The Real Mary Kelly (13 page)

Frederick George Abberline is one of the best-known figures in the Ripper story, having played a role in almost every dramatic portrayal – in fact and fiction – of the events of 1888. He joined the Metropolitan Police in 1863 at the age of 20 and was a high flyer from the start
⁹¹
. He was promoted to sergeant within two years and soon transferred to the newly formed detective branch later to be known as the Criminal Investigation Department or CID. He was stationed in Whitechapel at Leman Street police station for 14 years before being transferred in 1887 to Scotland Yard. With his knowledge of the area and the local villains, when the killings of 1888 started he was a natural choice to be sent back to be put in charge of the investigations on the ground. He was later commended for his discreet handling of the notorious Cleveland Street homosexual brothel scandal that erupted in 1889 and which was one of the causes of Queen Victoria’s grandson, Prince Albert Victor, figuring in so many of the later conspiracy theories surrounding the Ripper saga. With the possible exception of Abberline’s predecessor, Jack Whicher, probably no other factual detective of the Victorian era is better known
⁹²
.

Neither of the men in the picture however looks much like contemporary drawings of Abberline, of whom no known photographs exist. Abberline had mutton chop whiskers which connected with a neatly trimmed moustache, whereas the figure in the
Pictorial News
illustration has no moustache and is wearing a monocle in his right eye. The other, bearded, figure, who is presumably meant to be Helson, is partly obscured by Mrs. Amelia Palmer (mistakenly called Farmer in the picture), a fellow resident of the Dorset Street doss house from which Annie Chapman had sallied forth for the last time in the early hours of Saturday morning. She is standing at the table facing the coroner as she gives evidence of identification. Next to her, seated at the table with his back to the viewer, is a bearded man who is probably Mr. Banks, the coroner’s officer.

But it is one of the remaining figures in the picture who is perhaps the most interesting. Three men are seated at a table in the foreground, their backs to the artist. They are gentlemen of the press. There were about 20 or 30 reporters present in the court that day according to accounts in the newspapers, contrasting with the two or three that had attended Martha Tabram’s inquest only a month earlier. The three that are visible are seated in the front row and only the middle
one can be seen with any clarity. His head is turned half to the right as he appears to stare intently at the jury. He is a mild looking, bespectacled man, clean-shaven except for the bushy sideburns that most men of the time wore. As one of the local reporters, Francis may have known Mr. Banks well enough to ensure that a seat in the front row was reserved for him on each day of the inquest, or he may have queued sufficiently early to secure one for himself. If, as seems likely, he was the reporter for the
East London Advertiser
who had used the Americanism ‘rouse’ for the more usual English ‘ruse’ just a week before, then it is probable that he was sitting in the first row of the press benches that day for, when writing about the evidence of identification given by Fountain Smith, Annie Chapman’s brother, he wrote, ‘He gave his evidence in such a low tone as to be all but inaudible two yards off.’ The distance between the reporters in the front row and the witness in the picture does indeed appear to be about 6ft.

So is this Francis? There are no other known pictures of him but there are several of his father. One of them, an engraving done from a photograph of him allegedly taken when he was 80 years old, was used as the frontispiece to his memoirs published in 1885. It shows a man who looks at least 20 years younger than his stated age with a high, domed forehead, a receding hairline, clean-shaven but with the characteristic bushy sideburns of the time and small, wire-rimmed glasses. Another shows E.T. at the age of 88, now with a Messianic beard below his chin but still looking much younger than his stated age, an undoubted advantage since it was used to illustrate one of his many tracts on how to achieve longevity through the use of the health salts that he sold by mail order. In all of his portraits he bears a striking resemblance to the younger man in the courtroom picture with one important difference. Whereas the father in all his portraits wears a resolute, almost overbearing expression, his son, if it is him, appears mild, thoughtful and even sensitive. Apart from that and an age difference of perhaps 30 or 40 years they could be the same man. Are we looking at pictures of the Craigs, father and son?

If so it does not, of course, mean that the inoffensive looking reporter in the picture is necessarily the man responsible for the Whitechapel murders. Francis is known to have been a reporter in the area at the time and it would be no surprise for him to appear in the courtroom depiction of Annie Chapman’s
inquest. But if he was also the agent of her death then, unlikely as it seems, we may be looking at the only surviving portrait of the man known to history as Jack the Ripper. And if that is the case it most dramatically gives the lie to all the hundreds of imagined likenesses, serious or fantastical, of the most notorious serial killer in history and perhaps helps to explain why it was so difficult to pin him down at the time. Who could possibly believe that this man, looking for all the world like a curate at a vicarage tea party, could be responsible for all the blood-letting of those three months in 1888?

The first day consisted only of evidence of identification and the circumstances surrounding the finding of the body. The inquest was then adjourned until Wednesday, which was filled with more of the same and a diversion when John Pizer – a Jewish shoemaker known in the area as ‘Leather Apron’ – was given an opportunity to vindicate himself. The finding of a leather workman’s apron in the Hanbury Street yard had led to his arrest on the previous Monday but by Wednesday it had been established that the apron belonged to the landlady’s son and that Pizer had solid alibis for the nights of both murders.

With the focus of the world’s press now upon him, Baxter began to exhibit a supercilious disregard for the witnesses and the police that at times amounted to arrogance. When John Davis, the elderly man who had discovered Annie Chapman’s body, was giving evidence he remarked that he had been unable to identify to the police the men to whom he had first reported it because he had to go to work. Baxter retorted, ‘Your work is of no consequence compared with this inquiry,’ displaying complete indifference towards a labourer whose wages of a few shillings a day meant the marginal difference for himself and his family between poverty stricken survival and the gutter.

When Davis was describing the yard in which the body was found Baxter said, ‘I hope the police will supply me with a plan. In the country, in cases of importance, I always have one.
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’ Inspector Helson, who, with Abberline, had been given responsibility for the investigation, no doubt embarrassed by the failure of his men to provide one, replied that a plan would be available at the adjourned hearing. ‘Yes,’ said the coroner acidly, ‘but by that time we shall hardly require it.’

Wynne Edwin Baxter played a major role in the Whitechapel murders and it could be argued that his intransigence and determination to follow his own
pet theories materially impeded the police and led to a closed-mind attitude to certain lines of investigation. He was a larger than life character, both physically and in the breadth of his interests and activities. A solicitor, born into a prosperous printing family in Lewes, Sussex, of which he was later to become mayor, he had a career as a coroner that lasted more than 40 years. As well as East Middlesex, it included Sussex, the City of London and the Tower of London, the latter no sinecure because he later presided over the inquests of 11 German spies executed there during the First World War. He played a large part in the civic affairs of London and Lewes, was a prominent Freemason, an antiquarian, a microscopist and a notable authority on Milton.

Baxter did not like dissent or room for doubt in his court. When he finally retired in 1920 he is said to have boasted, ‘Thirty thousand inquests and not one exhumation.’ When Coroner Baxter committed a body for burial they stayed buried.

It was not until late on Thursday 13th September, the third day of the inquest, that the police surgeon Phillips was finally called. When he rose to give his evidence, only one person present in the expectant courtroom could have known that the Ripper himself was amongst the audience who craned forward to catch his every word. Phillips was a quietly impressive figure –54 years old and with nearly 30 years’ experience as a police surgeon he was undoubtedly the most expert of the various doctors directly involved in the Ripper murders – yet his evidence was always understated, never seeking to make a flashy point or to divert any attention onto himself. In fact many of the important points that he made were probably lost on his audience precisely because they were so low key. A contemporary described him as, ‘Ultra old-fashioned both in his personal appearance and in his dress … His manners were charming: he was immensely popular with the police and the public, and he was highly skilled.’

However much Phillips would have liked to de-sensationalise his evidence, the facts made it impossible. The court was hushed as Phillips quietly read from his notes:

Once again there was reference to one or more rings having been removed. Phillips also mentioned that, in searching the yard he had found a small piece of coarse muslin, a small-tooth comb, and a pocket-comb in a paper case together with ‘various other articles’ lying by the fence as if they had been carefully arranged. It was not the last time that this almost obsessional little detail of the murderer’s behaviour was noticed, but no-one appears to have attached any particular significance to it at the time.

He then went on to give an account of an examination of the victim’s brain and the deep cuts which had almost severed the head from the body before hesitating. He had obviously come to what, for him, was a difficult moment. ‘There are various other mutilations of the body, but I am of opinion that they occurred
subsequently to the death of the woman and to the large escape of blood from the neck,’ he said, adding in a voice close to desperation, ‘I am entirely in your hands, Sir, but is it necessary that I should describe the further mutilations? From what I have [already] said I can state the cause of death.’

Baxter disagreed: ‘The object of the inquiry is not only to ascertain the cause of death, but the means by which it occurred. Any mutilation which took place afterwards may suggest the character of the man who did it. Possibly you can give us the conclusions to which you have come respecting the instrument used.’

The doctor was clearly upset with the turn events were taking. ‘You don’t wish for details. I think if it is possible to escape the details it would be advisable. The cause of death is visible from injuries I have described.’

‘Supposing any one is charged with the offence,’ argued Baxter, ‘they would have to come out then, and it might be a matter of comment that the same evidence was not given at the inquest.’

‘I am entirely in your hands,’ murmured the unhappy Phillips.

The coroner agreed to postpone the point for the moment and asked Phillips to give his opinion as to the cause of death. No doubt relieved, even temporarily, the doctor continued, ‘From these appearances I am of opinion that the breathing was interfered with previous to death, and that death arose from syncope, or failure of the heart’s action, in consequence of the loss of blood caused by the severance of the throat.’ In response to a question regarding the instrument used and whether it was the same as the one used to cause the abdominal wounds the doctor said, ‘Very probably. It must have been a very sharp knife, probably with a thin, narrow blade, and at least six to eight inches in length, and perhaps longer.’ He was giving a description of a very particular sort of knife and the coroner asked whether it was the sort of instrument that a medical man might use for a post-mortem. Phillips replied, ‘The ordinary post-mortem case perhaps does not contain such a weapon.’ In this he was totally accurate but also, perhaps deliberately, misleading.

What he had described was a long-bladed amputation knife and, since amputations are not part of an ordinary post-mortem, the cases of instruments in use at the time for that purpose did not contain them. He knew that but the coroner, who was not medical, did not. Had he been asked whether the knife
was the sort of instrument that a medical man might use for an operation, he would have had to agree. He went on to dismiss the possibilities that it could have been an instrument used by a military man, such as a bayonet or a knife used by someone in the leather trade. He conceded that it could possibly have been a knife used by a slaughter man but only if ‘well ground down,’ in other words if the blade had been made narrower. As a physician and surgeon of 30 years standing Phillips surely knew exactly what sort of knife had been used, but why he chose not to volunteer the information can only be guessed at.