Complete History of Jack the Ripper (60 page)

What of the Ripper himself? The coroner’s papers, alas, probably tell us nothing about him. The stories of the witnesses certainly abound in dubious characters. The man Mrs Maxwell thought she saw talking to Mary at nine, if he ever existed, is exonerated. But there are plenty of others – the short, stout man with the blotchy face and carrotty moustache seen by Mrs Cox, the man with the black bag and the high hat, the man with the wideawake black hat Sarah Lewis saw lurking opposite the entrance of Miller’s Court and looking up the court ‘as if waiting for someone to come out’, and the young man seen with a woman by Sarah in Dorset Street. It should be remembered, though, that the fact that strange men, with or without women, were seen about Dorset Street in the nocturnal hours is of no significance in itself. The street consisted almost entirely of common lodging houses. That at 14 Dorset Street, where Mrs Maxwell’s husband was deputy,
alone could accommodate 244 people. And, as we have already noted, the street and its courts harboured prostitutes galore. It was thus by no means unusual to encounter men and prostitutes in the street in the early hours of the morning.

The only suspect these witnesses refer to against whom a case can be made is the man with the carrotty moustache because he was actually seen to enter No. 13 with Mary Kelly. Even the case against him, however, is extremely weak. It was about 11.45 p.m. when Mrs Cox followed them into Miller’s Court, no less than four hours before the probable time of the murder and far too early for us to assume that he was the killer. Mary was a prostitute. She was, moreover, in financial trouble. Her rent arrears stood at 29s. and Thomas Bowyer’s call the next morning may not have been unanticipated. Quite possibly she feared eviction. When Joe Barnett’s visit on Thursday evening proved barren of succour she took to the streets. She procured one client, the man Mrs Cox saw at 11.45, and in the ensuing four hours, impelled by necessity, she could easily have procured another. Indeed, there is crucial eyewitness evidence that she did precisely that.

The witness was George Hutchinson, a casual labourer then living at the Victoria Working Men’s Home in Commercial Street. His name will not be found in the coroner’s papers for the simple reason that he did not appear at the inquest. This was not, as some have recently alleged, because his evidence was deliberately suppressed, but because at the time of the inquest neither the police nor the coroner knew anything of him.

It was not until six in the evening of Monday, 12 November, after the inquest had been concluded, that Hutchinson walked into Commercial Street Police Station and made his statement. This document, still preserved in the records of the Metropolitan Police, merits quotation in full:

Hutchinson has been widely described by students of the case as the witness most likely to have met Jack the Ripper. Fortunate it is for us, then, that he was sniffed out by the newshounds as quickly as Israel Schwartz had been before him. On 13 November, just one day after his appearance at Commercial Street, he gave the press a fuller statement than that preserved in the police file.

By this account Hutchinson was in Romford, Essex, on Thursday the 8th. We are not told why. However, tramping back to London, he reached Whitechapel Road early on Friday morning. When he passed St Mary’s Church it was between ten and five minutes to two. He turned north into Commercial Street. Walking into Spitalfields, he passed a man standing at the corner of Thrawl Street and then, approaching Flower and Dean Street, met Mary Kelly. ‘Kelly did not seem to me to be drunk,’ remembered Hutchinson, ‘but was a little bit spreeish.’

‘Mr Hutchinson,’ she asked, ‘can you lend me sixpence?’

‘I cannot,’ replied Hutchinson, ‘as I am spent out going down to Romford.’

‘I must go and look for some money,’ said Mary.

She walked off towards Thrawl Street and there she met the man Hutchinson had already seen standing at the corner. He went up to her, put his hand on her shoulder and said something. Hutchinson did not hear the words but the couple both burst into laughter. The man then again placed his hand on Mary’s shoulder and they began to walk slowly in Hutchinson’s direction. Hutchinson himself walked on until he reached the corner of Fashion Street, where he loitered by the public house. The man with Kelly wore a soft felt hat ‘drawn down somewhat over his eyes’. As the couple passed him Hutchinson ducked down to see his face and the man ‘turned and looked at me very sternly’.

They crossed the street and turned into Dorset Street. Hutchinson followed them as far as the corner and from there watched them stand for about three minutes at the entrance of Miller’s Court. ‘I have lost my handkerchief,’ Mary was saying loudly. The man pulled a red one out of his pocket and gave it to her. They both then went into Miller’s Court.

Hutchinson’s efforts to learn more were persistent but fruitless. When he ventured up the court himself he saw no light in the house and heard no noise. And although he stood about the entrance of Miller’s Court for about forty-five minutes the couple did not reappear. ‘When I left the corner of Miller’s Court,’ he told the press, ‘the clock struck three o’clock.’

The labourer’s press statement contained a more elaborate description of the suspect than had been set down in his statement to the police:

This information clears the man with the carrotty moustache seen by Mrs Cox. And it answers some of the questions raised by Sarah Lewis’ testimony. The man in the black wideawake hat, whom Sarah saw about 2.30 looking up Miller’s Court ‘as if waiting for someone to come out’, was probably Hutchinson since by his account he stood outside the court from about 2.15 to 3.00 for precisely that purpose. The man with the black bag and the young man with the woman, both reported by Sarah, are likewise cleared. At 2.30, when she saw them, Mary was already in No. 13 with her new client and Hutchinson was upon his lone vigil outside.

All this, of course, assumes that Hutchinson’s story was true. But was it? No other witness who claimed to have seen a suspect with one of the murder victims swore to such a wealth of detail or spoke with such confidence. The last three words of the labourer’s statement to the police must have fired Abberline with hope: ‘Can be identified.’ It was a claim Hutchinson repeated to the press. ‘I could swear to the man anywhere,’ he said. That, sadly, is part of the problem. Hutchinson sound just too good to be true.

Only once, by the lamp of the Queen’s Head, did Hutchinson get a good look at Mary’s companion close up. For most of the time, in dim gaslit streets, he watched from a discreet distance. Yet we are asked to believe that he could describe the man with a precision worthy of Sherlock Holmes, in detail that would have been quite beyond a casual observer even in daylight. Hutchinson’s account raises other disturbing questions. If he really did see a man with Mary Kelly on the fatal night why did he wait more than three days after the murder to tell the police? And if he thought he saw the same man again at Petticoat Lane Market on the following Sunday why did he not follow him again or, at the very least, find a constable?

By this time some of my readers may feel that Hutchinson’s
statements belong in the waste paper basket with Packer’s. But the labourer is not to be dismissed as easily as the greengrocer. Two circumstances in particular speak strongly in his favour. The first is the remarkable consistency between his two statements. They each contain information not to be found in the other but there are only two actual discrepancies of fact between them. In his statement to the police Hutchinson said that Mary’s client had a
pale
complexion and a
slight
moustache turned up at the ends. To the press he described a man of
dark
complexion with a ‘
heavy
moustache curled up’. Given the length of the statements, however, these small discrepancies are not significant. Far more impressive are the numerous points of corroboration (at least forty) between the two accounts. This consistency in two statements made on different days to different parties certainly suggests that the labourer’s story was not a total invention.

A yet more telling circumstance supports Hutchinson. Abberline, an experienced and outstanding detective, interrogated him on the 12th – and believed him. In forwarding the statement to the Yard that same night the inspector made his view perfectly clear: ‘An important statement has been made by a man named George Hutchinson which I forward herewith. I have interrogated him this evening, and I am of opinion his statement is true.’
¹⁴

If Hutchinson was telling the truth he cannot have been a casual or disinterested observer. His statements, indeed, prove that he was not. For he evinced the keenest interest in Mary and her client, loitering by the Queen’s Head to get a close look, shadowing them to Miller’s Court and standing the best part of an hour outside on a cold night waiting for them to come out. Hutchinson told Abberline that his curiosity had been aroused by seeing such a well-dressed man in Mary’s company but this explanation is too thin. Inevitably, one suspects that he shared some undisclosed relationship with Mary. All we know for certain, however, is what he told the inspector – that he had known her about three years and had occasionally given her a few shillings.

A relationship of some kind with Mary Kelly might help to explain why Hutchinson was so slow to come forward after the murder. In his press interview he said that he had first told a policeman on Sunday 11th, the day before he reported to Commercial Street, but there is no corroboration of this in police records. Even if it were so he still delayed more than two days. Possibly he feared being implicated in
the crime. After all, by his own admission, he had spoken to Mary and followed her to Miller’s Court on the night she was killed, and he had no companion to confirm that his role in the events of that night had been an innocent one. There was, too, a danger that someone who had seen him skulking about there might accuse him and pick him out at a police identity parade. If it should transpire then that he knew more about Mary than he cared to admit he would have had some serious explaining to do. Perhaps, like Ted Stanley, the ‘pensioner’ in Annie Chapman’s life, George Hutchinson’s first instinct was simply not to get involved.

As we will discover, Hutchinson would prove to be a lasting influence on Abberline. Presumably he had a forthright manner and responded well to questions. Abberline must have reflected too, of course, that Hutchinson had volunteered his statement even though it placed him at Miller’s Court about the time of the murder. Whatever the inspector’s reasons for believing in him, he at once backed his judgement with action. Attaching two detectives to Hutchinson, he sent them out that very night to perambulate the East End with him in the hope that he might spot the man again. They trudged the streets fruitlessly until three the next morning and later on the 13th were out searching again.