“We will worry about that later. Right now you must try to sleep some more.”
“Sleep…yes.” I sat and held his hand until he drifted off again.
When he awoke a second time a few hours later, I brought him a bowl of broth, which he consumed with reawakening appetite. My husband was clearly on the mend; he was considering getting out of bed when Dr. Phelps stopped by.
The doctor was pleased with Edward’s progress. “Spend the rest of the day resting,” he said, “and then tomorrow you may be allowed up. You must be careful not to overtax yourself or the fever may recur.”
Edward put up a show of protesting, but I think he was secretly relieved that nothing was required of him except that he lie in bed all day. I escorted the doctor to the door.
“Make sure he eats,” he said to me. “He needs to rebuild his strength.”
I said I’d see to it. Then I hesitated; I could not go on without knowing. “Dr. Phelps, did anything happen last night?”
“I beg your pardon?”
He didn’t know what I meant. “Did the Ripper strike again?”
Dr. Phelps smiled. “I am happy to say he did not. Perhaps we’ve seen an end of these dreadful killings, hmm?”
My relief was so great it was all I could do not to burst into tears.
When the doctor had gone, I again fell to my knees and prayed, this time asking God to forgive me for entertaining such treacherous thoughts about my own husband.
1 November 1888, Leman Street Police Station, Whitechapel.
It was with a light heart that I left the vicarage this bright, crisp Tuesday morning. My husband was recovered from his recent indisposition and busy with his daily duties. I had received two encouraging replies to my petitions for charitable assistance for Whitechapel’s children. And London had survived the entire month of October without another Ripper killing.
I was on my way to post two letters, my responses to the philanthropists who seemed inclined to listen to my plea. In my letters I had pointed out that over half the children born in Whitechapel die before they reach the age of five. The ones that do not die are mentally and physically underdeveloped; many of them that are taken into pauper schools are adjudged abnormally dull if not actual mental defectives. Children frequently arrive at school crying from hunger and then collapse at their benches. In winter they are too cold to think about learning their letters or doing their sums. The schools themselves are shamefully mismanaged and the children sometimes mistreated; there are school directors who pocket most of the budget and hire out the children to sweatshop owners as cheap labor.
What I proposed was the establishment of a boarding school for the children of Whitechapel, a place where the young would be provided with hygienic living conditions, wholesome food to eat, and warm clothing to wear — all before they ever set foot in a classroom. Then when their physical needs had been attended to, they would be given proper educational and moral instruction. The school was to be administered by an honest and conscientious director who could be depended upon never to exploit the downtrodden. All this would cost a great deal of money.
My letters went into the post accompanied by a silent prayer. I was then in Leman Street, not far from the police station. I stopped in and asked if Inspector Abberline was there.
He was; he greeted me warmly and offered me a chair. After inquiring after my husband’s health, he sat back and looked at me expectantly.
Now that I was there, I felt a tinge of embarrassment. “It is pre-sumptuous of me, I know,” I said, “but may I make a suggestion?
Concerning the Ripper, I mean. You’ve undoubtedly thought of every possible approach, but…” I didn’t finish my sentence because he was laughing.
“Forgive me, Mrs. Wickham,” he said, still smiling. “I would like to show you something.” He went into another room and returned shortly carrying a large box filled with papers. “These are letters,”
he explained, “from concerned citizens like yourself. Each one offers a plan for capturing the Ripper. And we have two more boxes just like this one.”
I flushed and rose to leave. “Then I’ll not impose—”
“Please, Mrs. Wickham, take your seat. We read every letter that comes to us and give serious consideration to every suggestion made.
I show you the box only to convince you we welcome suggestions.”
I resumed my seat, not fully convinced but nevertheless encouraged by the Inspector’s courtesy. “Very well.” I tried to gather my thoughts. “The Ripper’s first victim, you are convinced, was Polly Nichols?”
“Correct. Buck’s Row, the last day of August.”
“The Illustrated Times said that she was forty-two years old and separated from her husband, to whom she had borne five children.
The cause of their separation was her propensity for strong drink.
Mr. Nichols made his wife an allowance, according to the Times, until he learned of her prostitution — at which time he discontinued all pecuniary assistance. Is this account essentially correct?”
“Yes, it is.”
“The Ripper’s next victim was Annie Chapman, about forty, who was murdered early in September?”
“The night of the eighth,” Inspector Abberline said, “although her body wasn’t found until six the next morning. She was killed on Hanbury Street, less than half a mile from the Buck’s Row site of Polly Nichols’s murder.”
I nodded. “Annie Chapman also ended on the streets because of drunkenness. She learned her husband had died only when her allowance stopped. When she tried to find her two children, she discovered they had been separated and sent to different schools, one of them abroad.”
Inspector Abberline raised an eyebrow. “How did you ascertain that, Mrs. Wickham?”
“One of our parishioners knew her,” I said. “Next came the double murder of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes, during the small hours of the thirtieth of September. Berner Street and Mitre Square, a fifteen-minute walk from each other. The Stride woman was Swedish by birth and claimed to be a widow, but I have heard that may not be true. She was a notorious inebriate, according to one of the constables patrolling Fairclough Street, and she may simply have been ashamed to admit her husband would not allow her near the children — the nine children. Is this also correct?”
The Inspector was looking bemused. “It is.”
“Of Catherine Eddowes I know very little. But the Times said she had spent the night before her death locked up in the Cloak Lane Police Station, because she’d been found lying drunk in the street somewhere in Aldgate. And you yourself told me she had a daughter. Did she also have a husband, Inspector?”
He nodded slowly. “A man named Conway. We’ve been unable to trace him.”
The same pattern in each case. “You’ve said on more than one occasion that the four victims had only their prostitution in common.
But in truth, Inspector, they had a great deal in common. They were all in their forties. They were all lacking in beauty. They had all been married. They all lost their homes through a weakness for the bottle.” I took a breath. “And they were all mothers.”
Inspector Abberline looked at me quizzically.
“They were all mothers who abandoned their children.”
He considered it. “You think the Ripper had been abandoned?”
“Is it not possible? Or perhaps he too had a wife he turned out because of drunkenness. I don’t know where he fits into the pattern.