I was forced to stop myself from indulging in my pleasure by taking the largest dose I have ever done. The pain that night has burnt into my mind. I vaguly recall putting a handkerchief in my mouth to stop my cries. I believe I vomited several times. The pain was intolerable, as I think I shudder. No more.
I am convinced God placed me here to kill all whores, for he must have done so, am I still not here. Nothing will stop me now. The more I take the stronger I become. Michael was under the impression that once I had finished my business I was to return to Liverpool that very day. And indeed I did one day later. ha ha.
So it was on Friday, November 9th, the world was sickened by the unbelievable bestiality of one of the most depraved murders ever committed.
GOD PLACED ME HERE TO KILL ALL WHORES.
Mary Jane Kelly was a young prostitute. Of uncertain origin, she was possibly born in Ireland and brought up in Wales. At about 25 years old she was almost the same age as Florence Maybrick and like Florie, but unlike the other victims of the Ripper, she was pretty. Her resemblance to Maybrick’s wife may well have fuelled his anger when he spotted her walking down Commercial Street past Thrawl Street, in what the local vicar the Reverend Samuel Barnett called ‘the wicked quarter mile’. In the person of Mary Jane Kelly there was even greater incentive to kill. She is the only one of the victims mentioned by name in the Diary.
Mary Jane had spent the afternoon and early evening of Thursday November 8th with friends. She was looking forward to the Lord Mayor’s Show next day when all the ceremonial pageantry the City of London could muster would be on parade for the inauguration of the new Lord Mayor. But Mary Jane Kelly never reached the show.
Early that evening her young friend, Lizzie Albrook, dropped in for a chat at 13 Miller’s Court, where Mary rented a tiny, 12’ x 10’ partitioned ground floor back room. As Lizzie left, Mary Kelly’s poignant parting words to the younger girl were; ‘Whatever you do, don’t you do wrong and turn out as I have.’ Mary’s movements from then on are uncertain.
She was in musical mood that night, disturbing the neighbours by singing loudly in her room. The tune they remembered was a typically sentimental Victorian ballad, ‘Only A Violet I Plucked From My Mother’s Grave’.
At about 2 a.m. on November 9th George Hutchinson, a labourer, of the Victoria Home in Commercial Street, was returning from Romford in Essex. Not until two days after the inquest did Hutchinson report to the police. He told them then that on the morning of the murder he had seen a man approach Kelly, who was looking for trade. Hutchinson was probably a former client so knew her well: he sometimes gave her money, but this time he had none left.
Just before I got to Flower and Dean Street, I met the murdered woman, Kelly… A man coming in the opposite direction to Kelly, tapped her on the shoulder and said something to her they both burst out laughing. I heard her say alright to him and the man said you will be alright for what I have told you: he then placed his right hand around her shoulders. He also had a kind of small parcel in his left hand, with a kind of strap round it. I stood against the lamp of the Queen’s Head Public House, and watched him… They both then came past me and the man hung down his head with his hat over his eyes. I stooped down and looked him in the face. He looked at me stern…
Hutchinson’s description of the man is suspiciously detailed considering the time of night. Besides, he did not make his statement until Monday 12th November. Nevertheless Abberline believed him. The police wanted to keep the information to themselves but Hutchinson spoke to the press and immediately the whole country became aware of the new suspect. Indeed, Jack the Ripper was now international news.
He was, said Hutchinson, of a dark ‘foreign’ appearance, respectable, wearing a long dark coat with astrakhan collar and cuffs; a dark jacket and trousers; light waistcoat, dark felt hat ‘turned down in the middle’; button-boots with spats; a linen collar; and a black tie with a horseshoe pin. A thick gold chain was displayed over his waistcoat and he carried a small package. He was 34 or 35 years old, 5’ 6” tall, with a pale complexion and a slight moustache curled up at the ends.
Horseshoe tiepins and thick gold chains were popular at the time — Michael Maybrick appears in various magazine photographs dressed in such style. Hutchinson continued:
They both went into Dorset Street. I followed them. They both stood at the corner of the court for about three minutes. He said something to her. She said alright my dear come along you will be comfortable. He then placed his arm on her shoulder and she gave him a kiss. She said she had lost her handkerchief. He then pulled his handkerchief a red one and gave it to her. They both then went up the Court together. I then went to the court to see if I could see them but I could not. I stood there for about three quarters of an hour to see if they came out. They did not so I went away.
If Hutchinson’s story was correct in essence, even if not in detail, the man he saw with Mary Jane Kelly was probably her killer. Was it Maybrick?
The police were told that neighbours thought they heard the cry of ‘murder’ around 4 a.m. They did nothing, for such cries were common in a violent area and were usually ignored. So there is now no way of knowing what happened or why… except, again, through the Diary.
We know that, in the weeks before the butchery of Mary Kelly, Maybrick had hit his wife — a fact that can be verified by reading through the mass of evidence surrounding Florie’s trial. It gave him a great deal of pleasure. His drug taking was escalating and there is a hint that brother Michael was suspicious. There have been previous references to James’ euphemistic description of his murderous outings as ‘sleepwalking’. Now he writes:
I have had several letters from Michael. In all he enquires about my health and asked in one if my sleepwalking had resumed… I have informed him it has not.
He again mentions his cold hands — just as earlier he spoke of his love of warmth and sunshine. This constant feeling of chill and the involuntary rubbing of clammy hands are a reminder of those little known symptoms of arsenic poisoning as described in the Materia Medica.
The pain of that night before the murder, spent at Michael’s apartment was, as we know, unbearable. But in the Diary there is no other build up, no creative scene setting or foretaste of the terrible events about to happen. The Diary continues when James Maybrick is back in Liverpool — when the re-living and writing of Mary Kelly’s last moments seem to offer the greatest thrill of all. What went before seems to have been blotted from his mind.
I have read about my latest, my God the thoughts, the very best. I left nothing of the bitch, nothing. I placed it all over the room, time was on my hands, like the other whore I cut off the bitches nose, all of it this time. I left nothing of her face to remember her by. She reminded me of the whore. So young unlike I. I thought it a joke when I cut her breasts off, kissed them for a while. The taste of blood was sweet, the pleasure was overwhelming… Left them on the table with some of the other stuff. …she riped like a ripe peach…
Is this writing really that of a forger indulging perverted pleasures by proxy or is there not the chilling ring of truth?
When Thomas Bowyer and John McCarthy looked through the window of Mary Kelly’s cramped hovel on that Friday November 9th, they saw what they described as ‘more like the work of a devil than of a man’.
There was panic. Dr George Bagster Phillips and Inspector Abberline were quickly on the scene but no one forced the locked door until 1.30 p.m. when John McCarthy broke it down with a pick handle.
Even at the inquest three days later Dr Phillips spared the jury many details of what he had seen, although an official photographer recorded the nightmare for posterity. Dr Phillips’ early observation that Mary Kelly was wearing a ‘skimpy shift’ was correct but contradicted the post-mortem report that she was naked. Not till 1987 was the full catalogue of the horror discovered. Then the police released notes, written on November 10th 1888 after the post-mortem by Dr Thomas Bond, police surgeon to A Division. These notes sai
d that the breasts had been left, ‘one under the head and the other by the right foot.’ According to Dr Thomas Bond too, ‘the viscera were found in various parts.’
The fact that the Diary contradicts these two reports has been taken by many of its critics as proof of forgery. They claim that a forger — then or now — could have scoured the newspapers and found that the Pall Mall Gazette, the Times and the Star of November 10th and the Pall Mall Budget of November 15th reported that the breasts were on the table. It is thought by some that, even in the midst of that carnage, driven by frenzy beyond belief, the murderer would have recalled exactly what he did with the mangled remains.
But would he? And are forgers always so diligent in their research? Even Philip Sugden’s interpretation is open to discussion. The Diary does not say, as he claims, ‘various parts of her body were strewn all over the room.’ Its actual words are:
I placed it all over the room… Regret I did not take any of it away with me it is supper time I could do with a kidney or two ha ha.
We cannot be sure what ‘it’ refers to. But, since poor Mary Kelly’s remains were indeed swept up and removed in a bucket to the mortuary it is possible to speculate. ‘It’ could also refer to the heart.
The last words of Dr Bond’s notes make the simple, dramatic statement: ‘the Pericardium was open below and the Heart absent.’ There was never any reliable explanation of where the heart could have been. Philip Sugden believes it was taken from the room.
The press issued the usual contradictory statements but most significantly Dr Phillips and Dr Roderick Macdonald the district coroner went back to Mary Kelly’s room and sifted through the ashes of the fire in which clothing had been burned. It seems they were looking for a part of the body that could not be located at the autopsy but apparently found nothing. So where was the heart and what motive did the murderer have for removing it?
Paul Feldman suggests he may have used it to write the initials on Mary Kelly’s room wall.
An initial here an initial there
will tell of the whoring mother
A curious and controversial photograph was taken for the police and first appeared the following year in a book Vacher L’Eventreur et les Crimes Sadiques by J.A.E. Lacassagne. In 1976 Stephen Knight’s Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution reproduced the picture with enough clarity to show that there appeared to be some initials on the wall partition behind Mary Kelly’s bed, although they were not pointed out until 1988. Then, crime researcher Simon Wood mentioned them to Paul Begg.
As part of his own investigations into the Diary, Paul Feldman went to Direct Communications in Chiswick, where computer technology made possible a more detailed examination of the photograph. The initials could then be seen clearly in the grime of the partition — a large M, and to one side a fainter F.
The Diary does not refer to the heart at the time of the murder. Only at the end of his life, in despair, does Maybrick utter the words that could equally be applied to Mary Kelly (the only victim for whom he shows remorse) and to his wife Florie. He offers no explanation. Only the agonised cry ‘no heart no heart’.
David Forshaw says of Maybrick’s frame of mind at this time:
While we know little, so far, about Maybrick’s parents, we know from studies of other serial killers that there is often deep resentment beneath superficial filial love.
At this precise moment the profound sense of inadequacy which was the true inspiration of Maybrick’s teasing, boastful writing as well as of the murders, came violently to the surface. Mary Jane Kelly took the place of Florie ‘the whoring mother’ of the Diary and perhaps, of all mothers.
* * *
After the Kelly murder, alleged sightings of the killer — and especially the evidence of George Hutchinson — had provided the most detailed description so far. Indeed, Hutchinson told press reporters that he had gone out hunting the murderer on the following Sunday November 11th and despite a choking fog was almost certain he had seen him in Middlesex Street.
Paul Feldman discovered that on November 19th, after Hutchinson’s original statement, the press again threw the spotlight on Liverpool: ‘The Whitechapel murderer is supposed to travel up from Manchester, Birmingham or some other town in the Midlands for the purpose of committing the crimes. Detectives have been engaged in Willesden and Euston watching the arrival of trains from the Midlands and the North.’
It is strange that of all the places and ports in Britain through which the Ripper might have escaped, the police focused on Liverpool and London.
There had been an enormous escalation of police activity — over one hundred officers were now on the job. Then, on the very day of Mary Kelly’s death, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Charles Warren, resigned. There was no direct connection, although there had been ongoing and unhelpful hostility between Sir Charles and Home Secretary Henry Matthews. He had also become increasingly unpopular with the press, following a great deal of social unrest and in particular his use of troops against the unemployed on Bloody Sunday, November 13th, 1887. He was succeeded by James Monro, former head of the CID with whom he had also quarrelled.
The burden on the police was horrendous. They received hundreds of letters. One of the later examples was published — on November 19th. It said:
Dear Boss,
I am now in the Queen’s Park Estate in the Third Avenue. I am out of red ink at present, but it won’t matter for once. I intend doing another here next Tuesday night about ten o’clock. I will give you a chance to catch me. I shall have check trousers on and a black coat and vest so look out. I have done one not yet found out, so look out, so keep your eyes open. — Yours Jack the Ripper.
Queen’s Park Estate is in the area of Michael Maybrick’s London apartments far from Whitechapel.
* * *
We were now entering an exciting period of richly unresearched material. This centred around the missing writings of Dr Thomas Dutton (1854–1935) whose practice in 1888 was listed in directories at 130 Aldgate High Street. Dr Dutton was, according the the authors of The Jack the Ripper A-Z a man of wide interests and considerable ability. He is said to have studied the Ripper correspondence and selected 34 letters which he believed to be in the same hand. Throughout his professional life he compiled a random, handwritten collection of notes, thoughts and impressions on all the major crimes and always claimed that he knew the identity of Jack the Ripper. These notes entitled Chronicles of Crime were given to a Miss Hermione Dudley before he died and both she and they vanished without trace. Research has failed to find any reference to Miss Dudley’s life or death.
The only source for some of the many interesting observations allegedly arising from the Chronicles of Crime is author the late Donald McCormick who met Dr Dutton in 1932 when the doctor was living the life of an elderly recluse. Mr McCormick took notes from the Chronicles but put them away so that they did not see the light of day until after World War II. These notes in turn were lost.
Cynics say that the Dutton material did not exist or even, as has been fiercely denied, that Mr McCormick made up the whole story. They are skating on thin ice. Attempts to discredit Dutton tend to founder. Racehorse breeder, Terry Saxby, who lives in Australia and is researching yet another Ripper book, has uncovered some original archive material that proves at least one of Dr Dutton’s theories was correct. There was a link between four of the murdered women. They had all, at one time, lodged at the St Stephen’s workhouse off the Walworth Road, Southwark. This being so, we should all be wary of dismissing Dutton’s other work too lightly.
Dr Dutton died, alone, in 1935 and was found to have been living in a state of squalid neglect. The newspapers at the time spoke highly of his professional life and also commented that the police removed a quantity of papers.
Some of the content of Chronicles of Crime was published in Donald McCormick’s The Identity of Jack the Ripper (1959). In particular, we were concerned with a mysterious rhyme, ‘Eight Little Whores’. There was goo
d reason. After the murder of Mary Kelly there is an entry in the Diary which reads:
*One whore in heaven
*two whores side by side,
*three whores all have died
*four
According to Donald McCormick’s now lost record, Dr Dutton copied the rhyme from one of the 34 attested letters which he had identified as all being in the same hand. Whether it was a creation of the Ripper himself or whether he had plagiarised an already well-known Victorian verse was not clear.
Eight little whores, with no hope of heaven,
Gladstone may save one, then there’ll be seven.
Seven little whores begging for a shilling,
One stays in Henage [sic] Court, then there’s a killing.
Six little whores, glad to be alive,
One sidles up to Jack, then there are five.
Four and whore rhyme aright, so do three and me,
I’ll set the town alight ere there are two.
Two little whores, shivering with fright,
Seek a cosy doorway, in the middle of the night,
Jack’s knife flashes, then there’s but one,
The Diary of Jack the Ripper - The Chilling Confessions of James Maybrick Page 15