Naming Jack the Ripper: The Biggest Forensic Breakthrough Since 1888

by Edwards, Russell

  The most prominent of these organizations was the Mile End Vigilance Committee, whose president was Mile End painter and decorator George Lusk. With his name appearing in the newspapers often, Lusk became the target of some strange incidents, including the receipt of alleged letters from the murderer. The most famous of these and certainly the most notorious ever received by anybody at the time, arrived at his home on the evening of 16 October. The letter came with a parcel containing half a human kidney.

  From hell

  Mr Lusk,

  Sir

  I send you half the Kidne I took from one woman and prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer

  signed Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk

  In light of the removal of a kidney from Catherine Eddowes only two weeks previously, it made the whole package highly contentious. Apart from being definitely human, medical experts at the time could not ascertain whether the kidney had even belonged to a woman, let alone Eddowes, and there is a possibility that it came from a dissecting-room corpse. Many rumours have since circulated about the piece of kidney, including the popular suggestion, put forward in memoirs, that it had traces of Bright’s disease, a condition that afflicted alcoholics, as did the organ remaining in Catherine Eddowes’ body. Although the kidney was analysed several times, sadly the official reports or notes have long been lost. In my opinion, this is the only one of the letters that could be genuine, especially because of the reference to the kidney, and because the writer does not use the Jack the Ripper name. But I have no proof, and it could well be another hoax.

  October was a busy month for the police, but a quiet time for the Ripper himself, with no further murders until 9 November 1888. Experts have come up with different theories for what was, for him, a long break. It has been suggested that serial killers often take longer spells away from their ‘work’ at times.

  But I believe I have now solved the mystery of the five-and-a-half-week lull in his activities. Before I explain, here are the details of his final killing, which outstrips everything that came before in its sheer brutality. This time the Ripper returned to Spitalfields, at the heart of the East End’s most impoverished district.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MURDER MOST GHASTLY

  The Death of Mary Jane Kelly

  The fifth and final Ripper murder is the one I call his Mona Lisa. It is the one where he had the time to completely fulfil his warped, sadistic urges, the culmination of all the fantasies he had developed in the escalating complexity of the previous mutilations. He could indulge himself, free from the risk of discovery, and he did.

  Again, thank God, the victim was dead swiftly. It is hard to imagine the terror she must have felt when she realized the man she had taken back to her room was not there for straightforward sexual gratification, but at least he murdered her before he began to dismember and mutilate her.

  Mary Jane Kelly’s body was found in her lodgings at 13 Miller’s Court, Dorset Street, on the morning of Friday, 9 November 1888. It was a morning of great police activity in London as it was the day of the Lord Mayor’s Parade, when crowds would be out to cheer the new mayor and then 2,000 poor people would be given a free ‘substantial meat tea’, followed by entertainment. Many of the unfortunates of the area were looking forward to earning money from the men enjoying the holiday mood. But the festivities were eclipsed as the news of another murder spread through the East End.

  Mary was a twenty-five-year-old prostitute described as 5 foot 7 inches tall, with a fair complexion, a rather stout build, blue eyes and a very fine head of hair. From descriptions given of her she was good-looking: ‘attractive’ is the word most used, and a ‘pretty, buxom girl’ is another description of her.

  What we know about Mary’s background is contentious as it originates from Mary herself, and is what she told to friends and acquaintances. Even today, with so much access to genealogical databases, confirmation of the facts proves elusive. She had a very common name, and it may not have been the name she was born with: many of the unfortunates were fleeing from their past when they gravitated to the streets of the East End. What follows is her own story of her life, none of which has ever been proven to be true or false.

  She was born in Limerick, Ireland, and moved with her family to Carmarthenshire in Wales when she was very young. At the age of sixteen she married a collier by the name of Davies, but, tragically, her husband died in a mining accident within two years of their marriage. Mary apparently moved to Cardiff where, under the influence of a cousin, she became involved in prostitution. From there onwards her life took an unusual turn. Moving to London by 1884, she worked at an exclusive West End brothel which, given her looks, could certainly have been true.

  She told friends that she travelled to France with a ‘gentleman’. Deciding that this was not the life for her, she returned to England after two or three weeks. The trip to France may have inspired Mary to occasionally call herself ‘Marie Jeannette’. Around 1884, Mary settled in the East End, near the London docks, lodging with a Mrs Buki until her growing fondness for alcohol meant that she had to leave. She then stayed at the home of a Mrs Carthy until 1886 when Mary left to live with at least two different men in Stepney for short times, before ending up in the dosshouses of Spitalfields, where she stayed at Cooney’s lodging house in Thrawl Street. Her descent, as with so many of the unfortunates, seems to have been rooted in alcohol. She was according to those who knew her a quiet, pleasant girl when sober, but noisy and bawdy when drunk.

  On Good Friday 1887, she met Joseph Barnett, a twenty-nine-year-old Billingsgate fish porter, and after only one day they made the decision to live together, which they subsequently did in rooms in various houses in George Street, Brick Lane and Little Paternoster Row before finding a room in Dorset Street, Spitalfields. Dorset Street had a notorious reputation for crime and vice; the philanthropist and social reformer Charles Booth, who campaigned for more government help for the poor, described it in his 1888 survey notebooks as ‘the worst street I have seen so far – thieves, prostitutes, bullies, all common lodging houses.’ Room 13, Miller’s Court, was at the end of a small passageway between 26 and 27 Dorset Street. It was actually the back room of No. 26 which had been separated from the rest of the property with a false partition by the landlord, John McCarthy, who ran a chandlers shop from No. 27. Miller’s Court was known as ‘McCarthy’s Rooms’ because he was the landlord for so much of the court. Mary and Joe moved there in early 1888, paying four shillings and six pence a week for the partly furnished, squalid little room.

  Joe Barnett supported the couple financially but lost his job as a fish porter in early August, and gradually the couple fell behind with the rent. What Joe made selling oranges did not provide enough for them, so Mary felt she had no option but to go back to prostitution. This, along with her habit of allowing other prostitutes to sleep in the room on cold nights, caused Joe to walk out on 30 October and move into a lodging house in New Street, Bishopsgate.

  Mary was apparently fascinated by the Ripper murders, as were so many of the working women of the East End. She used to ask Joe Barnett to read all the newspaper stories to her, and her fears may account for her inviting other girls to share her room, both for her protection and theirs.

  Despite the separation, Mary and Joe were obviously still on good terms and Barnett would regularly stop by to give her some money if he had managed to earn any from casual work. He last visited Mary between 7 and 8 p.m. on the evening of 8 November, this time to apologize for not having any money to give her. That was the last time he saw her alive.

  After her death, neighbours in Miller’s Court gave evidence about what they had seen and heard on the last night of Mary’s life. Mrs Mary Ann Cox, a widow who also earned her subsistence from prostitution, lived at Room 5, Miller’s Court and had known Mary Kelly for about eight months. She followed Mary, who was with a man, into Miller
’s Court at about 11.45 p.m. on that Thursday night. The couple entered Room 13 and as Mary was walking through her door, Mrs Cox said goodnight to her; Mary was very drunk and could scarcely answer, but managed to utter a slurred ‘Goodnight’. The man who accompanied her was carrying a quart pail of beer and was described as about thirty-six years old, about 5 foot 5 inches tall, with blotches on his face, small side whiskers and a thick carroty moustache, dressed in shabby dark clothes, a dark overcoat and a dark felt hat. She went on to say that she soon heard Mary singing, ‘Only a violet I plucked from my mother’s grave’. Mrs Cox was in and out of her room several times that evening and, when she finally returned at 3 a.m., all was dark in Room 13 and she didn’t hear any noise for the rest of the night.

  Elizabeth Prater lived at Room 20, Miller’s Court, the room above Mary’s. At about 3.30 or 4 a.m. she was awoken by her kitten and heard a cry of ‘murder’ in a female voice about two or three times. As Dorset Street was considered the roughest in the area at the time, she was used to such cries and so she ignored them and went back to sleep, not waking until 11 a.m. Sarah Lewis, staying with friends at Room 2, Miller’s Court, may have heard the same cries at around the same time. Lewis, however, had more to report. When she got home to Miller’s Court, at around 2.30 a.m., she saw a man standing over against the lodging house on the opposite side of the street to Miller’s Court. He was described as not tall but stout and had on a wide-awake black hat (a hat with a low crown and wide brim.) The man Sarah Lewis described was probably George Hutchinson, a friend of Mary Kelly. He did not present himself as a witness until after the inquest, when he appeared at Commercial Street Police Station at 6 p.m. on 12 November 1888. He had an interesting story to tell.

  He said that he was walking along Commercial Street, between Thrawl Street and Flower and Dean Street, at about 2 a.m. that morning. He was approached by Mary, who said, ‘Hutchinson, will you lend me sixpence?’ He said that he didn’t have it to give her as he had spent it all going to Romford, and Mary went on her way. She was heading back in the direction of Thrawl Street when a man coming in the opposite direction tapped her on the shoulder and said something to her, at which they both burst out laughing. Hutchinson said that he heard her say ‘Alright’ to him and the man replied, You will be alright for what I have told you’. He then placed his right arm around her shoulders. Hutchinson stood against the lamp of the Queen’s Head public house at the corner of Fashion Street and watched as the couple came past him. The man dropped his head with his hat over his eyes, so Hutchinson stooped down to look him in the face, at which the man gave him a stern look.

  The couple headed into Dorset Street and Hutchinson followed. Mary and her new acquaintance stood at the entrance to Miller’s Court for a few minutes and the man said something to her to which Mary replied, ‘Alright my dear, come along, you will be comfortable.’ The man then placed his arm around her shoulder and gave her a kiss and they both disappeared into the gloomy court together. Hutchinson stood on the other side of the road for about three quarters of an hour, during which time he was seen by Sarah Lewis. When he realized that neither Mary nor her companion were coming out soon, he went away to find lodgings of his own.

  Hutchinson gave a description of the man as aged about thirty-four or thirty-five, height 5 foot 6 inches, with a pale complexion, dark eyes and eyelashes and a slight moustache, curled at the ends. He was wearing a long coat trimmed with astrakhan, with a dark jacket underneath, a light waistcoat, dark trousers, a dark felt hat turned down in the middle, button boots and gaiters with white buttons. He apparently wore a thick gold chain, a white linen collar and a black tie with a horseshoe pin, an appearance which suggested affluence. He was Jewish in appearance and walked ‘very sharp’. Hutchinson also noticed that he was carrying a parcel. It was an unusual description, but Inspector Abberline personally questioned Hutchinson and felt that he was telling the truth.

  Two further sightings of Mary Kelly took place in Dorset Street that morning, but they are extremely problematical. Caroline Maxwell saw her at the corner of Miller’s Court between 8 a.m. and 8.30 a.m. They spoke, and Mary said that she ‘had the horrors of drink upon her’, probably meaning a huge hangover. Mrs Maxwell suggested that she go and have a drink, but Mary replied that she had already done so and had thrown it up in the road, pointing to a small pool of vomit by the kerb. Maxwell saw Kelly again at between 8.45 and 9 a.m. on the corner of Dorset Street, talking to a man who was aged about thirty and had the appearance of a market porter. The other sighting of interest was from Maurice Lewis who believed he saw Mary Kelly leave her room at about 8 a.m. and then saw her again in the Britannia pub at the corner of Dorset Street and Commercial Street. The big problem with both these sightings is, according to later evidence given by medical men, Mary Kelly would have already been dead for a while by the time Maxwell and Lewis saw her. It’s possible that, not knowing her well, she was confused with another woman, or that the witnesses simply had the day wrong.

  At 10.45 a.m. that morning, the landlord John McCarthy sent his assistant, an elderly man named Thomas Bowyer, to try and collect some of the six weeks overdue rent from Mary. Bowyer went through the passageway to Room 13 and knocked on the door, but there was no answer. He tried opening the door but it would not budge, as though it was locked from the inside, so rather than walk away empty-handed, he went round to the side window, which had a broken pane, put his hand through the hole in the frame and pulled back the muslin curtain that was obscuring his view of the interior. In the gloom of that little room he could make out the corpse of Mary Jane Kelly: she was lying on the bed and she had been literally ripped to pieces. In shock, he immediately ran to fetch John McCarthy who, with Bowyer, swiftly ran to Commercial Street Police Station where they alerted Inspector Walter Beck and Sergeant Edward Badham. After arriving at Miller’s Court and seeing for himself the bloody scene, Inspector Beck sent for assistance from Divisional Superintendent Thomas Arnold and the divisional surgeon Dr George Bagster Phillips. Inspector Abberline also visited Miller’s Court, as did Assistant Commissioner Robert Anderson, the first time he had been able to visit any of the crime scenes since his return from sick leave in early October.

  Miller’s Court was sealed off to the public by 11 a.m. On his arrival, Dr Phillips viewed the scene through the window and satisfied himself that the woman in the room was long past needing immediate assistance. A decision was made to use bloodhounds in an attempt to sniff out the killer and so a long wait ensued before the room could be opened; by 1 p.m. no bloodhounds had arrived and so, in the absence of a key, John McCarthy was ordered to break down the door of Mary’s room with a pickaxe. The scene that greeted those who entered that tiny room was shocking even to hardened policemen and medical men, as the highly experienced Dr Thomas Bond, the divisional police surgeon for A Division (Westminster), made clear in his post-mortem report:

  The body was lying naked in the middle of the bed, the shoulders flat, but the axis of the body inclined to the left side of the bed. The head was turned on the left cheek. The left arm was close to the body with the forearm flexed at a right angle and lying across the abdomen, the right arm was slightly abducted from the body and rested on the mattress, the elbow bent the forearm supine with the fingers clenched. The legs were wide apart, the left thigh at right angles to the trunk and the right forming an obtuse angle with the pubes.

  The whole surface of the abdomen and thighs was removed and the abdominal cavity emptied of its viscera. The breasts were cut off, the arms mutilated by several jagged wounds and the face hacked beyond recognition of the features. The tissues of the neck were severed all round down to the bone.

  The viscera were found in various parts viz: the uterus and kidneys with one breast under the head, the other breast by the right foot, the liver between the feet, the intestines by the right side and the spleen by the left side of the body.

  The flaps removed from the abdomen and thighs were on a table.

  The be
d clothing at the right corner was saturated with blood, and on the floor beneath was a pool of blood covering about 2 feet square. The wall by the right side of the bed and in a line with the neck was marked by blood which had struck it in a number of separate splashes.

  Dr Bond went into further detail:

  The face was gashed in all directions the nose, cheeks, eyebrows and ears being partly removed. The lips were blanched and cut by several incisions running obliquely down to the chin. There were also numerous cuts extending irregularly across all the features.

  The neck was cut through the skin and other tissues right down to the vertebrae the 5th and 6th being deeply notched. The skin cuts in the front of the neck showed distinct ecchymosis.

  The air passage was cut at the lower part of the larynx through the cricoid cartilage.

  Both breasts were removed by more or less circular incisions, the muscles down to the ribs being attached to the breasts. The intercostals between the 4th, 5th, and 6th ribs were cut through and the contents of the thorax visible through the openings.

  The skin and tissues of the abdomen from the costal arch to the pubes were removed in three large flaps. The right thigh was denuded in front to the bone, the flap of skin, including the external organs of generation and part of the right buttock. The left thigh was stripped of skin, fascia and muscles as far as the knee.

  The left calf showed a long gash through the skin and tissues to the deep muscles and reaching from the knee to 5 ins above the ankle.

  Both arms and forearms had extensive and jagged wounds. The right thumb showed a small superficial incision about 1 in long, with the extravasation of blood in the skin and there were several abrasions on the back of the hand moreover showing the same condition.