Mayhem (14 page)

East London Observer
–
Saturday, 10 November 1888

The WHITECHAPEL HORRORS

Another Horrible Tragedy.
The Head Cut Off.
Frightful Mutilation.
The Bloodhounds at Work.
Latest Details.

… that the work is that of the murderer of Tabram, Smith, Chapman, Eddowes and Stride is only too evident. Quite apart from the extraordinary coincidence of the date – it being on the 8th of September that the Hanbury-street victim was murdered, and about the same period of the previous month that Tabram was also butchered – the similarity and ghastly nature of the wounds, and the class of women, all point to the same hand. Another curious coincidence is that although the window of the opposite house can almost be touched from that of the room in which the victim lies, no unusual noise or scream was heard by the occupants either of that room or of any of the adjoining houses.

New York Times
–
10 November, 1888

“THE PARNELL INQUIRY AND ANOTHER BUTCHERY BY COMMERCIAL CABLE FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.”

The discovery to-day of the seventh Whitechapel murder, this time believed to have been committed in broad daylight and involving the most terrible wholesale mutilation it is possible to imagine, overshadows all other topics in the London mind to-night. Bloodhounds are out, but I am unable to learn at this hour that they have discovered anything. The conclusion is now universal that the assassin is a periodic lunatic, who, unless detected at once, is likely to commit a fresh series of crimes within a few days before his frenzy passes away.

17

London. November 9, 1888

Dr Bond

Whatever thoughts had been filling my mind, they vanished in an instant as I stared at the wreck of a human being who was lying so devastated on the cheap sodden mattress. I could not have recalled my own name, had it been demanded. It had rained heavily throughout the night and the stench of damp clung to me. I wondered if it would now for ever be associated with this gory tableau in my sensory memory. I sincerely hoped not; it rained a lot in London, and I had no desire to be reminded of this more often than I could help in my future years.

‘Inside?’ I said, eventually. It was the thought that disturbed me most. ‘He’s working inside now?’

‘They call it “Do-as-you-please Street”, did you know that?’ Bagster Philips said. ‘It seems Whitechapel Jack did just that.’

‘Who is she?’ I asked. From what was left there was no way I could ascertain if she had been fine-looking, or even if she were young or old. He might as well have cut her head clean off for what was left of her face, made her simply a collection of pieces of meat, as the
Thames Killer did. But this was not the work of that man, and I did not want to think on him – there was madness enough on the bed in front of me without my mind wandering towards the priest and his words. I had been only once to the dens since that night, and I had chosen a tiny one, normally catering solely for Chinamen, lascars and the like, and I had kept my eyes firmly shut as I lay on my cot. Since then, I had resorted to the laudanum from my cabinet when the need to sleep became too great. But try as I might, too often I found my thoughts turning to the wickedness gripping my city – wickedness such as these terrible deeds of Jack’s.

‘Her name is Mary Jane Kelly, apparently, and she has been renting this room a year or so. In her twenties or thereabouts.’

‘How long have you been here?’ The inspectors on the scene, Beck and Abberline, had both been outside when I arrived, talking to a photographer who was no doubt waiting for us to be done before finishing up his own work. He’d looked green, and now I had seen what he had been faced with, I did not blame him in the least. Abberline had nodded me in, and we had not stopped to exchange pleasantries. He was a sensible chap and would let us work before asking questions – and he had his own hands full managing his men, who were gathering information from any witnesses and neighbours who might have heard or seen something, or had some idea of the victim’s last movements.

‘I got here at quarter past eleven,’ Bagster said. ‘She was found at quarter to – behind on her rent to the sum of twenty-nine shillings, and the landlord sent his man to collect it. He peered through the broken pane’ – he gestured in its direction – ‘and got quite a shock, I should imagine.’ He smiled at me from behind his moustaches. Dr George Bagster Philips, the Police Surgeon for Whitechapel, was a strange character, I thought, and not for the first time in our association. He was popular with both the police and the public, and instantly recognisable from his somewhat old-fashioned choice of dress. He looked as if he had stepped out of a portrait from many decades past, and as he moved into middle age he showed no sign of wishing to catch up with the present day – not that this mattered, however, for he was a charming fellow, and I had no doubts as to his professional skills.

‘He ran back to get the landlord, a chap called McCarthy – owns a shop on Dorset Street – and he sent his man off to fetch the police, who called me in. I took a look through the window – any man could see there was nothing I could do for this poor creature, so we waited for those bloodhounds we were promised for the next of these terrible events.’ He laughed a little at his small joke. ‘As it transpired, the dogs had been sent on cases elsewhere and were no longer available.
Two hours
wasted. You can imagine how well that went down with our inspectors. Not that the dogs would
have been much use after all the trampling around out there. I think everyone from a mile around us has been to see what’s in this room.’ His voice grew soft. ‘Damned fools. Why would anyone want to see something like this if they didn’t have to?’

‘They should have asked for Jasper Waring and his dog,’ I muttered. This woman had little enough chance of justice if the lack of evidence from the previous murders was anything to go by; she certainly did not need any incompetence caused by too many levels of command to make things worse.

‘Ah yes,’ Bagster said, ‘from your Torso boy? Found the limbs the police dogs missed, didn’t he?’ He looked at me and then sighed. ‘The city’s the colour of Claret this year, isn’t it?’

The image made me think of the priest. Although I was quite sure he was a madman, I was finding him difficult to shake from my thoughts. Perhaps it was because in my mind he and the overwhelming darkness of men’s deeds had become wrapped up together in my thoughts. I had hoped he would give me some answers, and now when I lay in my sleepless bed, I imagined him in the dens and walking the streets of the rougher parts of the city looking at the spaces around men’s heads in order to find his ‘
Upir
’, whatever that might be. I hoped that he never did, for the sake of whatever unfortunate man he decided was its host. The encounter would not end well for that stranger, I was sure of it.

‘Thomas?’ Bagster was watching me carefully. ‘You look a little off-colour. Not this, I presume?’

‘No.’ I could answer him quite truthfully. ‘It is a shocking sight, certainly, but I am too long in the tooth for it to make me ill. I have been slightly unwell myself – I am tired.’

‘I trust you are taking care of yourself?’

‘I do my best.’ I looked again at our Mary Jane Kelly, who would no longer have to worry about her unpaid rent. Another wasted life. ‘How many of these have you done now?’

‘I was at the scene for Stride and Chapman, and the autopsies for Chapman, Stride and Eddowes. None of them were like this, however.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Here he had time.’ The rage that had been taken out on Kelly’s body disturbed me. It was frenzied, there was no doubt about that, and in sharp contrast to how her clothes – all aside from the chemise that clung to what remained of her form – had been neatly folded on a chair, no doubt only moments before he attacked her.

‘Let’s see what we can find out, shall we?’ Bagster said. ‘And then we can let that poor photographer chap finish his job, if his guts have recovered. I doubt he’s taken portraits like these before.’

We set to work, and for a while my mind was wholly occupied with the science of analysing the dead. At some point Inspector Abberline appeared in the corner of the room behind us, but he remained
silent, allowing us to work without the interruption of questions. Bagster and I muttered quietly as we studied the mutilated remains, confirming each other’s suggestions or observations as we tried to identify the wrecked human anatomy.

Only when we stepped back and looked up did Abberline come forward. ‘What can you tell me?’ he said. His voice was calm and precise, as was the man himself. He could have been a bank manager or some such, with his manner and eye for precision. I respected him, as did Bagster Philips; they must have come to know each other quite well over the recent weeks.

‘He’s taken off the whole surface of her thighs and abdomen.’ I indicated the mangled flesh on the legs, that were spread slightly and bent at the knees a little, as if in mockery of the way she had earned her living in life. ‘Her abdominal cavity is empty, and as you can see, her intestines are there to her right. Both breasts have been removed, and he placed one under her head – along with her kidneys and uterus – and the other is there beside her right foot. That is her liver between her feet. Her arms have several jagged cuts, and as for her face …’

‘I can see that for myself,’ Abberline cut in. ‘Dear God, he really is a monster.’

‘No,’ I said. I was done with talk of monsters and creatures. ‘This is the work of a man – a monstrous one, perhaps, but a man all the same.’

‘Can you tell me how she died?’

In terror
was the answer that rose up in my mind, but luckily Bagster was quicker to speak.

‘I would say his normal method: he slashed her neck. Severed the carotid artery. Before he got to work on the rest of her.’

‘That would explain how no one seems to have heard anything.’ Abberline stared again at the body. ‘What about time of death?’

‘I would say she was killed somewhere between two and eight this morning,’ I said. ‘Rigor mortis has started to set in. Although from the state of the grate, it looks like he had quite a fire going. The heat could put my assessment out slightly.’

‘Why did he light the fire?’ Bagster asked.

‘Light.’ Abberline sounded tired. I imagined he was as exhausted as I. ‘There was only one candle in here; he would have wanted to see properly as he did all this.’

‘Have you found out much about her?’ I asked. After the anonymity of the river killer’s victims there was suddenly something comforting – if haunting – about having an identity to go with the corpse.

‘We’re getting there. It’ll take a while to sift through all the information and get a clear sense of her movements. She was drunk in the Britannia last night at around eight or nine. The rest I’ll need to piece together later.’

‘This is only two or three hundred yards from
where the Nicholls murder happened, isn’t it?’ Bagster asked.

‘That’s right.’ Abberline sighed. ‘He’s certainly partial to the streets of Whitechapel – but I know them well myself. I intend to scour them for him.’

Our work done, we followed Abberline out into the small courtyard. A young policeman was talking to the photographer as we joined them.

‘Remember, get pictures of her eyes,’ he was saying earnestly. ‘We might see the reflection of her killer in them.’

‘I thought you were supposed to be helping with the cordon, Detective Constable Dew?’ Abberline said.

‘I just thought …’ the young man said, his eyes sparkling with excitement.

‘Don’t think. That’s my job. Do as I tell you.’

‘And I can assure you, young man,’ Bagster added, ‘that I have looked into her eyes. There is nothing to help you there.’

Only slightly cowed, but clearly irritated, the young man scurried back down the narrow arched alley that led from Miller’s Court to Dorset Street.

‘See the killer in their eyes,’ Bagster snorted. ‘What next?’

I smiled and shook my head, but something in the thought chilled my soul. Reflections. Shadows. Things just out of sight. Once again I was reminded of the priest and his urgent search for something supernatural.

‘I heard him tell Beck he knew the girl,’ Abberline said. ‘Said he’d seen her often on the Commercial Road. Said she was a pretty thing, never wore a hat.’ He paused. ‘That detail was a nice touch.’

‘You don’t believe him?’ I said.

‘Our young Detective Constable may well go far in the Force. He’s ambitious, determined to catch criminals – but he does like to embellish his role in these things.’ He glanced back through the broken window to where the photographer was now cautiously setting up his equipment. ‘I’ll get the body over to you when I can. Probably an hour or so. Then we’ll get this place boarded up, try and stop it becoming an exhibit before it has to.’

‘We should go and prepare for the post mortem,’ Bagster said.

I looked once more at the room behind us. I didn’t need to peer in; I had seen enough for the image to stay with me for quite some time. ‘I wonder if you could let me see all your records on the others?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ he answered. ‘But it won’t make for pretty reading.’

*

I didn’t even attempt sleep that night. My head was full of wild thoughts of murder and blood, images no doubt fuelled by my craving for opium, and I wondered if the distillation the priest was partial to was so much stronger, that it had made my dependency worse. The visions were calling to me, I was sure of it. As
much as the blank spaces it had left in my memory frightened me, the clarity of thought I had had during the experience was a lure in itself. It was only the lingering shock at the priest’s madness that kept me away. Whatever illness the poor man suffered, the drug could only have made it worse, and I had no desire to follow into that fate myself. My anxiety attacks and insomnia were sometimes enough to lead me to half-believe myself mad already; I needed no further spurs into delusion.