by James Reese
P.C. Neil obtained the assistance of P.C.s 55H Smizen and 96J Thain, the latter immediately leaving the site in pursuit of Dr. Llewellyn, No. 152, Whitechapel Road, who arrived quickly to pronounce life extinct but by minutes. He directed the body removed to the mortuary, stating that he would make a further examination there.
Upon said examination the Dr. stated that the throat had been cut from left to right, the windpipe and spinal cord being cut through. The abdomen had been opened from the centre of the bottom of the ribs along the right side, under pelvis to the left of the stomach, and there the wound was jagged. The stomach was also cut in several places, and two stabs on the private parts, apparently done with a strong bladed knife, were observed. The scarcity of blood at the scene remains unexplained.33
Description of the Deceased is: Aged about 45, length 5 ft. 2. or 3., compx. Dark, hair dark brown (turning grey), eyes brown, slight laceration of tongue, deficient of one tooth upper jaw, two on left of lower jaw; dress: brown ulster with 7 large brass buttons (w/ figure of a female riding a horse and a man at side thereon),34 brown linsey frock over grey woolen petticoat, white chest flannel, brown stays, white chemise, stained, black ribbed woolen stockings, man’s side-spring boots, black straw bonnet trimmed w/ black velvet. It was later ascertained that the chemise bore the marks of Lambeth Workhouse and deceased, Mary Ann Nichols by name, was identified as an inmate of said house.
A husband, Wm. Nichols, is at present residing at 37 Coburg Row, Old Kent Road, and has employment as a machine printer, Messrs. Purkiss Bacon & Co., Whitefriars St. E.C. They separated nine years since in consequence of her drunken habits. For some time he allowed her 5/-per week, but in 1882, it having come to his knowledge that she was living the life of a prostitute, he discontinued the allowance, in consequence of which she became chargeable to the Guardians of the Parish of Lambeth, by whom the husband was Summoned to show cause why he should not be ordered to contribute towards her support. The facts of her dissolute life being proved, the Summons was dismissed. The husband has not heard anything of her since, and there are no grounds for suspecting him to be the guilty party.
Since 1882, the Deceased has at different periods been an inmate of Edmonton, The City of London, Holborn and Lambeth Workhouses. She left the latter institution on the 12th May last to take a situation at Ingleside, Rose Hill Road, Wandsworth, but absconded from there on the 12th July last, stealing the clothes she wore. Some days subsequent, she obtained lodgings at 18 Thrawl Street, Spitalfields, a common-lodging house, and remained there and at a similar establishment at 55 Flower and Dean Street close by, living and working with others of that class known as unfortunate until the day she was found dead, 31st August inst.
The Deceased was seen walking the Whitechapel Road about 11 pm 30th, and at 12.30 pm 31st was seen to leave the Frying-pan Public House, Spitalfields, and at 1.20 am 31st she was at her common-lodging, 18 Thrawl Street, and at 2.30 am was seen again at the corner of Osborne Street and Whitechapel Road. On each occasion she was alone.35 Fellow inmates of the Thrawl Street doss house state that when Mrs. Nichols left there at 1.40 approx. it was for the purpose of getting 4d. to pay for her bed (robbery is thereby dismissed as motive for the murder). At 3.45 am 31st she is found dead, and no person can be found at present who saw her after 2.30 am 31st. Enquiries have been made amongst all resident in the locality, watchmen who were employed in adjoining properties, P.C.’s on the adjoining beats and in every quarter from which it has been thought any useful information might be obtained, but at present not an atom of evidence is in hand connecting any person with the crime.
BRAM STOKER’S JOURNAL
Sunday, 9 September ’88, 10 p.m., aboard the Magic from Belfast to Liverpool.
“You quite try my rational mind, brother,” said Thornley last evening; “and were it not you doing so, I confess it: I would dismiss all you’ve said as bunkum, as balderdash, as what-have-you. The official diagnosis would of course be ‘dementia praecox,’ or something similar, and for it I’d have you set under scrutiny at an asylum…. But alas and alack, it is you. Damn! Far easier it would be to disbelieve.”
Thornley, his hand shaking, brought to his moustachioed lip his glass of sherry. We sat in his library at the end of a long week that had just ended badly. “And besides,” said he, “have I not learned that we cannot anticipate what it is life will deliver us? Is what you recount any more a mystery than…than…”; and my saddened sibling left the question unasked, though he tipped his chin towards the distant dining room lest I miss his reference to the humiliation that had passed there not two hours earlier:
We’d been eight at dinner: Thornley, myself, Florence, Noel, and two sets of spouses, the men co-medicos and colleagues of Thornley’s. One of the latter was knighted, titled, and landed, and I liked him not at all, the less so when Thornley bade him take his seat at table’s end, a mahogany mile of Sèvres and monogrammed silver separating the host from this, his most honoured guest. I was let to sit to the right of the second surgeon’s wife, from whom I often turned aside, trying, trying and failing, to engage my own son in converse. Noel, however, was rather more concerned with the mint jelly a serving maid had lately ladled onto his plate, “hating it” and caring not that it might serve the coming lamb well. Florence commanded for the boy a new and un-jellied plate, and when he thanked her with a mumbled merci, I could but bemoan the distance between us, as broad as that sea that separates my wife & child from their adored France.
Alas. Dinner progressed. I partook as I was able; which is to say insignificantly, for too fresh in my mind were the things I’ve lately seen—viz., bags of blood dependent from our dining lamp, a lamp much like Thornley’s only simpler: all we have is simpler, as Florence reminds me—and all I’d lately read, re: the particulars of Mrs. Nichols’s murder, which had arrived with that day’s post, the same that had brought three more letters from Henry, taking the week’s total to ten.
It was as we sat over a vanilla pudding—rather too flesh-like in texture to suit my present tastes—that a secondary door to the dining room was thrown blastingly back onto its hinges by Emily, Mrs. Thornley Stoker, who thusly disclosed herself standing naked as a jay. Poor Thornley was the last to see the sight, and only when he turned in time to our slack-jawed stares did his wife announce, and screechingly so, “I, too, like a little intelligent conversation!” Whereupon, spurred by the fast approach of her two attendants, she tore into the room and rounded the table at full speed. Napery was put to concealing purpose, and when finally her attendants tamed the lady of the house, all three took their silent leave. Needless to say, our dinner soon disbanded with my brother begging discretion of his guests, who lied in saying they’d supply it.
Yes, a most ignominious end to the week it was; for I had arrived at Ely Place early Saturday last, September 1st, to join Florence & Noel, who’d been resident some while in two of Thornley’s many splendid rooms. A whole week had passed in naught but pleasantries, even though the wire I’d sent had borne the word “urgent”; but those few times I’d found my brother alone, I found, too, that my nerve failed me. In truth, I feared just such a diagnosis—dementia—as he later delivered. But last evening, with my departure planned for the next day, Sunday, to-day, the time for truths had come.
Thornley and I had agreed to meet in the library for a much-deserved sherry once I had put Noel to bed. This I was keen to do; for, earlier that evening, after Emily’s appearance, my bemused boy had asked me what madness was. Shamefully, I admit to sitting at his bedside a long while before asking if I mightn’t tell him another time. “Perhaps by then I shall know,” said I; and, having kissed onto his forehead the wish that his dreams would in no way resemble mine, I turned low the light and left him.
Finally, with all the rest of the household retired, I joined Thornley. Talk of dear, demented Emily was scant.36 It pained him. What’s more:
The topic of Tumblety soon lay between us, for all the devilish details had come from me in a t
orrent. Perhaps it was my brother’s own melancholy, or the fact that he listens and elicits such truths professionally, or…; regardless, I spoke such that Speranza must now number Thornley amongst us Children of Light.
Thornley had heard of the Golden Dawn but knew little of the Order. He knew even less of demonology and possession. Oh, but my brother knows much, much about madness and murderers. Too, as he may list amongst his many achievements pioneering work re: the processes of transfusion, I asked him—perhaps too pointedly—if the quantity of blood I’d discovered in the bags could have come from one body; for I’d wondered this since I’d watched it disappear down the drain. “Yes,” said he, “a woman of standard size might hold within her six or more pints, nearly a gallon”; but he added that the ex-sanguination of said quantity would take some time, “particularly if efforts were being made to…to bag the blood, you say?”
I nodded; whereupon Thornley qualified his words, saying the speed of the bleeding was of course dependent upon how the blood was being drawn.
“Would so complete a blood-letting require a surgeon’s skills?”
“Not necessarily,” said he. “A slaughterer’s might suffice.” He sipped his sherry, once and again, before saying, slowly, “A vampire’s would do nicely, too, I suppose.”
“Do you mock me, Thornley?”
He thought a moment. “Yes,” said he, “I suppose I do…. Forgive me, Bram. I shan’t do it again.” And he shan’t. Poor Thornley is nothing if not devout: to Emily, descending ever deeper into her delusion, as to me yet wallowing in the shallows of mine. I fear I shall have reason to call upon his devotion, too; his devotion, his expertise, and his highly rational mind, which last was on display this morning when he led me from the terrace upon which we’d all partaken of a late breakfast. “Bram,” said he, “…a moment, please?”
“What is it, Thornley?” We were playing at playing croquet so as to have some privacy. “Have you secured me a lunatic’s room at Richmond?”37
“No, no,” said he. “If ever it comes to that, brother, be assured”—and here he nodded to the mansion’s distant wing, wherein his wife was resident—“you, too, shall be kept in comfort.” As this talk of asylums—blithe on my part, oblique on his—reminded me of the visit to Stepney Latch, at the close of which I’d agreed to convey Dr. Stewart’s regards to Thornley, I did so now; and these he happily heard, opining, “Ah, yes, a good man, that Dr. Tom Stewart…. But what I was wondering, Bram…”
“Go on,” said I, thwacking a brightly-striped ball towards a distant picket.
“Correct me, brother, if I err in the following facts:
“This Abberline, of whom you speak none too fondly? You say he has had reason to question you previously? That is, previous to his having seen you at the burning docks?”
“Yes.” And I recalled to Thornley the horrid incident of the hounds; told him, too, that Abberline had literally dis-covered Caine and me in Whitechapel, and later that same night had seen me sense-stricken upon the streets.
“And so he has reason to situate you in Whitechapel the night of the fire?”
“Yes.”
“The night of the fire was also the night of this second murder, was it not?”
“It was.” And with a wave of my mallet, I hurried my brother to his point, which was this:-
“Does it not dawn on you, Bram, that you were perhaps unwise to leave London when you did? I fear that you are so familiar with the dots of all this that you have failed to connect them. Inspector Abberline shall not fail similarly, count on that. And I shan’t be surprised in the least if—upon your return to London—you find he has been making enquiries.”
“As to my whereabouts?”
He nodded, and solemnly so.
“But I have been with you, Thornley, here, and tens of people can attest to it. And mightn’t a man go about his business as it pleases him?”
“Indeed a man might; but that same man—when he has been proximate to murders recently committed—…that same man, I say, had best have an alibi ready to hand. And Bram, understand: At issue is not that you left London when you did but rather why. Abberline is an Inspector, Scotland Yard, man! His renown reaches us here. He shan’t dismiss your trip as coincidence. He shall, indeed, wonder: Why? Have an answer at the ready, is all I am saying. That, and leave at once: The sooner you return to London, the better.”
Thornley was right, of course. I really must endeavour to see things with Abberline’s eyes if I am to act as an inspector myself. Oh, but could I possibly be a suspect? Nonsense. Rather it is through me that Abberline searches still for Tumblety, who left his hounds unmourned, who disappeared the day of their death and…And, Good God, if only Abberline knew the half of it! (Mem.: He can never know, not now; for we have already gone too far in our dissembling so as to spare Caine.)
In Dublin, I bade my wife and child adieu and trained to Belfast to board this faster boat. Florence had readily agreed to lengthen their stay indefinitely, Thornley’s house being fine and lacking, too, its lady—a role Ellen Terry could not play half as well as my wife now does. And perhaps Noel can borrow a bit of a brogue and roughen his tongue whilst in Ireland. But be that as it may, in Dublin, with Thornley, I know wife & child are safe. I cannot say the same of London.
London. To what do I return? I cannot consider the question at present. Instead I shall heed the sea’s lullaby and sleep my way to Liverpool, whence to London and who-knows-what.
Later, training from Liverpool to London.—We watched, we waited too long; and now there is naught to do but pray over the soul of a third murdered woman and say in our defence, We knew not what else we could do. But I know now. And I shall re-take to the hunt with purpose.
Hadn’t debarked the Magic before I heard a newsboy call up from dockside: Another Whitechapel Outrage! Had to hurry lest I miss the 6.20 a.m. London train, but first—and fie!—I found this grisly bit in a Pall Mall Gazette:38
ANOTHER MURDER—AND MORE TO FOLLOW?
SOMETHING like a panic will be occasioned in London to-day by the announcement that another horrible murder has taken place in densely populated Whitechapel. This makes the third murder of the same kind, the perpetrator of which has succeeded in escaping the vigilance of the police.
Three poor women, miserable and wretched, have been murdered in the heart of a densely-populated quarter, and not only murdered but mutilated in a peculiarly brutal fashion, and so far the police do not seem to have discovered a single clue to the perpetrator of the crimes.
There is some reason to hope that the latest in this grim and gory series of outrages will supply some evidence as to the identity of the murderer. A leather apron was, it is said, found by the corpse. If so, this is the only trace left by this mysterious criminal. The fact that the police have been freely talking for a week past about a man nicknamed Leather Apron may have led the criminal to leave a leather apron near his victim in order to mislead. He certainly seems to have been capable of such an act of deliberate preparation. The murder perpetrated this morning shows no indication of hurry or of alarm. He seems to have first killed the woman by cutting her throat so deeply as almost to sever her head from her shoulders, then to have disembowelled her, then to have removed certain internal organs, and then to have disposed of the viscera in a fashion recalling stories of Red Indian savagery. A man who was cool enough to do this, and who had time enough to do it, was not likely to leave his leather apron behind him apparently for no purpose but to serve as a clue. But be this as it may, if the police know of a ruffian who wears a leather apron in Whitechapel whom they have suspected of previous crimes, no time should be lost in ascertaining whether this leather apron, if it really exists, can be identified as his.
This renewed reminder of the potentialities of revolting barbarity which lie latent in man will administer a salutary shock to the complacent optimism which assumes that the progress of civilisation has rendered unnecessary the bolts and bars, social, moral, and legal, which keep
the Mr. Hyde of humanity from assuming visible shape among us. There certainly seems to be a tolerably realistic impersonification of Mr. Hyde at large in Whitechapel. The Savage of Civilisation whom we are raising by the hundred thousand in our slums is quite as capable of bathing his hands in blood as any Sioux who ever scalped a foe. But we should not be surprised if the murderer in the present case should not turn out to be slum bred. The nature of the outrages and the calling of the victims suggests that we have to look out for a man who is animated by that mania of bloodthirsty cruelty which sometimes springs from the unbridled indulgence of the worst passions. We may have a plebeian Marquis De Sade at large in Whitechapel. If so, and if he is not promptly apprehended, we shall not have long to wait for another addition to the ghastly catalogue of murder.
There is some reason to hope that the sentiment of horror which the peculiar atrocity of the present crime excites even in the most callous will spur the police into a display of vigorous and intelligent activity. At present the disaffection in the force is so widespread that, unless we are strangely misinformed, the police are thinking more of the possibility of striking against a system which has become intolerable than of overexerting themselves in the detection of crime. As for the community at large, the panic will probably be confined to the area within which this midnight murderer confines his operations. If, however, a similar crime were now to be committed in the West-end, there would be a panic, the like of which we have not seen in our time. From that, however, we shall probably be spared; but the public will be more or less uneasy as long as the Whitechapel murderer is left at large.
Later.39—He has not been here.
From Euston, I took a hansom home, handing up half a sovereign for speed. At the station, gathered all papers possible. Details, or rather the detail—has he taken her heart?—yet unanswered; but word should come from within the Yard by to-morrow a.m.