At 1.45 am, her body was discovered by the bull’s-eye lamp of PC Watkins as he walked on his beat through the square. It lay on its back in a corner. ‘I have been in the force a long while,’ said Watkins, ‘but I never saw such a sight.’ The body had been ripped open, said Watkins, like a pig in the market. The left leg was extended and the right leg bent. The throat had been deeply slit and the face had been slashed and cut. There were also abrasions on both cheeks. Both sets of eyelids had been nicked and part of the nose and the right ear had been sliced off. The trunk had been torn apart from the sternum to the groin by a series of disjointed thrusts, the pointed knife that was employed being angled from right to left. The woman had been disembowelled – entrails had been thrown across her right shoulder. The uterus and the left kidney had been cut away and removed.
Police sketches and photographs of Catherine Eddowes’s body greatly minimise the view that the murderer had some anatomical knowledge, or took ‘at least five minutes’ over his work. He clearly worked in a frenzy – cutting the throats of his victims, ripping their bodies and pulling out organs with neither care nor skill, and all in a couple of minutes at the most. He would have worked with speed, frantic with bloodlust and also fearful of being caught. He may have had a very rough knowledge of anatomy, sufficient for him to knowingly silence each victim by severing her windpipe, and he might have known what a womb looked like (he removed two) and have been able to distinguish such a comparatively small and obscure item among the mass of organs in the gut. But this does not mean that he had had any actual medical experience or had been a butcher, slaughterman, farmer or hunter of any sort.
The idea propounded at the time by some doctors, that the throats of the victims had been cut (the cause of death) as they lay on the ground, is in reality not very likely – unless the women were already unconscious, or dead. For despite their dirty clothes and drunken state, they are unlikely to have stretched out on the much dirtier, muddy ground to have sex. This service would most likely have been provided standing up against a wall, with their backs to it – or facing it. And it is unlikely that the women were suffocated or strangled before their throats were cut. If they had been strangled, they would surely have fought for their lives. But in no case was there any sign of a struggle, nor were any bruises found on the women’s necks where pressure in strangulation would have been applied. Despite the cut throats, some such marks, if they had been there, must have remained. There were, however, bruises and abrasions on the faces of the women, about the chin and jaw. Stride’s shoulders were also bruised.
It seems likely that the murderer seized the women from behind, with his left arm or hand gripping face or chin and forcing it upwards, thereby stifling any cry and exposing the throat to the long-bladed knife in his right hand. He would then cut from left to right. In every case, the drunken women were taken by surprise. Despite the fact that people were awake and within a few yards of the murders, there was evidently never any resistance or any sound.
Catherine Eddowes wore a black cloth jacket with an imitation fur collar; her black straw bonnet was trimmed with beads and velvet; her dark green dress was patterned with michaelmas daisies and lilies. In her pockets were a handkerchief, a comb, two clay pipes, a cigarette case, a matchbox containing some cotton, a ball of worsted, a mitten, a small tin box containing tea and sugar, five pieces of soap and a blunt table-knife. Around her neck was a ribbon and ‘a piece of old white coarse apron’, presumably in place of a scarf. The three previous victims had also worn scarves. Part of this bloodstained apron had been cut off, and was found at the bottom of some common stairs leading to 108-119 Wentworth Dwellings, Goulston Street (north-east of Mitre Square and on the way to Spitalfields) at 2.55 am.
PC Long, who noticed the bloody rag during his night patrol, stated that at 2.20 am it had not been there. Nor, he said, had a five-lined message written in chalk on a black-bricked wall in the passage: ‘The Juwes are / The men that / Will not / be Blamed for nothing.’ When the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Charles Warren, arrived in Goulston Street about 5 am, he ordered the words to be rubbed out, even before a daylight photograph could be taken of this possible clue. The words, however, were copied. Warren’s action was explained by his concern to avoid the exacerbation of prevailing anti-semitic prejudice. For apart from the fact that some main suspects had been Jews, the last four women had been murdered in Jewish areas and near buildings occupied by Jews.
The ‘double event’ of the murders of Eddowes and Stride provided the press with even more sensational and lurid headlines and reports, and added further fuel to the clamour for the resignation of Sir Charles Warren and the Home Secretary. It was felt that not enough was being done to identify and apprehend the murderer, and the police were strongly criticised. Vigilance committees were formed, petitions signed and demonstrations made. Thousands of letters about the murders and the murderer’s identity were sent to the police and to the press, exhibiting every sort of social, sexual and racial prejudices.
Meanwhile, in the East End, where large morbid crowds had gathered in the streets to view the scenes of the murders and indulge in rabid speculation, a ‘terrible quiet’ descended.
Then a letter and a postcard, received by the Central News Agency, were published with the permission of the police on 3 October. From now on the murderer had a name – Jack the Ripper.
The letter, addressed to The Boss, Central News Office, London City, was dated 25 September 1888 and posted in the East End on 27 September, the Thursday before the double murder in the early hours of Sunday, 30 September. It read:
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 (Annie Chapman) no time to squeal … I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear 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 ha ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldnt 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 a chance. Good luck.
yours truly
Jack the Ripper
Dont mind me giving the trade name
wasnt good enough to post this before I got all
the red ink off my hands curse it. No luck yet.
They say I’m a doctor now ha ha.
The letter was followed a few days later by a postcard. It was postmarked 1 October – the Monday after the double murder and not, as many writers have said, on the same day – even ‘a few hours after’ the murders of Stride and Eddowes. The postcard was probably written at least 24 hours after the murders, and after details of them had been sensationally splashed in the Monday morning papers. It was addressed to: Central News Office, London City, EC:
I wasnt codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip. youll hear about saucy Jackys work tomorrow double event this time number one squealed a bit couldnt finish straight off. had no time to get ears for police thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again. Jack the Ripper
The postcard might have been written on Sunday the 30th, anything from twelve to twenty hours after the murders, which were within the few hours after midnight. It might have been written by someone in the locality who had heard of the ‘double event’, or indeed by a journalist,