They would have walked away from the main road into Buck’s Row, a cobbled street which was, according to the Evening News ‘not overburdened with gas lamps.’ A terrace of new workers’ cottages ran along one side. On the other were tall warehouses.
The Diary is consistent with medical reports of what happened next.
I have shown all that I mean business, the pleasure was far better than I imagined. The whore was only too willing to do her business. I recall all and it thrills me. There was no scream when I cut. I was more than vexed when the head would not come off. I believe I will need more strength next time. I struck deep into her. I regret I never had the cane, it would have been a delight to have rammed it hard into her. The bitch opened like a ripe peach. I have decided next time I will rip all out. My medicine will give me strength and the thought of the whore and her whoring master will spur me on no end.
Maybrick’s fantasy and obsession with decapitation is a recurring theme in his accounts of the murders, and inquest records show that there were indeed deep cuts around the neck of each victim.
Afterwards he walked silently away. None of the residents or night watchmen had heard a thing.
Charles Cross, a carter, was on his way to work down Buck’s Row when he saw what he thought was a useful tarpaulin bundled against the gates to some stables. It was Polly Nichols. Because she was dead before her throat was cut, there had been no mess — only a wine glassful of blood in the gutter. The body was still warm, with Polly’s prized black velvet-lined bonnet lying nearby.
Dr Llewellyn was summoned from his surgery in the Whitechapel Road to make an examination and pronounced her dead. A few hours later, two mortuary attendants were told to clean the body and only then was it discovered she had been mutilated. Dr Llewellyn was called again to make a further examination. He reported a jagged wound running for two or three inches on the left side of the abdomen. It was very deep and tissues had been cut through. There were several other incisions across the abdomen and three or four cuts running down the right side, all of which had been caused by a knife.
From this report arose the original belief that the killer stood in front of his victim, steadied her jaw with his right hand and cut her throat from left to right holding the knife in his left hand. By contrast, the authors of The Jack the Ripper A-Z suggest that he:
Stood in front of his victim in a normal position for standing intercourse; that he seized them round the throat with both hands, thus instantly silencing them and rapidly inducing unconsciousness; that he pushed them to the ground with their heads to his left, and cut their throats dragging the knife towards him. The initial arterial blood flow would thus be away from him and he would avoid heavy bloodstaining. Also, this suggests he was right-handed.
The inquest, which began on September 1st and was re-convened on the 3rd, 17th and 23rd took place in the packed, Whitechapel Working Lads Institute, next to the present Whitechapel Underground station. This was conducted by the stylish coroner Wynne Edwin Baxter, who turned up fresh from a Scandinavian tour, in black and white check trousers, white waistcoat and a crimson scarf.
The hunt was on.
On Saturday September 1st the Liverpool Echo reported under the heading ‘Who is Jim?’:
There is another point of some importance on which the police rely. It is the statement of John Morgan, a coffee stall keeper, who says that a woman whose description answers that given him of the victim, called at his stall, three minutes walk from Buck’s Row early yesterday morning. She was accompanied by a man whom she addressed as ‘Jim’.
The description of the man given by Mr Morgan does not fit Maybrick. All we can safely note is that a man named Jim was at the murder site within minutes of the murder.
* * *
The Diary suggests that at home in Liverpool Maybrick was eagerly scanning the newspapers for reports of the killing. He was not disappointed.
The wait to read about my triumph seemed long, although it was not… They have all written well. The next time they will have a great deal more to write, of that fact I have no doubt… I will remain calm and show no interest in my deed, if anyone should mention it so, but I will laugh inside, oh how I will laugh.
A reporter for the Star in London, probably either Lincoln Springfield or Harry Dam, combed the local pubs and doss houses seeking for descriptions of the killer. He claimed to have interviewed about 50 women in three hours, each of whom had given identical details of a man the locals called ‘Leather Apron’. This claim may well have been true if, as is likely, the reporter plied the women with beer first and then asked them to rubber stamp his own suspicions.
So ‘Leather Apron’ made his first appearance — in the Star.
He was described as about 40 years old, short and Semitic looking, with an exceptionally thick neck and a black moustache. His movements were ‘silent and sinister’, his eyes gleamed and he had a ‘repulsive smile.’
In fact, the Polish Jew they called Leather Apron — a boot finisher, whose real name was John Pizer — was innocent, although he had been charged with a couple of minor assaults in the past. On the night of Polly Nichols’ murder, he was in Seven Sisters Road, Holloway, watching a glow in the sky from two huge fires at the docks and he was seen not only by a lodging housekeeper but also by a policeman. So despite the eagerness of Sergeant William Thick to arrest him, he could not be linked with the murder and even received some small compensation for libel from the press. Even so, the certainty was that the murderer must be foreign and probably Jewish since no Englishman would sink to such depths. Sensationalism was a Victorian novelty, and the case provided ideal material for an unwholesome craving for the macabre, for vampires, monsters and real-life fat ladies and freaks such as Joseph Merrick, Whitechapel’s very own Elephant Man. Readers were confronted with words never before printed in their newspapers and full frontal anatomical illustrations of shockingly mutilated bodies. The prurient Victorians lapped up every appalling detail.
Even the American press revelled in the case, likening it to Edgar Allen Poe’s story The Murders in the Rue Morgue. American newspapers wrote of a small man with wicked black eyes moving silently with a ‘queer run’. One imaginative reporter for the New York Times described how Polly Nichols had run from the scene of her attack and was found several streets away, with her head almost severed.
This kind of coverage did nothing to help the police, who also came under fire. They were castigated for their failures and not really until police files were opened in 1976 was it possible to appreciate just how much energy and initiative had been channelled into the the biggest manhunt Britain had ever known. But the police had no experience upon which to draw, their methods were unsophisticated, even crude and their policy of secrecy at the time only served to provoke the press into creative reporting. The task set by the Ripper was beyond them.
All the Whitechapel murders except one came within the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police Force. Founded in 1829 the department was responsible for all of London except the square mile of the City. The ‘Met’s’ area was then organised in divisions, Whitechapel being H Division. As a result the press compared the ‘Met’ unfavourably with the City police.
The ‘Met’ officials were answerable to the Home Office, whose civil servants had considerable power and it was they who made many of the decisions for which the public blamed the police. For example, the bureaucrats forbade the offer of a government reward for anyone providing information that led to an arrest. The Home Secretary Henry Matthews was a witty man with a fine legal mind who, nevertheless, became unpopular over the Whitechapel affair. He managed to provoke the resignation of two Metropolitan Police Commissioners during his tenure. Less than a year later Matthews was to find himself facing challenging decisions over the alleged murder of James Maybrick.
One of the Police Commissioners was Sir Charles Warren. An Evangelical Christian and former soldier, he ruled with military precision and was still being pilloried by the press
for his heavy-handed treatment of a mass demonstration against unemployment the year before. The London newspaper, the Star, wrote on September 10th:
To add to the list of clumsy follies, Sir Charles Warren whose name stinks in the nostrils of the people of London, has lately transferred the whole of the East End detectives to the West and transferred the West End team to the East.
This was an action which was to guarantee that the men on the ground had little or no knowledge of their new patches!
The capital was also in the thick of the first London County Council elections, in which the radicals sought control of the East End. The banner headlines referring to the Ripper’s crimes threw light on the unemployment and disgraceful living conditions of London’s underclass. The Ripper murders became a political hot potato. His terrible deeds were, in part, responsible for later social reforms as well as improvements in police procedure. So the five women murdered in the East End of London thus became martyrs to a cause.
Inspector Frederick George Abberline (1843-1929) was the best-known name on the case, probably because he had a well-developed sense of his own importance. But because he knew the area and its villains so well, he was in charge of day-to-day investigations. It was Abberline whom Maybrick selected as the butt of his sarcasm:
Oh, Mr Abberline he is a clever little man
Inspector Abberline remembered the seemingly endless sleepless nights after he had come off duty, trawling the streets of Whitechapel only to be called, exhausted, from his bed in the early hours of the morning to examine yet more evidence. Every statement had to be read, every witness — and there were hundreds — to be interviewed. He and his team alone made out 1,600 sets of papers about their investigations.
It was a coincidence, of course, that Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was thrilling London audiences at the time. Although the play was not about sexual repression, it was nearer the truth than anyone then imagined. It tells of the elderly, respectable Dr Jekyll, who discovered a potion which freed the hidden side of his personality — ‘comparative youth, the light step, the leaping pulse, and secret pleasures’ — but which also awakened in him the ‘spirit of Hell’ and sent him forth to kill in the streets of London.
Such a divided spirit was James Maybrick. Within a week of Polly Nichols’ death, the Diary finds him plotting his next murder.
I LOOK FORWARD TO TOMORROW NIGHT’S WORK, IT WILL DO ME GOOD, A GREAT DEAL OF GOOD.
Maybrick was now apparently enjoying his notoriety. The Diary records him discussing the murder of Polly Nichols with his friend George (probably Davidson). The two apparently praised the excellent Liverpool police and agreed that events such as the Whitechapel killing would not happen there, in Liverpool, where women could safely walk the streets.
Indeed they can, for I will not play my funny little games on my own doorstep. ha ha
Exhilarated, he immediately planned to repeat the thrill.
I will not allow too much time to pass before my next. Indeed I need to repeat my pleasure as soon as possible. The whoring Master can have her with pleasure and I shall have my pleasure with my thoughts and deeds. I will be clever. I will not call on Michael on my next visit. My brothers would be horrified if they knew, particularly Edwin after all did he not say I was one of the most gentlest of men he had ever encountered. I hope he is enjoying the fruits of America. Unlike I, for do I not have a sour fruit.
The gentle man with gentle thoughts will strike again soon. I have never felt better, in fact, I am taking more than ever and I can feel the strength building up within me. The head will come off next time, also the whore’s hands. Shall I leave them in various places about Whitechapel? Hunt the head and hands instead of hunt the thimble ha ha. Maybe I will take some part away with me to see if it does taste like fresh fried bacon.
The next weekend he was off to London again. This was the time when Richard Whittington Egan says Florie began to experience those ‘long lonely nights’. None of the passengers on the train that Friday September 7th 1888 would have suspected that they were travelling in the company of the most wanted man in Britain. Maybrick would have made the journey in the comfort of an upholstered maroon and gold carriage of the London and North Western Railway. In such luxury, the Diary tells us, he jotted down his first clumsy attempts at verse.
One dirty whore was looking for some gain
Another dirty whore was looking for the same.
After all the subsequent murders there are such doggerel verses packed with puzzling references of obvious significance to Maybrick himself. The rhymes become an obsession, with much scratching out and re-writing. They seem to be a rather pathetic attempt to establish some kind of superiority over Michael, the younger brother. Deep-rooted jealousy underlies the Diary.
… if Michael can succeed in rhyming verse then I can do better, a great deal better he shall not outdo me. Think you fool, think. I curse Michael for being so clever. I shall outdo him, I will see to that. A funny little rhyme shall come forth.
James Maybrick’s sense of inferiority and the desperate compulsion to write about his deeds are all part of an attempt to prove intellectual and physical prowess. The word ‘clever’ appears no fewer than 25 times in the Diary. ‘Sir Jim’ seems to be his favourite nickname. In fact Florence Aunspaugh remembered Nurse Yapp referring somewhat impudently to her master as ‘Sir Jim’.
* * *
The Ripper’s second Whitechapel victim was Annie Chapman. The daughter of a lifeguardsman, she had abandoned her husband and her two children to live by selling flowers and, occasionally, herself.
At the time of her death she was already terminally ill with a disease of the lungs and brain, but was forced to continue earning a bed for the night. She was short and stout but well proportioned and friends described her as a steady woman who drank only on Saturday nights.
At about 5.30 a.m. on September 8th, Albert Cadosh, a carpenter heard someone talking in the yard behind 29 Hanbury Street. He thought he heard a voice say ‘no’ and then a thud against the fence. But he took no notice and walked off down Hanbury street. There was not a soul about. This was just a few hundred yards from Dorset Street, where Annie was then living in Crossingham’s Lodging House. Mrs Amelia Richardson, a packing case maker; Mrs Hardyman a cats’ meat woman; Mr Walker and his simple-minded son, car man Thompson and Mr and Mrs Copsey, who were cigar makers; and the elderly John Davis, his wife and their three sons — all slept undisturbed a few feet away.
When John Davis woke up at 5.45 a.m. he went down into the yard and was horrified to see the mangled, bloody corpse of Annie Chapman. ‘What was lying beside her I can’t describe,’ he said, ‘it was part of her body.’
It did not take long for an excited crowd to gather. What they all later remembered was the grotesque spectacle of Annie’s striped woollen stockings protruding from beneath her dishevelled skirt. It was a tale to terrify friends and relations.
The murdered woman was covered with a sack and removed, leaving all her worldly goods arranged in a strangely formal manner. It seems generally agreed by most Ripper authors that there was a piece of coarse muslin, a small tooth comb and a pocket comb. There was also a scrap of envelope.
But were there any farthings? These items have become the focus of much attention and have also played their part in the debate about the authenticity of the Diary which offers its own but quite logical version of events.
THE ENVELOPE
At about 1.45 a.m. on September 8th, Timothy Donovan, manager of Crossingham’s Lodging House, had let Annie Chapman into the kitchen. William Stevens, a printer, told the police a week later that Annie had been to the hospital that day and he saw her in Crossingham’s on the day of her death. She had taken a box containing two pills from her pocket and when the box broke she wrapped them in a torn envelope which, he alleged, she had found on the floor.
According to the authors of The A-Z of Jack the Ripper, the envelope bore the crest of The Sussex Regiment, the p
ost office stamp ‘London, August 28th 1888’ and a letter M in a man’s handwriting. According to Philip Sugden, in The Complete Jack the Ripper the initials on the envelope were, indeed, an M but there was also Sp. This has been assumed to be part of the address of Spitalfields.
It was only when Paul Feldman obtained the private collection of papers belonging to the late Stephen Knight, author of Jack the Ripper, The Final Solution, that he found a document, transcribed by Knight from the original and written by Inspector Chandler. It followed his visit to the depot of the 1st Battalion of The Sussex Regiment at North Camp, Farnborough, on Sept 14th to check on the origins of the envelope. This said, ‘enquiries were made amongst the men but none could be found who corresponded with anyone living in Spitalfields or with any persons whose address commencing [sic] ‘J’. The pay books were examined and no signature resembled the initials on the envelope.’
But in Inspector Chandler’s original report at Scotland Yard a figure 2 is written in exactly the same way as the supposed J in Stephen Knight’s copy. The Inspector’s report speaks unequivocally of ‘letters’ in the plural and makes no mention of numbers. But the envelope has consequently been dismissed as insignificant … except by the Diary.
*letter M it’s true
Along with M ha ha
Will catch clever Jim
THE RINGS
The Diary of Jack the Ripper - The Chilling Confessions of James Maybrick Page 11