“Jack Be Nimble, Jack Be Quick” was written especially for this collection but was acquired by Ripperologist magazine and published in its August 2015 issue.
JACK BE NIMBLE, JACK BE QUICK
A Casual Inquiry into the Theory, Practice—and Identity—of the Ripper
Stephen Hunter
Who was Jack the Ripper?
I don’t know.
Nobody knows. Two of the best-known theories that claim to be based on forensic science involving DNA (Russell Edwards’s and Patricia Cornwell’s) are baseless. They disappear into nothingness under the gentlest of scrutiny. That leaves hundreds of prose essays and books, based on sources, primary or secondary, as forced through a process of applied deduction.
—
Here’s another one, and perhaps it’s just as much an epistemological con job of cherry-picked facts arranged along a bias axis as any of them. It represents even less an effort than Edwards’s or Cornwell’s. I have made no new discoveries, I have done no interviews; I have only traveled to Whitechapel for a week, where I took a Jack the Ripper tour and found it as banal as any tourist attraction. I’ve had too much beer in the Ten Bells, stood in the vestry at St. Botolph’s, the prostitute’s church, I’ve been to all the murder sites—well, I didn’t make it to Polly’s, because it was too far away from the hotel and I am no longer young. It didn’t seem worth it on the last day, as the other four were but dreary pieces of unmarked real estate in a decaying section of London that looked far more like Islamabad than any British city. Polly’s promised but more of the same.
In the end, my theory does little but look at and reorganize some classic Jack materials, and it is perhaps illuminated here and there by new insights into methods and means. I think it’s a great theory and I will say in its defense it not only identifies a suspect (albeit a well-known one) but it eliminates the other suspects. Additionally, it doesn’t turn on some penny-dreadful Freudian reading of someone’s psychology. He hated his mum, his da whipped him, he was a sex-deviate from seeing his older sis doing it with the blacksmith in the barn. None of that. I have no idea and not nearly enough imagination to conjure a “motive.” My theory is based entirely on suppositions that follow from what was observable about the crimes themselves. It’s all drawn from evidence, not bogus insights into the unconscious. In the end, I believe, it proves—at least in the circumstantial sense—that only one man could have and did do the five Whitechapel killings.
—
First principles. Simplicity. Of each particular thing ask, what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man that we seek? Thus: What is the First Thing about Jack? What made Jack Jack? What was the essence of Jack?
It wasn’t that he killed five prostitutes or even five women. That had been done before and after and no sordid citation is necessary. It wasn’t that London, in 1888 the world’s greatest newspaper town with over fifty dailies, boasted a literate, sensation-hungry population of over five million and thus a pool of hungry readers eager for titillation and stimulation, whose maw the press barons fed every morning and night. It wasn’t that someone, though probably not Jack, came up with one of the best brand names in history in “Jack the Ripper,” an onomatopoeic identifier that penetrated straight to the subconscious like a dart and there struck and stuck forever. (That was the best career move for Jack.) It wasn’t the sheer barbarism of what was done to four of the five bodies, bringing to the most civilized city on Earth the lurid imagery seen before only on battlefields and torture chambers. It wasn’t that in the end he disappeared, leaving writers high and low, geniuses and charlatans and screwballs and hacks, to write their own endings, however apposite or inapposite to the set up.
It was none of those things, in exactly the same way it was all of them, forming a perfect storm of media, macabre material, folkloric fear, an assault on the modern, and a confirmation of the bestial. But all that was consequence.
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The fulcrum upon which all of this consequence tipped is often overlooked. It was Marcus Aurelius’s and Hannibal Lector’s first principle. It was the simple fact that Jack killed quickly and efficiently and silently, a matter, really, of seconds. He never missed his stroke. He never faltered. And afterward—clearly a part of the same attribute of efficiency—he vanished without a trace of a trace. Though his murders took place hard by population concentrations (on residential streets, in the courtyard of a club just after the full blaze of quorum, in a residential square patrolled from two directions every few minutes by bobbies), he got away clean each time. He was as silent as the night, as a cat, as a ninja, as the orang in Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue.”
Of the five canonical murders we shall closely consider only the first four, which were remarkably similar. The last, of Mary Jane Kelly, on the night of November 9, 1888, took place uncharacteristically indoors. It is a carnival of deviations from the Jack norm. The woman lay abed, on her left side, asleep. The location was her rented room at Miller’s Court, off Dorset Street (“London’s worst street”), a few blocks from the Ten Bells. She had retired early not having done business, perhaps buzzed from cheap gin (she sang before she fell asleep, a sign of inebriation). He cut her throat on the exposed right side, and she bled out in minutes while he held her down. Many believe that the cut had to be delivered by a left hand, not a right, because he would have used his right to crush her head into the pillow, mooring her for his labor. To account for the discrepancy, some believe he was therefore ambidextrous, having taken four with his right hand and Mary Jane with an equally adroit left. That true ambidexters are quite rare in reality does not seem to faze them.
—
The other four were all street jobs. The women were so vulnerable to his predation because their profession consisted of leading strange men into the blackness of interior Whitechapel, a maze of alleys and passageways, meandering medieval cow paths now bricked over, and barely lit public squares, locating a secure but hardly private spot, accepting first the thruppence, then a few minutes of vertical rutting. Against a willful, stronger being, a demon from the looks of the carnage, they had no human chance. All were dispatched by deep, strong cuts to the left side of the neck, severing the entwined carotid artery and jugular veins, as performed by a strong right hand. The assumption of death methodology was exsanguination, under the power of the throbbing heart which would continue its mechanical obligation until the brain, issuing its last command, ordered it to shut down. Consciousness would have long since evaporated, in the eight seconds it takes for the brain to empty itself of life-giving, sentience-giving blood. The weapon is thought to be a butcher knife, common to every English kitchen. They died perhaps more quickly than Mary Jane, and in all cases he then did the ghastly things post-mortem that made him so famous. The single exception is Liz Stride, on Berner Street in the courtyard of the International Working Men’s Educational Society—sometimes called the Anarchist’s Club—where it is thought that he was interrupted by a Mr. Diemschutz, a cheap jewelry peddler, on his pony cart, who arrived at the gateway to the yard after Jack had dispatched the woman but before he began his fun. Somehow, lurking in shadows, Jack got away that night, too.
THE KILLINGS
The question to be answered is alarmingly explicit. It is about methods. Initially, it was believed by most that he approached from the rear, like a commando eliminating a sentry in a movie. With a swift left hand, he reached around to muffle the mouth, stifling any cries, at the same time tipping the chin back to open the throat to cutting. With his right hand, the knife held in fist edge-backward toward flesh, he snaked around the right ear, the face and back to the left ear and then, arm fully encircling and fully extended, pressed the cutting edge against and into the throat, and drew it hard about, severing the artery and vein that were entwined there. As he continued his stroke, his angle to the flesh became difficult and thus the cut became more tenuous.
—
However, it was noted that in all four cases ce
rtain anomalies occurred, so that any discussion of the four women and their victimization must account for them. The first of these is that there was no spatter. Generally, when an artery is nicked or slashed, the pressure from the heart’s pumping action forces the flood from the puncture under some propulsion. Thus a pattern of droplets is visible at the crime scene—a later forensic specialty would become the interpretation of these spatter patterns. The laws of hydraulics mean that the smaller the puncture, the farther the spatter will be projected. In none of Jack’s four street kills was there any spatter. Why? Second, there was no blood on the front of the victims, that is, upon their dresses, across their bosoms. Instead, the blood coagulated under or to the side of the head, behind and beneath the throat wound. Third—admittedly an inference but surely a sound one—no blood adhered to Jack, as in all cases he exited the scene and re-entered the civilization he had abandoned and although it was late at night, bobbies still patrolled, drunks still cavorted, men still hunted for flesh, and women still sold it, all under a vivid glow from the still-open beer shops and pubs. Yet he was never identified by scarlet splotch so we must assume that he avoided the scarlet splotch.
—
A solution was soon offered to the lack-of-spatter and the blood-behind-but-not-in-front difficulties and it has since become the consensus. Instead of cutting from behind while they were at full verticality with gravity coming into play as the heart pumped, producing copious amounts, he faced them in the dark and, under the guise of offering coin, found a second when they were distracted, and then his left hand lashed out, clamped them about the throat and forced them to the ground. Secured there, pinned and choked, they were helpless as he bent over them and cut with his right hand deep into the left-side neck and its treasure of veins and arteries. The blood, in obedience to gravity, would then flow downward and backward, coming to gather beneath or to the side of the head. It would not mark their chests or his jacket. Under these circumstances, the blood produced would theoretically be appropriate to the blood discovered.
Still, generally, that situation seems quite awkward. He’s holding, he’s cutting, she’s squirming and kicking and writhing, perhaps beating at his pinioning arm, in any event raising a ruckus. Does nobody hear, does nobody notice? It’s also hard to believe that he would have brought off this complex physical operation perfectly four times running. It’s also hard to believe her dress wouldn’t have been much smeared by dirt, abraded by stone, and under it, so too would her flesh. Only one—Annie Chapman, his problem victim—exhibits bruising indicative of some kind of albeit brief struggle.
But more damaging to this claim is that all four were cut completely around the neck, from ear to ear. It’s not that such effort was unnecessary, since the first deep cut of vein and artery was sufficient (how would he know?) but the angles of his arms to her body make the transaction extremely awkward. Starting on the left, how does he get his knife all the way around her neck to her far ear? The ground itself offers an impenetrable wall through which he cannot maneuver for better angle. He would have to rotate her or move himself awkwardly to her far right, because the last third of her throat would be in the lee of her head, and he’d find it difficult not merely to cut from that angle but even to reach. That does not say such a cutting was impossible but it certainly makes it seem unlikely and unnatural and unnecessary. Not much notice has been paid to this fact, but it is certainly inconvenient to the on-the-ground fellows.
—
To explain the lack of spatter, the adherents of this approach suggest the women were already dead by strangulation, thus the heart had stopped beating and nothing propelled the blood into the air. But that opens as many questions as it closes: why would he waste time cutting their throats when they were obviously already dead? It cost time and effort in his fragile public circumstances. Why would the few bruises randomly found on two of the four necks not be coherently organized in the pattern of clenching, choking fingers? Why were no bones broken in the neck? Why would the results be so ambiguous to trained medical examiners? It seems another reason for the lack of spatter and the lack of blood down the front must be found.
There’s another limitation to either of these solutions to the how-did-he-cut-them? quandary, not so much for Jack but for anybody trying to understand Jack. It’s that neither of them allow much in the way of inference. They imply only the power of the strong over the weak, the tall over the short, the willful over the distracted. Nothing else may be learned from them. No gender may be read into them—a tall, strong woman, a strapping teenage boy, an elderly but determined gentleman, all could equally be suspect—and no other attributes are indicated. We can arrive at no conclusions, much less a next step.
—
In my rethinking of the four deaths, I put the killer directly in front of and facing the victim. They have arrived at the sex place, in pitch dark—a backyard, a courtyard, a deserted street, an empty square—and now she expects her pay, after some no doubt polite but banal palaver on the walk in. Instead, she gets the blade. It is held in his right hand, but it is not thrust, as none of the women were stabbed when they were alive; nor is it carefully placed for sawing, as the straightness of the cut in three of the four examples suggests that no sawing was done. Instead it arrives at the end of a full-power swing. His arm has flashed out in a crescent and the belly of the blade arrives at speed at the end of a power arc, like the tip of a whip. All muscles of the arm and the right side of the chest propel it, as does, most probably, affiliated hip movement, along the lines of a baseball hitter “stepping into it,” which drives the edge to maximum speed. The target is the one inch of neck between the jaw bone and the collar bone. The knife must be held rigidly and furthermore at or very near a ninety-degree angle to the flesh, so that all energy is spent on the penetration of the edge and none on vibration or rebound. The Japanese katana is designed for this type of kill, and, not knowing it, Jack is emulating the killing superiority of that famous weapon.
Driven at such speed, the blade easily cuts epidermis, subcutaneous muscle and tissue, and the carotid highway of blood. That is, it cuts it completely, so the “puncture” is not a nick or a gash or even a rip, it is the diameter of the whole artery itself. That diminishes or at least does not radically increase its pressure, again by the rules of hydraulics. Ergo: no spatter. Instead of spraying or spurting or hose-piping, the thick, oxygenated blood wells, gurgles, even burbles from the interruption, and, following gravity, it runs into the opened cavity itself, but also outside to some degree, down the body, principally (as she is inclining rearward in recoil to the blow) down her back.
Still, the heart would pump for thirty seconds to two minutes, and so much blood being driven outward might not spatter but it surely would not limit itself to her back; it could not be controlled nor predicted. So obviously another mechanism must be in play.
And that is that Jack’s cut was so well placed and so efficient that it not only sheared the carotid but the jugular as well as the two are entwined about each other in a sheathing of muscle in the neck. One is artery, one is vein; they course between heart and brain, but in different directions, and it is the jugular that is far more important here. It is the one that moves deoxygenated blood to the heart from the brain.
—
When it is cut completely, the blood from the brain simply empties from the upper segment into the body cavity, draining consciousness from the victim. However, in the lower of the two segments, still linked to the heart, still under power of the palpitating spasms of the vein, the remaining blood continues its journey. As it moves, it sucks or draws in air behind its path from and through the violently administered new portal. The action is similar to that of the plunger on a syringe as it is raised to draw in liquid medicine for injection. The air, in no small quantities, for it increases as the blood recedes, reaches the heart in four seconds.
This is called an air embolism. It is a catastrophic event. Lodging at the nexus of the four chambers it stops
the heart more surely than a .45 bullet dispatched into the same spot. That is what kills—instantaneously upon arrival—all four street victims. That is what stops the heart, stops the pumping, stops the spatter and limits the blood loss merely to smallish amounts that drain when the victim is laid out on the ground.
Jack, meanwhile, oblivious to the heart mechanics that have already concluded his drama, is still cutting. Encountering no planet to halt his progress to the back side of the body, he rotates quickly around her, to catch her, for her raw fall to earth might strike something and make it break or bounce loudly. As he rotates, he draws the knife through her neck. It is not graceful but it is effective and he believes it necessary. Doing so to a woman flat on the ground would have been impossible, without turning her or in other ways disturbing the body and thus spreading the blood puddles. Additionally, cutting an entire circle, particularly that troublesome last third under her far ear, is quite natural in that it flows, it continues an act, it completes the ritual of throat-cutting.
—
As for his poor victim, her brain suddenly deprived of oxygen, she loses consciousness in four to six seconds but her heart has already stopped beating because of the impediment at its nexus; by that time, he is fully around her and as her knees go, he already grips her intimately, and now he eases her to the ground onto her back, so what blood does flow, flows backward and downward. She probably has no idea what’s happened to her, for in the dark, and not paying any attention to anything but her mind’s eye where she sees the thruppence and the glass of gin it will subsequently buy, she does not see the flash of the blade but merely feels its sudden impact, like a punch that knocks her backward, then sees lights go off, and then utter dizziness invades her sensibilities and then it’s over. Her conscious brain has never noticed that she has been slain.
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 22