CORONER: What sort of cap was he wearing?
MARSHALL: A round cap with a small peak to it – something like what a sailor would wear.
CORONER: What height was he?
MARSHALL: About five feet six inches and he was stout. He was decently dressed, and I should say he worked at some light business and had more the appearance of a clerk than anything else.
CORONER: Did you see whether he had any whiskers?
MARSHALL: From what I saw of his face I do not think that he had. He was not wearing gloves and he had no stick or anything in his hand.
CORONER: What sort of a coat was it?
MARSHALL: A cutaway one.
CORONER: Are you sure this is the woman?
MARSHALL: Yes, I am. I did not take much notice of them. I was standing at my door and what attracted my attention first was her standing there some time and he was kissing her. I heard the man say to deceased: ‘You would say anything but your prayers.’ He was mild speaking and appeared to be an educated man. They went down the street.
The next witness was PC 452H William Smith, whose beat on that particular night took in Berner Street. Normally his patrol took him about half an hour, and it was about 12.30 a.m. when he saw a man and a woman talking together.
CORONER: Was the latter anything like the deceased?
SMITH: Yes, I saw her face. I have seen the deceased in the mortuary and I feel certain it is the same person.
CORONER: Did you see the man who was talking to her?
SMITH: Yes, I noticed he had a newspaper parcel in his hand. It was about eighteen inches in length and six or eight inches in width. He was about five feet seven inches as near as I could say. He had on a hard felt deerstalker hat of dark colour and dark clothes.
CORONER: What kind of a coat was it?
SMITH: An overcoat. He wore dark trousers.
CORONER: Can you give any idea as to his age?
SMITH: About twenty-eight years.
CORONER: Can you give any idea as to what he was?
SMITH: No sir, I cannot. He was of respectable appearance. I noticed the woman had a flower in her jacket.
The last witness was a boxmaker, James Brown, who went out at about 12.45 a.m. to get some supper from a chandler’s shop in Berner Street. As he was crossing the road he saw a man and a woman standing up against the wall by the Board School. He heard the woman say, ‘Not tonight, some other night’, which made him turn round and look at them. The man was leaning over the woman with his arm against the wall. Brown noticed that he was wearing a long dark coat which reached almost down to his heels. He took no further notice of them and went home.
‘When I had nearly finished my supper I heard screams and shouts for the police – that would have been in about a quarter of an hour.’
There were several points of similarity between the two witnesses’ descriptions. Marshall and Smith both agreed in general that the man they had seen was dressed in a black cutaway coat and that he was middle-aged in appearance. Where they differed was over his headgear. Smith said that he was wearing a deerstalker hat and Marshall that he was wearing a round cap like a sailor’s. They also disagreed as to whether he was carrying anything in his hand. Marshall said that he saw nothing and Smith that he was carrying a parcel. Smith thought, too, that the man he had seen was wearing a coat down to his heels. Either Stride had been with more than one man in that last hour, which was not impossible, or else the descriptions were confused. Faced with these descriptive permutations of what was probably one and the same man, the Police Gazette hedged its bets and issued the following descriptions:
At 12.35 a.m. 30th September, with Elizabeth Stride found murdered on the same date in Berner Street at 1 a.m., a man, age 28 height 5 feet 8 inches, complexion dark, small dark moustache; dress, black diagonal coat, hard felt hat, collar and tie, respectable appearance, carried a parcel wrapped up in newspaper.
At 12.45 a.m., 30th, with the same woman in Berner Street, a man, age about 30, height 5 feet 5 inches; complexion fair, hair dark, small brown moustache, full face, broad shoulders; dress, dark jacket and trousers, black cap with peak.
In his summing up the coroner asked to know precisely how Stride had met her death.
There were no signs of any struggle; the clothes were neither torn nor disturbed. It was true that there were marks over both shoulders, produced by pressure of two hands, but the position of the body suggested that she lay down or allowed herself to be laid down where she was found. Only the soles of her boots were visible. She was still holding in her hand a packet of cachous, and there was a bunch of flowers still pinned to her dress front. If she had been forcibly placed on the ground, it was difficult to understand how she failed to attract attention, as it was clear from the appearance of the blood on the ground that the throat was not cut until after she was actually on her back. There were no marks of gagging, no bruises on the face, and no trace of any anaesthetic or narcotic in the stomach, while the presence of the cachous in her hand showed that she did not make use of it in self-defence.
The marks on the shoulder to which the coroner had referred suggest that some pressure was applied from behind in order to push her down onto the ground. Clearly the attack must have come from behind, since she would otherwise have dropped the bag of cachous which she evidently gripped in her final spasm. Indeed it is very possible that she was dead before the throat was cut.
Someone who claimed to have seen the murderer was Matthew Packer, an elderly greengrocer and fruiterer trading from his small shop at 44 Berner Street. When interviewed, during house-to-house enquiries, he said that he had closed up his shop at 12.30 a.m. and had seen nobody standing about, or heard any noise or anything suspicious. Two days later he gave a different story to two private detectives hired by the White-chapel Vigilance Committee. He told them that at about 11.45 p.m. he had sold half a pound of black grapes to a man and woman who had loitered about the street for the next half hour eating them in the rain. This story underwent other modifications in its retelling to the newspapers. Bits and pieces of detail were added which Packer had either picked up from the newspapers or local gossip. As far as the evidence of the grapes was concerned the doctors, when questioned on this point at the inquest, were emphatic that no grapes had been found in Stride’s hands or near the body, nor had she swallowed or eaten any grapes before her death. The changes that Packer made to his story seem to be directly related to the reward that was being offered after the ‘double event’ of the Eddowes and Stride killings and his hope of profiting from the murderer’s capture. His differing statements were considered unreliable as evidence, which is why he never appeared before the Stride inquest as a witness.
Within twenty-four hours of the ‘double event’ the public were clamouring for the resignation of the Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren and the Home Secretary. At a meeting of nearly a thousand people in Victoria Park, the crowd passed a resolution calling on them to make way for men who would leave no stone unturned to find the murderer. At four other meetings in Mile End there were similar resolutions passed.
A petition was presented to the Queen by George Lusk, head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, on behalf of the inhabitants of Whitechapel, asking for her Government to offer a reward for the capture of the murderer. Warren had already tried to persuade the Home Secretary to agree to this but Matthews had refused him. He similarly advised the Queen that it would be bad policy to agree to this measure now. Fortunately, the City of London Corporation did not come under Home Office control and within twenty-four hours of the murders Colonel Fraser, the City Police Commissioner, offered a reward of £500 for information leading to the capture of the Whitechapel murderer.
A petition more to the Queen’s liking was collected within the three days following the murders and forwarded by the St Jude’s vicar’s wife Mrs Barnett, who had managed to collect between four and five thousand signatures:
To our Most Gracious Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria.<
br />
Madam – We, the women of East London, feel horror at the dreadful sins that have been lately committed in our midst and grief because of the shame that has fallen on our neighbourhood.
By the facts which have come out in the inquests, we have learnt much of the lives of those of our sisters who have lost a firm hold on goodness and who are living sad and degraded lives.
While each woman of us will do all she can to make men feel with horror the sins of impurity which cause such wicked lives to be led, we would also beg that your Majesty will call on your servants in authority and bid them put the law which already exists in motion to close bad houses within whose walls such wickedness is done and men and women ruined in body and soul.
We are, Madam, your loyal and humble servants.
In vain, a harassed Warren pointed out that he had drafted as many police reinforcements into the East End as he could spare. In a long and detailed letter published in The Times on 4 October he refuted point by point the allegations that he had switched experienced detectives from one district to another where they had no local knowledge to help them; that he had not changed the old system of beat patrols but had kept the same one that had been in existence for the past twenty years. But the public was wanting a scapegoat and it did not matter what he said or did. The mounting opposition to him was completely summed up in one newspaper headline – WAR ON WARREN.
He was heaped with ridicule when he negotiated with a Mr Edwin Brough of Scarborough, Yorkshire, for the use of two champion bloodhounds named Barnaby and Burgho. On Monday, 8 October at 7 a.m., they gave a demonstration of their tracking powers in Regent’s Park on ground thickly coated with frost, hunting a man for about a mile after he had been given a fifteen-minute start. They were tested again that night, when it was dark, and again the next morning, when half a dozen runs were made. Warren himself was present and took the part of the hunted man on two of them. But he could not make up his mind whether to use them. There was never any agreement made with the owner that they would be. It was this general misunderstanding that led to the story that the bloodhounds were tested again at Tooting and became lost in a fog. Barnaby’s keeper took him to Hemel Hempstead for some exercise on the same day that a sheep was killed on Tooting Common. The police telegraphed him for the bloodhounds to be sent but he did not receive this message until later that evening when he returned home. Because they did not turn up somebody said that they were missing and this was magnified into a story that they had been lost, although Burgho was back up in Scarborough.
Warren and the bloodhounds
The inquest on Catharine Eddowes (Kate Kelly), the second victim on 30 September, opened on Thursday 4 October. As the hearing was within the jurisdiction of the City of London, it took place at the Golden Lane mortuary and was presided over by the City coroner, Mr S. F. Langham.
PC 881 Watkins, who had found the body, said that his beat normally took him between twelve and fourteen minutes to patrol. He had walked through Mitre Square at 1.30 a.m. and again at 1.44 a.m. On the first occasion he had shone his lamp into the dark corners and passages but had seen nothing unusual, and the second time had seen the body as soon as he entered the square. She had been ripped up, like a ‘pig in the market’, he said, and her entrails ‘flung in a heap about her neck’.
He had run across to Kearley and Tonge’s warehouse, where the door was ajar, and called to the watchman who was sweeping the stairs: ‘For God’s sake, mate, come to my assistance.’ From his appearance the watchman thought that he was ill. As he was an ex-policeman himself, and knew what to do, he ran into the square and blew his whistle for help as this was more likely to attract attention than the policeman’s old-fashioned rattle.
If his times were correct – and Watkins said that he checked his watch immediately after speaking to the watchman – then, allowing for the constable’s time in entering and leaving the square and getting out of earshot, the Ripper could have had only between seven and eight minutes in which to kill the woman and do his work. This would apparently have been enough; the doctors said that he would have needed a minimum of five minutes. A search was made at the back of the empty houses but apparently not inside them. According to the medical evidence, her throat was not cut until she was lying down. Thus, if the murderer had first strangled her, there would have been no risk of her screaming or calling out, and this would have given him more chance of getting safely away.
Nobody had seen them go into the square. But a couple of witnesses who had left the Imperial Club in Duke Street, close by, just after 1.30 a.m., had seen a man and a woman standing together at the corner of Church Passage leading into Mitre Square. The woman was wearing a black jacket and bonnet, and one of the witnesses thought that clothes he later saw in the mortuary were the same. The woman was about three or four inches shorter than the man, and the witness saw her put her hand on his chest, though not apparently to push him away. She was facing him and they were talking together quietly. When the witness was asked to describe him, the prosecution asked that the description should not be given as, it was inferred, it might hinder police inquiries. Later, this description was published in the Police Gazette :
At 1.35 a.m., 30 September, with Catharine Eddowes, in Church Passage, leading to Mitre Square, where she was found murdered at 1.45 a.m., same date, a man, age 30, height 5 feet 7 inches, or 8 inches; complexion fair, moustache fair, medium build; dress: pepper and salt colour loose jacket, grey cloth cap with peak of same material, reddish neckerchief tied in knot; appearance of a sailor. Information respecting this man to be forwarded to Inspector MacWilliam, 26 Old Jewry, London E4.
Dr Sequeira and Dr Brown, both of whom had been called to Mitre Square and been present at the post-mortem, thought that the murderer had shown no evidence of any anatomical knowledge other than that which could be expected of a professional butcher or meat cutter. Dr Saunders, who had examined the contents of the stomach for poison, and who had also been present at the post-mortem, agreed with them. Most of the relevant points of this examination were dealt with by Dr Brown, who was the surgeon of the City of London Police, in his long and detailed statement, followed by cross-examination.
The throat was cut across to the extent of about 6 inches or 7 inches. The sterno cleido mastoid muscle was divided; the cricoid cartilage below the vocal cords was severed through the middle; the large vessels on the left side of the neck were severed to the bone, the knife marking the intervertebral cartilage. The sheath of the vessels on the right side was just open; the carotid artery had a pin-hole opening; the internal jugular vein was open to the extent of an inch and a half – not divided. All the injuries were caused by some very sharp instrument, like a knife, and pointed. The cause of death was haemorrhage from the left common carotid artery. The death was immediate. The mutilations were inflicted after death. They examined the injuries to the abdomen. The walls of the abdomen were laid open, from the breast downwards. The cut commenced opposite the ensiform cartilage, in the centre of the body. The incision went upwards, not penetrating the skin that was over the sternum; it then divided the ensiform cartilage, and being gristle they could tell how the knife had made the cut. It was held so that the point was towards the left side and the handle towards the right. The cut was made obliquely. The liver was stabbed as if by the point of a sharp knife. There was another incision in the liver, and 2½ in., and, below, the left lobe of the liver was slit through by a vertical cut. Two cuts were shown by a jag of the skin on the left side. The abdominal walls were divided vertically in the middle line to within a quarter of an inch of the navel; the cut then took a horizontal course for 2½ in. to the right side; it then divided the navel on the left side round it – and made an incision parallel to the former horizontal incision, leaving the navel on a tongue of skin. Attached to the navel was 2½ in. of the lower part of the rectus musela of the left side of her abdomen. The incision then took an oblique course to the right. There was a stab of about an inch in the left groin, penet
rating the skin in superficial fashion. Below that was a cut of 3in., going through all tissues, wounding the peritoneum to about the same extent. There had not been any appreciable bleeding from the vessels.
MR CRAWFORD: What conclusion do you draw from that?
DR BROWN: That the cut in the abdomen was made after death, and that there would not be much blood left to escape on the hands of the murderer. The way in which the mutilation had been effected showed that the perpetrator of the crime possessed some anatomical knowledge.
MR CRAWFORD: I think I understood you to say that in your opinion the cause of death was the cut in the throat?
DR BROWN: Loss of blood from the throat, caused by the cut. That was the first wound inflicted.
MR CRAWFORD: Have you formed any opinion that the woman was standing when that wound was inflicted?
DR BROWN: My opinion is that she was on the ground.
MR CRAWFORD: Does the nature of the wounds lead you to any conclusion as to the kind of instrument with which they were inflicted?
DR BROWN: With a sharp knife, and it must have been pointed; and from the cut in the abdomen I should say the knife was at least six inches long.
MR CRAWFORD: Would you consider that the person who inflicted the wounds possessed great anatomical skill?
DR BROWN: A good deal of knowledge as to the position of the organs and the abdominal cavity and the way of removing them.
MR CRAWFORD: Could the organs removed be used for any professional purpose?
DR BROWN: They would be of no use for a professional purpose.
MR CRAWFORD: You have spoken of the extraction of the left kidney. Would it require great skill and knowledge to remove it?
DR BROWN: It would require a great deal of knowledge as to its position to remove it. It is easily overlooked. It is covered by a membrane.
The Complete Jack the Ripper Page 9