Jack the Ripper (4 page)

It is necessary to record the traumatic events of Bury’s early childhood because herein lies the explanation of the man he was to become. His mother was sunken so deeply in her own unhappiness that she could not give him the attention which is vital to the physical and mental health of a growing child. Bereft of love, or subject to abuse, a child cannot develop normally. It is a matter of record that the vast majority of serial killers have had a deprived, or abusive, childhood. The early years of Bury’s life would have been terrible. He was ‘abandoned’ by both parents, and then rejected by his foster family. It is unlikely, but not impossible, that he could remember the horrific death of his sister and the day his mother was told she was a widow. What is certain is that he would have been told about these events, and probably not in the kindest of terms. He would have believed that both his sister and mother were insane, and it is possible that he blamed them for the terrible death of his father. Young children tend to see the loss of a mother as a wilful act of rejection, and Bury would have become very sensitive to further affronts. The anger he felt towards his sister, and mother, led him to regard all women with fear and loathing. Indeed, in adult life he could barely bring himself to be civil to women, under any circumstances. At the same time he longed to bolster his fragile self-esteem by gaining the respect and admiration of other men. However, he was not a homosexual; when he was troubled by sexual desire it was directed towards the female body.

After the almost inevitable murder of his wife in 1889, some information about Bury’s life has been preserved in court and police records, and was recorded in contemporary newspaper accounts. People who had known him in Wolverhampton and London came forward to give evidence or speak to journalists. The picture we get is not an attractive one. As a young adult he could read and write well enough to find work as a ‘Factor’s clerk’, according to the 1881 census records for Wolverhampton. He lost his chance for a steady career, with a Mr Bissell, by borrowing money on false pretences, but managed to talk his way into employment with a nearby locksmith. In the short term, Bury could give a good impression, particularly when dealing with other men, but sooner or later, he would always prove to be totally unreliable. In his early twenties, he was already a habitual drunkard. It was said of him at that time, ‘In drink he was wholly incapable of controlling himself and when sober he had not the least compunction in deceiving his best friends.’ He also had a reputation for irritating his fellow workers with his lies. From those days comes a telling anecdote, which has him being teased by his workmates and breaking a window. This is typical behaviour on the part of someone who was very angry, but also scared. He lacked courage and in later life took to sleeping with a knife under his pillow.

He lost his job with the locksmith, and may have become a vagrant. He was seen scraping a living as a street vendor in Birmingham, but eventually he was drawn in, like so many other desperate people, by the illusory promise of a better life in London. So were some of the Ripper victims. Of the ‘Canonical 5’, Elizabeth Stride came from Sweden, Catharine Eddowes was born in Wolverhampton and Mary Kelly may have been born in Limerick. Bury arrived in London in the autumn of 1887, and tried to earn a living selling ‘cats’ meat’. This trade would have required some aptitude with a knife. Being brought up outside the metropolis, he may also have been familiar with the slaughter and dissection of pigs, which so many working people kept in the back yard.

Towards the end of the year, Bury gave up the cats’ meat trade and entered into an agreement with one James Martin of No.80 Quickett Street, Bow. Bury was to pay Martin for the use of a horse and cart, and Martin would also sell him supplies of sawdust and silver sand. Bury could keep any profit he made, after paying Martin his dues; this he failed to do. London did not deliver on its promise. Bury was in debt to Martin, yet spent all he had on drink. February 1888 saw him struggling to exist in Bow, but also marks the start of a disquieting series of attacks on women in the capital. Casual, drink-fuelled violence was common enough, but murder was surprisingly rare. Although the common belief is that the Ripper claimed five victims in the ‘Autumn of Terror’, it is entirely possible that there were more attacks, not all of them fatal.

The murder of Emma Smith, on 3 April, is frequently mentioned in the context of the Ripper killings. Her death bears no similarity to any Ripper attacks, and was most probably the work of a gang which terrorised prostitutes for the sake of their meagre earnings. Of more significance, however, are two knife attacks on women in February and March of 1888. On 25 February, Annie Millward was admitted to hospital with numerous stab wounds to her legs and lower body. No more is known about how and why this happened; she recovered but died a month later of an apparently unrelated condition. This was obviously a sexually motivated attack, though would not have been recognised as such at the time. On 28 March, Ada Wilson was attacked just after midnight by a man with a ‘sunburnt’ flushed face, who demanded money and almost immediately stabbed her twice in the throat. She was able to scream and he fled.

Meanwhile, Bury had found a way out of his financial difficulties. In addition to trading in sawdust, Martin and a female partner were running a small brothel, and one of the prostitutes attracted Bury’s attention. Ellen Elliot, born 24 October 1856, was known to have a modest legacy in the form of shares. She also rented a room in nearby Swaton Street. Bury saw the prospect of wealth and security, but even to achieve this he could hardly bring himself to be pleasant to Ellen, and before their wedding on 2 April, he had already given her at least one beating.

Portrait of Ellen and William Bury. (
Midland Weekly News
, 16 February, 1889)

Ellen Bury had drifted through life. She appears to have had a stable upbringing but, as a child, her health had been poor and her education had suffered. She could just about read and write, but with difficulty. She gave birth to an illegitimate child, which later died, and spent some time in the workhouse. It does not seem to have occurred to her to use her nest egg to make her life more comfortable. She became a prostitute and had little contact with her family, other than her married, elder sister Margaret Corney, who was to give evidence at Bury’s trial. Ellen had retained enough pride in herself to lodge outside the brothel, and she was fond of her little collection of good jewellery. Having passed her thirtieth birthday, she must have been desperate for the respectability of marriage, even to a man like Bury. Nothing else could explain why she gave in to him. Bury was a little man, morally and physically. He stood 5ft 3½ ins tall, and weighed under ten stone. He had dark hair and a face, that with drink, or emotion, became flushed. Oddly enough, newspaper reports from his trial describe him variously as ‘decent looking’ but also ‘insignificant’ and even ‘feeble-minded’, and with having a Jewish look about him. In his personal conduct, he seems to have clung to just one shred of self-control in that he kept the Sabbath by not drinking on a Sunday.

For mos, of the short period of their marriage, Bury treated Ellen abominably. He beat her, took all her money from her and, by May, he had given her a sexually transmitted disease. More to the point, within days of the wedding, Mrs Haynes, the couple’s landlady at Swaton Road, caught him holding a knife to Ellen’s throat. Bury managed to force Ellen to sell some of her shares; with which he bought a horse and cart of his own, in order to trade in sawdust, but apparently he did more drinking than actual work. He was also under the necessity of finding other lodgings, because his behaviour had become so intolerable that Mrs Haynes told the couple to leave. They lodged first in Blackthorn Road and then in nearby Spanby Road, close to the stable where the horse was kept.

Bury was still finding life difficult. Other people were able to notice and criticise his conduct, and he found he was forced into a parody of domestic life, when his every instinct revolted against being in the company of a women, except to relieve a sexual need. He was to find a way to get satisfaction without even a semblance of emotional involvement.

Martha Tabram, or Turner, is gaining acceptance as a Ripper victim. She was a prostitute and after a busy evening with some soldiers, she met with one last client. She was found dead of multiple stab wounds in the small hours of 7 August. The intent was plainly to kill, and her murderer had begun to explore a little further by inflicting an ‘incised’ wound in the region of her private parts. This wound bled out and probably left the killer stained with blood.

Martha was known to suffer ‘rum fits’, from alcohol withdrawal. The most likely scenario is that she led her killer to a quiet spot to have intercourse, but then lost consciousness. Bury was confronted, yet again, by total rejection as Martha became oblivious to his presence. He stabbed her in anger – he always had a knife about his person – and then was thrilled to discover that he was in total control and in no danger of further affronts to his self-esteem.

Later, that August, Bury felt the need for a holiday, and took Ellen to Wolverhampton. He was looking forward to showing his former workmates that he had made good. He flashed ‘his’ money around, boasted of Ellen’s prospects, and graciously permitted her to buy some more jewellery. It was all a sham. Back in London, he continued drinking heavily, and by the end of the month the work of Jack the Ripper had begun in earnest.

He found ways to refine the process. First he strangled his victim, either by hand or with a ligature. Whether or not this was instantly fatal, the resulting loss in blood pressure would reduce arterial spray when the throat was cut across. When this was done, the killer was free to open the body to mutilate, remove, and even assimilate what he believed to be the significant sexual organs. In his mean-spirited way, he also rummaged through his victims’ pockets and may have taken a few souvenirs. He did not think of himself as Jack the Ripper; that name was bestowed upon him by a journalist. The killer wrote no letters, scribbled no graffiti, and did his best to avoid being noticed.

He usually hunted towards the end of the week, but he never struck during his Sabbath time of abstemiousness; he was cautious. He left his den to hunt in Whitechapel, and his victims were women who were peculiarly vulnerable. He took Polly Nichols on 31 August, Annie Chapman on the 8 September, and both Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes on 30 September. On 9 November, Mary Kelly let him into her small room in Miller’s Court. Without fear of being interrupted, he was able to take her body apart. He took out the heart, a powerfully symbolic act. This organ was never found and he probably ate it. As well as destroying Mary’s body, he burnt some of her clothes in the fireplace. Then he managed to slip away unnoticed. One of the biggest problems in identifying the Ripper lies in the variety of eye-witness testimony about probable suspects. Bury was small and rather nondescript; if seen, he left no strong impression. He could be any or none of the sightings.

After his climactic experience with Mary Kelly, he was emotionally drained and also increasingly fearful. The entire nation was obsessed with the Ripper and the police were at their most vigilant. The press had also reported further alleged sightings, and Bury thought he could be identified. He may have made a half-hearted attempt to take a victim in Poplar, when Catherine Mylett was choked to death in late December, but by January he decided he had to leave London. He had nothing left to lose; his business had gone and there was very little left of Ellen’s money.

With a crudely forged letter, apparently offering the pair of them employment, he tricked Ellen into accompanying him to Dundee. The work never materialised, but she was now unable to leave him even if she tried. He was, however, at least presenting the appearance of a dutiful husband and the couple were seen well dressed and apparently happy. They arrived on 20 January and took lodgings with a Mrs Robinson, at 8
s
a week, but with a flash of his old hostility to women, he alarmed her by trying to beat her down to 6
s
. He then gained access to a derelict basement at No.113 Princes Street, by taking the keys in order to view it – and there Ellen’s life was soon to end.

For a week or so, Bury was to spend the last of their savings trying, as ever, to make a big impression in the local pubs. He bought rounds of drinks, and a naïve young man called Walker found him fascinating company. Ellen felt out of place so far from London and did not mix much with her new neighbours, though she and her husband did meet with a couple called Smith. When she was alone with them, she confided in them that her husband had fallen into bad company in London and was in the habit of stopping out at night. When he came back, the talk turned to Whitechapel and Ellen said, ‘Oh, Jack the Ripper is quiet now.’ Women who suspect the worst will try to hide the thought, even from themselves, but Bury began to fear that his secret would be revealed.

Ellen was never seen alive again after Monday 5 February; she may have died in the early hours of Tuesday. Bury went out and about, but his door was left locked and the blinds drawn. He went on drinking, but also went as a spectator to the Dundee Magistrates’ Court and watched the proceedings with fascination. At noon, on Sunday 10 February, he visited his new friend Walker at home, and they looked over the
People’s Journal
together. Bury read, with interest, an account of a woman committing suicide with a rope around her neck, but Walker alarmed him by asking if there was anything about Jack the Ripper, ‘you that knows the place.’ Bury went out, pretending Ellen was cooking a good dinner, but he was soon back and the two men went to look at the ships in the harbour. But Bury did not plan to sail away. All he could think of now was a way to avoid being blamed for his wife’s death.