12 October 1888, Golden Lane Mortuary, City of London.
Today I did something I have never done before: I wilfully disobeyed my husband. Edward had forbidden me to attend the inquest of Catherine Eddowes, saying I should not expose myself to such un-savory disclosures as were bound to be made. Also, he said it was unseemly for the vicar’s wife to venture abroad unaccompanied, a dictum that impresses me as more appropriately belonging to another time and place. I waited until Edward left the vicarage and then hurried on my way. My path took me past one of the larger slaughterhouses in the area; with my handkerchief covering my mouth and nose to keep out the stench, I had to cross the road to avoid the blood and urine flooding the pavement. Once I had left Whitechapel, however, the way was unencumbered.
Outside the Golden Lane Mortuary I was pleased to encounter Inspector Abberline; he was surprised to see me there and immediately offered himself as my protector. “Is the Reverend Mr. Wickham not with you?”
“He has business in Shoreditch,” I answered truthfully, not adding that Edward found inquests distasteful and would not have attended in any event.
“This crowd could turn ugly, Mrs. Wickham,” Inspector Abberline said. “Let me see if I can obtain us two chairs near the door.”
That he did, with the result that I had to stretch in a most unladylike manner to see over other people’s heads. “Inspector,” I said,
“have you learned the identity of the other woman who was killed the same night as Catherine Eddowes?”
“Yes, it was Elizabeth Stride — Long Liz, they called her. About forty-five years of age and homely as sin, if you’ll pardon my speaking ill of the dead. They were all unattractive, all the Ripper’s victims. One thing is certain, he didn’t choose them for their beauty.”
“Elizabeth Stride was a prostitute?”
“That she was, Mrs. Wickham, I’m sorry to say. She had nine children somewhere, and a husband, until he could tolerate her drunkenness no longer and turned her out. A woman with a nice big family like that and a husband who supported them — what reasons could she have had to turn to drink?”
I could think of nine or ten. “What about Catherine Eddowes?
Did she have children too?”
Inspector Abberline rubbed the side of his nose. “Well, she had a daughter, that much we know. We haven’t located her yet, though.”
The inquest was ready to begin. The small room was crowded, with observers standing along the walls and even outside in the passageway. The presiding coroner called the first witness, the police constable who found Catherine Eddowes’s body.
The remarkable point to emerge from the constable’s testimony was that his patrol took him through Mitre Square, where he’d found the body, every fourteen or fifteen minutes. The Ripper had only fifteen minutes to inflict so much damage? How swift he was, how sure of what he was doing!
It came out during the inquest that the Eddowes woman had been strangled before her killer had cut her throat, thus explaining why she had not cried out. In response to my whispered question, Inspector Abberline said yes, the other victims had also been strangled first.
When the physicians present at the postmortem testified, they were agreed that the killer had sound anatomical knowledge but they were not in accord as to the extent of his actual skill in removing the organs. Their reports of what had been done to the body were disturbing; I grew slightly faint during the description of how the flaps of the abdomen had been peeled back to expose the intestines.
Inspector Abberline’s sworn statement was succinct and free of speculation; he testified as to the course of action pursued by the police following the discovery of the body. There were other witnesses, people who had encountered Catherine Eddowes on the night she was killed. At one time she had been seen speaking to a middle-aged man wearing a black coat of good quality which was now slightly shabby; it was the same description that had emerged during the investigation of one of the Ripper’s earlier murders. But at the end of it all we were no nearer to knowing the Ripper’s identity than ever; the verdict was “Willful murder by some person unknown.”
I refused Inspector Abberline’s offer to have one of his assistants escort me home. “That makes six women he’s killed now, this Ripper,” I said. “You need all of your men for your investigation.”
The Inspector rubbed the side of his nose, a mannerism I was coming to recognize indicated uncertainty. “As a matter of fact, Mrs.
Wickham, I am of the opinion that only four were killed by the same man. You are thinking of the woman murdered near St. Jude’s Church? And the one on Osborn Street?” He shook his head. “Not the Ripper’s work, I’m convinced of it.”
“What makes you think so, Inspector?”
“Because while those two women did have their throats cut, they weren’t cut in the same manner as the later victims.” There is vicious-ness in the way the Ripper slashes his victims’ throats…he is left-handed, we know, and he slashes twice, once each way. The cuts are deep, brutal…he almost took Annie Chapman’s head off. No, Polly Nichols was his first victim, then Chapman. And now this double murder, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes. Those four are all the work of the same man.”
I shuddered. “Did the four women know one another?”
“Not that we can determine,” Inspector Abberline replied.
“Evidently they had nothing in common except the fact that they were all four prostitutes.”
More questions occurred to me, but I had detained the Inspector long enough. I bade him farewell and started back to St. Jude’s, a long walk from Golden Lane. The daylight was beginning to fail, but I had no money for a hansom cab. I pulled my shawl tight about my shoulders and hurried my step, not wishing to be caught out of doors after dark. It was my husband’s opinion that since the Ripper killed only prostitutes, respectable married women had nothing to fear. It was my opinion that my husband put altogether too much faith in the Ripper’s ability to tell the difference.
I was almost home when a most unhappy incident ensued. A distraught woman approached me on Middlesex Street, carrying what looked like a bundle of rags which she thrust into my arms.
Inside the rags was a dead baby. I cried out and almost dropped the cold little body.
“All he needed were a bit o’ milk,” the mother said, tears running down her cheeks.
“Oh, I am so sorry!” I gasped helplessly. The poor woman looked half-starved herself.
“They said it was no use a-sending to the church,” she sobbed,
“for you didn’t never give nothing though you spoke kind.”
I was so ashamed I had to lower my head. Even then I didn’t have tuppence in my pocket to give her. I slipped off my shawl and wrapped it around the tiny corpse. “Bury him in this.”
She mumbled something as she took the bundle from me and staggered away. She would prepare to bury her child in the shawl, but at the last moment she would snatch back the shawl’s warmth for herself. She would cry over her dead baby as she did it, but she would do it. I prayed that she would do it.