Read Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888 Online
Authors: Russell Edwards
Elizabeth Prater lived at Room 20, Miller’s Court, the room above Mary’s. At about 3.30 or 4 a.m. she was awoken by her kitten and heard a cry of ‘murder’ in a female
voice about two or three times. As Dorset Street was considered the roughest in the area at the time, she was used to such cries and so she ignored them and went back to sleep, not waking until 11
a.m. Sarah Lewis, staying with friends at Room 2, Miller’s Court, may have heard the same cries at around the same time. Lewis, however, had more to report. When she got home to
Miller’s Court, at around 2.30 a.m., she saw a man standing over against the lodging house on the opposite side of the street to Miller’s Court. He was described as not tall but stout
and had on a wide-awake black hat (a hat with a low crown and wide brim.) The man Sarah Lewis described was probably George Hutchinson, a friend of Mary Kelly. He did not present himself as a
witness until after the inquest, when he appeared at Commercial Street Police Station at 6 p.m. on 12 November 1888. He had an interesting story to tell.
He said that he was walking along Commercial Street, between Thrawl Street and Flower and Dean Street, at about 2 a.m. that morning. He was approached by Mary, who said, ‘Hutchinson, will
you lend me sixpence?’ He said that he didn’t have it to give her as he had spent it all going to Romford, and Mary went on her way. She was heading back in the direction
of Thrawl Street when a man coming in the opposite direction tapped her on the shoulder and said something to her, at which they both burst out laughing. Hutchinson said that he heard
her say ‘Alright’ to him and the man replied, You will be alright for what I have told you’. He then placed his right arm around her shoulders. Hutchinson stood against the lamp
of the Queen’s Head public house at the corner of Fashion Street and watched as the couple came past him. The man dropped his head with his hat over his eyes, so Hutchinson stooped down to
look him in the face, at which the man gave him a stern look.
The couple headed into Dorset Street and Hutchinson followed. Mary and her new acquaintance stood at the entrance to Miller’s Court for a few minutes and the man said something to her to
which Mary replied, ‘Alright my dear, come along, you will be comfortable.’ The man then placed his arm around her shoulder and gave her a kiss and they both disappeared into the gloomy
court together. Hutchinson stood on the other side of the road for about three quarters of an hour, during which time he was seen by Sarah Lewis. When he realized that neither Mary nor her
companion were coming out soon, he went away to find lodgings of his own.
Hutchinson gave a description of the man as aged about thirty-four or thirty-five, height 5 foot 6 inches, with a pale complexion, dark eyes and eyelashes and a slight moustache, curled at the
ends. He was wearing a long coat trimmed with astrakhan, with a dark jacket underneath, a light waistcoat, dark trousers, a dark felt hat turned down in the middle, button boots and gaiters with
white buttons. He apparently wore a thick gold chain, a white linen collar and a black tie with a horseshoe pin, an appearance which suggested affluence. He
was Jewish in
appearance and walked ‘very sharp’. Hutchinson also noticed that he was carrying a parcel. It was an unusual description, but Inspector Abberline personally questioned Hutchinson and
felt that he was telling the truth.
Two further sightings of Mary Kelly took place in Dorset Street that morning, but they are extremely problematical. Caroline Maxwell saw her at the corner of Miller’s Court between 8 a.m.
and 8.30 a.m. They spoke, and Mary said that she ‘had the horrors of drink upon her’, probably meaning a huge hangover. Mrs Maxwell suggested that she go and have a drink, but Mary
replied that she had already done so and had thrown it up in the road, pointing to a small pool of vomit by the kerb. Maxwell saw Kelly again at between 8.45 and 9 a.m. on the corner of Dorset
Street, talking to a man who was aged about thirty and had the appearance of a market porter. The other sighting of interest was from Maurice Lewis who believed he saw Mary Kelly leave her room at
about 8 a.m. and then saw her again in the Britannia pub at the corner of Dorset Street and Commercial Street. The big problem with both these sightings is, according to later evidence given by
medical men, Mary Kelly would have already been dead for a while by the time Maxwell and Lewis saw her. It’s possible that, not knowing her well, she was confused with another woman, or that
the witnesses simply had the day wrong.
At 10.45 a.m. that morning, the landlord John McCarthy sent his assistant, an elderly man named Thomas Bowyer, to try and collect some of the six weeks overdue rent from Mary. Bowyer went
through the passageway to Room 13 and knocked on the door, but there was no answer. He tried opening the door but it would not budge, as though it was locked from the inside, so rather than walk
away empty-handed, he went
round to the side window, which had a broken pane, put his hand through the hole in the frame and pulled back the muslin curtain that was
obscuring his view of the interior. In the gloom of that little room he could make out the corpse of Mary Jane Kelly: she was lying on the bed and she had been literally ripped to pieces. In shock,
he immediately ran to fetch John McCarthy who, with Bowyer, swiftly ran to Commercial Street Police Station where they alerted Inspector Walter Beck and Sergeant Edward Badham. After arriving at
Miller’s Court and seeing for himself the bloody scene, Inspector Beck sent for assistance from Divisional Superintendent Thomas Arnold and the divisional surgeon Dr George Bagster Phillips.
Inspector Abberline also visited Miller’s Court, as did Assistant Commissioner Robert Anderson, the first time he had been able to visit any of the crime scenes since his return from sick
leave in early October.
Miller’s Court was sealed off to the public by 11 a.m. On his arrival, Dr Phillips viewed the scene through the window and satisfied himself that the woman in the room was long past
needing immediate assistance. A decision was made to use bloodhounds in an attempt to sniff out the killer and so a long wait ensued before the room could be opened; by 1 p.m. no bloodhounds had
arrived and so, in the absence of a key, John McCarthy was ordered to break down the door of Mary’s room with a pickaxe. The scene that greeted those who entered that tiny room was shocking
even to hardened policemen and medical men, as the highly experienced Dr Thomas Bond, the divisional police surgeon for A Division (Westminster), made clear in his post-mortem report:
The body was lying naked in the middle of the bed, the shoulders flat, but the axis of the body inclined to the left side of the bed. The head was
turned on the left cheek. The left arm was close to the body with the forearm flexed at a right angle and lying across the abdomen, the right arm was slightly abducted from the body and rested
on the mattress, the elbow bent the forearm supine with the fingers clenched. The legs were wide apart, the left thigh at right angles to the trunk and the right forming an obtuse angle with
the pubes.
The whole surface of the abdomen and thighs was removed and the abdominal cavity emptied of its viscera. The breasts were cut off, the arms mutilated by several jagged wounds and the face
hacked beyond recognition of the features. The tissues of the neck were severed all round down to the bone.
The viscera were found in various parts viz: the uterus and kidneys with one breast under the head, the other breast by the right foot, the liver between the feet, the intestines by the
right side and the spleen by the left side of the body.
The flaps removed from the abdomen and thighs were on a table.
The bed clothing at the right corner was saturated with blood, and on the floor beneath was a pool of blood covering about 2 feet square. The wall by the right side of the bed and in a line
with the neck was marked by blood which had struck it in a number of separate splashes.
Dr Bond went into further detail:
The face was gashed in all directions the nose, cheeks, eyebrows and ears being partly removed. The lips were blanched and cut by several incisions running obliquely down
to the
chin. There were also numerous cuts extending irregularly across all the features.
The neck was cut through the skin and other tissues right down to the vertebrae the 5th and 6th being deeply notched. The skin cuts in the front of the neck showed distinct ecchymosis.
The air passage was cut at the lower part of the larynx through the cricoid cartilage.
Both breasts were removed by more or less circular incisions, the muscles down to the ribs being attached to the breasts. The intercostals between the 4th, 5th, and 6th ribs were cut through
and the contents of the thorax visible through the openings.
The skin and tissues of the abdomen from the costal arch to the pubes were removed in three large flaps. The right thigh was denuded in front to the bone, the flap of skin, including the
external organs of generation and part of the right buttock. The left thigh was stripped of skin, fascia and muscles as far as the knee.
The left calf showed a long gash through the skin and tissues to the deep muscles and reaching from the knee to 5 ins above the ankle.
Both arms and forearms had extensive and jagged wounds. The right thumb showed a small superficial incision about 1 in long, with the extravasation of blood in the skin and there were
several abrasions on the back of the hand moreover showing the same condition.
On opening the thorax it was found that the right lung was minimally adherent by old firm adhesions. The lower part of the lung was broken and torn away.
The left lung was intact: it was adherent at the apex and
there were a few adhesions over the side. In the substances of the lung were several nodules of
consolidation.
The Pericardium was open below and the Heart absent.
In the abdominal cavity was some partially digested food of fish and potatoes and similar food was found in the remains of the stomach attached to the intestines.
Having made his post-mortem report on Mary Kelly, Dr Bond was shown those written about the previous victims and produced a résumé of the kind of person he felt
the Ripper must have been, which is often considered to be the first criminal offender profile. Dr Bond had been a police surgeon for over twenty years at this time, and was also a distinguished
lecturer in forensic medicine. He committed suicide at the age of sixty, in 1901, when he was suffering from an untreatable and very painful bladder condition.
He stated that the injuries to Mary Kelly were so severe as to make it impossible to assume any anatomical knowledge on the part of the person who killed her: ‘in my opinion he does not
even possess the technical knowledge of a butcher or horse slaughterer or any person accustomed to cut up dead animals.’ He stated:
The murderer must have been a man of physical strength and of great coolness and daring. There is no evidence that he had an accomplice. He must in my opinion be a man
subject to periodical attacks of Homicidal and erotic mania. The character of the mutilations indicate that the man may be in a condition sexually that may be called satyriasis. It is of course
possible that the Homicidal impulse may have developed from a revengeful or brooding condition of the
mind, or that Religious Mania may have been the original disease,
but I do not think either hypothesis is likely. The murderer in external appearance is quite likely to be a quiet inoffensive looking man probably middle aged and neatly and respectably
dressed. I think he must be in the habit of wearing a cloak or an overcoat or he could hardly have escaped notice in the streets if the blood on his hands or clothes were visible.
Assuming the murderer to be such a person as I have described he would probably be solitary and eccentric in his habits, also he is most likely to be a man without regular occupation, but
with some small income or pension. He is possibly living among respectable persons who have some knowledge of his character and habits and who may have grounds for suspicion that he is not
quite right in his mind at times. Such persons would probably be unwilling to communicate suspicions to the Police for fear of trouble or notoriety, whereas if there were a prospect of reward
it might overcome their scruples.
Before being moved to Shoreditch mortuary, the body of Mary Kelly was photographed twice, one view taken in full from the side, the other from the foot of the bed. These
images, perhaps the earliest examples of murder crime scene photography by the British police, show the full horror of what happened that day and allow us, over a century later, to understand the
shock that these killings generated. It is hard to imagine that the murderer could have done any worse.
At the inquest Dr Phillips attributed the cause of death to ‘the severance of the carotid artery’.
Mary Jane Kelly’s funeral was a massive occasion, with
thousands united in a great outpouring of sympathy and grief along the procession route to St Patrick’s
Roman Catholic Cemetery in Leytonstone. In just a short space of time, the Whitechapel murders had revealed the dark heart of London’s East End, turning forgotten unfortunates into tragic
victims and paralyzing the whole district with fear. In November 1888, no one knew that the Miller’s Court murder would be the Ripper’s last atrocity (according to most experts, and
certainly in my opinion). Instead, it was deemed just a further escalation in the series; Queen Victoria herself had apparently been keeping an eye on the events unfolding in the East End and
following the Kelly murder felt compelled to fire off a telegram to her ministers, showing great concern:
This new most ghastly murder shows the absolute necessity for some very decided action. All these courts must be lit, & our detectives improved. They are not what they
should be. You promised, when the 1st murders took place to consult with your colleagues about it.
Mary Kelly was not the only victim on 9 November. As news of her murder spread around London, reports that Sir Charles Warren, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, had
resigned were also doing the rounds. Warren had been given a tough time by the radical newspapers throughout the Whitechapel murders and was constantly at loggerheads with Henry Matthews, the Home
Secretary. After he had written a forthright article about the police in
Murray’s Magazine
, Warren was hauled over the coals by Matthews, at which point he felt that enough was
enough and he tendered his resignation, which was duly accepted. Although Warren’s resignation had
little to do with the Metropolitan police’s failure to capture
the Ripper, popular legend has continued to promote the idea that Jack the Ripper’s crimes had disastrously affected the very highest echelons of authority.