The Complete and Essential Jack the Ripper (11 page)

Unbeknownst to Warren, this article was in direct contravention of an 1879 ruling stating that no police officer was to publish any material without the prior consent of the Home Office. He claimed not to know about such a ruling and stated that, if he had, he would never have taken his position as chief commissioner in the first place, believing that he had a right to defend himself and his men from unfair condemnation.
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Home Secretary Henry Matthews fired off an immediate communiqué to Warren, but the chief commissioner was adamant that his duties were governed by statutes which meant the home secretary was not in any position to give orders to the police. Warren, now at the end of his tether with such interference, tendered his resignation on 8 November 1888, the day before the Lord Mayor’s Show.

Word spread about Warren’s resignation the following day, mixed with the excited reports of yet another murder, which, for its sheer brutality, was unsurpassed.

At about 10.45 on the morning of 9 November 1888 Thomas Bowyer walked from Dorset Street into the narrow, grimy passageway leading to Miller’s Court with the intention of calling upon the young resident of room 13, Mary Kelly. He had been sent by John McCarthy, who owned the shop at 27 Dorset Street where Bowyer worked as well as the various furnished rooms in Miller’s Court and who was aware that Mary owed him a considerable amount of money in unpaid rent. Bowyer, arriving at room 13, knocked on the door. As there was no reply, he knocked again, with the same result, so, not put off, he walked round to the windows, where one pane of glass was missing in the window nearest the door. Assuming Mary was in the room, he put his hand in the open window frame, pulled aside an old curtain and peered into the dark room. At first he saw what he thought were two lumps of flesh on the bedside table; looking again, he could see a body lying on the bed and a large amount of blood on the floor. Obviously shocked, he immediately ran to McCarthy’s shop by the entrance to Miller’s Court and informed his master of what he had seen.
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Once McCarthy had seen the body for himself, the two men ran to Commercial Street police station, where Inspector Walter Beck was on duty. Beck, accompanied by PC Walter Dew, followed the two men back to Dorset Street. Immediately Beck closed Miller’s Court off so that
nobody could leave or enter and sent for Dr George Bagster Phillips.

Soon news of the murder had been telegraphed to police stations across London. A number of constables were called down from Commercial Street police station and were used to guard Miller’s Court and to cordon off each end of Dorset Street. Dr Phillips arrived at 11.15 a.m. and, looking into the room, saw immediately that Mary Kelly was in no need of medical attention. Inspector Abberline arrived soon after with the word that entry to the room would have to wait for the arrival of the much-debated bloodhounds. However, the situation deteriorated into farce when the dogs were not forthcoming, and it was not until 1.30 p.m. that Inspector Thomas Arnold arrived with instructions to enter the room. John McCarthy, curiously having no key of his own, forced the door open with a pickaxe. The sheer horror of the spectacle that confronted the men as they entered was summed up by Mc-Carthy in a later interview:

The sight we saw, I cannot drive away from my mind. It looked more like the work of a devil than of a man. I had heard a great deal about the Whitechapel murders, but I declare to God I had never expected to see such a sight as this. The whole scene is more than I can describe. I hope I may never see such a sight again.
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Mary Kelly was lying in the middle of the bed, her body inclined to the left and her head resting on the left cheek. The face was unrecognizable, as the nose, cheeks, eyebrows and ears had been partly removed. Mary’s neck had been severed down to the bone and the vertebrae notched by the murder weapon. The left forearm was stretched across her abdomen,
her right arm resting on the mattress; both arms had been mutilated. The breasts had been cut off, with one being placed under her head, the other put by the right foot. The heart was ‘absent’. The whole of the surface of the abdomen and thighs had been removed and the contents of the abdomen emptied and distributed around the body: the uterus and kidneys under the head, her liver between the feet, intestines on her right side, the spleen by her left. On the bedside table parts of the abdomen and thighs had been placed. The front of the right thigh was entirely stripped of skin, and the left thigh was denuded of flesh to the knee.
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A great number of officers descended upon the scene, and at 1.50 p.m. even Robert Anderson made an appearance. A tarpaulin-covered horse-drawn cart pulled into Dorset Street at 3.50 p.m., at the sight of which great excitement ensued:

The news that the body was about to be removed caused a great rush of people from the courts running out of Dorset-street, and there was a determined effort to break the police cordon at the Commercial-street end. The crowd, which pressed round the van, was of the humblest class, but the demeanour of the poor people was all that could be described. Ragged caps were doffed and slatternly-looking women shed tears as the shell, covered with a ragged-looking cloth, was placed in the van.
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As the body was transported to the small mortuary in the grounds of St Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch, room 13 was closed, the windows boarded up, and the door padlocked. Later in the day, the police cordon was lifted as the crowds began to disperse, their curiosity exhausted.
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According to various individuals who knew her, Mary Jane
Kelly was about twenty-five years old at the time of her death, five foot seven inches tall and stout. She had blue eyes and a fair complexion; however, press reports after the murder variously gave her hair colour as blonde, ginger, light or dark.
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PC Walter Dew later said that he knew Kelly by sight and that she invariably wore a clean white apron, but never a hat.
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Sir Melville Macnaghten, later assistant chief constable of the Metropolitan Police, had heard that she was ‘said to be of considerable personal attractions’.
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But Mary Kelly’s appearance and character are as much of a mystery as her past. Much of what is known about her life came from Joseph Barnett, her former lover, and a few others. Any of it, or none of it, may be true.

She said she had been born in Limerick, Ireland, but whether she meant County Limerick or the town of Limerick is not clear. She said her father was named John Kelly and she had six or seven brothers and one sister. The family had moved to Wales when she was very young, and her father worked as foreman in an ironworks in either Caernarvonshire or Carmarthenshire, probably the latter. She had married when only sixteen years old, but her husband, a collier named Davis or Davies, was killed in a mine explosion some two or three years later. Mary then went to live with a cousin in Cardiff, where she turned to prostitution. From Cardiff she moved to London, where she said that she had worked for a French woman in a high-class bordello in the West End; she claimed that she had been dressed well, had been driven about in a carriage and had gone across to France several times in the company of ‘a gentleman’. However, she had not been enamoured by this life and had returned to London in 1884 – the time in France may have inspired her to use the alternative spelling of her name, ‘Marie Jeanette’. Her first residence on her return to London
was with a Mrs ‘Buki’
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in St George Street, near the London Docks.
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She then moved to Breezer’s Hill, off Pennington Street, staying with a ‘Mrs Carthy’,
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who later said that some time in 1886 Mary had left to live with a Joseph Fleming, and although Mrs Carthy believed that Fleming would have married Mary, the relationship soon ended.
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By 1887 Mary Kelly was living at a lodging house at 16–17 Thrawl Street. On 8 April that year – Good Friday – she met Joseph Barnett, a porter at Billingsgate Market and sometime fruit hawker, in Commercial Street. They went for a drink, arranged to meet the following day and at that meeting decided to live together. The couple took up lodgings in George Street, Spitalfields, then moved on to Little Paternoster Row, off Dorset Street. After some time in Brick Lane they acquired room 13, Miller’s Court, in January or February of 1888, paying John McCarthy a weekly rent of four shillings and sixpence.

In July or August 1888 Joseph Barnett lost his job, and the resulting financial hardship began to put a strain on the relationship. Mary may have returned to prostitution, and Barnett certainly complained that she let prostitutes use their room. As a result they had many arguments, the window of their room being broken during one of them. In the early evening of 30 October, Barnett walked out. There appears to have been no hard feelings, as he called in on her often and gave her money when he had some to spare. On Thursday 8 November he visited her at about 7.30 p.m. Mary was with Lizzie Allbrook, who left soon after he arrived, and Barnett stayed on for about half an hour. Conflicting statements by Maria Harvey and Elizabeth Foster make Mary’s movements after that difficult to ascertain,
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but the next reliable sighting of Mary
was made by a neighbour, Mary Ann Cox, a widow who lived at 5 Miller’s Court. At about 11:45 p.m. she turned into Dorset Street from Commercial Street and ahead of her she could see Mary walking with a man. They turned into the passage leading into Miller’s Court, and, as Mrs Cox turned down the passage herself, she saw them going into room 13. Mrs Cox bid Mary goodnight, Mary replying in a slurred manner that she was ‘going to have a song’. She was obviously quite drunk, and her companion was described as about thirty-six years of age, stout, with a blotchy face, small side whiskers and a thick ‘carroty’ moustache. He was dressed in shabby dark clothes, a long dark overcoat and a round, hard billycock hat. In his hand he held a quart can of beer.
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Mary could soon be heard singing ‘A Violet I Plucked From Mother’s Grave’ and half an hour later she was still singing the same song. Catherine Pickett, a flower-seller who lived in Miller’s Court, was not best pleased and was all ready to complain, but her husband stopped her.
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Elizabeth Prater, a prostitute living in a room above Mary, returned home after a night drinking at about 1.00 a.m. She loitered at the entrance to Miller’s Court for about half an hour and had a chat with John McCarthy in his shop before going up to her room. Not bothering to undress, she lay on her bed and immediately fell asleep. By now there was no sound from Kelly’s room.

At 2:00 a.m. George Hutchinson, a friend, was walking along Commercial Street from Romford when he met Mary near the junction with Thrawl Street. She asked if he could lend her some money, but Hutchinson had spent what he had in Romford. Kelly, who seemed ‘spreeish’, said goodbye and walked on towards Thrawl Street. Hutchinson’s statement to the police takes up the story:

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 a 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 hid down his head with his hat over his eyes. I stooped down and looked him in the face. He looked at me stern. They both went into Dorset Street I followed them. They both stood at the corner of the Court for about 3 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 gave her a kiss. She said she had lost her handkercheif he then pulled his handkercheif a red one out 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 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.
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Hutchinson’s rather detailed description of the man said that he was:

about 34 or 35. height 5ft6 complexion pale, dark eyes and eye lashes slight moustache, curled up each end, and hair dark, very surley looking dress long dark coat, collar and cuffs trimmed astracan. And a dark jacket under. Light waistcoat dark trousers dark felt hat turned down in the middle. Button boots and gaiters with white buttons. Wore a very thick gold chain white linen collar. Black tie with horse shoe pin. Respectable appearance walked very sharp. Jewish appearance. Can be identified.

Shortly before 4.00 a.m. Sarah Lewis, who was staying with friends at 2 Miller’s Court, heard ‘a scream like that of a young woman, which seemed to be not far away. The voice screamed out “murder”. ’ In her room above Mary’s, Elizabeth Prater was awakened by her little black kitten Diddles walking across her neck. She too heard the cry in a faint voice but, being used to such cries in the neighbourhood, she went back to sleep.
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She woke at 5.00 a.m. and went to the Ten Bells for a glass of rum. The only people she saw in the street were two or three men harnessing some horses. Mary Ann Cox heard a man’s footsteps leaving Miller’s Court at about 5.45 a.m., and at 7.30 a.m. Catherine Pickett knocked on Mary’s door with the intention of borrowing a shawl, but there was no reply. A little over four hours later, Thomas Bowyer made his shocking discovery.

Mary Kelly’s post-mortem was conducted the following day by Dr George Bagster Phillips and his assistant, Dr William Dukes, assisted and observed by Dr Frederick Gordon Brown and Dr Thomas Bond. Dr Bond believed that rigor mortis had begun between six and twelve hours after death, from which he roughly calculated that death could have taken place between 2.00 a.m. and 8.00 a.m. The remains of a meal – fish and potatoes – were found in the stomach and intestines, so reasonably assuming that Kelly had eaten no later than between 10.00 and 11.00 the previous night, time of death was narrowed down to 1.00 a.m. or 2.00 a.m., which makes the claims of two witnesses, Maurice Lewis and Caroline Maxwell, stand out as strange, almost unbelievable.

Lewis, who had known Mary for five years, claimed to have seen Mary Kelly leave her room at 8.00 a.m. and return a few moments later. Then, at 10.00 a.m., he was playing ‘pitch and toss’ in Miller’s Court, after which he and his companions
went to the Britannia. There, Lewis was certain he saw Mary drinking with some other people.
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Caroline Maxwell, of 14 Dorset Street, had an even stranger tale to tell. She saw Mary at the corner of Miller’s Court between 8.00 and 8.30 a.m. She spoke to Mary, asking her why she was up so early, to which Mary replied that she had the ‘horrors of drink’ upon her, as she had been drinking for some days previously. Mrs Maxwell suggested she go and have a drink in ‘Mrs Ringers’ (the Britannia), but Mary replied that she had already done so and had brought it up, pointing to some vomit in the road. Maxwell left, saying that she pitied her feelings. On returning from an errand in Bishopsgate, Maxwell saw Mary again at about 8.45–9.00 a.m. outside the Britannia, talking to a man. He was about thirty years of age, stout of build, about 5 feet 5 inches tall and dressed like a market porter. The statements made by Lewis and Maxwell flew in the face of medical evidence, and Mrs Maxwell was warned about her evidence by the inquest coroner, Roderick MacDonald, as it was ‘different to other people’s’.
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MacDonald’s inquest lasted a single day, in complete contrast to Wynne Baxter’s often interminably long proceedings, that being all that was needed to ascertain the circumstances of Mary Kelly’s death. The verdict was the all too familiar ‘wilful murder against person or persons unknown’.