Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

many aspects of criminal investigation. Dr Frederick Gordon Brown, the police surgeon who examined the bloodied part of the apron found in the doorway of the Wentworth model apartments in Goulston Street on the night of the murders of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes, could not even say if the blood found on the apron was human blood.
    By 1885 the population of London stood at 5,255,069. Officers in the Metropolitan Police numbered 13,319, but only 1,383 walked a beat during the day. Unless a criminal admitted to his crime, or an accomplice informed on him, or he was caught red-handed in the commission of the offence, it might be a simple enough matter for a cautious and determined criminal to get away with murder.

CHAPTER 6
     
     
    T hursday, 30 August 1888 marked the night of the London Docklands fires and the eve of the first of the Ripper murders. At about nine o’clock in the evening, the warehouse of an engineering company in the Shadwell dry dock turned into an inferno when an oil lamp fell on to the bone-dry straw of a damaged packing case, setting it alight. A second unconnected fire broke out in a bonded warehouse nearby, in the South Quay of the Pool of London. Thunderous black storm-clouds, hanging low over London Bridge, turned a vivid blood-red as they reflected the furious leaping flames, and East Enders, ignoring the driving rain, turned out in their thousands to observe the grand spectacle.
    Standing in the throng of sightseers was a small, dirty, emaciated woman. At fifty years of age, Ellen Holland was a penniless, convicted drunk. Soon after midnight, when the rain finally stopped, she turned away from the raging fires and headed back to Thrawl Street in Whitechapel and her paid bed for the night.
    When Holland neared the junction of Osborne Street and the Whitechapel Road, the bell of St Mary’s church chimed half past two. It was then that she met an old friend, Polly, who was drunk, reeking of gin, and barely able to keep her balance as she staggered about on the pavement.
    At forty-three years of age, Polly was a small, unattractive, poorly dressed woman with dark brown hair turning a premature grey. The few teeth she had left were crooked and stained dark brown by nicotine and neglect. Her dirty clothes and voluminous skirts marked her out as a vagrant.
    A bed in Thrawl Street’s White House, a common lodging house, had to be paid for in advance. Anyone loitering in the house at nightfall with insufficient money for a doss, a bed for the night, would be turned out into the street. To have no bed on a cold, early autumn night was bad enough at the best of times, but the prospect of a sadistic murderer stalking the dark streets and alleyways of Whitechapel must have made it all the more terrifying. Ellen Holland, who had already paid for her bed, offered to share it with her friend. The offer was refused. “I’ve ’ad me doss money three times already,” Polly said, “an’ it’s all gone. But it won’t be long before I’m back.” The implication seemed to be that she intended to find one more client for sex before using the money she would earn to pay for her bed. Her hand lightly touched the brim of a black straw bonnet that someone had given to her. And then she made her parting remark, “See what a jolly bonnet I’ve got now.” She turned and staggered away eastwards along the almost deserted Whitechapel Road, lit only by a few gas street lamps and the bright crimson glow from the distant Docklands fires. Ellen Holland, who watched her until she disappeared into the impenetrable darkness, was the last person known to have seen Polly alive.
    At 3.40 a.m., just over an hour later, Charles Cross, a labourer, was walking from his home in Doveton Street to Pickford’s in Broad Street where he worked. It was the same route he always took and it brought him through Buck’s Row, a narrow cobbled street that ran from Brady Street in the east to Baker’s Row in the west, where it widened to twice its width just past the Board School. It was one street away from, and ran parallel to, the Whitechapel Road, close to the London Hospital. A row of small terraced cottages housing eight families stood on the south side; warehouses and factories lined the north side of the row. Usually deserted after dark, there was just a single gas-lamp at one end, so it was almost pitch-black and, past midnight, always deathly quiet.
    The evidence that Cross gave, both to the police and at the