Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888

by Edwards, Russell

  Several hours later, John Gardner and John Best saw Elizabeth leave the Bricklayers Arms in Settles Street shortly before 11 p.m. with a man they described as about 5 foot 5 inches tall, with a black moustache, weak, sandy eyelashes and wearing a morning suit and a billycock (bowler) hat. Gardner and Best, noticing that the couple were sheltering briefly from a sudden downpour, joked to her, ‘That’s Leather Apron getting round you,’ before Elizabeth and the man went off.

  Mathew Packer, a fruiterer of 44 Berner Street, said that he sold half a pound of black grapes at about 11 p.m. to a young man about twenty-five to thirty years of age, who was accompanied by a woman dressed in a black frock and a jacket with fur round the bottom and a black crêpe bonnet. She was also wearing a flower in her jacket, resembling a geranium, which was white outside and red inside. The man was about 5 foot 7 inches tall wearing a long black coat which was buttoned up and a soft felt hat described as a kind of ‘Yankee’ hat. He had broad shoulders and spoke rather quickly in a rough voice. Packer later identified the woman as Elizabeth Stride in St George-in-the-East mortuary, but Packer’s evidence was later questioned, and there was no evidence from the contents of her stomach of the dead woman having eaten grapes. All crimes attract ‘groupies’, people who want to be at the centre of attention, and this is probably all that Packer was. Chief Inspector Swanson wrote in a report that Packer ‘made different statements . . . any statement he made would be rendered almost valueless as evidence.’

  At 11.45 p.m., William Marshall, a labourer who lived at 64 Berner Street, witnessed a man kissing Elizabeth Stride (he positively identified her in the mortuary) as they were standing near his lodgings. He heard the man say, ‘You would say anything but your prayers.’ He described the man as middle aged, wearing a round cap with a small peak, about 5 foot 6 inches tall, rather stout in build and decently dressed. As the sighting was an hour before the likely time of the murder, the man he saw is probably an earlier client of Elizabeth’s.

  At 12.35 a.m. PC William Smith was pounding his beat along Berner Street when he saw a man and a woman standing in the street opposite a narrow passageway known as Dutfield’s Yard. The man was about 5 foot 7 inches tall, about twenty-eight years old, with a small dark moustache and a dark complexion. He was wearing a black diagonal cutaway coat, a hard felt hat, a white collar and tie, and was carrying a parcel wrapped up in newspaper about 18 inches long and 6 to 8 inches wide. The woman was wearing a red flower pinned to her jacket, which PC Smith later recognized at the mortuary when he went to view Elizabeth Stride’s body.

  Another witness, Mrs Fanny Mortimer who lived just a few houses from the murder scene, gave different stories to journalists, but it boiled down to her seeing nothing more than a young couple at the corner of the road, about twenty yards from her.

  On the corner of Berner Street and Dutfield’s Yard was the International Working Men’s Educational Club, a two-storey building which housed a club for Jewish socialists and anarchists, mostly of Russian and Polish origin, and on this evening it had hosted a meeting and lecture about the iniquitous ‘sweaters’, the sweatshops where the poor were forced to work for very low pay. At the end of the meeting members stayed behind, drinking and singing songs in Russian.

  Morris Eagle, a member of the club, walked down Dutfield’s Yard at 12.40 a.m., having been away from the premises for just under an hour to take his girlfriend home, and he saw nothing unusual before he went back inside.

  Only five minutes later, the most important witness of the night, and in my opinion, the whole case, Israel Schwartz, witnessed what I believe is the only definite sighting of the Ripper. Very little is known about Schwartz other than that he was a Hungarian who spoke hardly any English and who had ‘the appearance of being in the theatrical line’. He was certainly married by this time as it was stated that he and his wife had moved from their lodgings in Berner Street to a new address in Helen Street, near Backchurch Lane, on the day of the incident.

  Schwartz was on his way to his new home and was walking towards the gateway of Dutfield’s Yard at about 12.45 a.m. The report of what he saw was written down in a statement taken by Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, and I’m reproducing it here in full because it is so vital:

  12.45 a.m. 30th Israel Schwartz of 22 Helen Street, Backchurch Lane, stated that at this hour, on turning into Berner Street from Commercial Road and having got as far as the gateway where the murder was committed, he saw a man stop and speak to a woman who was standing in the gateway. The man tried to pull the woman into the street, but he turned her round and threw her down on the footway and the woman screamed three times, but not loudly. On crossing to the opposite side of the street he saw a second man standing lighting his pipe. The man who threw the woman down called out, apparently to the man on the opposite side of the road ‘Lipski’, and then Schwartz walked away, but finding that he was followed by the second man he ran so far as the railway arch, but the man did not follow so far.

  Schwartz cannot say whether the two men were together or known to each other. Upon being taken to the mortuary Schwartz identified the body as that of the woman he had seen. He thus describes the first man who threw the woman down :– age, about 30; ht 5ft 5in; comp. [complexion], fair; hair, dark; small brown moustache; full face; broad shouldered; dress, dark jacket and trousers, black cap with peak, and nothing in his hands.

  He then went on to describe the second man as 5 foot 11 inches, thirty-five years old, with a fresh complexion, light brown hair and a brown moustache. He wore a dark overcoat and an old black hard felt hat with a wide brim.

  According to Inspector Abberline, ‘Lipski’ had become an abusive term for the Jews in that part of London since the arrest of Israel Lipski the previous year. Lipski, who was of Polish–Jewish descent, had been accused of murdering Miriam Angel in nearby Batty Street, having forced her to drink nitric acid. Lipski was found under her bed with acid burns in his mouth and was arrested, brought to trial, found guilty and hanged, despite his protestations of innocence.

  At first the police hoped that ‘Lipski’ was the name of the second man, so that he could be traced and questioned, but this was fruitless and they accepted that it was an insult, possibly aimed at Schwartz because of his Jewish appearance.

  The Star was the only newspaper to cover Schwartz’s story in any depth, on 1 October. There are discrepancies between the police account and the one the newspaper published, perhaps because of some over-enthusiastic journalism (all newspapers wanted to sensationalize the murders as much as possible) but also possibly because of Schwartz’s poor English, which necessitated the use of a translator. Because I believe Schwartz is so important to this case, I think it’s important to reproduce the full article:

  Information which may be important was given to the Leman Street police yesterday by an Hungarian concerning this murder. The foreigner was well-dressed and had the appearance of being in the theatrical line. He could not speak a word of English, but came to the police station accompanied by a friend, who acted as interpreter. He gave his name and address but the police have not disclosed them. A Star man, however, got wind of his call and ran him to earth in Backchurch Lane. The reporter’s Hungarian was quite as imperfect as the foreigner’s English, but an interpreter was at hand and the man’s story was retold just as he had given it to the police. It is, in fact, to the effect that he saw the whole thing.

  It seems that he had gone out for the day and his wife had expected to move, during his absence, from their lodgings in Berner Street to others in Backchurch Lane. When he first came homewards about a quarter to one he first walked down Berner Street to see if his wife had moved. As he turned the corner into Commercial Road he noticed some distance in front of him a man walking as if partially intoxicated. He walked on behind him, and presently he noticed a woman standing in the entrance to the alleyway where the body was found. The half-tipsy man halted and spoke to her. The Hungarian saw him put his hand on her shoulder and push her back into the passa
ge, but feeling rather timid of getting involved in quarrels he crossed to the other side of the street. Before he had gone many yards, however, he heard the sound of a quarrel and turned back to learn what was the matter, but just as he stepped from the kerb a second man came out of the doorway of a public house a few doors off, and shouting some sort of warning to the man who was with the woman, rushed forward as if to attack the intruder. The Hungarian states positively that he saw a knife in the second man’s hand, but he waited to see no more. He fled incontinently to his new lodgings.

  He described the man with the woman as about 30 years of age, rather stoutly built, and wearing a brown moustache. He was dressed respectably in dark clothes and felt hat. The man who came at him with the knife he also describes, but not in detail. He says he was taller than the other but not so stout, and that his moustaches were red. Both men seemed to belong to the same grade of society. The police have arrested one man answering the description the Hungarian furnishes. The prisoner has not been charged, but is held for inquiries to be made. The truth of the man’s statement is not wholly accepted.

  The substantive differences between the two versions of Schwartz’s testimony are the intoxication of the first man; the fact he tries to push Elizabeth Stride into the passage, not pull her into the road; that in the Star version it is the second man who calls out the warning; and the second man has a knife not a pipe. As the police presumably took more care to write down their statement than the reporter did, it is their version that is most widely accepted. Whatever the differences, the main story remains the same, and Schwartz was considered then, and now, a very important witness. Sadly, the second man did not come forward as a witness to corroborate, or contradict, Schwartz’s version of events.

  Elizabeth Stride’s body was discovered at 1 a.m., when Louis Diemschutz returned with his horse and cart to the International Working Men’s Educational Club, where he lived. He had been working that day at Westow Hill market, in Crystal Palace, where he sold costume jewellery from his barrow. He was also the steward of the club which he ran with his wife. As he turned into the gateway of Dutfield’s Yard, his horse shied to the left, causing Diemschutz to glance down at the ground next to the club wall to see what was spooking the horse. Realizing that there was something there, he got off his cart, prodded the shape with his whip and struck a match to give him light to see by. The wind instantly snuffed out the match, so he ran upstairs into the club to fetch a candle, as he had glimpsed what he thought was a drunken woman lying on the ground.

  Diemschutz told his wife and a few club members that there was a woman lying in the yard and that he was ‘unable to say whether she was drunk or dead’. He grabbed a candle and went back downstairs, with one of the club members. As they approached the body they could see blood, a large pool on the cobbles next to the body, which had a deep wound in the neck. Diemschutz let out a cry which brought more members from the club upstairs, including his wife who screamed when she saw the blood and the woman’s ‘ghastly face’.

  The men ran out shouting ‘Police!’ as they went. Morris Eagle managed to find two police constables, Henry Lamb and Edward Collins, in Commercial Road. When they got back to Dutfield’s Yard they saw a crowd of people already gathering at the gateway into the yard. PC Lamb managed to keep them back, telling them that if they got blood on their clothes then they would only attract trouble for themselves.

  He shone his lantern on the body, and touched the woman’s face; it was still slightly warm. He could see that the blood by the body was still in a liquid state but when he felt for a pulse he found nothing. PC Collins went for Dr Frederick Blackwell, who lived in Commercial Road, but as Dr Blackwell was not dressed, his assistant Edward Johnston went on ahead of him. He stated that the body was warm when he arrived – except for the hands which were quite cold – and that the blood had stopped flowing from the neck wound.

  Dr Blackwell arrived at 1.16 a.m., according to his pocket watch. He reported that:

  The deceased was lying on her left side obliquely across the passage, her face looking towards the right wall. Her legs were drawn up, her feet close against the wall of the right side of the passage. Her head was resting beyond the carriage-wheel rut, the neck lying over the rut. Her feet were three yards from the gateway. Her dress was unfastened at the neck. The neck and chest were quite warm, as were also the legs, and the face was slightly warm. The hands were cold. The right hand was open and on the chest, and was smeared with blood. The left hand, lying on the ground, was partially closed, and contained a small packet of cachous wrapped in tissue paper. There were no rings, nor marks of rings, on her hands. The appearance of the face was quite placid. The mouth was slightly open. The deceased had round her neck a check silk scarf, the bow of which was turned to the left and pulled very tight. In the neck there was a long incision which exactly corresponded with the lower border of the scarf. The border was slightly frayed, as if by a sharp knife. The incision in the neck commenced on the left side, 2 ½ inches below the angle of the jaw, and almost in a direct line with it, nearly severing the vessels on that side, cutting the windpipe completely in two, and terminating on the opposite side 1 ½ inches below the angle of the right jaw, but without severing the vessels on that side. I could not ascertain whether the bloody hand had been moved. The blood was running down the gutter into the drain in the opposite direction of the feet. There was about 1lb. of clotted blood close by the body, and a stream all the way from there to the back door of the club.

  Dr George Bagster Phillips was also sent for and arrived on the scene at approximately 2 a.m. He agreed with Dr Blackwell’s account. At 4.30 a.m., amid growing excitement in the area, the body of Elizabeth Stride was taken to the small St George-in-the-East mortuary. At the time of her death she was described as being about forty-two years old, 5 foot 2 inches in height, with dark-brown curly hair and a pale complexion, with light grey eyes. She was wearing a long black jacket trimmed with black fur which she had on when she left her lodgings, an old skirt, a dark-brown velvet bodice, two light serge petticoats, a white chemise, a pair of white stockings, a pair of side-spring boots and a black crêpe bonnet.

  At the inquest the cause of Elizabeth Stride’s death was given as ‘loss of blood from the left carotid artery and the division of the windpipe’. In other words, she died when the Ripper slashed her throat. Some experts believe that she actually had a heart attack before the throat slashing, because she was, according to Dr Blackwell ‘pulled backwards’ by her silk scarf, and the pressure on her throat could have caused a reflex cardiac arrest. Whichever version is correct, she died quickly.

  Israel Schwartz’s account of the attack on the woman he later identified as being Elizabeth Stride, and his description of the man attacking her only fifteen minutes before she was found dead, was an important lead. Coupled with Dr Blackwell’s opinion that death occurred between 12.46 a.m. and 12.56 a.m., it is highly probable that Schwartz saw the man who killed her. It was also widely felt that, because Stride’s body exhibited none of the abdominal mutilations evident in the previous cases, the murderer may well have been disturbed by the arrival of Louis Diemschutz on his pony and cart and either he left before Diemschutz got close enough to see the entrance or, more likely I believe, he had hidden in the shadows of the yard, escaping during those brief moments when Diemschutz first went into the club. If Diemschutz had locked the gate, the Ripper’s reign could have been over.

  Another element of Israel Schwartz’s statement that is interesting is that he said the would-be attacker called out, ‘Lipski!’ Israel Schwartz was described in the press as ‘Semitic’ in appearance, leading to the possibility that the man’s outburst was aimed at him. Interestingly, Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, in whose hand Schwartz’s statement is written, made a note on the statement to the effect that he believed that the use of this word suggested that Stride’s attacker was Jewish, although it’s hard to see why he would shout out an insult to himself, unless he is referring to hims
elf as a Jewish man, and perhaps appealing to someone he assumed is also Jewish to ignore the attack. It does not seem rational, but ‘rational’ is hardly a word to apply to a crazed and sadistic killer.

  What is unusual about Israel Schwartz as a witness is that he did not appear to have been called to the inquest to give his evidence, possibly because he spoke poor English. Matthew Packer, the fruiterer who claimed to have sold grapes to Stride and a man shortly before the murder, was not called because his evidence was unreliable. Schwartz, however, had an important story to tell and regardless of how it was covered, his claims would have considerable influence on the hunt for the Ripper in years to come, and could have ironed out the differences between the official statement and the newspaper account. It could be that the police did not call him because he was the only witness who appeared to have witnessed an actual attack on a victim. They may have taken his statement privately, to avoid the description of the man he saw being published in all the press reports of the inquest. (The detectives were constantly battling the red herrings the press threw into their investigations.) It is also possible that he refused to testify because he was Jewish, a theory I will come back to later.

  Because there are more witnesses, or potential witnesses, to this killing than to any of the other Ripper murders, the fate of Elizabeth Stride has been the most debated part of the whole case over the years: it is one of the few attacks that yields possibly vital clues. Until I found my proof, which is in a different league from the speculation that has been all we have had until now, it was widely believed to be the murder that would most likely be the key to solving the mystery. I believe that, in Israel Schwartz, we come the nearest to a true account of events just before the unfortunate Elizabeth met her death, and we have no comparable evidence from any of the other killings. Israel Schwartz is an important plank in my case, but, thankfully, only a plank: the substance of the structure is incontrovertible science.