Complete History of Jack the Ripper (57 page)

When the Kelly murder occurred Bond had already studied police notes on the Buck’s Row, Hanbury Street, Berner Street and Mitre Square outrages. And at two on the afternoon of 9 November he turned up at Miller’s Court to conduct his personal examination of the latest victim. His notes, written the next day, tell us what he saw:

Bond’s statement that Mary’s body was found naked was contradicted by Phillips’ inquest testimony that she was clad in a linen under garment. Phillips was right because in a surviving police photograph of the scene a puffed sleeve of the garment is clearly visible about the top of Mary’s left arm. One possible explanation of the discrepancy
is that most of the under garment had been cut away from the body in the process of mutilation.

From the moment the police and their surgeons descended upon Miller’s Court the local residents became little more than helpless bystanders to the drama being enacted in their midst. The few who saw inside the butcher’s shambles that was No. 13 were left numb with shock. One was Elizabeth Prater. Her husband, a boot machinist named William Prater, had deserted her five years since and she now earned a living by prostitution and lodged alone in No. 20 Miller’s Court, above Mary’s room. ‘I’m a woman myself,’ she sobbed to a
Star
reporter on the day of the murder, ‘and I’ve got to sleep in that place tonight right over where it happened.’ Mrs Prater had good cause to know what had happened. A pump stood in the court near No. 13 and Mrs Prater took advantage of a trip for water to peep through the window of Mary’s room. ‘I could bear to look at it only for a second,’ she said, ‘but I can never forget the sight of it if I live to be a hundred.’
¹⁷

John McCarthy, who had forced the door, was among the first to enter No. 13. ‘The sight we saw,’ he said later in the day, ‘I cannot drive away from my mind. It looked more like the work of a devil than of a man. The poor woman’s body was lying on the bed, undressed. She had been completely disembowelled, and her entrails had been taken out and placed on the table. It was those that I had seen when I looked through the window and took to be lumps of flesh. The woman’s nose had been cut off, and her face gashed and mutilated so that she was quite beyond recognition. Both her breasts too had been cut clean away and placed by the side of her liver and other entrails on the table. I had heard a great deal about the Whitechapel murders, but I declare to God I had never expected to see such a sight as this. The body was, of course, covered with blood, and so was the bed. The whole scene is more than I can describe. I hope I may never see such a sight again.’
¹⁸

Tidings of the murder soon swept through the crowded courts and alleys of the East End. ‘Women rushed about the streets,’ said one report, ‘telling their neighbours the news, and giving utterance in angry voices to expressions of rage and indignation.’
¹⁹
As the Lord Mayor’s procession swung into Fleet Street from Ludgate Circus the news burst upon the crowds lining the route there. Soon spectators were deserting the show in thousands and converging upon Dorset Street. Cordons of police at each end denied them access but the entrances from Bell Lane and Commercial Street became choked by crowds of excited, frightened-looking people.

At about four o’clock a one-horse carrier’s cart with a tarpaulin cover was driven into Dorset Street and halted opposite Miller’s Court. A long shell or coffin, scratched and dirty with use, was taken from the cart and carried into No. 13. The surgeons had completed their preliminary examination of the remains. The news that the body was about to be removed produced a great rush of people from the courts leading out of Dorset Street and a determined push against the police cordon at the Commercial Street end. ‘The crowd, which pressed round the van [cart], was of the humblest class,’ ran the
Times
report, ‘but the demeanour of the poor people was all that could be desired. Ragged caps were doffed and slatternly-looking women shed tears as the shell, covered with a ragged-looking cloth, was placed in the van.’
²⁰

After the remains had been driven to Shoreditch Mortuary the windows of No. 13 were boarded up and the door padlocked. The cordons at the ends of the street were withdrawn but although crowds of idlers roved through Dorset Street all evening there was nothing for them to see since two stalwart constables vigilantly guarded the passage into Miller’s Court.

In Whitehall the news of the latest murder was greeted with dismay. When Beck saw Mary’s mutilated corpse through the broken window he lost no time in apprising Commercial Street by fast-running constables and from there the news was promptly relayed by telegraph to Scotland Yard. Warren dashed off a brief note to Lushington. ‘I have to acquaint you, for the information of the Secretary of State,’ he wrote, ‘that information has just been received that a mutilated dead body of a woman is reported to have been found this morning inside a room in a house (No. 26) in Dorset Street, Spitalfields.’ The matter, he added, had been entrusted to Anderson. Messages then flew back and forth. The Home Office telephoned Warren. They wanted to be informed as soon as possible of any further news. And, after personally inspecting the scene of the murder, Anderson telephoned the Home Office. A scribbled note of his message still survives in the Home Office papers: ‘Body is believed to be that of a prostitute
terribly muti
[sic] much mutilated. Dr Bond is at present engaged in making his examination but his report has not yet been received. Full report cannot be furnished until medical officers have completed enquiry.’
²¹

On Saturday morning the police returned eagerly to their investigation of the crime. Abberline was back at Miller’s Court, exploring the ashes cold in the grate of Mary’s room. It had been a large fire, so
fierce that it had melted the spout of the kettle, but the only clues his search turned up were a few remnants of women’s clothing. A
Times
report assures us that they were a piece of burnt velvet, presumed to be the remains of a jacket, and the charred rim and wirework of a woman’s felt hat. Press versions of Abberline’s inquest testimony speak of the remnants of a skirt and the brim of a hat.
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What had been the purpose of this blaze? To destroy something? Abberline did not think so. He discovered but one piece of candle in the room and decided that the Ripper had been compelled to burn clothes in order to provide the light by which he mutilated his victim.

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

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

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

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

But the injuries inflicted upon Mary’s torso and limbs exceeded in bestiality anything the Ripper had yet done. Dr Bond wrote:

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

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

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

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

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