Complete History of Jack the Ripper (58 page)

The mutilations of Nichols, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly, said the doctor, were ‘all of the same character.’ They were inflicted with a strong knife, very sharp, pointed at the top, about an inch in width and at least six inches long. ‘It may have been a clasp knife, a butcher’s knife or a surgeon’s knife,’ he speculated, ‘[but] I think it was no doubt a straight knife.’

On the important question of the killer’s medical expertise Bond provided Anderson with a categoric reply. The murderer was a man of physical strength and ‘great coolness and daring.’ But, as far as Bond was concerned, he possessed no anatomical knowledge: ‘In each case the mutilation was inflicted by a person who had no scientific nor anatomical knowledge. 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.’

Of more immediate interest to Abberline, struggling to unravel the
mysteries of Miller’s Court, would have been the answer to a different question. When did Mary die? But on this point Dr Bond was less sure of his ground:

The most dramatic development of Saturday 10th was the intervention of the government. A Cabinet Council held at the Foreign Office decided that Mr Matthews should stand firm on his refusal of a reward and instead agreed to countenance the offer of a free pardon to any accomplice of the murderer of Mary Kelly who would betray him into the hands of the police. Lushington accordingly authorized Warren to issue the following notice, which appeared in the press and outside police stations:

It would be naive to believe that the Cabinet expected to detect the Ripper by this intervention. Their decision was immediately
challenged in the Commons. W. A. Hunter, the Member for Aberdeen North, asked on 12 November whether the Home Secretary had considered extending the pardon to the killer’s accomplices in the earlier murders, especially since ‘in the case of the first murder, committed last Christmas [Emma Smith], according to the dying testimony of the woman, several persons were concerned in the murder.’ Matthews declined to answer at that time. When Hunter repeated his question eleven days later, however, he attempted to project a facade of omniscience and replied that he would be quite prepared to extend the pardon if he had any evidence that such a decision might be fruitful. But, he pointed out, ‘in the case of Kelly there were certain circumstances which were wanting in the earlier cases, and which made it more probable that there were other persons who, at any rate after the crime, had assisted the murderer.’
²⁷

Matthews’ explanation of the rationale of the pardon offer is, quite frankly, unbelievable. In at least two of the earlier murders, that of Emma Smith, which was apparently perpetrated by three men, and that of Liz Stride, for which Israel Schwartz had accused two, there
had
been evidence of accomplices. The Home Secretary was not ignorant of these facts. Hunter himself had drawn his attention to the first instance and Warren had sent him a detailed report on the Stride murder on 24 October. In the case of Mary Kelly, on the other hand, there was no evidence whatsoever that more than one man had been involved and Dr Bond had said so in his report. So what was the real purpose of the Cabinet’s hasty, ill-judged action? Simply that the latest murder threatened to deluge the Home Secretary in a tidal wave of public anger and recrimination and it was deemed imperative that he do something, however futile, to appease the outcry. Having argued so forcefully against rewards in the past, Matthews could scarcely endorse them now and retain credibility. But a pardon . . . It was, then, an empty gesture, a sop to public opinion, prompted not by wisdom but by fear.

The inquest was held on Monday, 12 November. The murder had been committed in Spitalfields and the body had been deposited in Shoreditch Mortuary. So the proceedings were conducted, not by Wynne Baxter, but by Dr Roderick Macdonald, Coroner for the North Eastern District of Middlesex. The venue was Shoreditch Town Hall.

There was great public excitement. All day curious sightseers rambled up and down Dorset Street. They were prevented from
entering Miller’s Court, still guarded by two constables, but a crowd collected outside the court and maintained a permanent vigil. At Shoreditch Town Hall, where the inquest got under way at 11.00 a.m., large numbers of people had to be shut out. When the crush outside threatened to overwhelm the coroner’s officer, trying to hold the door, the door was locked and an inspector stationed there. By that time the inquest room was packed.

After the jurors had been sworn they were conducted by Abberline to the mortuary to view the body and then to Miller’s Court to see the murder room. Mary’s corpse had been stitched together and coffined. Only her face was visible, her mutilated body lying concealed beneath a dirty grey cloth. ‘The eyes were the only vestiges of humanity, commented the
Pall Mall Gazette.
‘The rest [of the face] was so scored and slashed that it was impossible to say where the flesh began and the cuts ended.’
²⁸
It was close on twelve before any evidence was taken. The jury learned something about Mary from Joe Barnett. Thomas Bowyer and John McCarthy told them how her body had been discovered on Friday morning. And depositions bearing upon her final hours were contributed by half a dozen residents of Dorset Street and Miller’s Court. But those anticipating a feast of gory revelations were profoundly disappointed. Dr Phillips spoke only briefly about the medical aspects of the case. Indeed, beyond his assertion that death had been caused by the severance of the right carotid artery he told the jury virtually nothing. And no question was put to him as to the details of the extensive mutilations or as to whether any organs were still missing. From Beck and Abberline, whose testimonies wound up the day’s proceedings, they heard little more about the police investigation.

However frustrating to the modern historian, the attitude of Phillips and the police was, of course, understandable. Their view was that the work of the police might be hindered by the immediate publication of the full details. Dr Macdonald, himself a police surgeon (to the Metropolitan Police’s K Division), recognized the logic of their case and told the jury that he was only going to take the preliminary portion of Phillips’ evidence, the remainder of which could be more fully given at the adjourned inquiry. The inquiry, in the event, was not to be adjourned. After Abberline had made his deposition Macdonald terminated the day’s proceedings. In doing so he advised the jury that it would be sufficient for them to ascertain the cause of death only, leaving other matters in the hands of the police, and he asked them
if they had already heard enough evidence to enable them to reach a verdict. The foreman, having consulted his colleagues, affirmed that they had. They returned a verdict of ‘wilful murder against some person or persons unknown’.

During the days immediately after the Miller’s Court outrage East Enders were witness to frantic police activity. But, from the first, the press expressed little confidence in their success. ‘It is quite clear,’ thundered the
Star
, ‘that nothing can be expected from the police, and that we may have 20 murders, as well as seven or eight, without their doing a single thing or making a single effort which will be fruitful for the public good.’ Even
The Times
was beginning to despair of the CID: ‘The murders, so cunningly continued, are carried out with a completeness which altogether baffles investigators. Not a trace is left of the murderer, and there is no purpose in the crime to afford the slightest clue, such as would be afforded in other crimes almost without exception. All that the police can hope is that some accidental circumstance will lead to a trace which may be followed to a successful conclusion.’
²⁹

Admirable as
The Times
’ exposition of the problem was, we must challenge its assumption that the Ripper had left absolutely no new clues to his identity. Clues in the form of tangible objects there were certainly none. No weapon had been discovered. A pipe found by the police in No. 13 turned out to belong to Joe Barnett and a man’s black overcoat to have been left there by Mary’s friend Maria Harvey. But there was no shortage of witnesses who saw Mary on the night of the murder. Several of them even claimed to have seen her in the company of strange men.

It is time for us to examine the evidence of these witnesses, to explore the last few hours of Mary Jane Kelly’s life, to probe the dark secrets of Miller’s Court on that cold November night a century ago.

O
UR SEARCH FOR THE FACTS
about the murder of Mary Kelly must discount the unsupported tattle of the Victorian press. Even when important witnesses were seen by reporters, interviews were often conducted so sloppily and edited and published so hastily that the words of witnesses appear to have been quite misconstrued.

Take, for example, the John McCarthy statement printed by the
Daily News
on 10 November. It was made on the day of the murder and contains this intriguing passage: ‘At eleven o’clock last night she [Kelly] was seen in the Britannia public house, at the corner of this thoroughfare [Dorset Street], with a young man with a dark moustache. She was then intoxicated. The young man appeared to be very respectable and well dressed.’ Who was McCarthy’s informant? He does not say. But a sighting of Mary with a man on the night of her death would have been an observation of the greatest importance so it is difficult to understand why McCarthy made absolutely no reference to the incident in his statement to the police or in his testimony before the coroner.

A report from the
Western Mail
, published in Paul Begg’s book, seems at first glance to provide a plausible solution to this mystery – McCarthy’s informant was his assistant, Thomas Bowyer, and the observation had been made, not on Thursday night but on Wednesday, more than a day before the murder. The report reads: ‘Harry Bowyer states that on Wednesday night he saw a man speaking to Kelly who resembled the description given by the fruiterer of the
supposed Berner Street murderer. He was, perhaps, 27 or 28 and had a dark moustache and very peculiar eyes. His appearance was rather smart and attention was drawn to him by [his] showing very white cuffs and a rather long white collar, the ends of which came down in front over a black coat. He did not carry a bag.’
¹
Sadly even this tidy solution will not do. For Bowyer’s inquest deposition proves that he saw Mary Kelly
neither
on Wednesday night
nor
on Thursday night. Replying to a specific question from the inquest jury, Bowyer said: ‘I last saw deceased alive on Wednesday afternoon in the court [Miller’s Court].’
²

If the incident alluded to in McCarthy’s press statement happened at all the informant was not Bowyer or it had predated the murder by several days. In either case the story, as it stands, is worthless as evidence. This is not to say that newspapers do not yield occasional gems and we will have occasion to be thankful to them when we encounter George Hutchinson. But unless, as in that case, we can corroborate them from police or coroner’s file, press statements of witnesses should be used with great caution and news reports – when they treat of the details of the murders and murder investigations – altogether discounted. Fortunately authentic evidence of the Kelly case does exist and if we are to find any answers to our questions we must seek them there.

Nine local residents appeared to give evidence at the inquest on 12 November. The records of coroners’ inquests held for the North Eastern District of Middlesex still survive. And the papers relating to this case
³
contain, not only an official record of the depositions made at the inquest, but copies of the original statements made by the nine witnesses to the police three days earlier. The statements are all dated 9 November and all but one are in the handwriting of Inspector Abberline.

Taken together the depositions and statements of these witnesses constitute our main source of documentary evidence relating to the murder. They furnish invaluable insights. Nevertheless, full of comings and goings, suspicious characters and contradictory testimony, they are often frustrating to use. And the light they shed upon the events of that night is but a fitful one. By it we can drive the shadows from Miller’s Court for brief intervals, but they lurk in the corners, and as regularly as our light falters they close around us again to envelop us in impenetrable gloom.