Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

to convince Caroline Maxwell that she was speaking with Kelly, because though Kelly was Irish-born, she had spent her formative years in Wales and it is virtually certain that she spoke with a Welsh accent. Lizzie, who spoke with an English ‘twang’, could also speak with a Welsh accent if she required. She needed to be confident enough, both in speech and demeanour, to convince Caroline Maxwell that she was Mary Kelly.
    Lizzie Williams was both an accomplished musician and an actress . The information we were able to gather about her, some of it gleaned from the stack of postcards she received from her friends over many years, now kept by the National Library of Wales, demonstrates that she was intelligent and refined, talented and religious, even kindly. After the death of her mother, she had been brought up by a governess, Mary Bevan, and, as the only child of a wealthy, indulgent father, had almost certainly learned to think highly of herself, even though a photograph taken of her as a girl when she was about fifteen, shows that she was not a good-looking child. During her teenage years she performed at Eisteddfodau (Welsh festivals of music and drama). There is little doubt that whatever painful blows married life may have dealt her, Lizzie Williams was an intelligent and confident woman.
     
    Fog, much like the poverty which plagued London’s East End, was a major problem in the capital during the last decades of the nineteenth century, and did not improve until well into the following century when the Clean Air Act of 1956 came into force. A report in The Times on 5 December 1837, referring to the huge difficulties caused in London by thick fog the previous morning, read, “Not only was the darkness so great that the shops were all lighted up, but also every object in the streets, however near, was totally obscured from the view of the persons walking along.”
    As the nineteenth century progressed, the problem became worse owing to the growth of heavy industry which relied on coal for power, and an ever-increasing population which needed coal for cooking and heating. Almost thirty years later, an article published in The Times on 24 January 1865 made it clear that the problem was just as great for those indoors: “Even those who remained at home found a large clear fire but a poor mitigation of the unpleasant atmosphere that filled their comfortable rooms.”
    R. Russell, in his book London Fogs (1880), wrote: “A London fog is brown, reddish-yellow, or greenish, darkens more than a white fog, has a smoky, or sulphurous, smell, is often somewhat dryer than a country fog, and produces, when thick, a choking sensation. Instead of diminishing while the sun rises higher, it often increases in density, and some of the most lowering London fogs occur about midday or late in the afternoon. Sometimes the brown masses rise and interpose a thick curtain at a considerable elevation between earth and sky. A white cloth spread out on the ground rapidly turns dirty, and particles of soot attach themselves to every exposed object.” It was said that in the theatre, actors’ voices could be heard but their faces could not be seen. Even in hospitals, it sometimes proved impossible to perform surgical operations, owing to the choking sulphurous haze that seeped into operating theatres. Shops, offices and even homes throughout London were similarly affected. During the cooler months, certainly from the autumn of 1888 onwards until June or even July the following summer when it became warmer, fog was an everyday, inescapable fact of life.
    There is no doubt that from mid-October 1888 dirty grey fog enveloped the area in and around Miller’s Court. A brief contemporary account of the atmospheric conditions prevailing at the crime scene on the actual morning of Mary Kelly’s murder read: “About half way down this street on the right-hand side is Miller’s Court, the entrance to which is a narrow arched passage, and within a few yards of which, by the way, last night there loomed grimly through the murky air [my italics] a partly torn down bill….” ( The Daily News , 10 November 1888).
    At the street entrance to the passage, foul noxious fog would have been thick enough to obscure Lizzie Williams’s facial features sufficiently so as to prevent Maxwell from seeing her clearly, even though she was only standing on the other side of Dorset Street, some twenty feet or so away. Maxwell said she looked ill, even though