin on the left side.

The abdominal walls were divided in the middle line to within of an inch of the navel. The cut then took a horizontal course for two inches and a half towards right side. It then divided round the navel on the left side and made a parallel incision to the former horizontal incision, leaving the navel on a tongue of skin. Attached to the navel was 2 inches of the lower part of the rectus muscle on the left side of the abdomen. The incision then took an oblique direction to the right and was shelving. The incision went down the right side of the v.a.g.i.n.a and r.e.c.t.u.m for half an inch behind the r.e.c.t.u.m.

There was a stab of about an inch on the left groin. This was done by a pointed instrument. Below this was a cut of 3 inches going through all tissues making a wound of the perineum about the same extent.

An inch below the crease of the thigh was a cut extending from the anterior spine of the ilium obliquely down the inner side of the left thigh and separating the left labium, forming a flap of skin up to the groin. The left rectus muscle was not detached.

There was a flap of skin formed from the right thigh attaching the right labium and extending up to the spine of the ilium. The muscles on the right side inserted into the Poupart's ligament were cut through.

The skin was retracted through the whole of the cut in the abdomen, but the vessels were not clotted. Nor had there been any appreciable bleeding from the vessel. I draw the conclusion that the cut was made after death, and there would not be much blood on the murderer. The cut was made by someone on right side of body, kneeling below the middle of the body . . .

The intestines had been detached to a large extent from the mesentery. About 2 feet of the colon was cut away. The sigmoid flexure was inv.a.g.i.n.ated into the r.e.c.t.u.m very tightly.

Right kidney pale, bloodless, with slight congestion of the base of the pyramids.

There was a cut from the upper part of the slit on the under surface of the liver to the left side, and another cut at right angles to this, which were about an inch and a half deep and 2 inches long. Liver itself was healthy.

The gall bladder contained bile. The pancreas was cut but not through on the left side of the spinal column. 3 inches of the lower border of the spleen by an inch was attached only to the peritoneum.

The peritoneal lining was cut through on the left side and the left kidney carefully taken out and removed. The left renal artery was cut through. I should say that someone who knew the position of the kidney must have done it. The lining membrane over the uterus was cut through. The womb was cut through horizontally, leaving a stump of of an inch. The rest of the womb had been taken away with some of the ligaments. The v.a.g.i.n.a and cervix of the womb was uninjured.

The bladder was healthy and uninjured, and contained 3 or 4 ounces of water. There was a tongue-like cut through the anterior wall of the abdominal aorta. The other organs were healthy. There were no indications of connection.

Brown could suggest no reason for the removal of the left kidney and womb. These parts, he said, would be 'of no use for any professional purpose.'

For the first time in this series of crimes the murderer mutilated his victim's face. According to Brown, the face was very much mutilated. There was a cut about of an inch through the lower left eyelid dividing the structures completely through. The upper eyelid on that side, there was a scratch through the skin on the left upper eyelid near to the angle of the nose. The right eyelid was cut through to about an inch. There was a deep cut over the bridge of the nose extending from the left border of the nasal bone down near to the angle of the jaw on the right side across the cheek. This cut went into the bone and divided all the structures of the cheek except the mucous membrane of the mouth. The tip of the nose was quite detached from the nose by an oblique cut from the bottom of the nasal bone to where the wings of the nose join on to the face. A cut from this divided the upper lip and extended through the substance of the gum over the right upper lateral incisor tooth. About an inch from the top of the nose was another oblique cut. There was a cut on the right angle of the mouth, as if by the cut of a point of a knife. The cut extended an inch and a half parallel with lower lip. There was on each side of cheek a cut which peeled up the skin forming a triangular flap about an inch and a half. On the left cheek there were 2 abrasions of the epithelium. There was a little mud on left cheek. 2 slight abrasions of the epithelium under the left ear.

Photographs were taken of Kate's body before and after post-mortem st.i.tching but her wounds were most clearly depicted in two sketches made by Frederick William Foster, an architect and surveyor, at the City Mortuary on the morning of the murder. One of them depicted the injuries to the face and head. It recorded the detail that the lobe of Kate's right ear had been cut off. This wound, which will prove of some significance to us later, was not described in Brown's autopsy report although he did note that when the body was stripped at the mortuary 'a piece of deceased's ear dropped from the clothing.'13 From all that he had seen Dr Brown concluded that the mutilations had all been inflicted by one man on the spot where the body had been found. There was a current theory that Kate had been murdered somewhere else and then dumped in Mitre Square but the doctor did not agree. 'The blood on the left side [of the neck] was clotted,' he said, 'and must have fallen at the time the throat was cut.' That clotted blood, and the absence of bloodstains on the front of her jacket and bodice, proved that Kate's throat had been severed while she was lying on her back. The murderer, at least when inflicting the abdominal injuries, had been kneeling on the right side, and below the middle, of the body. In Brown's opinion he had performed the mutilations to the face and abdomen with a sharp, pointed knife. From the abdominal injuries the doctor judged that the blade of this weapon must have been at least six inches long.14 In the case of Annie Chapman the murderer had removed the womb intact but in that of Kate Eddowes a stump of about three quarters of an inch had been left in the body. Despite this, Dr Brown concluded that Kate's killer, too, must have possessed both anatomical knowledge and surgical skill. He based his case primarily upon the careful extraction of the left kidney: 'I should say that someone who knew the position of the kidney must have done it . . . I believe the perpetrator of the act must have had considerable knowledge of the position of the organs in the abdominal cavity and the way of removing them . . . It required a great deal of knowledge to have removed the kidney and to know where it was placed. Such a knowledge might be possessed by someone in the habit of cutting up animals.'15 According to a press version of his testimony, Brown explained to the court that the removal of the kidney would have required 'a good deal of knowledge as to its position, because it is apt to be overlooked, being covered by a membrane.'16 It is worth reiterating given some of the eccentric interpretations of Brown's evidence put about in recent years that the doctor attributed surgical skill as well as anatomical knowledge to the killer. His references to the left kidney being 'carefully taken out and removed' and to the murderer possessing knowledge of the position of the organs and of 'the way of removing them' demonstrate this. The point is more explicitly made in some of the newspaper transcripts of his deposition. The Daily Telegraph quoted him thus: 'The way in which the kidney was cut out showed that it was done by somebody who knew what he was about.' And the Daily News thus: 'The left kidney had been carefully taken out in such a manner as to show that it had been done by somebody who not only knew its anatomical position, but knew how to remove it.' More, in an early interview, Brown told a Star reporter that the murderer 'had some knowledge of how to use a knife.'17 Brown did not believe, however, that the degree of knowledge and skill displayed would only have been possessed by a medical man. A slaughterman, for example, would have known enough to have inflicted the injuries.

What of the other medicos?

Implicit in Brown's view was the belief that the murderer had deliberately sought out the kidney. Sequeira and Saunders do not seem to have been so sure. Perhaps they wondered whether he could have come across the organ fortuitously and cut it out without understanding what it was. Anyway, they both told the inquest that they did not think that the killer had had designs on any particular organ and that he did not seem to have been possessed of 'great anatomical skill.'18 The wording is unfortunate because it has led some writers to a.s.sert, incorrectly, that these doctors testified to a total absence of skill on the part of the killer. In fact, if they were endorsing Brown (and they both explicitly said that they were), they meant that the killer possessed an elementary degree of skill rather than none at all. That this was Sequeira's intended meaning is confirmed by an interview he gave to the Star. He told its reporter that the atrocity had been performed quickly. 'By an expert, do you think?' queried the reporter. 'No, not by an expert,' explained Sequeira, 'but by a man who was not altogether ignorant of the use of the knife.'19 Dr Phillips made no report to the inquest but his position seems to have been very close to those of Sequeira and Saunders. A report of Chief Inspector Swanson gives us the most detailed precis of Phillips' view: The surgeon, Dr Brown, called by the City Police, and Dr Phillips, who had been called by the Metropolitan Police in the cases of Hanbury Street and Berner Street, having made a post-mortem examination of the body, reported that there were missing the left kidney and the uterus, and that the mutilation so far gave no evidence of anatomical knowledge in the sense that it evidenced the hand of a qualified surgeon, so that the police could narrow their enquiries into certain cla.s.ses of persons. On the other hand, as in the Metropolitan Police cases, the medical evidence showed that the murder could have been committed by a person who had been a hunter, a butcher, a slaughterman, as well as a student in surgery or a properly qualified surgeon.

In other words, although the murder might have been committed by a qualified surgeon the degree of expertise actually displayed could also have been possessed by a hunter, butcher, slaughterman or medical student. Phillips saw less evidence of medical expertise in the Eddowes murder than in that of Annie Chapman and for this reason was inclined to the belief that these crimes had been done by different men.20 While the doctors were thus learning something about Kate's killer in the post-mortem room the detectives were finding out a little more by knocking on doors. Searches of Mitre Square and neighbourhood lodging houses, launched soon after the discovery of Kate's body, had availed them nothing. But a house-to-house inquiry in the vicinity of the square turned up two Jews who saw a woman who might have been Kate in the forty-five minutes between her discharge from Bishopsgate Street and the discovery of her body by PC Watkins. Furthermore, the woman was talking to a man, and if she was indeed Kate her companion was almost certainly the murderer.21 The witnesses were Joseph Lawende, a commercial traveller, of 79 Fenchurch Street, and Joseph Hyam Levy, a butcher, of 1 Hutchinson Street, Aldgate. On the evening of Sat.u.r.day, 29 September, these men, together with Harry Harris, a Jewish furniture dealer, went to the Imperial Club at 1617 Duke Street. It rained that night so they stayed on there until 1.30 the next morning. Then they prepared to go. At the inquest Lawende said that they left the building at about 1.35. Levy put the time at 1.33 or 1.34.

As they left the club they saw a man and a woman standing at the corner of Church Pa.s.sage, about fifteen or sixteen feet away. 'Look there,' Levy said to Harris, 'I don't like going home by myself when I see those characters about.' But however unsavoury the couple might have appeared there seemed nothing noteworthy about them. And this, together with the fact that they were standing in a badly lighted spot, may explain why Levy's recollection of them was so vague: 'I pa.s.sed on, taking no further notice of them. The man, I should say, was about three inches taller than the woman. I cannot give any description of either of them.'

Lawende, walking a little apart from his companions, was nearer to the couple. He saw more. The woman was short and wearing a black jacket and bonnet. She stood facing the man, one hand resting upon his chest. Lawende only saw her back. There was no quarrel in progress. Rather the couple appeared to be talking very quietly and Lawende could not hear what was being said.

Lawende saw the man too but the official transcript of his inquest deposition records only that he was taller than the woman and wore a cloth cap with a cloth peak. Press versions of the testimony, however, add the detail that 'the man looked rather rough and shabby'22 and reveal that the full description was suppressed at the request of Henry Crawford, the City Solicitor, who was attending the hearing on behalf of the police. Fortunately this deficiency in the record can be redressed from other sources. Lawende's description of the man was fully published in the Police Gazette of 19 October 1888: At 1.35 a.m., 30th September, with Catherine Eddows, in Church Pa.s.sage, leading to Mitre Square, where she was found murdered at 1.45 a.m., same date A MAN, age 30, height 5 ft. 7 or 8 in., complexion fair, moustache fair, medium build; dress, pepper-and-salt colour loose jacket, grey cloth cap with peak of same material, reddish neckerchief tied in knot; appearance of a sailor.

On the same date Chief Inspector Swanson attributed precisely the same details to Lawende in his report on the Stride murder.23 Much later some remarkable claims would be made in relation to Lawende's sighting so it is important here to note that he did not see his suspect well enough to feel confident that he would be able to recognize him again. Our sources make this absolutely clear. On 11 October, only eleven days after the event, Lawende told the inquest: 'I doubt whether I should know him again.' At the end of the same month Inspector McWilliam reported to the Home Office that 'Mr Lewend (sic), who was nearest to the man & woman & saw most of them, says he does not think he should know the man again.' On 6 November, also writing for the Home Office, Swanson similarly a.s.serted that 'the other two [Levy and Harris] took but little notice and state that they could not identify the man or woman, and even Mr Lawende states that he could not identify the man.' Although Major Smith's memoirs may recall Lawende's description inaccurately they also corroborate the commercial traveller's diffidence: 'The description of the man given me by the German [Lawende] was as follows: Young, about the middle height, with a small fair moustache, dressed in something like navy serge, and with a deerstalker's cap that is, a cap with a peak both fore and aft. I think the German spoke the truth, because I could not "lead" him in any way. "You will easily recognize him, then," I said. "Oh no!" he replied; "I only had a short look at him."'24 Lawende and his friends walked down Duke Street into Aldgate, leaving the couple still talking at the corner of Church Pa.s.sage.

A weakness of Lawende's testimony is that he did not see the woman's face. It is possible that she was not Kate Eddowes although when Lawende was permitted to examine Kate's clothing at the police station he expressed the opinion that they were identical to those worn by the woman he saw. Church Pa.s.sage, moreover, led directly into Mitre Square where Kate was found dead just nine minutes after Lawende's sighting.

Many minor mysteries surround the Eddowes murder. To begin with there are several unanswered questions concerning Kate's conduct on the day of her death. When John Kelly last saw her, on Sat.u.r.day afternoon in Houndsditch, he was quite sure that she was dest.i.tute and sober, and she gave him to understand that she was going to her daughter's in King Street, Bermondsey, to see what she could scrounge. Whether she went there or not we do not know but if she did she did not find her daughter because Annie left King Street two years previously without leaving a forwarding address. Where Kate went, who she saw and what she did our sources do not tell. Somewhere, however, she acquired enough money to drink herself into a stupor. More important, we know nothing of Kate's movements between 1.00 a.m., when she was discharged from Bishopsgate Street, and 1.35 a.m., when she was seen, apparently soliciting, in the entry of Church Pa.s.sage in Duke Street. She had spent her former earnings on drink and may have been making her way to the casual ward at Mile End. If so she was not averse to exploiting any opportunity that presented itself along the way to earn a few coppers. Perhaps she aspired to raise sufficient to pay for a bed at c.o.o.ney's or to make her peace with Kelly. 'I shall get a d.a.m.ned fine hiding when I get home,' she had told PC Hutt.

A yet more intriguing question concerns Kate. The City Police seem to have seriously considered the possibility that her presence in Mitre Square had not been entirely fortuitous, that she had, in fact, kept a pre-arranged appointment there with the man who slew her.25 The rationale for this view was that since no policeman observed Kate and her killer walking together towards Mitre Square and the City Police were under instructions to keep men and women out together under close surveillance they may have made their separate ways there as to a pre-arranged rendezvous. Support for such a contention might be read into Kate's anxiety for an early discharge from the police station and into her insistent inquiry of PC Hutt about the time. More, the appointment theory could tie in neatly with this tantalizing item from the East London Observer of 13 October: A reporter gleaned some curious information from the Casual Ward Superintendent of Mile End, regarding Kate Eddowes, the Mitre Square victim. She was formerly well-known in the casual wards there, but had disappeared for a considerable time until the Friday preceding her murder. Asking the woman where she had been in the interval, the superintendent was met with the reply that she had been in the country 'hopping'. 'But,' added the woman, 'I have come back to earn the reward offered for the apprehension of the Whitechapel murderer. I think I know him.' 'Mind he doesn't murder you too,' replied the superintendent jocularly. 'Oh, no fear of that,' was the remark made by Kate Eddowes as she left. Within four and twenty hours afterwards she was a mutilated corpse.

This snippet is one of those sc.r.a.ps of evidence that surface occasionally to challenge our conventional view of the Whitechapel killings. But however intriguing, as it stands it is nothing more than a piece of unsupported hearsay. It may even be less than that because the parting exchange alleged between Kate and the casual ward superintendent is so like that between Kate and John Kelly that it is tempting to see the Observer's tale simply as a piece of dishonest reporting drawing upon confused memories of Kelly's various press statements. That no police officer observed Kate and her killer wending their way together towards Mitre Square proves nothing. The fact is that they were apparently seen by Lawende in Duke Street and it is entirely possible that they had just met there. No, at present there is little reason to suppose that the penniless waif who was 'always singing' met Jack the Ripper by anything but a desperately unlucky chance.

Thanks to the survival of the Brown and Foster sketches and of the official inquest record the Mitre Square murder is more satisfactorily doc.u.mented than any other crime in the series. Nevertheless, a.n.a.lysis of this material leaves us with a problem already familiar from three previous cases.

Brown decided that loss of blood, resulting from the cutting of the left carotid artery, had been the cause of death. When Kate's throat had been cut, however, she was already lying on the ground. Why? Surely she would not voluntarily have lain down in the wet (the back of her jacket was found covered in dirt as well as blood) but there were no signs of a struggle, nothing to indicate that she had been forced down, and no one had heard a cry.

Questioned by the coroner, the medicos could offer nothing like a convincing explanation for that absence of a cry. 'The throat had been so instantly severed that no noise could have been emitted,' said Brown. 'I account for the absence of noise as the death must have been so instantaneous after the severance of the windpipe and the blood vessels,' chimed Sequeira. All of which neglects to explain why Kate didn't cry out as she was being put down, before her throat was cut. Could she have been poisoned or drugged? If so the traces escaped Dr Saunders' a.n.a.lysis of her stomach contents. 'I carefully examined the stomach and its contents,' he reported, 'more particularly for poisons of the narcotic cla.s.s, with negative results, there not being the faintest trace of these or any other poison.'

The absence of any scream or cry suggests, once again, the possibility that the victim had been strangled before her throat had been cut. Such a hypothesis finds support in the comparatively small spillage of blood. When the murderer severed Kate's throat blood did not spurt out over the front of her clothes. The left carotid artery bled out onto the pavement on the left side of the neck and Brown found a pool of clotted blood there at 2.18 a.m. Because of the slope of the pavement some of it had trickled under the neck to form a fluid patch about the right shoulder. Blood had also acc.u.mulated under Kate's back and the backs of her jacket, vest and bodice were all badly stained. This pattern of staining, for reasons already noticed, is consistent with the view that her throat was cut after death.26 The theory that Kate's mutilations were Masonic in character has been refuted elsewhere. Nevertheless, in her case, as in that of Annie Chapman, there does seem to have been some eerie ritualistic element. Dr Brown found a piece of the intestine, about two feet long, placed between the body and the left arm, 'apparently by design'. And there were matching cuts on each of Kate's cheeks, peeling up the skin to form triangular flaps of skin, and corresponding nicks to her eyelids.

Brown seems to have been more impressed than his colleagues by the murderer's medical expertise but the doctors concurred in the view that his handiwork had evidenced some degree of skill. Recent medical experts have disagreed with each other. After studying Foster's sketch of Kate's abdominal injuries and police photographs, the pathologist Francis Camps concluded that the murderer may have had some elementary anatomical knowledge but little if any surgical skill. 'Far from being the work of a skilled surgeon,' he said, 'any surgeon who operated in this manner would have been struck off the Medical Register.' Quite so. But Nick Warren, a practising surgeon, contends from personal experience that because the kidney is so difficult to expose from the front of the body the killer must have possessed some anatomical experience.27 It should be borne in mind, too, that the mutilations were performed in exceptionally difficult circ.u.mstances. In Mitre Square the murderer worked at great speed, in constant danger of discovery, and in the darkest corner of the square, deep in the shadow cast by Mr Taylor's shop.

He was undoubtedly a fast worker, just how fast will become immediately apparent to anyone who cares to consider the matter of times. The killer was seen with his victim in the entry of Church Pa.s.sage soon after 1.30 by the three men leaving the Imperial Club. The precise time was fixed by Lawende, one of the three, at about 1.35. and by Levy, a companion, at 1.33 or 1.34. We can be reasonably confident in these times because the witnesses checked the club clock before they left the building and Lawende, in addition, owned a watch. Murderer and victim must have pa.s.sed through Church Pa.s.sage and into Mitre Square very soon after Lawende's party had gone. At 1.44 or 1.45, just ten minutes after the Church Pa.s.sage sighting, PC Watkins found Kate's body.

The testimony of PC James Harvey is problematical. If his deposition is to be credited, Harvey walked through Church Pa.s.sage and looked into the square at about 1.41 or 1.42 but detected nothing untoward. 'I saw no one, I heard no cry or noise,' he said. Perhaps the murderer was still there, crouching unseen in the shadow of Taylor's shop. Or perhaps it might have been possible, though only just he had already slain Kate and left by Mitre Street or St James' Place. Neither of these possibilities seem very likely and inevitably one wonders about Harvey. His timing may well have been awry. It was, as he conceded himself, not much better than guesswork: 'I pa.s.sed the post office clock between 1 and 2 minutes to the half hour . . . I can only speak with certainty as to time with regard to the post office clock.'28 When the murder occurred Harvey had served twelve years in the City Police. Within another year he would be dismissed from the force for reasons as yet unknown.

Whatever view we take of Harvey's claim, the killer worked with ruthless speed and efficiency. Dr Sequeira thought that the murder would have taken about three minutes but Brown told the inquest that the injuries he had seen could not have been inflicted in less than five. Even so, after cutting the throat and mutilating the abdomen, the killer had obviously had enough time in hand to indulge in further gratuitous cutting and slashing to the face.

One further clue, albeit small, is afforded by the medical evidence. Professor James Cameron, a specialist in forensic medicine, recently deduced from the medical sketches and photographs that Kate's murderer had been right-handed, 'as the incision drags to the right, as would happen, and is deeper as more viscera is exposed.'29 Precisely the same inference can be made from Dr Brown's comments that the abdomen was laid open upwards by a man kneeling at the prostrate victim's right side. For it would have been difficult if not impossible for anyone to have worked left-handed from such a position.

On the face of it there is no more baffling aspect of the whole Mitre Square mystery than the murderer's escape from the City. If Constables Halse and Long were correct and the piece of ap.r.o.n which the killer deposited in Goulston Street was not there at about 2.20 this is especially the case. For, since the ap.r.o.n was not found until 2.55, we are left with the possibility that the murderer loitered for an hour or more on the fringes of the City before making good his escape. The capacity of the culprit to elude patrolling policemen perplexed Walter Dew, then a young Metropolitan detective attached to H Division. Half a century later he noted the precautions that had been taken by both forces before the double murder and marvelled that 'the Ripper, or any other human being, could have penetrated that area and got away again . . . It seemed as though the fiend set out deliberately to prove that he could defeat every effort to capture him.'30 Remarkable the escape certainly was but not inexplicable. Although the murderer's clothes may have been bloodstained the area through which he pa.s.sed abounded in slaughterhouses. There was, for example, a Jewish abattoir in Aldgate High Street, hard by Mitre Square. Consequently the sight of slaughtermen on the streets at night in bloodstained ap.r.o.ns or overalls was presumably a familiar one. But more importantly, we are almost certainly wrong in imagining the murderer fleeing the scene of his crime reeking with blood. An examination of Kate's clothing demonstrated that some of the cuts had been made through the clothes, which would have afforded the murderer some protection against bloodstaining. Furthermore, if the mutilations were inflicted after Kate had already been strangled the spillage of blood would have been relatively slight. The abdominal injuries were certainly inflicted after death and, as Brown noted, occasioned little appreciable bleeding. A greater effusion of blood flowed from the left carotid artery. But by kneeling on the right side of the body, and turning the victim's head to the left as he severed her throat, the murderer could have directed the flow towards the ground and away from him. Mud found on Kate's left cheek does suggest that her head had been held in this way. Whatever, neither Brown nor Sequeira thought that the murderer need necessarily have been bespattered with blood.

The police should not be judged too harshly for allowing the killer to slip through their clutches. The City force, it is true, had been put on standing alert by Major Smith but they had been enjoined to watch prost.i.tutes and couples rather than single men. Then, too, we are not treating of an age of panda cars and radio communication. We do not know how quickly the news from Mitre Square reached the various patrolling constables and plain clothes men in and about the City. The experience of Halse, Outram and Marriott proves that some at least had heard something of the tragedy within fifteen minutes of PC Watkins' discovery but even after they knew, a man with a plausible tale would have given them no cause for detaining him unless he was bloodstained or behaving in an obviously suspicious manner. In addition, the police on duty that night had virtually no idea what their quarry looked like. The only description that they might have read or been told about that from Elizabeth Long had emanated from a witness who had not even seen the suspect's face. When Inspector McWilliam arrived on the scene of the crime he ordered immediate searches of streets and lodging houses in the vicinity. It must then, however, have been about four or later and by that time the bird had long since flown.

Much of the discussion surrounding the Eddowes murder has inevitably centred upon the cryptic message chalked in the entry of Wentworth Dwellings in Goulston Street: 'The Juwes (Juews?) are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.' Why did Sir Charles order it wiped away before it could be photographed? What did it mean? And to what extent was its obliteration by the Metropolitan Police, in Smith's phrase, an 'unpardonable blunder'? We have already dealt with the first of these questions and the answer to the last partly hinges upon our response to the second.

The trouble with the chalk message is that, like many clues relating to these murders, we can doc.u.ment its existence but do not know enough to interpret its meaning. There are at least three permissible interpretations of this particular clue. All three are feasible, not one capable of proof.

The first is that the writing was not the work of the murderer at all. It was attributed to him only because of its proximity to the discarded piece of Eddowes ap.r.o.n. But suppose the killer happened to throw the ap.r.o.n, quite fortuitously, down by an existing piece of graffiti? In such a case we would be utterly wrong in according to the writing any significance whatsoever. Walter Dew was inclined to endorse this approach to the problem. Why, he asked, should the murderer 'fool around chalking things on walls when his life was imperilled by every minute he loitered?' He might, of course, have been right. Chief Inspector Swanson referred to the writing as 'blurred', which suggests that it might have been old. Constable Halse, on the other hand, saw it and thought it looked recent. And Chief Inspector Henry Moore and Sir Robert Anderson are both on record as having explicitly stated their belief that the message was written by the murderer.31 The position of the writing, just above the bloodstained piece of Kate's ap.r.o.n, and the unlikelihood of any overtly anti-semitic message surviving long in chalk in an entry princ.i.p.ally used by Jews, oblige us to take it seriously. Both of the remaining interpretations a.s.sume that the killer was its author.

One interpretation would take the scribe at his word. It may seem strange that a Jewish killer should so publicly direct suspicion towards his co-religionists and, hence, to himself, but, as Dew himself conceded, 'murderers do foolish things.' It is by no means impossible that the chalk message was the defiant gesture of a deranged Jew, euphoric from b.l.o.o.d.y 'triumphs' in Dutfield's Yard and Mitre Square. When the message became public property it was widely proclaimed that the spelling 'Juwes' or 'Juewes' unmistakably incriminated a Jew. 'The language of the Jews in the East End,' said the Pall Mall Gazette of 12 October, 'is a hybrid dialect, known as Yiddish, and their mode of spelling the word Jews would be "Juwes". This the police consider a strong indication that the crime was committed by one of the numerous foreigners by whom the East End is infested.' Warren, in fact, did not believe that the killer was a Jew. But the newspaper stories prompted him to take the matter of the spelling up with Hermann Adler, the Acting Chief Rabbi. On 13 October Adler replied: 'I was deeply pained by the statements that appeared in several papers today . . . that in the Yiddish dialect the word Jews is spelled "Juewes". This is not a fact. The equivalent in the Judao-German (Yiddish) jargon is "Yidden". I do not know of any dialect or language in which "Jews" is spelled "Juewes".' Such was Sir Charles' fear of anti-semitic disturbances that, on the strength of Adler's letter, he issued a statement to the press in which he explicitly refuted the claim that 'Juwes' was the Yiddish spelling of Jews.32 It was not the second but the third interpretation that was most favoured at Scotland Yard and Old Jewry. This read the chalk message as a deliberate subterfuge, designed to incriminate the Jews and throw the police off the track of the real murderer. Thus, in his report on the Eddowes murder Swanson noted the fact that the writing was on the wall of 'a common stairs leading to a number of tenements occupied almost exclusively by Jews' and a.s.serted that its purport was 'to throw blame upon the Jews'. Warren, in a minute of 13 October, declared that he could not understand the crimes 'being done by a Socialist because the last murders were evidently done by someone desiring to bring discredit on the Jews & Socialists or Jewish Socialists'. Similarly, on 6 November, he told the Home Office that the message was 'evidently written with the intention of inflaming the public mind against the Jews'. And however critical Major Smith might be of Sir Charles' eradication of the clue he concurred in the Commissioner's reading of it. Its probable intent, he wrote in his memoirs, was 'to throw the police off the scent, to divert suspicion from the Gentiles and throw it upon the Jews'.33 The implication of this reasoning is obvious the murderer himself was not a Jew.

Although it seems likely that the graffito was written by the murderer it yields little clue to his ident.i.ty. Warren, writing to Lushington on 10 October, could not make much of it: 'The idiom does not appear to me to be either English, French or German, but it might possibly be that of an Irishman speaking a foreign language. It seems to be the idiom of Spain or Italy.' The spelling 'Juwes', however, may simply reflect local dialect. According to A. G. B. Atkinson's study of the parish of St Botolph Aldgate, published a decade after the murders, Jewry Street was long known in the area as Poor Jewry or 'Pouere Juwery'.34 Advocates of the Masonic conspiracy theory cite 'Juwes' as proof that the murderer was a Freemason. This a.s.sertion is based upon an erroneous belief, promulgated by Stephen Knight, Melvyn Fairclough and others, that 'Juwes' was a Masonic term by which Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum were collectively known. In fact this was simply not the case. By 1888 the three murderers of Hiram Abiff had not been part of British Masonic ritual for more than seventy years, and although they had survived in American ritual in neither country had they ever been called, officially or colloquially, the 'Juwes'. 'It is a mystery,' wrote Paul Begg, one of the most dependable modern students of the case, 'why anyone ever thought that "Juwes" was a Masonic word.'35 Few of those who have pondered the events of 30 September have doubted that both murders were the work of the same killer. As we have noted in a previous chapter, some doubt about the relationship of the Stride killing to the rest of the series will always remain but there are at least two compelling arguments in favour of linking her death with that of Kate Eddowes. First, the technique by which the victims' throats were cut was virtually identical. The throat of each victim was severed from left to right while she was lying on the ground. And in both cases the left carotid artery suffered far more damage than the right. The cut in Elizabeth's throat partially severed the left carotid but left the vessels on the right side of the neck untouched. In Kate's case the left carotid was completely severed and the right sustained only a 'fine hole opening'. Second, a comparison of the description furnished by Lawende with those provided by Marshall, Smith and Schwartz of men seen with Liz Stride reveals several points of similarity. The likeness between Lawende's man and Schwartz's man is especially marked. Admittedly Lawende's man was of medium build and appeared rather 'rough and shabby' whereas Schwartz's was broad shouldered and respectably dressed. But both men looked about thirty. Both were of fair complexion and medium height. Both sported small moustaches. And both wore jackets and caps with peaks. It is perhaps needless to add that the most important difference between the Stride and Eddowes murders the absence of abdominal and facial mutilations in the former is plausibly explained by Diemschutz's disturbance of Stride's killer. Dr Blackwell, Inspector McWilliam and Major Smith all declared that the same man claimed both victims. The only known dissentient was Dr Phillips.36 If, as seems probable, the same man did commit both crimes he must have been possessed of reckless daring. For, having nearly been trapped in a cul-de-sac with the body of his first victim, he walked into the City to claim a second within the hour, and then, knowing full well that the Metropolitan Police must have been alerted by the first murder, returned to Whitechapel carrying knife and gruesome mementoes of Mitre Square with him. If this scenario is correct and it probably is Martin Friedland's suggestion that the murders were carefully contrived 'to throw as much suspicion as possible on the Jewish community' deserves better than it has received from later commentators.37 The murder of Elizabeth Stride next to the International Working Men's Educational Club, the apparent hailing of an accomplice by the name 'Lipski', the murder of Kate Eddowes close to another club (the Imperial) frequented by Jews, and the message 'The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing' chalked in the entry of a house of Jewish tenements these signify little by themselves but, taken together, begin to make a persuasive case.

There is no credible evidence from Mitre Square that the murderer was a.s.sisted by an accomplice. This does not prove that there was no accomplice, only that one was not noticed, for the role of such a man might plausibly have been to loiter at a distance from the actual killer, watching for signs of danger and ready to intervene only if the murderer looked as though he might be caught red-handed. I say no credible evidence because there is James Blenkingsop: James Blenkingsop, who was on duty as a watchman in St James's Place (leading to the square), where some street improvements are taking place, states that about half-past one a respectably-dressed man came up to him and said, "Have you seen a man and a woman go through here?" "I didn't take any notice," returned Blenkingsop. "I have seen some people pa.s.s".38 This newspaper tale is not corroborated in any of the official doc.u.mentation now extant. Even if it is not a complete fiction there is no proof that the man Blenkingsop claimed to have seen had any connection with the murderer. Indeed, given the possibility that the estimated time was wrong, it is conceivable that he was a plain-clothes detective, investigating the crime soon after it had occurred.

A day after the double event Londoners opened their morning papers to read of yet more horrors. They were told that several days before the latest atrocities the Central News had received a letter from someone who claimed to be the Whitechapel murderer. The writer declared himself to be 'down on wh.o.r.es', promised further killings and signed his letter with a name that would live in history and become a synonym for s.e.xual serial murder the world over Jack the Ripper.

13.

Letters from h.e.l.l.

NEWSMEN RECOGNIZED THE EXISTENCE of a multiple murderer in Whitechapel soon after the Nichols murder of 31 August, but it was not until after the double killing a month later that the a.s.sa.s.sin because generally known as 'Jack the Ripper'. In the interval people spoke of him only as 'the Whitechapel murderer' or 'Leather Ap.r.o.n'.

It is now well known that the name 'Jack the Ripper' was coined by the author of a pseudonymous letter received by the Central News Agency on 27 September. The sources of this scribe's inspiration, however, still invite speculation.

'Jack' is as obvious a name as anyone could have chosen and we need really seek no explanation of it. Nevertheless, William Stewart's suggestion that this particular use of 'Jack' may have been inspired by the frequency of the name amongst criminal celebrities of the past1 has found favour with students who believe the author of the original Jack the Ripper letter to have been a young man steeped in penny dreadful literature. Stewart may just have a point because the most celebrated criminal in the 19th century was the burglar and prisonbreaker Jack Sheppard. Sheppard died at Tyburn in 1724 but his reputation was revived in 1839 in a best-selling romance by William Harrison Ainsworth and for the rest of the century his short but spectacular career continued to inspire romances, chapbooks and plays. Indeed, such was the vogue for Jack Sheppard on the stage that for many years anxious Lord Chamberlains, fearful of the alleged pernicious influences of such dramas upon public morals, refused to license plays under that name. This did nothing to check the legend, however, and as late as 1885 Nellie Farren enjoyed rapturous applause at the Gaiety impersonating Jack in Yardley and Stephens' hit burlesque Little Jack Sheppard. Another penny dreadful hero of the period was the 18th century highwayman John Rann, better known as 'Sixteen String Jack' from his habit of decorating the knees of his breeches with silk strings. A little of Rann's fame still persisted in the Ripper's day and devotees of Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie's 'terrible masterpiece', will probably know that Barrie, growing up in the 1870s, was dubbed 'Sixteen String Jack' by one of his schoolmates because of his taste for blood and thunder literature. Closer in spirit to the Ripper than these engaging rogues was 'Spring Heeled Jack'. This was the popular name of a miscreant who, in a variety of bizarre disguises, a.s.saulted and terrified women and children in the environs of London in 183738. Spring Heeled Jack was neither identified nor caught but he entered folklore as a bogy man and his name was used by exasperated mothers well into the Ripper's time to scare fractious offspring into better behaviour.

It is thus possible that the name Jack would have subconsciously suggested itself to a man well versed in cheap crime literature. The word 'Ripper' was, of course, derived from the murderer's technique of laying open the abdomens of his vict