Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman (12 page)

If they were a woman’s nails, what sort of a woman might have nails of such length? Whitechapel was home to many thousands of people who, for the greater part, lived in abject poverty. Single women had to fend for themselves, while married women were required to contribute to the household budget as best they could. For these women, life was hard and many worked long hours in factories, warehouses and laundries as seamstresses, jute pickers, washerwomen and the like, none of whom would be likely to have grown nails of a sufficient length to have caused the marks found on the victim’s neck. Neither, we thought, would they have belonged to a midwife, who, by the very nature of her job, would have required short, trimmed nails to avoid scratching her patients – or new-born children. It seemed to us more likely that they belonged to a woman who did not have to work for a living, a woman of independent means, or a woman who was supported by her husband: in other words, a woman who might have been
well-to
-do.

There were two recent bruises on the right side of the murdered woman’s head and neck, one on the cheek and the other at a point corresponding with the scratches. They appeared to indicate how the murderer had grasped the victim during the attack.

The injuries to the abdomen, Dr Phillips thought, had been inflicted after death. The abdomen was entirely laid open, from top to bottom. The injuries to the abdomen, Dr Phillips thought, had been inflicted after death. The abdomen was entirely laid open, from top to bottom. The intestines, still attached to the body by a cord, now lay across the woman’s upper body and over her right shoulder. The uterus and its appendages, with the upper portion of the vagina and lower two-thirds of the bladder, had been entirely removed. No trace of these body parts could be found anywhere in the yard; the only logical conclusion to be drawn is that the murderer must have taken them away. The incisions were cleanly cut, skirting the rectum, and dividing the vagina low enough to avoid injury to the uterus. Dr Phillips gave his opinion that the work was “Obviously that of an expert – of one, at least, who had such knowledge of anatomical or pathological examinations as to be enabled to secure the pelvic organs [the uterus] with one sweep of a knife….”

As for the weapon used, the doctor said that all the injuries had been inflicted with the same knife: a very sharp weapon, probably with a thin, narrow blade, six to eight inches long; perhaps a small amputating knife.

Much blood had been spilled where the body was found and Dr Phillips thought that the murderer would have been covered in a very great deal of blood, “especially on his hands”.

There were no signs of a struggle, or that the attack had been sexually motivated, and no evidence of rape, sexual assault, or even that recent intercourse had taken place – this conclusion was reached despite the position of the victim’s legs. Once again, no evidence could be found that showed that the murderer had any sexual interest in the victim.

Dr Phillips suggested that if the removal of the uterus had been performed “deliberately, with care and for the right medical reasons, say for pathological research, it might have taken a skilled surgeon perhaps an hour to complete. But if no care were required, it would take considerably less time, but even then, no less than a quarter of an hour”. It was clear, he said, that “whoever had attacked and murdered the poor woman was determined to acquire her uterus”.

As for the time of death, the doctor estimated that it might have occurred at 4.30 a.m., but he had reservations; that summer had been the coldest since records began, and during the early hours, the temperature had hovered around the mid-40s. With the corpse left out in the open on such a chilly morning, and the victim losing a great deal of blood, her abdomen cut open and skirts pulled up, cooling would have occurred at a much faster rate than normal.

Detective Inspector Abberline, together with D.S. George Godley, soon arrived at the crime scene, to assist in the fledgling investigation, and began by making a thorough and painstaking search of the yard, then of the house to which the yard belonged. Nothing of interest, or any clue, was discovered. Detectives questioned the owner of number 29, the tenants who resided there, and various witnesses who had been in the vicinity at the time when the crime was supposed to have been committed. Mrs Amelia Richardson, whose first-floor room was located immediately above the corridor leading from the front door, said that she had not heard any person either entering or leaving the house that morning. Because the ground floor and stone-flagged corridor was bare, she maintained that she usually heard people coming in and going out.

John Richardson, aged thirty-five, the son of Amelia Richardson, lived a two-minute walk from Hanbury Street. He called by the house just before dawn that morning to check that the cellar in the yard was secure because he kept his work tools in there. He was adamant that when he looked into the yard, there was no corpse there then. “If there was,” he said, from his vantage-point at the top of the steps, “I could not possibly have missed seeing it.” Since dawn on that day was 4.51 and the body was not there then, Dr Phillips’s estimate of the time of death as being 4.30 was clearly incorrect.

Another witness was Mrs Elizabeth Long of Church Street, the wife of a cart-minder who looked after boxes of fish piled on carts for the fishmongers of Billingsgate market. She was on her way to Spitalfields market at 5.30 when she saw a woman talking to a man outside 29 Hanbury Street. She was sure about the time because she heard the bell of the Brewery clock in Brick Lane strike the half-hour. She later made a positive identification of the dead woman at the mortuary, so there can be no doubt that it was the deceased whom she had seen. The brutal murder had therefore occurred in the narrow time frame of just 30 minutes.

Lying on the ground near the head of the deceased was part of an envelope bearing a red postmark: ‘London, Aug. 23, 1888’. The words ‘Sussex Regiment’ appeared on an embossed blue seal on the back of the envelope and what appeared to be the first two letters of a word or place: ‘Sp,’ but the envelope was torn at that point, so it was impossible to say what the rest of the word might have read – Spitalfields perhaps? Inside the envelope were two pills. Police enquiries at the Royal Sussex Regiment in Farnborough led nowhere, although it was quickly established that the pills had belonged to the victim.

The third finger of the victim’s left hand was bruised where two rings had been wrenched off; it was presumed that the murderer had stolen them. It was later established that they were made of brass and were, therefore, quite worthless. Enquiries at
pawnbrokers
and dealers within a five-mile radius proved fruitless.

My father and I wondered if the murderer
had
taken the rings. While it must have appeared to the police as the only likely answer, it seemed to us that it was both out of character, and a trivial,
time-wasting
distraction where the primary reason for the attack was evidently to obtain the victim’s uterus – and time had been short. We thought that perhaps the rings might have been removed by someone else altogether: James Kent had returned to his workplace to obtain a piece of canvas. By the time Inspector Chandler arrived ten minutes later, the rings could have been removed by anyone who had gone into the yard to view the body. There was ample time for the theft to have taken place – and an abrasion to the victim’s finger suggested that they appeared to have been taken in haste – although who, in the rapidly growing crowd that had gathered in the yard to gaze at the body, might have stolen them, it is
impossible
to say.

There was something odd about the murder scene. Under the victim’s skirts a large pocket was discovered. It was tied about her waist with a piece of knotted string. Torn at both the front and on one side, it was empty. But close to the dead woman’s feet were a number of articles that the police assumed had been rifled from her pockets: it was as though the murderer had been searching for something, and had then discarded the various items which were unwanted. According to the report of Inspector Abberline, dated 19 September, the items were a small-toothed comb, a larger comb in a paper case and a piece of coarse muslin, folded in two. The inquest testimony of Dr George Bagster Phillips was that “They had apparently been arranged there.” While little further
information
is available, either from the inquest records or from contemporary newspaper reports, it seems clear that both Inspector Chandler and Dr Phillips thought that the items had not been casually discarded or tossed to one side; more that they had been quite deliberately tidied up.

It was an unusual and unexpected find for which no obvious explanation presented itself. As part of his summing up on 26 September, the final day of the inquest, the coroner, Wynne Baxter, commented: “All was done with cool impudence and reckless daring: but perhaps nothing is more noticeable than the emptying of her pockets, and the arrangement of their contents with business-like precision in order near her feet.” My father and I wondered: if the murderer had been a man, would he have tidied up his victim’s possessions with such precision after the killing. Or was it rather more likely that the culprit might have been a woman acting out of habit: a careful, meticulous woman?

For what it’s worth, William Stewart, author of
Jack the Ripper: A New Theory
, published in 1939, gave his view that the victim’s possessions were arranged at her feet in “a typically feminine manner”, though this was, of course, merely his opinion.

There was something else strange too. In the yard was a tap with a pan of clean water underneath. Mrs Amelia Richardson said it had been left there the night before so that the occupants of the house could wash their hands after they had used the water closet, or when they had returned from their work perhaps? Yet it appeared to have been untouched; the water was still clean. Whoever had committed this dreadful crime must have been covered in blood; Dr Phillips certainly thought so, yet the murderer did not appear to have used the water to wash away the blood.

Within two hours of the body’s discovery, the Hanbury Street victim was identified. Her name was Annie Chapman, known to her friends as Dark Annie. She was forty-seven years old, separated from her husband three or perhaps four years before, and had lived a sad life thereafter, most of it as a prostitute. She lived in Crossingham’s lodging house in nearby Dorset Street.

It was a most peculiar crime by any standard and it bore all the hallmarks of the murder of Mary Ann Nichols committed just over a week before. They were both middle-aged prostitutes, drunk at the time of their deaths – Nichols more so than Chapman – and they had accompanied the murderer to a quiet and secluded place. Then, it was believed, they had lain down on the ground
voluntarily
, as though they were ready and willing to perform the sexual act. In neither case was any scream for help reported, nor were there signs that a struggle had taken place; the women had been
throttled
, Chapman only partially so, and their throats had been cut – from left to right – their abdomens’ ripped open. But far greater injury had been inflicted upon Annie Chapman’s lifeless body: her uterus cut out and removed from the scene of the crime. Whereas Nichols had been murdered in the dead of night, Chapman had been killed as much as half an hour after sunrise.

It could have been only a matter of minutes between the commission of the murder and the discovery of the body when the alarm was raised, because blood was still flowing from the victim’s open wounds. Yet, once again, the murderer, supposedly covered in blood, had escaped on what was a fine, bright morning, when the streets were coming alive, then had somehow, silently and
mysteriously
disappeared.

The newspapers had a field day – and they too were in no doubt as to the sex of the murderer. The headline in
The Star
on 8 September announced: “A nameless reprobate – half beast, half man – is at large, who is daily gratifying his murderous instincts…”.
The Times
on 10 September reported: “This person, whoever he might be, is doubtless labouring under some terrible form of insanity, as each of the crimes has been of a most fiendish character.”

The best efforts of Detective Inspector Abberline, Detective Sergeant Godley and the might of Scotland Yard produced no results, though their collective view was that the murderer was the same man who had murdered Mary Ann Nichols, and that, once again, the victim had been murdered where she was found. This conclusion was quickly reached because no blood was found anywhere other than in the immediate vicinity of the body. Despite an intensive investigation, no clues were to be discovered in the small Hanbury Street backyard, in the long stone corridor leading to the front door, in the house itself or on the street outside. Wide ranging house-to-house enquiries were made, suspects were rounded up and questioned, but nothing suspicious was found by the police.

It was clear to us that Lizzie Williams possessed two main
objectives
for the murder: the first was to slaughter her victim in the quickest, most efficient manner possible; the second was to cut out and take away her uterus; but why she would want such an organ we had no idea. Wynne Baxter, who conducted Chapman’s inquest, said: “…the injuries have been made by someone who had considerable anatomical skill and knowledge. There are no meaningless cuts. It was done by one who knew where to find what he wanted [the uterus], what difficulties he would have to contend against, and how he should use his knife so as to abstract the organ without injury to it. No unskilled person could have known where to find it.”

There was of course a third objective – and that was to avoid getting caught. Everything was geared towards these aims, and the murderer carried them through with impressive effect.

We wondered how Lizzie Williams had persuaded Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman to go with her – or she with them – to the forsaken places where their dead bodies were found. What might she have said to them? The first, Nichols, in a dark, quiet street while people slept and night-watchmen tended their braziers; the second, Chapman, in the enclosed backyard of a fully occupied tenement building just after sunrise, when people were already up and going about their business. Neither location was an ideal place to commit murder and expect to get away with it; Hanbury Street was even less suitable than Buck’s Row. Why was it that both victims were willing to lie down as though they expected to perform the sexual act? And how did each of the women allow themselves to be attacked and murdered without, apparently,
uttering
a sound or offering any form of resistance? For what possible reason would Lizzie Williams want her victim’s uterus? What had caused the three scratches on Annie Chapman’s neck, why was her pocket torn, and what was the explanation for the personal effects tidied up so neatly at her feet?