The Ripper's Shadow

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Wailing issues from an open door. I find myself in a small room crowded with Jewish women, all in black garments and head scarves, weeping around a coffin. Mr. Lipsky speaks briefly in Russian. All but one of the women slip out the door.

  “My wife Rachel,” he says.

  She’s small and round; her rosy face would be pleasant if her eyes were not red, drenched with tears, and filled with the same grief as her husband’s. She welcomes me politely, thanks me for coming, then indicates the coffin. “Our daughter Yulia.”

  Now I know the cause of the Lipskys’ grief, but its magnitude is beyond my comprehension, for I have never had a child, let alone lost one. My troubles concerning the murders of Polly and Martha and the visit from PC Barrett shrink as if viewed through the wrong end of a telescope.

  “We want picture,” Mrs. Lipsky says. “For remember.”

  For folks of limited means, photographs are a luxury not conferred upon them until their funerals. It is not uncommon to take pictures of the dead, and I have done it before; postmortem photography is bread-and-butter business for any studio. I’ve propped up their bodies to look as though they were alive and posed them with their families, but it’s harrowing for me when the deceased is a child. Still, I want to help this bereaved mother and father.

  “It would be my privilege to photograph your daughter,” I say.

  Mr. Lipsky opens the coffin. The girl lying inside is perhaps sixteen years old. Her fine-drawn, lovely face is as white as the simple shroud she wears. Black lashes fringe her closed eyes. Her black hair curls upon the white linen pillow. Her emaciation suggests she died of tuberculosis, an all-too-common disease. Mrs. Lipsky sobs. Her husband wipes his cheeks. As I set up my camera, my eyes fill.

  Their grief touches the rugged shore of my own for my father.

  Centering the girl’s still face in the viewfinder, I think about how different this is from photographing Polly, Annie, and the other prostitutes. Yulia Lipsky is as pure as they were vulgar. While I compose the shot, I remember, as I often do, my father’s instructions.

  “Look for the truth under the surface of what’s before your eyes,” he said often while teaching me photography, when I was a child. “It’s what makes a good picture.”

  “How do I know the truth when I see it?” I would ask.

  “Your heart will beat faster.”

  I’m seldom absolutely sure I’ve captured the truth in a photograph, but I’ve learned to trust my heartbeat. Now, as I focus the camera on Yulia Lipsky, her truth is obvious: she was a good soul who died too young, and she will be mourned by her parents. I take three photographs of Yulia at different exposures. My tired eyes blur as I focus the camera for the fourth, last shot.

  Instead of Yulia in her coffin, I see Polly lying on cobblestones red with blood.

  The world spins and goes dark.

  #

  I’m lying in bed while a woman dressed in black rubs my wrists. For a moment, I’m frightened because don’t know who she is or where I am. Then I recognize Mrs. Lipsky. Her husband looms over me, his scowl dark with worry.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “You fainted,” Mrs. Lipsky says.

  Not only have I disgraced myself on the job, but these people are in the midst of a terrible tragedy, and I’m lying on their bed while they tend to me! “I’m sorry to cause you so much trouble. Please excuse me.”

  I’m frantic to leave, and not only because my behavior was so unprofessional. Today’s events have pushed me into too close contact with too many people, and I crave solitude. But when I try to sit up, black dots swim in my vision.

  “You must rest,” Mrs. Lipsky says. “Abraham, bring her tea.”

  He goes to the other room, fills a cup from a shining copper urn, and drops sugar lumps into the cup. His wife takes the cup and gently supports my head so that I can drink, and I’m too weak to resist. The hot, strong, bittersweet black tea revives me.

  “Thank you,” I say. “You’re very kind.”

  Mrs. Lipsky smiles. Her husband’s scowl relaxes. I’m humbled because despite their grief, they have consideration for a stranger.

  “You are sick?” Mrs. Lipsky asks. “We should call doctor?”

  How long has it been since anyone took care of me? My mother did when she was alive. “No, I’m not sick.” I mustn’t burden the Lipskys with my problems, but I owe them an explanation. “I’ve just had a disturbing experience. There was a murder in Whitechapel last night. I saw the body.”

  “Ah, yes. So I hear from neighbors. They say it was a woman.” Mrs. Lipsky lowers her voice, as one does when speaking of horrific things. “They say she was stabbed many times.”

  My mind swirls nauseatingly with the memory of Polly dead in Buck’s Row and posing in photographs I took of her. “I’m afraid that my . . .” I can’t say models. “That my friends are in danger.” My models and I aren’t friends; I could more accurately call them business partners, but I don’t want the Lipskys to ask what sort of business.

  “But it is only streetwalkers killed,” Mrs. Lipsky says, puzzled. “Why you afraid?”

  She must think I look too respectable to have friends who are streetwalkers, and if she lacks sympathy for streetwalkers, I can’t blame her. I’ve seen them throw garbage at Jewish women and yell vulgarities. Like many of the less fortunate English folk, they hate the Jews, convenient scapegoats for their own ills.

  “Whoever killed them may attack other women, too,” I say.

  “But even if it is so, why you think he will kill your friends?”

  I am too close to spilling my secrets, and I have taken too much advantage of the Lipskys’ hospitality. “I just have a feeling.” When I sit up, my head is steady; I ease myself off the bed. I mention the logical yet intimidating solution to the problem of safeguarding my models. “Maybe I should tell the police.”

  Mrs. Lipsky steps back from me and folds her arms as if I’ve let a cold wind blow into the room. Mr. Lipsky begins shouting in Russian, gesturing violently. The sudden change in him is so alarming that I cry out. His eyes blaze with fury; his stomping feet shake the floor. His waving hands are big enough to strangle the cattle he butchers.

  “Abraham! Stop!” Mrs. Lipsky grabs his arms and scolds him in Russian. He is twice her size, but he submits to her restraint. She says apologetically, “He has bad temper.”

  “Please excuse,” Mr. Lipsky mutters.

  My heart is still pounding. I can only nod. Such a strong man with such a temper could do vast harm.

  “Not angry at you,” he says. “We don’t like police.”

  The Lipskys and I have unexpectedly found common ground. I think of Mick and wonder if I will ever meet anyone who likes the police.

  “In Moscow, have pogroms,” Mrs. Lipsky says. “You understand, pogroms?”

  “Yes.” To further my education, I study the newspapers. I recall that during the early years of this decade, the Jews were blamed for the assassination of the czar. The government called for retribution, and the rabble among the peasants in towns and the workers in the cities answered the call. The result was the pogroms—waves of violent beatings, looting, and destruction of property inflicted on the Jews. And the pogroms have continued long since then.

  “Police burn our house.” Fresh tears spill down Mrs. Lipsky’s cheeks. “We come to England.”

  Her husband’s anger is understandable now. They suffered much before losing their child, and they still have kind hearts. Although even more humbled by and grateful to the Lipskys, I shy from their kindness. Don’t let people put you in their debt, my mother said. They’ll expect tit for tat.

  “London, same as Moscow. Police!” Mr. Lipsky curses in Russian.

  “English police, they beat Jews.” Mrs. Lipsky gives me a skeptical look. “What would police do for your friends?”

  My models are even lower in the social hierarchy than myself or the Jews. The police won’t lift a finger to protect streetwalkers. If I reported that my
models are in special danger and explained about the photographs, it would be me, not the killer, who would be likelier to wind up in jail. The Lipskys have helped me justify the decision that I have been moving toward all day.

  “The police can’t be trusted.” My anger at PC Barrett resurges. “I shall just have to warn my friends that they may be in danger and tell them to be careful.”

  5

  Mary Jane Kelly, Liz Stride, Annie Chapman, and Kate Eddowes ply their trade by night and sleep by day. Warning these four of my five models is complicated by the fact that I’m not sure where they live. Prostitutes move frequently. I go to the hotel on Union Street where I last saw Kate. It’s a three-story brick house amid a row of others that have businesses on the ground floors and lodgings above. A sign announces, “Rooms for Rent by the Hour.” Men in ragged, dirty clothes loiter outside a cookshop from which rancid steam issues. When I slip in through the hotel’s door, the proprietor is snoring behind his desk. I tiptoe up the dirty stairs. On the first landing, I step around a puddle of urine. A man and woman shout angrily above me. On the second floor, the last door on the right is Kate’s. I knock. Nobody answers.

  “Kate?” I call.

  Above, the man curses and the woman screams; they bump the walls, wrestling their way toward the stairs. I try the door; it’s unlocked. Rather than be caught in a fight, I dart inside the room. It has a musky, sweaty, masculine scent. On the bed, a naked man lies on his side, facing away from me, pressing himself against the bed’s other unseen occupant. His slim back and legs are firmly muscled. His fair, sleek skin and tousled blond hair gleam. He’s not Kate’s usual companion—John Kelly, a laborer, is thickset and red-haired—he must be a customer. How beautiful he is! I shouldn’t watch, but when amazed by such a rare physical perfection, I can never immediately turn away. I would photograph him if I dared.

  The lovers roll over, the blond man on top. The person under him isn’t Kate—it’s a dark-haired young man with the physique of a boxer. As the two make love, their legs tangle; their hands grope; their bodies heave. They kiss, tongue entwining with tongue, and they groan with pleasure.

  I stand frozen with shock.

  Sodomy is considered a sin, a crime against nature and the law. These paramours probably come from some distant, better part of town. In Whitechapel, they won’t be recognized, and the folks here are less likely to report anyone to the police. But instead of disgust, I feel astonished by how natural their passion seems. I am moved by it, and envious. Nobody has ever touched me with such desire. I’ve never experienced such pleasures with another person, and I surely never will.

  The dark man rises up on his hands and knees. The blond man kneels behind him. Their members are huge, erect, not like the miniature genitalia on statues. I gasp because I have never seen a naked, aroused male. The lovers turn their heads toward me. The blond man has a face to match his physique—masculine yet fine-featured and sensitive, breathtakingly handsome. He and his partner blench with fear.

  Stammering an apology, I back out of the room. The handsome man jumps off the bed, dragging the sheet, covering his loins with it, and slams the door. I flee.

  Outside the hotel, I go from door to door at cheap lodgings. By late afternoon, I’m desperate to find Kate, Mary Jane, Liz, and Annie before another night falls and they take to streets haunted by a murderer. On Commercial Street, the bright Saturday bustle is gone; the crowds thin as market vendors close up their stalls. The moist gray air congeals into a foggy, premature dusk while harlots bloom like tattered flowers under the sulfurous glow of the gas lamps. I hear scuffling in an alley, glance in, and see a woman with her back against a wall, her skirts up, and a man thrusting himself between her spread legs.

  It’s known as a three-penny stand-up. It’s how the streetwalkers and their customers often transact business. One simply ignores them while hurrying past.

  I look inside the public houses. The women are not in the Britannia or the Horn of Plenty. My luck changes at the Ten Bells. When I open the door, raucous laughter greets me. The room is dim, filled with the yeasty smell of beer and the acrid smoke from pipes. In the flickering lamplight, the people crowded around the tables appear as brief flashes—a grinning profile here, a hand on a breast there—like scenes from a painting by Bruegel. I hear a woman’s familiar voice speaking with a Swedish accent and see a gaunt figure crowned by a black bonnet, a red silk rose on her lapel. It’s Liz Stride.

  She is relating a story, with dramatic gestures, to three people seated with her. As I head toward her, a hand grabs my bottom; I swat it away. I am trembling when I arrive at Liz’s table.

  “My children fall overboard. My husband jump in water, try to save them. They all drown. I climb up rope.” Liz pantomimes climbing hand over hand. “The man above me, kick me in mouth.” She grins. Her upper front teeth are missing.

  It’s the story of the Princess Alice, a pleasure steamboat that sank in the Thames nine years ago. More than six hundred people drowned. Liz claims that her husband and children were among them. It is her favorite story; God only knows if it’s true. All the prostitutes who model for me have bad-luck stories. I feel sorry for them even if their stories are made up. Sometimes the lies one tells, outright or by omission, aren’t as sad as the truth. My mother told people that my father had died of cholera. She said that if they knew about his protest marches and the riot, they would think we were troublemakers, too.

  Liz tells her story to anyone who will listen. Her audiences often take pity on her and buy her a drink or give her money. Her companions tonight are two men and a woman. The men are factory workers, judging from their grease-stained appearance. The woman is Mary Jane Kelly. I expel a breath of relief; I need look no further for her. She’s young, in her twenties, and comely. A green velvet bodice flatters her buxom figure and rosy face; the brown hair topped by her straw bonnet flows over her shoulders in thick waves. She sees me and cries in her Irish brogue, “Look who’s here! It’s Miss Bain!”

  She and Liz have never seen me anywhere except my studio. We enjoyed a semblance of friendship while I photographed them, but there is a barrier between us. I am on one side, with my camera and my respectability, and they are on the other. They don’t look pleased to see me now. I’ve crossed an unmarked line.

  “Good evening,” I say, uncomfortably prim in the pub’s rowdy, freewheeling atmosphere. “May I speak to you a moment?”

  “Aye. Sit if you can find a chair.” Mary Jane’s cold tone says that tonight I am an interloper.

  One of the men says, “The more the merrier.”

  I cannot clearly see his face or the other man’s, but the light shines on their hands holding their mugs. Black crescents line their fingernails. Is it dirt, or dried blood? Did one of them kill Polly Nichols last night?

  “In private,” I tell the women, then address the men, “If you would please leave us?”

  Either my frosty manner repels them or they think they can find better flesh elsewhere. They rise and depart. I take one of the vacated seats.

  “Hey!” Liz calls after them. “Come back!”

  “You chased away our fellows! We were all set for the night.” Mary Jane’s blue eyes flash with anger. Liz scowls.

  I’d better beware, for I know, from their own admissions, that they can be mean. Liz has been arrested for drunken disorderliness. Mary Jane’s beaux always jilt her because liquor makes her quarrelsome and violent.

  “You mustn’t go with any men,” I say, pitching my voice low so that the other patrons can’t eavesdrop. “You must stay off the streets at night.”

  They regard me as if I’d said, The queen eats cannibals in Africa. “Why?” Liz asks.

  “There was a murder last night. Haven’t you heard?”

  “Oh, aye.” Mary Jane sounds bored; she tosses her hair. “It’s the man they’re calling the Ripper. He’s done it again.”

  “So what?” Liz shrugs her bony shoulders under her worn, soiled black clothes. The women
are callous because they know murder is not an uncommon fate for their kind.

  “It was Polly Nichols.”

  “We’ll send flowers to her funeral,” Mary Jane says.

  “If you’ll lend us three pence,” Liz says. She and Mary Jane laugh.

  My models are not really one another’s friends. They flock together when it suits them, but they view other prostitutes as competition, and they seem to prefer not to develop affection for anyone. Losing a friend would add pain to lives already filled with loss.

  I am not one to disagree.

  After my father’s death, my mother and I moved away from Clerkenwell and lived in a series of lodgings. We kept to ourselves, never stayed anywhere for long, and never made new friends. My loneliness worsened my grief for my father.

  Liz claims to have lost seven children, or five, or nine. She claims she’s been hospitalized for bronchitis, tuberculosis, and the French disease. I think there actually are serious illnesses and children’s deaths in her past and that exaggerating their number somehow makes their memory less real—and less painful—for Liz.

  “Martha Tabram was murdered only three weeks ago,” I say. “She was stabbed, too.”

  “What’s it to do with us?” Liz looks honestly puzzled.

  “You may be next.”

  Their eyes harden. I suppose they don’t like anyone pointing out the danger they court every time they take a customer, forcing them to acknowledge their vulnerability. “Martha and Polly modeled for me. So did you. I think the murderer is selecting his victims from the photographs.”

  “He won’t get me.” Liz preens with boastful confidence. “I would never go with a murderer.”

  “When you pick up a man, how can you tell if he’s a murderer?” I ask.

  “By his eyes,” Mary Jane says, and Liz nods. “If he’s evil, they’ve a certain dirty look.”

  “Martha and Polly probably thought they knew how to tell,” I say.

  Liz’s snort calls them stupid.

  “I’ll kick him in the nuts before he can lay a hand on me,” Mary Jane declares.