Sor I send you half the kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer.
signed Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk
The writer of this note is probably not the same man who penned the ‘Jack the Ripper’ epistles. Apart from the fact that the handwriting is different, the spelling of the Ripper letter and card are superior and written in quite a neat copper-plate. A curious feature of the note to Mr Lusk is the oddly illiterate spelling – it seems deliberate. Words like ‘half’, ‘piece’, ‘fried’ and ‘bloody’ are properly spelt, yet ‘kidne’, ‘prasarved’, ‘nise’, ‘knif’, ‘wate’ and ‘whit’ are not, being given a sort of phonetic spelling which in three cases is merely attained by the omission of the last letters – ‘kidne’, ‘knif’ and ‘whit’. Yet in the last two words, the silent letters ‘k’ and ‘h’ are included. There is also an obvious Irishness to the spelling of ‘Sor’ and ‘Mishter’.
Mr Lusk had already been bothered by a prowler and other letters, and was at first inclined to dismiss the kidney as a disagreeable hoax. But friends advised him to submit the half kidney to the inspection of the police and doctors, and on 18 October Dr Openshaw, at the Pathological Museum, after examining the offensive organ, concluded that the kidney had come from a woman who drank, had Bright’s Disease, and that it was part of a left kidney. He thought it had been removed within the last three weeks. It had also been preserved in spirits after its removal.
It has since been assumed that the kidney was the one missing from the body of drunken Catherine Eddowes. There is no proof of this. Eddowes was buried in the City of London Cemetery at Ilford on 8 October, so there was no chance of direct verification or of comparing the alleged length of renal artery attached to the postal kidney and that still in the murdered woman. It is also virtually impossible – it would have been completely so in 1888 – to tell whether a kidney comes from a woman or a man. Moreover, Bright’s Disease, which infected the kidney, is not necessarily caused by alcoholism, and the postal kidney had been put in spirits within a few hours of its removal – something the murderer of Eddowes would surely not have thought of or had time to do.
Assumptions and error have gilded the half-kidney since it was sent to Mr Lusk. The sender was most probably a morbid hoaxer, possibly a medical student or hospital worker, who must have been much gratified by the success of his little device. On 29 October, another illiterate letter was sent, this time to Dr Openshaw:
Old boss you was rite it was the left kidny i was goin to hopperate agin clos to your ospitle just as i was goin to dror my nife along of er bloomin throte them cusses of coppers spoilt the game but i guess i wil be on the job soon and will send you another bit innerds Jack the ripper.
An interesting feature of the letters quoted above, one or two of which are thought by some to have possibly been written by the actual Whitechapel murderer, is that the addresses were correct (and correctly spelt) and that none of them was addressed to the police – who, in fact, received thousands of letters. This is odd, for murderers with a literary leaning invariably feel bound to communicate with the police, and with no one else – with the exception of Dr Cream, who wrote to everyone.
Sir Robert Anderson, who became head of the CID at the Yard in September 1888, said later: ‘The “Jack the Ripper” letter which is preserved in the Police Museum at New Scotland Yard is the creation of an enterprising journalist.’ And Sir Melville Macnaghten, who became Assistant Chief Constable at the Yard in 1889 and head of the CID in 1903, wrote: ‘In this ghastly production I have always thought I could discern the stained finger of the journalist – indeed, a year later I had shrewd suspicions as to the actual author! But whoever did pen the gruesome stuff, it is certain to my mind that it was not the mad miscreant who had committed the murders.’
The fifth and final murder generally attributed to the Ripper happened forty days after the ‘double event’. It was different in that the victim, a prostitute, was young and attractive, was killed indoors and more horribly and extensively mutilated than any female murder victim before, or perhaps since.
Mary Jane Kelly – also known as Dark Mary, Mary Ann and Marie – aged twenty-four, was murdered in the early hours of Friday, 9 November, in a back room of 26 Dorset Street. Two women in nearby but separate rooms said they heard a woman cry ‘Murder’ about 3.45 am. Mary Kell’s lodging, rented for four shillings a week, was Room 13 in the house and had its own entrance, a side-door opening into a passage called Miller’s Court. Until 30 October she had shared the room with her common-law husband, Joseph Barnett. After a stormy row he left her, since when another prostitute had stayed with her occasionally.
Kelly’s body was discovered about 10.45 am by her landlord’s assistant, Thomas Bowyer, who had been sent to ask her for the thirty-five shillings she owed in rent. Getting no answer to his knocking – the door was locked – he peered through a broken window, removing rags that filled the gap and pulling aside a curtain to do so. The police were sent for, but as the Commissioner, Sir Charles Warren, had chosen to resign the day before, the police force were in some confusion. Kelly’s room was not entered (at first by the window) until 1.30 pm.
The bloodstained room was sparsely furnished. Mary Kelly, wearing the remains of a chemise or slip, was lying on her back on a bed, where she had been placed after the murderer cut her throat. By the light of a fire, fuelled by clothes and other items he found in the room (although Kelly’s clothes, folded on a chair, were not so used), he set to work mutilating the body, which was stabbed, slashed, skinned, gutted and ripped apart. Her nose and breasts were cut off and dumped on a table; entrails were extracted; some were removed; other parts lay on the bed. Mary Kelly was nearly three months pregnant.
The last person believed to have seen her alive was George Hutchinson, an unemployed labourer. He had known Kelly for three years. He met her in Thrawl Street as he walked towards Flower and Dean Street about 2 am. She said: ‘Hutchinson, will you lend me sixpence?’ ‘I can’t,’ he replied. ‘I’ve spent all my money going down to Romford.’ She shrugged. ‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘I must go and find some money.’ She walked off, and a man coming in the opposite direction accosted her – they both laughed. Hutchinson watched. He heard Kelly say: ‘All right.’ ‘You’ll be all right for what I’ve told you,’ said the man. They walked towards Hutchinson and passed him – he was standing under a lamp outside a pub, the Queen’s Head. The man lowered his head and his hat as he passed. But Hutchinson was later able to describe him as being about thirty-four, 5 ft 6 in tall, dark-haired, with a small moustache curled up at the ends. He was dressed in a long dark coat, with a dark jacket and trousers; his waistcoat was as pale as his face, and across it was a gold chain. He wore a white shirt, button boots with gaiters and his black tie had a horseshoe-shaped pin in it. He seemed quite respectable, and Jewish.
Hutchinson’s description is very exact: it seems too good to be true. He goes on to say that he followed Kelly and her pick-up into Dorset Street, where they stood talking by Miller’s Court for a couple of minutes. He heard Kelly say: ‘All right, my dear. Come along – you’ll be comfortable.’ The man kissed her, and they went into Miller’s Court. Hutchinson waited, but they failed to reappear.
Nothing is known about Hutchinson that might lend credence or otherwise to his statement. The man he saw need not have been Kelly’s murderer – she was not killed until at least an hour and a half later. Unlike the dark gentleman who chatted quite