Complete History of Jack the Ripper

by Philip Sudgen

  Much later PC Robinson would identify the Mitre Square victim as the drunk he had taken into custody in Aldgate High Street. But full identification had to wait upon John Kelly. The extent of his personal tragedy may, perhaps, be gauged from part of the interview he gave the Star on 3 October:

  When she [Kate] did not come home at night I didn’t worry, for I thought her daughter might have asked her to stay over Sunday with her. So on Sunday morning I wandered round in the crowds that had been gathered by the talk about the two fresh murders. I stood and looked at the very spot where my poor old gal had laid with her body all cut to pieces and I never knew it. I never thought of her in connection with it, for I thought she was safe at her daughter’s. Yesterday morning [2 October] I began to be worried a bit, but I did not guess the truth until after I had come back from another bad day in the market. I came in here [Cooney’s] and asked for Kate, she had not been in. I sat down on that bench by the table and carelessly picked up a Star paper. I read down the page a bit, and my eye caught the name of ‘Burrill’. It looked familiar, but I didn’t think where I had seen it until I came to the word ‘pawnticket’. Then it came over me all at once. The tin box, the two pawntickets, the one for that flannel shirt, and the other for my boots. But could Kate have lost them? I read a little further. ‘The woman had the letters T. C., in India ink, on her arm.’ Man, you could have knocked me down with a feather! It was my Kate, and no other. I don’t know how I braced up to go to the police, but I did. They took me down to see the body, and I knew it was her. I knew it before I saw it, and I knew her for all the way she was cut . . . I never knew if she went to her daughter’s at all. I only wish to God she had, for we had lived together a long while and never had a quarrel.

  Although a study of the full interview does suggest that Kelly furnished the bulk of the information in this account the words were probably the Star’s as much as his. There were, moreover, inaccuracies and misrepresentations. Most importantly, the interview leaves us with the impression that Kelly knew nothing of Kate’s imprisonment at Bishopsgate Street. This was not the case. At the inquest he told the court that two women had told him that Kate had been locked up at the police station and that he ‘made sure she would be out on Sunday morning.’ And Frederick Wilkinson, the lodging house deputy, testified that he had asked Kelly where Kate was when the labourer came in on Saturday night. ‘I have heard she’s been locked up’ was Kelly’s reply.10 Plainly, then, the reason that Kelly was not immediately concerned for Kate was that he believed her to have been safely under lock and key at the time of the murders. However, when questioned by the Star he did not like to admit that Kate had been arrested drunk and tried to protect her by saying that he thought she was at her daughter’s.

  Whatever the detail there is no doubt that Kelly called at Bishopsgate Street late on Tuesday, 2 October. He was convinced that the dead woman was Kate and, taken to the mortuary, identified her at once. Press reports concur that he was ‘very much affected’. The next morning he helped detectives locate Mrs Gold, Kate’s sister, in Thrawl Street. Conducted to the City Mortuary, Eliza confirmed Kelly’s identification of the body. ‘I never dreamed that she would come to such an end as this,’ she told reporters that night, ‘and I can’t get over it.’11

  The autopsy upon Kate’s body was performed by Dr Brown at the City Mortuary on the afternoon of Sunday, 30 September. Present were Dr Sequeira, who had been the first medical man on the scene of the crime, Dr William Sedgwick Saunders, the City’s Public Analyst, and Dr Phillips.

  As in the Nichols and Chapman murders, the victim’s throat had been deeply severed from left to right. Dr Brown’s inquest deposition reads:

  The throat was cut across to the extent of about 6 or 7 inches. A superficial cut commenced about an inch and ½ below the lobe and about 2½ inches below behind the left ear and extended across the throat to about 3 inches below the lobe of the right ear. The big muscle across the throat was divided through on the left side. The large vessels on the left side of the neck were severed. The larynx was severed below the vocal cord. All the deep structures were severed to the bone, the knife marking intervertebral cartilages. The sheath of the vessels on the right side was just opened. The carotid artery had a fine hole opening. The internal jugular vein was opened an inch and a half, not divided. The blood vessels contained clot. All these injuries were performed by a sharp instrument like a knife and pointed.12

  It was Brown’s opinion that the murderer had first cut the woman’s throat, that death had been occasioned by the escape of blood from the left common carotid artery, and that the other mutilations had been inflicted after death.

  The most extensive mutilation had been to the abdomen, which had been ripped open upwards in a great jagged wound extending from the pubes to the breastbone. The left kidney and part of the womb had been cut out and taken away. Press reports of Dr Brown’s inquest deposition suppressed this part of his testimony altogether but the official transcript in the coroner’s papers records it in detail:

  We examined the abdomen. The front walls were laid open from the breast bone to the pubes. The cut commenced opposite the ensiform cartilage. The incision went upwards, not penetrating the skin that was over the sternum. It then divided the ensiform cartilage. The knife must have cut obliquely at the expense of the front surface of that cartilage.

  Behind this the liver was stabbed as if by the point of a sharp instrument. Below this was another incision into the liver of about 2½ inches, and below this the left lobe of the liver was slit through by a vertical cut. 2 cuts were shewn by a jagging of the skin on the left side.

  The abdominal walls were divided in the middle line to within ¼ of an inch of the navel. The cut then took a horizontal course for two inches and a half towards right side. It then divided round the navel on the left side and made a parallel incision to the former horizontal incision, leaving the navel on a tongue of skin. Attached to the navel was 2½ inches of the lower part of the rectus muscle on the left side of the abdomen. The incision then took an oblique direction to the right and was shelving. The incision went down the right side of the vagina and rectum for half an inch behind the rectum.

  There was a stab of about an inch on the left groin. This was done by a pointed instrument. Below this was a cut of 3 inches going through all tissues making a wound of the perineum about the same extent.

  An inch below the crease of the thigh was a cut extending from the anterior spine of the ilium obliquely down the inner side of the left thigh and separating the left labium, forming a flap of skin up to the groin. The left rectus muscle was not detached.

  There was a flap of skin formed from the right thigh attaching the right labium and extending up to the spine of the ilium. The muscles on the right side inserted into the Poupart’s ligament were cut through.

  The skin was retracted through the whole of the cut in the abdomen, but the vessels were not clotted. Nor had there been any appreciable bleeding from the vessel. I draw the conclusion that the cut was made after death, and there would not be much blood on the murderer. The cut was made by someone on right side of body, kneeling below the middle of the body . . .

  The intestines had been detached to a large extent from the mesentery. About 2 feet of the colon was cut away. The sigmoid flexure was invaginated into the rectum very tightly.

  Right kidney pale, bloodless, with slight congestion of the base of the pyramids.

  There was a cut from the upper part of the slit on the under surface of the liver to the left side, and another cut at right angles to this, which were about an inch and a half deep and 2½ inches long. Liver itself was healthy.

  The gall bladder contained bile. The pancreas was cut but not through on the left side of the spinal column. 3½ inches of the lower border of the spleen by ½ an inch was attached only to the peritoneum.

  The peritoneal lining was cut through on the left side and the left kidney carefully taken out and removed. The left renal artery was cut thro
ugh. I should say that someone who knew the position of the kidney must have done it. The lining membrane over the uterus was cut through. The womb was cut through horizontally, leaving a stump of ¾ of an inch. The rest of the womb had been taken away with some of the ligaments. The vagina and cervix of the womb was uninjured.

  The bladder was healthy and uninjured, and contained 3 or 4 ounces of water. There was a tongue-like cut through the anterior wall of the abdominal aorta. The other organs were healthy. There were no indications of connection.

  Brown could suggest no reason for the removal of the left kidney and womb. These parts, he said, would be ‘of no use for any professional purpose.’

  For the first time in this series of crimes the murderer mutilated his victim’s face. According to Brown, the

  face was very much mutilated. There was a cut about ¼ of an inch through the lower left eyelid dividing the structures completely through. The upper eyelid on that side, there was a scratch through the skin on the left upper eyelid near to the angle of the nose. The right eyelid was cut through to about ½ an inch. There was a deep cut over the bridge of the nose extending from the left border of the nasal bone down near to the angle of the jaw on the right side across the cheek. This cut went into the bone and divided all the structures of the cheek except the mucous membrane of the mouth. The tip of the nose was quite detached from the nose by an oblique cut from the bottom of the nasal bone to where the wings of the nose join on to the face. A cut from this divided the upper lip and extended through the substance of the gum over the right upper lateral incisor tooth. About ½ an inch from the top of the nose was another oblique cut. There was a cut on the right angle of the mouth, as if by the cut of a point of a knife. The cut extended an inch and a half parallel with lower lip. There was on each side of cheek a cut which peeled up the skin forming a triangular flap about an inch and a half. On the left cheek there were 2 abrasions of the epithelium. There was a little mud on left cheek. 2 slight abrasions of the epithelium under the left ear.

  Photographs were taken of Kate’s body before and after post-mortem stitching but her wounds were most clearly depicted in two sketches made by Frederick William Foster, an architect and surveyor, at the City Mortuary on the morning of the murder. One of them depicted the injuries to the face and head. It recorded the detail that the lobe of Kate’s right ear had been cut off. This wound, which will prove of some significance to us later, was not described in Brown’s autopsy report although he did note that when the body was stripped at the mortuary ‘a piece of deceased’s ear dropped from the clothing.’13

  From all that he had seen Dr Brown concluded that the mutilations had all been inflicted by one man on the spot where the body had been found. There was a current theory that Kate had been murdered somewhere else and then dumped in Mitre Square but the doctor did not agree. ‘The blood on the left side [of the neck] was clotted,’ he said, ‘and must have fallen at the time the throat was cut.’ That clotted blood, and the absence of bloodstains on the front of her jacket and bodice, proved that Kate’s throat had been severed while she was lying on her back. The murderer, at least when inflicting the abdominal injuries, had been kneeling on the right side, and below the middle, of the body. In Brown’s opinion he had performed the mutilations to the face and abdomen with a sharp, pointed knife. From the abdominal injuries the doctor judged that the blade of this weapon must have been at least six inches long.14

  In the case of Annie Chapman the murderer had removed the womb intact but in that of Kate Eddowes a stump of about three quarters of an inch had been left in the body. Despite this, Dr Brown concluded that Kate’s killer, too, must have possessed both anatomical knowledge and surgical skill. He based his case primarily upon the careful extraction of the left kidney: ‘I should say that someone who knew the position of the kidney must have done it . . . I believe the perpetrator of the act must have had considerable knowledge of the position of the organs in the abdominal cavity and the way of removing them . . . It required a great deal of knowledge to have removed the kidney and to know where it was placed. Such a knowledge might be possessed by someone in the habit of cutting up animals.’15 According to a press version of his testimony, Brown explained to the court that the removal of the kidney would have required ‘a good deal of knowledge as to its position, because it is apt to be overlooked, being covered by a membrane.’16

  It is worth reiterating – given some of the eccentric interpretations of Brown’s evidence put about in recent years – that the doctor attributed surgical skill as well as anatomical knowledge to the killer. His references to the left kidney being ‘carefully taken out and removed’ and to the murderer possessing knowledge of the position of the organs and of ‘the way of removing them’ demonstrate this. The point is more explicitly made in some of the newspaper transcripts of his deposition. The Daily Telegraph quoted him thus: ‘The way in which the kidney was cut out showed that it was done by somebody who knew what he was about.’ And the Daily News thus: ‘The left kidney had been carefully taken out in such a manner as to show that it had been done by somebody who not only knew its anatomical position, but knew how to remove it.’ More, in an early interview, Brown told a Star reporter that the murderer ‘had some knowledge of how to use a knife.’17

  Brown did not believe, however, that the degree of knowledge and skill displayed would only have been possessed by a medical man. A slaughterman, for example, would have known enough to have inflicted the injuries.

  What of the other medicos?

  Implicit in Brown’s view was the belief that the murderer had deliberately sought out the kidney. Sequeira and Saunders do not seem to have been so sure. Perhaps they wondered whether he could have come across the organ fortuitously and cut it out without understanding what it was. Anyway, they both told the inquest that they did not think that the killer had had designs on any particular organ and that he did not seem to have been possessed of ‘great anatomical skill.’18 The wording is unfortunate because it has led some writers to assert, incorrectly, that these doctors testified to a total absence of skill on the part of the killer. In fact, if they were endorsing Brown (and they both explicitly said that they were), they meant that the killer possessed an elementary degree of skill rather than none at all. That this was Sequeira’s intended meaning is confirmed by an interview he gave to the Star. He told its reporter that the atrocity had been performed quickly. ‘By an expert, do you think?’ queried the reporter. ‘No, not by an expert,’ explained Sequeira, ‘but by a man who was not altogether ignorant of the use of the knife.’19

  Dr Phillips made no report to the inquest but his position seems to have been very close to those of Sequeira and Saunders. A report of Chief Inspector Swanson gives us the most detailed précis of Phillips’ view:

  The surgeon, Dr Brown, called by the City Police, and Dr Phillips, who had been called by the Metropolitan Police in the cases of Hanbury Street and Berner Street, having made a post-mortem examination of the body, reported that there were missing the left kidney and the uterus, and that the mutilation so far gave no evidence of anatomical knowledge in the sense that it evidenced the hand of a qualified surgeon, so that the police could narrow their enquiries into certain classes of persons. On the other hand, as in the Metropolitan Police cases, the medical evidence showed that the murder could have been committed by a person who had been a hunter, a butcher, a slaughterman, as well as a student in surgery or a properly qualified surgeon.

  In other words, although the murder might have been committed by a qualified surgeon the degree of expertise actually displayed could also have been possessed by a hunter, butcher, slaughterman or medical student. Phillips saw less evidence of medical expertise in the Eddowes murder than in that of Annie Chapman and for this reason was inclined to the belief that these crimes had been done by different men.20

  While the doctors were thus learning something about Kate’s killer in the post-mortem room the detectives were finding out a little mo
re by knocking on doors. Searches of Mitre Square and neighbourhood lodging houses, launched soon after the discovery of Kate’s body, had availed them nothing. But a house-to-house inquiry in the vicinity of the square turned up two Jews who saw a woman who might have been Kate in the forty-five minutes between her discharge from Bishopsgate Street and the discovery of her body by PC Watkins. Furthermore, the woman was talking to a man, and if she was indeed Kate her companion was almost certainly the murderer.21

  The witnesses were Joseph Lawende, a commercial traveller, of 79 Fenchurch Street, and Joseph Hyam Levy, a butcher, of 1 Hutchinson Street, Aldgate. On the evening of Saturday, 29 September, these men, together with Harry Harris, a Jewish furniture dealer, went to the Imperial Club at 16–17 Duke Street. It rained that night so they stayed on there until 1.30 the next morning. Then they prepared to go. At the inquest Lawende said that they left the building at about 1.35. Levy put the time at 1.33 or 1.34.

  As they left the club they saw a man and a woman standing at the corner of Church Passage, about fifteen or sixteen feet away. ‘Look there,’ Levy said to Harris, ‘I don’t like going home by myself when I see those characters about.’ But however unsavoury the couple might have appeared there seemed nothing noteworthy about them. And this, together with the fact that they were standing in a badly lighted spot, may explain why Levy’s recollection of them was so vague: ‘I passed on, taking no further notice of them. The man, I should say, was about three inches taller than the woman. I cannot give any description of either of them.’