Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

may have been Dr John Williams who was unable to father a child.
    While my father and I were unable to locate any medical records or even diary entries that might throw some light on Lizzie Williams’s emotional state at this time, her condition was one affecting so many women of childbearing age, both then and today, that it is possible to speculate about the effects that her infertility might have caused in the marriage.
    It is now well recognised that reactions differ from one individual to another, that they are subject to cultural and social factors, even the importance placed on having a child by the parties to the marriage. Both Dr John and Lizzie Williams wanted a child; he, it seems – encouraged by his mother – more than she. A baby was the cement that might have held their marriage together, and if that were not possible, the very future of their relationship was in doubt. She likely felt a seething anger at what she may have thought was a serious failing on her part, and bitter resentment towards her mother-in-law, Eleanor, other mothers and all pregnant women. Perhaps she felt a sense of guilt, and thought that her infertility was a punishment for some long-forgotten transgression; she may been uncomfortable around friends who had children of their own, so that her frustration and mood swings pushed them away from her, leaving her feeling even more isolated. She may have harboured emotions of hatred, or even disgust, towards her own body, feeling that it had let her down. It is within the uterus that gestation – life – begins, and it is this organ, above all others, that identifies a human being as a woman. Lizzie’s uterus, this most significant of all female organs, was useless to her, perhaps leading to feelings of inadequacy and that she was in some way less than a woman and sexually unattractive.
    There is no doubt that Lizzie Williams’s infertility placed a great strain on the marriage. She may have felt that she was under constant threat of abandonment – however unlikely that was – and perhaps Dr John Williams, himself disappointed, angry and resentful , displayed his wrath towards her and showed his feelings, thereby increasing her fears, and the schism between them.
    Their sex life may have disappeared and, with it, the love and closeness normally experienced by fertile married couples. Or they may have timed the sexual act to coincide with ovulation, but it would, by that stage, have been performed as an attempt to procreate, rather than for enjoyment.
    Dr John Williams’s mother would have added to the heavy burden that Lizzie Williams already felt. It is certain that Eleanor Williams, anxious that her only married son should provide her with a grandchild, would have pressed the issue both before and frequently during the marriage. This too would have placed the couple’s relationship under further, enormous strain.
    For such a woman as Lizzie Williams, accustomed from childhood to having everything she wanted, it must have seemed almost incomprehensible to her that she was being denied a baby by her own body: her feelings of despair were exacerbated by the steady stream of women patients who found their way to Dr John Williams’s consulting rooms, wards and clinics, many seeking abortions, to rid themselves of their unwanted babies.
    Above all, she would have seen it as grossly unjust that the worthless, middle-aged, disease-ridden hags, the gin-soaked alcoholics who clamoured for Dr John Williams’s services to perform an abortion, as he did on Mary Ann Nichols in the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary, were fertile and produced babies by the score. She, even though of child-bearing age, who read her Bible, attended chapel, and performed so many charitable works, was infertile – and she would have resented them for it.
    This brings us rather neatly to the point: exactly what were the services that Dr John Williams, gynaecologist, provided to his destitute female patients at the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary and Leman Street’s Eastern Clinic, also in Whitechapel, the poorest district of London? The Medical Directory of 1900 makes no mention of Dr John Williams working in either establishment, yet a thorough investigation by author Tony Williams confirmed that he worked in both places, although at the same time stating that it was illegal for him to do so. He suggested that it was for the purposes of his research and for philanthropic reasons, but my father and I believe