Legacy of the Ripper (15 page)

The reasons for such thoughts lay on the coffee table before him. The two hard cover books had been provided by Sergeant Carl Wright. Holland's assistant had long been a student of unsolved murder cases and none came with as high a historical profile as that of the Whitechapel Murders of 1888. His study of the Ripper case had long been a source of amusement among some of his colleagues, who thought his time might be better spent trying to ascertain the identity of some of the more recent killers who appeared to have escaped detection. After all, some of them had voiced to him, what use was it after all this time to try and find out who Jack the Ripper really was? What could it mean to the living to reveal the identity of a man long dead, one who admittedly had escaped detection for over a hundred years, but who was after all way beyond the reach of the law. Wright simply explained that thousands of people around the globe still felt a need to try and solve the case, he being only one of them. If someone couldn't understand his motives in attempting to arrive at a solution to the case, that was their hard luck, in his mind. Holland had spent the best part of the evening poring over the books, trying to commit to memory as many facts about the case as he could. In addition to the books, he'd managed to obtain a dossier from the Metropolitan Police, sent by e-mail that afternoon, which also provided him with as many details as he could possible require about the case, this time from the police of the time's point of view. There were case files, interview reporters with various witnesses, before and after the fact, as no-one ever saw the ripper at work.

With too many similarities between the case Holland was currently investigating and that of the Whitechapel Murder of 1888, Mike Holland had decided that it would be folly to ignore the possibility of a link, however tenuous, between the two even if it were no more than the fact that they had a crazed killer on the loose in Brighton who had determined to replicate the murders of the original ripper. The fact that the two killings on Holland's patch had occurred on the same dates as the first two Whitechapel murders and that both victims had been prostitutes was too coincidental to be ignored at this stage of the investigation.

Holland eventually shook himself from the lethargy of tiredness that he felt slowly engulfing him, rose from his sofa and made his way to the kitchen, mug in hand, where he quickly boiled the kettle and replenished his coffee with a freshly made, steaming hot mug of the dark elixir. Returning to the sofa, he began to read through the notes he'd made earlier when correlating the information he'd gleaned from Wright's books and from the old Scotland Yard reports.

Knowing that 'knowledge was power' he'd become determined to learn as much about his current nemesis as possible. If the Brighton killer was using the Jack the Ripper murders as a template for his own crimes it was obvious to Holland that the man must have studied the intricacies of the original murders in order to carry out his macabre re-creations of the murders, and Holland had therefore set out to arm himself with every scrap of knowledge that might give him an 'edge' no matter how slight, in his search for the murderer. Holland needed to know everything there was to know about the Whitechapel murders of 1888, and so, he continued his studious reading of his notes.

The crimes of Jack the Ripper had been played out against the backdrop of filth and degradation that pervaded the Whitechapel and Spitalfields areas of Victorian London. In what become known as 'The Autumn of Terror' the world's first officially acknowledged 'serial killer' stalked his prey and carried out his hideous campaign of murder and mutilation amidst the streets and alleyways of the veritable rabbit-warren of streets that reeked of human effluent, mirroring the poverty and deprivation that stared out at the rank thoroughfares from the windows of the squalid, bleak buildings that housed the employed, the unemployed and the unemployable of the city's vast underclass of the poor. Even to be employed proved no guarantee of a healthy or a long life within those mean streets, with the work available to the denizens of Whitechapel usually being that of the manual labourer, back-breaking work with long hours, poor pay and no assurance of job security. Often such work, perhaps in the markets of London or at the vast docks that helped fuel the engine of Empire with the comings and goings of the great ocean going ships that carried goods to and from the capital was of the casual, transient kind, a day here or there if the worker was lucky. Each day huge queues would build up wherever the prospect of earning a few shillings, or maybe just pennies presented itself.

For women the prospects were even gloomier, with little education being available to girls and marriage often the only means of escape from total destitution. Such marriages in themselves often led to the eventual descent of many a woman into the ancient art of prostitution. Sometimes, it would be the only way for a woman to supplement the meagre earnings of a poorly paid husband, or, often tragically, the only way for a widow, (and there many), to keep body and soul together after the loss of a husband's earnings. It is perhaps often forgotten that the majority of the victims of Jack the Ripper were at one time married women, mothers, and with the exception of the final victim, Mary Jane Kelly, all were what today would be termed 'mature' women.

So the streets of Whitechapel teemed with those least able to cry for help in a society that cared little for those whose efforts powered the great city's factories and dockyards, or who worked in the great houses of the rich, and returned home each night to the squalor and deprivation of the East End of London, and those very streets would provide the perfect hunting ground for the killer who would be remembered by history as none other than
Jack the Ripper
.

Somewhat perversely overlooked from almost every angle by the spire of Christ Church, Spitalfields, Jack the Ripper's killing ground covered only a small geographical area and spanned only a few weeks in time, yet his reign of terror would reach out to touch the hearts and minds of almost everyone within the vast metropolis of London and far beyond, as the notoriety of his crimes became known throughout the country and afar. There were those who would later attempt to attribute other, later killings to the Whitechapel murderer, but most scholars are of the opinion that the murders of Jack the ripper ended with that of Mary Kelly on the 9th November 1888.

There was indeed some speculation and disagreement at one time as to who was indeed the Ripper's first victim, with many wishing to blame the killing of Martha Tabram on some other, unknown assailant. It is now generally believed and accepted however, that Tabram was the Ripper's first victim, and so we will take the date of her murder, 31st August 1888 as the beginning of the Ripper's terrible killing spree, ending with the butchery of the unfortunate Mary Kelly on 9th November, a mere ten weeks from start to finish.

As has been illustrated earlier in this narrative, the murders of Martha Tabram and Mary Ann Nicholls took place on the 7th and the 31st of August respectively. Following the death of Nicholls, it would be a mere eight days before the killer struck again, this time with even greater severity. At that time the name 'Jack the Ripper' had not yet been coined for the murderer, the name being applied to the killer only after the receipt of a letter, mailed to the Central News Agency on 27th September, and reproduced in the morning newspaper
The Daily News
on 1st October. Often regarded as a hoax by modern Ripperologists, the 'Dear Boss' letter nonetheless identified the killer by the name with which he will always be remembered, being signed "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper."

The letter read:

25 Sept 1888

Dear Boss

I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon here of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope haha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn't you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife's nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get the chance. Good luck.

Yours truly

Jack the Ripper

With those few words, a terror was born, a name given to the faceless assailant who appeared free to roam and kill at will and the people of London and the world would forever associate the crimes of that autumn with the man who, though never captured, identified and brought to justice would always live in memory as Jack the Ripper.

That terror, the fear of the ordinary citizen and the anger at the police force's seeming inability to apprehend the killer grew to massive proportions when, twenty two days after the murder of Annie Chapman the as yet un-named Whitechapel murderer claimed not one, but
two
victims in one night.

Swedish born Elizabeth Stride, (nee Gustavsdotter), aged forty-five became the third victim of the ripper, her body being discovered in Dutfield's Yard by Louis Diemschutz, a street seller of cheap jewellery as he drove his horse and cart into the yard at around 1 a.m. Her body had not been subjected to the mutilations present in the bodies of Tabram or Chapman, but Diemschutz testified that he believed he may have disturbed the killer before he was able to carry out such mutilations and so perhaps fuelled the killer's need to find another victim upon whom he could satisfy his evil lust that night.

That second victim of the night and Ripper's fourth victim in his reign of terror was forty six year old Catherine Eddowes, a native of the city of Wolverhampton, who had long since descended into a life of prostitution on the streets of the capital. Her savagely mutilated body had been discovered by a police constable, Edward Watkins, at around 1.15 a.m in the southwest corner of Mitre Square. Watkins saw and heard no-one as he entered the square and Eddowes proved to be the most brutally mutilated victim of the killer thus far, perhaps a victim of his savage frenzy at being interrupted in his 'work' upon the body of poor Elizabeth Stride earlier.

The post-mortem examination of her remains was carried out by Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown and his report provided disturbing reading to say the least. Catharine Eddowes throat had been cut, "to the extent of about six or seven inches." The big muscle across the throat had been completely divided on the left side. The large vessels on the left side of the neck were severed. Her larynx had been severed below the vocal chord and all the deep structures of the throat were severed to the bone. The cause of death was haemorrhage from the carotid artery and Brown estimated that death would have been immediate, and that the mutilations were carried out post-mortem.

On examining the abdomen he found that the front walls had been opened from the breast bone to the pubes. The liver had been stabbed and slit through by a sharp object. The intestines had been drawn out and placed over the right shoulder, with one section having been cut away completely and placed beside the poor woman's body. The face had been heavily mutilated, with the nose almost being cut away, one ear virtually severed, mutilating cuts about the face resulting in flaps of skin being formed around much of the face. The womb had been cut through horizontally, and the woman's left kidney had been carefully and precisely removed from the body. These were but some of the injuries listed in Brown's post-mortem report and serve to show the escalation in severity of the Ripper's attacks.

The police investigation continued, hampered slightly by the fact that Eddowes' body had been discovered within the boundaries of the City of London, thus coming under the jurisdiction of the City of London Police Force as opposed to the Metropolitan Police who had been in sole charge of the case up until that time. A public clamour soon broke out, with demands that the police take action and discover and bring to heel the murderer. There were demands for the resignation of the Commissioner of Police, and vigilante committees were formed and took to the streets at night in the hope of catching the killer.

Despite the police flooding the streets with uniformed and plain clothes officers, not one shred of viable evidence was found that might have led to an identification of the man responsible for the terrible crimes that were being perpetrated, seemingly at will upon the citizens of Whitechapel.

Within days however the killer had an almost universally known name, as the 'Dear Boss' letter appeared in the press and the name of
Jack the Ripper
was being shouted from every street corner by the newspaper sellers and the fear that had gripped the East End of London grew with every passing day that brought no results in the police investigation.

Whether by chance or by design, the whole of October passed without another killing on the streets of Whitechapel, and though the public continued to demand action from the police in tracking down the killer, the public outcry that had greeted the first four murders began to calm down. Perhaps, some thought, Jack the Ripper had gone, left the country or simply ceased his evil ways and that the terror had passed. They couldn't have been more wrong. Jack the Ripper's most heinous crime was yet to come, an act of barbarism and butchery so terrible that grown men, hardened police officers used to seeing the most hideous sights that man could inflict upon his fellows, actually broke down and cried when confronted with the scene that met their eyes on the morning of 9th November 1888.

In a room in Millers Court, off Dorset Street in Whitechapel, the body of Mary Jane Kelly was discovered by Thomas Bowyer as he attempted to collect the rent she owed on her room. Aged around twenty five, Mary Kelly proved to be the youngest victim of the Ripper and the mutilations carried out upon her body were so terrible and so vile that little was left of the woman that could be positively identified.