JACK THE RIPPER …

PERSON OR PERSONS

UNKNOWN?

by

Garry Wroe

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AUTHOR’S NOTES

Having read my first book on the Jack the Ripper murders in 1986, I began researching the case in earnest the following year. The resultant manuscript was completed in the summer of 1995 and, with the exception of a subsequently included quotation from John Douglas’s Mindhunter (1995), the main body of the present text stands precisely as it did then. As such, any similarities to other works focusing on the same ‘suspect’ are purely coincidental.

Along the way, I have received invaluable help from many individuals. In this context, I would like to extend my special appreciation to the staff of the Local History Library, Bancroft Road, Mile End; the Newspaper Library, Colindale; the Public Records Office, Kew; and St Catherine’s House, Central London. Equally, I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of individuals associated either directly or tangentially with the Ripper case: Paul Begg, Professor David Canter, the late Joe Gaute, Dr Stuart Kind, Brian Marriner, Donald Rumbelow, Paul Williams and Colin Wilson. Here, I must express my profound thanks to Robin Odell who, from the beginning, has been a constant source of help, support and encouragement. I hold Robin in the highest of esteem as both a man and a writer.

This work is dedicated to the memory of my late father, Jack Wroe (1934-1969).

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Chapter One

MEAN STREETS

‘The place is lined on either side by dark-looking houses. The postman seldom pays it a visit. If he arrives there boys and girls hail his advent, and the person for whom he has brought a letter is fetched down to meet him. Policemen are little known here. They prefer to keep away when a fight is going on, for the people are rough, and more than once boiling water has been thrown over constables by intoxicated women.’

This was a typical East London slum court circa 1888, a microcosm of the sprawling network of filthy, malodorous courts, alleyways and narrow thoroughfares which were the Victorian East End. Many of its neighbourhoods were anathema to outsiders. Whitechapel, Spitalfields and Hoxton, along with Stepney, Bethnal Green and Limehouse were perceived as the most sordid and dangerous districts in the metropolis. Here resided the ‘dregs of humanity’, those considered ‘unfit to live’ – common prostitutes, loafers, cadgers, swindlers, housebreakers, pickpockets, forgers and fences. Add to this catalogue the befouled army of vagrants that infested the area and it is easy to understand why the East End was equated with lawlessness and immorality. Indeed, such was its stigmatized image that Professor Julian Huxley, with reference to the primitive Polynesian native, opined that ‘With all his savaging, he was not half so savage, so unclean, so irreclaimable, as the tenant of a tenement in an East London slum.’

Others, however, recognized that decades of parliamentary pretermittance had, in socioeconomic terms, effectively annexed the area from the remainder of London, precipitating widespread misery through mass unemployment, poverty, overcrowding and an alarmingly high incidence of crime and alcoholism. Even when politicians did attempt to appease their critics with some token gesture of help, it usually ended in farce. The Artisans’ Dwelling Act, vaunted as a means of supplanting slum housing with decent, affordable accommodation, may be cited as an example of the governmental ‘assistance’ rendered during the period. Difficulties first emerged when it became apparent that insufficient forethought had been applied to the practicalities behind finding shelter for the displaced once demolition was underway. Consequently, those made homeless were confronted with no alternative other than to move into what were already grossly overcongested lodgings. And with accommodation at a premium, slum landlords were able to demand extortionately inflated rents while allowing living conditions to deteriorate to new depths. As a result, thousands ended up by living in infinitely worse squalor than had been the case hitherto. But a further absurdity soon emerged, for upon their completion these New Model Dwellings commanded rents which proved prohibitively expensive for the East End poor – the very people for whom they had been constructed in the first place!

Some of the realities surrounding everyday life were brought home with a vengeance when in early 1887 Charles Booth submitted to the Royal Statistical Society a paper outlining the plight of the East London poor. Given an overall population of some 900,000 persons, an estimated 35 percent were adjudged to be living either on or above the poverty threshold – that is to say, below the minimum weekly income level of 21 shillings required to sustain an average family unit. Moreover, averred Booth, 13 percent struggled daily against conditions under which ‘decent life is not imaginable’. According to these data, therefore, almost 117,000 East Enders were subsisting on the very brink of starvation.

Long-term unemployment, a phenomenon that haunted the area throughout the 1880s and beyond, was the factor on which much of this poverty hinged. The East End was certainly no stranger to indigence, but the economic situation deteriorated dramatically as jobs became fewer and further between. To their credit, most families rose to this challenge, doing their utmost to eke out an honest living wherever possible. Cottage industries sprang up unceasingly with tenement rooms and low lodgings doubling as both a home and a place of manufacture. This outwork, traditionally the domain of women, children and the elderly, was invariably monotonous and required little skill. Everything from matchboxes to packing cases was assembled; items of clothing were repaired or laundered; others produced cigars, cigarettes, matches, cheap jewellery, children’s toys – anything, in fact, so long as the task could be accomplished quickly, inexpensively and promoted a modest livelihood.

Unemployed males generally sought some form of casual labour, in which respect various East London dockyards attracted daily an early-morning throng of men desperate to be selected for a few hours’ work at the rate of 5d an hour. As the foreman appeared, clutching a handful of labour tickets set for distribution to the fortunate few, competition amongst the ‘casuals’ almost always degenerated into violence:-

Coats, flesh and even ears were torn off. The strong literally threw themselves over the heads of their fellows and battled ... through the kicking, punching, cursing crowd to the rail of the ‘cage’ which held them like rats – mad human rats who saw food in the ticket.

This ritual sometimes involved as many as six hundred men, each clamouring for one of perhaps only twenty labour tickets. But the ignominy continued even for those who managed to secure work, as hired bully-boys subjected the casuals to remorseless, sadistic beatings. Having endured such obscenities for the sake of a few shillings, however, the combination of a weak, malnourished body and the gruelling physical demands of dock work proved too much for some who simply collapsed and died of exhaustion at the end of their shift.

In terms of sheer human misery, even the docks were eclipsed by the sweatshop system that proliferated throughout the East End during the Victorian era. This industry, centring mainly on the production of cheap, low-quality clothing, footwear and furniture, adhered to the axiom whereby ultra-competitiveness could be realized only so long as overheads were restricted to the barest minimum. Hence, taking advantage of the huge surplus of manpower that offered a seemingly unlimited supply of replacements for every disgruntled worker, local sweaters were able to inflict upon their employees conditions under which ‘foul air, long hours of drudgery, and starvation pay are producing in our midst colonies of human beings who are infinitely worse off than were the slaves of bygone years.’

Investigations into sweating revealed an appalling cycle of despair. Earning an average weekly wage of just 19 shillings, workers, frequently numbering eight, nine or ten persons, toiled upwards of sixteen hours a day, six, sometimes seven days a week ensconced in a single room of domestic proportions, a room bereft of ventilation or sanitation in which the sweated cooked and ate their meals, a room that in many instances served as the Master’s living quarters during non-working hours. Inquiries by Select Committees in both Houses vilified the foreign Jew, whose alleged stranglehold on the industry implied his culpability for many of the privations borne by the suffering poor. Conveniently, such denunciation ignored the years of political neglect that had largely ghettoized East London, sowing the seeds for the type of exploitation now under censure. Neither was consideration given to the fact that sweating, although an abomination, at least offered a financial lifeline to those with no alternative means of support. While some newspapers responded by calling for an immediate cessation to immigration, others advocated the repatriation of the ‘pauper alien’ who, it was argued, was actively peddling his services on the labour market at a substantially reduced rate, thereby denying the ‘true-born Englishman’ gainful employment. As a consequence of such rhetoric, the Jewish community was scapegoated for a whole host of society’s ills: unemployment, overcrowding, disease, poverty and poor housing conditions. Jews were openly assaulted on the street, their homes attacked, their children abused both verbally and physically. The situation seemed for a time to be getting dangerously out of hand until an uneasy peace was restored due to politico-religious intervention. Even so, there remained at street level a general brooding resentment towards the Hebrew population, not to mention bitter enmity for the sweatshop system – which, despite its sullied reputation, continued to operate much as before.

Most poor East Enders were obliged to live in either tenement buildings or low lodging houses. What the average, dangerously rundown tenement lacked in running water and sanitation was more than compensated for with a plentiful supply of vermin and disease. More often than not, families comprising upwards of five members occupied a single room. To compound matters still further, economic necessity compelled many to sublet floorspace to outsiders. Apart from the filth and overcrowding which epitomized these dwellings, neglect had left the generality in an atrocious state of disrepair. Broken window panes, crumbling plasterwork, nonexistent banister rails and stair-treads, gaping holes in ceilings, walls and floors, all were accepted as the norm. Complaint was futile, for to air a grievance was to invite immediate and unceremonious eviction. Some landlords were more unscrupulous, reacting to dissatisfaction by imposing a rent increase with which to offset the cost of any desired repairwork – even though these renovations would never be carried out. And with an average weekly rent at 4/6, such additional expenditure only exacerbated the wretched hand-to-mouth existence of those battling for survival on or below the economic margin.

Bearing in mind the fact that the common lodging house was the resort of the penurious, the superabundance of these establishments in Whitechapel and Spitalfields provides a clear indication as to the depth of poverty that existed among the local populace in the late-Victorian era. One report, submitted in 1888 by the Medical Officer for Health, stated that, contained in a mere thirty-six Whitechapel streets, were no less than 141 low lodging houses. Remarkably, only a few years earlier, tiny Flower and Dean Street could alone boast thirty such properties.

Padding kens or doss houses, as they were termed colloquially, were not purpose-built hostels, but rather ordinary dwellings into which, after a minimum of improvised alteration, were herded anything up to six hundred men, women and children. Not surprisingly, perhaps, since most deputies adopted an air of indifference regarding sexual segregation, streetwalkers used these establishments as pseudo-brothels, brazenly servicing customers in full view of anyone who cared to watch. Amid this atmosphere of filth, vermin, foul language and even fouler odours, youngsters, many barely into their teens, not only looked on at the prostitutes’ antics, they openly indulged in orgies of their own.

The doss house also served as a rendezvous point for all manner of villains, most of whom planned future illegal ventures from the premises and afterwards stashed or sold their booty there too. In this context the observations contained within Henry Mayhew’s classic four-volume study London Labour and the London Poor are at once amusing and instructive, providing as they do an invaluable insight into the kind of shenanigans that formed an integral part of Victorian lodging house life:-

‘Hens and chickens’ are a favourite theft, and ‘go at once to the pot’, but in no culinary sense. The hens and chickens of the roguish low lodging-houses are the publicans’ pewter measures: the bigger vessels are the ‘hens’; the smaller are ‘chickens’. Facilities are provided for the melting of these stolen vessels, and the metal is sold by the thief ... to marine-store buyers.

A man who at one time was a frequenter of a thieves’ lodging-house, related to me a conversation which he chanced to overhear between a sharp lad, apparently of twelve or thirteen years of age, and a lodging-house (female) fence ... The lad had ‘found’ a piece of Christmas beef, which he offered for sale to his landlady, averring that it weighed 6 lbs. The fence said and swore that it wouldn’t weigh 3 lbs., but that she would give him 3d. for it. It probably weighed above 4 lbs. ‘Fip-pence!’ exclaimed the lad, indignantly; ‘you haven’t no fairness. Vy it’s sixpun and Christmas time. Fip-pence! A tanner and a flag’ (a sixpence and a four-penny piece) ‘is the werry lowest terms.’ There was then a rapid and interrupted colloquy, in which the most frequent words were ‘Go to blazes!’ with retorts of ‘You go to blazes!’ and after strong and oathful imputations of dishonest endeavours on the part of each contracting party, to over-reach the other, the meat was sold to the woman for 6d.

Mayhew’s narrative continues:-

Some of the ‘fences’ board, lodge and clothe two or three boys or girls, and send them out regularly to thieve, the fence usually taking all the proceeds, and if it be that the young thief has been successful, he is rewarded with a trifle of pocket-money, and is allowed plenty of beer and tobacco.

One man, who keeps three low lodging-houses (one of which is a beer-shop), not long ago received from a lodger a valuable great-coat, which the man said he had taken from a gig. The fence (who was in a larger way of business than others of his class, and is reputed rich) gave 10s. for the garment, asking at the same time, ‘Who was minding the gig?’ ‘A charity kid,’ was the answer. ‘Give him a deuce’ (2d.) ‘and stall him off’ (send him on an errand), said the fence, ‘and bring the horse and gig and I’ll buy it.’ It was done, and the property was traced in two hours, but only as regarded the gig, which had already had a new pair of wheels attached to it, and was so metamorphosed, that the owner, a medical gentleman, though he had no moral doubt on the subject, could not swear to his own vehicle. The thief received only £4 for the gig and horse; the horse was never traced.

This account was as relevant in the late 1880s as it had been thirty-five years earlier when the results of Mayhew’s research first came to public attention as a series of features in Reynolds Magazine. Far from improving, the situation had actually deteriorated in many respects. Whereas, for example, legislation aimed at eradicating the more unsavoury aspects of lodging house life had been welcomed, its effect appears to have been largely cosmetic, cultivating a climate of discretion rather than reform. Official inspections became somewhat perfunctory affairs, pre-arranged and conducted during daylight hours when premises were all but deserted of customers. And while in theory police were granted almost unlimited powers of access, few officers in practice were prepared to prejudice their personal safety by entering a lodging house unaccompanied after nightfall. So it was business as usual.

For the average Victorian, the horror of ending up in a pauper’s grave after death compared only with the prospect of entering the workhouse during life. But this had not always been the case. Prior to 1834 the House had operated under a fairly relaxed regime, one by which inmates were subjected to loosely applied regulations and enjoyed a plentiful supply of beer and tobacco. Indeed, workhouse life was reputedly so agreeable that, as a last resort, a beleaguered Master had only to issue a threat of expulsion to subdue even the most refractory of his charges.

Parish relief functioned on two basic levels – outdoor and indoor. Outdoor relief was intended to relieve ‘genuine’ temporary distress and normally constituted several weekly payments of around 2/6, dispensations which were occasionally, but by no means always, allocated under the condition that they be repaid. Similarly, according to the discretion of the Relieving Officer concerned, food, clothing or coal donations were sometimes considered a more appropriate means of assisting the petitioner. Indoor relief, on the other hand, entailed the applicant entering the workhouse proper, where, in exchange for his or her labours, food, shelter and, if necessary, clothing were provided.

Despite the reality that a large proportion of claimants were elderly or infirm, murmurs of discontent from within the Establishment led to a smear-campaign that undermined the scheme’s credibility. Accusations of waste, overindulgence and inefficiency provoked demands for its abolition. Many of those it served, it was avouched, were either layabouts or moonlighters. Neither were critics slow in pointing out that the majority of workhouse inmates did little or nothing in the way of work, preferring instead to occupy their time in the pursuit of less productive activities – drinking and gambling, for example. And apart from the fact that individual workhouse food rations exceeded those of the men serving in the junior ranks of the British Army, inmates of both sexes caused mayhem amid regular forays into their surrounding communities with orgies of drunkenness, theft and violence – incursions during which, it was asserted, females resorted to prostitution and even the occasional stint of blackmail.

In short, the relief system was denounced as a shambolic, much-abused waste of public funds. It came to be regarded as a scheme that encouraged the ‘natural proclivity of the working-class poor toward indolence, dishonesty, and immorality.’ The ‘solution’ was found in the Poor Law Amendment Act, which, upon its introduction in 1834 and for almost a century to come, would evoke within the destitute nationwide a visceral sense of fear and loathing.

It was apparent from the outset that the Act’s underlying strategy was one that sought to deter the needy from seeking parish-funded succour. To this end, all extant workhouses (which were considered much too commodious for their intended purpose) were replaced by newly designated Union Houses – edifices which, even in external appearance, presented a vision of such imposing austerity that they quickly acquired the Bastille cognomen. Here inmates experienced a brutal environment, one wherein total subjugation was achieved at the expense of all human dignity. Retribution for even a minor infraction of the rules was swift and often savage in the extreme.

Entry into the House was an ordeal in itself. Newly arrived inmates were obliged to bathe in a solution not altogether dissimilar to sheepdip before being issued with their ‘uniform’, a drab, coarse and uncomfortable affair that soon chaffed the skin of its occupant. The psychological warfare continued as families were wrenched apart, dispersed amongst different parts of the citadel, permanently segregated save for a brief meeting once a month. Inmates might be subjected to sexual as well as physical abuse at the hands of both staff and fellow paupers. Neither was it unknown for a workhouse Master, in search of libidinal gratification, to beat and starve the object of his desire into a state of compliant sexual servitude.

Reflecting the strict disciplinarianism under which the reformed system operated, work was at once insipid, retributive and often hazardous. Alcohol and tobacco, like visits from family and friends, were strictly prohibited and children denied the innocent pleasure of toys. It was said of these youngsters that, deprived as they were of any kind of mental or physical stimulation, they invariably became melancholic and inert, spending hour upon hour staring vacantly into open space. On top of all this, food allocations were of little nutritional value and fell short in quantitative terms of even prison rations.

Tremendous working-class hostility was directed towards the Union during its incipience. Demonstrations turned ugly when it was rumoured that the restructured system was the method by which the Establishment intended to rid society of its flotsam. Not altogether surprisingly, perhaps, it was claimed that the Bastilles were centres of mass extermination, a rumour that became so entrenched that half-starved pauper inmates began refusing bread rations, fearing workhouse loaves to be laced with poison. But the real implications of the Act were readily recognized. For with outdoor relief rendered virtually unobtainable, those facing severe adversity were confronted by a simple choice – either enter the harsh, miserable environs of the transmuted workhouse or return to the streets and risk possible starvation. Given this option, most preferred to take their chances on the streets.

Even in the 1880s, after decades of scandal had embarrassed Union officialdom into relaxing its regime somewhat, the system remained anathema amongst the poverty-stricken. Any casual examination of contemporaneous newspapers reveals a propensity to commit petty criminal offences as a means of incurring a short-term prison sentence rather than approach the parish. It might also be pointed out that the crime wave then swamping East London was partially attributable to this innate horror of the Bastille, for as one journalist observed, ‘As long as Society can offer no relief to the poor man but the workhouse, who can be surprised if he prefers to relieve himself?’

Further antagonism arose when, after a number of inmates had died under highly suspicious circumstances, it was discovered that one workhouse party, designated the task of pulverizing animal bones, had taken to extracting and eating the feculent marrow contained therein. As with similar cases which came to light, those involved were painfully malnourished and, despite regulation rations, seldom let slip an opportunity to scavenge extra ‘food’, no matter how inedible or unappetizing it might have been.

Whitechapel was as rigid in its application of Poor Law policies as anywhere and figured prominently in a concept that proposed to convey the dispossessed to forced labour camps where, it was recommended, inmates should experience ‘a disciplined existence, with regular meals and fixed hours of work – which should not be short!’ Indeed, two prototype farming colonies were later set up in Essex for this very purpose.

A programme that went even further in the bid to resolve the poverty problem amounted to nothing less than the compulsory repatriation of children and juveniles. While Dr Barnardo had long practised voluntary emigration, Poor Law Guardians were far less altruistically motivated in their choice of candidate, a shortcoming that was inevitable when their objective was less concerned with enhancing an individual pauper’s long-term prospects than reducing the immediate drain on the relief system. In any event, the ploy proved an unmitigated disaster when a proportion of those shipped to Canada couldn’t or wouldn’t adjust to colonial life and either drifted into crime or became an additional encumbrance on the Canadian tax payer.

For those unable to afford lodgings and who refused to enter the House, a life on the streets represented one of the few alternatives. Although a benevolent society occasionally secured an empty building that provided for the dispensation of food and temporary accommodation, the dispossessed generally found ‘shelter’ underneath railway arches or in doorways or churchyards. In the summer and autumn of 1887, though, the East End homeless availed themselves of Trafalgar Square itself, converting the site into what one observer called ‘a foul camp of vagrants.’ Police eventually cleared the square at the behest of local businessmen, but the man responsible, Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, Sir Charles Warren, received only a reprimand from Home Secretary Henry Matthews for his troubles. Within days, as the homeless again drifted back to the locus, Warren learned that West End shopkeepers were now planning to take the law into their own hands by hiring thugs to exact rough justice. Fearful of such a confrontation, Warren consulted Matthews and was granted permission to restrict the square’s use during specific periods of the week. Once the squatters defied Warren’s edict, however, he was left with little alternative but to launch an operation aimed at their removal – a scenario that was to set in motion the events of Bloody Sunday.

By the afternoon of Sunday, 13 November, the derelicts had been joined by an enormous mob of sympathizers. Their message was unmistakable. Here at last the underclass was to vent its anger against unemployment and its associated evils – poverty, hunger and homelessness. Signalling in the opposing camp an unequivocal warning that mob rule would not to be tolerated was a combined force of almost 5,000 constables and militiamen. In view of the intransigence displayed by both sides confrontation was inevitable. When it came, it did so with a vengeance. Amid scenes of extraordinary carnage, hundreds of policemen and demonstrators alike were seriously injured. Still, considering that police launched repeated mounted assaults on a crowd armed to the teeth with cudgels, knives and iron bars, the fact that only one person, civilian Alfred Linnell, was killed, must rank as something of a minor miracle. When the pandemonium finally subsided, three hundred arrests had been made and all those later convicted received prison sentences with hard labour. More significantly, perhaps, a funeral procession consisting of 120,000 mourners marched from the West End to Bow Cemetery when Mr Linnell was subsequently laid to rest. Although Sir Charles had achieved his objective, he became a figure of contempt amongst many of the East London poor and their supporters, a situation for which he would pay a heavy professional price almost exactly a year later.

While more than a quarter of a century separated the publication of London Labour and the London Poor (volume edition) and the murders of Jack the Ripper, social and economic change advanced so slowly in the East End that the observations of Henry Mayhew may still be relied upon to create an illuminating overview of the culture and characteristics peculiar to those who Jack London designated ‘the People of the Abyss.’ As a means of presenting a fairly typical example of the Victorian working-class East Londoner, therefore, we need look no further than the costermonger or market trader. Under the heading ‘Habits and Amusements of the Costermongers’, Mayhew declares:-

A fondness for ‘sparring’ and ‘boxing’ lingers among the rude members of some classes of the working men, such as the tanners. With a great majority of costermongers this fondness is still as dominant as it was among the ‘higher classes’, when boxers were the pets of princes and nobles. The sparring among the costers is not for money, but for beer and a ‘lark’ – a convenient word covering much mischief. Two out of every ten landlords, whose houses are patronised by these lovers of ‘the art of self defence’, supply gloves. Some charge 2d. a night for their use; others only ld. The sparring seldom continues long, sometimes not above a quarter of an hour; for the costermongers, though excited for a while, weary of sports in which they cannot personally participate, and in the beer-shops only two spar at a time, though fifty or sixty may be present. The shortness of the duration of this time may be one reason why it seldom leads to quarrelling. The stake is usually a ‘top of reeb’ [‘pot of beer’ – coster slang involved uttering words or phrases in reverse so as to confuse outsiders], and the winner is the man who gives the first ‘noser’; a bloody nose however is required to show that the blow was a veritable noser. The costermongers boast of their skill in pugilism as well as at skittles. ‘We are handy with our fists,’ said one man, ‘and are matches, aye, and more than matches, for anybody but reg’lar boxers. We’ve stuck to the ring, too, and gone reg’lar to the fights, more than other men.’

Changing tack slightly, Mayhew steers a conversation with one man towards the costers’ literary and theatrical leanings:-

‘Love and murder suits us best, sir; but within these few years I think there’s a great deal more liking for deep tragedies among us. They set men a thinking; but then we all consider them too long. Of Hamlet we can make neither end nor side; and nine out of ten of us – aye, far more than that – would like to see it confined to the ghost scenes, and the funeral, and the killing off at the last. Macbeth would be better liked, if it was only the witches and the fighting. The high words in a tragedy we call jaw-breakers, and say we can’t tumble to that barrikin. We always stay to the last, because we’ve paid for it all, or very few costers would see a tragedy out if any money was returned to those leaving after two or three acts.’

‘The costermongers,’ said my informant, ‘are very fond of illustrations. I have known a man, what couldn’t read, buy a periodical what had an illustration, a little bit out of the common way perhaps, just that he may learn from some one, who could read, what it was all about … Look you here, sir,’ he continued, turning over the periodical, for he had the number with him, ‘here’s a portrait of “Catherine of Russia”. “Tell us about her,” said one man to me last night; “read it; what was she?” When I had read it,’ my informant continued, ‘another man, to whom I showed it, said, “Don’t the cove as did that know a deal?” for they fancy – at least, a many do – that one man writes the whole periodical, or a newspaper. Now here,’ proceeded my friend, ‘you sees an engraving of a man hung up, burning over a fire, and some costers would go mad if they couldn’t learn what he’d been doing, who he was, and all about him. “But about the picture?” they would say, and this is a very common question put by them whenever they see an engraving.’

‘Anything about the police sets them a talking at once. This did when I read it:

“The Ebeneezers still continued their fierce struggle, and, from the noise they made, seemed as if they were tearing each other to pieces, to the wild roar of a chorus of profane swearing. The alarm, as Bloomfield had predicted, was soon raised, and some two or three policemen, with their bulls-eyes, and still more effective truncheons, speedily restored order.”

“The blessed crushers [police] is everywhere,” shouted one man. “I wish I’d been there to have a shy at the eslops,” said another. And then a man sung out: “Oh, don’t I like the bobbies?”

‘If there’s any foreign languages which can’t be explained, I’ve seen the costers,’ my informant went on, ‘annoyed at it – quite annoyed. Another time I read part of one of Lloyd’s numbers to them – but they like something spicier. One article in them – here it is – finishes in this way:

“The social habits of the Magyar noblesse have almost all the characteristics of the corresponding class in Ireland. This word noblesse is one of wide significance in Hungary; and one may with great truth say of this strange nation, that ‘qui n’est point n’est rien.’”

“I can’t tumble to that barrikin,” said one young fellow; “it’s a jaw-breaker. But if this here – what d’ye call it, you talk about – was like the Irish, why they was a rum lot.” “Noblesse, said a man that’s considered a clever fellow, from having once learned his letters, though he can’t read or write. “Noblesse! Blessed if I know what he’s up to.” Here was a regular laugh.’

Though amusing, the type of illiteracy encountered by Mayhew in the 1850s and 1860s ought to have been eradicated once the 1870 Education Act made schooling a statutory requirement. Certainly there existed in the East End during the 1880s a number of Ragged Schools catering for underprivileged children, but for many youngsters a need to augment the family income far outweighed any of the potential long-term benefits of regular school attendance. Still, even lessons were no guarantee of learning, for as several philanthropists were at pains to point out, acute malnutrition rendered a hefty proportion of slum children incapable of absorbing even the most fundamental of education principles. Dr Barnardo, for one, condemned the intrinsic morality behind a programme that demanded the compulsory school attendance of half-starved urchins whose physical condition was so frail that they frequently collapsed in the classroom. However, to return to Mayhew’s discourse:-

Among the men, rat-killing is a favourite sport. They will enter an old stable, fasten the door then turn out the rats. Or they will find out some unfrequented yard, and at night time build up a pit with apple-case boards, and lighting their lamps, enjoy the sport. Nearly every coster is fond of dogs. Some fancy them greatly, and are proud of making them fight. If when out working, they see a handsome stray, whether he is a ‘toy’ or ‘sporting’ dog, they whip him up – many of the class not being very particular whether the animals are stray or not.

Their dog fights are both cruel and frequent. It is not uncommon to see a lad walking with the trembling legs of a dog shivering under a bloody handkerchief, that covers the bitten and wounded body of an animal that has been figuring at some ‘match’. These fights take place on the sly – the tap-room or back-yard of a beer-shop, being generally chosen for the purpose. A few men are let in on the secret, and they attend to bet upon the winner, the police being carefully kept from the spot.

A good pugilist is looked up to with great admiration by the costers, and fighting is considered to be a necessary part of a boy’s education. Among them cowardice in any shape is despised as being degrading and loathsome; indeed the man who would avoid a fight, is scouted by the whole of the court he lives in. Hence it is important for a lad and even a girl to know how to ‘work their fists well’ – as expert boxing is called among them. If a coster man or woman is struck they are obliged to fight. When a quarrel takes place between two boys, a ring is formed, and the men urge them to have it out, for they hold that it is a wrong thing to stop a battle, as it causes bad blood for life; whereas if the lads fight it out they shake hands and forget all about it. Everybody practices fighting, and the man who has the largest and hardest muscle is spoken of in terms of the highest commendation. It is often said in admiration of such a man that ‘he could muzzle half a dozen bobbies before breakfast’.

Bearing in mind the events which in the autumn of 1888 were to plunge the East End into a combined state of panic, fear and resentment, a gamut of highly charged emotions that left some authority figures envisaging the possibility of full-scale insurrection, it is interesting to note Mayhew’s perception of the relationship that existed between police and public:-

To serve out a policeman is the bravest act by which any costermonger can distinguish himself. Some lads have been imprisoned upwards of a dozen times for this offence, and are consequently looked upon by their companions as martyrs. When they leave prison for such an act, a subscription is often got up for their benefit. In their continual warfare with the force, they resemble many savage nations, from the cunning and treachery they use. The lads endeavour to take the unsuspecting ‘crusher’ by surprise, and often crouch at the entrance of a court until a policeman passes, when a stone or brick is hurled at him, and the youngster immediately disappears. Their love of revenge too, is extreme – their hatred being in no way mitigated by time; they will wait for months, following a policeman who has offended or wronged them, anxiously looking out for an opportunity of paying back the injury. One boy, I was told, vowed vengeance against a member of the force, and for six months never allowed the man to escape his notice. At length, one night, he saw the policeman in a row outside a public-house, and running into the crowd kicked him savagely, shouting at the same time: ‘Now, you b , I’ve got you at last.’ When the boy heard that his persecutor was injured for life, his joy was great, and he declared the twelvemonth’s imprisonment he was sentenced to for the offence to be ‘dirt cheap.’ The whole of the court where the lad resided, sympathized with the boy, and vowed to a man, that had he escaped, they would have subscribed a pad or two of dried herrings, to send him to the country until the affair had blown over, for he had shown himself a ‘plucky one.’

The incidence of prostitution in late-Nineteenth Century London should not be underestimated. Difficult as it may be to countenance, unofficial figures for the period indicate that one in sixteen women had resorted to commercial sex at some time or another, albeit casually in many instances. Nonetheless, if accurate, this computation signifies the existence of some 80,000 prostitutes working the capital, the majority of whom being, in police parlance, ‘of the lowest possible kind’. Poverty, of course, was largely responsible for this extraordinary state of affairs, which explains why it was common for a woman to sell herself for half a loaf of stale bread, and why others habitually accompanied strangers to their lodgings, securing a bed for the night in exchange for casual sex. Neither was it unknown for a mother to act as procuress for a prepubescent daughter. (It is also a matter of record that mothers sold their offspring to Dr Barnardo to finance an alcoholic binge!)

Poverty alone did not stimulate this cornucopia of vice, however, for, as Mayhew illustrates with the following passage, it was the quotidian rigours of domesticity that drove many women into what most presumably envisaged as being the freer, less physically demanding existence of the streetwalker:-

The wife [of a costermonger] is considered as an inexpensive servant, and the disobedience of a wish is punished with blows. She must work early and late, and to the husband must be given the proceeds of her labour. Often when the man is in one of his drunken fits – which sometimes last for two or three days continuously – she must by her sole exertions find food for herself and him too. To live in peace with him, there must be no murmuring, no tiring under work, no fancied cause for jealousy – for if there be, she is either beaten into submission or cast adrift to begin life again as another’s leavings.

This contemptuous attitude toward females continued well into the Twentieth Century and, with more than a few families, persists in the present day. Essentially, the East End was a male-dominated society wherein a woman was expected to both know and keep her place. Often after a beating a gal would excuse her chap’s behaviour with a resigned shrug of the shoulders and the claim that “he wouldn’t do it unless he loved me”. A great many attempted to blur the reality of an unhappy existence by turning to drink – or, to apply a quaint Victorian euphemism, by ‘going on the spree’. Drinking, however, only exacerbated existing problems, generating additional marital friction that in turn propelled these women even further along the path to eventual alcoholism. Notably, the antecedents of all Jack the Ripper’s known victims followed a remarkably consistent pattern. A relationship, sometimes but not always volatile, broke down partly because of the woman’s drinking, whereupon she took to the streets, surviving as best she could by way of prostitution. But the existence of the common prostitute was and still is dangerously unsavoury. Only hours before meeting the last punter of her life, Mary Jane Kelly was desperately unhappy. After expressing her desire to leave London altogether, she cautioned a young friend, “Whatever you do, don’t you do wrong and turn out as I have.” Kelly detested streetwalking to the extent that she needed to be drunk in order to face the ordeal of working her beat. Her creeping dependency on drink soon progressed into full-blown alcoholism, a condition that in turn required her to service customers in larger numbers to finance a heightened craving, not to mention capacity, for the demon drink. With no obvious exception, each of the Ripper’s victims became entangled in this same cycle, from which escape ultimately proved impossible. Quite how many other East End women were similarly trapped remains a matter for conjecture.

Considering the repercussions brought about by the disastrous 1880s slump when, for example, an estimated 45 percent (36,000) of the Whitechapel population was living either on or below Charles Booth’s poverty margin, it was with a certain predictability that these circumstances contrived to amplify the already substantial criminality that had long pervaded East London. Whereas destitution drove many normally law-abiding denizens to commit the occasional act of petty dishonesty, crime for others was a traditional family occupation, a calling every bit as acceptable as bricklaying or accountancy. In this context, the apparently lucrative practice of chirruping proved a simple yet effective form of music hall protection racket.

Concentrating on performers of some repute, the chirruping gang’s usual tactic was to loiter by the stage door in anticipation of their target’s arrival. Having appeared, the artiste would be requested to ‘donate’ a proportion of his fee. Whilst those who capitulated were guaranteed an enthusiastically appreciative audience, dissenters would be heckled remorselessly throughout their performance. Typically, as though incapable of accepting that any Englishman could conceive such an act of ‘sacrilege’, certain sections of an indignant press laid the blame firmly at the feet of the French, citing the Parisian claquer as the inspiration behind this ‘shameful example of theatrical blackmail’. These same newspapers, however, were appreciably less scathing in their coverage of an innovation practised by an increasing number of dockside confidence tricksters ...

The 1880s was a decade of intense Jewish persecution throughout Europe, particularly in Russia and Poland. Following an epidemic of anti-Semitic pogroms, thousands of Jews fled their homelands to seek sanctuary in the supposedly more hospitable environs of Britain. Those disembarking in the East End presented a pitiful sight – malnourished, exhausted and bewildered after an odyssey extending perhaps several weeks, most having left behind all but those few possessions that could be easily carried.

Never prone to oversentimentality, the waterfront swindler was happy to provide a reception all of his own. His strategy, once a vulnerable-looking target had been selected, entailed engineering a casual conversation which, although outwardly innocuous, enabled him to gather details concerning the traveller’s accommodation arrangements. Ordinarily, a Jewish organization would have secured local lodgings for the refugee, frequently within half a mile of the docks. Nevertheless, feigning a reaction of sympathetic concern, the trickster would concentrate his efforts on convincing the newcomer that the address in question lay many miles distant and could be reached only via a long and complicated rail journey. Instantly despairing of his predicament, the foreigner, lost and alone in an alien milieu, was putty in the conman’s hands. Hence it was with a certain inevitability that the shark would be recruited as a paid escort.

The charade would proceed with a circuitous rail excursion beginning at one nearby station and culminating at another, wherefrom the appreciative exile would be delivered to his lodgings oblivious to the deception. Besides paying for the sham services of his guide, the victim would have been further cheated when handing over money for the purchase of food, drink and rail tickets. Often this amounted to fifty shillings, a costly experience given that the dupe might have completed his journey for as little as a shilling had he taken a hansom cab from the dock gates.

Frequently regarded as a latter-day phenomenon, mugging was anything but a rarity on the streets of East London. Indeed, contemporaneous newspapers were positively awash with references to a crime commonly committed on busy thoroughfares during broad daylight. But it was after nightfall, when a paucity of streetlighting thrust much of the area into virtual darkness, that the mugger was at his most industrious. In this, their favoured element, gangs usually numbering three or four members patrolled their territory, paying special attention to those leaving pubs, clubs, penny gaffs and music halls. Drunken sailors enjoying a few days’ shore leave were always prized targets, as they tended to carry around large amounts of cash. Prostitutes, too, were considered fair game, since they represented a source of easy money and seldom reported a robbery to the authorities. Experience taught the majority of gangs that, as a preventative against unwelcome police attention, victims had to be silenced as a matter of urgency – thus they were routinely bludgeoned with hammers, coshes or iron bars. Unfortunately, the mugger was somewhat inclined toward overzealousness in this respect, his lack of self-restraint accounting for a proportion of those bruised and battered corpses that turned up with monotonous regularity once daylight invaded Whitechapel’s myriad alleys and backstreets – confirmation, if any were needed, that life in these parts was one of the few commodities that proved immutably cheap.

Though not nearly so brutal, female crimps (criminals) were every bit as wily as their male counterparts when it came to earning a dishonest crust. Generally operating in pairs, prostitutes working the tripping up scam reserved a unique protocol for those clients who had perhaps sampled one or more drinks too many. First the punter would be offered temptingly attractive terms for indoor intimacy, which, if agreeable, led to him being taken to the ladies’ lodgings according to convention. Being the worse for wear, he normally rolled off to sleep the moment business was concluded. Taking this as their cue, his companions would then rifle his pockets, stealing whatever money and saleables could be found. Rings, watches and clothing were taken directly by one of the pair for disposal with a local pawnbroker or fence, while her partner remained with the dupe, ready to protest her innocence when, possibly several hours later, he awoke to the realization of what had occurred. Although some of these women were successfully prosecuted, a usual lack of evidence combined with the victim’s understandably vague recollection of events led more often than not to them getting away with their villainy. In retrospect, however, the target had good reason to count his blessings, for a less subtle variation employed by the tripper up involved luring the customer to a secluded alleyway where he would be ‘subdued’ by a waiting henchman, then stripped naked and robbed of his dignity as well as his possessions.

Adult preying on adult was one thing, but few crimes in the lawless East End aroused the indignation of local slum dwellers as did those perpetrated against children. Since outworking constituted the main alternative to conventional employment, many women helped to make ends meet by taking in washing. As such, the sight of a heavily-laden youngster collecting or delivering laundry was commonplace. One strand of urban pirate specialized in intercepting these urchins, however, stealing their bundles and making posthaste for the nearest pawn shop. Invariably committed by a woman, this was a crime of pure deception and entailed no hint of menace or violence. Its standard execution involved the woman approaching the youngster and, purportedly relaying a message from his mother, insisting that a domestic emergency required his immediate return home. If in his anxiety the child was gulled by the woman’s reassurances into entrusting her with his bundle while he scurried away to attend the ‘crisis’, both would have disappeared long before his return. By applying a parallel technique, these women were equally capable of talking children into handing over their coats and boots – highly desirable items which always provided a healthy profit when ‘popped’.

Redressing the balance somewhat, East London had no shortage of juvenile gangs who preyed on their elders. As petty thieves (gonophs), these youngsters were mainly opportunistic, perhaps snatching an apple from a market stall one minute and a watch from the pocket of a toff the next. Most turned to crime through necessity after being orphaned or abandoned at an early age. Thereafter, survival depended on an ability to pilfer food from shops and markets. Inexperience usually carried with it the inevitability of arrest, representing for the majority their initiation into a recidivistic cycle of freedom, prison remands and reformatories. First-hand familiarity with the penal system was so extensive that, in many cases, these waifs were regarded as seasoned lags by the age of thirteen or fourteen. Holding a resignedly philosophical outlook on life, they tended to view the custodial sentence as nothing more than an occupational hazard, an unavoidable if wearisome interruption to the carefree round of drinking, gambling, philandering and minor criminality reinforced by an intimate association with the low lodging house existence.

Begging, as might be expected, was developed into something of a fine art by more than a few East Enders. Emaciated young children, a valuable commodity in this sphere of activity, were hired on a daily basis from their parents as a means of eliciting pity from credulous passers-by who not unnaturally assumed the child or retinue of children to be the offspring of the accompanying mendicant. Another ‘dodge’ played upon the sentimental generosity most Victorians reserved for their war heroes. Adding spice to this particular ruse, begging gangs affected the guise of battle-injured ex-servicemen presently undergoing financial hardship. These claims, of course, as with their stirring tales of derring-do performed in defence of Queen and Empire, were utterly bogus. So too was their right to sport an array of medals pinned to shabby and bloodied uniforms, accoutrements which were sometimes bought second-hand but more often than not stolen. Such was the profitability of this ‘lurk’, especially during military or naval campaigns, that some of the more sophisticated gangs lent additional authenticity to the imposture by recruiting into their ranks genuinely blind or otherwise disabled members.

While begging might be construed as a relatively harmless enterprise, the widespread perversion of victuals practised by publicans, shopkeepers and streetsellers held potentially devastating consequences for many East Londoners. Chiefly targeted in this ongoing profit amelioration scheme were milk and beer (products which were eminently susceptible to dilution), while salt, sand and even toxic elements were added to tea, coffee, cocoa, bread, butter, flour and sugar – namely those commodities constituting the primary dietary intake of the struggling poor. Moreover, doctored weighing scales ensured that customers received short measures as a matter of course – and no self-respecting coster would even contemplate throwing away decaying produce so long as it could be concealed amongst freshly acquired stock.

Much like the overpowering stench of filth and decay, crime was everywhere in 1880s’ East London. Yet here on these crumbling mean streets, the same indomitable spirit that would a little over half a century later stand defiantly against the terror of Hitler’s bombs reached its zenith. Rising above their everyday degradations, a substantial proportion of the community closed ranks and looked after its own. With extraordinary acts of kindness, neighbour helped neighbour, the hungry fed the starving, the poor donated to the penniless and the weak nursed the ailing who in turn comforted the dying.

Church and benevolent organizations flooded into the area in an attempt to alleviate the most extreme misery. Soup kitchens, blanket and coal funds along with temporary night shelters were instituted whenever and wherever possible. The Salvation Army worked relentlessly on behalf of the dispossessed, distributing a diversity of alms on nightly visits to slum tenements, low lodgings and outdoor encampments. Women like Octavia Hill fought the housing crisis by persuading builders and private landlords to invest in new or specially renovated low-rent properties which, unlike the ill-conceived New Model Dwellings, presented a viable accommodation option to the poor. Dr Barnardo embarked on a crusade aimed at the protection of children. His programme of providing sanctuary for homeless waifs saved many from certain starvation, and in the process eased something of the strain on an overburdened penal system. With admirable prescience Barnardo even took to purchasing neglected youngsters from unfit or overwhelmed mothers.

Neither were those ordinarily castigated by ‘decent’ society overlooked in this glut of altruism. A number of refuges catering for soiled doves were founded in the hope that habitual streetwalkers might be tempted into abandoning their ungodly activities in favour of moral, social and spiritual rebirth. Lady philanthropists in particular expended much time and effort in visiting those of the Abyss, occasionally invoking paroxysms of delight when a group of slum children were herded together, shepherded aboard a train and shunted off for the day to some rural or seaside Elysium.

Sadly, though, while immensely laudible, the sum total of this compassionate outpouring amounted to precious little. For here was a socioeconomic emergency of catastrophic dimensions that no measure of well-intentioned benefaction could ever hope to resolve. Positive political action was what was really needed. Yet rather than adopt decisive countermeasures, the Government persisted with a long-established strategy of nonintervention, regurgitating in defence of its apathy the same outmoded, morally inexcusable rhetoric espoused by successive previous administrations. While intervention, it was argued, might conceivably improve the immediate situation of a poor minority, its long-term result on the honest, disciplined, industrious majority would prove deleterious, fostering an erosion of the work ethic in consequence of rewarding ‘self-imposed idleness’. More appallingly still, it was claimed that such a scenario would create a domino effect, precipitating first national socioeconomic chaos before ultimately destabilizing the entire British Empire.

Meanwhile, in the ghetto, an army of filthy, diseased, half-starved slum dwellers continued to scavenge their way through an unremittingly wretched existence, little realizing that a new and even more ghastly chapter in their collective waking nightmare was about to unfold.

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Chapter Two

SHARP FORCE

Buck’s Row was unusually peaceful as local carman Charles Cross interrupted his journey to work at 3:40am on Friday, 31 August, 1888. Having spotted what in the pre-dawn darkness looked like an abandoned tarpaulin lying in front of some stableyard gates on the opposite pavement, he decided to make a closer inspection. Only when halfway across the road, about ten feet from the gates, did Cross realize that the ‘tarpaulin’ was the supine form of a woman, her skirts lifted and draped around her midriff, her legs exposed and splayed wide apart. He immediately concluded that “she had been outraged and had gone off in a swoon.”

Cross was joined seconds later by Robert Paul, another Bethnal Green carman making toward his Whitechapel workplace. Touching the stranger’s shoulder, Cross gestured in the direction of the gateway and said, “Come and look over here. There’s a woman.” Although apprehensive, Paul accompanied Cross to the woman and crouched down beside her. Both men felt for signs of life.

“I think she’s dead,” said Cross after examining her hands. Paul touched her face and declared it still warm. Encouraged, he explored her chest, hoping to find a heartbeat. He soon detected what he took to be a slight undulation, a discovery that prompted him to remark, “I think she’s breathing, but it’s very little if she is.”

Thinking that the woman might have collapsed in a drunken stupor, Paul suggested that they “shift her” – hoist her to her feet. “I’m not going to touch her,” responded Cross emphatically.

With both men now running behind schedule, they decided to resume their journey to work, intent upon finding a policeman along the way. Before departing, however, Paul resolved to restore to the woman at least a semblance of dignity by drawing her skirts back over her legs. Yet, despite a determined effort, the clothing proved difficult to reposition and Paul abandoned the task having covered only the upper thighs.

Cross and Paul now set off together, reaching the western extremity of Buck’s Row before heading north along Baker’s Row. Here, a few yards further on at the corner of Hanbury Street, they met and related their story to PC Jonas Mizen, 56 H (Whitechapel), who was engaged in ‘knocking up’.

“She looks to me to be either dead or drunk,” concluded Cross.

“I think she’s dead,” avouched Paul.

“Alright,” replied Mizen, who, after rapping two or three times on the door nearest to him, parted company with the carmen and made directly for Buck’s Row. The time was now 3:45am.

At the same time another policeman chanced upon the woman, though unlike Charles Cross or Robert Paul, PC John Neil, 97 J (Bethnal Green), came equipped with a bullseye lamp. Illuminating the area to the front of the stableyard gates he was left in no doubt that here was a case of murder, for still oozing blood the woman’s throat gaped with a savage, jagged wound that spanned from ear to ear. Composing himself, Constable Neil bent over the body and discovered that, despite the early morning chill, the face and upper arms were still warm. He felt certain that she had been killed where she lay and was equally positive that the body had not been present when he had last patrolled the street thirty minutes earlier.

Before he had time to deliberate further, Neil heard the distinctive step of a colleague crossing the street’s eastern entry. Raising his bullseye he signalled for assistance and was hurriedly joined by PC John Thain, 96 J, who attempted to take in the scene. “For God’s sake, Jack,” implored Neil, “run and fetch Doctor Llewellyn.”

Thain sped off toward Divisional Surgeon Dr Ralph Llewellyn’s Whitechapel Road surgery, missing by seconds the arrival of PC Mizen fresh from his encounter with Cross and Paul. Mizen’s stay was brief, however, since he was despatched for an ambulance while Neil remained with the body.

News of the murder was even now circulating the neighbourhood. Already present on Thain’s return with Dr Llewellyn were Harry Tomkins and rough-looking James Mumford, two horse-slaughtermen who worked in nearby Winthrop Street. Dr Llewellyn set about examining the victim under the gaze of a steadily expanding gallery of police and civilian onlookers and, to no-one’s surprise, pronounced life extinct shortly thereafter. “Move the woman to the mortuary,” he enjoined. “She is dead and I will make a further examination of her [there].” Within minutes, as policemen roused and questioned neighbouring residents, the deceased was placed aboard a horsedrawn ambulance and transported to Old Montague Street Mortuary.

Notwithstanding its impressive-sounding designation, this facility was nothing more than a decrepit, woefully insanitary shed abutting Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary. Most of its menial duties were performed by the House inmates, two of whom, Robert Mann and James Hatfield, took delivery of the body at approximately 4:30am, apparently under explicit police instructions not to interfere with it until after Dr Llewellyn’s re-examination. Mann and Hatfield would later deny all knowledge of this directive and, much to the exasperation of investigators, not only stripped and washed the woman, but threw her clothing into the yard. Still, in a bitter twist of irony, they did uncover a gruesome and as yet unsuspected feature of the crime. Not content with inflicting the throat injuries, the killer had further mutilated the abdomen, meting out a series of deep and jagged wounds through which the victim’s entrails were clearly visible.

Quite how the epileptic Mann and elderly Hatfield reacted when confronted with this hideous apparition is perhaps best left to the imagination. Predictably, Dr Llewellyn was requested to conduct a second and more comprehensive medical examination as a matter of urgency. He duly complied and delivered his official postmortem report the following morning, Saturday, 1 September, wherein he noted a minor injury to the tongue, a circular bruise on the left side of the face and an elongated contusion marking the right jawline – superficial traumas probably sustained preparatory to throat-cutting as the assailant immobilized the victim’s head with finger and thumb pressure. Additional bruising to the left side of the neck was coupled with an abrasion to the right. Two separate cuts, each running left to right, had severed the neck tissues back to the cervical vertebrae, the more prominent extending to a length of eight inches. Mutilation to the lower abdomen consisted of one large, jagged wound and a series of slashes inflicted across and downwards. While no body parts were absent, the fact that many of the vital organs had been worried inclined Llewellyn to infer that the killer was possessed of at least some anatomical knowledge. Moreover, given his interpretation as to the assailant’s position and posture during the crime’s execution, the Doctor discerned from the angle of mutilation evidence suggesting left-handedness.

The primary task of the murder inquiry was now that of identifying the anonymous victim. Her personal effects amounted to scarcely anything at all: a white handkerchief, a comb and mirror, the latter possibly signifying an owner who had frequented low lodging houses. More promising was a petticoat bearing the legend Lambeth Workhouse – P.R. The garment was clearly Union issue and, since the ‘PR’ pinpointed its place of origin, police attention now switched to Prince’s Road, Lambeth. There the Matron was questioned and then taken to the mortuary, but failed to recognize the deceased. After consulting her records, however, she provided the names of two former inmates whose present whereabouts were unknown. Mrs Mary Ann Monk, an associate of one, was located, and once confronted with the murdered woman immediately and unequivocally identified her as Mary Ann or ‘Polly’ Nichols.

Born in 1845, Polly Nichols began drinking heavily at some point during the mid-1870s. Just as the frequency of her bibulousness increased, so too did the urge to up and leave husband William and their five children. After absenting herself on several occasions she deserted the family home altogether in 1880 and thereafter hawked her body whenever short of money. In March, 1883, having grown accustomed to drifting in and out of Lambeth Workhouse, she moved in with her father, Edward Walker, at 131 Trafalgar Street, Walworth. But the arrangement wasn’t to last and within two months Polly’s insobriety (coupled, one suspects, with her streetwalking activities) culminated in a quarrel that prompted her return to Lambeth Workhouse.

A month later she was living in pseudo-wedlock at 15 York Street, Walworth, with blacksmith Thomas Drew. This period of cohabitation apparently continued until she resurfaced in the House four and a half years later at St Giles’s, Endell Street. On 19 December, 1887, she was removed along with other down-and-outs amid a police clearance of Trafalgar Square and consequently renewed her association with the Lambeth Union. Following brief spells in Mitcham Workhouse and Holborn Infirmary, Polly next enjoyed a three-month stint of legitimate employment, working as a domestic in the household of Samuel and Sarah Cowdry at Rose Hill Road, Wandsworth. Unusual though this lapse into humble respectability might have been, it is clear from a letter written to her father that Mary Ann was proud of her newfound status.

I just write to say you will be glad to know that I am settled in my new place, and going all right up to now. My people went out yesterday, and have not returned, so I am left in charge. It is a grand place inside, with trees and gardens back and front. All has been newly done up. They are teetotallers, and religious, so I ought to get on. They are very nice people, and I have not much to do. I hope you are all right and the boy [her eldest son, Edward, who moved in with his grandfather subsequent to the Nichols’ marital breakdown] has work. So goodbye for the present. From yours truly, Polly. Answer soon please, and let me know how you are.

Perhaps Polly grew tired of the dull, regimented existence at Rose Hill Road and yearned for another taste of her former debauched lifestyle. Whatever her motivation, she vanished from the Cowdry residence shortly after writing to her father, as coincidentally did clothing belonging to her erstwhile employers valued at £3 10s!

In a few short weeks Polly had gravitated to East London, paying 4d a night for the dubious privilege of occupying a shared room at 18 Thrawl Street, Spitalfields. She completed her descent into the nethermost reaches of human degradation when, on 24 August, 1888, she took lodgings in ‘perhaps the foulest and most dangerous street in the whole metropolis’ – Flower and Dean Street. Here at number 56, otherwise known as the White House, Nichols was free to entertain clients with impunity owing to a policy of free association between the sexes. Life became an endless ritual of prostitution, excessive drinking, then more prostitution once her earnings had been frittered away. But for Polly Nichols the nightmare was to be short-lived. A week after moving into the White House she was found butchered and staring glassy-eyed in nearby Buck’s Row.

Police inquiries unearthed several witnesses who had seen Nichols during her crucial final hours, each stating that she had been intoxicated. The earliest positive sighting occurred at 11:30pm when she was observed walking along Whitechapel Road. An hour later she was spotted on the corner of Brick Lane and Thrawl Street, apparently leaving the Frying Pan public house. She was sitting in the communal kitchen of her former Thrawl Street lodgings at 1:20am but was shown off the premises when the deputy learned she lacked fourpence for a bed. Making light of her predicament, Polly assured him that obtaining her doss money posed no problem. As if to emphasize the point, she indicated the new hat perched on her head and said, “See what a jolly bonnet I’ve got now,” and chuckling, staggered off into the night.

She was next seen at 2:20am by Emily Holland, one of the prostitutes with whom she had roomed at 18 Thrawl Street. Now very drunk and leaning against a wall on the corner of Whitechapel Road and Osborn Street, her condition was so unstable that a concerned Mrs Holland tried to coax her back to the relative safety of her lodgings. But Nichols refused, stating somewhat optimistically, “I’ve had my lodging money three times today and I’ve spent it. It won’t be long before I’m back.” On this note the two women parted company. While Emily made toward Thrawl Street, Polly lurched off in search of one final customer.

Despite considerable efforts, police failed to trace anyone who saw Nichols alive after this encounter. And although she was killed on the spot where Charles Cross found her body roughly an hour later, nothing even remotely suspicious had been perceived by neighbouring residents. Self-confessed light-sleeper Emma Green slept obliviously through the assault, notwithstanding the fact that her bedroom window sat only a few feet from the crime scene. In another front-facing bedroom directly opposite, the wife of Essex Wharf manager Walter Purkiss endured a fitful night and was in all probability pacing the floor when Polly died, yet still sensed nothing out of the ordinary. Here, entirely exposed to view by dozens of windows in a thoroughfare not twenty feet wide, someone had throttled and slashed a woman into extinction without alerting a single person. Not only were those hunting him acutely aware of his nerve and stealth, they also feared that he may have killed before – perhaps more than once.

Almost five months earlier a forty-four year old prostitute named Emma Elizabeth Smith had spent the Bank Holiday Monday evening of 2 April drinking (and probably peddling sex) in the vicinity of Whitechapel High Street. It was well after midnight when she decided to make for her bed. Setting off on the short walk back to her lodgings from Whitechapel Church, Mrs Smith became conscious of being followed by three youths, the eldest of whom appeared to be no more than eighteen years old. After trailing her along Osborn Street they pounced on the corner of Brick Lane and Wentworth Street. There she was beaten, robbed and raped. She also sustained dreadful internal injuries as some indeterminate object was thrust into her vagina. Left for dead and bleeding profusely, Emma struggled to her feet and, with no little resilience, staggered home to 18 George Street, Spitalfields. Concerned fellow-lodgers recognized the gravity of her condition and, despite her tigerish resistance, rushed her to the London Hospital. There she quickly lapsed into a coma and died on 5 April having never regained consciousness. Inexplicably, police were only informed of the circumstances attendant upon her demise the following day, an anomaly that perhaps best illustrates why they made little headway with the ensuing murder investigation.

Whereas Smith was domiciled at 18 George Street when killed after celebrating a Bank Holiday Monday, thirty-nine year old fellow-prostitute Martha Tabram lodged at number 19 at the time of her death during the corresponding August festivities four months later. By all accounts she had been drinking heavily on the evening of Monday 6 August, 1888. Accompanied by a friend, Mary Ann ‘Pearly Poll’ Connolly, she had already visited several pubs prior to a 10:00pm encounter with two soldiers in the Two Brewers, Brick Lane. Now a foursome, the group imbibed its way through a succession of other pubs before arriving at the White Swann, Whitechapel Road, at about 11:00pm. Forty-five minutes later the two women separated, Pearly Poll taking her corporal to Angel Alley, whilst Tabram entered George Yard with her client, a private. With business concluded at 12:15am, Poll and companion strolled to the corner of George Yard. But when, after several minutes, Tabram still had not returned, Poll departed alone, heading off in the direction of Aldgate.

At 2:00am PC Thomas Barrett, 226 H, noticed a Grenadier Guard lingering somewhat suspiciously at the corner of Wentworth Street and George Yard. When asked to explain himself, the soldier said that he was “waiting for a mate who has gone off with a girl.” Constable Barrett accepted his story and took the matter no further.

Almost three hours later, at 4:50am, John Saunders Reeves discovered the body of a woman lying in a pool of blood on the first-floor landing of the George Yard Buildings. She had been murdered, stabbed thirty-nine times in a frenzied knife attack during which most of her vital organs, as well as her throat, breasts, abdomen and vagina, sustained numerous puncture wounds. This woman was afterwards identified as Martha Tabram.

Police soon established that, at 1:45am, an occupant of the tenement, Mrs Elizabeth Mahoney, passed the spot on which Tabram had been killed but noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Another occupant, Alfred George Crow, saw an indistinct form lying on the landing while ascending the staircase at 3:30am. With his vision impaired by poor ambient lighting, however, he assumed the figure to be that of a sleeping drunk. Hence, given the near-certainty that this was Tabram’s body, the murder must have been committed between 1:45 and 3:30am – probably much nearer the latter if Dr Timothy Killeen’s projected 3:30am time of death may be taken as reliable.

Every effort was now made to find the Grenadier Guard questioned by PC Barrett at two o’clock. After an identity parade held at the Tower of London proved fruitless, another the next day prompted Barrett to pick out two soldiers resembling the wanted man. Whilst one was exonerated when the Constable manfully admitted to having made a mistake, the second was similarly eliminated once he supplied an independently corroborated alibi as to his whereabouts on the night of 6/7 August. This line of inquiry yielded no further leads.

Another setback was brought about by Pearly Poll’s reluctance to help the police. No sooner was she questioned about the murder than she went into hiding, her absence necessitating the abandonment of an identity parade scheduled for 10 August. Although it was reconvened on the 13th after she was located at a relative’s home close to Drury Lane, Poll denied that either of the men that she and Tabram had met in the Two Brewers were present. She did, however, inspire a new lead when remarking that the wanted soldiers’ caps each bore a white band, opening up the possibility that they were attached to the Coldstream Guards and not the Grenadiers as had been suspected hitherto. Consequently, a third identity parade was organized, this time at Wellington Barracks, Knightsbridge, on 15 August. Poll now picked out two of those in attendance – Privates Skipper and George. The identification contradicted her original claim that she had consorted with a corporal on the night of the murder, but it was noted that one of the privates had earned good conduct stripes, a decoration that could have accounted for the confusion concerning rank. Yet the issue proved academic when both men supplied apparently watertight alibis, an outcome that convinced more than one investigator that Poll had deliberately misled them.

So, for the second time in four months, a local prostitute had been brutally slain in Whitechapel only for the proceeding murder inquiry to grind to a halt, stymied by a dearth of information. But was there a common link between the deaths of Emma Smith and Martha Tabram, and if so might the Nichols killing provide a further connection?

Given the balance of probability, the assaults on Smith and Tabram would appear to have been unrelated. Emma Smith was clearly a victim of gang robbery, and while the presence of rape coupled with implementary violation betray an unmistakable sexual element, economic gain rather than carnal gratification was the attack’s primary motivation. Conversely, the Tabram murder was overtly sexual in nature, as witness the multiple stab wounds to the neck, breasts, abdomen and genitalia. Had Martha’s assailant merely wished to commit murder, he could have done so quickly and with infinitely less personal risk by cutting her throat or plunging his knife into her heart. Instead he stabbed again and again at specifically targeted areas, continuing to pierce the body long after the point of death. This man was in the grip of acute sexual frenzy, his arousal heightened with each penetrative thrust of the knife. Only after an onslaught of violence did emission finally assuage his excitement and thus temper the compulsion to stab at a lifeless body. Unlike Emma Smith, who undoubtedly fell victim to one of the marauding extortion gangs whose viciousness was legendary in the Victorian East End, Martha Tabram died at the hands of a full-blown sex killer, the recognition of which effectively demolishes any connection between the two crimes.

Though perhaps not so obviously apparent, Polly Nichols’ murderer was also a sadistic deviant who derived untold sexual delight by penetrating human flesh with his knife. He, too, of course, could have taken to his heels the instant he severed Nichols’ throat had his intention been to commit a mere casual homicide. Yet, disregarding the risk of discovery, he had elected to remain with the body to perform a series of postmortem mutilations. Killing simply wasn’t enough for this man, for his was an altogether more macabre compulsion. Beyond all doubt a sadosexual psychopath, he had developed a craving for evisceration.

As will be shown in a later chapter, such crimes are almost invariably the product of long-term immersion in violent sexual fantasy. Often the offender spends years contemplating his first attack, planning every aspect in meticulous detail. As the obsession intensifies, so the accompanying sadosexual imagery becomes more vivid, ensuring that it is only a matter of time before the killing mechanism is triggered and he explodes into violence. Henceforth his crimes stimulate the fantasy which in turn incites further crimes, creating a self-perpetuating cycle that is normally broken only by incapacitation, incarceration or death itself.

Apart from actuating the individual killing episodes, the fantasy serves as a blueprint for the offender’s crime scene behaviour, inspiring a murder ritual that, with the majority of perpetrators, remains relatively constant even in an extended series of homicides. In this context, therefore, it is unlikely that the man who butchered Polly Nichols on 31 August would have contented himself some three weeks earlier with merely puncturing Martha Tabram’s body. Given the opportunity presented there on that dark and deserted landing, the urge to fulfil a disembowelling fantasy that had probably been festering within him for several years would have proved irresistible. That Tabram was repeatedly stabbed rather than slashed and eviscerated provides powerful evidence indicating that she and Nichols were killed by different men. Nevertheless, in what should serve as a chilling indictment against the locality, at least two sadistic sexual deviants were simultaneously and independently stalking women on the streets of Whitechapel. Bearing in mind the attack on Emma Smith (as well as countless other similar episodes), one can but wonder to what extent this wave of misogyny permeated the area as a whole.

To their credit, those hunting the Whitechapel Murderer gave little credence to the largely press-inspired theory that he had despatched Emma Smith – though they were noticably less certain as regards Martha Tabram. Still, with little or no experience of the random episodic sex killer, their confusion is both understandable and wholly excusable. Unfortunately for one woman, however, their sphere of knowledge was about to be expanded in the most grotesque manner imaginable.

Born illegitimately to George Smith and Ruth Chapman in September, 1841, Eliza Ann Smith was one of four children who, with their parents, lived an undistinguished existence in Paddington before moving to Windsor in 1856. Annie married John Chapman, a relative of her mother, in May, 1869, and within a year they moved to Bayswater. The Chapmans moved again in 1873, on this occasion into a court close to Berkeley Square.

If Annie and John ever enjoyed a period of wedded bliss it was short-lived. Whereas John had previously earned his living as a domestic coachman, he now secured the position of valet to a gentleman residing in Bond Street. According to one source, however, he either resigned or was dismissed on account of Annie’s dishonesty – the inference being that she was strongly suspected of stealing money or valuables from the house. To make matters worse, the couple were developing an unhealthy predilection for alcohol. Further strain was placed on the relationship with the birth of a disabled son who was eventually sent to a crippled children’s home.

The Chapmans returned to Windsor in 1881 but separated a year later in consequence of Annie’s “drunken and immoral ways”. Shortly thereafter, Emily, one of two daughters, died at a tragically early age.

Annie now moved to East London, sustained in part by a weekly allowance of ten shillings paid by John. She met and took up with a sieve maker named Jack ‘Sivvey’, the man with whom she was cohabiting at 30 Dorset Street, Spitalfields, when in late-1886 her maintenance payments unexpectedly dried up. Desperate for money, she visited her estranged husband’s brother at his Whitechapel home only to learn that John had died of cirrhosis of the liver on Christmas Day. She was also informed that her one surviving daughter had been placed in a French institution.

Deprived of her financial safety-net, Annie endeavoured to earn a living by streetselling and crochet work. Increasingly, though, she resorted to casual prostitution in the ongoing battle against hunger and homelessness. As the relationship with Jack Sivvey started to founder, she began seeing bricklayer Edward Stanley. But it was hardly the stuff of true romance. When in May 1888 Annie moved into Crossingham’s lodging house (35 Dorset Street), it was Ted who regularly paid her weekend doss in return for sexual favours.

September 1888 began none too auspiciously for ‘Dark’ Annie. Within days of Polly Nichols’ murder she entered the Britannia public house, Commercial Street, and for a while shared the company of two acquaintances, Eliza Cooper and a gentleman going under the name of Harry the Hawker. Trouble broke out when Annie alerted Harry to the fact that she had seen Cooper exchange one of his florins with a polished halfpenny piece. An indignant Eliza Cooper denied the deception, retaliating with a counter-accusation that called into question Annie’s integrity regarding a missing bar of soap. Annie reacted by hurling the offending ha’penny at Cooper, shouting angrily, “There’s your soap!” The altercation escalated and soon developed into a fierce exchange of blows. Annie came off badly, sustaining a black eye as well as bruising to her head, hands and chest.

While her health had been deteriorating for quite some time, Annie was unaware that she was terminally ill – dying from brain and lung disease. Eating only frugally, she was severely malnourished. She presented such a piteous sight when meeting Amelia Farmer in Dorset Street on 4 September that her equally penurious friend handed over 2d with which to buy a meal. After promising not to spend the money on rum, Annie expressed her intention of seeking admission into the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary where she hoped to obtain food and medication. Annie was probably true to her word since two days elapsed before she was again seen in her usual haunts.

Amelia Farmer next encountered her friend on Dorset Street at 5:00pm on Friday, 7 September. Annie was downcast and there appeared to be no improvement in her health. When asked if she intended going to Stratford (where she generally prostituted herself), she responded by saying that she felt too unwell to do anything. But, after a moment’s contemplation, she acknowledged the cold reality of her situation: “It’s no use my giving way. I must pull myself together and go out and get some money or I shall have no lodgings.”

A few hours later, at 11:30pm, a penniless Annie Chapman arrived at Crossingham’s and pleaded with deputy Timothy Donovan for permission to enter the kitchen. With no little compassion, Donovan acquiesced, allowing Annie to rest and warm herself before returning to the streets to earn her doss at about 12:10am.

Curiously enough, she reappeared at 1:35am only to tell nightwatchman John Evans that she had just completed a futile round trip to her sister’s Vauxhall home for the purpose of borrowing sufficient money to secure her bed. This story was patently untrue, of course, for not only could Annie ill-afford the expense of public transport, her wretched health precludes any possibility that she was able to walk from Spitalfields to Vauxhall in under ninety minutes – let alone there and back again. This point was not lost on Evans and Donovan; much less when she tried to explain away her transparent drunkenness by claiming that she had called in only briefly at the Britannia “for a pint of beer.”

In reality, Annie probably picked up a punter soon after her 12:10am departure from Crossingham’s and, perhaps hoping to ease the aches and pains borne of her deteriorating physical condition, invested the proceeds in a drink or two. Indeed, she was seen in the Britannia at 12:30am by fellow-lodger Frederick Stevens. She evidently spent her earnings and at 1:35am returned to Crossingham’s, pouring out the fanciful Vauxhall tale in the hope of being granted further use of the kitchen. Both Donovan and Evans were alive to her intoxication, though, and any sympathy they otherwise might have had was suppressed by the knowledge that she had earned and squandered her lodging money. So, despite her sorry state, Annie was shown the door. “Keep my bed for me, I shan’t be long,” she called back to Evans while shuffling along Dorset Street. Little did Evans know as he watched her turn north into Paternoster Row that Annie Chapman was about to encounter death in its most obscene form.

29 Hanbury Street was an atypical Whitechapel tenement insofar as only seventeen people occupied its eight dingy rooms. It did, however, comply to the norm in that most of its residents were engaged in some form of outworking. Cigars were manufactured on the premises, as were artificial flowers and rough packing cases. One ground-floor room was tenanted by ‘purveyor of horseflesh’ Mrs Harriet Hardiman and her fourteen year old son William. Apart from sleeping in this room, the Hardimans utilized it for the production of cats’ meat.

Of the two doorways that provided access to the building from Hanbury Street, one led directly into the Hardimans’ quarters and the second opened into a passage extending to the rear of the property. Running off this corridor was a staircase by which lodgers reached their upper-floor rooms. At the end of the passage was a back door, this allowing for egress into the yard. Seldom slow to take advantage of such an opportunity, local prostitutes, conversant with the fact that both passage doors were left permanently unlocked, often wandered into the building and serviced clients in either the corridor or yard.

One man who in only two weeks of residence had repeatedly ejected streetwalkers from the passage was fifty-six year old John Davis. A carman employed at Leadenhall Market, Davis reflected on what for him had been a restless night as he rose for work at 5:45am on Saturday, 8 September. He made a cup of tea, drank it, and then, a little before 6:00am, left the third-floor room he shared with his wife and