Complete History of Jack the Ripper (19 page)

The inspector at once sent for Dr George Bagster Phillips, the divisional police surgeon, and to the police station for further assistance and an ambulance. When the constables arrived he had the passage cleared. He also ensured that no one touched the body and covered it with a piece of sacking.

Dr Phillips arrived at 6.30. Then in his fifties, he had been the local divisional surgeon for many years. Walter Dew, who knew him well, remembered him as ultra old-fashioned in dress and personal appearance. ‘He used to look,’ wrote Dew, ‘for all the world as though he had stepped out of a century-old painting.’
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But his manners were charming, he was popular with the force and he knew his business. The doctor’s inquest deposition of 13 September contains the fullest description of the appearance of Annie Chapman’s body in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street:

Phillips thought that the woman had been dead at least two hours, probably longer. He gave instructions for her to be removed and she was conveyed to the Whitechapel Mortuary on the police ambulance. The doctor and Chandler then made a careful search of the yard itself.

There were no signs of a struggle. On the back wall of the house, near where the woman’s head had lain and about eighteen inches above the ground, were about six spots of blood. They varied in size
from that of a sixpenny piece to that of a small point. There were also patches and smears of well clotted blood on the wooden palings, about fourteen inches from the ground. These too were close to the position of the head, immediately above the part where the blood had mainly flowed from the neck. Since there were no bloodstains in the passage and no others in the vicinity of the house, Dr Phillips was convinced that the murder had occurred in the yard.

A macabre discovery awaited them near the palings and close to where the feet of the dead woman had rested. It comprised a small piece of coarse muslin, a small-tooth comb and a pocket comb in a paper case. These articles appeared to have been the contents of the dead woman’s pocket and Dr Phillips did not think that they had been casually cast to the ground. ‘They had apparently been placed there in order,’ he would tell the inquest, ‘that is to say,
arranged
there.’ Near the head position was a portion of an envelope containing two pills. The back of the envelope bore a seal and the words ‘Sussex Regiment’ embossed in blue. On the other side was a letter ‘M’ in handwriting and, lower down, ‘Sp’ as if someone had written ‘Spitalfields.’ The rest of the envelope was torn away. It bore no postage stamp but there was a postmark in red: ‘London, Aug. 23, 1888.’

A few other articles were found about the yard – an empty nail box, a piece of flat steel and, about two feet from a water tap and saturated with water, a leather apron.
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Later in the morning Chandler visited the mortuary and examined the dead woman’s clothing. If, as the inspector remembered, he arrived a few minutes after seven it is unlikely that anyone had had time to tamper with the clothes. Indeed, when he got there the body still lay on the ambulance and did not look as though it had been disturbed.

The main items were a black figured jacket that came down to the knees, a brown bodice, a black skirt and a pair of lace boots, all old and dirty. Chandler’s evidence on the condition of the clothes, presented five days later to the inquest, was very loosely reported in the press but it is apparent that he discovered remarkably few bloodstains. The black jacket, which he found hooked at the top and buttoned down the front, was bloodstained about the neck, both inside and out, but otherwise bore only two or three spots of blood on the left arm. On the black skirt there was evidently only a little blood ‘on the outside, at the back, as if she had been lying in it.’ Chandler also mentions two bodices and two petticoats. The bodices
were only stained about the neck and the petticoats were stained ‘very little.’ There were no traces of blood upon the stockings. The clothing was neither cut nor torn. But the woman wore a large pocket under her skirt, tied around her waist with strings, and this was torn, both down the front and at the side. It was empty.
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Dr Phillips conducted the post-mortem examination at the Whitechapel Mortuary that afternoon. The circumstances were difficult. When he arrived he was discomfited to discover that two nurses from the Whitechapel Union Infirmary had already stripped and partially washed the corpse and that it lay ready for him on the table. The mortuary itself was simply a shed belonging to the workhouse, lacking in proper facilities, and Robert Mann, the old keeper, a pauper inmate.

No report or post-mortem notes by Dr Phillips now exist. He presented his evidence, of course, to the inquest – on 13 and 19 September, but no official record of the inquest depositions has survived. For our knowledge of his findings, therefore, we must largely trust to press notices of the inquest and this is most unfortunate.

When Phillips first appeared before the inquest he was reluctant, as we shall see, to divulge all the details of his examination, especially with regard to the abdominal mutilations, and Coroner Baxter excused him for the time being from so doing. Upon his recall six days later the coroner obliged him to present the suppressed evidence in full but the press considered his remarks upon the abdominal injuries unfit for publication and deleted that part of his testimony from their reports. There is thus an important gap in the press coverage of the medical evidence. Curiously enough, however, the problem confronting the historian is not so much what the press refused to report as what it did print. The details of the abdominal mutilations can be accurately recovered from other sources. But for the rest of Phillips’ testimony we are virtually dependent upon the newspapers and they edited it so arbitrarily, and reported it in such vague and ambiguous language, as to render parts of it almost unintelligible. Our reconstruction of Annie Chapman’s injuries, then, must necessarily be provisional, pending the discovery of more exact evidence.
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The doctor discovered a bruise over the right temple and two bruises, each the size of a man’s thumb, on the fore part of the top of the chest. He did not think that they were recent and he
was quite right because Annie had sustained them in her fight with Eliza Cooper. He found more recent marks, however, on the face and about the sides of the jaw. Below the lower jaw on the left side, one and a half to two inches below the lobe of the ear, were three scratches. They ran in the opposite
direction to the incisions in the throat. There were also evidently two recent bruises on the right side of the head and neck, one on the cheek and the other at a point corresponding with the scratches on the left side.

Phillips deduced from these that the woman had been seized by the chin before her throat had been cut. And the coroner’s questions prompted him to express the view that she had been partially suffocated:

There were the distinct marks of one or more rings on the proximal phalanx of the ring finger. An abrasion over the head of the proximal phalanx suggested that the killer had wrenched the rings from her finger.

The throat had been ferociously severed from left to right. The
Telegraphy
, reporting Phillips’ testimony on this point, stated that ‘the incisions of the skin indicated that they had been made from the left side of the neck on a line with the angle of the jaw, carried entirely round and again in front of the neck, and ending at a point about midway between the jaw and the sternum or breast bone on the right hand.’ This is difficult to interpret. It might be taken to mean that there were two cuts, one along the line of the jaw and completely encircling the throat, the other commencing at the front of the neck and terminating on the right side between the levels of the lower jaw and the breast bone. The doctor also intimated that the murderer
had attempted and failed to cut off the woman’s head. He discerned two distinct clean cuts on the left side of the spine, parallel to each other and half an inch apart. ‘The muscular structures between the side processes of bone of the vertebrae,’ he said, ‘had an appearance as if an attempt had been made to separate the bones of the neck.’

Phillips held that the woman had been partially suffocated before death and that death had resulted from syncope, the sudden loss of blood supply to the brain caused by the severance of the throat. The abdominal mutilations, he contended, had been inflicted after death. Albeit the coroner compelled him, upon his recall, to describe the abdominal injuries the press censored the details. Fortunately this gap in the record can be filled from two other sources.

An unsigned piece in the
Lancet
of 29 September set down the gist of Dr Phillips’ description of the injuries to the abdomen and indicated why he thought he had detected professional skill in their execution. It tells us that ‘the abdomen had been entirely laid open; that the intestines, severed from their mesenteric attachments, had been lifted out of the body, and placed by the shoulder of the corpse; whilst from the pelvis the uterus and its appendages, with the upper portion of the vagina and the posterior two-thirds of the bladder, had been entirely removed. No trace of these parts could be found, and the incisions were cleanly cut, avoiding the rectum, and dividing the vagina low enough to avoid injury to the cervix uteri. Obviously the work was that of an expert – of one, at least, who had such knowledge of anatomical or pathological examinations as to be enabled to secure the pelvic organs with one sweep of a knife . . .’ Chief Inspector Swanson also summarised the mutilations in his report of 19 October. ‘Examination of the body,’ he wrote, ‘showed that the throat was severed deeply, incision jagged. Removed from, but attached to body, & placed above right shoulder were a flap of the wall of belly, the whole of the small intestines & attachments. Two other portions of wall of belly & “Pubes” were placed above left shoulder in a large quantity of blood . . . The following parts were missing:- part of belly wall including navel; the womb, the upper part of vagina & greater part of bladder.’

It was Phillips’ opinion that the injuries to the throat and abdomen had probably been inflicted with the same knife. He told the inquest that it must have been a very sharp weapon, probably with a thin, narrow blade at least six to eight inches long. It was not a bayonet and the type of knife commonly used by cobblers and in the leather
trades would not be long enough in the blade. A slaughterman’s knife, however, well ground down, might fit the bill. Baxter asked whether it could have been such an instrument as a medical man might employ in post-mortem examinations. ‘The ordinary post-mortem case,’ replied Phillips, ‘perhaps does not contain such a weapon.’ Swanson credited the doctor with substantially the same views: ‘The Dr gives it as his opinion . . . that the knife used was not an ordinary knife, but such as a small amputating knife, or a well ground slaughterman’s knife, narrow & thin, sharp & blade of six to eight inches in length.’

Phillips thought that the murderer had demonstrated anatomical knowledge and surgical skill in extracting the viscera. ‘There were indications of it,’ he said on 13 September. ‘My own impression is that anatomical knowledge was only less displayed or indicated in consequence of haste.’ Six days later he reaffirmed this view: ‘I myself could not have performed all the injuries I saw on that woman, and effect them, even without a struggle, [in] under a quarter of an hour. If I had done it in a deliberate way, such as would fall to the duties of a surgeon, it would probably have taken me the best part of an hour. The whole inference seems to me that the operation was performed to enable the perpetrator to obtain possession of these parts of the body.’

Hanbury Street lay within the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police’s H Division. The divisional head of CID was Edmund Reid, who had investigated the Tabram murder, but he was now enjoying his annual leave and the conduct of the Chapman inquiry fell to Chandler and Detective Sergeants Thick and Leach.

The division was also anxious to secure Abberline’s services. ‘I would respectfully suggest,’ wrote Acting Superintendent West on the day of the murder, ‘that Inspector Abberline, Central, who is well acquainted with H Division, be deputed to take up this inquiry as I believe he is already engaged in the case of the Buck’s Row murder which would appear to have been committed by the same person as the one in Hanbury Street.’
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Abberline, in fact, had been instructed that very morning to assist the Chapman investigation.