Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly as victims of Jack the Ripper. It was, and perhaps still is, widely agreed by experts that these five women were the Ripper’s only victims and they became known as the ‘canonical five’. So, as impossible as it seemed, if Lizzie Williams murdered Mary Kelly, then she must have murdered all five women.
    But was it likely? We were eager to find out. We already knew a great deal about Sir John Williams, as he became when Queen Victoria conferred a baronetcy on him in 1894, from intensive research my father had carried out. He had also conducted an investigation into the life of Lizzie Williams (née Hughes) several years earlier which culminated in an article appearing in the South Wales Evening Post (14 May 2001). From information he had gathered, we knew that the marriage of John and Lizzie Williams was not happy. Dr John Williams desperately wanted a child, but his wife was infertile and unable to conceive.
    It was not until well into the twentieth century, shortly after the end of the second world war in fact, that the notion of infertility affecting men became accepted. Until this time it was generally believed that if a couple were unable to produce a child, the woman was to blame; those who were educated or had careers even more so, as it was considered that they had brought their misfortune on themselves. James Marion Syms (1813-1883) considered to be the father of American gynecology, stated that “probably the gynecologist of today is consulted more often with regards to the sterile condition of women, than for any other disease”. The ‘driving force’ behind Sir John Williams’s professional career involved his search for a cure for infertility in women. He therefore followed the traditional path in holding his wife accountable for her failure to produce an heir. We also believe that his arrogance and vanity would not have allowed for the possibility of an alternative explanation . We therefore pursued our investigation on the basis of the parties’ apparent belief; that it was Lizzie Williams who was infertile , and not her husband.
    While we had dismissed out of hand the possibility that Sir John Williams might have been the murderer, we found the additional family information provided by Tony Williams in his book Uncle Jack particularly helpful. If Dr Williams was the womaniser that his great-great-nephew says he was and had enjoyed an intimate and sustained relationship with Mary Kelly, as Tony Williams also claimed, a vitally important piece of the puzzle had fallen into place.
    We now knew that Dr John Williams had a direct connection with three of the Ripper’s victims: Mary Ann Nichols perhaps, and Catherine Eddowes, who were his patients, and Mary Kelly, who was his mistress. Attacks on three of the victims, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly involved the removal of uteri – a hysterectomy – and it was this very operation that Dr Williams performed on a frequent basis in his work as the leading gynaecologist at University College Hospital. In the circumstances, it was difficult to avoid the same conclusion that Tony Williams had reached: that Dr Williams was in some way, either directly or indirectly, connected with the murders. However, while he struggled to ascribe a plausible motive for the murders to Dr Williams, he failed to take the further small, but obvious, step that would have led him to the realisation that it was not Dr John Williams who had the motive to kill Mary Kelly, but his wife.
    The consistent testimony of Mrs Caroline Maxwell, her written statement to the police and sworn evidence given during the inquest at Shoreditch Town Hall, identified a woman she believed to be Mary Kelly leaving Miller’s Court on the morning of the murder. But it was several hours after Mary Kelly was conclusively proved to be dead. This evidence, coupled with the remnants of a woman’s clothing found in the ashes in the fireplace of Kelly’s room; a felt hat, a dark brown cotton twill skirt and black velvet cape – clothes that no one had ever seen Kelly wearing – confirmed to us that her murderer must have been a woman. Lizzie Williams was an obvious suspect because of the intimate relationship that the victim, Mary Kelly, had formed with her husband.
    Lizzie Williams had not expected to encounter someone like Caroline Maxwell as she left Miller’s Court following the murder, but she was well prepared for such an eventuality. A Welsh accent was essential