Ein Auszug aus dem Buch "Chronicles of Crime and Criminals" von Henry Wainwright, im Jahre 1895 von Beaver Publishing in Toronto veröffentlicht. Hier geht es auch um den russischen Verdächtigen Nicholas Vassily (@Thomas: Sollte man den Thread zu den Verdächtigen schieben?).
ACHTUNG: Sehr viele Wort/Rechtschreib/Formatierungsfehler.
FULL AND AUTHENTIC ACCOUNT OF THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS
Never in the record of criminal history were the police of any
country called upon to unravel a mystery so complete as that which
enshrouds the famous murders in Whitechapel, London.
Nine victims have fallen under the skilful knife of an unknown
fiend, and there remains not a particle of a clue on which to hang
a hope of discovery of the murderer.
From beginning to end the tragedies have been marked by
many circumstances and mysterious details which fill all with
horror and dismay.
The clubman in his club, the lady in her boudoir, the house-
fwife in her kitchen, the workgirl in the shop and factory, the
whispering, gin-soaked public woman on the thoroughfare, alike
were stirred by these dreadful tidings of heartless and bloody
crime.
The Government of Her Majesty was questioned about them
in open Parliament.
The Detectives of Scotland Yard put their heads together,
plotted, schemed, devised, but all to no purpose.
The ensanguined book of dastardly murder is a sealed book.
One after the other the mutilated victims of this mysterious
demon were picked up on the highways of a great city, but no
one has seen the murderer, no one suspects who he is, and no one
has found him.
A great wave of nervous, feverish alarm and terror swept over
the metropolis of Great Britain.
In every case the unmistakable work of the same fiend was
too painfully apparent to admit of a doubt that these murders in
Whitechapel were wrought by one fell hand.
Madman he probably was,, but with all his boldness he
possessed a cruel cunning which allowed him to stalk abroad on the
public streets, striking down his victims as he pleased, leaving not
the faintest clue to his personality.
"No conception can be formed of the motives of his horrible
crimes, unless it is reasonable to suppose it was the work of a
maniac.
Did the fiend experiment on the corpses for anatomical
purposes ?
Did he seek revenge on the class of public women because of
some injury he had himself received from one of them?
Was he a madman — irresponsible, bloodthirsty, craving, super-
natural excitements ?
The^e are some of the questions that may resolve themselves
w^en you have read a detailed account of these murders perpe-
i;rated in one of the oldest, and, presumably, one of the most
civilised cities of the modem world.
The first of the Whitechapel murder series attracted little
public attention.
It was perpetrated on April 3rd, 1888.
The victim was Emma Elizabeth Smith.
As the policeman stooped over her, looked into her bloodless
face, in the light of buUseye, gazed into her blear eyes, smelt
her gin-soaked breath, examined her bloodstained clothes, he
reported the case to headquarters.
The officials did not bother much about it.
Only a woman of the lowest class, they thought, murdered in
a drunken brawl.
What else can you expect in Whitechapel with its floating
population of criminals and fallen women?
The press commented a little on the incident; the clubman
yawned after he read about it at his supper; the fine lady
remarked it was shocking as she buttered her muffins at breakfast,
and then the disagreeable subject was dismissed.
Martha Turner was a poor hawker in Whitechapel.
On Tuesday, August 7, 1888, this Martha Turner was found
lying on her back, her clothing disarrayed, on the first floor land-
ing of the buildings known as George Yard Buildings, Commercial
Street, Spitalfields, Whitechapel.
Her throat was cut, her breasts were amputated and lay beside
her, her legs were lacerated with knife gashes, and the blood
stained the floor with clotted red.
The day previous to the second murder had been what is known
as " Bank Holiday " and it was late in the evening that day that
the murder had been perpetrated.
Martha Turner had evidently met her fate by the same hand
that struck down Emma Elizabeth Smith.
The same mutilation of the same parts was visible.
The same rapid work was traceable in the assassin's onslaught.
As nearly as the police could determine, both women had been
seized suddenly, unexpectedly by a powerful arm from behind, and
their throats cut swiftly by the rapid stroke of a razor-edged knife.
Such was the force of the murderer's death blow and such the
keenness of his devilish weapon that the head was almost severed
from the body, hung loose, and the knife had left its imprint upon
the bone at the back of the neck.
But more remarkable than the ghastly work at the throat was
the discovery that the woman had received no less than thirty-nine
distinct deep and clear cut stabs upon various parts of her body.
From these wounds the blood had poured forth,, saturating her
clothes and covering the steps on which she lay with a slippery
coating of coagulated blood.
Examination of the body revealed the same horrible, indescrib-
able mutilation of the uterus that had marked the first murder.
The underclothing of coarse material had been thrown roughly
up over the victim's head and a jagged wound crossed the bowels,
laying bare the intestines.
Below this a portion of the woman's body had been cut out
with the nicety and skill of a surgeon's knife, leaving only a
blood-oozing and quivering aperture.
The organ had been removed as in the case of the first murder.
Horror seized the police authorities on seeing this sight.
Several friends of the victim were arrested and held by the
coroner.
But little was found that cast light on the crime.
At the inquest, Mary Ann Connelly, known in Whitechapel
as " Pearly Poll," was a witness, vho was expected to give valu-
able information.
Inspector Reid asked that she might be cautioned prior to
being sworn, and the coroner complied with his request.
" I am a single woman," testified " Pearly Poll." " I've been
lodging in a lodging house in Dorset Street. I've gained my
livelihood on the streets. I've known the murdered woman for
four or five months. We called her * Emma.' The last time I
saw her alive was on *
Bank Holiday/ at the corner of George
Yard> Whitechapel. We went to a public house together and
parted at 11.45. We were accompanied by two soldiers, one a
private and one a corporal. I don't know to what regiment they
belonged, but they had white bands around their caps. I don't
remember whether the corporal had side arms or not. We picked
up with the soldiers together and entered several public houses.
We drank in each of the houses. When we separated, ' Emma '
went away with the private. They went up to George Yard and I
and my fellow went to Angel Alley. Before I went away from
my fellow I had a quarrel, and he hit me with a stick. I didn't
hear * Emma ' have a quarrel. I never saw her alive again.
* Emma ' wasn't given to drink. I tried to pick out the two men
who were with us. I tried at Wellington Barracks. The men
were paraded before me; but though I saw two men something
like those who were with us on the night of the murder, I couldn't
be sure. I left my fellow, the corporal, at five or ten minutes
past 12 that morning and afterwards went along Commercial
Street towards Whitechapel. I didn't hear no screams. I didn't
hear of the murder till Tuesday."
" Pearly Poll " was the only witness who could give any news
at all about Martha Turner, and that news, as you see, was scant
enough.
The authorities were baffled.
The public was beginning to be aroused.
Scarcely had aristocratic West End of London recovered from
the second murder in low-life East End when the city and the
world were cast into new spasms by the flash of news that a third
crime had been committed in the cursed, crime-stained precincts
of Whitechapel.
Everybody asked:
"Whois'it?"
And the answer came swifter than death:
" Another woman !"
This time it was Mary Ann NichoUs, aged forty-two, a woman
of the lowest class. She had heen killed and mutilated.
Her body was found in the street in Buck's Kow, Whitechapel,
in the early morning of Friday, August 31.
Mary Ann NichoUs had evidently not been killed on the spot
where her body lay dead.
She had evidently been killed at another spot and dragged to
where she lay.
There was little blood around the corpse
Buck's Row is a short street, half occupied by factories, half
by dwelling houses.
Half down this street is the house of Mrs. Green.
N'ext to this house is a large stable yard, whose wide, closed
gateway is next to the house.
In front of the gateway, Mary Ann Nicholls was found.
The brutality of the murder is beyond conception and beyond
description.
The throat was cut in two gashes, the instrument of crime
having been a sharp one, but used in a most ferocious and reckless
wav.
There was a gash under the left ear, reaching nearly to the
centre of the throat.
Along half its length, however, it was accompanied by another
one, which reached around under the other ear, making a wide
and horrible hole and nearly severing the head from the l>ody.
No murder was ever more ferociously or more brutally done.
The knife, which must Iiave been a large and sharp one, was
jabbed into the deceased at the lower pari of the abdomen, and
then drawn upward twice.
A sickening sight, truly, such as unmanned the most hardened
official.
Constable O'Neill, who discovered the lifeless body, im-
mediately rapped at the house of Mrs. Green.
" Have you heard any unusual noise ?" he asked, wiping the
perspiration from his brow.
Then he pointed out the body.
Mrs. Green ahnost fainted when she saw the ghastly spectacle.
Constable O'Keill put his hand on the woman'3 shoulder and
repeated the question.
ICrs. Green, as though demented, shook her head in the negative.
Then Constable O'Neill questioned the son and daughter of
Mrs. Green.
"We have heard no outcry," said they.
" The night was unusually quiet," said Mrs. Green, finally.
" I should have heard a noise, if there had been any, for I have
trouble with my heart, and am a very light sleeper."
Then Constable O'Neill questioned Mr. Perkins, an opposite
neighbor to the Greens' but he also denied having heard a noise
in the still air of night.
Severrl people, however, remembered strange sounds.
" I was awakened Friday morning," testified Mrs. Perkins, a
neighbor, " by my little girl, who said some one was trying to get
into the house. I listened and heard screams. They were in a
woman's voice,, and though frightened, were faintlike, as would be
natural if she was running. She was screaming, * Murder I
Police I Murder ! ' She seemed to be all alone. I think I would
have heard the steps if anybody had been running after her, unless
he were running on tip-toe."
The detectives of Scotland Yard, thoroughly aroused by this
third murder, at once searched everywhere in the vicinity, in the
hope of discovering some clue.
None was found.
Everything pointed to the fact that the murder was committed
at some distance from where the boiT lav.
There were drops of blood all along the sidewalks.
But there was a mystery even here.
The police were puzzled by the fact that there were blood
stains on both sides of the street.
Amid a gaping, terror-stricken crowd, the blood-clotted body
of Mary Ann Nichols was lifted on a stretcher and conveyed to the
deach house.
A cordon of police had to keep the crowd back.
It took some time to identify her positively.
The clothing wore a workhouse stamp. A comb and a piece
of looking glass were found in one of the pockets.
Finally four women identified her, said they knew her by the
name of " Polly."
" We have lived with her at 18 Thrawl Street, Spitalfields,"
said they. "We lived there in a room. We paid four pence a
night."
On the night of the murder, it appears Mary Ann Nichols,
alias " Polly," was turned out of this house because she hadn't
money to pay for her lodgings.
She was then a little the worse for drink and said, as she was
turned away:
" I'll soon get my ' doss ' money. See what a jolly bonnet I've
got now !"
The lodging house people only knew her as " Polly," but later
a woman from Lambeth Workhouse identified her as Mary Ann
Nichols.
The deceased woman had been an inmate of the workhouse
and left it to take a situation as a servant, but after a short time
she absconded with £3 of her employer's money.
Prom that time forth she was an outcast.
The police theory was at that time that a sort of " high rip "
gang existed in the neighborhood, which, blackmailing women of
the " unfortunate " class, takes vengeance on those who do not
fird money for them.
They base that surmise on the fact that within twelve months
two other women have been murdered in the district by almost
similar means — one as recently as the 6th of August last — and left
in the gutter of the street in the early ho?irs of the morning.
At the coroner's inquest no testimony was adduced that tended
to cast any light on the horrible mystery.
The deceased woman's husband, who is a printer's machinist,
testified that he had lived apart from his wife for over eii^ht years,
and the last time he saw her alive was three years ago. His wife
had left him of her own accord,, and her drinking habits had led
her into a dissolute life.
A week after the killing of Mary Ann IN'icholls, another fallen
woman — ^Annie Chapman, aged forty-five — ^was found killed and
hacked like the rest, this making the fourth murder.
Her body was discovered in Buck's Kow, Whitechapel.
John Davies, living on top floor of 29 Hanbury Street,
stumbled across it on the morning of Friday, August 31, and
yelled for the police.
At a spot a very few hundred yards from where the mangled
body of the poor woman NichoUs was found just a week before
lay this body of another woman, mutilated and horribly disfigured.
She was found at 5.30 on Sunday morning, lying in the back
yard of IN'o. 20 Hanbury Street,, Spitalfields, a house occupied by
Mr. Richardson, a packing-case maker. As late as 5 o'clock on
Saturday morning, it is said, the woman was drinking in a public
house near at hand, called the Ten Bells.
I^ear the body was discovered a rough piece of iron sharpened
like a knife. The wounds upon the poor woman were more fear-
ful than those found upon the body of the woman Nichols, who
was buried on Thursday. The throat was cut in a most horrible
manner, and the stomach terribly mutilated.
The bowels were ripped open.
The intestines hung out.
The place was a pool of blood.
While Davies cried for the police Mrs. Richardson, an old lady
sleeping on the first floor front, was aroused by her grandson,
Charles Cooksley, who looked out of one of the back windows and
screamed that there was a dead body in the corner.
Mrs. Richardson's description makes this murder even more
horrible than any of its predecessors.
The victim was lying on her back,, with her legs outstretched.
Her throat was cut from ear to ear. Her clothes were pushed up
above her waist and her legs bare. The abdomen was exposed, the
woman having been ripped up from groin to breast-bone, as in the
preceding cases. Not only this, but the viscera had been pulled
out and scattered in all directions, the heart and liver being placed
behind her head and the remainder along her side. No more
horrible sight ever met a human eye, for she was covered with
blood and lying in a pool of it.
The throat was cut open in a fearful manner — so deep, in fact,
that the murderer, evidently thinking that he had severed the
head from the body, tied a handkerchief round it so as to keep it
on. There was no blood on the clothes. Hanbury Street is a long
street which runs from Baker's Row to Commercial Street. It
consists partly of shops and partly of private houses. In the
house in question, in the front room on the ground floor,, Mr.
Harderman carries on the business of a seller of catsmeat. At the
back of the premises are those of Mr. Richardson, who is a packing-
case maker. The other occupants of the house are lodgers. One
of the lodgers, named Robert Thompson, who is a carman, went
out of the house at 3.30 in the morning, but heard no noise. Two
girls, who also live in the house, were talking in the passage until
12.30 with young men, and it is believed that they were the last
occupants of the house to retire to rest.
It seems that the crime was committed soon after 5. At that
hour the woman and the man, who in all probability was her
murderer, were seen drinking together in the Bells, Brick Lane.
But though the murder was committed at this late hour, the
murderer — acting, as in the other case, silently and steathily —
managed to make his escape.
On the wall near where the body was found, there was, accord-
ing to one reporter, discovered written in chalk:
FIVE: 15 MORE AND THEN I GIVE MYSELF UP.
Jack the Ripper.
Davies, the lodger, who discovered the body,, immediately com-
mimicated with the police at the Commercial Street station, and
Inspector Chandler and several constables arrived on the scene
in a short time, when they found the woman in the condition
described. An excited crowd gathered in front of Mrs. Richard-
son's house, and also around the mortuary in Old Montague Street,
to which place the body was quickly removed. Several persons
who were lodging in the house, and who were seen in the vicinity
when the body was found, were taken to the Conmiercial Street
station and closely examined, especially the women last with the
deceased.
Inquiries led to the discovery that the woman was known by
several names. Her real name was Annie Chapman, but she had
latterly passed as Annie Sievy,, and rejoiced in the nickname of
" Dark Annie." Her age was about forty-five. She was 6 feet
high, had fair, brown, wavy hair, blue eyes, and, like Mary Ann
Nicholls, had two teeth missing. One peculiarity of her features
was a large, flat kind of nose. Her clothing was old and dirty,
and nothing was found in her pockets except part of envelope
bearing the seal of the Sussex Eegiment
Eor the last nine months she had been sleeping at a lodging-
house, 35 Dorset Street, Spitalfields, and she was there as recently
as 2 o'clock on Saturday morning eating some potatoes. She had
not, however, the money to pay for her bed, and at 2 o'clock she
left with the remark to the keeper of the place :
" I'll soon be back again ; I' J soon get the money for my doss,"
almost the very words Mary Ann Nicholls used to the companion
ehe met in Whitechapel Road, at 2.30 on the morning of her death.
A companion identified her soon after she had been taken to
the mortuary as " Dark Annie," and as she came from the
mortuary gate, bitterly crying, said between her tears:
" I knowed her ; I kissed her poor, cold face."
The large,, flat kind of nose of the deceased was so striking a
peculiarity that the police hop^d to be able to fully trace the
movements of the deceased by means of it. The clothing of the
dead woman, like that of most of her class who ply their trade in
this quarter of London, was old and dirty.
In the dress of the dead w^oman two farthings were found, so
brightly polished as to lead to the belief that they were intended to
be passed as half-sovereigns, and it is probable that they were
given to her by the murderer as an inducement for her to
accompany him.
Late on Saturday, after the deceased had been formally identi-
fied as Annie Sievy, a witness came forward and stated that her
real name was Annie Chapman. She came from Windsor and had
friends residing at Vauxhall. She had been married, her husband
being an army pensioner, who had allowed her lOvshillings a week,
but he died a twelvemonth ago, and the pension ceasing,, she be-
cam i one of the hideous women infesting Whitechapel. She lived
for a time with a sieve-maker in Dorset Street, and was known to
her acquaintances as " Annie Sievy," a nickname derived from
her paramour's trade.
Mrs. Fiddymont, wife of the j^roprietor of the Prince Albert
public house, better known as the " Clean House," at the corner of
Brushfield and Stewart Streets, half a mile from the scene of the
mui'der, told the police that at 7 o'clock on Saturday morning she
was standing in the bar talking with another woman, a friend, in
the first compartment.
Suddenly came into the middle compartment a man whose
rough appearance frightened her. He had a brown stiff hat,, a
dark coat and no waistcoat. He came in with his hat down ovtir
his eyes, and with his face partly concealed, asked for a half pint
of ale. She drew the ale, and meanwhile looked at him through
the mirror at the back of the bar.
As soon as he saw tlie woman in the other compartment watch-
ing him he turned his back, and ffot the partition between himself
and her. The thing that struck Mrs. Fiddymont particularly was
the fact that there were blood spots on the back of his right hand.
This, taken in connection with his appearance, caused her
uneasiness. She also noticed that his shirt was torn. As soon as
he had drank the ale, which he swallowed at a gulp, he went out.
Her friend went out also to watch the man.
Her friend was Mary Chappell, who lives at No. 28 Stewart
Street, near by. Her story corroborates Mrs. Fiddymont's. When
(the man came in the expression of his eyes caught her attention,
his look was so startling and terrifying. It frightened Mrs. Fiddy-
mont so that she requested her to stay. He wore a light blue
check shirt, which was torn badly — into rags, in fact — on the right
shoulder. There was a narrow streak of blood under his right
ear, parallel with the edge of his shirt. There was also dried blood
between the fingers of his hand. When he went out she slipped
out the other door and watched him as he went toward Bishopsgate
Street. She called Josehp Taylor's attention to him, and he
followed him.
Taylor is a builder, at No. 22 Stewart Street, and said that as
soon as his attention was attracted to the man he followed him.
He walked rapidly and came alongside of him, but did not speak
to him. The man was rather thin, about 5 feet 8 inches high and
apparently between forty and fifty years of age. He had a shabby-
genteel look, pepper-and-salt trowsers, which fitted badly,, and dark
coat. When Taylor came alongside of him, the man glanced at
him, and Taylor's description of the look was, " His eyes were as
wild as a hawk's."
Was this man with the sharp eye also the man with the sharp
knife ?
Was he the Whitechapel murderer ?
Time, perhaps, will tell.
" Jack, the Ripper," had got to be a thing of flesh and blood
in the households of England.
The man of Whitechapel inspired the fear once inspired by
Guy Fawkes.
Mothers hushed their unruly children by saying:
" Be quiet, or * Jack, the Ripper,* will come."
The police were still at work.
The officials of Scotland Yard were more than usually busy.
A cordon of constables surrounded Whitechapel.
Bloodhounds were called into use, and sniffed the dirty
pavements.
The women of the quarter did without food and drink — dared
not venture into the streets.
Every man they saw seemed to them the demon.
Every man loomed up as " Jack, the Ripper," the fiend who
would be satisfied with no less than fifteen victims.
It was on Sunday. September 23 — a calm, quiet, autumnal
day of rest.
The churches and cathedrals of England were full of devout
worshippers.
Suddenly there flashed across the wires that a murder had
been committed at Gateshead, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, in the
North of England.
Again a feeling of apprehension seized all classes.
A young woman — disembowelled, mangled, mutilated, unrecog-
nizable — ^lay cold in death on the roadside.
Who did the dastardly deed ?
Everything pointed to the conclusion that this murder at
Gateshead was the fell stroke of " Jack, the Ripper," of White-
chapel, his fifth murder.
The epidemic of fear in London now became more horrible
than before.
The most callous elegants of the West End now became
thoroughly alarmed.
But " Jack, the Ripper " merely grinned with fiendish glee,
Rnd kept from the sleuthhounds of the public.
He hadn't killed his fifteen yet.
On the night of September 30 the streets of London were
echoing with shrieks of murder.
Two more unfortunate women had been added to the list of
the butchered in Whitechapel, being the sixth and seventh victims.
Elizabeth Stride, nicknamed " Hippy Lip Anny," forty years
of age, was found murdered in Berners Street at 1 o'clock in the
morning. Her throat was cut, but there was no slashing of the
remains.
The body was warm when found, and the murderer had evi-
dently been frightened away.
Now, fifteen minutes after the discovery of the dead body of
" Hippy Lip Annie " the mutilated body of another victim — a
degraded woman of the Whitechapel district, named Catharine
Eddowes — was found in the north-west corner of Mitre Square.
The older portion of London abounds with these cul-de-sacs,
inaccessable to wagons, and to be reached only by footpaths
through private property. A stranger in London would never think
of entering one of them, but the old Londoner knows them well
as convenient short cuts.
There are two street lamps in Mitre Square, and they were
burning brightly at 1 o'clock this morning. A large tea house in
the square hires a private watchman, and. he was on duty last
night, with lights blazing from five windows. He is a veteran
policeman, and looks like a wide-awake,, trustworthy man. Less
than two hundred feet from the tea house are three or four dwelling
houses, with bedroom windows facing the square, and at least
twenty people sleeping in them. The policeman on the beat goes
through the square every fifteen minutes throughout the night,
searching corners with a dark lantern and rousing out homeless
people who fall asleep on the area railings. The policeman who
was on the beat at 1 o'clock this morning was a stalwart, honest-
looking fellow.
At 1.30 this morning he passed through the square, searching
all corners with his lantern and stopping for at least half a minute
in one particular corner right under the bedroom windows of a
dwelling-house. Everything was silent and dark, except the
windows of the tea-house, where the watchman was awake, reading.
Fifteen minutes afterward the policeman passed the same
corner again. This time he found a woman stretched dead upon
the pavement in a pool of blood, her throat cut,, her nose torn from
the face, the clothes thrown back over llie body, the abdomen
gashed into pieces and the intestines wrenched from the stomach.
The policeman started.
He ran over to the tea-house and hammered on the door. .
'• What's the matter ?" shouted the watchman.
" For God's sake," said the policeman, " come out and assist
me ! Another woman has been ripped open."
Not a sound had the watchman heard. The slumbers of the
people in the dwelling-houses had not been disturbed. Within
fifteen minutes a merciless murder had been committed, and the
murderer had disappeared in the darkness without the slightest
clue for the police to follow.
It was a horrible sight. Every sweep of the assassin's knife
had been made to tell. It was a woman about forty-five years old,
poorly nourished, shabbily dressed, undoubtedly an unfortunate
who picked up a living on the streets. In this case no organs were
missing, as in the bodies of the women previously murdered. The
cuts on the stomach were almost in the shape of the letter T, the
upward cut stretch: ng from the uterus to the breast and the cross-
cut slanting from the lower part of the left ribs to the right hip.
The '^oed must have been done witha heavy knife, and by some
one skilled in the use of it — no jagged hacking, but clean cuts,
scientifically made.
Several doctors arrived and examined the body. They found
a prodigious quantity of blood, which had flowed chiefly from
the throat, but the murderer had so carefully avoided it that not
a single footmark could be traced. The body was removed to the
mortuary, -where a careful post-mortem examination took place.
There was a tattoo mark of a figure " 4 " on the won^an's left
forearm.
Throngs of noisy men, dissolute women and squalid children
surrounded the localities where the murders were committed and
the places where the bodies await the coroner. They struggled
and fought with each other to gain admittance to the dead-house
and the police had to use brute force to drive them back. It was a
panic of fear and frenzy that those who witnessed will never
forget.
Early in the day people were allowed in the dead-house to see
'the woman found on Berner Street and to try and identify her.
As soon as she was identified, the doors were closed to all except
persons having business there. Those living in the neighborhood
who did get a chance to approach the corpse paraded the streets
all day with bloodstains of the victim on their fingers and
described the appearance of the body over and over again to all
the people who would listen to them.
London was now thoroughly alarmed.
Sir Charles Warren issued a proclamation.
The Lord Mayor offered a big reward for the capti^re of the
murderer.
Even the swell in the Wefit End stopped sucking the end of
his cane and showed considerable animation over the horrorr ^/...i,
took place with such startling successive rapidity.
Everybody felt that the condition of the lost women in London
ought to be investigated.
Everybody felt there was much rottenness in the existing state
of things.
Is it a wonder there are so many degraded women in London ?
If West End is full of iniquity and injustice can you marvel
at dissipation and debauch in East End ?
London was soon stirred by another sensation.
On October 2, 1888, the highly decomposed remains of a
woman were found on the site of the projected Metropolitan Opera
House on the Thames Embankment.
The spot is near Charing Cross, three miles west of White-
chapel.
But the state of the body, the gashes, the mutilations, the cuts,
the holes in the flesh, proved plainly that the murderer was the
old fiend ; that this was his eighth victim.
He had evidently attacked his victim from behind, cut her
throat from ear to ear, dug his ?aiife into her breasts.
Then he had raised her poor, dishevelled clothing, slit the
body right and left, and left the intestines exposed in a clotted
pool of blood.
There had evidently been a hard fight.
Spots of gore were spattered all over the pavement.
But the victim, in spite of her struggles, had succumbed to the
hellish adroitness and diabolical strength of her foul assailant.
N There she lay in the moonlight — stiff, stark dead.
And the murderer escaped.
Newsboys hawked about the dreadful news.
London at its breakfast read of a new tragedy.
The calls for the resignation of Sir Charles Warren, Chief ol
Metropolitan Police, already loud grow louder.
Old men told the story of crimes in the olden times.
Terrible as this eighth murder was, Whitechapel had been the
scene of mysterious murders before.
Close upon eighty years since it, and, indeed, the whole
country, was startled by the perpetration of a series of most revolt-
ing murders, the scene being Ratcliffe Highway. The malefactor,
whoever he was — for it was never definitely decided,, although
there was a case of strong circumstantial evidence, almost amount-
ing to certainty, against an Irish sailor named Williams or
Murphy — did not, in these instances, seek out and mark down
unfortunate women of the lowest class, but looked for his victims
in the persons of respectable tradespeople and their families,
slaughtered without mercy every human being within the four
walls, sparing not even the defenceless, innocent babe in the cradle.
The two distinct crimes, in which seven lives were taken,
occurred within the space of a fortnight. The first,, the murder
of the whole household of the Marrs, at Xo. 29 Ratcliffe Highway,
soon after midnight of Saturday, December 8, 1811, and the
eecond, a similar massacre of the Williamsons, at No. 81 New
Gravel Lane, Eatcliffe Highway, between eleven and twelve o'clock
on the night of the 19th of the same month.
In the first case four persons in all were the victims of the
outrage. They were Mr. and Mrs. Marr, each of whom were
under twenty-five years of age, their infant, four months old, and
James Gohen, the apprentice, fourteen years of age. The servant-
girl would doubtless have shared the same fate but that she had
been sent out on an errand, and on her return, having been absent
less than twenty minutes, she found the house in darkness, and
subsequently the bodies were discovered lying in various parts
of the ground floor and upon the staircase.
Three persons perished in the second case. They were Mr.
and Mrs. Williamson, the landlord and landlady of the King's
Arms, and their maid-servant, who was found in like manner at
the bottom front of the house.
A delirium and panic seized Londoners in general, and those
living in the East End especially,, as had seldom or never been
known before. People barricaded their doors and windows as if
in momentary expectation of a seige, and there were some who
even died of fright as they heard their shutters or doors tried by
persons who, at the worst, were probably meditating nothing more
serious than burglary. Nor was the alarm confined to the
metropolis. A notion had somehow got abroad that the murderer,
whoever he was, had left London, and a state of the wildest terror
prevailed all over the country. It is an ill wind that blows
nobody good, and those were fine times for locksmiths, iron-
mongers, carpenters and the like. Everybody was having new
shutters, doors, bolts, bars and locks. Indeed, the door-ohain,
which upon old doors is so often of tremendous strength and
weight, owes its origin to the prevailing alarm which existed. For
many months afterward he would be in truth a bold, and, his
neighbors would say, a rash man who answered a knock at the
door or a ring at the bell before peering cautiously through the
slit which the chain permitted. Even the caricaturists of the day,
ready enough as a rule to seize hold of anything which excited the
public mind, seemeu to have been too frightened to make capital
out of the murders, and the political cartoons which introduced
hammers and razors, the instruments with which the crimes were
committed, are but one or two. ,
Then,^ as now, in this particular district, the shopkeepers were
in the habit of keeping open until midnight, and later on Satur-
day, and Mr. Marr, who is described as a " man mercer," or a
hosier, as the modern term has it, at a few minutes before twelve,
his shop being still open,, gave his servant, Margaret Jewell, a £1
note, instructing her to pay the baker's bill and to bring in some
oysters, which was no doubt a Saturday night, or Sunday morning,
to be more accurate, treat after the labors of the week.
Margaret went to the Baker's, and, finding it shut,, leturned
past the shop, which was yet open, and her master was still behind
the counter. She then went to get the oysters; but, finding the
Iphop shut up also, returned, after an absence of twenty minutes
in all, finding the shop closed and everything in darkness.
Upon knocking she was unable to gain admittance. Presently
a watchman passed on the other side of the street with a person
in charge, and soon after another watchman came up,, calling the
hour of one, who told her to move on. She explained who she
was, and the watchman knocked and rang, and then was joined
by a neighbor, who got in through the back and opened the door,
when they together entered the house. This was the girl's evidence
at the inquest, and at this point she fainted away.
, A sorry spectacle met their gaze as soon as a light could be pro-
cured. There lay the apprentice upon his face on the staircase
with a great hole in his skull where his brains had been knocked
out, and with such force had this been done, that portions thereof
were bespattered over the walls and ceiling. Mrs. Marr was next
found lying on the floor,, near the street door, quite dead, her head
wounded in a like terrible manner, and Mr. Marr's body without
any sign of life, was discovered behind the counter with exactly
similar injuries. The only other occupant of the house, an infant
four months* old, whose innocence had not been suflBcient to pro-
Stect it, was in its cradle, with its throat cut from ear to ear: its
head lay almost severed from its body.
!N'othing was missing from the house, although there were £152
in the cash-box, and the ill-fated Marr had nearly £5 in his pockets.
The assassin, whoever he was, had disappeared, leaving behind
him a large shipwright mallet, which was covered in blood, weigh-
ing two or three pounds, with a handle three feet long, a i.pping
chisel eighteen inches long, and a wooden mallet about four inches
square, with a handle eighteen inches in length.
Mr. Murry, the neighbor, stated that at about ten mmutes
past twelve he heard a noise in Marr's house like the pushing of
a chair,, and the watchman said that soon after twelve he had
called out that the window was unfastened, and had been answered
from within. " We know it." The girl gave evidence that while
she was waiting she heard a child cry, and then someone came
downstairs.
Prints of blood-stained footsteps of at least two persons were,
it was said, discovered in the rear of the premises, and several
people were taken up on suspicion, but were discharged. The
churchwardens of the parish offered a reward of £50, and this
was supplemented by £20 from the Thames Police Office, but
nothing came of it.
Whilst London was ringing with the news, the terror which
already existed was heightened by the intelligence of a crime
which was equally barbarous and almost equally inexplicable.
The unfortunate sufferers by the first outrage were buried in the
presence of a large number of people on the Sunday following,
and on the Thursday after, the twelfth night from their death.
the entire household of Williamson's, with one exception, was
slaughtered, as already stated.
On that night, between eleven and twelve, the passers-by in
New Gravel Lane were alarmed by a cry of " Murder !" whidi
came from a man, clothed in nothing but his shirt, who was hang-
ing by the sheets of his bed — ^which he had knotted together —
from a second floor window at No. 81 in that thoroughfare. He
contrived to reach the ground, and then told those who had hurried
up on hearing his cry of " Murder !" that murderers were in the
house, slaughtering every one within.
A couple of men thereupon burst open the door, when they
found the mistress and maid-servant lying by the kitchen fire with
their throats cut from ear to ear. In the cellar was the master
of the house also, with his head nearly severed from his body, and
one of his legs broken. The grandchild of the murdered man, a
little girl, was happily found alive, but there were evidences that
the murderer had entered the room, doubtless with the intention
of slaying it also, for he was eventually shown pretty clearly to
have been the Marr murderer, and, no doubt,, his fiendish instincts
were equally strong on each occasion. The noise of the breaking
door and the persons entering the house, however, prevented his
carrying his diabolical purpose into effect.
Rushing upstairs, the crowd found the door of a room locked.
As they burst it open they heard the crash of glass. The murderer
had sprung through the wind». \V, and in the fog which prevailed
was lost to sight.
Then the man in the shirt found an opportunity to speak. It
appeared that he was a lodger in the house, and had gone to bed,
but was awoke by a cry of " We shall be murdered !" Ou' of
bed he sprang, and,, looking over the stairs, saw through the window
of the taproom a powerful, well-made man, six feet high, dressed
in drab, shaggy bearskin coat, stooping over the body of Mrs.
Williamson, rifling her pockets. Then upon his terrified ears came
the sounds of the sighs of a person in the agonies of death.
Frightened half out of his life, he ran to the top of the house, but
could not find the trapdoor whereby to escape. Then he crept
back to his room and escaped, as stated, through the window.
Rewards were now offered amounting to £1,500, and a great
number of persons were taken up on suspicion. Amongst them
was a John Williams or Murphy — for he went by either name —
an Irish sailor, lodging at the Pear Tree public-house, not far off.
The wallet which had been left behind was marked with the
initials J. P., and a wallet so marked was missing from ^ tool-
chest -ivhich had been felt at the Pear Tree by John Petersen, a
ship's carpenter.
Mr. Vermilee, the landlord, who was at the time of the murders
in Newgate for debt, was shown the wallet. Murphy's washer-
woman stated that there was blood on a shirt and on some stock-
ings he had sent to her.
More than one person had seen him near "Williamson's house
on the night of the murder,, and others proved that he was well
acquainted with both Marr and Williamson.
Then, with that fatal stupidity that so often characterizes the
guilty. Murphy, when told on Friday morning of the miirder, and,
being yet in bed, replied, surlily, " I know it." In his dreams,
Itoo,, he had muttered words siifficient to implicate him, and so he
was apprehended on the same day and committed for trial on the
Saturday, a strong escort being provided to guard him on his way
to Coldbath Fields Prison. Nor was the caution ill-judged. All
along the route he was attended by a howling, roaring mob,
anxious to tear him limb from limb, and hurl his quivering flash
to the four winds. Escort and prisoner were only too thankful to
get safely to the prison.
Murphy managed, however, to cheat the hangman, and two
days after Christmas his lifeless body was discovered hanging by
his handkerchief from the iron grating of his cell. In accordance
with the barbarous custom of the period the suicide was buried
in the dead of night at four cross roads, with a stake driven
through his body. K^ot many months ago Messrs. Aird & Lucas'
workmen, in digging a trench for the purpose of laying a main
for the Commercial Gas Company at a point where the Cannon
Street Road and Cable Street, in St. George's-in-the-East, intersect
one another, discovered a skeleton, supposed to be that of Murphy,
with a stake driven through it, and some portions of a chain were
lying close to the bones.
The death of Murphy did not do much toward allaying the
public panic. A general notion prevailed that he had been
assisted by accomplices, and two of his friends, named Allbrass
and Hart, were apprehended; but after several examinations,
they were discharged. The excitement took a long time to subside,
but eventually the occurrences faded out of recollection, and now,
vdth the exception of the journals of the period, there is nothing
yto keep alive their memory but the innocent door-chain, with
which not one in a hundred of the modern jerry-built villas is
furnished.
Such IS the yam that old people in London tell young people
of famous murders in Whitechapel.
Meanwhile, though the old mystery was solved, the new is
as deep and dire an enigma as ever.
Dorset Street is one of the narrowest, dirtiest little alleys of
all those that go to make up the labyrinth known as the East End
of London.
To get there a cabman had to ask questions — a rare thing —
while his passengers on the journey loses all idea of location, and
wonders whether the cab horse's head or tail is pointing toward the
north.
Until to-day only a few out of many million landowners
knew that Dorset Street in the East End existed, but they know
it now, and will, with all other Englishmen, talk about it for
weeks.
On the day of the Lord Mayor's Show,, November d, all inter-
est was taken from that senseless pageant by ragged boys
struggling through the crowds with bundles of newspapers, and
yelling that another horrible Whitechapel murder had occurred
in Dorset Street.
You have read about these Whitechapel murders, and you
know how the cutting up of seme wretched woman is a happening
which the average Britisher has come to look for as one of the
regular incidents of metropolitan life.
It has got to such a point that those murders can almost be
written up after the methodical fashion which characterizes the
minutes of scme school-board meeting.
Each time a miserable creature belonging to the most
degraded class of women is mutilated in a most inconceivably
horrible fashion; the murderer has disappeared; the police do
nothing but observe secrecy; the general public theorizes as to
whether the murderer is mad or sane, short or tall, English or
foreign, etc. ; the Whitechapel women shiver in bunches, wonder-
ing whose turn will come next, and after a while the terror in the
East End and the curiosity in the West End subside together until
a fresh murder renews them.
The last and ninth Whitechapel murder was not committed in
Dorset Street, properly speaking. Out of Dorset Street there
opens an arched passage low and narrow.
A big man walking through it would bend his head and turn
sideways to keep his shoulders from rubbing against the dirty
bricks.
At the end of the passage is a high court, not ten feet broad
and thirty long, thickly whitewashed all round,, for sanitary rea-
sons, to a height of ten feet. That is Miller Court.
Misery is written all over the place — the worst kind of London
misery — such as those who have lived their lives in America can
have no idea of.
The first door at the end, on the right of the passage, opens
into a tiny damp room on a level with the pavement.
The landlord of this and neighboring rooms is a John Mc-
Carthy, who keeps a little shop on Dorset Street, on the side of
the passage. About a year ago he rented it to a woman who looked
about thirty. She was popular among the females of the neighbor-
hood, who shared her beer generously, as I have been tearfully
informed, and went imder the title of Mary Jane McCarthy. Her
landlord knew that she had another name, Kelly, but her friends
had not heard of it.
.> It seems there had been a Mr. Kelly, whom Mary Jane had
married in the manner which is considered satisfactory in White-
chapel. They had not gone to the expense of a license, but pub-
lished the fact of matrimon^ by living in one small room, and
sharing joy and sorrow and drunkenness there together.
Mary Jane took up her residence in the little room in Miller
Court when Kelly went away.
Since then her life had been that of all the women around
her ; her drunkenness and the number of strange men she brought
to her little room being the gauges by which her sisters in
wretchedness measured her prosperity.
On November 8 she went out as usual, and was seen at various
times up to half past 11 drinking at various low beer shops in
Commercial Street.
In those resorts she was known, not as 'N' iry Jane, her own
name, but as "Fair Emma," a title bestowed in complimentary
allusion to her appearance.
At last, just before midnight,, she went home with some man
who appears to have dissuaded her from making a good-night visit,
as was her custom, at the drinking place nearest her room.
No description whatever can be obtained of this man.
Right opposite the passage leading to Mary Jane's room is a
big and very pretentious lodging-house, where the charge is four-
pence. Some gentlemen congregated about the door at midnight
are sure they saw a man and a woman, the latter being Mary
Jane, stop to laugh at a poster on one side of the passage, which
offers a hundred pounds reward for the whitechapel murderer.
The man must have enjoyed the joke, for he himself was the
Whitechapel murderer beyond all doubt. This picture from real
life of a murderer reading an advertised reward for his capture
with the woman he is about to butcher, is not a usual one.
A great deal of speculation will be done as to whether he was
a cold-blooded monster trembling at his own danger as he read, or
a madman,, defiant of everything and with difficulty restraining
his impulse to kill at once.
The men who saw him can onlv sav that he did not look
remarkable.
At 10 o'clock in the morning, just as the Lord Mayor was
climbing into his golden carriage, three horrified policemen, who
had first looked in through Mary Jane's window and then drunk
big glasses of brandy to steady themselves, were breaking in her
door with a pickaxe.
The Whitechapel murderer had done his work with more
horrible thoroughness than ever before.
The miserable woman's body was literally scattered all over
her little room.
A description of such butchery is unpleasant to write, but is
necessary to understand London's state of terror and to form an
opinion as to this remarkable murder.
Almost every conceivable mutilation had been practised on the
bod v.
ft'
McCarthy, the shopkeeper and landlord, had seen the body
first. He had gone, as he had daily for a long time past, to ask
for several weeks' arrears of rent, amounting in all to thirty
shillings.
Though not an imaginative man,, McCarthy at once expressed
the conviction that a devil, and not a man, had been at work.
This, by the way, is a new theory in regard to the murderer's
identity.
The woman's nose was cut off and her face gashed.
She had been completely disembowelled, at had all the mur-
derer's former victims, and all the intestines had been placed upon
a little table which, with a chair and the bed, constituted all the
furniture in the room.
Both the woman's breasts had been removed and placed also
on the table.
Large portions of the thighs had been cut away, and the head
was almost completely severed from the body.
One leg was almcdc completely cut off.
The mutilation was so frightful that more than an hour was
spent by the doctors in endeavoring to reconstruct the woman's
body from the pieces, so as to place it in a coffin and have it photo-
graphed.
On the 8th of November^ at midnight, Dorset Street and all
the neighborhood was swarming with such a degraded White-
chapel throng as have been already described in these columns.
Those with any money were getting drunk very fast.
The drunkenness of the poor of London is amazing.
Many sober women, and all the drunken ones, were crying
from terror, while the men lounged about, singing or fighting and
chaflSng the women, according to their ideas of humor.
Gallantry is not rampant among these Whitechapel men.
The police were doing nothing of importance.
The poor woman's fragments, put together as skillfully as
possible, were lying in the Houndsditch mortuary in a scratched
and dirty shell of a coflBn often used before.
The mortuary is in a graveyard back of tiie gloomy old
Houndsdltch Church, and not a pleasant spot late at night.
While the body was being carried from the scene of the murder
thousands crowded as near as the police would allow, and gazed
with Kfted caps and pitying faces at the latest victim.
The police did nothing but push the crowd about and
be officious — this to such an extent that even those whose duty
led them to the place found it necessary to place frequent softening
half-crowns in policemen's palms.
The most interesting individual in Miller Court was a woman
who had known the dead woman.
Mary Jane's pal, she called herself.
Her room was directly opposite the murdered woman's and its
H\ agitated proprietor stood in the doorway urging a young girl with
straggling wisps of red hair,, who had started for beer, not to be
gone a minute.
She assured a reporter that she would be glad to talk to him
while Kate was away, just to forget the horrors.
This woman spoke well of the dead.
Her name was Mary, and she had not always been on peaceable
terms with the murdered Mary Jane. Though quarrelsome, Mary
Jane was pretty before she was cut up, she said, and she was only
twenty-four, not thirty, as she looked: but she would fight, and
did not care what sort of a place she lived in.
Mary's was about as big as a horse car. Sleeping and cooking
were both done in it. On a clothes line stretched across it a night
dress was drying. There was a bed one foot above the floor, a
stool and a nondescript piece of furniture to hold things. There
was milk in a saucer on the floor, showing that vile air and worse
drainage had brought the kitten down without the help of hunger.
When the girl with the red hair came back the woman who had
been a friend of Mary Jane drank in a few minutes a quart of
beer,, relating at the same time many incidents in the lives of her-
self and her dead friend.
At last, with a flood of drunken tears, she declared that she
would never dare go out on the streets again to earn a living,
observed somewhat inconsistently that lightning never struck
Itwice in the same place, meaning that the murderer would never
come back to Miller Court, made the red-haired girl swear an
oath to stay all night, and went asleep on the bed with her head
the wrong way up.
Those who think they have a working plan for reforming
society should take a careful look through Whitechapel and see
the things they have got to reform.
The girl with the red hair did not think it wonderful that
no one had heard any sound of the murder.
Some one was always drunk and yelling in Miller Court, and
she rightly guessed that a woman being beaten would make as
much noise as one cut up, so that the murder would not be noticed.
For her part she was sure to imagine murder in every direction
now.
She had a strong mind, however, had not had any beer,, and
did not cry. She knew positively that Mary Jane was alive at one
o'clock, for at that hour she had heard her singing " Sweet
Violets " to whoever was in her room.
This fact and the name of the tune has been solemnly entered
in the police account of the case.
It is useless to theorize any further concerning the murderer.
He proved himself a man of wonderfully cool nerve or most utter
recklessness.
There is little prospect of anything resulting from the English
detectives' efforts. London has resigned itself to wait till the
murderer shall betray himself.
The question faces us, who was the man who committed these
harrowing murders ?
Many explanations have been given.
" A suicidal maniac," says one.
"A crank afflicted with insane desire for notoriety," says
another.
A man who has been injured in some mysterious way by a
woman of the unfortunate class, and who thus wreaks his
vengeance."
One of the most palpable explanations given as to the identity
of the murderer was that advanced by John Paul Bocock, in the
^ew York "World," ascribing the murders to iN'icholas Vassili,
a Russian,, who committed a series of murders in Paris some years
ago, and who, according to the journalist, now repeats his fell
work in London.
Here is the story of iN'assili's crimes.
Even if he should not prove to be the Whitechapel murderer,
the story is interesting:
!N'o stronger story of love, crime, fanaticism and mania has
ever been told. The ferocious stamp of a savage realism marks
the history of Nicholas Vassili from the first as that of a man
unfettered from human restriction, a law, a creed, a passion unto
himself. He was born in 1847, at Tiraspol,, in the Province of
Cherson.
At that time a religious reform was just beginning to stir
from the timeworn ruts of their creed, the peasantry and middle
classes of Southern Russia.
Nicholas grew up to feel its influence to the depth of his
strange nature. He grew up to be a tall, stern youth, broad-
shouldered, strong beyond the common power of his peers, dark-
eyed, pale-faced. His family were well to do ; he did not have to
work, but studied, pondered, and became before his majority an
ascetic in body as in mind.
At the beginning of the year 1872,, the Russian Church made
a vigorous effort to repress the spread of this fanatical asceticism
in Cherson, of which Vassili was now a leading exponent, and
which seemed to be running havoc among the peasantry and
middle classes. The sect of v^hich he was the rising apostle was
that of " The Shorn."
When the Kussian patriarchs began to persecute them, some
of the Shorn were for a resort to arms. Others weni into volun-
tary exile, and among the latter was Nicholas Vassili.
He was now twenty-five years of age and a notable-looking
man in any assemblage. He had been well educated at Taraspol
and at the University at Odessa, and he had inherited from his
parents an income sufficient to his own frugal needs.
So fierce h::d been his denunciations of the oppress
Thema: "Chronicles of Crime and Criminals", Henry Wainwright 1895 (Gelesen 12820 mal)