Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

scene of the crime.
    The victim’s throat had been cut from just below the left ear to the lower jaw in a four-inch gash, and from the way the flesh was torn, it was apparent that the cut had been made from left to right. This aspect of the murder would prove to be a significant feature when linking it to the four subsequent murders. A second eight-inch cut, parallel with, but an inch lower than, the first incision, almost encircled the neck; it, too, had been made from left to right.
    A deep jagged incision, where the tissues had been cut, ran the full length of the woman’s abdomen on the left side. Several more wounds had been inflicted which crossed her body, and three or four more long cuts had been drawn down the right side of her abdomen.
    Dr Llewellyn gave his opinion that the murderer “must have had some rough knowledge of anatomy”, and that a “strong-bladed knife, moderately sharp, and used with great violence”, had been employed in the attack.
    Because the victim was almost insensible from drink, the doctor considered that “it would not have needed a strong man to kill her”. The entire attack, he thought, had taken just four minutes, five at the most.
    The victim had not been raped or sexually assaulted. The murderer did not appear to have shown any sexual interest in her; it was plainly apparent that the only reason her skirts were pulled up was to allow the murderer access to the abdomen to make the appalling incisions.
    As for the estimated time of death, Dr Llewellyn’s opinion was that it had occurred at 3.30 – “give or take ten minutes either way”. This fitted in well with the evidence of the police constable who had found the body. P.C. Neil had last walked down Buck’s Row at 3.15 a.m. when he had seen no one – though this was not quite what he would tell the inquest jury the following afternoon; Cross and Paul discovered the victim’s body twenty-five minutes later. This allowed the murderer a maximum of some twenty minutes to escort the victim along Buck’s Row to the closed stable gates, persuade her to lie down on the pavement, damp from the rain that had fallen earlier, strangle or suffocate her, cut her throat, pull up her skirts to inflict the wounds to her abdomen, and then escape, all without being seen or heard. It all seemed incredible, yet it had been done.
    When news of a murder broke later that day, a steady stream of people made their way to the Whitechapel mortuary to see if they could identify the victim, Ellen Holland amongst them. There, and in the presence of the detectives who were investigating the case, she tearfully identified the torn body lying on the mortuary table as her friend, but she knew the victim only as Polly.
     
    The ferocity of the attack – the third murder to take place in Whitechapel since Easter – terrified the local inhabitants, made headline news around the world and confounded the police. Editorial comment on 31 August in The Star read: “The brutality of the murder is beyond conception and description.” The New York Times on 1 September stated: “A strangely horrible murder took place in Whitechapel … the most dangerous kind of lunatic is at large.” Women, children and even grown men ventured out of doors after dark only if they had to, and even then, reluctantly. Trade suffered as customers stayed away from the area and shopkeepers reported that their business had almost halved. There was no description of a suspect, no helpful clues had been left at the scene of the crime, nor, it seemed, was there an obvious motive. Not even the victim’s true name was known. In fact, as far as Scotland Yard was concerned, “there was nothing to go on at all”.
    On the day of the murder, Detective Inspector Frederick George Abberline of the Criminal Investigation Department (established ten years before in 1878) at Scotland Yard, was appointed as co-ordinating officer to direct the work of the local detectives. At forty-five years of age, he was almost five feet ten inches tall, portly, with thinning, side-parted dark-brown hair, hazel eyes and a long, aquiline nose. A carefully trimmed moustache, which met his whiskers at the angle of the chin, gave him more the appearance of a bank manager than a police officer, according to a colleague, Inspector Walter Dew. Abberline’s pedigree was faultless: enlisted in the Metropolitan Police in 1863 and appointed to Islington; promoted to sergeant two years later and assigned to