The Autobiography of Jack the Ripper

by James Carnac

  At that moment I heard the grinding of wheels and the slither of hooves just outside the gate.

  My mind switched abruptly from the huddled form before me to that sinister sound, and I looked quickly around me; in spite of the obscurity of the yard I could see that the gateway was the only egress. I was trapped.

  I confess that in that moment of panic my nerves all but failed me, though only for a second. Everything went black before my eyes and down my spine shot a cold thrill like a stream of icy water. Then the panic passed and I recovered my self-possession. I was trapped, but I would break the trap. Whoever entered the yard need never live to tell of what he had seen; one quick stab of my scalpel from the shadow of the half-open gate as he entered, and I should be free to depart unhindered. The gate opened inwards and was swung half-way to the wall; I tip-toed across the yard and crept into the blackness behind the gate.

  A pony and cart drove into the yard.

  There came a clatter and scraping as the animal shied at that which it had seen upon the ground—or was it at that which it sensed behind the door? The driver muttered something under his breath and, peering from my hiding place, I saw him climbing down from the cart. He was not a yard away from me. As his foot reached the ground and he turned his back towards me, I slid from the shadow, passed between the gate and the cart and crept silently into the alley-way. I tip-toed along this into Berner Street and then broke into a run. Berner Street was deserted and I sped along it to another street and then turned into another. In a few seconds I was in a familiar thoroughfare. Nobody was in sight and I slackened my progress to a walk.

  I found myself wet with a cold perspiration. I was still grasping the scalpel and my left hand was brown and sticky. I put away the weapon and tucked my left hand into my overcoat-pocket.

  —

  I set off home; I was rather pleasantly elated at the neat manner in which I had evaded the intruder, not because I was conscious of any particular skill on my part in doing so, but because it seemed that “luck” had not deserted me. X. had assured me that I should not be caught, and this narrow escape tended to confirm his assurance, or so it seemed to me at the time. I became conscious of a feeling of increasing boldness.

  But I was slightly disappointed with my night’s work; the mere slitting of the woman’s throat had not been very satisfying. My thoughts took a new channel and, in my mind, I cursed the unknown man who had come so inopportunely into the yard.

  I had been walking towards home, and now found myself in a lighted thoroughfare; it was Houndsditch. The night was close and oppressive and seemed to promise thunder. Neither moon nor stars were visible, and the houses rose grimy and mottled in faintly illumined silhouette like buildings in a drawing by Sime. Here and there their surfaces were broken by oblongs of yellow light, or oblongs broken into patterns of light varying in density where the windows had been partially screened by ragged curtains or their glass-work repaired with patches of paper. The pavement gleamed slimily in the yellow glow of the street lamps and the muddy and garbage-littered roadway looked like the treacherous surface of a swamp in wait for the footsteps of the unwary.

  A number of people were about. A man went by me wheeling an empty barrow which rattled over the stones of the roadway. A group of rough-looking youths, caps pulled over their faces, lounged at the entrance of a passage; they turned as I passed and cast curious glances upon me. A Chinese slid by; a drunken sailor lurched against me and stumbled on. And then a woman stumbled from an alley-way and stopped before me, grinning into my face. In the light of a street lamp I looked her over.

  She was more or less drunk. She was a short, elderly woman dressed in a black jacket with a moth-eaten collar of imitation fur and three grotesquely large metal buttons. Her skirt looked like a piece of window-curtain; it was of dingy green print patterned with a faded design of flowers. She wore broken men’s boots and her head was covered by a black straw bonnet trimmed with black beads and green velvet; once it might have looked coquettish—now it looked merely pathetic.

  I had half intended to go home, but the sight of this grotesque, leering creature made me hesitate. My experience that evening had been disappointing, but here was another subject ready to my hand.

  I looked around; nobody seemed to be observing me and I followed her away from the light and into a side-street. Here I talked to her for a few moments; she was not too drunk to understand me and presently led me back towards the direction from which I had come. I should not have gone far that way, for I had no intention of returning to the neighbourhood of the earlier affair; however, she turned again into another street, and so through others until at last we emerged into a dark, deserted square.

  A footstep broke the silence and I drew the woman into a dark corner as a policeman strolled by.

  As soon as he had passed, the drab uttered a sort of chuckle and gave me a playful shove. “’E didn’t see us that time, dearie,” she said.

  I grinned at the woman’s words and at the thought of how she would have dashed after the constable, imploring his protection, at a revealing word from me. I looked sideways at her and saw that her face bore a silly smirk; she caught my eye and laboriously winked. I regarded her curiously; I wondered whether she had been suffering under the universal nervousness and panic, whether she had ever considered the possibility of meeting the Whitechapel Murderer. Had she just heard of him as she might hear of an earthquake in a remote country—something interesting and exciting but never likely to touch her? Did she exercise no caution in the plying of her trade? Evidently not, for she had accepted me with hardly a second glance. What nonsense we hear about the intuition of women!

  A spirit of impishness impelled me to remark: “You haven’t met our friend the Murderer yet then?”

  “Garn,” she said, contemptuously, “I ain’t afraid of no murderer, I ain’t. I reckon there ain’t no such person. ’E’s only somethink got up by the noospapers. Let’s go over to that corner.”

  I followed her to the spot indicated. “So you don’t believe in the mysterious killer?” I persisted. “But how about these women who’ve been killed?”

  “Give over!” she replied. “A sailor done that; we know all about ’im round ’ere. There ain’t no one else, you take my word. ’E’s bin got up by the noospapers. And the bobbies,” she added after a pause. She sat down on the pavement.

  I looked around the square. It was a small one, paved with cobbles and enclosed on three sides by what I took to be warehouses. On the fourth was a dwelling-house. I observed several entrances to the square, and was reassured; never again would I operate in a cul-de-sac.

  By way of answer I leaned down and took her by the throat while my right hand groped in my pocket for the scalpel. At that instant the side of the square on which we were was dimly illuminated by the moon as it now burst through the clouds which had concealed it during most of the evening. This was very convenient, and I took full advantage of the moonlight. And as I was able to work without hurry I made quite a good job of this affair.

  —

  I reached home relatively early, feeling extremely tired, but satisfied with my evening’s work. I had not only done that which I had set out to do, but I had done it in spite of the alleged Vigilance Committees; I looked forward, with some excitement, to the newspaper uproar I knew would follow.

  Chapter 23

  My sobriquet “Jack the Ripper” was chosen not by myself, but by another. And the circumstances were such as to require special mention.

  During the first few days of October I learned from my newspaper that the Central News Agency had received a letter written in red ink and smeared with dried blood, purporting to come from the unknown assassin and referring to a prospective campaign in Whitechapel. It was signed “Jack the Ripper.” On the morning following the Berners Street and Mitre Square affairs, the Agency received a second communication, a postcard, similarly signed.
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br />   Since great excitement was caused by these missives at the time, and much discussion has taken place since regarding them, I may state definitely that I was not the author. They were written, I judge, by a practical joker of eccentric humour who doubtless derived much entertainment from his innocent pleasantries. But this unknown poet gave me my name; henceforward I was “Jack the Ripper.”

  But Jack the Ripper became something more than a name; he began to take on a definite personality built up from scraps and smatterings of inaccurate and purely imaginative “information.” Dozens of people were able to describe a man they had seen in “suspicious circumstances.” Sometimes he had accosted women who, feeling frightened at “something in his manner,” had escaped in time. He had distributed tracts to women; he had appeared in many circumstances which aroused suspicion in the minds of the witnesses—when they came to think it over. But for some reason which I am unable to explain, all the evidence tallied on one point: J.R. always carried a shiny black bag.

  Now I never carried, nor even possessed, a black bag; but many men did, and some of them attracted such unfavourable notice by their simple equipment that they were chased by the outraged citizenry. One or two clerks or working men narrowly escaped lynching. This sounds almost Gilbertian, read to-day; but at the time of the Terror it was nothing to laugh at. I recall hearing that a certain woman opened the door of her cottage in response to a knock and immediately fell dead upon catching sight of her visitor. This is a result which few of us can hope to achieve, but this man happened to be carrying a black bag.

  “The Man with the Black Bag” and “Jack the Ripper” were terms uttered fearfully, as less enlightened nations pronounce the secret name of a testy deity. They were meat and drink to good Mrs. D., my landlady.

  But I can state with authority that no one did see J.R. with a black bag, and that only one person, other than his subjects, saw him in “suspicious circumstances”; that incident I will now mention.

  I have already described how, in the company of the woman Stride, I bought some grapes, and how I caught the fruiterer’s ruminative eye upon me. In the later excitement of the evening I forgot this, and I will confess that in this respect I was guilty of a piece of reckless oversight.

  A few days later I read in the newspapers of a message which, it was alleged, had been chalked upon a wall by Jack the Ripper. According to the report the legend read: “The Jews are not the people to be blamed for nothing.” (Incidentally I may remark that a section of the public favoured a theory that the Unknown was of Jewish extraction.) I was curious to see this message and decided to go to Whitechapel. When I arrived at the spot indicated by the papers I found that the writing had been erased by the police; and I was retracing my steps when I passed the fruiterer’s stall, and again saw the fruiterer.

  And he saw me; recollection came to me as I caught his eyes upon me, and in that eye I saw a sudden interest and fixity. He remembered me, and he remembered when and in what company he had seen me.

  I passed and continued my walk without, as I thought, hastening my pace; but I felt, rather than saw, the man leave his stall and take a few steps in my direction. At the corner I gave a brief glance backwards; the fruiterer was speaking to a boy and pointing towards me. I turned the corner and rapidly increased my pace, and in a few minutes I found myself in a main street thronged with people and traffic.

  Here luck was with me, for a tram had stopped and was just re-starting within a few yards of the end of the street from which I had emerged. I jumped on to the platform, and as the conveyance jangled on I looked back through the doorway and saw the boy, who had obviously been instructed to follow me, standing on the pavement and staring after.

  Yes, luck had been with me; luck or Destiny. But what an escape! As I sat in the tram something in my expression must, I think, have betrayed my uneasiness; I at least imagined that several fellow-passengers were casting curious glances upon me, and the conductor certainly looked sharply into my face as he punched my ticket. He had seen my hasty scramble on to the platform; had he also noticed my follower?

  I was seated in the corner of the tram and now I examined my fellow-passengers more carefully; and I became aware, for the first time, how extraordinarily self-conscious one can become in a public conveyance. Here were a dozen or twenty people sitting together, passive, free for a brief space from the necessity of action, their limbs at rest but their minds ceaselessly busy with the gnawing worries of their individual affairs. Each an individual “I” to whom all others were merely units of environment. And yet the mere presence of this group of silent, passive people, their roaming fish-like eyes, made me self-conscious.

  Despite the suggestion conveyed that each of these travellers was shut away and isolated, indifferent to his or her fellows, the eyes would wander from trifle to trifle; the attention would be caught occasionally by an object of sufficient passing interest to drag the mind from its ruminating to a consciousness of surrounding things. A text pasted on a window of the tram; a gaping wound in the boot of a woman; a bundle of rough wood held between the knees of a workman; an intriguing brown-paper parcel clutched under the arm of a flashily dressed Jewess. Or the relatively respectable black suit and hat of a sallow, quick-breathing man in the corner.

  I looked cautiously along the row of people facing me, and caught one or two pairs of eyes resting meditatively upon me. I turned my head and stared out of the back of the tram; then I glanced stealthily back again. Several persons were now looking at me, though most of them turned their eyes away as they perceived my observation. But a fat woman seated in the corner opposite my own, her lap encumbered with a large basket filled with vegetables and one or two newspaper packages, maintained her stare. She sat there heavy, motionless, a sagging mass of fat, one side of her face persistently twitching as she sucked at a tooth, her little pig eyes fixed steadily upon my face.

  I looked above her head at an advertisement pasted on the roof of the tram, but I could see, without actually looking at the woman, that her attention was still fixed upon me. Or was it attention? Was it not perhaps the mere fixed, unthinking gaze of one entirely absorbed by inward thoughts? Was she really seeing me at all? I looked quickly downwards and then back again at the advertisement. Yes, the woman was really observing and studying me; there was intelligence and interest in those pig eyes.

  And then, as I tried to ignore the woman by concentrating my attention upon the advertisement, I was suddenly possessed by an extraordinary feeling. It seemed as though a telepathic message was emanating from the fat woman, a message addressed to her fellow-travellers and catching their attention one by one. “Here’s a funny-looking fellow,” the message said. “There’s something about him I can’t quite make out. Have a look at him; what do you all think? Doesn’t he look nervous as though he was afraid of something? Have a look at him. Doesn’t he look scared? Have a look at him. Have a look.” And I could feel other heads turned in my direction one by one, feel other eyes studying me covertly as I tried to fix my attention on the advertisement.

  I longed for something to break the spell of that silent scrutiny; if only someone would speak! Any trivial muttered remark to show that these staring creatures were human. Something like panic obsessed me. I turned abruptly to the conductor at my elbow and addressed him with the first words which came into my head. “They don’t seem to have caught this fellow yet,” I said.

  “Ah, they’ll catch him all right,” replied the conductor sagely. “Don’t you worry.” He knew at once who “this fellow” meant, and so did everyone in the tram. Every head turned swiftly in my direction; even the travellers on my side of the tram craned their heads forward to look at me.

  That break in the silence was sufficient to unloose a flow of talk. Each traveller turned to his unknown neighbour; half a dozen conversations commenced. “This fellow” was a topic to set every tongue wagging; no one but could advance some theory, recount some hearsay
incident, suggest what ought to be done to the “fellow” when caught.

  “They say they’re sendin’ out tecs dressed as women—”

  “The papers say—”

  “No, she sez to me. I daren’t go. Not at this time o’ night—”

  “’Eard ’em we did. Footsteps creepin’ like up the stairs. An’ my missus sez to me—”

  “They say they couldn’t find out oo she was, she was so cut to bits an’ all—”

  “No, it’s more than six. It’s eight. ’Ow about that one down by the river—”

  “They knows right enough. You take my tip. Waitin’ to cetch ’im red-’anded, that’s wot they’re doin’—”

  “Yus, they say ’e carries away bits in that there bag—”

  “Dirty—! That’s wot ’e is. ’Angin’s too good fer ’im. If I ’ad my way—”

  “Any more fepisss-s!”

  “They say—”

  “The papers say—”

  But the fat woman spoke no word: only eyed me steadily, sucking at her tooth. I could stand it no longer and, jumping up, I jerked the cord in the roof and left the tram. On the kerb I looked back at the retreating vehicle and through the door caught a glimpse of that heavy face, bent forward and turned in my direction.