Whitechapel

by Bryan Lightbody

  Emotionally destroyed he ran back to the house sobbing all the way and vowing to distance himself from all woman kind forever, having had his heart broken by his first and only love, a common whore. When she returned in the early hours, Tumblety, his dogs, his horse and all possessions were gone, except for his wedding ring which she found on their dining table. He shut all memories of her from his mind including her name. The wonderful jewellery set, however, remained permanently in his possession as it was his way of maintaining his fortune without depositing in a bank’s vaults.

  He moved on to St John, New Brunswick to set up a new practice. His bad luck followed him there when within months a patient called Podmore, a locomotive engineer he was treating with ‘medicine,’ died from poisoning. Tumblety was forced to flee to avoid facing a manslaughter charge and took himself off to Boston, again to set himself up in new surgery but being far more careful with the type of medicine he practised. He specialised in pimple cures and took a real interest in his female patients, secretly now beginning to plot his revenge against whore-kind by getting to know women anatomically. His surgery flourished and he soon had branches across the USA in New York, New Jersey, Pittsburgh and San Francisco. This kept his lifestyle fully funded and he travelled to other US cities such as Chicago, Niagara and Philadelphia as well venturing to Liverpool and London and on to mainland Europe.

  It was then that he first began to hear the voices. The emotional trauma he had suffered over the proceeding period had set off a chemical imbalance in his brain causing him to begin to suffer with paranoid schizophrenia. Tumblety would be frequently invaded by loud and disturbing male voices calling for him to distance himself from ‘all whores’ and to ‘wreak revenge amongst them and take trophies to signify his triumphs.’ The first initial months he managed to suppress these strange and unknown voices in is mind but as time moved on they became more vociferous and called for him to take action. There was a familiarity in the voice that blindly he could not place. Feeling that the affections of others which had once made him so happy could help him, he decided to take drastic action.

  He felt it appropriate to distance himself from women to prevent the voices forcing him to take action, so he now sought sexual satisfaction amongst the company of men, a matter that he kept secret from the American high society within which he mixed. All that some within this peer group knew was that he had developed ‘a deep hated and distrust of women’. Despite this hatred, he did not find the company of men brought him any sexual satisfaction merely making him at times feel dominated, so he developed a thought process to a different end. He would indulge in intercourse with common whores bringing about a sense of power and domination, one class over another. However, on occasions he had the habit of disturbing those with whom he discussed the matter, like the New Jersey lawyer Colonel C.A. Dunham.

  Dunham a close friend of Tumblety’s found it strange when he lost contact with the doctor over a few months. He had felt he had seen a change in his friend after the episode with his wife but put it down very naively to the emotional distress the discovery must have caused. Little did he know how Tumblety’s mind had begun to twist or the new obsessions the doctor had developed.

  Beginning to kow-tow to the voices, Tumblety lacked the courage to go and kill and physically take trophies, but he felt if he gained a collection of medical specimens and continued to try to sexually dominate women it may suppress their demands. Paying visits to hospitals and medical colleges around the state, Tumblety initiated and expanded his collection of female anatomical specimens. But to his bitter disappointment it merely fuelled the voices to implore him to share their beliefs.

  The months had passed and out of the blue Dunham received correspondence from Tumblety requesting him to come for dinner to discuss important matters. Concerned about his friend’s absence he agreed and arrived at the Doctor’s house one winters evening for dinner. The Colonel was visibly shaken when over dinner that night the matter of his wife’s deceit had come up for discussion with Tumblety who had then taken Dunham to his office where in a cupboard he had a large collection on specimen jars in which Tumblety claimed to be collecting examples of the ‘uterus of all classes of women’. When Dunham inquired as to why, Tumblety simply answered ‘so I can have reference to an object of desire’. Clearly shocked the Colonel decided to cut short his dinner engagement and left Tumblety’s house never to see him again. The most disturbing aspect had been the request from Tumblety for him to join him in ‘the blood letting of whores’.

  In 1887 on his first trip to England whilst being driven by the voices, staying in Liverpool and then before moving on to London, Tumblety met a beautiful young Irish girl called Mary who was very shy and quite defenceless it seemed with her having been widowed at an early age. Amazingly to him, he was so taken with her loveliness that the voices seemed to begin to fade and he now believed that his best therapy was to once again try to forge a relationship and a trust in female kind. If he could achieve this he felt confident from the voices suppression that he could live a calm and fruitful life again.

  With her background and her own seemingly emotional frailty, Tumblety got chatting with her on a regular basis in the hotel bar where she worked and he was staying and they eventually had dinner together. He felt she was vindicating womankind to him and his dark ambitions on women definitely began to subside and they started to see each other on a regular basis. There were many years between them but it allowed them to build a protective bond with each other especially when they both discussed their varying emotional pasts, although Tumblety was far from fully truthful.

  But for Tumblety the emotional darkness within him began to trouble him after the first time they made love. Coming in to contact with a woman intimately had been a brave new step for him and a fascination to take ‘specimens’ himself for his collection began to grow within him from the dark subliminal programming the voices had given him, even with this beautiful young Irish girl. He had told her that his profession was that of a physician but he had also taken up art as a relaxing pastime and Mary frequently became his subject set amongst a landscape of the Liverpool coast or Lancastrian hills.

  But his stay in Liverpool was interspersed with trips to London where he would stay in the grandest hotels and then skulk off to the East End. There he would engage in filthy street sex with the local whores to satisfy the overwhelming sense of female domination that the voices drove him to achieve. So strong were the demands of the voices, they drove him to consider lodgings in the Spitalfields district to indulge in longer periods of depravation with these women in private. He got to know the geography of the district very well, and it was not uncommon to see men in military uniform there, either on leave or out drinking and debauching, so Tumblety blended in well. As far as Mary was concerned he was always on business. He had also put the word discreetly out amongst the medical fraternity in East London that he wished to purchase particular female specimens to add to his collection.

  Months passed with this outrageous and depraved behaviour on one hand and then emotional stability with Mary on the other. He must do something to try to resolve the two halves of his life. Short of Victorian electrotherapy, what could he do? He decided he would go to Paris for some thinking time and see if he could suppress his emotions. But on breaking the news to Mary she insisted on going with him. He tried to talk her out of the idea but with the tears flowing and the stories of her past spilling forth once more, he agreed to take the young Mary Kelly with him. They travelled first class together all the way to Paris settling in a hotel in the fashionable and famously bohemian Monmartre district known for it’s artists. They had a suite which consisted of a main living room, a bathroom and two bedrooms as Tumblety respected a lady’s privacy and felt that Mary deserved it with the short time they had known each other, despite their intimacy.

  Walking the streets of an evening together Tumblety found himself distracted by the sight of dogs being walked, owning his own in the USA much t
o the annoyance of Mary. For him and his ownership of dogs he understood his deep interest in them; they always offered him unconditional love. Both were fascinated by the portraits they saw of naked models in oils and water colour on the streets and on returning to the hotel Mary made a suggestion to Tumblety.

  “Francis, would you like me to pose like the models we’ve seen?” Thinking cautiously about the matter Tumblety agreed as he felt it might help his delicate emotional state by attacking his obsessions head on and therefore be good therapy.

  The next night he opened his art materials bag to get his sketching items out as Mary readied herself. The voices had returned to him slowly but surely since leaving England, to the extent they had driven him to leave the hotel early in the mornings to seek ‘trophies from a new continent.’ He removed the false bottom he had made just to take a look at the specimen bottles he had recently got from the local hospital to see if he could kick the unhealthy obsession. He had slipped out on a couple of occasions early in the mornings to avoid Mary’s curiosity to go one of the local hospitals to buy some foreign examples for his collection. These ‘trophies,’ and the desire for them, were fuelled by the voices that dominated his actions over them and prevented him from discarding them or trying to resist collecting more. He felt sure in few days with the relaxed Paris atmosphere and the seeming love of a good woman his paranoia and the voices would once and for all die and he could throw all this bizarre collection away and make a new start.

  Only that very day at 6.a.m he had made his way to the Pasteur Memorial Hospital to visit the pathology department to collect a specimen for which he had negotiated with the mortuary attendant. Having made a request for uterus of an African prostitute, something which he knew he would not get readily in London, the rather dubious mortuary attendant even by Tumblety’s standards had obliged very quickly and willingly.

  The mortuary attendant was a twenty-two year old Polish fellow who had claimed to have served surgeons apprenticeship in his home town of Nagornak before leaving for the brighter lights of Western Europe. He had told Tumblety of his intention to move to London to settle amongst the Polish community in the East End and was merely passing through Paris. He didn’t admit to having been there before and having to leave following an allegation of a serious assault. He felt that a year on the dust would have settled there and he could return, but not to the West India Dock area where he had previously worked as a barber. Young Severin Klosowski had a violent streak within him and an unhealthily high sexual drive and unbeknown to Tumblety he had made for the Bois de Boulogne the notorious forest within the city known for its use by night of women of the prostitute class. With this knowledge he concluded that he could satisfy his sexual and violent desires and receive a fee from the curious Dr Tumblety at the same time.

  At 11.40.p.m the night before, he had been scouring the area for his victim when he had come across a black woman who had just finished with a client and spotting Klosowski sealed her own fate by making her way towards him. She smiled revealing a row of even white teeth a legacy of her healthy diet whilst still a native of the French Colonies in Africa and spoke to him in French which he understood to a degree.

  “Do you want a good time, young man?” she said seductively whilst walking with an exotic sway towards him. He could feel himself becoming very hot all over and just wanted to indulge in pleasures of the flesh now the chance had been presented to him. He replied to her advances.

  “I have a cab waiting, will join me elsewhere?”

  “As long as you are paying, my darling, then anywhere.” They linked arms and walked around a corner to a waiting cab, to which Klosowski had already given the driver instructions to head to the Pasteur Hospital.

  They climbed aboard and the driver whipped the reigns to set the horses off at a trot to make their way through the busy Parisian streets. The footways along the boulevards were crowded with ladies and gentlemen taking the air or enjoying some pavement dining along such famous thoroughfares as the Champs Elysee.

  “I’m Monique,” she said as she began to unbutton his trousers. He just smiled in return as he felt himself stiffen within his suit trousers and began to unbutton her blouse to reveal her unfettered rounded ebony breasts with large dark brown erect nipples; the shade of them an erotic contrast to the rest of her flawless African skin. She pulled herself across his lap lifting her skirt as she did so, her free hand already working him up and down energetically having freed him. Detecting how hard he now was she allowed herself to sink onto him knowing they would slide together with ease as a result of her last liaison. He grunted loudly burying his head into her bare breasts as she flung her head back and began to pant with excitement lifting her self up and down with her thighs to provide her client with pleasure.

  The passionate sounds emanating from within the cab were lost amongst the throng of humanity in the busy streets and the sound of the horse and carriage itself along the cobbled streets. After several minutes of passion their unloving sexual encounter was over, and for Monique so was her life. As Klosowski did up his trousers and she fastened her blouse he pulled his belt from around his trousers. Monique was looking out of the window and speaking to him unaware of his intentions.

  “You are my greatest ever lover,” looking round to her client for a response the narrow leather belt was flung around her neck and pulled tight before she could even emit a scream. Fighting for her life she lashed out at her assailants face with her long fingernails to try and inflict enough damage for him to stop, but only making a glancing lunge she failed and within thirty seconds of her blood supply cut off to her brain she was unconscious.

  Now pulling up outside the hospital, Klosowski casually replaced his belt and leaned out of the cab to pay the driver and said “Look, my friend, could you help me in with her? She’s fainted.” The driver, curious as to their destination anyway asked no questions so as not to jeopardise his tip. He assisted his fare to the door of the Hospital with the unconscious woman and was rewarded handsomely for his troubles. Now, by himself, Klosowski dragged Monique off to the mortuary. He placed her limp body onto the examination table and began to strip her. He found this dark skinned woman very erotic and once naked he tied her down and gagged her. He wanted one last opportunity with her before she had to be slain. Poised above her, she came round from her temporary coma to find the man who would be her final contact with life upon her and within her. Then he cut her throat.

  Klosowski had no concern or remorse as no one in Paris would miss just another colonial whore from the infamous Bois. The only people who could raise any concern were her own kind and the authorities would be unlikely to listen to them. He got to work on the body, after he had made himself a casual cup of coffee, for it to be ready for his client early in the morning.

  Tumblety paid Klosowski handsomely for the specimen and hurriedly left from the mortuary to make his way swiftly back to the hotel so as not arouse Mary’s curiosity. Klosowski counted his money and smiled to himself. He now had his money for a ticket to cross the channel and realise his ambitions in London.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tumblety sat himself in an armchair facing a chaize-longue about ten feet way from him for Mary to pose on. She entered the room in a dressing gown and walked across the room making positive eye contact with her prospective portrait artist. Then standing in front of the chaize-longue she undid the waist tie on the gown allowing it to fall from her shoulders to reveal herself to Tumblety wearing only a seductive smile. He took a deep intake of breath as she did so, still after the time they had known each other taken aback by her beauty. Mary then laid herself out on the couch and got into a comfortable lying position and the ‘artist’ began his work.

  He initiated her portrait with a soft leaded pencil in his shaking hand sketching a basic outline of the furniture and Mary’s form lying within it. As he got the detail flowing he worked his way along the outline of the body he had created on his pad filling in detail and shading. Excitement
bubbled within him and his quivering nature grew rather than subsided, feeling himself driven by the voices to pay attention to the distinctively female attributes of her body creating what amounted to a female caricature, with emphasis on her breasts with prominent nipples, making them now out of proportion with the rest of the pencil drawn body and the same with her crutch area paying particular detail to it and emphasising it unnecessarily, an area he had become obsessed by. The voices and their various tones then caused him to freeze. From hearing a jumble of pitches he now picked up on and could only sense one specifically speaking to him.

  ‘Coward, take your own trophies, let some whores blood. Who do you think you are, sketching, you should be drawing the life from her.’ Finally he recognised it and its familiarity. It was his own voice within what was becoming an ever more tortured mind.

  During the sketching process Mary could see from his face that he was becoming more and more troubled by the experience. But why? They seemed to get on well and have an intimate relationship, so why was his expression becoming more stern and tortured? She noted he was beginning to perspire heavily too. The voice raged in his head.

  ‘A whore, she’s a whore like them all, you cannot trust her, do your work and take a trophy, you pathetic sexually inadequate fool.’

  In his own mind Tumblety was replying ‘Leave me I will not succumb to you, she is innocent, she is good, I will not kill her, she is my salvation.’

  ‘She will deceive you and hurt you like all the others.’

  ‘She isn’t the others, this is Mary and I love her.’

  ‘Romantic imbecile, what is love; male gullibility born out of female sexual temptation, kill the whore!’